Category: Food

NAFTA and Your Diet

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Walk through the produce section of your supermarket and you’ll see things you’d never have seen years ago — like fresh raspberries or green beans in the dead of winter.

Much of that produce comes from Mexico, and it’s the result of the North American Free Trade Agreement — NAFTA — which took effect 20 years ago this month.

In the years since, NAFTA radically changed the way we get our fruits and vegetables. For starters, the volume of produce from Mexico to the U.S. has tripled since 1994.

The NPR Report

Another thing to consider in this discussion is not just the food and its quality, it is how American’s invested in food production in the past 20 years….instead of local improvements to farms and farmland, much capital went to companies investing in Mexican land and industrially managed lands

Color Code Your Food

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Could a little red circle really make me bypass short ribs and mashed potatoes for some cod and rice instead? You’ve got to be kidding.

Well, a team of doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital sure think so — at least sometimes — and they have a study that backs them up.

The NPR Report

Chick-fil-A

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There are, apparently, a number of ways to make breaded chicken sandwiches healthier. To this end, Chick-fil-A has been quietly switching out ingredients over the past decade. According to Nation’s Restaurant News it eliminated heart-disease-promoting trans fats in 2006, removed high-fructose corn syrup from its bagels and golden wheat bread, and gradually reduced sodium in some products. Now the 1,700-store chain is working to remove preservatives from its breads and oil.

What’s unusual about the efforts is that Chick-fil-A has largely refrained from publicizing them until now, hoping to avoid ire about any perceived change in flavor. Fast-food companies have had to balance customer loyalty to well-known menu items with growing pressure to offer healthier options. “We didn’t necessarily want the customer to know we’ve tweaked their favorite product,” Jodie Worrell, the chain’s senior nutrition consultant, told NRN.

The Bloomberg News Article

The Philippines Disaster and Food Aid

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An NPR Report that tries to relate the Philippines Disaster, Food Aid, and the U.S. Farm Bill.

I say ‘tries to relate’ because the underlying political economy of U.S. food aid appears irrational and driven by commodity politics.

Sadly, once American government went down this path it became extremely difficult to make decisions that are ethically sound for needy local communities around the world.

Food Sovereignty

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“I don’t think we can call ourselves sovereign if we can’t feed ourselves.” This is what Paul “Sugarbear” Smith told me a few years ago when I went to visit him in Oneida Territory, Wisconsin. I think he’s got something here and it’s worth looking into.

What is food sovereignty? The ability to feed your people. Let’s say that. This could be through your own growing and harvesting, or this could be through trade, if you’re happy with it and it’s working out for you. This is where we need to be, but certainly aren’t there now.

A very interesting two part essay by Winona LaDuke

Creating a Food Oasis

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We recently worked with the African Alliance to fund a 2014 project that will put African vegetables in a pilot group of Providence markets. The new vegetables will be coupled with cooking demonstrations and family oriented events – impacting neighbors with food and nutrition education coupled with, as Wendell Berry would say, the pleasures of eating.

This CNN report catches the spirit of the project’s intention, as well as hits at some of the dilemmas of current food advocacy in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods (which focuses too much on defining the problem rather than developing solutions).

From the report:

What we need is a Food Oasis Movement.

There is an untapped demand for fresh fruits and vegetables. Unlocking the demand requires understanding that food access is about relationships, not transactions. Also, price matters.

Families won’t respond to the food police nagging them to eat their veggies. Outsiders dropping off a pallet of free food won’t cut it.

Families will respond positively to cooking classes with their friends, celebrations of family kitchen traditions and high-quality produce distributed through trusted sources.

Philadelphia grocer Jeff Brown has opened supermarkets in neighborhoods written off as food deserts. He hires from the neighborhood, adds specialty items the neighbors like and puts health clinics and community meeting rooms inside his stores. His stores make money.

Food Oasis innovators focus on what they can do, not what they can’t.

Edamame

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Edamame

China produces most of the world’s edamame, handpicking and processing it there. Now lots of locally-grown edamame are being packed in the town of Mulberry, Ark. Fresh-picked pods jiggle across a massive high-speed conveyor for automated sorting, washing, blanching and flash freezing.

A Texas-based Asian foods importer chose Arkansas to build its company, called American Vegetable Soybean and Edamame Inc., here. Raymond Chung, the chief financial officer, says one reason is because plenty of local farmers are willing to grow the non-genetically modified vegetable soybeans.

The NPR Report

The Flexitarian Diet…Vegan Part of the Time

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It’s increasingly evident, however, that a part-time vegan diet — one that emphasizes minimally processed plant food at the expense of everything else — is the direction that will do the most to benefit human health, increase animal welfare and reduce environmental impact.

The Article

I’ve found ‘part’time’ vegan nutrition (combined with gluten free foods) has been enormously beneficial.