From the category archives:

food politics

Occupy Food: College Co-op Advocates Gather in Berkeley

January 6, 2012 berkeley bites

The research and training group CoFED works with college co-op advocates who want sustainable whole foods on campus — not a steady diet of fast food joints.

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Best Blog Posts from the 2011 Lettuce Eat Kale Archives

December 28, 2011 baking

Wherein we look back at the stories of 2011 on LEK, pick the best of the bunch, and then take a nap.

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Michael Pollan: New Food Rules, No Need to be Neurotic

November 3, 2011 berkeley bites

Author Michael Pollan teams up with artist Maira Kalman — and several reader-eaters — in the new edition of Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.

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Food Day: Growing a Movement Around What we Eat

October 23, 2011 berkeley bites

Food Day, on October 24th, will highlight the good, bad, and ugly of the way we consume food in this country.

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Nikki Henderson: On the Frontlines of Edible Education

August 21, 2011 bay citizen

Food security activist Nikki Henderson keeps it real for a new course she’s co-teaching at UC Berkeley, called Edible Education 101.

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First Lady, Food Deserts & New Fund for Hungry

July 21, 2011 bay area bites

First Lady Michelle Obama announces a new food financing initiative designed to increase access to healthy, affordable food in underserved communities in California.

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Michelle Obama and Alice Waters: Let’s Do Breakfast

June 13, 2011 berkeley bites

Alice Waters feeds First Lady Michelle Obama at the fancy pants Claremont Hotel. What happened to plans to for a downhome breakfast in Oakland?

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Author Raj Patel’s Food Revolution: From Chips to Salad

April 1, 2011 berkeley bites

Author Raj Patel on why there’s reasons to be cheerful about the global food movement.

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Ten Top Food News Stories of 2010: Part Two

January 3, 2011 bay area bites

Highlights from the 2010 food news files: food security, new york food, animal food, sweet food, virtual food.

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Ten Top Food News Stories of 2010: Part One

January 2, 2011 bay area bites

Five of the biggest food news stories in 2010: school food, street food, food politics, food safety, and DIY eats.

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Farm Together Now

December 20, 2010 bay area bites

Amy Franceschini, Daniel Tucker, and Anne Hamersky provide a portrait of the people, places, and ideas in the American New Food Movement in their recently-released book Farm Together Now.

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Food for Health Forum: An Rx for Doctors

October 16, 2010 civil eats

Today, the man who encourages us all to eat food, mostly plants, and not too much will bring his prescription for a healthier population and planet to a group that, surprisingly, he hasn’t spoken to before: Doctors and other healthcare professionals. The man, of course, is Michael Pollan — who talks about the importance of [...]

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Berkeley Student Food Collective: Education & Eating

October 8, 2010 bay citizen

After going without a cooperative grocery store for more than twenty years, Berkeley is about to get a new food co-op. The Berkeley Student Food Collective is slated to open later this month.

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Spiral Gardens Helps Needy Feed Themselves

July 30, 2010 berkeley bites

Just around the corner and down the street from where I live on a stretch that includes liquor stores and the dodgy characters who frequent such places, you’ll find Spiral Gardens, a slightly disheveled verdant oasis on a fenced in corner of a formerly empty city lot. It’s a welcome addition to the neighborhood. For [...]

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Ten Teens Rocking the Food Revolution Scene

July 7, 2010 food films

Ten teens rocking the Food Revolution scene, making a difference on the food front in schools and communities around the country.

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Q&A with Locavore Jessica Prentice of Three Stone Hearth

June 5, 2010 berkeley bites

Jessica Prentice’s claim to fame comes from coining the term locavore, chosen as the 2007 Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary. The New York City-trained natural chef lives and breathes the locavore lifestyle. She is a co-founder of Three Stone Hearth, a community supported kitchen cooperative in Berkeley, California, which sells [...]

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Meatless Mondays: A Handy Primer, Part One

May 17, 2010 food organizations

Every Monday is meatless in my home. Most Tuesdays-Sundays as well, as regular readers of this blog already know. Okay, there’s one notable exception, which you can read all about in a recent post, A Culinary Confession. But for the purposes of this blog entry: I’ve essentially been a veg head for the past three [...]

