News to eat up

A food revolution?

By Culinate staff

March 23, 2009

The New York Times offered plenty of reading this weekend for anyone interested in food. Which means most everyone, right?

Over on the business page, Andrew Martin asks whether a food revolution is “now in season.” In a lengthy piece about the business of remaking the food business, Martin surveys the current political and business landscape and finds that change may be underway (although certainly not everyone is convinced).

Meanwhile, Mark Bittman, continuing his eat-less-meat message, writes that food doesn’t have to be labeled organic to be good for you: “There’s plenty of evidence that both a person’s health — as well as the environment’s — will improve with a simple shift in eating habits away from animal products and highly processed foods to plant products and what might be called ‘real food.’”

Maybe people looking for “real food” is the reason sugar has become a selling point, writes Kim Severson. She reports that sugar is fashionable again, in part as people turn against high-fructose corn syrup, although nutrition experts say both are equally problematic when it comes to calories.

And finally, on the opinion page, Paul Greenberg, who’s writing a book about fish, reveals just how much wild-caught fish goes toward feeding pets: a lot. Writes Greenberg: “If we are serious about curtailing our impact on the oceans, we should insist that land-based farm animals stick to land-grown feed.” Who knew?