Eat Well, Be Well: What We Eat and Who Supplies It

Supermarkets and big box stores offer nearly 50,000 – or more – products for us to choose from to feed ourselves and our families. A nation-wide analysis of U.S. grocery purchases revealed that highly processed foods make up more than 60 percent of the calories in food we buy, and these items tend to have more fat, sugar and salt than less-processed foods.

If we don’t understand the high cost of bad food – to ourselves, our families, our communities, and our economy – we will see life expectancy shorten, chronic diseases increase, and healthcare costs continue to spiral. Selecting locally grown and minimally processed food items – good food – can mean more healthful and nutritious food on your plate.

Our Daily Bread: It Takes Farmers, Millers, and Bakers

Most of the US forgets – or is simply ignorant of the fact – that the Northern Great Plains are a major part of the nation’s “bread basket.” They’ve been raised to think that wheat comes from Kansas. Our goal at GoodFood World is to stimulate discussion by reporting on the critical issues affecting the production and use of organic wheat and other grains, especially the challenges to small-scale organic family farms, millers, and bakers.

Montanans Buying From Montanans: Montana Department of Ag Food Show

Can Montana feed itself? That sounds like a pretty basic question – after all, Montana is the fourth largest state in the United States, spanning 147,000 square miles.

Shouldn’t we be able to support our meager population of 1,050,000 souls? We are primarily an agricultural state where almost 28,000 farms and ranches are spread across 60 million acres.

Big Food Snaps Up More Independents

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.

When Did Our Daily Bread Take a Wrong Turn?

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?

Local Grains: Taking Back Our Wheat

Our “National Hymn,” America the Beautiful, opens with the image of endless skies over fields of ripe golden grain that reach to purple mountains on the horizon. Poet Katharine Lee Bates would probably be appalled to realize that she was eulogizing one of the worst examples of mono-cropping in existence – second only to the carpeting of Iowa with corn.

How to Buy a Flour Mill: Check Craig’s List

Then one day, in June of 2007, Kevin was checking Craig’s List for bargains and came across this ad: “Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill for sale…” Kevin didn’t know a thing about flour or milling, but he was willing to learn and to work hard.