Entries Tagged 'food politics' ↓

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.

If ‘67 was the summer of love, this is the summer of food

The reasons behind this sudden consciousness-raising are myriad, but Pollan summarizes them most succinctly. In an e-mail, he says Americans are starting to understand “just how important the food issue is — how it is linked to energy and global warming (17% of our fossil fuel use goes to feeding ourselves); to environmental pollution (farming is the single biggest source of water pollution); health (obesity and diabetes turned attention to the way we produce food); world trade, the federal budget and the welfare of animals.”"Increasingly,” Pollan adds, “people recognize that the industrial food system is failing us — it is not keeping us or our world healthy. And there are alternatives.”

from the New York Times

I miss the cookies and the fries,” Max Gold-Landzberg said.Sitting in the cafeteria at John Jay High School in Cross River, N.Y., Max, 17, a senior, chomped on a roast beef and cheese sandwich on a whole wheat roll.

Last year he would have had the sandwich on a regular roll, Max said, but white-bread products are no longer sold in this Westchester County school, which has introduced some of the most sweeping menu changes in the region. Even the pizza now has a whole wheat crust. And instead of Max’s favorite potato chips, there is white cheddar popcorn.

Consumers are going to the source for pastured beef, pork, poultry and eggs

Like a fast-growing number of American carnivores, the Hagans are opting out of the mega-feedlot meat system. They’re buying directly from a local rancher or farmer who raises meat animals the old-fashioned way, on grassy pastureland.