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Inside Berkeley’s School Kitchen: Part Two

May 14, 2010 food organizations

A follow-up on Ed Bruske of The Slow Cook blog’s series about the Berkeley Unified School District’s central kitchen and school lunch program, considered a model around the country.

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Five Reasons for Optimism on the School Food Front

May 6, 2010 food organizations

School food news: Introducing FoodCorps, Food Revolution Legacy, Changes in Chicago School Food, Cool School Food Advocates in Cyberspace and Children Champion Change.

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Farmer Jane: Females in the Fields

May 4, 2010 civil eats

A queen of green focuses her first book on female farmers, a subject author Temra Costa comes to organically. Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat, grew out of Costa’s career in sustainable food, and her passion for eating locally and seasonally.

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Darra Goldstein's Global Gastronomical Tour

April 7, 2010 civil eats

Going around the globe with Gastronomica’s Darra Goldstein without leaving Berkeley.

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Seven Reasons Why the Time is Ripe for School Lunch Reform

April 5, 2010 civil eats

Academic Janet Poppendieck, author of Free for All: Fixing School Food in America, discusses school food reform at a California Food Policy Advocates event.

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Jamie Oliver: School Food Revolution or Reality TV Rubbish?

March 29, 2010 food politics

It’s time to talk about the Limey lad’s Appalachian invasion. Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution

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A Culinary Confession

March 23, 2010 civil eats

Confessions of a lapsed vegetarian. Blame it on Bakesale Betty.

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Fed Up with School Lunch: The Feds Join The Fray

February 9, 2010 civil eats

Many kids in the U.S. eat half their daily calories at school. And what a sad, super-size me state of affairs that is in most parts of the country. Highly processed and packaged food laden with sugar, fat, and salt fill in for whole grains, fruit & veg, and protein — you know, the kind [...]

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Michael Pollan Talks Food Rules in San Francisco

January 23, 2010 civil eats

Find out what the affable, ethical epicurean had to say today in my post on Michael Pollan for Berkeleyside, which was also republished at Civil Eats. And check back here next week for this month’s book giveaway, a signed copy of Pollan’s Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.

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Cultivating Controversy: In Defense of an Edible Education

January 18, 2010 food politics

I was so royally peeved by Caitlin Flanagan’s hatchet job on Alice Waters and the Edible Schoolyard in her Atlantic piece “Cultivating Failure” that it’s taken me a week to simmer down enough to write about the matter with some decorum. The snarky article takes a swing at public school gardens everywhere and it made [...]

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Cool Cuisine Author Advocates Green Grub to Save Globe

January 14, 2010 food book giveaways

Laura Stec combines her passion for the planet with a love of food in her efforts to promote green cuisine — eating healthily and well while treading lightly on Mother Earth. And she’s got the cred to back up her good intentions.  Laura trained at the Culinary Institute of America, School of Natural Cookery, and [...]

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Book Giveaway: Cool Cuisine

December 30, 2009 food book giveaways

Here’s a concept: Eat well and help prevent climate change at the same time. That’s the premise behind Cool Cuisine: Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming, an easy-to-digest account about our overheating planet that focuses on solutions to the problem and includes culinary tips and techniques designed to mitigate global warming.  Written by environmental [...]

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Menu for Hope

December 16, 2009 food events

Here’s a shout out for a worthy cause sponsored by food bloggers around the globe during this season of giving, getting, and overeating. Menu for Hope is an annual, above board, fair dinkum, fundraising campaign to help feed hungry people worldwide. The devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia provided inspiration for the first campaign, which raises [...]

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Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food

September 18, 2009 food politics

Photo of farmer Ramon Mojica taken by Brian Lee, courtesy of Riverdog Farm Finally, a government policy I can dig. And based on such a simple premise: Know where your food comes from and who produces it. This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, a new federal initiative [...]

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School's in Session, Time for Lunch Lessons

September 8, 2009 food politics

Yesterday while loads of folks fronted for backyard barbecues, Slow Food USA sponsored more than 300 Eat-Ins around the country as part of their Labor Day potlucks with a purpose. The cause: Getting real food into schools. The organization’s Time for Lunch Campaign seeks to bring attention to the Child Nutrition Act, the bill that [...]

