Essays
Opinion: Occupy Wall Street has its points, but occupying the kitchen will bring, keep families together, and when food is sourced locally, will 'stick it to the Man,' too
By Kurt Michael Friese
The Huffington Post 2011-10-27
Opinion: Children's needs ignored as Senate protects potato farmers who complained over proposed anti-obesity rules limiting high-carb foods for school meals
By Valerie Strauss
The Washington Post 2011-10-20
Opinion: Proponents of urban homesteaders' backyard slaughter rights engage in exaggeration, omissions, other techniques similar to those used by industrial agriculture
By James E. McWilliams
The Atlantic 2011-10-12
Opinion: As daily exposure to endocrine-disrupting toxins grows, academic scientists, clinicians need a place at regulatory table with EPA, FDA and industry scientists
By Patricia Hunt
Scientific American 2011-10-11
Opinion: As Occupy Wall Street draws attention to corporate control of democracy, government, we note lobbyists' role in shaping food/ag issues, even writing legislation
By Ben Lilliston
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy 2011-09-30
Opinion: Self-sufficiency is a lot of work and it requires organization and improvisation, but it's no big deal; you just do it - if you're hungry
By Susan Gregory Thomas
The New York Times 2011-10-09
Opinion: Despite lure of $1 million gifts, those in Good Food Revolution aren't required to include Wal-mart, other entities whose practices undermine long-term goals
By Andy Fisher
Civil Eats 2011-09-16
Opinion: To become healthier, more sustainable population, we must encourage a shift from ubiquitous fast food to craft of cooking and associated thrift
By Mark Bittman
The New York Times 2011-09-27
Opinion: Philanthropic retailers could take cue from Kellogg, Walmart foundations and back farmers' market organizations, food access/food justice nonprofits
By Michel Nischan
The Atlantic 2011-09-27
Opinion: To address medical costs, improve health, we must focus on policies in agriculture, transportation, energy, education that shape world beyond doctor's office
By Aaron Wernham
Roll Call 2011-09-26
Opinion: Convenience, addiction-like responses to hyperprocessed items have drowned out home cooking; we can counter by educating children and tearing down the food carnival
By Mark Bittman
The New York Times 2011-09-24
Opinion: When killing animals for food, scale, density of production severs the emotional bond between farmers and animals - essential for factory farming
By James E. McWilliams
The Atlantic 2011-08-24
Opinion: Reviving home ec, and its premises - that producing good, nutritious food is profoundly important, that it takes study and practice - could fight diet-related disease
By Helen Zoe Veit
The New York Times 2011-09-05
Opinion: Rather than subsidizing unhealthful foods with tax dollars, we should tax them, then use income to make good food affordable, ubiquitous
By Mark Bittman
The New York Times 2011-07-24
Opinion: To advocate for better food, vote with your fork, vote with your vote, and take on school lunches and the farm bill
By Marion Nestle
San Francisco Chronicle 2011-07-03
Opinion: "Stoveman," a reality cooking show with deeper meaning, documents business aimed at providing efficient rocket stoves to poor households in struggling places
By Andrew C. Revkin
The New York Times 2011-06-27
Opinion: Paul Ryan's draconian budget plan might not be best way to tackle federal deficit, but approach could help solve nation's obesity crisis
By Hank Cardello
The Atlantic magazine 2011-07-01
Opinion: Global security challenges - food, water, energy - are inextricably linked, so need for systemic thinking and action is inescapable
By John Elkington
The Guardian (UK) 2011-06-29
Opinion: Bribery memo set off an ethics scandal that reached Tyson's executives, raises questions about who, if anyone, is held accountable for high-level corporate crime
By James B. Stewart
The New York Times 2011-06-24
Opinion: As Chicago school coffers drain, free Rice Krispies Cereal Bars, Crunchmania French Toast Flavored Graham Snacks, Danimals Crush Cups tempt home-fed students
By Monica Eng
Chicago Tribune 2011-06-16
Opinion: If you're keen to make the world's poorest people better off, it's smarter to invest in their farms and workplaces than to send them packing to cities
By Raj Patel
Foreign Policy 2011-05-04
Opinion: Middle Eastern dictators use food to maintain power, from Saddam Hussein's use of UN oil-for-food program to food subsidies that helped prop up Hosni Mubarak
By Annia Ciezadlo
Foreign Policy 2011-05-01
Opinion: Nutrition professor says she now supports soda ban for $68 billion SNAP program and is impressed with WIC, which allows purchase of only restricted number of nutrient-rich foods
By Marion Nestle
San Francisco Chronicle 2011-05-01
Opinion: Beyonce's former gig as soda saleswoman, and now her work with Let's Move campaign shows why celebs with hopes of influencing kids shouldn't hawk junk food
By Melanie Warner
BNET 2011-04-13
Opinion: Partnerships, alliances with food corporations put agriculture, food, nutrition, and public health advocacy groups in conflict of interest - latest is Oxfam America aiding Coca-Cola
By Marion Nestle
Food Politics 2011-04-20
Opinion: To avoid fiscal catastrophe and millions of premature deaths, prevent disease rather than treat it; build food distribution system that favors real food, and market it
By Mark Bittman
The New York Times 2011-04-12
Opinion: In high school classes, students couldn't say where honey comes from, but they shared stories of families ruined by diabetes - and begged to learn how to avoid that bleak future
By Jamie Oliver
The Wall Street Journal. (may require subscription) 2011-04-10
Opinion: Free-range animal agriculture, in which we kill animals for our benefit, often celebrated as common good by food writers while vegans cast as against consumer choice
By James E. McWilliams
The Atlantic magazine 2011-04-08
Opinion: Might not a government aware of links between poor diets, obesity and diabetes yet stubbornly beholden to beef, sugar lobbies be accused of obfuscation, corruption?
By Jocelyn C. Zuckerman
The Atlantic magazine 2011-02-25
Opinion: The very politicians who are so worried about public debt -- and who want deep spending cuts now to save our future - dismiss climate, resource crisis and natural debt
By Bryan Walsh
Time magazine 2011-02-22
Opinion: The students at Chicago Public Schools are right - in healthier lunches, they get cardboardy crusts, chalky macaroni salad, formaldehyde-scented lettuce, canned pears that taste like wet toilet paper
By Monica Eng
Chicago Tribune 2011-02-20
Opinion: Fundamental to today's food movement - extraordinary efforts of people in every corner of U.S. - is holistic thinking, respect - knowing origin, history of food, savoring it with family, friends
By Nicolette Hahn Niman
The Atlantic 2011-02-17
Opinion: Possibility of taint from genetically modified alfalfa is low; farmers often cut hay before it flowers, and even if a cow producing organic milk ate GM alfalfa, impact would be benign
By James E. McWilliams
The Atlantic 2011-02-16
Opinion: With Monsanto's Roundup Ready Alfalfa, new kind of pollution is forced on us; it now affects majority of food produced in U.S., without our consent. We've said "No," but is anybody listening?
