Food and Farming
This Low-Carb Diet Is Good for You and the Planet
2014. A new year. The time to make resolutions. It's when we all join gyms, sign up for dating sites, and start new diets — only to quit them a few weeks later. If you're into resolutions, I've got one for you to consider: In 2014, try a low-carb diet. Not a...
A Toxic Cocktail
Shrimp cocktail makes a great finger food for holiday parties. Right? Only if you have no idea how those crustaceans were produced. Because if you did, you wouldn't want to eat shrimp again. Before I go on, I'll say this: There is good shrimp out there. Monterey Bay...
Coke’s Ploy to Drain Your Wallet When You Dine Out
Coca-Cola is running a stealth advertising campaign. Stealth? Why would a corporation known for its iconic ads like Coke spend big bucks on advertising that it doesn't want consumers to notice? Shhhh. The soft drink giant's campaign is a surreptitious ploy to enlist...
Fast Food Giants Gorge on Subsidies
The fast food industry is notorious for handing out lean paychecks to their burger flippers and fat ones to their CEOs. What's less well-known is that taxpayers are actually subsidizing fast food incomes at both the bottom — and top — of the industry. Take, for...
The Fight for Control over Our Own Dinner Tables
Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist and former farm boy, once wrote: "[T]he central problem with modern industrial agriculture... [is] not just that it produces unhealthy food, mishandles waste, and overuses antibiotics in ways that harm us all. More...
Save the Turkeys
It's odd that the most iconic feature of Thanksgiving — the turkey — is likely the most unnatural. It's got competition, of course, from the jellied cranberry sauce that retains the shape of its can and various food products sold in boxes marked "Just Add Water."...
Genetically Engineered Truth
Genetic Engineering Lies Prevail Again
If you doubt that big money and lies can pervert elections, look at Initiative 522 in Washington State. A grassroots coalition of consumers, organic producers, environmentalists, and others who want honesty in food labeling put it on the ballot. They lost. The measure...
This Year, Have a Big-Poultry-Free Holiday Season
Chicken and turkey are among the most popular and versatile foods Americans eat, but they also bring health risks to your plate. Most factory-farmed poultry is raised with antibiotics — which leads to antibiotic resistance in humans. Now, the USDA wants to cut the...
Who Deserves Our Thanks for Truly American Food?
What do turkey, sweet potatoes, and cranberries have in common? Yes, you eat them on Thanksgiving. Additionally, they are all distinctly American foods. So are potatoes and the corn in your corn bread. Believe it or not, the day that Columbus blundered into the...
