Food / Farming - OtherWords

Feeding Obesity

Attention foodies: There’s a new craze in Cuisine World, and it’s going 180 degrees in the opposite direction from the much-publicized healthy-eating movement.

Vegan Confessions

by Donald Kaul

If you invented a pill that offers long life, good health, and a body to be proud of, you’d make a fortune. Bottles would fly off the shelves.

Maybe you thought the lowest possible point of Republican miserliness was reached when Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Agriculture proposed that ketchup be counted as a vegetable in the school lunch program. If so, you’ve not taken a peek at the GOP’s astoundingly penurious budget proposal recently pasted together in a fit of ideological extremism by the party’s budget guru, Rep. Paul Ryan.

Vegan on Board

by Khalil Bendib

Two Heads Aren’t Always Better than One

by Jim Hightower

The corporate propensity for rationalizing the irrational in the pursuit of profit appears to be boundless. Consider J.R. Simplot, a giant agribusiness conglomerate whose phosphate mining operations in Idaho have grossly polluted creeks with selenium, a highly toxic metal.

Catching up to the Local Food Revolution

by Bill Wenzel

This year, spring arrived early as a record-breaking heat wave swept across the nation. It feels like summer in Minnesota, Virginia, and many other parts of the country. Farmers are either already planting their crops or just about to start. Consumers who shop at farmers markets throughout the Midwest will soon be sampling fresh-picked local asparagus a few weeks ahead of schedule.

Consumers Need to Know about Those Newfangled Ingredients

by Andrew Korfhage

Many products already bear labels proclaiming the number of calories, the grams of sugar, fiber, and fat, and other details for every serving. Labels say whether the products we put in our bodies are sugar-free, kosher, organic, and more. Shouldn’t we also know whether the food we’re eating is genetically modified?

Congress Must Pass a Farm Bill in 2012

by Ben Burkett

There’s a nasty fight brewing in Washington over the budget that could determine whether a farm bill is enacted in 2012. Given the gridlock that has afflicted Congress since before this election year even got underway, some lawmakers say it should wait until 2013. I couldn’t disagree more. Our farm and food system is broken, and it’s wrecking the lives of family farmers here in the United States and across the globe.

The Chief Twinkie Goes Ding Dong

by Jim Hightower

The bad news is that Hostess Brands has sunk into bankruptcy. It couldn’t stay afloat with the $860-million debt piled onto it after a group of Wall Street speculators took over the 82-year-old company. The good news, though, is that devoted customers can still get their daily fix of five kinds of sugar, partially hydrogenated oil, polysorbate 60, artificial flavors, and yellow dye No. 5 — just a few of the ingredients in Hostess Twinkies.