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  • FDA moves to reform nutrition labels

    Still smarting over the industry’s shenanigans over the “Smart Choices” label, the FDA has decided to pick up the pace of change. Marion Nestle dug up a set of proposed new front-of-package nutrition labels that the FDA is studying, one of which may ultimately get the agency’s final approval. Here they are: My faves are […]

  • The localization of agriculture

    In the United States, there has been a surge of interest in eating fresh local foods, corresponding with mounting concerns about the climate effects of consuming food from distant places and about the obesity and other health problems associated with junk food diets. This is reflected in the rise in urban gardening, school gardening, and […]

  • An open letter to the dean who promoted Froot Loops as a “smart choice”

    Editor’s note: Several of the nation’s largest food manufacturers recently rolled out a new label called “Smart Choices.” Controversy erupted when processed junk like Froot Loops and Fudgsicles made the cut. In a Sept. 4 New York Times article, Eileen T. Kennedy, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University […]

  • A debate about soil, organics, and nutrition

    Inert medium for turning agrichemichals into food, or a teeming, diverse ecosystem? “The whole problem of health–in soil, plant, animal, and man–is one great subject.” — Albert Howard, The Soil and Health Ezra Klein and I are engaged in a little debate over the value of organic food. I’m honestly a little surprised to be […]

  • Philly’s universal school lunch program lives on — for now

    Sometimes sanity prevails. Philly’s Universal Feeding school lunch program–whose announced cancellation caused an uproar the other week–just got a reprieve, at least until 2010. The Philly Inquirer has the story: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has decided not to discontinue a Philadelphia school breakfast and lunch program that provides free meals to poor students, members […]

  • Vilsack names former head of Iowa’s Health and Human Services as new USDA nutrition chief

    Phil Brasher at the Des Moines Register is reporting that USDA chief Tom Vilsack has named Kevin Concannon the new Undersecretary of the Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, i.e. the head of the federal food and nutrition programs — which include food stamps and the national school lunch program. Concannon ran Iowa’s Department of Health […]