Michael Pollan on Food Safety

What happens when you mix legendary chef and sustainable-food activist Alice Waters with the tradition of an esteemed Ivy League university? You get the Yale Sustainable Food Project, helping to pave the way toward creating a sustainable food system.

Ever have a great idea for a product that could help ease our severe ecological burden? Read the story of one mom who, confronted with numerous issues in packing up her kids’ lunches, had such an idea—and followed it through. The result is a nifty product called the ECOlunchbox, now available at stores nationwide.

It might be the economic wave of the future. Instead of megacorporations plying us with chemical-laden factory-produced products with questionable health values, people like Lily grow pure, natural ingredients and produce 100 percent organic facial products that are truly good for us. Lily’s story of triumph—both personally and business-wise—is quite refreshing.

It’s beneath our feet, and in our yards, and in our fields. It’s dirt. But as Dirt! The Movie so cleverly reveals, it’s also a living, breathing organism upon which our future depends. We interviewed co-director Gene Rosow about this amazing film, about its impressive roster of participants, and about how our future is in the ground.

Slow Death by Rubber Duck is a fascinating look at the toxins surrounding us every day in our very own homes. In this unique work, two environmentalist-authors, Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie, set out to discover just how prevalent these chemicals are—by ingesting them themselves, in a way similar to that of Morgan Spurlock in his 2004 documentary Super Size Me. Despite the title and much of the information provided, the main message of the book is one of hope.

Food is the new target for social change among college students. The Real Food Challenge, a movement now taking place in colleges all across the country, promises to be a prime catalyst for bringing sustainably produced food not only on to campuses but into the general society as well.

If you’ve seen the documentaries Food, Inc. or Fresh, you witnessed what happens on factory farms before cattle, pigs and chickens make it to your local supermarket. But there are new alternatives for non-vegetarians who don’t want to participate in a system of hormones, antibiotics and animal cruelty. The Country Natural Beef Association is a good example.

When documentary filmmaker ana Sofia joanes set out to make the film Fresh, her motivation wasn’t one of creating an exposé of the horrors of the industrial food system—although touching on such issues could hardly be avoided; it was more a message of hope. “I feel that we’re getting so much negative information and the problems that we’re facing—the food crisis, the oil crisis, the water crisis, war, famine and others”—are so complicated and appear to be outside the reach of our individual actions.”