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Big Food

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    Protein propaganda: It’s what’s for dinner

    By working hard to ensure that nutrition guidelines equate "protein" with meat, the meat industry often edges plant-based protein sources out of the picture.

    Michele Simon Food

  • Willie Nelson wants you to occupy Big Food

    No less an authority than Willie Nelson is writing in the Huffington Post, calling on people to Occupy the Food System. Big Agriculture is just as one-percenty as the banks, says Nelson, with most of the resources concentrated in the hands of a few large corporations — and the government isn't doing anything to help. Our […]

    Jess Zimmerman Agriculture

  • A dollar badly spent: New facts on processed food in school lunches

    Photo: USDA I want to draw attention to an eye-opening investigative report on school lunch that has gotten a bit lost in the holiday shuffle. In a collaboration between The New York Times and the Investigative Fund, reporter Lucy Komisar delved into the billion-dollar business of the national school lunch program and found some unsettling news. […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • Sorry Mrs. O, but jumping jacks aren’t enough

    At a recent summit on childhood obesity, the first lady announced a shift in her well-known Let’s Move campaign — away from food reform and toward an increased focus on exercise. Instead of “forcing [children] to eat their vegetables,” she told her audience, “it’s getting them to go out there and have fun.” Yes, you […]

    Michele Simon Food

  • Toying with the Happy Meal: Is McDonald’s evading the law?

    While most media outlets dubbed it the “Happy Meal toy ban,” the ordinance passed in San Francisco last year didn’t ban anything. The law just placed a few reasonable nutrition guidelines (a maximum of 600 calories per meal and limits on fat and salt, for example) for restaurants using free toy incentives to lure kids […]

    Michele Simon Food

  • Chicken chases its kale: Chik-fil-A attacks artist over leafy-green slogan

    Photo: Ellen KFor all of you poor souls who can’t tell kale and chicken apart (lord knows it can be difficult), your troubles may soon be over. Chik-fil-A, the country’s second-largest chain chicken restaurant (after KFC), is pressuring Vermont-based small-business owner Bo Muller-Moore to drop the phrase “Eat More Kale,” which he’s been screen-printing by […]

    Claire Thompson Food

  • Mic checking Big Food

    The Occupy Big Food rally at Zuccotti Park on Saturday.“Whose food? Our food!” This was the rallying cry at the first Occupy Big Food event on Saturday in Zuccotti Park. The rally, which I led with Erika Lade, a graduate student in NYU’s Food Studies program, gathered about 100 people with the goal of connecting […]

    Kristin Wartman Food

  • How did pizza become a vegetable? Blame lobbyists

    By now, most of us have seen the headlines. They’ve ranged from “Is Pizza Sauce a Vegetable? Congress says Yes” to the more childish, “Congress to USDA: Pizza is So a Vegetable, Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah.” News outlets have had a field day over a recent proposal from Congress that suggests pizza sauce […]

    Michele Simon Food

  • Confessions of a former Big Food executive

    Photo: Casey V. PhotographyA few weeks ago, I learned of a relatively new blog about food industry deception, but with an interesting twist. The blog’s author is Bruce Bradley, who spent over 15 years as a food marketer at companies like General Mills, Pillsbury, and Nabisco. He has since, in his words, “become more educated […]

    Andy Bellatti Food