By Barbara Damrosch
The Washington Post 2011-02-16
Opinion: In bipartisan move, lawmakers celebrate removal from House cafeteria of compostable flatware that bent under pressure like a pocket watch in a Salvador Dali painting
By Charlotte Allen
Los Angeles Times 2011-02-13
Opinion: Food movement aligns consumers, producers, media, politicians and could create political, social and workplace transformation that environmentalists have failed to achieve
By Bryan Walsh
Time magazine 2011-02-15
Opinion: Agribusiness giants Monsanto and Syngenta restrict independent research on their genetically engineered corn, soybeans, canola, cotton, legally limiting research options
By Doug Gurian-Sherman
Los Angeles Times 2011-02-13
Opinion: Asia provides frightening look at food crisis, where critical mass of those living on less than $2 a day reside; implications touch debt outlook, leaders looking to keep peace
By William Pesek
Bloomberg Businessweek 2011-02-13
Opinion: Whether gluttony is a deadly sin is a matter of religion, but foodies are single-minded, and single-mindedness - even in less obviously selfish forms - is littleness of soul
By B. R. Myers
The Atlantic 2011-03-01
Opinion: For food security, we must raise water productivity; cut emissions; shift to solar, wind, geothermal; urge smaller families, make all-out effort to eradicate poverty
By Lester R. Brown
The Christian Science Monitor 2011-02-08
Opinion: The poorest, as fastest growing sector of global economy, are new frontier for corporate food regime, but taxpayers can say no to subsidizing juggernaut that undermines small farmers who grow half the world's food
By Eric Holt Gimenez
The Huffington Post 2011-02-07
Opinion: Growing turmoil shows that ordinary life revolves around price of bread, other basic commodities; at least two Indian governments have been felled by rising price of onions
By Mohamed A. Ramady
Arab News 2011-02-08
Opinion: Lawsuits against biotech alfalfa, sugar beets seek to award organic farmers a civil right not to have their high-end, ad-created market segment disturbed by industrial progress
By Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
The Wall Street Journal. (may require subscription) 2011-02-02
Opinion: Food and everything surrounding it is a crucial matter of personal and public health, of national and global security; at stake is health of humans and that of earth
By Mark Bittman
The New York Times 2011-02-01
Public funding of campaigns, single food safety agency, breaking culture of corporate growth every quarter among nutrition professor Marion Nestle's wishes for food system
By Marion Nestle
The Atlantic 2011-01-18
Opinion: Background factor conducive to unhinged violence is standard junk food diet, dangerously low in omega fatty acids found in fish and walnuts, which help counter depression
By Wayne Roberts
NOW Toronto 2011-01-13
Opinion: To cut $100 billion, first replace subsidies to big agriculture with government matching funds for farmers' deposits into savings accounts; then tax carbon
By Kevin Hassett
Bloomberg Businessweek 2011-01-09
Opinion: Obesity epidemic requires common sense - return P.E. to schools, offer better food in school cafeterias, end some subsidies, reward wellness in employer health plans, and eat more homemade dinners with our families
By David Gratzer, M.D.
The Washington Times 2011-01-07
Opinion: There is no corporate right to privacy; Congress should require that all significant donations from corporations that might affect elections, legislative debates or public policy be fully and promptly disclosed
By Alan B. Morrison
Politico 2010-12-30
Opinion: Emerging cultural divide tearing at military; in 2008, 634 military personnel were discharged for "don't ask, don't tell" violations, 4,555 were discharged for obesity and overweight
By David Frum
CNN.com 2010-12-06
Opinion: UK's cheap global supermarket food chain will fail when oil stops flowing; country should teach people how to grow food, feed themselves, distribute and barter food, too
By Arthur Potts Dawson
CNN 2010-12-19
Commentary: Our preoccupation with geography of food comes as geography threatens to disappear from globe, now that world's countryside threatens to morph into one mall
By Ingrid D. Rowland
The New York Review of Books 2010-12-02
Opinion: 22,000 a day signing up for SNAP in U.S.; this level of food stamp use could prove unsustainable in current economy, since some funding was taken for Child Nutrition Reauthorization
By Marion Nestle
The Atlantic 2010-12-15
Opinion: Free-range meat only slightly better than factory farmed; better lives for animals doesn't equal acceptable and killing an animal for seduction of taste perpetuates harm
By James E. McWilliams
The Atlantic 2010-12-07
Opinion: Sausage makers, who use one recipe, specified ingredients and quality control, insulted by comparisons of their art with lawmaking
By Robert Pear
The New York Times 2010-12-05
Opinion: Changing our eating behavior means changing culture - our freewheeling way of eating too much, indiscriminately, anywhere, at any time, in response to any and all stimuli
By Judith Warner
The New York Times 2010-11-28
Opinion: To wield power responsibly, conservatives must recall that post-Depression social welfare programs provided civic stability so people could buy food, pay rent, sustain economy
By David Frum
The New York Times 2010-11-14
Analysis: Draft deficit commission report is opinion of two guys; any serious plan will spend about 98 percent of its time on health care, since it's our only real spending problem
By Kevin Drum
Mother Jones 2010-11-10
Opinion: Process surrounding AquaBounty GE salmon illustrates FDA's perverted process; study flaws include small sample size, non-random samples, setting detection limits too high
By Tom Laskawy
Grist 2010-09-14
Opinion: Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act is opportunity to use school lunch to address both hunger, obesity problems; we can find funding when it's a priority - and now is the time
By José Andrés
The Atlantic 2010-09-09
Analysis: Evolution of potash, phosphate, nitrogen to hunted, strategic commodities illustrates growing links between globalization, demographics, agriculture, food security
By Javier Blas and Leslie Hook
Financial Times (London) (may require registration) 2010-08-27
Opinion: Brazil's agriculture system, underpinned by research, capital-intensive large farms, openness to trade, new techniques is worthy of study in face of slow-motion food crisis
The Economist 2010-08-26
Opinion: If fish can be bred commercially and marine life can be saved through scientific technique, it will help stave off food-scarcity crisis larger than any we have known
By Josh Ozersky
Time magazine 2010-09-01
Opinion: With US slaughterhouses poised to kill more than 10 billion animals in 2011, concern grows over health, environmental woes of handling the inedible 60 percent of each cow
By James E. McWilliams
The Atlantic 2010-08-11
Opinion: Biotech salmon is just starter protein in GM food revolution, but before using Frankenfish label, note that there are few aspects of food industry that remain "natural"
By Robin McKie
The Guardian (UK) 2010-08-27
Opinion: Despite its noise and din of criticism in social media about that noise, biodegradable packaging for FritoLay's processed SunChips is important innovation
By Caroline Scott-Thomas
nutraingredients.com/Decision News Media 2010-08-23
Opinion: A look at New York City's vanished school gardens of the past could offer instruction for resisting pressures of population, development today
By Daniel Bowman Simon
The Huffington Post 2010-08-20
Opinion: Global architecture for policies on agriculture, food overdue; food, nutrition security should figure prominently at G20 summit, UN conference on millennium goals
By Joachim von Braun
Financial Times (London) (may require registration) 2010-08-09
Opinion: Impact of public health felt most clearly in absence of negative consequences - good quality of food, water, for example- which reduces awareness of its vital functions
By David Tuller
California Magazine 2010-07-01
Opinion: Increase in health literacy crucial; reducing infant mortality is laudable, but if we fail to teach healthy eating habits, kids will develop diabetes
By George “Chip” Morris
Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI) 2010-07-24
Opinion: Instead of regarding healthful eating as a skill set, we should nurture it as an art - seek everyday sights of stunning beauty rather than the nearest Big Mac
By Jennifer LaRue Huget
The Washington Post 2010-07-22
Opinion: Lacking in diet-related disease talk is time-focus model, where public, stakeholders engage along with policy makers every few years to renew, reform programs
By Marc Ambinder
The Atlantic 2010-07-23
Opinion: Tories' attack on Jamie Oliver reflects values of conservatives, who embrace permissiveness in children's food, but not in matters of sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll
By Tom Laskawy
Grist 2010-07-02
Opinion: Policies that protect our health are fully American - when a bottle of soda costs less than a bag of oranges, we can't experience our full range of choices
By Larry Cohen
The Huffington Post 2010-07-08
Opinion: Exploring contradiction of organic farming and deal with Wal-Mart through Sun Maid - am I married, divorced, or sinning?
