Posts tagged as:

USDA

Picture this: Marketing machine

May 2, 2011

Last week, four federal agencies announced new principles governing food marketing to children. Will these voluntary principles lead to significant change? Unlikely, say Marion Nestle and Melanie Warner. (And food companies already have shown they can’t self-regulate.) But let’s hope some of it sticks. Because we really don’t need more “healthy” vending machines like this, you know? For more on why voluntary steps [...]

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The ABCs of GMOs:
Alfalfa, bureaucrats and a conversation with a kid

February 5, 2011

Talking GMOs with my 7-year-old: Me: “You know how cows eat grass?” Tess: “Uh, huh.” Me: “Well, some of that grass is made by scientists instead of by nature.” Tess: “How do they make it? Do they rip the plant or give it surgery?” Me: “Kind of. They put genes from bacteria into the grass cells. You remember what genes [...]

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Stop reading labels and start reading ingredients

January 29, 2011

All week I’ve been seeing stories about Walmart-style food reform and food manufacturers’ self-serving nutrition labels, about fake meat, fake blueberries and fake maple syrup. Stories about all the ways the food industry tricks us, and all the ways people get mad about the food industry tricking us.  So here’s a thought: Let’s stop playing the game. Ignore the labels. Don’t look at numbers. Don’t believe [...]

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Would you feed your own kid the same food you donate to food pantries?

November 24, 2010

Last year at about this time, my daughter and I were in the grocery store, buying items for a local food drive. After I threw a few bags of brown rice in the cart, Tess asked me why brown and not white. “Because it’s healthier,” I answered, “and it’s what we eat.” Then I told [...]

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Food (and propaganda) at the state fair

September 17, 2010

I realize that state-fair food is a category unto itself, a passionately defended paean to Americana and summertime. And to criticize it could cause a distracting uproar. Some might even offer me their fried-fave-on-a-stick with instructions to make it disappear right up my behind.      So I’ll just say that we did not partake of the many fried delicacies [...]

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Send me your children’s menus!
(Because it’s one step forward, 25 steps back.)

July 23, 2010

Just when I was feeling good about children’s menus, this depressing round-up crossed my desk. In it, the Daily Beast names the 25 worst meals from kids’ menus at chain restaurants, analyzed for calorie count, saturated fat, carbohydrates and sodium. I’m not into counting calories for kids. And I think standard dietary guidelines like the USDA food [...]

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When parents stand in the way of better school food

June 8, 2010

I’m a journalist, which means I balk at reporting anything before I can suss it out. So I was going to post about this after I’d attended a meeting planned for tonight and talked to more of the people involved and done all those other reporter sorts of things. And I still will. But in the [...]

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Pesticide, organic and other dirty words

May 20, 2010

“Organic” was an early word in my now 6-year-old’s vocabulary. (She pronounced it “ga-nan-ic.” Tell me that’s not adorable.) It’s also one of the first words she learned to spell, which is why we have progressively more readable versions written on random bits of paper and newsprint. So when we go grocery shopping, Tess takes pride in pointing [...]

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“Two Angry Moms”: Still too true

May 3, 2010

The school-food movie “Two Angry Moms” was released in 2007, and I saw it probably two years ago, but its message still resonates. That’s both good and bad. Sadly, school food in the United States remains a mess (no surprise to anyone who watched “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” or, frankly, to anyone who’s walked into almost any school [...]

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