Good Food is Everybody's Business
Minutes after meeting Hilario Alvarez in the packing sheds on his farm south of Yakima Washington, we were dashing after him down and across rows of peppers that were blazing with ripe fruit. Until you’ve stood knee-deep or, in some cases, waist-deep in dark green pepper plants, you have no idea how striking the colors of ripe peppers can be.
New research shows a link between use of two pesticides, rotenone and paraquat, and Parkinson’s disease. People who used either pesticide developed Parkinson’s disease approximately 2.5 times more often than non-users. The study was a collaborative effort conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, and the Parkinson’s Institute and Clinical Center in Sunnyvale, Calif.
Upgrade along the Continuum: This principle reveals a common sense philosophy that is both mobilizing and gracious, and let’s face it, we need these qualities in a guiding principle if we’re going to walk the life long journey of eating and living healthier.
What ever happened to good old fashioned grocery shopping? Is New York’s Eataly “Dean and DeLuca meets Whole Foods – on steroids” or is it the supermarket as Disneyland – for adults?
Milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables – those are all the basics of life; and yet the ups and downs of the economy over the last several years have been especially hard on the small to mid-sized farmer. Local, organic dairies are especially hard-pressed to make a go of it; milk has a shelf-life measured in days and to get it on the shelves and sold quickly is tough, even in the best of times.
More than 500 people attended Organicology, held this year in Portland OR, and took part in a full day of intensives, 2 days of workshops and educational sessions, and a mini trade show with 66 exhibitors. There were three fascinating keynote speakers, nine outstanding meals prepared out of local and organic products, and even a potato tasting competition. This is the first of several “post event” commentaries.
In the United States, more than 20 million people are workers in the food chain, over 11 million of which are full-time employees earning an income. Movements to make healthy food accessible to everyone are increasing in popularity, which is an important step towards achieving food equity for people of color. However, more attention must be paid to the often-invisible labor that produces and prepares the food that we put on the table.
Seed to Seed is part field notebook, part sketchbook and part diary. Built upon a narrative of the passing seasons of 2004, it relates that narrative to the life history of an ‘iconic’ plant. It gives a description of what is ‘seen’ and of the hidden molecular mechanisms that underlie the visible events in the plant’s life, and tells the story of the last ten years of scientific discoveries in Nicholas Harberd’s own laboratory as the team works on decoding the genome of a basic plant, thale cress – the fruit-fly of the plant world.
