Hazon has been invited to join a group of Faith-based and Community organizations to support Michelle Obama’s recently launched Let’s Move campaign. The meeting in DC tomorrow will provide organizations with tools and information to help combat childhood obesity in their communities. Judith Belasco, Director of Food Programs, is headed to the Capitol to represent Hazon!
According to Judith, “Hazon is always looking to expand our support of healthier lifestyles as meaningfully as we can. Already North America’s largest faith-based supporter of CSA’s, we provide healthy living education through our Jewish Food Education Network (JFEN) and annual Food Conference. We look forward to engaging the Jewish community and beyond in support of Let’s Move.”
According to Joshua DuBois, White House Director of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Parnerships, “The Let’s Move campaign will combat the epidemic of childhood obesity through a comprehensive approach that builds on effective strategies, and mobilizes public and private sector resources. Let’s Move will engage every sector impacting the health of children to achieve this national goal, and will provide schools, families and communities simple tools to help kids be more active, eat better, and get healthy.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear a first-time case about the risks of genetically engineered crops. Named Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, No. 09-475, the case before the high court will be yet another step in an ongoing battle waged by the Center for Food Safety to protect consumers and the environment from potentially harmful effects of genetically engineered (GE) crops.
Hazon staff love granola. We’re blessed to often get home-made batches from our colleagues, but when we need granola for 600+, we turn to Udi’s Granola. Udi and his team have been supporters of the Hazon Food Conference for years. And, if that wasn’t enough to convince us that we like them, Udi’s Granola was a winner in the San Francisco Chronicle’s granola reviews. Here’s what they said in the article:
Panelists described the first-place Udi’s ($4.99/13 ounces at Whole Foods) as “toasty and nutty,” with “a mild honey flavor” and “nice small flakes.” They liked the “oaty-ness” and “simple flavor” and thought it had an “old-fashioned taste.” Two would buy this brand, two might and one would not.
Okay, so the job market is pretty lousy right now, but I got this job posting via email and though I’d pass it along.
Sales and Operations Manager
KOL Foods, LLC puts kosher meat and ethics on the same plate so consumers can feel good about the meat they eat. KOL Foods sources and sells grass-fed, non-industrial, healthy lamb and beef and pastured poultry directly to individuals. Since its foundation in 2007, the interest in KOL Foods’ products has grown rapidly, and, consequently, they are now available in the East Coast and the Midwest primarily through our website. As demand is increasing KOL Foods is seeking to expand in the Eastern United States and, in the near future, nationwide.
KOL Foods is unique as it operates differently from industrial kosher meat businesses. As a values-based business, our mission is to produce food that is in harmony with nature, neighbors and tradition – all the way from farm to fork. For further information on KOL Foods, please go to: www.kolfoods.com .
The following article was written by Leah Koenig and published in the Jewish Daily Forward earlier this week. Be sure to click on the link below to check out the comments.
On Tuesday November 3, His Royal Highness Prince Philip will host over 200 guests for lunch at Windsor Castle, the 900-year-old palace that serves as an official residence of his and Queen Elizabeth’s. But this lunch will be noticeably different from the roasted quail and crème fraîche typical of castle meals. Instead, the menu is entirely vegan and centered on seasonal, regionally sourced ingredients.
After 70 years of publication, Conde Nast is ceasing publication of Gourmet magazine, while maintaining its support of Bon Appetit magazine. As with many (most?) corporate decisions, it was a precipitous one, announced to its staff on Monday just as the November issue was off the presses.
As an immigrant to this country, I learned about the cultural rituals of my new country through the Girls Scouts manual– obtained from my small, neighborhood library, another American treasure– and later on, the pages of the food magazines. The National Geographic was too arcane for me, but Bon Appetit broadened my cultural horizons past my family’s tenement apartment in New York’s Chinatown. It showed me what people really do eat in their own homes and how to prepare their dishes. It gave me a cultural passport, even before I could afford to travel on my own salary.
In another important case against Monsanto and the USDA, the Center for Food Safety has again prevailed, demonstrating that GMOs pose serious risk of harm to organic farmers and consumers, and that the USDA is failing to sufficiently protect us from the contamination that can result from the planting of these crops – this time in Sugar beets! As lead counsel for CFS on this case, I’m excited to share the news with you!
A Federal Court ruled yesterday that the Bush USDA’s approval of genetically engineered (GE) “RoundUp Ready” sugar beets was unlawful. The Court ordered the USDA to conduct a rigorous assessment of the environmental and economic impacts of the crop on farmers and the environment.
