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  • Did Jamie Oliver meet his match in ‘America’s Fattest City’?

    When last we saw British superstar chef-turned-food-system-reformer Jamie Oliver, he was in the midst of teaching “the fattest city in America” how to cook. How did it go? Well, thanks to the miracle that is reality television, we’ll find out one episode at a time. The series — Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution — doesn’t premiere […]

  • Ask Umbra on toilet paper, dryer balls, and Twitter

    Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, Is it more environmentally sound to throw tissue paper in the toilet or in the trash?  I’m disturbed by how much toilet paper is used by one family alone and wonder just what it takes to remove all that paper from the sewage system and from the […]

  • Study shows transmission costs for big wind are low!

    Grist recently discussed the new National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) large wind study [pdf]. This study explores scenarios for supplying 20 percent to 30 percent of total electric energy consumption used by the eastern grid through wind power. (The eastern grid serves about 70 percent of the U.S. population.) Although it was not the main […]

  • Will Google’s fight with China stymie climate negotiations?

    If any progress is to be made in the global fight against climate change — whether via diplomatic negotiations or cleantech partnerships — it will only happen through cooperation between the U.S. and China.  But the potential for collaboration of any kind took a big blow this past week thanks to the Google fracas.  Reports […]

  • Welcome to the Corporatocracy

    Coss Posted from Biodiversivist.   Corporatocracy. Ever wonder why you can step across the Mexican border and instantly move from one of the richest countries on Earth to one of the poorest? It’s all about governance. Mexico’s government is hobbled by the corrupting influence of wealthy individuals. Politicians trapped in that system have no choice […]

  • Tales from a D.C. school kitchen: How food service turns a green school into an enviro hog

    Ed Bruske recently spent a week in the kitchen at H.D. Cooke Elementary School in the District of Columbia observing how food is prepared. This is the fifth of a six-part series of posts about what he saw. Read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. Cross-posted from The Slow Cook. And check out the rest […]

  • Did China block Copenhagen progress to pave way for its own dominance in cleantech?

    You hear it all the time, one of the most frequently voiced excuses for Western countries failing to radically cut carbon dioxide emissions: Taking any such action would hand a massive competitive advantage to fast-industrializing China. Yet evidence is piling up that the very opposite is the case. The main challenge from the world’s new […]

  • Lesson for schools: sweetened junk shouldn’t count as food

    Sugar in school: give the people what they want? Reporter Ed Bruske spent a week working in a Washington, D.C. public school lunchroom. His series of articles (1, 2, 3) that resulted are fantastic reading for anyone following the ongoing debate regarding school lunches and the challenges for enacting real reform. Today’s entry looked at […]

  • Thick as a foggy, drizzly night: smoky-spicy split peas

    In Tom’s Kitchen, Grist’s food editor discusses some of the quick-and-easy things he gets up to in, well, his kitchen. He thinks the column name sucks–please help him rename it. Email ideas to tphilpott[at]grist[dot]org. He apologizes for the lame iPhone photography. ———- Photo: Tom PhilpottIt’s been a rough winter up here in these North Carolina […]

  • Tales from a D.C. school kitchen: Hold the fat and please pass the sugar

    Ed Bruske recently spent a week in the kitchen at H.D. Cooke Elementary School in the District of Columbia observing how food is prepared. This is the second of a six-part series of posts about what he saw. Read parts 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6. Cross-posted from The Slow Cook. And check out the rest […]