In 2004, the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka killed eight members of this small fishing family. And yet today, they still fish (either on stilts or in a boat) because they have to do it to survive. The family lives in a small, makeshift hut with a back "window" that opens onto the ocean -- the same sea that gives life also takes it away.

In America, the better-food movement likes to talk about getting to know your farmer. Farmers markets are a great venue for building those relationships. But farmers markets aren't magically transparent and this strategy is not foolproof. Consider, for instance, that at a farmers market in China, someone allegedly made about $1.5 million selling fox, mink, and rat meat as mutton.

The Guardian:

One suspect, named Wei, earned more than £1m over the past four years by purchasing fox, mink and rat meat, treating it with gelatin, carmine (a colour produced from ground beetles) and nitrate, then selling it as mutton at farmers' markets in Jiangsu province and Shanghai. Authorities raided Wei's organization in February, arresting 63 suspects and seizing 10 tonnes of meat and additives.

Do you drive to the grocery store? That's not very green, nobody needs to tell you that. New research suggests you could halve the carbon footprint of your shopping just by putting your feet up and getting your groceries delivered to your door.

That's according to calculations by University of Washington engineers. They point out in a paper published in the Transportation Research Forum journal [PDF] that delivery trucks follow efficient routes as they drop off groceries at customers' homes.

Did you know that Capri Sun -- which has always freaked me out although there are arguably more disgusting drinks -- comes from Germany? That's what Wired says, anyway. How weird is that? But that's not what this story is about. This story is about fungi. Mystery fungi. Five kinds of which a scientist has just found in Capri Sun.

Pack up your kids and move to Queens. One public school there, Public School 244, has become the first in the city, possibly the country, to go vegetarian.

And the food sounds pretty darn good. Here's a sample of offerings, via the New York Daily News:

BREAKFAST MENU
Whole-grain sunrise carrot bread with hot cereal choice
Fluffy egg omelet with melted cheese in a New York-style bagel
Waffles with warm syrup and
mozzarella string cheese

LUNCH MENU
Black bean and cheddar quesadilla served with salsa, red roasted
potatoes and broccoli
Roasted organic tofu with cacciatore sauce, whole-grain pasta and roasted zucchini
“Superhero” spinach wrap with cucumber salad
Chickpea falafel in a soft wheat wrap with chopped romaine, fresh diced tomatoes and cucumber salad

The Windy City is about to roll out a new local food label designed to support the city’s burgeoning urban farming movement. "Chicago Grown" will soon appear on signs around the city and on stickers on fruit, veggies, herbs, and honey, and eventually on processed items in which they’re included, such as salsa, jams, and even kombucha.

Backers believe Chicago Grown will be the first label issued by a major city specifically to promote its urban ag culture. "We really want the label to both increase demand for foods grown through urban agriculture and celebrate that so many people are growing food within Chicago," says Megan Klein with the Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council (CFPAC), who is spearheading the effort with input from growers around the city. "We want people to be able to identify who is growing the food around them and to let them know where they can get it."

Chicago Grown and efforts like it are a natural next step for the “buy local” campaigns started in the ’90s. The early movement helped usher in the era of farmers markets, launch community supported agriculture operations (CSAs), and convince the nation’s gonzo chain grocery stores to stock their shelves with “local” products -- but the definition of “local” varies. Now, a flurry of branding and rebranding efforts around the country is giving the eating public an easy way to tell exactly where its food comes from and who grew it.

These local branding efforts are “reweaving a community tapestry undone by industrial America,” says Phil Korman, executive director of the Massachusetts-based nonprofit Community Involved in Sustainable Agriculture (CISA), which in 1999 founded the groundbreaking “Local Hero” marketing campaign, with the trademarked “Be A Local Hero, Buy Locally Grown” label. “We are giving back respect to farmers and changing the culture of where we are as people.”

Nutria are 20-pound rodents that are gnawing away at the coast of Louisiana. They are eating so much vegetation, principally roots that hold fragile outlying coastal pieces of land together -- kind of the way eggs bind a cake -- that they are causing serious problems. Like, "See ya, Louisiana Coast!" type problems. The sad thing is that someone actually deliberately brought the big fat rat thingies into Louisiana from Argentina in 1930 because they had the brilliant idea they were going to make fur coats out of them. And now, there are way way way too many of these things to make fur coats. I mean, even if everyone in the world was Paris Hilton and wanted a fur coat, they'd have leftovers.

So, what do we do about nutria? Time to start eating! At least, that's the most recent plan put forward by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries -- reduce nutria populations by turning them into jambalaya and snack sticks. Some dudes who are making a film about nutria, entitled Rodents of Unusual Size, wondered what all this culinary innovation tasted like. You can watch the taste test here. Or just run.

OK, meat eaters, do you want the good news or the bad news first? Hey, I know! I’ll start with the bad news: In a just-released study, Consumer Reports tested 257 samples of ground turkey from supermarkets, and found that virtually every one was contaminated with either fecal bacteria, staph, or salmonella. Even worse, most of the fecal bacteria were resistant to one or more antibiotics important to human medicine.

Clearly, between this study and the Environmental Working Group’s recent report on the high rates of fecal (and antibiotic-resistant) bacteria, it’s fair to conclude that the meat industry is struggling to keep its product safe.

The bit of good news here is that Consumer Reports tested both meat raised with antibiotics and meat raised without them. While meat raised without antibiotics had about the same rates of overall contamination as the industrial alternative, it had far lower levels of antibiotic-resistant strains -- and it’s the antibiotic-resistant bugs that should scare you. Infection with them puts you at far greater risk of serious illness or even death if you’re an infant, elderly, or immune-compromised.

The message to consumers is simple: Buying meat raised without antibiotics will reduce your exposure to the nastiest bacteria. Which is a good thing.

There’s a message here for the meat industry, too: Restricting agricultural use of antibiotics would have a big effect on meat safety. Of course, any Danish pig farmer would tell you the same thing. But here at home neither Big Meat nor the government agencies that police it are ready to face that reality.

Big corporations are feeding Americans a diet of crap, but a swarm of start-ups is chewing away at their market dominance.

The New York Times brought us the news this week that venture capitalists -- normally the lifeblood of innovation in the technology and cleantech sectors -- are increasingly providing the financial fodder for food-related start-ups. The injections of cash could be helping to fertilize a green agro-culinary revolution.

From the Times article:

In some cases, the goal is to connect restaurants with food purveyors, or to create on-demand delivery services from local farms, or ready-to-cook dinner kits. In others, the goal is to invent new foods, like creating cheese, meat and egg substitutes from plants. Since this is Silicon Valley money, though, the ultimate goal is often nothing short of grand: transforming the food industry.

Everybody who majored in English, comp lit, art, history, art history, or indeed basically anything except pre-med and economics has heard jokes about how you're just training to say "do you want fries with that." What you might not realize, though, is that you can major in "do you want fries with that," too, at McDonald's University in East London. And it's kind of a competitive school.