- Crop Mobs attract landless farmers. – NYT
- FoodNYC has a Blueprint for a Sustainable Food System – FoodNYC
- Video tips for removing toxins from your kitchen – The Delicious Truth
- Is the food stamp challenge ingenious or inappropriate? – Change.org
Link Break 3/1/10 March 1, 2010
Link Break 1/26/10 January 26, 2010
- Target stops selling farmed salmon in favor of sustainable wild-caught fish – PR Newswire
- School produce stand feed families in Oakland – Civil Eats
- 18.5% of Americans can’t afford enough food – FRAC
- Salami recalled after 137 people are sickened by Salmonella – Food Politics
Brain Food: CAFO January 26, 2010
To know your food, sometimes you have to speak the language.
Definition: CAFO: Abbreviation for “concentrated animal feeding operation.” CAFO is defined as any facility with more than 1000 animal units confined on site, or an AFO (Animal Feeding Operation) of any size that discharges pollutants (e.g. manure, wastewater) into any ditch, stream, or other water conveyance system, whether man-made or natural. Consider these key points:
-Operations with more than 1000 animal units are not considered CAFOs if the animals are housed or fed on areas where crops are produced during the normal growing season
-A facility of any size can be designated as a CAFO if pollutants are discharged into water passing across, through, or adjacent to the facility.
-Any water that comes into contact with animals or manure must be contained on site.
[Source]
Why it matters: CAFOs are huge contributers of waste and pollution. Animals kept in crowded conditions need large doses of antibiotics to keep them disease-free. The antibiotics then end up in food and in water run off. Animals in CAFOs are also given low quality feed and are prevented from grazing. Some argue that this kind of operation leads to unsafe, low quality meat and is cruel to the animals.
What to look for: The best way to avoid supporting CAFOs is to buy from a small supplier. You can also look for meat that is labeled 100% Grass Fed or Grass Finished. CAFOs use corn as the main ingredient in their feed and cannot make these claims. Be wary of labels that state only “Grass Fed” because ALL beef cattle are grass fed at some point in their lives before being sent to a CAFO.
Cuba’s Green Revolution January 25, 2010
Cuba is quickly becoming a world model for urban gardening. The urban gardening movement grew out of an immediate need to feed the nation’s citizens. Due to cost constraints, the produce HAD to be organic. Urban growers reclaimed abandoned lots and were unable to afford fertilizers and pesticides. The result has been highly nutritious produce that travels directly from garden to consumer. The system creates job, improves the quality of life, and can teach us all about the benefits of using cities to produce healthy food for the community.
[via Grow Organic Food
Link Break 1/25/10 January 25, 2010
- Whole Foods offers employee discounts based on BMI – Jezebel
- New greenhouse design extends Minnesota growing season – Cooking Up a Story
- Hard times for dairy farmers ends in tragedy – Times Union
- GM Corn genes found in “soil animals” – Organic Consumers
Recommended Viewing: Dean Ornish on Killer Diets January 21, 2010
Only got 3 minutes? Check out this very succinct TED talk by Dean Ornish. Ornish is the founder of Preventive Medicine Research Institute and has done extensive research in how health is related to diet. Here he speaks about the globalization of diet-related. illnesses. When the rest of the world eats like us, they die like us.
Brain Food: Food Miles January 21, 2010
Food Miles: The term food miles refers to the distance that food travels before it gets to your table. It is used in calculating the carbon footprint of not only what we eat, but also where it originates. For instance, an apple grown in Yakima, Washington, and sold in New York City travels roughly 2,700 food miles.
[Source]
Why it matters:A lot of fuel goes into the food we eat. It takes energy to grow the crops, but it also takes a lot of oil to transport them from the field to your table. Is it really better for the to buy organic produce that was grown 3000 miles away? The environmental cost of the distance food travels is something to consider when making your purchasing decisions.
What to look for:Most stores will indicate where the produce was grown. Food miles are not the be all and end all of making informed choices, in fact some people believe that they can be rather misleading. That being said, look for food that is grown as close to your home as possible, by growers who practice sustainable farming. Proximity of growth is important, but many other factors influence how much fuel is used to produce your food.
Link Break 1/21/10 January 21, 2010
Michelle Obama’s rules for healthy eating – Obama Foodorama
Antitrust regulators begin a formal investigation of Monsanto – WSJ
Jeffrey Smith believes a comsumer GMO uprising is coming – Huffington Post
Ontario schools ban soda in favor of good nutrition – National Post
Recommended Viewing: Mark Bittman on What We Eat January 18, 2010
Mark Bittman is the mind behind The Minimalist, a food column in the New York Times.
In the TED talk above, he dives into what is wrong with what we eat. Bittman touches on the meat industry and the industrialization of the world’s food supply. He gives a great, quick history of food production and explains how our food (particularly beef) is hurting the health of Americans and wrecking environmental havoc. It’s a simple bit of background with some timeless advice for fixing the problem
Brain Food: Brix (°Bx) January 18, 2010
Brix: Relative density scale used in sugar and winemaking industry, it indicates the percent of cane sugar (sucrose) by weight (grams per 100 milliliter of water) in a solution or juice of unfermented grapes in degrees Brix (°Bx). The most commonly used refractrometer scale for measuring solids dissolved in water, it corresponds directly to the refractive index scale. One °Bx equals one percent and, in winemaking, the alcohol concentration of the finished wine is estimated to be 0.55 times the °Bx of the grape juice. Named after the 19th century Austrian scientist Adolf Brix who invented a hydrometer that reads directly the percentage of sugar at a specified temperature.
[Source]
Why it matters: Actually, the jury is still out on IF this one matters. Brix is most commonly used in the wine industry, but is growing in popularity with other farmers. Some growers claim that Brix is an indicator of nutrients, not just sugar, and so a high score equates to higher nutrient density. Thus, you might conceivably be able to find apples with a higher Brix score that had more nutrients compared to apples of the same variety that had a lower Brix.
What to look for: Very few products are marked, so you will probably have to speak directly with your grower and ask if they take any samples of their produce. Theoretically, the higher the Brix, the more nutrients in your tomato.
