Food
Although I have been personally steering away from processed foods ever since my grandmother taught me to be wary of any foods that required hazmat suits to produce, I recently viewed a report on food additives that stunned me.
Though it sometimes seems like our evil frankenfood corporate overlords, such as Monsanto and Dow, have completely hi-jacked our food system, many people around the nation are actually creating more sustainable and viable alternatives. A few good folks in Asheville, NC are bringing agriculture back to the people, empowering urbanites to gain more food independence, while learning to grow healthier fresh local food for their own communities.
North Carolina’s city of Asheville is the most recent town in our nation to create a Food Action Plan. These sensible strategies address difficult issues, such as food deserts, community health, food insecurity, nutrition knowledge deficits, barriers to local food production and distribution, as well as food sovereignty. The plan was approved 6-0 on January 21, 2013 by the city council; this legislation will play an active role in improving healthy food access, and will also help to build a more sustainable local food infrastructure.
Grocery shopping is one of the basic foundations of our health. Learning how to do it well can help you save tons of time and money. If you incorporate these simple steps into your weekly routine, you will not only reap the benefits of home cooked meals, as well as delicious leftovers for lunch, but will also be able to maintain a busy work schedule and usually get everything done.
My friend and fellow Important Media editor, Becky Striepe, has just published a new e-book showing just how easy it can be to make a wide variety of delectable and nutritious beverages. 40 Days of Green Smoothies illustrates the simple step by step instructions to enable you to create all manner of affordable liquid lusciousness that will also help you to feel great.
This forlorn and starving cartoon bee from Occupy the EPA made me laugh out loud when I first saw it. The comic does a brilliant job of humorously expressing the very real plight of these vital insects, as they battle habitat loss, chemical pesticides and disease, in a desperate attempt to survive.
Beautiful Asheville, North Carolina is famous for many things, including its bountiful array of diverse foraged edibles and medicinal plants; our region is now taking eating wild one step further by opening the first entirely wild crafting public market in the US. The upcoming weekly market will include vendors selling edible and medicinal mushrooms, plants.
Monsanto is trying to destroy California’s Proposition 37, a piece of legislation that they once supported.
Want to know if that spinach salad you are about to eat is really organic? Now there is a new app to help you find out.
Last year at the Slow Money Gathering in San Francisco, I was really impressed with a presentation that I heard from one of the founders of Stockbox Neighborhood Grocery in Washington. Her idea was simple and innovative — retrofit shipping containers to sell healthy food and produce in underserved neighborhoods. The easily portable container could be placed in industrial areas and regions where food deserts now prevail, instantly providing better access to fresh groceries.
The battle to avoid genetically modified foods may have just gotten a lot harder, as the world’s largest retail operation has recently announced that it plans to sell genetically modified corn without any labeling to warn consumers.
Sandor Katz’s The Art of Fermentation is a handsome hard cover volume which provides many easy to understand recipes explaining how to make everything from succulent sauerkraut, pickles and beer, to sourdough bread, cheese and tofu. However, this great work is also much more than just a cookbook. This essential reference book delves into fermentation concepts and food history from around the world, and explains relevant scientific concepts, like how bacterial cultures work.
The right of consumers to know whether the foods they eat have been genetically engineered is moving closer to being law. This November the California Right to Know Act will appear on the state ballot as Proposition 37. If passed the measure would be the first U.S. law that requires GMO foods to be labeled.
A polluted 28 acre site in New York was once a massive illegal dump, but has now been cleaned up and transformed into a local food hub distribution center.