News, weather, sports. With the recent — and unprecedented — deluge of new restaurants raining down on the Twin Cities, diners need a scorecard or a spreadsheet to keep up. The folks behind the Yogurt Lab have stepped further into the restaurant business with the launch of Agra Culture Kitchen & Press (2939 Girard Av. S., Mpls., 612-315-3349, www.agra-culture.com), their counter-service cafe and cold-press juice bar. Consulting chef Tim Scott — the longtime head culinary honcho at the Store Formerly Known as Dayton’s — has devised imaginative all-day menus that emphasize fresh, organic, flavor-packed options, all served in a flash and conversant in the languages of vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free.
A second location is coming soon to the 50th and France area. (Open 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Sun. 6Smith (294 E. A shocker is the transformation of St. At Tongue in Cheek, chef Leonard Anderson (formerly of W.A. Meanwhile, at Cook St. On the subject of red-hot thoroughfares, Hola Arepa (3501 Nicollet Av. What I learned from six months of GMO research: None of it matters. About a third of the way through this series on GMOs, after a particularly angry conflagration broke out on Twitter, I asked my wife, Beth, if I could tell her what had happened. I was hoping to exorcise those digital voices from my head. Someone had probably accused me of crimes against humanity, shoddy journalism, and stealing teddy bears from children — I forget the details, thank goodness. But I remember Beth’s response. “No offense,” she said, “but who cares?” It’s a little awkward to admit this, after devoting so much time to this project, but I think Beth was right.
The most astonishing thing about the vicious public brawl over GMOs is that the stakes are so low. I know that to those embroiled in the controversy this will seem preposterous. Let’s start off with a thought experiment: Imagine two alternate futures, one in which genetically modified food has been utterly banned, and another in which all resistance to genetic engineering has ceased. All or nothing. A Note From Joel Salatin. Polyface Farm Joel Salatin Aug. 18, 2013 Joel Salatin Why do we need more farmers? What is the driving force behind USDA policy?
In an infuriating epiphany I have yet to metabolize, I found out Wednesday in a private policy-generation meeting with Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McCauliffe. I did and still do consider it a distinct honor for his staff to invite me as one of the 25 dignitaries in Virginia Agriculture for this think-tank session in Richmond.
It was a who’s who of Virginia agriculture: Farm Bureau, Va. It was the first meeting of this kind I’ve ever attended that offered no water. Why do they all assume nobody wants water, nobody cares about styrofoam, everybody wants potato chips and we all want industrial meat-like slabs on white bread? But I digress. I’m sitting there thinking he’s going to say that number needs to go up so we have more people to love and steward the landscape. Are you ready for the shoe to drop? Are you ready? Amanda Greene: Soy Lecithin: Why Is It In Everything? Have you ever noticed soy lecithin on the ingredient statement of your pre-packaged food? It sometimes seems like it's in everything! It makes you wonder--how could one little additive be so pervasive?
Well, because it's really useful. What does it do? First and foremost, it's used as an emulsifier, which means it makes oil and water mix together, which they ordinarily would never do. It even helps to emulsify foods you've probably never thought of as emulsions (oil & water mixtures)--like chocolate. But lecithin does more than just emulsify! When added to bread dough, its anti-stickiness power makes doughs easier to work with, and they rise better because there's less sticky resistance for the gas bubbles to strain against.
Basil Foam: 1 cup water, 1 cup fresh basil, 2 g soy lecithin powder. Lecithin is also a surfactant, or wetting agent. How does it work? Lecithin's versatility is remarkable, but how can one little molecule do so much? Structure of a triglyceride next to a phospholipid. Smart people say food prices are falling — depends what you mean by ‘food’ Excellent infographicker Dorothy Gambrell recently broke down falling American food costs and some changing tastes for Bloomberg Businessweek. Beef prices and consumption are both way down, while fresh fruit prices decreased less than any other category. Overall, though, it looks like food is getting a lot cheaper! And that’s true, ish, but it’s not the whole picture. Over the past century, food costs as a percentage of income have been dropping like overripe fruit that you forgot to pick off the tree. But those lower prices aren’t exactly adding up for the poor. Derek Thompson at The Atlantic finds that poor families are still spending the same percentage on food that they did 30 years ago, while middle-income and richer folks are paying significantly less.
