The new Cooking Light

Food reform goes mainstream

By Culinate staff

November 22, 2010

Once upon a time, the popular magazine Cooking Light encouraged its largely female readership to live a healthy lifestyle that included yoga, superfoods, and “lite” dairy products. A year or so ago, however, the rag got a makeover and a new editor, Scott Mowbray.

Yes, the makeup tips and reduced-fat cheese are still there. But here’s Mowbray, in the November issue, telling readers that making your own food, supporting farmers’ markets and other local food producers, and choosing products from animals that were humanely raised and slaughtered or sustainably fished are things we should all be doing:

At a time when so many Americans are without work and lack the money to pay their grocery bills, it may seem disrespectful to focus on the quality of the food. But with our national politics so churlish, and the Gulf so freshly poisoned, it feels important, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, to give thanks. Much is wrong in the American food chain, but much shows signs of getting better.

Dig, too, the issue’s lengthy feature profiling the country’s various DIY food mavens, including the folks behind Beecher's Handmade Cheese in Seattle and Brooklyn’s chocolate-making Mast Brothers.