Food | Grist

Flash in the Pan

Ask Umbra on canned and frozen foods 23
Posted 1 week, 6 days ago By Umbra Fisk With winter making the selection of fresh produce dwindle, a reader wonders which is the better eco-option: frozen foods, or canned? Umbra digs into the question.
White House loads policy initiatives into a few hours of fun at Healthy Kids Fair 0
Posted 2 weeks, 1 day ago By Eddie Gehman Kohan The autumn sunshine was very bright, the weather unseasonably warm, and there was a party atmosphere at the White House for Wednesday’s Healthy Kids Fair. The fun side of the the Healthy Kids Fair was reported by mainstream media. But the event couldn’t have been more serious.
headless horsemen of the bureaucracy

Is anyone in charge of food safety? 1
Posted 3 weeks, 2 days ago By Tom Laskawy The fact that there remains no one in charge of food safety at the USDA has become a sick sort of joke among food policy types.
A new direction on research at the USDA? 4
Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago By Paula Crossfield Paula Crossfield interviews some experts (more Pollan!) on what we need to know about agriculture.
lies, damn lies, and baseball caps

The American Farm Bureau goes all in 29
Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago By Tom Laskawy Agribiz lobbying group AFB's new pitch: "Don't CAP Our Future."
notable quotable

Jill Richardson’s apt critique of the redesigned Senate Ag Committee website 0
Posted 3 weeks, 4 days ago By Tom Laskawy La Vida Locavore's Jill Richardson notes the irony in the new Senate Ag Committee website.
Cooking oil

Can you taste the fuels in your food? 5
Posted 3 weeks, 6 days ago By Amanda Little To see fossil fuels in action on a farm, Amanda Little paid a visit to a Kansas corn grower and hitched a ride in his high-tech tractor. This is the fourth installment in a series of exclusive excerpts from Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells -- Our Ride to the Renewable Future.
Weed Whacking

The chemical treadmill breaks down and the superweeds did it 6
Posted 1 month ago By Tom Laskawy Tom Philpott has been tracking the rise of so-called "superweeds" -- i.e. herbicide-resistant weeds -- for a while now. He's talked about the chemical treadmill -- "the situation wherein weeds and other pests develop resistance to poisons, demanding ever higher doses of old poisons and constant development of novel ones."
Bioreactor reaction

Gulf dead zone fix falls flat 6
Posted 1 month ago By Erik Hoffner It's good to see a big Midwest "land grant" agricultural program that's concerned about the Gulf Dead Zone, and upper Midwest farms' large contribution to it.
Notable quotable

War is peace; chemical ag is sustainable ag 1
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago By Tom Philpott