By David Mas Masumoto
The Atlantic 2010-06-28
Opinion: Food security comes through revitalized food economy, but Wal-Mart, with its low wages and food desert strategy, is more about free public money
By Eric Holt Gimenez
The Huffington Post 2010-07-14
Opinion: Requiring animals, including animals that produce or become food, to be treated decently while alive ennobles animals and us
By Adam Cohen
Time magazine 2010-07-14
Opinion: Food movement's quest to find "new social and economic space" will be ensnared in same realities that have compromised Fair Trade
By James E. McWilliams
The New York Times 2010-06-30
Opinion: Women's success as CEOs in food business illustrates expanding role of females in workplace, principal influence in evolution of American food industry
By Morton Sosland
MeatPoultry.com 2010-06-23
Opinion: Reporter at The New York Times is relentlessly negative, sometimes almost apocalyptic in tone toward GE, says former FDA biotechnology head
By Henry I. Miller
Forbes 2010-06-30
Opinion: To curb obesity epidemic, limit ads from companies selling high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar products - and subsidize vegetables, not corn
By David Lazarus
Los Angeles Times 2010-06-29
Opinion: Food giants' health messages lost to World Cup spectators as they trot from sofa to fridge
By Jess Halliday
Decision News/nutraingredients.com 2010-06-14
Opinion: Food is elite preoccupation in West, but majority of truly undernourished people - 62 percent, in either Africa or South Asia - live the organic, local way and it doesn't work
By Robert Paarlberg
Foreign Policy 2010-05-01
Opinion: Report's omission of potent methane, nitrous oxide emissions in organic agriculture provides opportunity to think beyond us vs. them
By James E. McWilliams
The New York Times 2010-06-02
Class issues permeate food system, underlining need for coherent policy, argues columnist for Grist
By Brent Cunningham
Columbia Journalism Review 2010-05-04
Opinion: How next UK government handles farming and environment policy, role of food in public health, and industry-business links crucial for healthy food sector, healthy population
By Jess Halliday
nutraingredients.com/Decision News Media 2010-05-04
Opinion: It's a great American value to want to fix one's own problems, but food policy problems aren't solved by cooking a healthy dinner, or by one television show
By Kate Dailey
Newsweek.com 2010-04-23
Opinion: Sugar lobby to blame for overly sweet school meals and snacks; children will eat healthier foods when served them
By Marion Nestle
San Francisco Chronicle 2010-05-02
Opinion: Biggest bang for our taxpayer dollars is childhood obesity prevention; Let's Move starts process of making children's food healthier
By David Wallinga, M.D.
The Huffington Post 2010-04-09
Opinion: Michelle Obama, mother of young children, African-American from working-class family, is right person to deliver message of healthy fare
By Susan Reimer
The Baltimore Sun 2010-03-29
Opinion: Limp regulations on toxins, corporate secrecy on internal safety data leave consumers closer to Wild West than nanny state
By David Leonhardt
The New York Times 2010-03-30
Opinion: Forcing higher premiums on those who overeat oversimplifies complex issue that includes social status, income, family dynamics, education, genetics
By Sandeep Jauhar, M.D.
The New York Times 2010-03-29
Essay: After five days' hunting, boom of .270 Winchester downs a doe, brings extreme joy, grief and gratitude for gift of meat
By Betty Fussell
The New York Times 2010-03-28
Opinion: If "Food, Inc." wins Oscar, credence will be added to flawed messages, Michael Pollan's star will be polished
By Marlys Miller
Pork Magazine; Cattle Network 2010-03-02
Opinion: Visitors at hospital's cardiac wing can eventually become patients by eating fatty/salty/sweet snacks from vending machines
By Bernadette Dryden
Columbia Daily Tribune (MO) 2010-02-21
Opinion: Costs of upgrading school meals are minimal when compared with benefits and savings in long-term health care costs
By Bonnie Erbe
Scripps Howard News Service 2010-02-09
Opinion: Fortifying meals with omega-3s would aid soldiers' stress resilience, enhance battlefield performance, speed healing
By Mike Stones
nutraingredients.com/Decision News Media 2010-02-08
Opinion: To reduce childhood obesity, fix Farm Bill, which determines what children eat at school meals and subsidizes main ingredients of junk food - corn, wheat, soy
By Karen Nelson
Tucson Citizen 2010-02-08
Opinion: Strengthening Child Nutrition Act will improve nation's fiscal health, national security
By Debra Eschmeyer
The Huffington Post 2010-01-27
Opinion: As urban youths see bleak future of diet-related disease, Eat Smart, a cooking, gardening program scrambles for funding
By James E. Causey
Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI) 2010-01-23
Opinion: To change eating habits, require full disclosure on food labels of pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, genetic modifications
By Michael Maiello
Forbes magazine 2010-01-10
Opinion: Push by Monsanto, others for more biotech, more industrial farming to feed 9 billion by 2050 ignores 2008 crop yields - enough to feed 11 billion
By Josh Viertel
The Atlantic 2010-01-20
Opinion: Agri-intellectuals' assault on production agriculture threatens 1 in 6 U.S. workers and could undermine ability to help feed world
By Joel Kotkin
Forbes magazine 2010-01-19
On cruise ship, it's village life to the rhythm of mojitos being shaken
By Garrison Keillor
The New York Times 2010-01-06
Opinion: Stop confusing retail spending, possessive individualism with wellbeing
By George Monbiot
The Guardian (UK) 2010-01-04
Books: 'Food Rules' backed by science, framed by culture
By Michael Pollan
The Huffington Post 2010-01-04
Opinion: Agricultural resilience crucial since food security, national security, climate change are all linked
By Neil D. Hamilton
The Des Moines Register 2009-12-27
Opinion: Coal investors fuel long-term wealth destruction for short-term gains, climate change
By Jeremy Leggett
The Guardian (UK) 2009-12-30
Opinion: Until restrainers beat expanders, climate crises - water, soil - will continue
By George Monbiot
The Guardian (UK) 2009-12-14
Opinion: Divert Big Ag subsidies to community food infrastructure
PBS.org
Helping rebuild ecologically sane, accessible local-food economy proved extremely challenging for reporter-turned-farmer. Food industry consolidation shuttered community-scale processing facilities, created factories geared to large-scale farms. Explosion in size of operations means dirt-cheap, low-quality food that generates massive ecological, social problems. For sustainable food, feds must make smart, relatively low-cost investments beyond USDA's Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program. Reducing Big Ag subsidy payments and diverting the proceeds into local-food infrastructure is change we can believe in ... and savor.
By Tom Philpott
Newsweek.com 2009-11-11
Opinion: Health care new battlefront for more food industry rules
Nevil C. Speer
Agriculture under siege from unrelenting campaign bent on denigrating our mission to feed the world; new front of battle is personal and global connotations (or lack thereof) for all types of food - McDonald's hamburgers, bean sprouts - and/or production systems. Anti-agriculture activists, food police potentially have new venue - health care - for uniting; convergence enables them to leverage ideology, impose new regulation. Agriculture, entire food industry has as much, if not more, stake in this debate than any other industry. We better get with it.
