At the beginning of this semester when I was deciding what the theme of this blog should be, I was grappling with some of the paradoxes of our food system in both my thesis and my life. As I did more research into topics like “local food” and “food deserts,” I kept coming across things [...]
While many people acknowledge that they don’t know much about the production side of the things they consume, taking the next step to find out more can sometimes be a struggle. Followthethings.com is a cool website that helps consumers find documentaries, books, and more that detail how their products are created, distributed, and consumed. “Things” [...]
Grist reported earlier this week that the fast food industry is turning more and more towards fresh and healthy foods: Fast food companies understand that Bad Fast Food might be approaching its expiration date. Rather than clinging ever tighter to their fattening products like Coca Cola did, they’re remixing them. As one of the main [...]
“The ‘Food Movement’ is a movement of well-fed, affluent, liberal/left elitist Westerners who think with their emotions rather than their brains,” writes Huffpost “super user” under the screenname Cybernia. Cybernia is not alone in voicing this criticism. In Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability, the editors write, “[The food movement] consists of a group [...]
but it should be in our minds. This week is National Farmworker Awareness Week. For more information, check out this brief summary with links and drawings from Grist.org: http://grist.org/food/national-farmworker-awareness-week-highlights-a-dirty-labor-plight/
In Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir, Amy Trubek looks at the definitions and manifestations of “terroir,” or the idea that one can taste the place in which a product was produced. The term “terroir” is often used to describe flavors and varieties of wine, so Trubek appropriately begins with an examination of terroir [...]
Over spring break I joined the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in the last legs of their celebration of the New Day for farm workers, the 200-mile March for Rights, Respect and Fair Food. According to their website: The CIW is a community-based organization of mainly Latino, Mayan Indian and Haitian immigrants working in low-wage jobs [...]
Have government subsidies in agriculture driven our food system in a failing direction? Should raw milk be legal? Do people have the right to know what’s in their food? If you answered yes to these questions, you are probably a supporter of the food movement. You also have a fair amount in common with Libertarians. [...]
I recently received an email with the following from the COMFOOD elist (which is sometimes worth the absurd amount of emails it bombards you with): “Former Trader Joe’s President Doug Rauch is in the news this week for his announcement that he plans to open an urban grocery in Boston (Dorchester) that sells foods that [...]
There, the title said it. I have been in closer contact with the meat I eat than most vegans or vegetarians have, but I still eat meat. And I’m here to talk about how I can be a proud female food activist and still eat meat, which is seemingly incongruous in some minds. For class [...]