Some discoveries are too good to keep to oneself...
I stumbled upon a college friend's blog - "Plot 124" ... which is now dedicated to her home-grown culinary (and word, art, and fabric) creativity. In particular, check out her superb blogroll - she sums up some of my favorite sites which address issues from local food to land use.
Additionally, check out this fabulous list of organizations and resources committed to local food and sustainability - all thanks to Barbara Kingsolver.
Go bloggers!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Two sides to the same coin
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Michael Pollen revolutionized how we look at plants and food. His books and articles gave voice to a rising tide of dietitians, educators, and scientists concerned about America's fast flight to fat. Policy is indeed changing to favor fresh and limit sugars and fats. Though I love Pollen's message, as a student of agroecology, food, politics, and social change, it's gotten a bit redundant over time. You can't improve on a good message, right?
Well, you can look at multiple dimensions of the message for a richer understanding. Enter
Mark Bittman. He writes on food for the Opinionator section of the New York Times. Bittman is a hero of Pollan's caliber - author of Food Matters: A Guide to Conscience Eating and a columnist for decades on food, policy, and their impacts on health and environment.
Michael Pollen of "Omnivore's Dilemma" (and many more books) wrote an extensive piece for the Times which pretty much summarizes his multi-book treatise on food and health.
Though Bittman is the food and dining columnist and Pollen the academician, I appreciate that the former assumes that sustainability, human rights, and nutrition are symbiotic and necessary for good food choices. While Pollen elaborates on nutrition science with a jounralistic fury, Bittman stays focused on food, good and fresh. I find good, organic, juicy zucchini its own compelling advocate.
Perhaps it's the accessible nature of newspaper columns, but I loved Bittman's article on the current food policy climate. His Food Manifesto is worth a look as well.
Michael Pollen revolutionized how we look at plants and food. His books and articles gave voice to a rising tide of dietitians, educators, and scientists concerned about America's fast flight to fat. Policy is indeed changing to favor fresh and limit sugars and fats. Though I love Pollen's message, as a student of agroecology, food, politics, and social change, it's gotten a bit redundant over time. You can't improve on a good message, right?
Well, you can look at multiple dimensions of the message for a richer understanding. Enter
Mark Bittman. He writes on food for the Opinionator section of the New York Times. Bittman is a hero of Pollan's caliber - author of Food Matters: A Guide to Conscience Eating and a columnist for decades on food, policy, and their impacts on health and environment.
Michael Pollen of "Omnivore's Dilemma" (and many more books) wrote an extensive piece for the Times which pretty much summarizes his multi-book treatise on food and health.
Though Bittman is the food and dining columnist and Pollen the academician, I appreciate that the former assumes that sustainability, human rights, and nutrition are symbiotic and necessary for good food choices. While Pollen elaborates on nutrition science with a jounralistic fury, Bittman stays focused on food, good and fresh. I find good, organic, juicy zucchini its own compelling advocate.
Perhaps it's the accessible nature of newspaper columns, but I loved Bittman's article on the current food policy climate. His Food Manifesto is worth a look as well.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Eating Egypt
My apologies for a long break in writing - graduate school applications have (necessarily) been a time-sucker. In the midst of the contagion effect of middle eastern countries calling their autocratic leaders to authority, my friends at Epicurious's Epi-Log wrote this excellent analysis of how the uprising is impacting Egypt's food.
Eating Egypt
by Michael Y. Park
on 02/03/11 at 09:02 AM
The history of Egypt is the history of food, and this current crisis is no exception. In Roman times, Egypt served as the granary of the empire, and could throw around its political clout by holding the Eternal City for ransom by withholding food shipments. In modern times, the shoe's on the other foot: Egypt, with its exploding population concentrated in a narrow strip of land, may be the world's biggest importer of wheat, importing 40 percent of its food and 60 percent of its wheat.
Today, in Cairo, it will be interesting to see what happens with the distribution of food to the Egyptian people. The Mubarak government has absorbed much of the cost of the global increase in food prices. It is, after all, a country where one in five people lives on less than $1 a day. Some 14.2 million poor receive subsidized bread.