By Nevil C. Speer
Cattle Network 2009-11-04
Opinion: Political pushback shows food movement making progress
In column, Marion Nestle, nutrition and public policy expert, says that pushback after Rome speech advocating food system that promotes better health, more sustainable agricultural production is evidence that food movement is making progress. Same goes for Michael Pollan, whose book, 'The Omnivore's Dilemma,' is high on campus reading lists. Agricultural interests (click 'See also' to read exchange of letters) twice this fall attempted to force universities to cancel speaking invitations.
By Marion Nestle
San Francisco Chronicle 2009-11-01
Opinion: We have two choices - cheap meat or health
Factory farming of animals is chief cause of global warming, animal suffering, a decisive factor in diseases like bird and swine flu, cause of food-borne illness. Beyond illnesses linked to them, factory farms foster growth of drug-resistant germs, contribute to risk of pandemics like H1N1 swine flu, avian flu. Factory farm industry has more power than public health professionals because we fund industry by eating factory-farmed animal products. Perhaps, in deafening silence about this problem, we understand that something terribly wrong is happening. And: Factory farming's 335 million tons of manure annually hold infectious microbes that infiltrate air, soil, water, and are transported by houseflies, farm trucks, farm workers (click 'See also').
By Jonathan Safran Foer
CNN 2009-10-28
School meals may face more pork if USDA buys surplus
Feds undecided on whether to buy $50 million of pork to support industry; producers ask that it go for food assistance programs. And: Nation's schoolchildren are fed, in large part, by over-produced agricultural commodities that are promised a market by Farm Bill (click 'See also'). USDA buys hundreds of millions of pounds of excess beef, pork, milk and other meat and dairy products to bolster or normalize dropping prices, then dumps raw commodities into National School Lunch Program. Nearly half of U.S. children forecast to be overweight or obese by 2010.
By Charles Abbott
Reuters 2009-10-22
Opinion: Linking price of corn to school resources in Iowa
Most people in farm states really don't know a farmer, nor now how food reaches a grocery store. Neither do they realize economic links of farmers and non-farmers. Plunging price of corn - Iowa's largest crop - translates to projected budget deficit of 10 percent in state. Governor ordered 10 percent spending cut, which means fewer repairs, fewer services and reduced educational resources for every Iowan - farmer or not.
By Lan Samantha Chang
The New York Times 2009-10-25
Essay: Failed co-op members slip between cracks of organic ideals
Park Slope Food Coop
Like any place that wears its ideals on its sleeve, New York's Park Slope Coop (click 'See also'), with its stiff work requirements and great bargains, evokes rage, adoration and all emotions in between. But there's little public attention paid to co-op failures and near-failures who have struggled to stay in good standing and have stumbled in cramped aisles. Like me, says writer.
By Alana Joblin Ain
The New York Times 2009-10-25
Opinion: EPA's endocrine-disruptor testing old, incomplete
EPA's endocrine-disruption tests for assessing pesticide safety use old information. EPA's testing program addresses only segment of organs, tissues, systems, and won't detect chemicals that can alter development, function of pancreas, and its hormone, insulin, which could lead to diabetes, obesity. Nor will it detect chemicals that alter intelligence, behavior. And: Glyphosate, atrazine included in list of pesticides for Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (click 'See also,' then scroll to page 17583 of Federal Register).
By Theo Colborn
Scientific American; Environmental Health News 2009-04-27
Opinion: Hard-line organic advocates miss larger points
Flavor, seasonality, locality trump organic. Between pure organics and reckless use of chemicals is huge gray area where most farming is done. Ignore this and you ignore mission of supporting small farmers who grow wonderful food. In California, roughly 85 percent of farms are owned by individuals or families, 75 percent are smaller than 100 acres. Earthbound Farm, which grows organics, now cultivates more than 40,000 acres. And: Purity of USDA 'organic' label questioned (click 'See also').
By Russ Parsons
Los Angeles Times 2009-07-01
Opinion: When farmers choose biofuel crops, hunger, pollution rise
Farmers can grow food crops for one price, or same crops for biofuel for more plus tax credits. In 2007, amount of food turned into fuel could have fed 450 million for a year. Corn-based fuel additive use caused 10 percent to 15 percent of food price rise in one year. Higher food prices could cost Americans $900 million more for food stamps and child nutrition programs. Plus, amount of nitrous oxide (300 times more potent than CO2) released from farming corn, rape for biofuels had been underestimated by factor of 3 to 5 times.
By Ed Wallace
Business Week 2009-05-26
Opinion: Recession-related demise of organic foods greatly exaggerated
Contrary to gloomy headlines, organics market's growth merely slowed to rate of one percent a month, careful reading of Nielsen report shows. If that rate continues, organic sales will rise by 12 percent this year, though overall grocery sales are flat. Trade group reports that organic food sales grew by 15.8 percent in 2008.
By Barry Estabrook
Gourmet.com/Politics of the Plate 2009-05-07
Opinion: It's past time for food safety reform
Recent recalls, contaminations, plus industry calls have combined to allow for meaningful, united reform that could keep Americans confident of food on their plates. Obama would do well to use his influence to ensure food safety reform occurs. And: FDA searches Westco Fruit & Nut Co., of Irvington, NJ, after firm refuses to issue voluntary recall of products containing peanuts from shuttered Georgia plant (click 'See also').
By Caroline Scott-Thomas
nutraingredients.com/ Decision News Media 2009-05-04
Opinion: Making risky choice to reject culture of 'more'
In dramatic life change that seems risky but likely is safer bet, reporter quits job to simplify life, slow its pace, volunteer. She and fiance downsized house, will grow vegetables, preserve them and shop locally. 'We're going to see how little we can buy and how much we can reduce our use of electricity,' she writes.
By Emily Achenbaum
Chicago Tribune 2009-05-04
Opinion: Obama's pick for HHS should veto milk disclaimer bill
As Obama's pick for Health, Human Services which oversees FDA, Governor Kathleen Sibelius should veto biotech milk disclaimer bill as 29 groups have requested. Kansas bill would require that milk labeled hormone-free include disclaimer saying that FDA sees no 'significant difference' between milk products with or without it. Bill will become law unless she vetoes it by Thursday.
By Barry Estabrook
Gourmet.com/Politics of the Plate 2009-04-21
Opinion: White House garden as revolutionary emissions reduction agent
Michelle Obama's garden and her message of eating fresh-picked food is truly subversive: Change America's eating habits, improve health, cut emissions, change the world. Globally, agricultural sector releases more greenhouse gases (click 'See also') in growing, transporting, meat production than any activity except for constructing, heating, cooling buildings. Food sector should be priority in talks before Copenhagen meeting, where next round of emissions cuts will be decided.
By Mark Hertsgaard
The Nation. 2009-04-20
Analysis: Global appetites spur agriculture growth
Agriculture grows as more people achieve better nourishment through more grain, a lot more meat, much more milk. Meat and grain prices up 30 percent to 50 percent above averages a decade ago; demand for olive oil (replacing pork fat), continues to grow in China, elsewhere. Monsanto, other agribusinesses, posting strong gains; investment firms buy farmland in far-flung countries, including Morocco, Algeria, Pakistan, Syria, Vietnam, Thailand, Sudan and India.
The Economist 2009-03-19
Opinion: For health, fewer animal products trumps organics
'Organic' doesn't guarantee food safety, nutrition, low carbon footprint. Personal, environmental health will improve with shift in eating habits away from animal products and processed foods to plant products and 'real' food. Americans would reduce the amount of land, water, chemicals used to produce food; incidence of diet-related diseases; greenhouse gases from industrial meat production.
