From the category archives:

food security

Coming Soon: A Supermarket in West Oakland

April 15, 2013 bay area bites

People’s Community Market, projected to open in West Oakland in the fall of 2014, is inching closer to full funding. Brahm Ahmadi explains to Sarah Henry why the supermarket has been a long time coming and what local residents can expect.

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What Goes on Behind the Kitchen Door

March 28, 2013 bay area bites

UC Berkeley’s Saru Jayaraman, on a mission to improve the working conditions of restaurant employees around the country, is the author of Behind the Kitchen Door.

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Documentary Food Films: An Update

March 14, 2013 food events

What’s new on the documentary food front.

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Sodium Girl Jessica Goldman Foung Finds Flavor Sans Salt

March 3, 2013 bay area bites

Sodium Girl Jessica Goldman Foung finds flavor without the salt shaker.

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Commercial Community Kitchens: Trending Now

February 19, 2013 baking

Commercial kitchens with a community focus are popping up all over. Read about three with distinct flavors of their own.

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The Food Pantry’s Sara Miles Serves the Hungry

January 31, 2013 bay area bites

Self-described Jesus freak Sara Miles, who runs The Food Pantry at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, explains why she feels compelled to feed people in need.

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Food Banks Shift Focus, Seek to Nourish People in Need

December 19, 2012 bay area bites

Food banks are in the business of combating hunger — and they want to nourish their clients too. Find out about a new initiative designed to help places like the Alameda County Community Food Bank better serve people in need of a good feed.

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Hunger Doesn’t Take a Holiday

November 19, 2012 food flotsam & jetsam

Feeding people in need, including the ones right in front of you.

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Hana Fresh Feeds the Food Insecure in Paradise

November 15, 2012 farmers' markets

A nonprofit farm, farm stand, and medical center seeks to improve the health of Native Hawaiians in an isolated hamlet in Maui.

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Unsupersizing Our Children

September 18, 2012 food security

Why some of our children are both hungry and heavy and what parents can do to help.

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School Lunch 2.0: Oakland Headed for an Overhaul

August 29, 2012 edible east bay magazine

On the ballot this November: an ambitious plan to overhaul Oakland Unified School District’s inadequate and antiquated school food system, which serves 6.5 million meals a year to 38,000 students, 70 percent of whom are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

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How to Prevent Food Waste: A Primer for Home Cooks

July 18, 2012 bay area bites

Guilty of letting salad greens go limp or yogurt languish long past its use-by date? You’re not alone. Find tips on how to prevent food waste at home.

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Eating Richly: Even When You’re Broke

July 3, 2012 bay area bites

Formerly homeless and now the voice behind Eating Richly: Even When You’re Broke, Diana Johnson talks about eating healthily on a shoestring, the hidden hungry, and teaching people to cook cheaply and well.

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Growing Cities: An Edible Field Trip and Urban Farm Film

May 25, 2012 food films

Perhaps the coolest post-college road trip: Finding and filming urban farms around the country for the forthcoming documentary Growing Cities.

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Weight of the Nation: Battle of the Bulge Comes to Cable

May 15, 2012 civil eats

HBO tackles the vast and complex problem in a new four-part series, The Weight of the Nation: Confronting America’s Obesity Epidemic.

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Could Occupy the Farm and UC Compromise on Gill Tract?

May 7, 2012 berkeley bites

A wake up call In the sleepy enclave of Albany, where Occupy the Farm takes over contested university land known as Gill Tract, to make the case for more urban farming and local agriculture that feeds people in need close to home.

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Tracie McMillan, The American Way of Eating and Rush

March 18, 2012 bay area bites

First-time author Tracie McMillan about going undercover for her book The American Way of Eating, bouncing back from a Rush Limbaugh attack, and why everyone wants to eat well.

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FoodWorks: Canning Company Preserves Marin’s Produce

March 11, 2012 bay area bites

Canning queen Merrilee Olson lends her expertise to a new preservation project designed to help Marin farms — and county children fed by the Head Start program — by producing an artisan product from excess produce.

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Urban Adamah: A Story with Legs

February 28, 2012 berkeley bites

The background behind a popular story of an urban farm with a social justice and spiritual focus.

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The Boxcar Grocer: Rethinking the Corner Store

February 3, 2012 civil eats

A brother and sister team up to provide fresh food in a cool setting in an Atlanta neighborhood long lacking in good grub.

