Good Food, Good Life, Part ll
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comNestle is still at it. The Swiss Multinational corporation has been trying to gain essential control over the water from Oxbow Springs, near the...
View ArticleA Quiet Revolution
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comI’m still chuckling over the Carl’s Jr. television ads featuring gorgeous women devouring monstrous hamburgers while the words...
View ArticleSmoke and Mirrors - Sustainable Palm Oil
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comOn the heels of writing about how the food industry is suddenly responding to consumer demand that our food supply be sustainable, I stumbled upon...
View ArticleThe Big Four vs. The Rest of Us
The Big Four vs. The Rest of Us Posted on March 4, 2015 by Annoyed OmnivoreThere’s still about a month left for the public and industry to weigh in, but the 8th edition of the Dietary Guidelines for...
View ArticleSpawn of Monsanto
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comLoblolly sounds as though it’s a name of a quaint little village in Ireland, but it’s actually an important tree species in the U.S., and is being...
View ArticleTom Udall Gets It Wrong
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comThere are currently more than 80,000 chemicals available for purchase and use in the U.S. today that have never been tested for potential toxic...
View ArticleA Simple Reform
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comIn accordance with the definition of capitalism, we will constantly be doing battle with private industry, bent only the accumulation of profit, in...
View ArticleThree Lies
It is said that if you repeat a thing often enough people will believe in its veracity. There are three stances the biotech industry continues to inculcate, only one of which could be true, except...
View ArticleSoda Wars
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comAccording to the playbook on how to reduce tobacco use in this country, warning labels and taxes work. In 1965, Congress enacted the Federal...
View Article"Nafta on Steroids"
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comThe Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement has once again reared its ugly head as it appears to be ready for passage. President Obama...
View ArticleDissident Voices
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comA Pew Research Center poll conducted earlier this year revealed differences between what ordinary citizens believe and how those beliefs are in...
View ArticleArgentina vs. Monsanto
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comThe recent announcement by the World Health Organization concerning the carcinogenic nature of glyphosate, the chief component of Monsanto’s weed...
View ArticleDirty Water – The Use of Oil Production Wastewater to Irrigate California Crops
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comFor two decades farmers in California’s Central Valley have been buying water from the Chevron Kern River oil field, which is currently the...
View ArticleChipotle's-Giving People What They Want
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comChipotle’s recent announcement that they were working on ways to eliminate GMOs from their food, which is in accordance with their historic...
View ArticleWe Just Don't Know
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comFor those people who trot out the argument that there have been no studies demonstrating a link between the consumption of GMOs and health...
View ArticleHow the Demise of Agribusiness Would Save us All
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comA new study, The Large Potential of local Croplands to Meet Food Demand in the United States, was recently conducted by Professor Elliott Campbell of...
View ArticleThe FRESHER Act
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.comThe Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released a report Congress commissioned in 2010 to study the impact of fracking on...
View ArticleBig, Fat Chickens
You can walk into any large grocery store and buy a factory raised whole chicken for about $1.50 a pound. Chickens raised on sustainable local farms currently cost close to $3.00 a pound, or more if...
View ArticleThe Irrationality of Increased Pesticide Use
cross-posted at annoyedomnivore.wordpress.com“The Earth our home, is beginning to look like an immense pile of filth…The deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most...
View ArticleA Renewed Argument Against Factory Beef
In 1871, Colonel R. I. Dodge, when traveling along the Arkansas River, came upon a herd of bison that he measured to be 25 miles wide and 50 miles long. It has been estimated that 20 to 30 million...
View ArticleThe Potential of Modernizing the Safety Assessment of GMOs
On July 2 of this year, President Obama issued a bulletin called “Improving Transparency and Ensuring Continued Safety in Biotechnology.” It’s a seemingly benign document, but the bulletin calls for...
View ArticleTwo Reasons to Avoid Imported Seafood
It’s estimated that 86% of the seafood consumed by Americans is imported, and most of that comes from China, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam, and is largely farmed. It has long been established that...
View ArticleA Hershey’s Kiss and the Power of the Marketplace
We as consumers, collectively, have a great deal of power to affect change in the marketplace, albeit with incremental steps. A campaign to force General Mills to produce Cheerios cereal without the...
View ArticleCoca-Cola Wants You to Exercise. A Lot.
Since the late 1990s the amount of full calorie soda consumed by the average American has dropped 25%. That’s a huge decline, most assuredly brought about by increased awareness that soda pop plays a...
View ArticleDon’t Worry. (about the DARK Act) Be Happy.
The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015, or the Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act, has been milling about for some time now and recently passed through the House Agriculture...
View ArticleNo More Whole Wheat Wiener Wraps!
Harry Truman was responsible for the introduction of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in 1946. The goal was two-fold; to manage farm surpluses and feed school children. As he signed the...
