Diet

factoryfarm

Bruce Friedrich: Eating As Though the Environment Mattered

Imagine taking 6-20 plates of food and dumping them in the trash, perfectly fresh and edible. Off they go to the landfill. Obviously, none of us would behave so wastefully.
And yet that’s precisely the effect each time any of us consumes meat, since the vast majority of the calories consumed by a chicken, pig, or [...]

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Recent Posts

Free Range milk

An idea whose time has come from The Ecologist:
The Ecologist office is set in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty within a United Nations Biosphere Reserve. Hartland peninsular is dotted with steep, wooded valleys where bluebells, early purple orchids and woodpeckers abound.The hills afford breathtaking views across the Bristol channel to Lundy Island, itself a nature [...]

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Why the Ethanol Boom Means More E. Coli Burgers

ethanol

Back in 2007, amid a boom in US corn-based ethanol, researchers at Kansas State University released a sobering study involving distillers grains—the mash that’s left over after corn has been fermented and distilled into ethanol. As various government programs ramped up ethanol production—and with it the price of corn—the livestock industry was increasingly turning to [...]

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Coop Tour Season!

Check for a coop tour in your area. There’s a list here.
Here’s a report on Raleigh, North Carolina’s, from newsobserver.com:
These models, covered in feathers, strutting down runways and largely ignoring their gawking admirers, were featured attractions Saturday along with their elaborate homes in the Tour D’Coop, a benefit for Urban Ministries of Wake County that [...]

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Raw Food Potluck

Gainesville Raw Food Potluck is a group of people (everyone is invited) that meet monthly to share fellowship, food, recipes, and information about raw foods and related topics. RAW FOOD includes all un-cooked fruits, vegetables/leafy greens/herbs, un-roasted nuts, seeds, whole grains & seaweed. From these basics, we can make a variety of specialty foods, including [...]

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20 Unusual Ways to Use Coconut Oil

coconutoil

Have you added coconut oil into your daily healthy and beauty routines, yet?
Coconut oil is an incredibly versatile item to stock in your pantry and among your toiletries. Its healthy fats bring with them a host of health benefits. Incorporate the following 20 uses into your lifestyle and you’ll know how to take care of daily [...]

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Food Desert map

Sarah Laskow
posted a map of Food Deserts on Grist:

USDA

The USDA’s new Food Access Research Atlas is a map of all the places in the country where people live in food deserts — places where it’s difficult to access fresh food. There they are, above. (Click through to go to the interactive map.)
The green spots are [...]

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Foodies, unite!

Andy Fisher reflects on the food movement for civileats.com:
The past year or so has brought some dramatic changes to key organizations in the community food arena. Organizations like the Community Food Security Coalition, Food Alliance, Organic Farming Research Foundation, and Slow Food have gone through either challenging leadership transitions, substantially downsized, and/or closed down. The [...]

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Chemicals pervade all food

Tom Philpott looks at chemicals and plastic in our food for Mother Jones:
Bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates are what’s known as “endocrine disruptors”—that is, at very small doses they interfere with our hormonal systems, giving rise to all manner of health trouble. In peer-reviewed research, BPA has been linked to asthma, anxiety, obesity, kidney and [...]

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Ingrid Newkirk: There Is No Such Thing as Humane Meat

Looking at online menus for a restaurant to take a visiting friend, I read “humane meat” and had to do a double-take. This bizarre concept, already seen on labels in upscale grocery stores, is invading eateries so that anyone who wishes to order the chicken can feel sort of OK or even really good about it. What [...]

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Red Meat Linked to Cancer and Heart Disease

Eating red meat is associated with a sharply increased risk of death from cancer and heart disease, according to a new study, and the more of it you eat, the greater the risk.
People who ate more red meat were less physically active and more likely to smoke and had a higher body mass index, researchers found. Still, [...]

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Foodopoly book review

Christopher Cook reviews the new book for SF Gate:
Foodopoly,  by Wenonah Hauter, The New Press, 355 pages, $26.95
What a frightful spectacle our food has become. Human sustenance has been reduced to a corporate portfolio item – one whose success rides increasingly on sheer size and market control. In the name of profit, everything else gets [...]

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Food safety bogs down

Implementation of the sweeping law, signed two years ago, has been bogged down by the its complexity and cost.

(Photo: Richard Pipes, Albuquerque Journal, via AP)
From USA Today:

Story Highlights

Proponents of law say nation’s food supply at high risk
CDC: Foodborne illnesses strike one in six Americans each year
Tougher rules for imported foods also delayed

WASHINGTON — With thousands [...]

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What you read is not what you get in fish

The NY Times reports:
Fish is frequently misidentified on menus and grocery store counters in New York City, even at expensive restaurants and specialty shops, DNA testing for a new study found. National supermarket chains had the best record for accuracy in seafood labeling, the researchers reported.
The researchers, from the conservation group Oceana, said that genetic [...]

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India’s small flocks provide eggs

By Dr K. Ravvi Kumarr , Director, Central Poultry Development Organisation, Chandigarh, India
Rural poultry farming in India contributes to about 40% of the national egg production. The state sector has been taking care of backyard poultry units and the capital requirement of its co-operatives. Backyard farming has over the years contributed to a great extent [...]

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Pollution, Poverty and People of Color

Rae Tyson reports in Environmental Health News:
Trey Mackey expertly baits his fishing hook with a live worm, sits down on a folding chair and casts a line into the waters of Wisconsin’s Monona Bay. He’s driven up from Chicago for a day of fishing that could provide a fresh, tasty dinner of blue gill. But [...]

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Why organic food is worth it

Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute responds to the Stanford study comparing conventional and organic food:
I have enjoyed a virtually exclusive organic diet for the past 30 years. But I was deeply unsettled by a September 4 New York Times article and a similar Associated Press story casting doubt on the value of an organic [...]

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Are We Fair to Animals? Lecture at UF….

stockyards2

Cary Wolfe Rice University: “Biopolitics of the Posthumanities”

13 September 2012, 6:00 pm, Smathers Library East 1A

In this lecture, Prof. Wolfe will discuss new ways of thinking about the shared fate of human beings and non-human animals, using recent biopolitical thought as a framework, thus moving beyond traditional humanism. He will suggest some of the implications [...]

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America throws away half its food

Aug 21 (Reuters) – Americans throw away nearly half their food every year, waste worth roughly $165 billion annually, according to a study released on Tu esday.
“As a country, we’re essentially tossing every other piece of food that crosses our path. That’s money and precious resources down the drain,” said Dana Gunders, a scientist with [...]

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Big Organic corrupts the intent

Stephanie Strom reports in the NY Times:
Michael J. Potter is one of the last little big men left in organic food.
More than 40 years ago, Mr. Potter bought into a hippie cafe and “whole earth” grocery here that has since morphed into a major organic foods producer and wholesaler, Eden Foods.
But one morning last May, [...]

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