Articles by Tom Philpott

Tom Philpott was previously Grist's food writer. He now writes for Mother Jones.

All Articles

  • Slow Food Nation was magnificent in many ways, but overshot its mandate

    Photo: karmacamilleeon Slow Food Nation — that grand, sprawling culinary event that seemed to permeate San Francisco over Labor Day weekend — has passed. Now we can ask: What was it? A brazen display of foodie elitism, as some critics charge? A transformative moment in an ongoing effort to overthrow the industrial food system, as […]

    Tom Philpott Culture

  • New York chef urges people to get back in the kitchen

    Dan Barber is one of the most highly regarded chefs in the United States. Back in the late 1990s, his small Manhattan restaurant Blue Hill got lots of buzz for Dan’s innovative cooking. But even while he was dazzling diners with his technique, Dan was already haunting Manhattan’s Union Square Greenmarket for ingredients, before many […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Benitez of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers says deal imminent with Whole Foods

    I’m a lame blogger when it comes to breaking news at conferences, when my brain typically reaches explosion point with all the information zooming in. I should have live-blogged this Saturday, while I was taking in Slow Food Nation’s “Toward a new, fair food system” panel: Coalition of Immokalee Workers leader Lucas Benitez revealed that […]

    Tom Philpott Technology

  • Schlosser: Food industry abuses workers as matter of course

    Of all the panels I attended at Slow Food Nation’s series, the most powerful for me was the one convened by Eric Schlosser on creating a “new, fair food system.” It featured labor-rights advocates from California and Florida — the poles of industrial fruit-and-veg production in the U.S. Working conditions get little play in sustainable-agriculture […]

    Tom Philpott Food