Good Food is Everybody's Business
We have an Organic Industry Watchdog to help us keep an eye on the fox in the hen house!
Keep on top of threats and machinations to weaken organic regulations to the benefit of large industrial organic food producers and processors.
It is high time we confessed: we eat meat. The message we are trying to convey with this particular good food experience (a vegetarian meal prepared for guests in Seattle about ten years ago) is that there is wonderful good taste and variety available in natural, whole food for people who want to be healthy. What is more, for people who choose to stop eating unhealthful processed food full of salt, sugar, fat, and chemicals that enhance taste and extend shelf life, good nutritious food is available and affordable.
Just a couple of years ago, we could all take our food for granted; it was just there. Pretty good quality, the produce seemed fresh, …
One hundred years ago, the Helena Commercial Club, a local service organization, published a booklet promoting the Helena Valley as a “Land of Opportunity for Real Farmers.” Today the Valley is “growing” 5-, 10-, and 20-acre residential lots instead. We no longer hear the rousing enthusiasm for local food grown just minutes from the city limits.
Bread was truly the “staff of life” for both the peasant and the nobleman for centuries. In the Middle Ages, for example, a majority of the population – mostly peasants – ate 2 to 3 pounds of bread a day. Today, even with government recommendations of 6 to 8 ounces of “grain equivalents” a day, most Americans are eating about half as much bread as they did just 40 years ago.
Mariah Gladstone (Blackfeet/Cherokee Nation) talks about her background in food advocacy and her experience founding the online cooking platform Indigikitchen.
A descendant of generations of Montana ranchers and farmers, Tim Dusenberry, owner and operator of Double X Bar Ranch, is the steward of nearly 600 acres of farmland where he raises 135 head of beef cattle, 40+ pigs, and uncounted laying hens just a few miles from the city limits of Helena.
If you were to eat a dinner consisting only of Montana’s top agricultural products, here’s what you’d have in front of you: steak, a potato (no butter or sour cream, sorry), a big piece of bread, a cold glass of beer, and a piece of black cherry pie. What happened to that salad or side serving of veggies?
