food
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EPA risks kiling bees to fight invasive stink bugs
The brown marmorated stink bug threatens crops in 33 states. But the EPA will allow farmers to use a pesticide that could wipe out bee populations, too
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Give 7-Up to your baby!
Hey, whatever else is wrong with our current cultural relationship with sugar water, at least nobody's pushing it as a baby formula alternative anymore, right? This 1956 ad says that 7-Up is "so wholesome" that "lots of mothers" give it to their babies. The company's evidence for this wholesomeness? They list the ingredients, even though they don't have to!
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Congress about to let agribiz get liberal — with pesticides
There's a quiet but vicious fight going on in Congress to restrict the EPA's ability to regulate pesticides, and industry is poised to win.
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Could eating poo-burgers save the Earth?
Eat sh*t, cattle farming industry! No, literally, eat sh*t. Japanese scientist Mitsuyuki Ikeda has developed a way to make meat substitute out of "sewage mud," which is exactly what it sounds like. He extracts (bacterial) protein from what is essentially a soup of human feces, then blends it with soy protein and steak sauce to form a sort of poop patty. According to initial tests, the stuff actually tastes like beef, which raises the question: WHO THE HELL DID THEY GET TO DO THESE TESTS?
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SciAm op-ed: Kill biofuels to solve the food crisis
With the Senate successfully passing an amendment to end the 45-cent-per-gallon ethanol subsidy for American refiners and the 54-cent tariff on imported ethanol, I thought I'd point to this terrific op-ed in Scientific American on how to solve the food crisis. According to author Timothy Searchinger of Princeton University, it's the biofuels, stupid.
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Farm pork not going anywhere
To read The Washington Post is to believe farm subsidies are headed for the chopping block. Not so fast. The subsidies aren't going anywhere after all
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The ‘Dirty Dozen’: Which fruits and vegetables have the most pesticides?
The Environmental Working Group has released an updated list of the Dirty Dozen, the fruits and vegetables with the worst pesticide levels. Drumroll please: Apples Celery Strawberries Peaches Spinach Nectarines (imported) Grapes (imported) Sweet bell peppers Potatoes Blueberries (domestic) Lettuce Kale/collard greens If you can, it's worth shelling out a little extra for the organic […]
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Buy a half-gallon of sugar water at KFC, give a dollar to diabetes research
I honestly didn't believe this one was for real at first. No way even KFC, purveyors of a sandwich that uses fried meat as a delivery mechanism for fried meat, would seriously market a soda size called the "mega jug." And even if they did, they'd never have the chutzpah to donate "mega jug" dollars […]
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A fight over the future of farming: U.N. ag group vs. Big Ag
Small-ag mindset vs. Big Ag muscle.“The present paradigm of intensive crop production cannot meet the challenges of the new millennium,” says a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In other words: Big Ag, step aside. It’s not as if the world is being fed particularly well at the moment — […]