Civil Eats

I spend a great deal of my time on extremely small-scale food production.  Growing, procuring, cooking, eating, and writing about locally produced food is my bread and butter.  Thus picking up a copy of Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations was in some ways a departure for me.  Authors Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas are examining a world that looks to me much the same as the Grand Canyon must look to a mouse. Read More

In the battle for the hearts and minds (and pocket books) of everyday Americans, the large corporate players in today’s industrial food system must be pleased.

Consumer advocates for sustainable, healthy food are fighting with farmers, not because either picked a fight with the other, but because the knowledge gap between them has grown so expansive that misunderstandings rule the day. Credit the gap to industrial specialization and consumer marketing, which I will return to in a moment. Often times, these misunderstandings turn personal, further driving apart two groups that have much to gain by working together.

How this benefits the industrial food players may not be obvious, but by fighting amongst ourselves, we are paying less attention to the mechanized system generating massive amounts of unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly food and unprecedented concentrations of profits. Read More

As the U.S. faces continued peanut butter product food recalls and seven deaths due to the recent salmonella outbreak stemming from Georgia-based Peanut Corporation of America, other bad news about our failing food system broke in the heartland. Last week, University of Iowa researchers published the first study documenting methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in swine and swine workers in the United States.
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