Entries Tagged 'food politics' ↓

KQED QUEST Radio Segment

We’ve all heard the latest health advice: avoid transfats. Eat more fruits and vegetables. But for many school children, their cafeteria lunch menus haven’t caught up. This year, an effort to get healthy foods to the school lunch table is tied up in a much larger debate– national farm policy.

via the New York Times

In 1988, the surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, proclaimed ice cream to a be public-health menace right up there with cigarettes. Alluding to his office’s famous 1964 report on the perils of smoking, Dr. Koop announced that the American diet was a problem of “comparable” magnitude, chiefly because of the high-fat foods that were causing coronary heart disease and other deadly ailments.

found on eG Forums

The “I Hate to Cook Book” sat on my mother’s bookshelf when I was a child. I have a first edition here, from 1960. Same dust cover. I remember it well. It sat there, and I looked at it, on that same bookshelf for years. I hated that book. I hated the “I Hate to Cook Book”.

It’s interesting for a passionate feminist foodie to admit the enemy– prepared food– was also a liberator.

http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R707161000

The program looks into what the “organic” label means, why foods with the label cost more, and if “organic” foods really are more healthful.
Host: Michael Krasny
Guests:

Alyson Mitchell, associate professor and food chemist at UC Davis

Dr. Barbara Robinson, deputy administrator of the USDA, Transportation and Marketing Programs

Mark Squire, co-owner of Good Earth Natural Foods in Fairfax

Patricia Allen, director of the Center for Agro-Ecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz

Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association

The 2007 Farm Bill

http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R707110900

The Farm Bill, governing farm and food policy, is up for renewal this September. The program discusses the significance of the Farm Bill to farmers and consumers alike, as well as the increasingly heated debate in Congress and among interest groups in California over what priorities should be enacted.
Host: Michael Krasny

Guests:

A.G. Kawamura, secretary with the California Department of Food and Agriculture

Judith Redmond, president of the Community Alliance of Family Farmers and a full-time farmer at Full Belly Farm

Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of science and environmental journalism at UC Berkeley and author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”

Richard Rominger, farmer and former deputy secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture in the Clinton administration and former secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture

from megnut.com

Rational analysis doesn’t hold sway with the pregnancy police, says Steven Shaw in a great Op-Ed in the New York Times about sushi consumption and pregnancy. His point? The prohibition against raw fish during pregnancy is unnecessary.

a strange dim sum review from TimesOnline

So soon has it come to this: food that has been airlifted can’t, shan’t, won’t be considered organic. So, if you want a climatically ethical life, don’t nosh anything fresh from abroad.On the other hand, I expect those of you who want to live proper will also continue to fight ceaselessly for the cancellation of Third World debt and the tearing down of EU trade barriers that so cruelly penalise African agrarian economies, to allow them to sell their surplus cash crops freely to us. Except, of course, that they’ll have to deliver them by bike.

Should we buy Michael Pollan’s nutritional Darwinism? - By Daniel Engber - Slate Magazine

Should we buy Michael Pollan’s nutritional Darwinism? - By Daniel Engber - Slate Magazine

Restaurants serving LASD lunch programs cater healthful food and good will — Los Altos Town Crier

Susan Klepper, hot lunch coordinator at Covington School, said that the criteria for selecting a restaurant are broad and will often go beyond nutritional guidelines. According to Klepper, Covington has found local restaurants creative in their menus and cooperative in conforming to the mandated hot lunch guidelines.”The new guidelines are not a problem with sushi or teriyaki,” said Katie Chen, who, with her husband, John, owns Sumo’s Sushi-Boat in downtown Los Altos. “A lot of our items already met the requirements.”

The hot lunch program has become an important part of Sumo’s business. The restaurant serves Egan, Covington, Loyola and other Los Altos schools and, some days, prepares up to 600 meals, Chen said.