It seemed like a great way to kill two birds with one stone. Now I’m wondering if it’s killing—or at least harming—me.
Welcome to my water dilemma.
Last year, my concerns were mounting about both the evils of inherent in the privatization of water and the health risks of exposure to Bisphenol A, used to produce many common plastics. So the members of our household stopped using the Brita filter, and started toting straight-from-the-tap goodness with us wherever we went. Toting it in SIGG water bottles, which were sold as a plastic-free, all aluminum alternative to BPA-laden bottles.
Trust the Swiss their website said.
Yeah, trust the Swiss . . . to sell you out to the Nazis.
What if you knew that the organic vanilla that you were using in your recipe was not only kosher, but was grown by farmers who would not, under any circumstances, work in their gardens, harvest their trees or deliver their crop from 18 minutes before sundown on Friday until tzeit hakochavim (the appearance of three stars in the sky) on Saturday—with the same applying to all Jewish Festivals.
What if you knew that these farmers live in the deepest regions of sub-Saharan East Africa in the area Mbale, Uganda, and that their farming cooperative consisted of Jewish, Muslim and Christian members called Peace Kawomera?
What if you knew that these farmers were being paid two and a half times the fair trade price for their beans, because a volunteer organization run by a hazzan (cantor) in Los Angeles removes the middle-man and makes every attempt to allow the farmer to receive the most that he/she can?
What if you knew that this organization, Uniting Jewish Communities and Products, UJCP, is attempting to do this for as many communities as possible throughout the world, helping them become self sufficient, providing clothes, housing, health care and education.
It seems my earlier pessimism about the threatened value added tax (VAT) on fruits and vegetables was premature. For now, fruit and vegetables will remain tax-free commodities in Israel.
Was it concern for our health or the state of Israeli agriculture that prompted this turn-around? Not exactly. The Byzantine ins and outs of coalition politics are what saved the day. The Shas religious party, a member of the governing coalition, decided to press the issue, and they refused to accept the offered compromise in which the tax would start low and gradually increase over several years.
In the daily inundation of political scandal, violence, government infighting and general economic and social mayhem that we Israelis can’t seem to live without (judging by our consumption of news media), a proposed new tax on fruits and vegetables has garnered little public outcry.
Until now, fruits and vegetables have been exempt from the 16.5% value-added tax (v.a.t.) placed on nearly every other consumer item. But foods like tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and eggplant had been considered basic daily necessities, like bread and milk (both of which are still price-controlled).
Ever since the right to privacy went down on sheepskin, there’s been a cornucopia of confusion about whether or not American law should regulate personal choices, and what those “personal choices” are. As law makers get more and more worked up over “the epidemic of obesity”, and their constituents’ new interest in food, they look to legislate people’s eating habits from both the consumer (taxes on soft drinks, calorie counts in fast food) and the producer ends. As I listen to pizza makers bemoan the loss of transfats, community activists struggle to increase access to fruits and vegetables in poor neighborhoods, and local curb-sitters mark the price of a smoke in NYC, I get to wondering where all of this interest in our personal habits comes from, and whether the government really has the right to legislate it in the first place.
I asked my brother, the recent law school grad (though not yet lawyer) to dispel some of the mists of obscurity surrounding civil rights in general. What follows is a highly simplified version of his explanation, as filtered through my not-too-legal mind.
Among the numerous food-based scares that have surfaced lately (Salmonella from Spinach! And peanuts! And pistachios! Mercury in HFCS!), this one takes on a different flavor: An infiltration of Israeli produce into enemy territory?!?
Fear and outrage spread recently in Tehran after Iranian authorities discovered that certain citrus fruit being sold there were marked as Israeli-grown Jaffa Sweeties. Never heard of the Jaffa Sweetie? Click here to learn more. Basically, It’s a deliciously sweet white grapefruit-and-pomelo hybrid, and is considered a citrus delicacy of sorts in some circles.
However, possessing, selling and certainly eating Israeli fruit in Iran is apparently assur (prohibited). According to the BBC News, Hossen Safaie, the head of the Tehran Fruit & Vegetable Distribution center, was outraged at the presence of the fruit in his city and said his organization “will not allow those who want to make a profit ignore the Iranian citizens’ religious and revolutionary learning”. Ouch.
But wait…the saga continues with an interesting twist! Read more after the jump…
America, CSA/Tuv Ha'Aretz, Community Agriculture, Food Justice, Hazon, Most Inspiring Posts, News, Notable Press, Women
