PSA – Wash Those Pre-Washed Salad Greens
Recent research from the Consumer Reports Magazine found that those bagged salad mixes, most claiming to be pre-washed and ready to eat, aren’t as clean as you’d like them to be. Thankfully, what they found wasn’t e coli, salmonella or anything as dreadful as that. Instead, in their sample of 208 bags (representing 16 brands) [...]
March 13, 2010
Tags: agriculture, education, factory farms, Health, heroes, waste Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health, Science & Technology 
One Comment
Finally An Intelligent Move: RIP Smart Choices
After creating quite a stir in the foodie blogosphere, the mainstream media, and even riling up the lethargic FDA, the industry led Smart Choices label is voluntarily suspending the promotion of its program. Â They even had the Attorney General of Connecticut after them–Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced that he was investigating the program and some [...]
October 26, 2009
Tags: blogs, change, education, FDA, Health, heroes, nutrition, policy Posted in: Health, Politics, Science & Technology 3 Comments
Great Food Politics Blogs
Parke Wilde teaches graduate level courses in food policy and statistics at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Â Along with some of his graduate students, he keeps the U.S. Food Policy.
He recently wrote a sort of ‘top ten’ list of food policy blogs for blogs.com:
In this list, he looked beyond [...]
October 7, 2009
Tags: blogs, education, food, Health, policy Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health 2 Comments
The Man Who Fed The World
Dubbed the father of the green revolution, Norman Borlaug helped to create high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties around the world. He is attributed with saving over one billion lives from starvation worldwide. As just one example of the profound changes he made in agriculture, between 1965 and 1970 wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan [...]
October 2, 2009
Tags: agriculture, change, education, farmers, heroes, innovation, nutrition Posted in: Health, Science & Technology No Comments
A Relentless Focus On Prevention, Or Something
Food safety and child nutrition were topics at this year’s National Food Policy Conference. Â Bringing together the food industry, public health officials, consumer advocacy groups, and the government, the conference makes a concerted effort to demonstrate progressive action on key issues facing the nation and its food supply.
The Child Nutrition Act is due to be [...]
September 14, 2009
Tags: agriculture, change, education, farmers, FDA, food safety, Health, nutrition, policy, USDA Posted in: Politics No Comments
Come On Down To The…USDA!
Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan wants to be the “matchmaker” between the Obama administration and USDA program administrators. She recently sent out a memo, “Harnessing USDA rural development programs to support local and regional food systems,” (pdf) to her staff and interested third parties. It details how those programs can cash in on the [...]
August 31, 2009
Tags: agriculture, education, farmers, food event, policy, USDA Posted in: Health, Politics One Comment
Nagging Questions Gives You The Answers
I found a great food trivia column at chow.com called Nagging Questions. Searching through the list of questions author Roxanne Webber has already asked, I found myself thinking Yeah, why is that? a lot. Questions that had not ever nagged before, suddenly were. There were questions like how does packaged guacamole stay [...]
June 24, 2009
Tags: blogs, education, food, trivia Posted in: Fun Food Facts No Comments
Marion Nestle Continues To Fight For The Integrity Of Nutritional Science
Nutritionist and food safety activist extraordinaire Marion Nestle wrote a sternly worded email in response to a letter of nomination from the American Society of Nutrition (ASN) to join the Board of Directors of the Smart Choices program. She declined, explaining her reasons in an open letter that she posted to her blog:
Marion Nestle: Smart [...]
May 18, 2009
Tags: education, Health, heroes, marketing, nutrition, policy Posted in: Health, Science & Technology No Comments
Swine Flu Renamed To Please Pork Producers
Lobbyists’ requests to the World Health Organization to rename the swine flu to something more innocuous were denied the other day. Predictably, the name ’swine flu’ has had people scrambling away from pork products. Egypt has slaughtered its 300,000 pigs in its effort to prevent local outbreak (link).
The name “is jeopardizing and may [...]
April 29, 2009
Tags: agriculture, bacon, education, farmers, food event, Health, marketing, policy Posted in: Health, Politics, Science & Technology No Comments
4,000 Years of Failed Price Control Policies, But Chavez Thinks It Will Work This Time
For the past forty centuries or more, countless civilizations have attempted to feed people by fixing prices and each time it has produced catastrophic consequences. Â Whether they are democratic governments, dictators, or socialist reformers these “central planners”, as economists call them, have profound negative effects on the market when they attempt to hijack supply [...]
April 20, 2009
Tags: agriculture, education, farmers, food event, hunger, policy Posted in: Politics, Science & Technology No Comments