By Mark Bittman
The New York Times 2009-03-21
Opinion: Cut hunger risk with more farmers, home gardens, awareness
Jews farm because Judaism is an agrarian religion, but thousands of years have taught Jewish farmers that solution to hard times was passport. World climate, energy crisis can't be escaped by moving, and one in nine people in U.S. need food stamps. Best way to reduce hunger is more farmers, victory gardens everywhere, heightened awareness of importance of food. And: Farming, cooking aren't such radical ideas, says columnist (click 'See also').
By Sharon Astyk
The Dallas Morning News 2009-02-06
Opinion: Obama's fast start offers hope to sustainability advocates
Early words, actions of Obama administration offer hope of reforms in agriculture, food policy that lead to environmental sustainability, healthy diets. Among pending questions: commodities payments versus agri-environment programs, placement of ethanol in alternative energy, agriculture and WTO Doha talks.
By Thomas Dobbs
The Dakota Day 2009-03-06
Opinion: Beyond salmonella crisis to safer food system
Enhancing quality, safety of industrially produced food means building on success of existing programs; developing rapid detection methods for pathogens; eliminating unnecessary antibiotics; improving food preparation practices in all settings; strengthening capacities of health departments; and irradiating high-risk foods. CDC says irradiation could prevent up to 1 million cases of food-borne disease annually.
By Dennis G. Maki, M.D.
The New England Journal of Medicine 2009-02-11
Opinion: Food writing, beyond odes to crusty bread
Past recipes and celebrity chefs, the meat of food remains. Food news is interdisciplinary beat, one that's often on newspapers' front pages and on lists of most-read and most-emailed. It's embedded in safety, security, regulations and habits, economics, environment, agriculture and politics. Global crisis shows need for coverage of complicated, interconnected food reality.
By Georgina Gustin
Columbia Journalism Review 2009-01-01
Opinion: Consolidate FDA, USDA food-safety work?
Single food-safety agency debated as salmonella outbreak continues. Overhaul old laws in current system, says David Kessler, ex-head of FDA. Decentralize, revamp FDA and staff with real regulators, says James McWilliams, history professor. Single agency would develop transparent standards, coordinate response, says Jaydee Hanson, food policy analyst. Reinvent food system, with children's, planetary health first, says Ann Cooper, chef. Require more reporting, view food as homeland security, says Bill Marler, lawyer. Rename USDA to reflect priority of food, says Caroline Smith DeWaal, Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The editors
The New York Times 2009-02-08
Essay: Fantasy loses some luster along with economy
Starbucks was great American backup plan, offering promise of simpler life: Serve, smile, achieve perfect cappuccino foam - and it came with health insurance. Company still huge, but as it struggles, its status as fantasy shrinks. Still, making 200 drinks an hour focuses the mind.
By Mary Schmich
Chicago Tribune 2009-02-06
Essay: Choking incident shows need for staff safety training
alexholden.com
Portion of life-saving poster by Alex Holden, a Brooklyn artist.
Learning Heimlich maneuver should be mandatory for restaurant staff, writes famed cookbook author who was saved at her own party from choking on Persian shish kebab with pomegranate sauce. The knight? Tom Colicchio, who owns Craft restaurants and is judge on TV show 'Top Chef.' And: Brooklyn artist transforms eyesore of life-saving poster into aesthetic statement (click 'See also').
By Joan Nathan
The New York Times 2009-02-04
Opinion: School lunch program is focused path to food policy reform
Big Stock Photo
Sustainable food movement wants overhaul of nation's food system, but focus, call for specific action is way to real change. Best bet: Advocate for radical change with Congressional renewal of laws for school meals (click 'See also'). Currently, cash-strapped schools rely on government surplus, sales of soda, junk foods. Stricter nutrition standards, more funding for fresh food could change that, and both mesh with Obama's goal of ending childhood hunger.
By Jane Black
The Washington Post 2009-01-25
Analysis: Details crucial in healthful living campaign
Short on funds, New York governor turns call for change into anti-obesity measures: Soft drink tax, posting calorie counts in chain restaurants, adding markets to poor neighborhoods, banning junk food in schools. Professor says proposals take health care outside of medical sector and are way of cost-shifting that doesn't recognize obstacles - no sidewalks, time deprivation.
By Anemona Hartocollis
The New York Times 2009-01-11
Opinion: Build new food system to make current model obsolete
Despite raging wars, tanking economy, reform of food system can't wait. Obama's stimulus package should bolster infrastructure of local, regional food systems by providing grants to rebuild slaughterhouses, other missing facilities that sustainable-minded farmers need; reinvesting in school-cafeteria kitchens; and launching Teach for America-style program to lure new cooking school graduates to school cafeterias.
By Tom Philpott
Grist 2009-01-09
Opinion: Cooperating for health of land, eaters, economy
Obama's secretaries of agriculture, health and human services share simple link: Health of America's eaters depends on health of food/agriculture system. The two must create science-based policies that build and protect healthy soil, make fruits and vegetables the easiest and most affordable choice, and promote local food production as community asset to strengthen economy.
By Angie Tagtow
The Des Moines Register 2008-12-18
Preventing bad teeth, cascading health woes of poverty
Beyond joblessness or underemployment, bad teeth mark those without insurance-paid dentist visits. Loss of teeth makes eating fresh produce difficult; diet heavy in soft, processed foods exacerbates serious ills, like diabetes. Such preventive measures save money in health care. And: Obama predicts 'sobering' unemployment figures (click 'See also').
By Malcolm Gladwell
The New Yorker 2005-08-29
Opinion: End to unregulated genetic seed alterations?
Austrian study (click 'See also') links genetically modified corn strain with diminishing fertility, size of mice. Upwards of 90 percent of U.S. soy, 60 percent of U.S. corn, come from gene-altered seeds, suffuse food system, yet government essentially doesn't regulate GMO food. Cause for hope is Obama's declaration for gene-altered organisms 'abetted by stringent tests for environmental and health effects and by stronger regulatory oversight guided by the best available scientific advice.'
By Tom Philpott
Grist 2008-12-12
Opinion: Halting advance of health crisis from cheap food
With cheap food looming as crisis-in-the-making, Obama should consider a Cabinet-level agency over all food safety, enforcement and research. With low price as king, conglomerates trade foods from all over, and corners are cut. In U.S., 12 agencies administer 35 different food safety laws. Consumers must seek out sustainably produced foods - and vote with their pocketbooks.
By Aleda Roth
San Francisco Chronicle 2008-11-29
Opinion: Melamine links industrial waste to U.S. food production
Melamine has pervaded U.S. food system. It's added to fertilizer and accumulates in the farm fields. Last year, millions ate chicken that had been fed tainted gluten from China; Tyson Foods butchered hogs that had eaten tainted feed too. Meat was not recalled. China melamine scandal is opportunity for U.S. to pass fertilizer standards and to test for chemical.
By James E. McWilliams
The New York Times 2008-11-17
Opinion: Fishing for sustainable dinner
Monterey Bay Aquarium
The mackerel population is abundant, though a mercury advisory has been issued for King and Spanish varieties.
Now that we have caught large portion of all the fish in the sea and we're feeding fish to animals, not people, we have two choices. Either allow overfished species to return to sustainable levels while we broaden our appetites to include mackerel, sardines, anchovies and herring (click 'See also'), or face future of industrially farmed, flavor-deficient fish and accompanying environmental degradation.
