by Jess Leber, via Change.org,
If you're watching your weight, you read labels in the snack aisle.
If you're watching your hormones, you read labels in the soap and toothpaste aisle. Or at least you should be.
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By Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, via AlterNet.org,
December 28, 2010—JUAN GONZALEZ: U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks reveal the Bush administration drew up ways to retaliate against Europe for refusing to use genetically modified seeds. In 2007, then-US ambassador to France Craig Stapleton was concerned about France’s decision to ban cultivation of genetically modified corn produced by biotech giant Monsanto. He also warned that a new French environmental review standard could spread anti-biotech policy across Europe.
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Austin, Texas (Vocus/PRWEB) December 29, 2010—Summit International Awards honored Natural Vitality's Organic Connections magazine with its 2010 Summit Emerging Media Leader Award in the Green Marketing Website category.
Natural Vitality, a producer of award-winning natural and organic nutritional supplements, announced today that it is a Leader Award winner in the 2010 Summit Emerging Media Awards competition for its Organic Connections magazine website. Organic Connections features unique content covering nutrition, agriculture, sustainability, food, health, green design, and environmental issues.
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by BOB SALSBERG, via The Huffington Post,
A steady stream of customers filled baskets and shopping bags with vegetables, cranberries, cheese, fresh-baked breads and pies while chatting with the dozen or so farmers selling goods in the visitor's center of a local museum.
It was a bitterly cold, gray December day, but for many, it felt just right for the farmers market as live music and a warm fireplace helped set a holiday mood.
by Steph Larsen, via Grist.org,
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A year ago, we signed the deed for our 12-acre farm, and I prepared for a crash course in country living. I feel like I've lived a decade in the last 12 months here on Thistle Root Farm.
As seen in documentaries like Food, Inc., it is clear that something has gone very wrong with “conventional” farming methods. Today crops are low in nutrients, plagued by pests, and showered with herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Animals are treated in the least humane ways economically possible, and propped up with antibiotic and drug use in an effort to keep them marketable.
This is the story of one farm that survived a near-death experience—but revived by going organic.
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by Duncan Graham-Rowe, via NewScientist.com
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A new breed of electronic solar cells that harvests power from heat could double the output of conventional panels. SOLAR cells that work at night. It sounds like an oxymoron, but a new breed of nanoscale light-sensitive antennas could soon make this possible, heralding a novel form of renewable energy that avoids many of the problems that beset solar cells.
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Just in time for the holiday-season blizzard of baked goods comes the news that carbohydrates—not fat—are more likely to be responsible for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and the other ills of modern civilization. The Los Angeles Times has a detailed report on the growing body of scientific evidence that until now has been treated as nutritional poison: Fat is good, carbs are bad.
by Mark Hyman, MD, via The Huffington Post,
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Revolutions bubble out of injustice. Social, political, economic, spiritual and physical oppression drives people to rise up against violations of basic human rights. Working with Partners in Health this year, after the earthquake in Haiti, I learned from Dr. Paul Farmer that health is among the most neglected of human rights.
by Gene Logsdon, via Grist.org,
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I never thought I'd see the day when shit—the bodily kind—would make headlines the way it is right now. When my book about managing manure, Holy Shit, came out recently, erstwhile friends grinned and remarked, "You've been shooting the bull all your life so, sure, why not write a book about it?"
Read the rest of this feature »You might have heard the name Ed Bruske. He is a prominent feature on the sustainable food landscape—a Washington, D.C., blogger, writer, chef and gardener whose articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Martha Stewart Living and Edible Chesapeake. Ed’s work in sustainable gardening has been featured in People magazine as well as in popular food blogs such as Chow and Seriously Good. He has also made numerous appearances on television and radio.
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Wind turbines in Midwestern farm fields may be doing more than churning out electricity. The giant turbine blades that generate renewable energy might also help corn and soybean crops stay cooler and dryer, help them fend off fungal infestations and improve their ability to extract growth-enhancing carbon dioxide [CO2] from the air and soil.
by Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS., RD, LD, via The Huffington Post,
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Think back to what you had for dinner last night. Try to remember everything on your plate—the protein, the carbohydrates and the fat. Now ask yourself—where did it all come from? If you had a vegetable, do you know if it came from a farm near your house or perhaps did it travel hundreds, even thousands of miles to make it into your grocery store? If you had chicken, do you know if it grazed outdoors or was locked up? If your food came from a box, did you read the label first and if so, did you understand all the ingredients? The fact is most of us either don't know or don't want to know where our food comes from. To many of us, food is something that can be found in a box, thrown in the microwave and consumed in front of the TV.
