Good Food is Everybody's Business
In the town of Silveiras, Brazil, the frying and eating of queen ants dates back centuries, but pesticides used by the booming paper industry are now threatening the insects. The number of ants has been dwindling, threatening an ancient custom of cooking and serving the ants with traditional Brazilian dishes.
A real local food revolution must feed people healthy, local food year round to be sustainable. At the Benton Harbor Fruit Market, Market Master Lee LaVanway has helped the Mendel Center at Lake Michigan College make a commitment to serve local fruits and vegetables year round include winter. “Food for All Seasons” tells the story of this pioneering development.
Marion Nestle, the nation’s most recognized nutrition watchdog, highlights food consumption and nutritional information published in the newly released 2011 Statistical Abstract of the U.S.
During 2010, I tried to grow sweet potatoes in Seattle. Briefly summarized: I learned that cultivars vary immensely and that growing sweet potato plants for their edible leaves is well worthwhile; but for their swollen roots alone, I found them not worth space in a garden here.
Approximately 250,000 gallons of beef fat spilled out of a shore-based storage tank and 15,000 gallons of the fat then found its way into the Houston Ship Channel through a storm drain. Coast Guard to the rescue!
When a new food experience takes off in a neighboring city, capturing the fancy of foodies, city planners and researchers alike, we might well ask – why there and not here? Such is the case with Portland’s food carts, the new standard for cultural creativity and entrepreneur-driven economic development.
Why, in a time of record harvests, are a record number of people going hungry? And why are a handful of corporations making record profits? In their new book, Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice, authors Eric Holt-Giménez and Raj Patel with Annie Shattuck offer us the real story behind the global food crisis and document the growing trend of grassroots solutions to hunger spreading around the world.
When I was growing up in southeast Missouri on the banks of the Mississippi, just at the southern-most point of the Mason-Dixon Line, we always ate black-eyed peas on New Year’s Eve. Now I know why…
