Then check out School Lunch Talk, a blog that focuses on news in school food from the United States and around the world. Written by Ann Cooper, director of nutrition services for the Berkeley United School District, and Deborah Lehmann, a writer and scholar, School Lunch Talk covers everything from what’s being served in European and Japanese schools, to the continuous representation of fast food and processed items in our schools.

Thanks Nina for posting the trailor of Food, Inc. last month and for folk’s comments.

I recently had the fortune to join a group of community members from Boston’s Moishe/Kavod House Food Justice Campaign for a screening of the film. Here’s my review of the film–the good, the bad, and the ugly:

• I was first struck that the film would make an excellent education tool for students in grades 5-12 and beyond. Robert Kenner divides the film into chapters that do a nice job framing and connecting the dots on the key industries in our current food system–livestock issues, genetically modified organisms (GMO), the hidden costs of food and the ubiquity of corn. Showing this in health, science, political science or other classes would be a great way to provide students with a primer on where food comes from as well as a powerful, if at times graphic, illustration of what’s wrong with it.

Eat The View’s white house garden broke ground a couple of weeks back, and it’s by no means the only government lawn to go over to edibles. The City Hall in Baltimore, Maryland will give over everything but the tulips to a wide variety of vegetables, including two plots meant to demonstrate backyard growing to feed a family of four. Volunteers will hang around the gardens at lunch time to answer questions about gardening and the chef at a nearby soup kitchen is ecstatic at the prospect of thousands of dollars worth of produce in her kitchen from City Hall’s dirt.

Baltimore insists that it isn’t copying the fed. The article linked above quotes the city’s Mayor Dixon saying, “This was being planned before the White House…We are not copying!” But others are unabashedly hopping on the demonstration garden bandwagon. Among the confirmed government

Rabbi Julian Sinclair didn’t lose a minute at the Hazon Food Conference in December. Not only did he speak on Rav Kook’s vision of kashrut and vegetarianism, mediate the latke hammentashen debate and lead a Food for Thought discussion group on bensching after meals, he also participated in the turkey schechting on the day before the conference began, where 18 turkeys were slaughtered for Friday night dinner.

Sarah Newman is a locavore and vegeterian. She works as a researcher and blogger at Participant Media, which is releasing the documentary and companion book Food, Inc. in Spring 2009. She’s also a panelist at Hazon’s Food Conference this year, taking part in “Will Blog for Food” on Sunday. She’ll be blogging from the conference all weekend at Takepart.com, and we’ll be cross-posting her articles here on JCarrot.

Back in May, with Agriprocessors in the middle of its downward spiral (how far down it goes, nobody knows…), it seemed like there were people in Postville who still had some respect and appreciation for the jobs brought by the slaughterhouse, and felt their town was being unfairly picked on. On their blog Postville Voices, they wrote “We’ve had enough of every organization with an agenda cynically misrepresenting our town and workplace to further their own ends,” and added that, “There is one thing we do know — the people that run Agriprocessors are good, decent, honest people and we trust that they have acceptable answers.”

In a recent article in the UK’s Jewish Chronicle, Michael Green of our ally across the pond, Swords and Ploughshares, writes about the questionable kashrut status of genetically modified foods:

A long tradition of Jewish thinkers has emphasised the importance of protecting the natural environment, but Jewish voices have failed to reach a consensus since GM food hit the shops in 1996. . .

As Jonathan Sacks puts it, God and man are “partners in the work of creation”. The ancient covenant is mirrored in the modern concept of sustainability which seeks to “meet the needs of the present [generation] without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Or, in biblical terms, the environment must be preserved l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation.

There are many food-related things one can count while counting the omer– food miles, money spent on food each day/week….what else can folks think of?

Next week, Eat Local Challenge and the Locavores are sponsoring a Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge, from April 23 to 29. Many people are under the impression that eating local (like organic), requires a large food budget. The point of the Penny-Wise challenge is to eat local, as defined by a 100-mile radius, on what some consider a small budget.

The Penny-Wise challenge uses numbers from the Department of Labor’s Consumer Expenditures, which allots $68/week for a one-person household or $144/week for a household of 2+ with 2 wage earners.

This year, Counting the Omer is posting a new reason to be vegetarian every one of the 49 days of the omer. So far, they’ve got animal cruelty, vegetarians smell better, slaughterhouse workers work in deplorable conditions, it’s easier to keep kosher, and a number of others (we’re on day 8).

The neat thing about blogs is that people who leave comments often also do neat things themselves. Here are two bits about Purim worth sharing:

Carly from Peel a Pomegranate offers us a Mishloach Manot Swap:

In the spirit of the mitzvot of both giving gifts to the needy at Purim and also giving gifts to friends and acquaintances — I hereby dedicate the great Shalach Manot Swap of 5767. Read more

And Gluten-Free By the Bay offers us Gluten-free Hamentaschen