In the midst of the protests, food stores are among the only retail outlets that remain open. Warehouses are full of food staples, but there are reports that it's difficult to impossible to get them to the people. The bread factories that feed the millions simply can't get the flour, oil, and other products they need to keep running.
Not surprisingly, prices have soared for the food that is available, at least while the streets are still filled with protesters and counter-protesters. One woman described a 20-percent increase in the price of bread, with the cheaper options simply off the table for now.
And with the looting, major food retailers have shuttered their doors. Carrefour, for example, has closed all of its seven locations in the Cairo area.
All around, it's a volatile situation that won't necesssarily resolve itself with Mubarak's fall from power.
Read More http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor/2011/02/eating-egypt.html#ixzz1CzphJWl0
Eating Egypt
by Michael Y. Park
on 02/03/11 at 09:02 AM
The history of Egypt is the history of food, and this current crisis is no exception. In Roman times, Egypt served as the granary of the empire, and could throw around its political clout by holding the Eternal City for ransom by withholding food shipments. In modern times, the shoe's on the other foot: Egypt, with its exploding population concentrated in a narrow strip of land, may be the world's biggest importer of wheat, importing 40 percent of its food and 60 percent of its wheat.
Today, in Cairo, it will be interesting to see what happens with the distribution of food to the Egyptian people. The Mubarak government has absorbed much of the cost of the global increase in food prices. It is, after all, a country where one in five people lives on less than $1 a day. Some 14.2 million poor receive subsidized bread.
In the midst of the protests, food stores are among the only retail outlets that remain open. Warehouses are full of food staples, but there are reports that it's difficult to impossible to get them to the people. The bread factories that feed the millions simply can't get the flour, oil, and other products they need to keep running.
Not surprisingly, prices have soared for the food that is available, at least while the streets are still filled with protesters and counter-protesters. One woman described a 20-percent increase in the price of bread, with the cheaper options simply off the table for now.
And with the looting, major food retailers have shuttered their doors. Carrefour, for example, has closed all of its seven locations in the Cairo area.
All around, it's a volatile situation that won't necesssarily resolve itself with Mubarak's fall from power.
Read More http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor/2011/02/eating-egypt.html#ixzz1CzphJWl0
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Migration forces
In a masterfully crafted piece on nationalgeographic.com, David Quammen traces the paths and explores the reasons for animal migration. Animal migration is distinct from other animal movements since, as biologist Hugh Dingle explains, they are prolonged, linear, and focused movements that carry animals beyond their familiar habitats. Quammen further explains: "Migrating animals maintain a fervid attentiveness to the greater mission, which keeps them undistracted by temptations and undeterred by challenges that would turn other animals aside." When people build roads, houses, and other bottlenecks that force migratory animals from their singular journey, survival is threatened.
Two weeks after I landed in France to start my first post-college job with a conservation organization, I was lathering on mosquito repellent and untangling migrating barn swallows from mist nets. From late August through early October, hundreds of thousands of barn swallows roost in Provencal marshland while on their way to the Sahara. By day the swallows disperse to feed, but around sunset, the birds come back to the flooded reedbed to roost. I had never before worked with birds so closely (I'm a plant girl!), but I had to learn quickly on the job, as each evening at least 10,000 swallows swoop onto an acre of reeds for the night. A Rocha France, my employer, is working with local farmers to encourage them to leave flooded reedbeds and marshlands of the Rhone River untouched. While some farmers hesitate to let valuable land lie, all who come to the roost site during migration season are shocked and awed into agreement: migration is a mighty force to be reckoned with.
Quammen's article communicates such images with conviction. It reads like a novel and you may be impressed, as I was, as the author literally walks in the trail of migration. Quammen concludes the article with an image of 60,000 sandhill cranes rising from a marshland after a rest on their journey. "It was the accrued wisdom and resoluteness of evolution that I was witnessing, airborne above the Platte. If we humans have accrued equal wisdom and can summon equal resoluteness, I thought, maybe we'll allow them to continue their journeying a while longer."
