food

Ask Umbra on Ronald McDonald’s retirement, card games, and a coffee stirring stir

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, After close to 50 years of hawking fatty food directly to kids, a groundswell of parents, health experts, and children’s advocates are calling on McDonald’s to retire Ronald McDonald. A new report and national poll released by Corporate Accountability International found that close to half of the […]

Ask Umbra® Culture

New ratings for sustainability in restaurants

The Sustainable Restaurant Association was started by the founder of Leon. Photo: MomondoIt’s not quite a Michelin Star, but it could be soon. The newly formed Sustainable Restaurant Association will rate restaurants according to how green and sustainable they are. Launched with the backing of leading restaurants and seriously important English chefs, participating restaurants will […]

treehugger.com Technology

How export-focused agriculture has failed everyone it was meant to help

A recent Washington Post article documented the stark reality of Haiti’s non-existent agricultural infrastructure: Decades of inexpensive imports –especially rice from the U.S. — punctuated with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves. …Today Haiti depends on the outside world for nearly […]

Tom Laskawy Politics

Have Jesus’ disciples been overeating?

Leonardo da Vinci’s 1498 painting of The Last Supper.Photo: Drewwiki via Wikimedia Commons In a strange study published this week by the International Journal of Obesity, professors found that portion sizes in artistic renditions of The Last Supper increased dramatically in the past 1,000 years, the L.A. Times reports. The study, conducted by brothers Brian […]

Tyler Falk Food and Agriculture

Watching the green screens at the Environmental Film Festival in D.C.

HomegrownSpring and the Environmental Film Festival both burst into full bloom at the festival’s start in the Nation’s Capital last weekend. Eco-movie buffs, many having withstood record snowfalls in Washington, D.C., this winter, eschewed the beauty of the outdoors to watch the beauty of the outdoors indoors in the form of a wellspring of eco-conscious […]

Jennifer Prediger Culture

HFCS study authors defend work against attacks

Photo: BoekeMarion Nestle, along with other nutritionists have joined the Corn Refiners Association in criticizing the recent Princeton study on High Fructose Corn Syrup. Indeed the very title of Nestle’s post on the subject — “HFCS makes rats fat?” — seems to question the well-established practice of using rats to test hypotheses regarding human nutrition. […]

Tom Laskawy Culture

Witnessing the White House garden’s winter bounty

In “Chewing the Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related videos from around the Web. ————- The White House has released a new video documenting the drama of Snowmaggedon … and the White House garden: Despite two feet of snow, the White House garden managed to produce an impressive amount of lettuce, spinach, turnips, arugula, and […]

Tom Laskawy Politics

Ask Umbra chews the fat with Moby

Whatever you do when you meet Moby (eventually, we all will), don’t tell him you enjoy his book. “That’s a strange word to use,” he said when I did the very thing I’m telling you not to do. My face briefly turned the same shade as my hair as I attempted to explain how exactly […]