Food and Farming
More Food Doesn’t Guarantee Less Hunger
Every October, world leaders and corporate executives gather in Iowa to present the World Food Prize. Intended to celebrate those who make the largest contributions to increasing the world's food supply, the recipients are announced each year by the U.S. Secretary of...
McDonald’s Takes Its Time Cooking Up a New Menu
The appeal of fast food chains isn't their food: mostly fat, salty, sugary, empty-calorie mush. It's their speed. Order, pay, and — bam — your warmed-over burgerpizzachickentaco delight is instantly handed to you. Yet, for a mega-chain based on speed, McDonald's has...
The Slow Road to Better Fast Food
Challenging Big Chicken
Darn. I missed the official celebration in September — bet you did too. But even if we're a little late, we still have time to mark National Chicken Month. Websites are giving us myriad ways to observe the bird. Eat more chicken! Do the chicken dance! Read Chicken...
Engineering More Information for Consumers
One hundred calories per serving, two servings per container, three grams of fiber, product of USA, may contain traces of soy, manufactured in a facility that processes wheat. We're accustomed to seeing labels on our food that give us this information. However,...
Why Are We Eating in the Dark?
Have you ever eaten a genetically engineered food? If you're like most Americans, you have no idea. Genetic engineering is a controversial technology in which genes from one species (say, bacteria) are inserted into the DNA of a different species (for example, corn)....
The Farm Bill’s Wasteful Welfare Program
Some aspects of American agriculture are quite odd. For example, to meet a farmer these days, you don't need to venture out to the hinterland. Thousands of our farmers are city slickers. And they're really slick, for many of them neither plant nor harvest wheat,...
Faster Chicken Processing, More Injured Workers
Oscar was good at his job. He folded chicken wings at an Alabama poultry plant. As bird carcasses zipped by on the processing line, he twisted the wings into position, folding fast enough to meet a quota of about 40 chicken wings per minute — roughly 18,000 wings per...
Taking Stock of Factory Farm Pollution
One of the biggest drawbacks of the factory farms producing most of our food is the amount of pollution they generate. Factory farms, which raise the bulk of our chickens, hogs, and turkeys, and house most of our dairy cows, are one of the nation's largest sources of...
Junking Food Is Bad for Everyone
Several years ago, I worked in a grocery store bakery. At the end of each day, we threw away piles of perfectly good food. Before the store closed, employees walked down each aisle, checking the expiration dates of bread, bagels, and cookies to toss out whatever...