Overall, the falling burden of food costs is good news for lower- and middle-class families. As a part of those food costs, Thompson breaks down at-home and eating-out budgets. But, but, that pretty graph said they were cheap now … Food Tank Resource Database | Resource Database. Food Tank's Resource Database aims to help bridge the gap between Thinking and Doing: to give farmers, nutritionists, professors, chefs, urban gardeners, advocates, scientists, policy-makers, and others involved the food system the actionable data and information they need to make better decisions and take effective actions.
The database helps stakeholders discover the information they need to communicate problems and innovate solutions. It includes a wide range of materials—from official reports and studies containing the most relevant and timely research; background information on the organizations and individuals who are making a difference; and infographics and video documentaries—highlighting agro-ecological solutions for alleviating hunger and obesity, increasing incomes, and protecting the environment. The resource database is a work in progress and we will continue to ask for your recommendations and suggestions. CHARTS: Everyone Is Throwing Away Too Much Food.
It's no secret that Americans throw away an enormous amount of food, sending day-old leftovers and slightly wilted spinach straight to the garbage. But what about the food that never even makes it to the kitchen table? A new report released by a British engineering society reveals that worldwide, billions of tons of food are squandered each year because of poor agriculture practices, which include inefficient harvesting and inadequate infrastructure and storage—and it's depleting Earth's water supply.
"This level of wastage is a tragedy that cannot continue if we are to succeed in the challenge of sustainably meeting our future food demands," writes the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. "The potential to provide 60-100% more food by simply eliminating losses, while simultaneously freeing up land, energy and water resources for other uses, is an opportunity that should not be ignored. " The charts below illustrate some of the stats from the report. Is Junk Food Really Cheaper? Don’t toss your cookies: Curbing the crisis of food waste. Americans waste about half our food.
(Photo by Robyn Mackenzie/Shutterstock.) Imagine leaving the grocery store with three bags filled to the brim with your favorite foods. As you walk through the parking lot, one slips out of your hand. You look at it, shrug, and just keep walking. Seems ridiculous, right? People all around the world are investing time, land, water, energy, and loads of other resources to grow, store, process, and transport food, only for nearly half of that food to be thrown away. In the United States today, about 40 percent of all food goes uneaten. Yesterday, Natural Resources Defense Council released a report and kicked off a food waste blog series investigating the causes and extent of our food losses at every level of the supply chain, and how to get the most out of our food system through smart efficiency solutions.
But it’s not as straightforward as the potatoes left on your plate. The good news is, it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s not just businesses. Ronnie Cummins: The Organic Elite Surrenders To Monsanto: What Now? February 3, 2011 - Ronnie responds to reader comments with a new article (submitted but not yet published here at Huffington Post): Monsanto Nation: Exposing Monsanto's Minions "The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must. " -- Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011 In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto.
In exchange for allowing Monsanto's premeditated pollution of the alfalfa gene pool, WFM wants "compensation. " Why Is Organic Inc. Whole Food's Dirty Little Secret: Most of the So-Called "Natural" Processed Foods and Animal Products They Sell Are Contaminated with GMOs. GMOs and why you should never use Canola oil. « Vanessa Runs. Olive oil comes from olives. Sesame seed oil comes from sesame seeds. But what is a canola? Canola is actually a made-up word for a genetically modified product. Canola stands for “Canadian oil low acid.” It’s (sadly) a Canadian invention and subsidized by the government.
The subsidies make it very cheap to use, so almost all processed or packaged foods contain canola oil. Canola oil is developed from the rapeseed plant, which is part of the mustard family of plants. Rapeseed oil is the source behind mustard gas, and on its own it causes emphysema, respiratory distress, anemia, constipation, irritability, and blindness. The claim is that canola is safe to use because through modification it is no longer rapeseed but “canola.” It is now believed that rapeseed has a cumulative effect, taking almost 10 years before symptoms begin to manifest. From a nutritional perspective, canola oil has been found to deplete Vitamin E. THE SCOOP ON GMOs canolacornsoy NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF GMOs ON HUMANS 1. 2. How Agribiz Bought the Farm Bill. So, how's the farm bill going? Well, the Senate's version of it "could have been worse," I concluded after it passed, straining for positive things to write about it.
