Lovely photography by Leah Nash for The New York Times
The New York Times digs up the dirt on the return of root cellars.
Root cellars have long been the province of Midwestern grandmothers, back-to-the-landers and committed survivalists. But given the nation’s budding romance with locally produced food, they also appeal to the backyard gardener, who may have a fruit tree that drops a bigger bounty every year while the refrigerator remains the same size.
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Photo by
Orangeacid
The Internet is full of unnatural ways to lose weight using pills, medical procedures, electrical gadgets, hypnotherapy, and just about anything else under the sun you can think of. On the
organic and natural front, there are also plenty of ideas to lose weight, of which most are fairly harmless for the most part, that is until they start telling people to completely reduce fat intake (you need fat for your body to function), eat only carbohydrates, protein, etc...
Today, we have a new fad on the front which has been classified as
Japan's Morning Banana Diet. Once again on the surface we see yet another diet plan whose simplicity vs. its claims of losing up to 43 pounds in just 10 weeks seem rather impossible when you consider the rules of science and how the human body works.
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photo: Yellow + Blue
Yellow + Blue is expanding its use of sustainable Tetra Pak(R) cartons to include its Torrontes varietal. After the success of its Malbec in the Tetra Pak packaging, the brand of organically grown Argentinian wines has decided to wrap up another varietal. Read on to find out about why Tetra Pak is so
sustainable....
Willie Nelson certainly knows a thing or to about sustainable food and farm policies –he’s the leader of
Farm Aid, and one of the
most visible figures in the move towards biodiesel. So what does this onetime
Kucinich supporter have to say to our President-Elect? Well, a lot. He released today on the farm-aid Web site an open letter to
Obama, calling for policies that support a family farm system of agriculture. Will the next letter demand Obama reform marijuana laws? Hmmm...we shall see....
Photo by Kelly Rossiter
Hands down, the number one response I get from people when I mention that my children are both vegetarian is "but how do they get enough protein?" Getting your daily requirement of protein is actually pretty easy. In fact, if you are eating meat, chances are you are consuming more protein than you need.
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Farmer Roy Lawrence and CSA members - Matt Lowe
Local eating advocates often cite reduced shipping emissions as a good reason to source food from as close to home as possible. The concept of reduced
food miles equaling reduced carbon output quickly becomes clouded when economies of scale, production methods, and efficiency of shipping methods is taken into account. A group of farmers, activists and citizens in British Columbia have removed any hint of uncertainty by creating a local low carbon grain chain.
Keep reading to see how they did it. ...
The Fun Revolution via flikr
Many of us at TreeHugger may indeed be suffering from an emerging disease called carborexia. It was only a matter of time before someone pegged "too much" concern for the environment as a disease. Word watcher Michael Quinon of
World Wide Words explains the origins of the word in the "turns of phrase" section of his latest email dispatch.
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Food Fight opens with a bit of history about food production and America's eating habits over the past half century. Beautifully shot and well written, we are treated to a series of interviews with food luminaries such as
Alice Waters,
Dan Barber,
Wolfgang Puck and
Michael Pollan, who frankly, hold exactly the same views about food, cooking and eating as I do. It's no accident that I agree with them. These are the people who created the local, seasonal food movement as we know it today and who are at the forefront of trying to exact some change in the way Americans shop and eat.
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He looked liked a cute French guy who sold onions from his bicycle. Every week at the farmers' market he would be there; a charming Gallic touch, so quaint and picturesque. But he was also so much more: a part of a long tradition of "les Johnnies et de l'oignon rose".
It turns out that men have been travelling from Roscoff, Brittany in France to England to sell their special delicious pink onions since the 1920's. They came on foot, then on bicycles, laden with onions and going door to door to flog them in the early autumn when they are at their freshest. There were 1500 of the "Petitjeans" in 1929 and today there are still 20 left in the UK. Our "Johnnie" ( the name given to those men) comes from Roscoff where his family has had a farm forever. He and his fellow Johnnies come over on the ferry from Brittany every month and knock on doors in North London, selling their pink garlic and onions....
Arran Stephens is the CEO and co-founder, with his wife Ratana, of Nature's Path. The company is one of the leading privately owned and family operated organic food companies in North America. They sell their certified organic cereals, breads, cookies, and snack bars in 42 countries around the world.
Stephens opened Canada's first large organic supermarket in 1971 in Vancouver. The name of the store, Lifestream, was used for a successful line of natural products that was sold in 1981 and eventually bought by Kraft/Philip Morris. After launching Nature's Path in 1985 the company caught the first consumer wave of organic consciousness in experienced huge growth while maintaining it's core organic philosophy. In 1995, in a move that typifies how Stephens approaches business, he bought back Lifestream from Kraft so he could control the quality of the brand.
Click through for our Q+A with this organic food pioneer.
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photo by Robert Ouellette
We are quickly approaching party season and people are starting to think about their events. Personally, I love giving
dinner parties and twenty or more people is no problem for me at all. I realize that I'm a bit unusual in this and many people find entertaining quite stressful. It can, of course, be stressful for the guests as well, especially if you don't know the hosts or other guests that well. Here are a few things to think about it if you are hosting or attending a dinner party where vegetarians and meat eaters will be sharing the table.
