food justice
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Ask Umbra on healthy soil for urban and suburban farmers and gardeners
A reader wants to know if urban dirt is safe for growing food. Is there lead in that urban farm salad? Umbra investigates and gives some savvy tips.
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New Agtivist: Shakirah Simley wants to preserve justice
Shakira Simley at the San Francisco Underground Market.(Photo by Monica Jensen/SF Public Press via Flickr) In our New Agtivist interview series, we talk to people who are working to change this country’s f’ed-up food system in inspiring ways. Shakirah Simley is a food justice activist with an unusual weapon: pectin. She’s the founder and creative […]
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What Is Our "Right" to Opt Out of the Industrial Food System?
Slavery. Women prohibited from voting. No home schooling allowed. No interracial marriage. These were all official government policy at one time in America’s history, and have since been rejected by the courts. Now, the courts should break with another major taboo: restrictions on our access to food, most notably, raw milk. That’s the argument being […]
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Agreed: All processed food is not created equal
At last, Ezra Klein returns to food! And he levels a legitimate criticism at the food movement: One of the really difficult things about getting people to eat better is convincing them that it’s not just a way for others to impose class-based lifestyle preferences on one another. But when you’re down on processed foods […]
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Why Whole Foods’ shoppers are thin and Albertsons’ aren’t
A recent University of Washington study showed Seattle-area shoppers at Whole Foods are much less likely to be obese, on average, than shoppers at the less expensive chain Albertsons. I shrugged when I read this. From what I can tell, the study didn’t control for income: it’s well established that Whole Foods shoppers have higher […]
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In Court Case, FDA Takes a Strong Stand Against Unabridged Food and Health Rights
The expanding battle over raw milk has come to be seen by many advocates as a battle over food rights. Do we have a right to consume the foods of our choice? Or can the government restrict our access, or require processing and/or sterilization of certain foods, and simultaneously prohibit our access to the raw […]
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How the global food market starves the poor [video]
To understand the complexities of the international food market — and how traders in Chicago can cause Africans to starve — you could get a Ph.D. in economics, or read a 400-page report from the World Bank. Or you watch this superb nine minute video, directed by Denis van Waerebeke. Though ostensibly created for a […]
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Farmer-consumer group challenges FDA authority to ban interstate raw-milk sales
Don’t cry over raw milk. The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is taking on the Big Enchilada in the raw milk war: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s prohibition on interstate shipment of raw milk. The FTCLDF filed suit over the weekend in U.S. District court against FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg, and the secretary of the […]
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How to make healthy, safe food-bank donations
In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night. ————— Time to green the canned-food drive.From the Grist Twitter feed: Looking for healthy safe nonperishable foods to donate to food banks. Ideas? — […]