A Sweet Tax

A Sweet Tax

As Americans prepare to meet this year’s April 18 deadline to file our taxes, there’s talk of taxes across the Pond, too. Great Britain just passed a tax on sugary drinks. Unlike similar measures in Mexico and Berkeley, California, the British version may lead...
What’s ‘Processed’ Food?

What’s ‘Processed’ Food?

If you’ve read any nutritional advice lately, you’ve probably encountered one hard-and-fast rule: Avoid processed foods. But what does “processed” mean? On one level, anything humans do to food — slicing fruit, cooking beans, fermenting cabbage...
Eating in the Dark

Eating in the Dark

I’m sick of writing about labeling genetically engineered foods. I’m sick of it because there’s really one thing to say, and I’ve said it before: Americans have a right to know how their food is produced. Period. The fact is that most processed...
Betting the Farm on Free Trade

Betting the Farm on Free Trade

From her home in Berks County, Pennsylvania, Karen Feridun is helping stage a growing citizen pushback against the expansion of natural gas extraction. But a far-reaching global deal recently signed halfway around the world may make her job much harder. Feridun got...
Stomping on Our Constitutional Rights

Stomping on Our Constitutional Rights

Imagine the outcry by tea party Republicans if state legislators were passing laws banning the use of video cameras in banks to capture images of robbers. Yet those very same tea partiers have been passing laws in various states to ban the recording of inhumane,...
Slurp, Baby, Slurp

Slurp, Baby, Slurp

As the “lamestream” media, late-night talk show hosts, and Sarah Palin impersonator-in-chief Tina Fey lapped up the former Alaska governor’s first remarks to Donald Trump’s “right-wingin’ bitter-clingin’” supporters, one of her most hilarious lines didn’t get the...