Food and Farming
Another Side of the Immigration Debate
Until a few years ago, Rosa Acosta had never even seen a flush toilet. She raised her 12 children in a tiny adobe home in rural Jalisco, Mexico. Several of her kids left it to work in the United States. One son, who left at age 12 to earn money as a farmworker in...
A Better Way to Say I Love You
"Why do American companies sell pesticides that are banned in the U.S. to my country?" my Colombian friend Luz asked me. I had no good answer. Yet, this question lies at the core of the bouquet of roses you might give or receive this Valentine's Day. Nearly all roses...
High Time for Hemp
Four years ago, Michelle Obama picked up a shovel to make a powerful symbolic statement about America's food and farm future: She turned a patch of White House lawn into a working organic garden. I'm guessing that now, as she begins another four years in the people's...
This Week in OtherWords: January 30, 2013
This week in OtherWords, we're mixing food and politics. Wenonah Hauter skewers the government's lackadaisical regulation of genetically engineered salmon, Jill Richardson calls for a fresh outlook on the relationship between weight and health, Jim Harkness asks...
The End of the Farm Bill?
"There is absolutely no way to explain this other than agriculture is just not a priority," said Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow on the Senate Floor on New Year's Day. She was describing the bare-bones Farm Bill extension agreed to as part of...
Don’t Put a Fork in It
While most Americans were enjoying the holiday season or stressing out over the nation's imminent leap off the so-called fiscal cliff, the Food and Drug Administration delivered some big news as quietly as possible. On December 21, the agency announced that...
Fat Demons
My grandmother lay in bed at a hospice facility, days away from death. With her loving children by her side, she looked at her belly and — as she had done for all of the years I'd known her — complained that she was too fat. What? What did she think six-pack abs would...
Step Away from That Desk
Do you eat lunch at your desk? Alone? Continuing to work as you chew? Welcome to the new wondrous world of work in which employees feel intense pressure from bosses to labor right through lunch. In a survey, 62 percent of people with desk jobs said they grab a snack...
Fishy Genes
Coke Still Needs to Get Real
Does Coca-Cola think we’re all really stupid? For the first time, the company is using its slick commercials to address obesity. Obesity became a high-profile issue in the 1990s, when the government started to classify more than half of Americans as overweight or...