Two weeks after I landed in France to start my first post-college job with a conservation organization, I was lathering on mosquito repellent and untangling migrating barn swallows from mist nets. From late August through early October, hundreds of thousands of barn swallows roost in Provencal marshland while on their way to the Sahara. By day the swallows disperse to feed, but around sunset, the birds come back to the flooded reedbed to roost. I had never before worked with birds so closely (I'm a plant girl!), but I had to learn quickly on the job, as each evening at least 10,000 swallows swoop onto an acre of reeds for the night. A Rocha France, my employer, is working with local farmers to encourage them to leave flooded reedbeds and marshlands of the Rhone River untouched. While some farmers hesitate to let valuable land lie, all who come to the roost site during migration season are shocked and awed into agreement: migration is a mighty force to be reckoned with.
Quammen's article communicates such images with conviction. It reads like a novel and you may be impressed, as I was, as the author literally walks in the trail of migration. Quammen concludes the article with an image of 60,000 sandhill cranes rising from a marshland after a rest on their journey. "It was the accrued wisdom and resoluteness of evolution that I was witnessing, airborne above the Platte. If we humans have accrued equal wisdom and can summon equal resoluteness, I thought, maybe we'll allow them to continue their journeying a while longer."
Monday, October 11, 2010
Food insecurity in the US
In international development circles and at local food banks, there's been a lot of talk about 'food security.' Curious about this phrase and the potential differences between the domestic and international interpretations of food insecurity, I did a little digging.
Let's start with definitions and details: A food secure household has "consistent access to enough food for active healthy living" (USDA). Food insecurity, therefore, is when access to food is limited due to poverty, environment, disaster, or social upheaval (think Zimbabwe). Health problems increase and environmental degradation (particularly in countries populated by subsistence farmers) is a given as people eke out food, cash, and shelter from whatever natural resources are available.
Poor food availability and choice in the US has become a necessarily hot topic. In the US, 1 out of 10 households struggle to put food on the table. American families with minimal food security can trend towards obesity and food insecurity simultaneously, as they choose processed food that fills bellies rather fresh produce that nourishes. In 2007, the USDA surveyed households about food insecurity, asking questions such as: 'In the last 12 months, did you or other adults in the household ever cut the size of your meals or skip meals because there wasn’t enough money for food?'
In the next post, we'll discuss international food insecurity - linked directly with rising food prices and environmental fragility.
Let's start with definitions and details: A food secure household has "consistent access to enough food for active healthy living" (USDA). Food insecurity, therefore, is when access to food is limited due to poverty, environment, disaster, or social upheaval (think Zimbabwe). Health problems increase and environmental degradation (particularly in countries populated by subsistence farmers) is a given as people eke out food, cash, and shelter from whatever natural resources are available.
Poor food availability and choice in the US has become a necessarily hot topic. In the US, 1 out of 10 households struggle to put food on the table. American families with minimal food security can trend towards obesity and food insecurity simultaneously, as they choose processed food that fills bellies rather fresh produce that nourishes. In 2007, the USDA surveyed households about food insecurity, asking questions such as: 'In the last 12 months, did you or other adults in the household ever cut the size of your meals or skip meals because there wasn’t enough money for food?'
Childhood food insecurity - and often-related obesity due to poor food choices - is a significant problem in the US. The Child Nutrition Reauthorization, renewed in similar, if water-downed versions in both the House and Senate this year, promises funding for farm-to-school programs and lunches. Farm to school programs partner local farmers with government-funded school lunch programs, providing fresh, nourishing food with a story. These programs cultivate young citizens who are friends with farmers, aware of what they eat, and connecting their food with their environment. The bill awaits passage in the November lame-duck session of congress, so child hunger relief - and local food - advocates are holding their breath.
In the next post, we'll discuss international food insecurity - linked directly with rising food prices and environmental fragility.
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