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Farmers markets and CSAs sprout up every spring along with the lettuce and tomato plants. Supermarkets across the country, from small family-owned stores to big box chains, are all offering organic options throughout the store, not just produce any more. So, we all think – or would like to think – that we’re eating nutritious food. Do we even know what good “nutrition” is? 
Every year or so, when the first California berries make their appearance, we’re seduced into buying one – just one – box of strawberries at the supermarket. They always look so beautiful: large berries, bright red, the leaves still attached and fresh… 
Stand Together or Starve Alone: Unity and Chaos in the U.S. Food Movement, Mark Winne (Praeger, 2017) “The Food Movement” is a pretty big concept – it can incorporate anything and everything from farming and food production to distribution, marketing, and retail sales. Then toss in farmers markets, food co-ops, and CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) 
Bread went from being a major part of our ancestors’ food intake to being a very small part of the food we eat today. Heavy, rich, and nutritious bread was once a daily staple; today commercial “industrialized” bread is produced in fully automated factories and is full of chemical additives and preservatives, too much salt, and has too little nutritive value. What went wrong? 
Most of the millions living in the Pacific Northwest forget that the drylands of eastern Washington and Oregon on the west of the Rocky Mountains and Montana to the east are also part of the nation’s “bread basket.” They’ve been raised to think that wheat comes from Kansas. The truth is that eastern Washington and Oregon, and central and eastern Montana produce millions of bushels of wheat, most of which is sold by the train carload to one of just a handful of huge commercial flour mills or is exported. 
Strawberries are my absolute favorite fruit, and I look forward to strawberry season every year. Depending on where you live that season can start as early as mid-June or as late as mid-July. This year we bought our last quart of berries at the farmers market the second week of August. They were amazing! 
It’s another dark day for all of us in the Good Food Movement. Today it was announced that Campbell’s will buy Pacific Food, producer of organic and natural soups and broths, plant-based milks, and more. Last week, Hain Celestial snapped up Better Bean Company. More buy-ups and consolidations. More money, more power games. 
To those unfamiliar with the absurdist theater of school lunch, it is puzzling, even maddening, that feeding kids nutritious food should be so hard. You buy good food. You cook it. You serve it to hungry kids. 
Every five years the USDA updates its “US Dietary Guidelines” and the latest is out. We need to be careful about believing the conventional wisdom surrounding the “preferred diet” especially when the conversation is so distorted by commercial interests and money. 
At GoodFood World we’re always on the lookout for something special for dinner. This week we picked up a “2-Serving Portion” of wild sockeye salmon from the Loki Fish Co. stand at Ballard Farmers Market. |
 
Book of the MonthStand Together or Starve Alone: Unity and Chaos in the U.S. Food Movement
 “The Food Movement” is a pretty big concept – it can incorporate anything and everything from farming and food production to distribution, marketing, and retail sales. Then toss in farmers markets, food co-ops, and CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) and it’s a topic that is hard to get your mind around.
In Stand Together or Starve Alone, Mark Winne uses the term “food movement” as an over-arching concept, however he rounds it up into a more straightforward description: “Food Security.” Read on... A Video You Don't Want to Miss!As a member of the Blackfeet Nation, Mariah Gladstone, IndigiKitchen, shares the importance of an Indigenous-based diet. 
Gladstone poses the question of whether a nation can truly be soverign if they are unable to provide for themselves. Something we should all ask ourselves as we move farther from being able to do so. LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW YOUR FOOD GETS TO YOUR PLATE
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