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BBC News
reports that the Publicly Available Specification 2050 -
PAS 2050 - a newly created audit scheme to help companies measure the carbon footprint of their goods, was launched in the UK by
BSI British Standards. The effort aims to provide consistency and transparency for British companies to communicate their products’
carbon footprints to consumers.
DEFRA, the UK Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, co-sponsored the voluntary system with the
Carbon Trust in response to companies looking to count their carbon emissions and consumers wanting to know what how companies are doing just that.
PAS 2050 is an audit system that will help companies calculate the
life cycle greenhouse gases emissions of goods and services like food, buildings and electronics. It considers all the
life cycle stages of a product from raw materials extraction to end of life (waste management). According to the BSI, the methodology includes six greenhouse gases identified under the
Kyoto Protocol and can be used by all sizes and types of organizations. ...
There is nothing in our freezer but martini glasses; we shop every day. But lots of people are buying freezers now to sock away bargains.
Consumers Reports says that annualized sales of upright freezers sales jumped 17%, chest freezers 10%.
This is great if they are packing in vegetables and healthy foods, not so great if it is the frozen stuff that is full of fat and calories. One shopper told the
Wall Street Journal about her stockpiling of discounted frozen foods: "In the past, if it was a killer sale, I'd buy a few. Now, when they're on sale, I'll buy a lot." Consumers Reports did another story on
how appliances can make you fat that is worth reading.
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Many of us lead pretty busy lives these days and, especially those of us with families, are always trying to get dinner on the table as quickly and easily as possible. Occasionally we fall back on using prepackaged meals from the grocery store or calling for takeout. Those meals have more fat, salt and sugar than we need in our diet, they produce a lot of garbage from the packaging and they are more expensive than cooking from scratch.
In these uncertain economic times we really need to look at our food costs and start to spend more wisely. Here are seven recipes that will cover your dinners for a week, with some leftovers for your lunch. They are as quick as takeout, as easy as many processed dinners, and more economical and nutritious than both.
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School of Sardines via Monterey Bay Aquarium
Whenever it feels like the
fishing industry is making steady progress to become more sustainable another destructive trend is exposed. Published in the November 2008 issue of
Annual Review of Environment and Resources "Forage Fish: From Ecosystems to Markets" demonstrates how mismanagement of the pelagic (mid ocean) fishery results in the catch being wasted on farmed fish, pigs, and poultry. The researchers say forage fish include anchovies, sardines, menhaden, and other small- to medium-sized fish species which are the primary food for ocean-dwelling marine mammals, seabirds (especially puffins and gulls) and several large fishes....
Image source: Dee's Mini Doughnuts
Thanks to Daily Candy for their tip about
Dee's and her tasty mini organic donuts. Handcrafted in their facility in San Rafael, CA, all preservatives and artificial flavorings are left out in favor of thrilling glazes like cinnamon sugar, toasted coconut, raging raspberry, and (YUM!) D
agoba orange chocolate. Sprinkles available upon request....
Having written yesterday about
Edible Landscaping - a mail order nursery specializing in disease-resistant edible perennials, I took to googling around a little to find out what other resources are out there for under-used useful edible and medicinal plants. In the process I came across this fantastic and comprehensive
directory of nurseries and suppliers put together by the good folks at Permaculture Activist. Covering the USA and Canada, the directory is arranged by region and includes links, contact details and a short list of the products available from each supplier. Of course I should mention at this point that
Permaculture Activist is much, much more than a directory of suppliers - it's a huge treasure trove of information for anyone looking for alternatives to our current food system. ...
Fantastic Resource for Unusual Edible Perennials
While it might not get as many hits as posts on
scantily clad doom mongers, or
sexy sustainable sports cars, permaculture still crops up regularly on the pages of TreeHugger. Basically a design system that models itself on nature, permaculture gardening draws heavily from traditional agricultural methods, and lays a strong emphasis on edible perennials and native plants. From the design services of North Carolina-based
Bountiful Backyards, to
a short movie about greening the desert, we have tried to cover stories and products that appeal to the permaculturally minded. However, as a permaculture enthusiast myself, I still find it hard to get hold of the kind of diversity of useful plants you need if you’re designing low-input edible gardens – or I did until I discovered
Edible Landscaping.
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via UVM Transportation Center
In order to counter claims that ethanol production is a major cause of the
global food crisis, the
Renewable Fuels Association recently released a report called "Will the Plunge in Grain Prices Mean Lower Food Prices at the Supermarket?". John covered this story earlier in the year when he recognized that media reports were
quick to blame ethanol without weighing other factors. On the other hand, Lloyd reported on a World Bank report that blames
ethanol as a prime cause for the crisis.
The possible negative effects go beyond this year's food crisis. Below is some insight on ethanol production from two food system watchers, Wayne Roberts and Michael Pollan....
Photo Credit: Jason DeCrow, The AP
Earlier this week, Bill Clinton said at the UN that, "we all blew it, including me as president" by treating food crops as commodity rather than a right of the poor. Addressing attendees to the week's World Food Day, Clinton took to reprimanding the World Bank, IMF and other global institutions, that with pressure from the US forced Africans to via market models to invest in fertilizers and
GMO seeds, leaving them further away from food self-sufficiency. More below the fold....
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the
if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