The House Agriculture Committee's, though, was a full-on disaster, offering harsh cuts to food aid at a time of high unemployment, fat handouts to big ag, and gratuitous gifts to the biotech/pesticide industry. The bill is now stalled in the House, in danger of being buried by right-wing backbenchers intent on even deeper food-aid cuts. If the House doesn't vote on it before the August recess, the most likely outcome is an extension of the 2008 bill—and the 2013 Congress will have to start the farm bill process from scratch. This is tragic. Why? And it's not just any lobbyists storming the Hill to opine about federal farm policy. And, of course, it's precisely these corporate interests that fuel the gusher of lobbying cash.
Food has gotten cheaper — but at what cost? Photo by Nick Castonguay. I’ve noticed that quite a few Grist readers have been struck by our coverage of shockingly high food prices in Inuit communities in Canada’s far north. It’s less a story of life in extreme lands than the culmination of a historical destruction of indigenous peoples’ traditional foodways combined with a conservative government’s unwillingness to help them adapt. How appropriate then that NPR’s Planet Money, as part of its Graphing America series, should look at how America’s food spending has changed over the last 30 years.
The headline figure — the one Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is proudest of — is that we spend just under 9 percent of our income on food, about 30 percent less than we did in 1982. Image courtesy of NPR. Despite the drop, our shopping baskets have stayed more or less the same — with one notable exception. Thank you, Smithfield, Tyson, and Cargill! There’s a human cost, too. And then there are the animals themselves. Where Do You Stand on the Supersize Soda Ban? Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal, announced last month, to ban the sale of sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages larger than 16 ounces at restaurants, movie theaters and other food service establishments has elicited an avalanche of responses from public health experts, industry representatives, the media and the American public, let alone the New Yorkers who may no longer be able to take a big gulp beginning as early as March 2013.
The responses generally fall into two camps. In one are those who believe that the government has no choice but to intervene given the scale of the obesity epidemic. In the other camp are those who believe that government has no business taking away consumers’ freedom of choice in what they eat or drink. The Washington Post, for example, applauds the mayor’s initiative: “We are happy to see Mr. Bloomberg experimenting with serious policies to address obesity, which is more than can be said about most of America’s politicians, and we hope he succeeds.” Does Your Plate Look Like MyPlate? One notable achievement of Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity was the introduction of the MyPlate icon, which marks its first anniversary on June 2.
“This is a quick, simple reminder for all of us to be more mindful of the foods that we’re eating,” Mrs. Obama said at the news conference where she, along with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Surgeon General Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, first unveiled the icon a year ago. As busy as we are, “we do have time to take a look at our kids’ plates,” Mrs. Obama said, and as long as it resembles the MyPlate icon, “we’re good.
It’s as simple as that.” It isn’t as simple as that, unfortunately. Easier said than done for many school districts. A big part of the problem is that agricultural policy isn’t in line with health policy, notwithstanding the fact that the USDA is largely responsible for both. The Farm Bill comes up for renewal this year. Related Stories: Why You Aren’t Eating Your Veggies Hold the Fries! New Agtivist: Kandace Vallejo is working for food access in the heart of Texas. Kandace Vallejo.Construction workers may not be the most obvious constituency for a preacher of the locavore gospel. Yet in the airy stretches of Austin’s Pecan Springs neighborhood, Kandace Vallejo is making inroads from her perch in a bright blue building set on two acres.
As membership programs coordinator at the Workers Defense Project (WDP), a workers center founded in 2002 to help construction workers — many of them undocumented immigrants — battle against rampant under- and non-payment of wages, Vallejo launched a food-themed education project for the children of WDP’s members in early 2010.
Drawing on experience with the Student Farmworker Alliance and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in south Florida — and with support from a hyper-competitive Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Food and Community Fellowship — Vallejo is building a compelling case for the idea that everyone cares about their meals. Q. A. Our membership asked us to. Q. A. It’s also a problem of time. The Secret Farm Bill. Do vegetarian diets cause more harm to animals? Beef Central Criticizes Vegetarian Diet.