Entries tagged with 'sustainability'
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Michael Pollan's been making some pretty big waves lately--in the media, at colleges, with farmers and with little tots. Time to check in on what he's been up to and what it all says about the state of green food today.
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Note: This week in Meet Your Farmers, we get to know Greg Massa, a fourth-generation California rice farmer. Each week he brings delicious brown rice to nine Bay Area farmers' markets and is working toward building a sustainable farm model. [Photographs: Massa Organics] Name: Greg Massa Farm: Massa Organics What do you grow? Organic brown rice, wheat, almonds and now ducks. Ducks? We are selling our first 100 ducks at farmers' markets this weekend. The ducks live in the rice field and can help us with weed management. Ideally, the ducks should be able to feed themselves on the weeds and the bugs in the field. Weed management is no small feat when it comes to rice—it's our biggest production...
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We are big fans of Michael Gebert's Sky Full of Bacon video podcast series, even when they don't involve bacon. In this one, he investigates whitefish—what's usually deep-fried for fish and chips or smoked for deli bagel sandwiches. Gebert chats with 92-year-old Robert Schuffler of Robert's Fish Market in Chicago, a man who's digested his fair share of whitefish (even for breakfast) and is still going strong. Gebert then adventures out to the Lake Michigan waters with a family behind a fifth-generation Wisconsin fishery. When it's fresh, whitefish should smell like cucumber. The video, after the jump....
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Whole Foods shopping bag carrying the usual fennel, radishes, and gun. Wait what? [wsj.com] The Wall Street Journal is a little skeptical of reusable shopping bags. Just about every chain store seems to have their own custom-made tote, but which is the most functional? Stylish? And made of something you can't pronounce? The piece compares five of the biggest contenders: Whole Foods (features a tree design by Sheryl Crow), Ralphs (made of polypropylene), Target (too Target red-colored), 7-Eleven ("as chic as a Big Gulp"), Trader Joe's (if you're into acid-hued prints), and Dean & Deluca ("all style, no substance"). Related 75 Things You Can Compost, But Thought You Couldn't Serious Green: Plastic-Less Ways to Transport Your Lunch Does Your...
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[Photograph: Robyn Lee] Most deep-fried fish sandwiches from chain restaurants—including Denny's, Long John Silver's, and most certainly McDonald's—use hoki, a pretty ugly, bug-eyed fish found deep in the waters around New Zealand. But that may change, according to this New York Times piece. Drops in hoki spawn and damaged ecosystems have inspired the World Wildlife Fund to fight for reduced hoki fishing. In response, the New Zealand ministry has cut the allowable commercial catch quota from roughly 275,000 tons to 100,000 tons, which means McDonald's had to shrink its usual consumption of about 15 million pounds of hoki to 11 million pounds per year. "It could go up if the quota goes up," said McDonald's senior director of global...
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There's something about a cold metal spoon, especially the long ones for parfait glasses, to shovel up ice cream. The metal probably isn't helping the ozone layer or saving panda bears, but it's just one of those things you leave alone. As biodegradable food packaging has become more available, more ice creameries are offering specialized bowls and utensils instead. You can spot it right away: the slightly gritty mouth feel and off-white color. It was made of corn, potato starch, soy oil, or something else that sounds edible, and it belongs in a separate trash bin....
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Fish is complicated. You can have this one, but not this, and eating that Chilean seabass, oh dear, that might give you awful karma forever. In this beginning of a two-part series on fish, the always enlightening podcast Sky Full of Bacon visits Supreme Lobster, one of the country’s largest fish distributors. SFOB producer-writer-editor Michael Gebert goes behind-the-scenes to understand how the company moves thousands of pounds of fresh fish a week. He talks to sales rep Carl Galvan, who's so passionate about selling the good stuff, he keeps his chef clients updated on Twitter (@chicagofishdude). So much of the seafood discussion is difficult for consumers to navigate but this 22-minute video offers a clear perspective on what happy...
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The Trader Joe's pirate mascot seems like a pretty easy-going, Hawaiian shirt-wearing guy, until Greenpeace dubs him Traitor Joe. The environmental NGO has devoted a website to the grocery chain's greenwashing, or sneaky ways of marketing products as "green" and environmentally-friendly that aren't. This isn't a protest against pita chips or frozen dumplings—no, the campaign is targeting the red list seafood that Traitor Joe sells from his treasure chest (er, freezer case), singling out the Chilean sea bass and orange roughy. Traitor Joe likes to get his message across in the form of karaoke and Twitter ("Arrrg, I'm at the Brooklyn Trader Joes selling delicious ocean destruction," he recently tweeted.) In response, the real Joe has stated: "We intend...
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The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) recently came out with an updated Sustainable Seafood Guide that includes tips on selecting safe and sustainable seafood and what types of seafood to avoid....
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Note: Serious Eats contributor Allison Hemler is a NYC-based barista who recently traveled to Seattle to check out the internal coffee college at Starbucks HQ. This week, she'll be educating us on tidbits she picked up in class, today's focus being on the improving relationships between coffee bean farmers and roasters. Coffee farmers in Chiapas, Mexico. Photograph from tonx on Flickr As the second most traded commodity in the world after oil, coffee has acquired more frequent flier miles than any of your produce could hope for. In fact, more coffee enters the United States than any other food product. There's a clear reason why we don't have coffee trees in our backyards and why we rely on shipments from...
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