By Mark Bittman
The New York Times 2008-11-16
Two nutrition experts list food industry secrets
Food industry would rather us not notice: its billions spent on ads to children; its donations to nutrition associations; its lobbying that has made food labels confusing; its minimizing of health concerns related to its products; that it fronts groups that fight obesity and that it tries to discredit critics. Opinion: Modifiable diet factors cause much more illness, death than car crashes, nutrition professor, pediatrician say (click 'See also').
By Adam Voiland
U.S. News & World Report 2008-10-17
Opinion: U.S. food policy must link new energy, preventive care and global market
Obama must decide what, how and why the whole of America eats. Food system guzzles 19 percent of fossil fuels, gushes up to 37 percent of greenhouse gas emissions; health care is sapping 16 percent of national budget, with four diet-related diseases making top 10 killers list; global food price crisis shows food can't be traded across borders like color television sets (click 'See also').
By Jess Halliday
FoodNavigator 2008-11-03
Opinion: The time for giving to one another is now
Americans who surged to the polls to give Barack Obama their votes are ready right now to give more. All you with time and energy left over: Help homeless and hungry people. Work for an environmental organization, a food pantry or a community garden, or all three. Tutor a vet who is aiming for college. Some local cause is struggling. Find it and pitch in.
By Lawrence Downs
The New York Times 2008-11-10
Opinion: Obama gets bill for 200 years of burning fossil fuel
Obama must grasp that food, climate, energy, economy are globally linked and must be solved together, and that atmospheric CO2 must be cut from 385 to 350 parts per million. Fossil-fuel use must cease by 2030; we must make massive investment in green energy; we need a Marshall Plan for carbon. And: Food/agriculture sector of economy produces more than one third of greenhouse gas emissions, says UN agency (click 'See also).
By Bill McKibben
The Guardian (UK) 2008-11-06
Opinion: Viewing global food crisis as critical foreign policy
Barack Obama has opportunity to reposition global food crisis as critical foreign policy, and he should, since hunger is directly tied to civil unrest. Surely a world that found $1 trillion to rescue financial institutions can find $30 billion for short-term hunger needs and improvements to increase food production.
By Nancy Roman
World Food Program (UN)/Reuters AlertNet 2008-11-05
Opinion: It's time to refine farming, globally
With price of bread linked to that of petroleum, metal and other goods, and a billion people in extreme poverty, we must refine farming. Much of the world's best farmland in Russia, Ukraine, Africa produces nothing; poor infrastructure dooms 40 percent of world's food to rot. We need to invest in farming, make it globally desirable, productive, with tangible benefits.
By Doug Saunders
The Globe and Mail (Canada) 2008-10-25
Opinion: Fuel crops with sunshine, not oil, to solve nation's big problems
To progress on health care crisis, energy independence and climate change, new president must wean food system from fossil fuel and return it to diet of sunshine. Next, new policy must strive for healthful diet for all; improve reliance, safety and security of food supply; promote regional food economies; and reframe agriculture as part of solution to environmental problems.
By Michael Pollan
The New York Times 2008-10-12
Opinion: Apple's birthplace, rebirth crucial to food security
On border of Kazakhstan and China, conservationist has spent 70 years in 'fatherland' and forest of apples, cataloging as hedge against memories of famine. As solution to urbanization and loss, he proposes pairing restoration and commerce. Author (click 'See also'): Foragers and traditional farmers are food's safe-keepers. North America lost more than 15,000 apple varieties in 400 years.
By Gary Paul Nabhan
Orion Magazine 2008-05-01
Opinion: Food writing and gentle voyeurism
Food is a prism of understanding. Grandma's pot roast, Daddy's salad dressing, the meal you ate when you first fell in love: we each have our own stories and they're more interesting with recipes. Food writing is a gentler, lovelier voyeurism that links our humanity. How better to know other families, other love stories, than through meals people share?
By Luisa Weiss
Tufts Magazine 2008-06-21
Opinion: Retooling Slow Food for U.S.
Slow Food
In society that takes comfort in its politicians hunching over burgers from the Dollar Menu at fast-food outlets, Alice Waters, with her Edible Schoolyard, is truly subversive. She plants seeds of honest taste memories in every child. To become American, Slow Food must figure out how to make sure everyone can afford a lovely, local bunch of carrots.
By John Birdsall
San Francisco magazine 2008-09-01
Opinion: Heartbeat away from Italian chef in White House?
In 1987, Joe Biden promised to hire an Italian chef if elected president, so he could always eat his favorite food. It was an unusual campaign promise, but indicative of his engaging personality that will mesh well with staid, more serious Barack Obama.
By Carl P. Leubsdorf
The Dallas Morning News 2008-08-23
Opinion: Urban farming translates to victory salads
Karla Cook/thefoodtimes
Urban farming could relieve strain on food supply, increase food independence, combat obesity. When dinner is plucked from balcony pots or lawn, carbon footprint nearly disappears. Want to cool cities cheaply? Plant crops on rooftops. It's an excuse to geek out with NASA tech. Best of all, it would reconnect us to our frontier spirit.
By Clive Thompson
Wired magazine 2008-08-18
Opinion: Native, humble tomato returns as coveted heirloom
Summer tomatoes ripe and in vogue, says author/tomato farmer (click 'See also' for book review). Heirloom tomatoes, multi-colored and multi-cultural, replace Jersey beefsteaks in regional cuisine. Think Hungarian heirloom tomato salad with black radishes, a salsa cruda of Oxhearts and grilled peaches.
By Tim Stark
The Washington Post 2008-08-13
Opinion: Illegal workers and employer demands
Court papers show that Agriprocessors' human-resources employee helped distribute false green cards to Iowa slaughterhouse workers. In 2006, Swift official was charged with harboring illegals and failing to report crime after meatpacking raid. Companies seem to rely on a mid-level manager to create bogus documents, then claim ignorance.
By Rekha Basu
The Des Moines Register 2008-08-03
Opinion: Revenge of gardening nerds
Karla Cook/thefoodtimes
Cool hobby of gardening teaches children skills that help them succeed.
Vegetable gardening has become wild and dangerous, a radical way to rebel against authority and subvert the dominant industrial-food paradigm, says longtime gardener, once the dweebiest of dorks who grew tomatoes outside his dorm room. Young people are flocking to the garden. We'll tend our veggies while we wait to see if our hobby is passing fad or lasting effort to diversify our food system. Click 'See also' for more columns.
By John Hershey
San Francisco Chronicle 2008-07-26
Opinion: Gardening, cooking and eating as political acts
Social, cultural dimensions of our food system should raise great concerns for conservatives. Even the smallest acts of resistance to corporate-governmental collaboration on policy and nutritional guidelines are crucial to recovering local culture and will nurture ability to either govern or to resist centralized government.
By John Schwenkler
The American Conservative 2008-06-30
Opinion: Trust is prerequisite of biotech acceptance
Genetically modified foods would reduce some effects of global warming, but lack of long-term safety studies and lack of global trust in agri-biotech firms hinders acceptance. Monsanto must show it cares for people and environment more than profit - by paying medical bills of those harmed by its products, cleaning up its environmental disasters, and by dropping the strong-arm tactics with farmers.
By Laura H. Kahn
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2008-05-14
Opinion: Preventing, resolving conflict from food crisis
When hunger drives people into conflict, mere food aid tends to fuel fighting, as combatants seek to harness it for goals of war. Immediate challenge is for international community to swiftly respond to widespread outbreaks of violence. Peacemakers must incorporate remedies to socioeconomic roots of conflict.
