Barefoot and pregnant

How fire led to gender roles

July 2, 2009

Richard Wrangham’s new book, Catching Fire, has gotten press lately for its argument that our ability to cook is what, largely, makes us human. But also noteworthy is Wrangham’s assessment of how cooking may have divided us along gender lines; as the New York Times review of his book quoted, “Cooking created and perpetuated a novel system of male cultural superiority. It is not a pretty picture.”

Bittman’s latest

Industrial, organic, and seeded

July 1, 2009

A quick trio of recent posts we enjoyed on Bitten, Mark Bittman’s blog: a look at a new book about the food industry, a nod to Marion Nestle's assessment of organic food, and a graphic on which companies own seeds. Food for thought, all of it.

Where’s the beef?

Colorado company issues huge beef recall

June 30, 2009

The most recent beef recall, which was issued on June 24 and increased on June 28, includes 421,000 pounds of beef processed on April 21, 2009. The recalled meat, tainted with E. coli 0157:H7, comes from JBS-Swift, of Greeley, Colorado, and was shipped nationally and internationally.

(For one analysis of JBS and its meat, read Tom Philpott’s lengthy skewering of the company over at Grist.)

The blogging world has reacted to the recall with advice: “Avoid Beef Like It’s The Plague: Massive Class 1 Recall of Beef Products — 421,000 Pounds” warned Obama Foodorama. Sam Fromartz, of Chews Wise, offered other good suggestions:

Follow government advice and cook burgers until 160F (like a hockey puck?) or reduce risk by getting hamburger from a butcher who grinds meat in the shop.

That last idea, to entrust your butcher with the job of grinding your burger, is worth considering, and is repeated by cookbook author and blogger Jeanne Kelley in this video from the new site Good Eats; for her burger, Kelley buys a chuck roast and has it ground to order.

Ten unusual health foods

Featuring good fats alongside buckwheat and watercress

June 29, 2009

Everybody loves lists, right? The current issue of Bon Appétit magazine has a top-10 list of health foods most Americans don’t usually think of as health foods, including bacon, whole milk, and duck fat. Fry on.

A blog to bookmark

Eat this every day

June 26, 2009

From the department of luscious food blogs: Gourmet.com contributer Giovanna Zivny recently posted about her father’s blog, Eating Every Day. Charles Shere, husband of Lindsey, a founding partner at Chez Panisse — and author of Chez Panisse Desserts — writes a simple food log that never fails to whet our appetite.

BPA, behind closed doors

Plastics manufacturers fight back

June 25, 2009

So the plastics industry, instead of embracing alternatives to bisphenol A for its products, has apparently decided to damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

As the nonprofit Environmental Working Group recently reported, plastics manufacturers recently got together and decided that the key to keeping BPA on the market was to convince women (they do the shopping anyway, right?) that BPA was safe:

Their “holy grail” spokesperson would be a “pregnant young mother who would be willing to speak around the country about the benefits of BPA.”

As the EWG noted, “But who? What young mother will agree to tout a product that dozens of scientific studies have shown causes permanent damage to an embryo?”

Food, incorporated

An interview with Robert Kenner

June 24, 2009

Robert Kenner’s documentary film "Food, Inc." is the latest food-industry exposé, playing now at a theater near you. Kenner recently spoke with the Boston Globe about his work, and delivered some pretty devastating sound bites:

I feel like we’re part of an exploding movement. There are so many things coming to a head. On the one hand, there’s the financial crisis. People are realizing there was a credit Ponzi scheme, and we’re all paying the price. The government didn’t regulate it. The parallels with the food world are pretty identical. There’s a food Ponzi scheme going on. The system is totally unsustainable. It’s based on gasoline, based on pollution. Twenty to 25 percent of our carbon footprint is from growing and transporting food.

For a longer interview, read AlterNet's Q&A with Kenner. And for a recent list of other great food documentaries, check out the roundup from Fair Food Fight.

What’s on your food?

A new pesticide-information tool is now available

June 23, 2009

Do you know what pesticides are on that strawberry you’re eating?

A new Web-based tool for determining pesticide residues on various foods is available at What's On My Food? The site, sponsored by the Pesticide Action Network, breaks down the pesticides on given food items by type: “Known or Probable Carcinogens,” “Suspected Hormone Disruptors,” “Neurotoxins,” and “Developmental or Reproductive Toxicants.”

Strawberries, for example, show as many as 37 detected pesticides. The chart breaks out organic and conventional (when available), and provides information about the year when the food was tested.

It’s time-consuming to try to sleuth out what’s going on your food — and how unhealthful it is for you and the environment — but the idea of transparency and food is immensely appealing. Kudos to PAN for this tool.

(And a shout-out to the Environmental Working Group for its "Dirty Dozen" list of the most pesticide-laden produce items, and to Cindy Burke, for her book To Buy or Not to Buy Organic, which also examines which foods contain the most pesticides.)

School lunch news

Ann Cooper heads to Colorado

June 22, 2009

Ann Cooper, the self-proclaimed "renegade lunch lady," has a high profile among those working to redo the American school lunch. Now, after several years in the Berkeley, California, school district, Cooper has moved to a larger district, this time in Boulder, Colorado. Writes Katrina Heron at the Civil Eats blog:

A lot of [Cooper’s] work will involve breaking the district’s dependence on the conventional school-food procurement system, which is administered by the USDA via the National School Lunch Program.

Incidentally, the same program is up for reauthorization this fall as part of the Child Nutrition Act, and, according to a recent article in the Chicago Tribune, there’s lots for legislators to scrutinize, including the reality of nachos for lunch — every day:

They are cheap and easy to prepare, which is important in school systems with dwindling numbers of working kitchens, minimally trained labor and only about $1 to spend per meal. The dish uses at least two agricultural commodities that form the backbone of the lunch program, corn and meat. And students will happily eat nachos daily — key in a system that financially rewards companies when kids choose to eat their food.

Wondering what all the lunch-related fuss is about? The unappetizing photos on the blog American Lunch Room might be all you need to see, with one exception: The lunch photo submitted by Ann Cooper herself, which looks pretty darned good.