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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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Giving Thanks for Farmworkers on Thanksgiving

November 24, 2011 bay area bites

Taking a moment on the biggest food holiday of the year, to thank the people who grow and harvest our food.

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Everyone Deserves to Eat: Andre Green’s Kitchen Wisdom

November 23, 2011 berkeley bites

Andre Green feed the homeless and hungry on Thanksgiving and the rest of the year too.

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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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CANFIT Wants to Improve the Health of all America’s Youth

October 20, 2011 berkeley bites

Arnell Hinkle, the founder of CANFIT in Berkeley, works to prevent obesity and other chronic lifestyle diseases in low-income youth of color around the country.

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The Bread Project: Cooking up a Future for People in Need

September 30, 2011 baking

A profile of the Bread Project in Berkeley, which provides basic culinary training for low-income job seekers who want to find jobs in the food field.

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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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On the Corner: Berkeley’s Convenience Store Owners

July 25, 2011 berkeley bites

Meet the people who run corner stores in Berkeley. Find out where they’re from, what they sell, and their hopes for the future.

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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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Faith-based Urban Farm Opens in Berkeley

June 21, 2011 bay citizen

Urban Adamah, the community urban farm in Berkeley founded by Adam Berman, marries his interests in food security, environmental stewardship, and spirituality. Meet the man who founded the Jewish Sustainability Corps.

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James Berk of Mandela Foods Brings Produce to His People

May 4, 2011 civil eats

A profile of a young West Oakland man who decided to do something about the lack of good, affordable food in his community. Meet James Berk, one of the owner-workers of the Mandela Foods Cooperative.

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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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Urban Farmer Willow Rosenthal Plants Seeds in Berkeley

March 4, 2011 berkeley bites

A pioneer of the urban farm movement, Willow Rosenthal founded City Slicker Farms in West Oakland and now tends a thriving backyard edible garden in Berkeley.

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Joy Moore: Community Food Reformer

February 11, 2011 berkeley bites

Fresh food advocate Joy Moore on school food reform and getting good food to under-served Berkeley residents.

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Berkeley’s Natasha Boissier Forages Fruit, Feeds Hungry

February 4, 2011 berkeley bites

North Berkeley Harvest founder Natasha Boissier picks fruit for people in need.

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Urban Youth on Growing and Selling Good Food

February 1, 2011 bay area bites

Teens in Berkeley, Oakland, and New Orleans on getting good grub in their communities.

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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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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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Canning for a Cause: Let’s Preserve

December 13, 2010 bay area bites

Chef Merrilee Olson of Let’s Preserve closes the gap between waste and and want, works with volunteers to get preserved foods to the hungry.

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Shakirah Simley: Preserving Food, Seeking Justice

September 21, 2010 farmers' markets

One aspect of the food-writing world I don’t care for so much: It’s a mostly white crowd. The homogeneity doesn’t sit well with me and, I feel, is reflected in the stories I read. Where are the pieces on (and by) people representing voices from this country’s diverse ethnic communities? So when I heard Shakirah [...]

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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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Operation Frontline: Teaching the Needy to Cook

June 22, 2010 civil eats

A couple of Saturdays ago, on a gorgeous sunny day when many Berkeleysiders were likely heading out for a hike, contemplating another coffee, or barely out of bed, I stopped by a cooking class taught at Ursula Sherman Village on Harrison Street, a transitional living facility for the  homeless in West Berkeley. Sponsored by Operation [...]

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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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A Taste of Justice

February 22, 2010 food events

Think of agents for change in American eating habits, and Berkeley’s Alice Waters and Michael Pollan come immediately to mind. Indeed, eat-more-greens advocates can appear as white as Wonder Bread. On the menu at the local La Pena Cultural Center last night: some much-needed color in the conversation about good food matters. Read my entire [...]

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Haiti Bakesale Benefit Update

January 25, 2010 baking

Kudos to Samin Nosrat and her crew for raising $22,421.09 at a bakesale for Haiti in the Bay Area last Saturday. An outpouring of cupcakes and cash came from professional chefs and home cooks in events held at three community-minded food venues: Pizzaiolo in Oakland, Gioia Pizzeria in North Berkeley, and Bi-Rite Market in San [...]

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Serving People, Serving Food, Days of Service: Help Haiti

January 20, 2010 baking

Seem to have a food-related volunteer theme emerging this week. Not my intention but just going to run with it. If ever there was a time to ignore the imperative Think Global, Act Local, this is it. Don’t you agree? As I explained to my son on this week’s MLK Day of Service, we’re thinking [...]

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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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