By Michael Vatikiotis
Bangkok Post 2008-05-26
Opinion: Eating less meat, less processed food
TED
Mark Bittman: It's time to stop raising animals industrially and stop eating them thoughtlessly.
To ensure our health and the health of our planet, which are intertwined, we must reduce consumption of meat and processed foods, says longtime food journalist. Livestock production pollutes air, land, water and our bodies; if we eat more plants and less of everything else, we live longer. We don't need animal products, or white bread, or Coke - we're not born craving Whoppers or Skittles.
By Mark Bittman
TED: Ideas Worth Spreading 2007-12-04
Opinion: Elegy for slow growing
Spring displays a disquieting undertone this season, not born simply from the news that the cost of rice has climbed out of reach for many but because it seems that time is ripening a little too quickly. Already, we have sweet, dark-green Lancaster County asparagus, and if summer rushes, local strawberries due in late May might shave a week or two off that. Meanwhile, we give thanks for April's showers.
By Rick Nichols
The Philadelphia Inquirer 2008-05-01
Opinion: Food perils ahead
Beyond rising population, economic growth (sea transport accounts for a third of the price of grain) and global warming, policy of ignoring agriculture has contributed to food crisis. World Bank now pushes investment in rural irrigation, roads, transport and energy. Since climate change threatens agriculture, we must produce more on less land and with less water - which leaves genetically modified plants - but their use is disputed.
By Frédéric Lemaître
Le Monde (Translation by Harry Forster); The Guardian Weekly 2008-02-27
Opinion: Rice in every bowl
When it comes to food production, we need free trade. Rice feeds about half the world, but only about 5 to 7 percent of rice is traded across borders. Now, recent export restrictions are expected to lower international trade in rice. Those restrictions show farmers that their crops are least profitable precisely when the food is most needed, and could make shortages and high prices permanent.
By Tyler Cowen
The New York Times 2008-04-27
Opinion: Candidates missing green uprising
Presidential candidates are missing opportunity to put food at the center of their green plans, to support beginning farmers and to champion communities' efforts, nationwide, to build local food sources including farmers' markets and edible gardens. Neither candidate has dared to address the farm/food bill and how it could catalyze a truly green economy.
By Anna Lappé
Grist 2008-04-22
Opinion: Getting real on the food pages
Despite food crisis, hedonism dominates food media. We assume readers want window to epicurean life, and we linger over fast rewards, not strategic planning. But food revolutionaries and their followers believe that industrially produced cheap food is not cheap. The time is right for mainstream voices to marry pleasures of the table with reality, to recommend less packaged food and less meat.
By Sara Dickerman
Slate 2008-04-16
Opinion: You aren't what you cook
For what lies in the hearts and minds of the candidates, there are better places to look than their palates -- and their recipes. First families don't get to the White House because of their cooking, so let's stop pretending that politicians own well-thumbed copies of "The Fannie Farmer Cookbook," and let's stop asking them for family recipes.
By Walter Scheib
The New York Times 2008-04-20
Opinion: Green thinking, garden action
Karla Cook/thefoodtimes
Growing mint in a backyard garden means one less purchase at the supermarket.
The climate-change crisis, caused by our everyday choices, is upon us. We can tell ourselves stories to justify doing nothing; waiting for politicians or technology to solve the problem suggests we're not serious. But planting a garden reduces our sense of dependence. It's solar technology, it's nutritious, it's delicious, it's practically carbon-free, it reduces trash, it burns calories, it builds community and it sets a standard.
By Michael Pollan
The New York Times 2008-04-20
Opinion: Greenwashed design
Pasadena's new Whole Foods Market is Vegas with organic, gluten-free scones. First rule of sustainable architecture is keeping new buildings small and efficient. With 30-foot ceilings, endless aisles, 280 subterranean parking spots and TVs always on, this place is neither. Forget about doing more with less. This green-tinged cornucopia is about doing more with more.
By Christopher Hawthorne
Los Angeles Times 2008-04-06
Opinion: Not so fast
Slow Food is as "global" as McDonald's but networked, not hierarchical. It is a potent promotion machine that preserves for small elite the valuable goods and services that, as an economic system, globalization destroys. Tiny sacramental packages of gourmet products with irreducible rarity can't be sold to mass consumers because they don't scale up in volume. That's tough for capitalism but easy for a cultural network.
By Bruce Sterling
Metropolis magazine 2008-03-19
Opinion: Ruled by Tesco?
Until government awakens to approaching convergence of crises, we are at mercy of grocers. Expert believes that radical shift in diet, to mostly plant-based foods, is only long-term solution, considering dependence of industrial food system on oil and its rising price, land shortages due to appetite for meat, shortage of farmers, pressures on crop land by biofuels and effect of climate change.
By Rosie Boycott
The Guardian (UK) 2008-03-28
Opinion: Defending agricultural biotechnology
Contrary to anti-biotech group's position, environmental impact from cross-pollination on seed and forage fields of Roundup Ready alfalfa is no different from that which exists conventionally. Anti-biotech movement goes past money lost to feeding and caring for people, and to the unavailability of biotech Golden Rice, with its high Vitamin A content that could prevent blindness in children.
By Harry Cline
Western Farm Press 2008-03-17
Opinion: Cultivating a 'garden mind'
The Edible Schoolyard
An appreciation of nature and life cycles begins in the garden (The Edible Schoolyard, above), then flows throughout the school day.
Placing the idea of the garden at the heart of school, beyond the transient thrills of consumption, nurtures regard for the natural world and life's cycles. We learned that nature wasn't limited to the garden; discussions flowed from the lunch tables to history classes, at our weekly faculty meeting and at assemblies.
By Philip Nix
ecoliteracy.org 2008-03-14
Safe food for children
Barack Obama says that inadequacy of food recall process is clear, since most Hallmark/Westland beef recalled had already been eaten. He says that if elected, he will hire more federal food inspectors and ask the USDA whether federal food safety laws need to be strengthened. He says that as a parent, 'there are few issues more important to me than ensuring the safety of the food that our children consume.'
BarackObama.com 2008-02-18
Opinion: Campaigning for food safety
With nation's largest beef recall under way, Hillary Clinton details the food safety plan she would pursue if elected. It includes increasing USDA food safety funding by more than 50 percent, creation of a Food Safety Administration, granting safety agencies recall authority, creation of a national tracing system, and prosecution of production facilities that allow unsafe food to enter our food supply.
HillaryClinton.com 2008-02-18
Opinion: In the (reusable) bag
Chris Jordan
Plastic Bags, 2007. Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the U.S. every five seconds. (Partial zoom.)
Giving up bottled water was easy - a chance to cloak cheapness in environmental virtue. Abandoning plastic bags is an inconvenience that means changing the hearts and minds of others. First, we must remember to bring our own bags, then there's the disbelief and disgust of cashiers as the lines lengthen behind us at the supermarket.
By Jane Black
The Washington Post 2008-02-06
Opinion: The anti-trust
Weed-free fields, fat yields lead nation's farmers to enrich agribusiness giants Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, and to a devil's bargain with Monsanto, the maker of genetically modified seed and the weedkillers those seeds can tolerate. The company has used patent law to gain control of our two biggest crops - corn and soybeans - and voided the age-old tradition of seed-saving in farm country.
