This entry is cross-posted on http://yourhealthisonyourplate.com
This morning my daughter and I stopped by our neighborhood butcher to buy something to grill tomorrow. Arriving only 10 minutes before closing, we were absolutely astonished to discover that just a few packages of chicken remained, along with some knockwurst and hamburgers. Not a single steak, roast, chop or rib.
It seems odd, but we celebrate Memorial Day by eating meat. It’s a meat lover’s holiday. Is this a good thing? Despite the U.S. dietary guidelines, which recommend eating less red and processed meat, I think eating meat is a fine thing.
Dr. Renata Micha, of the Harvard School of Public Health, would probably agree. She published the results of a very interesting experiment in this month’s journal, Circulation. Dr. Micha’s team contacted the authors of 20 previously published studies about the effects of eating meat (evaluating a total of 1 million adults in 10 countries on 4 continents), and asked them to go back and separate the results of their raw data into processed (smoked, cured or salted) and unprocessed meat. All the meat contained similar amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol. The researchers found that eating the equivalent of one hot dog, or 2 slices of deli meat, per day was associated with a 42% increase in the risk of heart disease, and a 19% increase in the risk of diabetes. But eating twice as much unprocessed red meat was associated with neither.
Ever since I read the New York Times article about the proliferation of food blogs, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about them. How did the number of foodies explode in what seems like all of a sudden?
I think back to when I was in college in the late nineties, a time when people weren’t yet using digital cameras or blogs, there was no social networking, and people were just starting to get into going online. So certainly people probably weren’t photographing every meal to post to the world; just food photographers would have done such a thing.
Spaces are still available for the June 15-22 Organic Farm Alternative Break with The Jewish Farm School with Rabbi Jacob Fine and Permaculture Designers Tali Weinberg and Sarai Shapiro. Participants learn a wide range of skills in sustainable and organic agriculture such as planting, harvesting, natural building and composting as they gain exposure to the growing food justice movement within the Jewish and secular worlds. Click here for additional information and how to register.
In this week’s parasha, Beha’alotcha, Bnei Yisrael continue their journey from Egypt to the promised land. They are provisioned during their desert wanderings by manna, a mysterious food which appears on the ground with the nightly dew, and, according to midrashim,[1] exhibited a variety of tastes. It is against this background that we read the Israelites’ astounding complaint:
“If only we had meat to eat. We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for free, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic.” [2]
The Israelites had only just been redeemed from tortuous oppression, so it is most perplexing that they would now long for the ‘free’ foods of slavery. Commentators have offered a number of explanations, claiming that perhaps the fish were so cheap or easy to catch such as to be considered free.[3] The Sifrei, however, provides a more profound interpretation.
By Josh Berkman, Associate Director for Media and Marketing at American Jewish World Service (AJWS). Cross-posted on Food Forever — The AJWS Food Justice Blog.
A supplemental bill that includes the $2.8 billion in emergency funding to Haiti is expected to hold a House committee mark-up this week. But mere allocation of this money for Haiti is not enough – how the money actually gets used is of paramount importance.
To ensure U.S. aid to Haiti benefits Haitian farmers rather than international agribusiness, Congress must include language in the bill that make certain this money will be used to support community-based food production and procurement, cash vouchers and other programs that support local reconstruction efforts. American Jewish World Service (AJWS) is calling on Congress to include this language. You can help by contacting your representative through this form.
The U.S. approach, to this point, has been to structure relief and reconstruction efforts through large international bodies, our own military operations, and shipping in-kind goods. Local Haitian voices have had little, if any, say in matters that are crucial to their future, and the result has been a disconnect between needs and the kind of aid that arrives.
This past September I started “Your Health is on Your Plate” [http://yourhealthisonyourplate.com] to help prevent diabetes and obesity by teaching folks how to tell the difference between real food and manufactured calories. At “Your Health is on Your Plate,” I encourage readers to restore traditional methods of food selection and preparation. I focus on health, sustainability, and resource conservation.
Last week, I wrote about how I, dressed as “Chris P. Carrot,” had led the Veggie Pride Parade in New York City under my dual Jew-carrot identity. Now you can vote for a photo of Chris P. Carrot (with his “wife,” Penelo Pea Pod) from the event as the cutest photo in a PETA contest!
A post on PETA’s blog announced, “Calling all connoisseurs of cuteness: We need your help deciding which of the following pics from recent PETA demonstrations is the most aww-inspiring.” (Note: Although PETA owns the costume that I borrowed, the event was not a PETA demonstration.)
“On our farm, the house is bedecked with fragrant lilacs and green branches we’ve cleared from the woods. Tonight, we’re making chévre blintzes drizzled with rhubarb sauce for a sweet supper…”
Are you salivating yet? Click here to read more about Shavuot on the farm from our friends at Ten Apple Farm.
Click here for a recipe for the deliciousness you see in the picture above.
By AJWS Director of Advocacy Timi Gerson. Cross-posted on Civil Eats and Food Forever — the AJWS Food Justice Blog.
Monsanto has donated $4 million in seeds to Haiti, sending 60 tons of conventional hybrid corn and vegetable seed, followed by 70 more tons of corn seed last week with an additional 345 tons of corn seed to come during the next year. Yet the number one recommendation of a recent report by Catholic Relief Services on post-earthquake Haiti is to focus on local seed fairs and not to introduce new or “improved” varieties at this time.
Some tough questions need to be asked and answered before we’ll know whether or not Monsanto’s donation will help or hurt long-term efforts to rebuild food sufficiency and sovereignty in Haiti. Here are five of them:
Yesterday, I embodied the dual identity of the Jew and the carrot once again to lead the third annual Veggie Pride Parade through the streets of Manhattan. Trailing a police escort and walking in front of hundreds of enthusiastic herbivores, I frequently shouted “Eat Your Veggies, Not Your Friends!” while dressed as Chris P. Carrot.
I eat in a pretty healthy manner. I cook most of my own meals, and even when I eat out or at other people’s homes I’m careful what and how much I eat. [I also keep kosher, so I guess by definition I think a lot about what I eat or don't eat, but it's rote by now--I've been doing it most of my life.]
Over the past few years, I’ve developed a host of food intolerances/allergies (still not sure which they are yet, still working on that part) and in addition to making sure I eat healthily, I also have to make sure I don’t eat things that make me sick.
(Originally published at A Life in Many Small Parts.)
“All around me are bee haters, spider killers, dirt phobics, and dandelion destroyers, which for some reason are detested on front lawns, but not in gourmet salads. ” (excerpted from my article, “Earth Mother,” 1999, Holistic Living magazine)
I am an inveterate New Yorker. But for 14 years I lived with my family in a historic village (founded in 1701) in New Jersey, on a large tract of designated green acres–an area flanked by beautiful old family farms. It was a utopian world right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. In the time that we were there, we watched as fuel got cheaper, cars got bigger, highways expanded, and rapid development began to overtake the farmland, planting more strip malls and McMansions than produce in the Garden State. It was a land of sprawling front and backyards, open fields and public parks. Each spring as the first of the flowers appeared, simultaneously alongside them, bright yellow herbicide/pesticide flags began to crop up on lawns.
How does the food movement intersect with issues of poverty? For the hundred or so participants at the Growing Food Justice event last night we got a little taste of some of the issues and what we can do about it. The event was sponsored by the AJWS-Avodah partnership and was co-sponsored by Hazon. They brought together three activists who are fighting in very different ways to prevent hunger in New York City.