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A Shout Out for the Eat Real Food Festival

August 29, 2009 comfort food

A roasty toasty day by the bay and foodie folk swarmed Jack London Square in Oakland to sample cheap-yet-chic street eats dished out of food trucks and pedal carts at the Eat Real Festival, an outdoor event where small bites sell for five bucks or less. Thanks, in part, to Twitter, grabbing good food on [...]

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White House Farmers' Market: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

August 21, 2009 food politics

Think of the potential for produce everywhere: Barack Obama choosing his favorite potatoes, Michelle bagging tender salad greens, Malia and Sasha squeezing peaches and pluots. Average Janes and Joes from DC and beyond motivated to buy fresh fruits & veggies for a chance to rub shoulders with the President and his family gathering ingredients for [...]

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Organic Food Fight

August 6, 2009 food politics

Mulling over whether it’s worth spending more on organic greens, nectarines, or milk? You’ve got company. The assumption that organic produce tastes better and is better for you than conventionally-produced fruit and vegetables is as bruised as an organic farmers’ market peach brought home on a bike. Photo by Flickr user Auntie P used under [...]

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Eat Food, Cook Food, and Don't Forget the Salt

July 29, 2009 comfort food

Perhaps the best thing about Cook Food: a manualfesto for easy, healthy, local eating is that it’s a slim little volume. That’s not some snarky reviewer comment. Writer Lisa Jervis aims to demystify how to eat well and cook simple food by keeping her book brief. She includes 20 recipes of the beans, greens, grains, [...]

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Go Green: White House Vegetable Garden

July 27, 2009 food politics

Image: Syracuse Cultural Workers Inspired by everyone I know growing their own (including the President’s family, my neighbors, friends, & urban homesteaders) — and this postcard, picked up at a pre-Point Reyes hike at a special little store Spirit Matters — I finally planted some seeds & seedlings in my new planter box this weekend. [...]

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Food, Inc. May Make You Lose Your Lunch

June 30, 2009 food films

A film about what we eat could well win the award for the best horror flick showing in theaters this summer. Take a look, if you’re game, at Food, Inc., though a heads up for animal lovers and vegetarians: This documentary is hard to stomach. If you’ve read both Fast Food Nation by writer Eric [...]

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Food Stamped: A Film For Our Times

June 22, 2009 food films

Who knew that a documentary on the food stamp program could be funny, infuriating, informative, and entertaining? Food Stamped sets out to answer a simple but important question: Is it possible to eat well for a week on the federal supplemental food aid program? In this new film nutrition educator Shira Potash and her movie-maker [...]

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The First Lady of Food

June 19, 2009 food books

So the week began with Paul McCartney’s plea for Meat Free Mondays and ended with Michael Pollan and Novella Carpenter discussing slaughtering chickens, rabbits, goats, and pigs for dinner. What a difference a few days makes. Carpenter, in case you’ve missed her, is the author of Farm City, a new book on urban gardening that’s [...]

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Paul McCartney Sings: All You Need is Meatless Monday

June 15, 2009 food films

This just in: Paul McCartney & Yoko Ono seem to have put their legendary differences aside to promote the Meat Free Monday campaign, which is, well, exactly as its name suggests. There’s nothing particularly new about this notion. U.S. Presidents Truman and Roosevelt asked folks to give up eating animals during both World Wars. And [...]

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What's Cooking in the First Family's Kitchen?

June 2, 2009 food politics

Not much, judging by recent mainstream media reports. On Sunday, the New York Times noted that Michelle Obama’s big push on the eat-locally-grown-food front (think White House victory garden) may not extend to making a home-cooked meal. And last month the Washington Post revealed that when the First Lady was asked (albeit, it turns out, [...]

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Book Banning Abated

May 28, 2009 food books

Have you been following the controversy over the summer reading selection at Washington State University? It looks something like this: The best-seller Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by good food guru Michael Pollan was slated as a must read for all incoming freshmen. Then the university administration scrapped the book and an [...]

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