Good Food is Everybody's Business
All about living a healthy life, having safe and nutritious food, growing and making good food.
Every five years the USDA updates its “US Dietary Guidelines” and the latest is out. We need to be careful about believing the conventional wisdom surrounding the “preferred diet” especially when the conversation is so distorted by commercial interests and money.
Late September 2015, Arthur opened his garden for his fall tour (he offers from one to three “Open Gardens” each year) and then led a small group through Seattle’s International District (ID) to explore unique trees and plants and a visit to the Danny Woo Community Garden.
We’ve just finished 31 days of commercials, ads, and events – and pink everything – as part of October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and we’re all aware of the threat of cancer – all types of cancer – regardless of our age or gender. So now we’re being told that even the meat on our plates is going to cause cancer. What’s the real truth?
In the rush to insure cheap and plentiful food for our nation, we have inadvertently created a much greater problem and we are now experiencing a very high cost for our cheap food.
Whole Foods has been neck in neck for some time with Puget Sound’s PCC Natural Markets (the largest and one of the oldest food cooperatives in the nation), however the corporate structure of “whole” just couldn’t match the cooperative foundation of “real,” at least as far as good food principles.
Over the last 70 years, the beef industry has changed considerably, evolving into an intense, industrial enterprise designed to put as much weight on as many cattle as fast as possible and get the resulting meat to market as quickly as possible. In response to the damaging impact of feedlot production, more and more farmers and ranchers are choosing to return to – and improve upon – traditional methods of raising cattle on grass.
If asked, most people could not tell you where the meat on their plate came from. In fact, if they wanted to know, it would be darned difficult – if not impossible – to find out. On the other hand, while imagining that the beef cow they will be eating is frolicking on lush green pastures, the average American today does NOT want to meet their dinner while it is still standing.
Organically grown, local, whole, affordable, planetary stewardship, food justice, sustainably farmed, humanely raised and slaughtered, slow cooked and seasonally eaten, nutritionism, vegan, healthy lifestyle – these are just some of the words that come to mind around the conversation of How, What, When, and Where we eat these days. There is so much to talk about, and these words do not exist in isolation from one another.
