Food Choices for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet

All posts tagged Opinion


Organic and fair in the Middle East and the Bay Area

In Food, In the News, Salute to You, Uncategorized,
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  • Posted on July 24, 2012
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This month’s E Magazine has an encouraging story by Melinda Tuhus about a positive development in the West Bank. The Palestine Fair Trade Association has organized olive growers into cooperatives, so they receive a fair wage for their work and have their own brand, Canaan Fair Trade, which is sold in stores like Whole Foods. Said one member, “The people here [in the association] are very nice and they treat the farmers very well,” he says. “And they give scholarships to the children of the farmers.”  Canaan Fair Trade also produces other Middle Eastern delicacies like tahini, couscous, fig spread, and more. Check out the website to see all they do in their community!

 

 

 

 

Here are some places in the Bay Area where you can buy Canaan products:

 GLOBAL EXCHANGE STORE
2840 College Avenue,  Berkeley, CA 94705

RAINBOW GROCERY COOPERATIVE
1745 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

 COUNTRY SUN NATURAL FOODS
440 California Avenue, Palo Alto, CA

Just as heartwarming to those of us who care about good, sustainable, fair trade food, I’ve written elsewhere about several collaborations among Israelis, Jordanians, and Palestinians:

“Friends of the Earth/Middle East is an organization of Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian environmentalists who work together to clean up the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. This organization also promotes healthy food, solar energy, and eco-tourism.”

 

 

 

 

 

“Yossi Leshem, an Israeli bird expert and director of the International Center for the Study of Bird Migration, was troubled by the deaths of hundreds of birds in northern Israel. The birds were being killed by the chemicals used to eradicate the rats that were eating the farmers’ crops. Leshem persuaded a kibbutz to try a different solution. Barn owl boxes were installed to lure owls to make their homes at the kibbutz, and within a few years the rat problem was solved. An Ohio Jewish community group gave funds so the kibbutz members could donate building materials for owl nesting boxes to their Jordanian neighbors. Little by little, overcoming obstacles, the project is helping former enemies reach out to one another.”

May food be a bridge to peace.


Food and wildlife, rice and birds

In Food to Try, Good News, In the News,
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  • Posted on July 16, 2012
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A few weeks ago, Audubon California conservation biologist Monica Iglecia got her 15 minutes of fame – she was written up in two news stories that were highlighted in the week’s Bureau of Land Management newsletter. The first appeared in the AppealDemocrat, the local newspaper of Sutter and Yuba counties, and described her visit to a California rice farm. If you have images of rice paddies covered by inches of water, you’re on the right track. Rice does require a lot of water to grow, and California has half a million acres devoted to growing rice.

Where do birds come in to this picture?  So many acres of wetlands have been filled in and converted to human use that migratory birds can have a tough time finding places to stay over during their migrations. Solution: get rice farmers to make their fields more hospitable to our flying friends. Turns out this is eminently doable, and the Migratory Bird Conservation Partnership is making it happen. Said Ms. Iglecia, “That’s exciting when you see chicks because you know the nesting efforts are working.”

 

 

 

 

One thing rice farmers can do is flatten the tops of their water-retaining levees, so birds can find a place to build nests. Another is to leave grass and weeds at the fields’ borders, instead of pulling them out, thus providing bird habitat. For a great photo, go here.

Ms. Iglecia was also interviewed by an AP reporter and the two saw an avocet nest on top of such a levee. “It’s a full clutch of four eggs,” said Monica Iglecia, a shorebird biologist with Audubon California, looking through binoculars. “This is why we do this work. It’s exciting to see.”

Let’s hope that soon all these wonderful partners will create a “bird-friendly” label for rice packages, so we can seek out rice from growers that are hospitable to the birds that pass through our state.


Meat glue — smart or yucky?

In Food, Food Politics, Food to Avoid, In the News, Toxins and Pesticides, Uncategorized,
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  • Posted on May 16, 2012
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Not since kindergarten, when some of us ate the library paste, has a more yucky food ingredient been brought to our attention, with the obvious exception of pink slime. (You’ll recall that pink slime is made of the sweepings from the slaughterhouse floor, washed in ammonia, and mixed with ground meat). This newly revealed substance is called “meat glue” and has been around for a while. A powder made of transglutaminase (an enzyme) and beef fibrin can be used to stick together odd bits of meat to form them into apparently whole prime cuts.

It may surprise you to learn that I don’t totally condemn this practice – in concept, anyway. Waste is a terrible thing to do to food, and anything that can reduce food waste is worth considering. On the other hand, meat itself is a huge waste (of grain, water, land, etc.), not to mention the cruelty involved, and if the concept of meat glue turns you off eating meat, that is a good thing!

Of course, when meat glue is used deceptively, to falsely upgrade less desirable parts of the carcass, that is dishonest and should be stopped. There’s another problem: bacteria from the surface of different pieces of animal flesh are now in the middle of the final product and less likely to be killed during cooking, possibly causing food poisoning.

What do you think?