Climate Food and Agriculture
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Change in season: Why salt doesn’t deserve its bad rap
A good pinch of this won’t do you any harm.For something that’s so often mixed with anti-caking agents, salt takes a lot of lumps in the American imagination. Like fat, people tend to think of it as an unnecessary additive — something to be avoided by seeking out processed foods that are “free” of it. […]
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The $200 backyard barbecue
This is what's going to convince Americans to invest in local food and alternative energy: the demise of the backyard barbecue. High gas prices are finally trickling down into U.S. food markets, and the red-meat-loving New York Post has calculated that an outlay of burgers, hot dogs, trimmings, potato salad, and ice cream will cost […]
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Now that the FDA itself has found BPA in canned foods, will it regulate the poison?
Oh, yes we can: It’s time for the FDA to act on its own information regarding canned foods and BPA.The next time an FDA panel convenes to discuss whether to ban BPA, the endocrine-disrupting industrial chemical used in can liners, it will have new data to consider — a study by the agency’s own scientists. […]
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Frog hunting at night in Arkansas, with some guys I met on YouTube [VIDEO]
Looking at that pair of legs, you just want to eat them.Photo: Barclay NixIn this week’s video, I joined some guys from Arkansas who I met on YouTube for a night of catching frogs. It was precarious. We showed up around 10 p.m. in a small town near Jonesboro, Ark. Better judgement may have suggested […]
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Groups sue FDA to stop Big Ag antibiotic abuse — and it just might work
A growing weight of research links routine antibiotic use on factory farms to the rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria — which are showing up in more and more places worldwide (including, according to recent studies, in your local supermarket). Doctor groups, from the American Medical Association to the American Society of Microbiology, have appealed to the […]
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Family (farm) affair: my connection to Eliot Coleman’s rise to prominence
Portrait of the farmer as a young man: Eliot Coleman with children, circa early 1970s.Reprinted with permission from Melissa Coleman. I’m not sure exactly what it means to play a cameo role in a family memoir exploring the roots of today’s food movement; but certainly it makes you keenly aware of how quickly the years […]
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Small bites from the Big Apple: delicious eats in New York City
I recently visited New York City to attend the ceremony for the James Beard Awards in food journalism. I had been nominated for one in the category of column writing. I didn’t bring home a Beard in the end, but I did notch a few victories in the field of the palate. Here are the […]
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Bee season: Urban beekeeping in Hong Kong [VIDEO]
Take three minutes out of your day to watch this absolutely beautiful short video portrait of Michael Leung, a product designer and beekeeper in Hong Kong. (It’s part of a promotional campaign for Nokia called “Success Redefined,” but don’t let that put you off.) Leung is the founder of HK Honey: HK Honey is an […]
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How industrial agriculture makes us vulnerable to climate change, Mississippi floods edition
An “ephemeral gulley” that carried soil and agrichemicals from an Iowa farm toward the Gulf of Mexico during a 2010 storm. Photo: Environmental Working GroupNancy Rabalais, marine scientist and executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, is probably our foremost authority on the vast, oxygen-depleted “dead zone” that rears up annually in the Gulf […]
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Forget rice, think meat and yogurt: ‘Chinese food’ looking more and more like Western diet
Meating demand: Workers at an industrial meatpacking house in China try to keep up with their nation’s soaring appetite for animal products.Photo: Shreyans BhansaliIt’s Monday, which for many is now a meatless day, so it’s appropriate I think to highlight Howard Schneider’s Washington Post article on the long-anticipated Chinese meat-eating explosion: For China, the world’s […]