by Tim Harlan, MD, via The Huffington Post,
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The research is more and more clear that sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) cause health problems. When researchers look at this issue they don't include just soft drinks, such as sodas or colas, but they also look at sweetened fruit drinks like punch (not those that are 100 percent juice) as well as energy and vitamin water drinks.
by Dr. Mark Hyman, via The Huffington Post,
Read the rest of this feature »Imagine being the parent of a young child who is not acting normally and being told by your doctor that your child has autism, that there is no known cause, and there is no known treatment except, perhaps, some behavioral therapy. That is exactly what Jackson's parents were told as their 22-month-old son regressed into the non-verbal psychic prison of social withdrawal, disconnection, and repetitive behaviors typical of autism.
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Near the end of Chris Paine’s razor-sharp 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? we witnessed hundreds of electric cars—fast, almost silent-running vehicles with zero emissions that were in demand by consumers—being taken right out of the hands of drivers, hauled away, crushed and shredded. After a long, hard fight, electric car enthusiasts were hanging their heads in defeat, and it certainly appeared that the oil companies and automakers had carved, with a steady, cold, unsympathetic hand, the epitaph of the electric car into the stone of automobile history permanently.
by David Doniger, via Grist.org,
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Big news today from the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, which just gave the green light to implementing the EPA's first carbon pollution standards next January. The court flatly rejected the efforts by America's biggest carbon polluters and the state of Texas to block all of the EPA's efforts to begin curbing the dangerous pollution that causes global warming under the nation's clean air laws.
by Fred Pearce , via New Scientist,
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Here is the good news from Cancún. Brazil, so often demonised for its destruction of the Amazon rainforest, is turning over a new leaf. In the past year it has transformed a sketchy promise made in Copenhagen to cut emissions to 36 to 39 per cent below business-as-usual by 2020 into a detailed science-based plan. And much of the work will be done by the industry most responsible for trashing the Amazon—cattle ranching and commercial agriculture.
Ann Cooper is conducting a clinic in Boulder on how to rescue school food. Is anyone paying attention?
In remaking the lunch line in Boulder schools, Cooper has revealed the federally subsidized school meals program as living somewhere in the Stone Age. Not merely underfunded, school kitchens are woefully under-managed and under-equipped to function in a digital age. No wonder they constantly run in the red. Schools are incapable of serving real food any more because they are mired in lack of imagination, lack of will, and above all, lack of professional know-how when it comes to producing meals with recognizable whole ingredients.
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by Madeline Ostrander, via Yes! Magazine,
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What if a healthy environment were a human right? In most legal systems, you have a right to freedom of speech or religion, but you don’t have a right to breathe clean air or drink safe water. Maude Barlow—author, activist, and former senior adviser on water to the United Nations—believes that those rights should be recognized. This past summer, she helped engineer a landmark victory: The U.N. formally adopted a resolution recognizing the human right to water (though the United States abstained).
by Brie Cadman, via Change.org,
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Cruise around many low-income urban areas and it's not hard to figure out why they're described as "food deserts." Eating options range from convenience and liquor stores to fast food outlets and not much in between. Oftentimes, people must travel large distances to get access to staples like bread, milk and produce.
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First Lady Michelle Obama announced last week that a new public-private partnership, Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools, would make it possible for as many as 6,000 salad bars to be installed in U.S. school cafeterias at an estimated cost of $15 million. Contrary to what hundreds of irate commenters directed to Grist from a link by the Drudge Report feared, the salad bars will not be mandatory lunchtime eating for the nation's youngsters, not taxpayer-funded. If parents like Sarah Palin want their kids to eat cookies for lunch, no one is going to stop them.
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Uncommon Ground on Chicago’s Devon Avenue is a unique enough restaurant. Housed in a building that’s over 100 years old, with an elegant but comfortable atmosphere created with large windows, brick and wood, a fireplace, and a genuine art-deco bar, the eatery offers a seasonal, taste-filled menu structured completely around locally grown, sustainable ingredients. But this particular establishment has something that no other has: the country’s very first certified organic rooftop farm.
by Mari Margil, Ben Price, via Yes! Magazine,
A historic new ordinance bans natural gas drilling while elevating community decision making and the rights of nature over the “rights” associated with corporate personhood.
In a historic vote, the City of Pittsburgh today adopted a first-in-the-nation ordinance banning corporations from natural gas drilling in the city.
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