By Tom Philpott
Grist 2008-01-17
Opinion: Keep your clones
Real beneficiaries of cloning are the meatpacking companies - those that wish for nugget-shaped chickens. Anyone who really cares about food or farmers and their animals, likes different tastes, textures and delights and is more interested in diversity than uniformity. A cloned animal looks like what it is: a dead end.
By Verlyn Klinkenborg
The New York Times 2008-01-23
Opinion: Farm-to-plane
Eating locally makes sense in the summertime, when tomatoes are ripe in Jersey, or the dates are golden in California. But in Ohio during winter? Herewith, a distovore's meal in which each component collected frequent flyer miles before they were gathered from Whole Foods.
By Joel Stein
Time magazine 2008-01-10
Produce prizes
Great thinkers gather to ponder their list of 100 fruits and vegetables, with the task a simple one: Which are standouts from the last 50 years? Some answers were off course (a pork sausage, a table, a Scrabble game), but in short: lemons, Brussels sprouts, celery, tomatoes, pawpaws, baked beans, mushrooms, pomegranates and beets.
By Craig Brown
The Telegraph (Great Britain) 2008-01-12
Opinion: No lie
Farmers, who know their turnips and tend their olives or harvest their wheat, can read the warming trend in harvests, or lack of them. Many are somewhere between disbelief and denial, but beyond the hard numbers, there's the UN panel on climate change, consistently sounding the alarm.
By Mort Rosenblum
The New York Times 2007-12-23
Opinion: Early education
Schools, desperate for money, accept money from fast-food companies in return for printing logos on report cards and more, but those savvy marketers aren't trying to sell one Happy Meal. They're branding their products early and often in impressionable young minds to build loyalty and create lifelong customers.
By Julie Deardorff |
Chicago Tribune 2007-12-16
Opinion: Unsustainable, defined
The efficiency of factory farming may be nearing its limits. Two sacrifices of biological resilience are MRSA, a superbug that kills people, now found in concentrated animal feeding operations and in pig farmers; and the fatal epidemic among honeybees, pollinators of nuts, fruits and vegetables. What if researchers find that one cost of cheap meat is an epidemic of drug-resistant infection among young people?
By Michael Pollan
The New York Times 2007-12-16
Opinion: No greater good
After rising by one-third in past year, food-price index is at its highest since it began in 1845. High prices offer an opportunity to break a cycle of crop subsidies without income loss. Doing so would help taxpayers, revive the stalled Doha round of world trade talks, boost the world economy, and directly help many of the world's poor.
The editors
The Economist 0000-00-00
Opinion: Whole paycheck?
With more space devoted to prepared foods and other goodies than to fresh fruits and vegetables, new Whole Foods in Pasadena commands a premium but provides a sense of self-satisfaction for patronizing such an ostensibly "green" business.
By David Lazarus
Los Angeles Times 2007-12-02
Opinion: Wash and eat
Hand-washing, once a sign of gentility, respect for others, and a necessity since food was eaten out of hand, has fallen out of favor. Too bad for us. It's a low-tech, effective way to stop the spread of bacterial and viral infections.
By Katherine Ashenburg
The New York Times 2007-11-27
Opinion: Wish list
For organic farmer, a food life list is about saving and savoring, about the communal act of eating with family and friends and the experience of real wasabi, true truffles and the perfect peach. It's about the value of quality over abundance and economy of scale.
By David Mas Masumoto
Los Angeles Times 2007-11-21
Bank on it
After one meal of turkey with all the trimmings, 35 million Americans resume their places in line at soup kitchens, food banks and food stamp offices. It's time to rethink our devotion to food donation, and concentrate on ending poverty.
By Mark Winne
Washington Post 2007-11-18
Opinion: Park it
Eating local makes sense when the farmers' market is joyously abundant, but subsisting on root vegetables all winter is best as a well-told story. The best way to cut fossil fuel use is not to skip the Chilean grapes, but to avoid accidents and congestion by walking to the market.
By Tim Harford
Forbes.com 2007-11-15
Opinion: Treating symptoms
Slashing commodities subsidies addresses only a symptom, not the problem of the farm/food bill. Real reform in federal farm policy will come from changing the message to farmers, which, since the early '70s has increasingly been: Produce as much as you can."
By Tom Philpott
Grist 2007-11-08
Opinion: Food fear
Addressing every ingredient or additive fear in this writer's pantry or refrigerator would require him dedicating his life to organic chemistry, so he's decided to have another glass of chardonnay and turn his attention away from the nutrition label.
By Eduardo Porter
The New York Times 2007-09-25
Opinion: Eating less
Fasting for Ramadan helps writer with self-discipline and in achieving greater awareness of a plentiful food supply, the tendency for lavish spreads during iftar and their distraction from religion, and the extent of food waste.
By Aziz Junejo
The Seattle-Times 2007-09-15
Opinion: Fasting food
In a culture centered around meals and eating, Yom Kippur demands fasting, and that makes one writer recall childhood, when he contemplated fast food instead, and whether salt counts as nourishment.
By Michael Rosenberg
Detroit Free-Press 2007-09-24
Opinion: Temple of food:
To celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi with modak - dumplings stuffed with coconut and jaggery - or moon-shaped karanji, or to eat stellar Indian food, go no farther than the nearest temple, where the prices are low, writer says.
By Chidanand Rajghatta
Times of India 2007-09-16
Opinion: Gorilla warfare
Though armed and hungry guerrillas with a taste for wild meat often spell doom for mountain gorillas, it's Africa's demand for charcoal - cooking fuel -- that truly is endangering them, leveling forests and spoiling water for drinking and habitats, paleontologist says.
By Richard Leakey
BBC News 2007-09-10
Opinion: China quality
As country's importance grows in the international market, Chinese people should understand that there will be greater scrutiny of both country and products, so greater care for quality and food safety is important; errors would victimize its own people first.
By Wu Jianmin
People's Daily Online (China) 2007-08-27
Opinion: On critics
After Philadelphia Inquirer was sued for defamation for a restaurant critic's commentary, another critic contemplates restaurant reviews of the future, and ways to best guide diners in spending their discretionary dollars.
By Phil Vettel
Chicago Tribune 2007-07-19
Opinion: Water problem
Mountaintop removal coal mining, with toxic leftovers shoved into streams, foul residents' water and kill the fish; study traces mining pollution to children's nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and shortness of breath; long-term effects unknown.
By Eric Reece
Orion Magazine 2006-01-01
Opinion: Bottled tempest
Big water has Coke, Pepsi and Nestle behind all those bottles of all that water being marketed as preferable to the stuff that flows from the tap, with one spokesperson comparing it to French wines and iPods, both of which are shipped long distances.
By Alex Beam
The Boston Globe 2007-08-20
Opinion: Vietnam
Vietnamese-American watches his former country's leader and listens to the demonstrators chanting for democracy, but to him, the first problem is the hunger of the begging children, and the desperate circumstances that cause a parent to abandon a child.
By Tam Pham
Asia Times 2007-08-16
Opinion: A fish tale
It's a stretch to blame the precipitous worldwide decline of marlin, swordfish, tuna and sharks on Hemingway, even figuring spawning rates over four generations, but quest for sportsman-trophy fish photos like his have targeted the at-risk bluefin tuna.
By Paul Greenberg
The New York times (may require subscription)
OPINION
On the 25th anniversary of its release, Victor Schonfeld recalls the events that led to his creation of "The Animals Film," a British documentary using evocative, exploratory cinematography techniques to illuminate factory farming.
By Victor Schonfeld
The Guardian (UK) 2007-07-05