It’s a happy day for local foodies: Michelle Obama is going to start a vegetable garden at the White House. The sustainable food community has been pushing for this since before Barack’s inauguration: symbolically, the garden stands for healthy eating, local food, and freshly prepared meals. It sounds like those meals will be pretty tasty, [...]
Wal-mart has been in the news a lot lately for, well, for a lot of things, but one of them is its efforts to provide more organic foods. If you, like me, wonder whether it’s possible for a mega-corporation like Wal-mart to really help the organic food movement and not corrupt it, check out Eating [...]
As a vegetarian, food politics geek, and concerned cook, I’ve been a little upset that neither of the major presidential candidates has talked about the problems with our food system. I’m not surprised; it’s not a topic that’s high on most Americans’ list of concerns, though I’d argue that it should be. We all eat [...]
There’s an impressive amount of greenwashing advertising going around these days – big companies trying to act environmentally conscious when their very business is wrecking the environment. The oil companies are among the worst culprits. I’ve been really amazed by how Chevron’s new “Human Energy” advertisements show so much awareness and caring, when they really [...]
Do you remember the E. coli outbreak two years ago that started with contaminated spinach? Fresh spinach was virtually unavailable for weeks until the crop was declared safe again. Now, FDA has announced their solution to avoiding future outbreaks: spinach and other greens will be irradiated before being sold to consumers. Food and Water Watch [...]
An interesting story in the New York Times blog talks about finding the most humane way to kill a lobster. To spare you the suspense, no one really knows, but there are a number of theories – if you’re a lobster-eater and you get creeped out at the thought of boiling them alive, it’s worth [...]
One of the great things about living in the DC area is the AFI Silver Theater, and especially SilverDocs, their annual documentary filmfest. Not only do they show some of the best documentaries out there, but many of them are having their US or World premieres there, and often the director or others involved with [...]
I have an uneasy relationship with mock meats, as I imagine many vegetarians do. They’re not as good as real meat, and I would never tell a meat-eater that they’re a fair substitute, but many are close enough to fool my mouth and my brain. I had lunch today at Java Green, a mostly-vegan sandwich [...]