Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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What doesn’t kill you makes you gourmet
Editor’s note: The following essay and map are excerpted from Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas and are republished with permission by UC Press as part of Grist’s California agriculture series, an exploration of the people, farms, and issues shaping the state. Click for a larger version. The Bay Area is a tale of two […]
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Reinventing the supermarket: How New York’s Eataly falls short
Eataly is nice, but there’s still plenty of room left to reinvent the supermarket.Photo: Samantha DeckerThe American supermarket experience hasn’t changed much in a half century. It’s basically a connect-the-dots problem each consumer solves differently: How do you get in, get the things on your list, avoid those annoying people with the slow-moving carts, and […]
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Aspartame is not the only thing in diet cola that can kill you
What evil lurks in that can of refreshment?Photo: Jeff GoldenTurns out, it’s not just the fake sweetener in Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke that might cause cancer; it’s also the coloring agent. The cans these beverages come in aren’t so healthy, either. Modern-day commercial colas (both diet and regular) get their characteristic dark hue from […]
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This is Flint, Michigan, in all its pain and all its glory
Buick City parking lot, 2010.Photos: Wes Janz, except when notedCross-posted from Places [at] Design Observer, an online journal of architecture, landscape and urbanism, published in partnership with Design Observer. “Distressed are big chunks of Detroit, Flint, Gary, Chicago, East St. Louis, and Cincinnati.” This is what I wrote after completing the weeklong Midwess Distress Tour with […]
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Why raising the price of school lunch is a bad idea
Scene from Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Drawing by George Cruikshank, circa 1837.At a time when many families are struggling with money — and racking up millions of dollars in debt at school cafeterias — school lunch is about to get more expensive. The hike is mandated by the recent Child Nutrition Reauthorization passed by Congress and […]
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Chicken, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and regulatory independence
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ——— Would you like that chicken tainted with salmonella with resistance to one, two, three, or four different antibiotics? We also have six and seven. Consumer choice! After my post Monday on aspartame’s wild and wacky path from pharmaceutical-company lab […]
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Why playing with your food is serious business
Sometimes, you just want to get your hands on some food and goof around. Don’t worry; it just means you’re human. Sometimes, I cook when I’m hungry. Then there are those times I find myself heading into the kitchen with a strong drive for … well … nothing in particular. And I’m not even hungry. […]
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Killing a bison and eating it raw [VIDEO]
My vegetarian girlfriend/camera operator refuses to watch this week’s video, so I won’t be insulted if you skip over it. I’ll be more impressed, though, if you watch. The slaughter is followed by a recipe for bison tartare. When you’ve seen the farm, and the butchering process, raw is a non-issue. For those of you […]
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Ask Umbra Book Club: The history of ‘adulterated’ food and gross-food urban legends
Give us this day our daily bread, as long as we know what went into it.Photo: LaCheryl PorterDearest readers, Last week, we kicked off our discussion of Bill Bryson’s At Home: A Short History of Private Life. You can catch up here. Let’s move our conversation into what is perhaps the heart of a house: […]
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Why is Trader Joe’s short-changing farmworker justice?
Hey Trader Joe’s: respect the people who harvest the food you sell. Photo: Scott RobertsonOver the past two decades, Trader Joe’s has grown rapidly as bargain-hunting foodies swarmed into its outlets. The chain now runs more than 350 stores with sales topping $8 billion in 2009. The secret to its dazzling success? Fortune magazine describes […]
