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  • 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 […]

  • Your canned Thanksgiving staples are full of BPA

    I get the sense that everyone who can cook (i.e. pretty much everyone who isn't me) is going the foodie route with Thanksgiving these days, all free-range individual Cornish hens and Brussels sprout slaw. But if you like to go the easy/traditional/pull-stuff-together-at-the-last-minute route, use caution when reaching for the canned pumpkin or beans. The Breast […]

  • Food Studies: Not all cheeses are created equal

    A cheese cave at Murray’s CheesePhoto: VIPNYCAging cheese is tricky business. Trust me, I saw some pretty gory casualties while working at Murray’s Cheese in New York City this summer. When cheese goes wrong, it’s subject to cracking, peeling, excessive amounts of mite-dust, saggy skin, hosts of unintended molds. The list goes on. Which is […]

  • Thanksgiving turkeys can’t have sex because their breasts are too big

    Steven Dubner, of Freakonomics fame, recently told Marketplace that almost 100 percent of Thanksgiving turkeys are the product of artificial insemination. The problem, apparently, is Americans' appetite for gigantic breasts. "The modern turkey has quite large turkey breasts, and it actually physically gets in the way when the male and the female try to create […]

  • Peebottle Farms: Talking to plants

    A friend sent Nina an urgent text message that said: “Alert! Today is a good day for planting garlic!” KK Haspel talks to the plants on her farm. She also grows astoundingly delicious vegetables and bonkers-gorgeous flowers. The connection between these facts is not something I can confirm, but I’m happy to believe there is […]

  • DIY role model: Delilah Snell

    Photo: Aida Mollenkamp A version of this interview first appeared on Aida Mollenkamp’s website. Meet food wonder woman (or funderwoman, as I call her), Delilah Snell. She may be the most prolific person I know, with her hands in numerous activities at once. She’s also a Master Food Preserver (there are only a handful of in the […]

  • The Farm Bill: The view from the grassroots

    The odds that most of us laypeople will have any opportunity to influence this year’s Farm Bill process are looking awfully slim. Sure, there’s still a chance the current, nearly opaque supercommittee process, and the piece of it now known as “the Secret Farm Bill,” could break down. If that happens, the National Sustainable Agriculture […]

  • A local food blueprint

    Photo: Matthew BurpeeThe most exciting aspect of the new USDA report on the local food and farm economy [PDF] isn’t the sizable $4.8 billion in annual sales of local food it says occurred in 2008. It’s the fact that, as the AP noted, the local food economy is poised to grow as fast as even […]

  • Tattoos are decidedly NOT vegan

    There are two important principles of veganism that most people don't understand. More food is vegan than is immediately obvious. But more seemingly innocuous products have animals parts in them than the average meat-eater imagines. Case in point: tattoos. As Tim Donnelly writes at The Atlantic, "The ink and processes at your average shop contain […]