View ArticleYou Are What Your Grandmother Ate
A 2006 study conducted by researchers at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute provided fascinating evidence that the diet of one’s grandmother decidedly affects the health of her...
View ArticleAn Emergent Resistance Against the Proliferation of GMOs
There have been an unusual number of decisions and statements made over the last few weeks that frame genetically modified crops in a negative light. The State of California recently announced plans...
View ArticleFood Waste in America
Our city government provides a service which allows food waste to be deposited in yard debris containers which are subsequently picked up once a week. A consequence of this is that our garbage has...
View ArticleNestle v. Cascade Locks, Part lll
In 2008, Nestle began a campaign to gain essential control over the water at Oxbow Springs near the town of Cascade Locks, a small village in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. It continues in its...
View ArticleThe State Policy Network, ALEC and the TPP
Thomas Roe (1927-2000) was a businessman from South Carolina who, at the urging of Ronald Reagan, established the State Policy Network (SPN) in 1992. The SPN, philosophically opposed to the federal...
View ArticleHow The Intractability of the Meat Industry Hurts Us All
Every five years the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services appoints a committee of ten to fifteen nutrition experts to revamp the U.S. Dietary Guidelines. This...
View ArticleHow Consumer Demand Can Shape an Industry
Just this week Subway Restaurants announced that by March 2016 they will offer meals made with antibiotic-free chicken. A full phase in is expected within two to three years, and they’re promising...
View ArticleFruit Cake
No time to do anything at all this week, but at least I got to my fruitcakes. My mother made them always, and one of the most fabulous things I remember is my mother’s banana bread. I’ve never been...
View ArticleA Renewed Call For a Tax on Sweetened Drinks
The facts concerning the consumption of sweetened drinks are in and they’re solid. Drinking soda or any other sugary drink is a leading cause of obesity, particularly in children, and contributes to...
View ArticleUPOV 91 – A Real Threat to Sustainable Agriculture
The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, or UPOV (and colloquially known as “The Monsanto Law” in South America), was initially established in 1961 and was originally...
View ArticleClimate Change, Terrorism and GMOs
“If we are going to see an increase in drought, flood and extreme weather disturbances as a result of climate change, what that means is that people all over the world are going to be fighting over...
View ArticleThe (Real) Green Revolution
Just as I believe that no one benefits from Republican Party policies but rich white men, so too do I think that proponents of GMO crops are either paid by Big Ag to vilify anyone questioning the value...
View ArticleParis Climate Talks and the Elephant in the Room
The front page of Le Monde on Wednesday showed a picture of President Obama shaking hands with Bill Gates during the United Nations Conference on Climate Change. As the owner of 500,000 shares of...
View ArticleFood Waste in America – An Update
As a retired chef, I currently work in a regional grocery chain that offers a mix of organic and conventional foods. They continue to establish community connections and have actually become the main...
View ArticleUnited Soya Republic
In December 2003 Syngenta triumphantly labeled the countries of Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay as the United Soya Republic. At this point, Big Ag had effectively taken control of...
View ArticleBe A Climatarian!
I asked a co-worker what she and her boyfriend had planned for Christmas Day. As we work in a store that makes hundreds of connections with local farmers and ranchers while also providing organic...
View Article175 More Reasons to Avoid Processed Food
Most of us are aware of the dangers of Bisphenol A (BPA), which is found in most food wrappers and tin cans. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has stated that BPA can cause “altered...
View ArticleJust Say No to Farmed Salmon
I have long eschewed eating farmed salmon, most of which is Atlantic salmon, for a variety of health reasons. Among them are that farmed salmon have seven times the levels of PCB’s as wild salmon, 30...
View ArticleCombating an Obesogenic Environment
The World Health Organization (WHO) released a report last week that found that 41 million children around the world “under the age of five were either overweight or obese.” The report also found that...
View ArticleHillary Clinton and Monsanto
The Iowa caucuses revealed more than who the front runners might be in the upcoming presidential race. In a meeting of Iowa’s Tri-County Democrats, there existed a rather large block of women who had...
View ArticleThe Long Arm of the Biotech Industry
On May 20, 2014, Jackson County Oregon voters approved a ban on genetically engineered organisms. A similar ban was approved in nearby Josephine County. Both measures were counter to a previous state...
View ArticleHow to Change to a Healthier Diet For $1.50 a Day
Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, states simply that “eating is a political act.” He, along with Marion Nestle, the author of Food Politics, believes that Wall Street controls the food...
View ArticleThe DARK Act, Part Two
The DARK Act (the Deny Americans the Right to Know or, officially and duplicitously known as The Safe and Affordable Food Labeling Act of 2015) is back. It’s an industry backed bill, of course, one...
View ArticleHood River County Defeats Nestle
Since 2008 Nestle has waged a battle in Cascade Locks, Oregon for control over the rights to the water of Oxbow Springs. As I had reported first in 2013 and then in February of 2015 and September of...
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