Guide to Pesticides in Your Food

So, I'm not judging the city of Seattle's decisions to remove a pesticides-rating guide after industry pressure. Ok, maybe I am just a little bit. But in case you wanted to know the worst pesticide-laden fruits and vegetables, the Environmental Working Group has put together
a great list of their own.

To avoid pesticides in your food, buy organic and local when possible. Local farmers tend to use organic or Integrated Pest Management practices. With fewer miles to travel and more suitable environments in which to grow, local foods need less chemicals, and in my opinion, taste better, too!

One Farmer's Experience

Here's an interesting article about one family's experience as farmers in the U.S. and how our current agricultural system has changed their lives. It makes great points about the decline of the environment as we move away from local food systems, and makes links to both the obesity crisis and the opportunity to create new jobs in local agricultural sectors. The debate about the solutions in the comments is worth reading, too!

WHAT TO EAT: Making Sustainable Food Choices

If you're around New Haven, CT, tomorrow...

WHAT TO EAT: Making Sustainable Food Choices

Tuesday, April 1

Sage Hall (205 Prospect Street), Bowers Auditorium

4:30-5:30 pm

More and more people are trying to change the way they eat to make more sustainable choices, but sometimes the whole process can feel like a minefield. How local does local food have to be? What does “organically grown” really mean? Does living in New England mean eating potatoes all winter? Buying an apple can quickly become a complicated decision, and inviting people over for dinner an impossible one. Anastatia Curley and Laura Hess, of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, will give a presentation addressing these questions, and giving you the resources to make sustainable decisions about food purchasing and hosting events—whether they be masters’ teas, receptions, or dinners—in New Haven.

This event is part of the Yale Sustainability Summit, a week-long series of events on sustainability at Yale.

Food News

Here's some food news from the Yale Sustainable Food Project:

Food labels in Europe are causing a sticky situation in Africa. As more and more consumers try to limit the food miles on their plate by shying away from food marked by "air-freighted" stickers, angry scientists aren't sure that food miles are all they're cracked up to be--and African farmers are worried that demand for their crops will plummet. Right now, those crops are mostly wheat, rice, and corn. But UN researchers, citing a 75 percent drop in cultivated crop varieties over the last century, are hoping to encourage more niche and value-added production of heritage crops in Africa.

On our own side of the Atlantic, the Environmental Working Group takes a look at the state of the 2007 Farm Bill and the outpouring of citizen interest that somehow failed to positively shape the bill. A Google Map illustrates the diverse sources of editorials calling for reform and lets you read snippets of each article.

Eaters Unite!

Here's a great article by Michael Pollan on the current Food & Farm Bill being sent through the Senate right now. As Pollan replies to a representative who thinks that the public outcry about subsidies to big ag companies are because people don't know what they're talking about: "It seems more likely that, this time around, people in the city and all across the country know exactly what’s going on — they just don’t like it."

Join us this Saturday!

Who: You
What: Potluck Picnic
Where: Franklin Park
When: Saturday, Aug 11 12:30pm
How: Bring food to share, bike, hop, or skip (or even drive) over

Join us at the Tour de Farms potluck in Boston on Saturday, August 11th. While the riders finish up their 15 or 25 mile segments, we will be listening to our speaker Jim Buckle, the Farm Manager at Allandale Farm, Boston's oldest commercial farm, at about 12:30pm. Limited parking is available in the lot opposite the golf course, by the entrance to the Franklin Park Zoo. We will meet up on the fields in Franklin Park for our potluck picnic.

Please bring a potluck item to share, preferably showcasing local food, and some extra for our hungry riders. Visit your CSA, local farmer's market, or garden that week to harvest something yummy. Please bring a small index card to list the recipe or ingredients so that folks know what's in your dish (for food allergies or vegans). Also, please bring a picnic blanket, as there are no picnic tables available. The event runs rain or shine (within reason).

Farm Aid's Tour de Farms ride will showcase innovative urban farms and food projects that are strengthening Boston's local and sustainable food system. The 15 and 25-mile rides will go through the neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Brookline, Mattapan, Milton and the beautiful Blue Hills Reservation. The Tour de Farms is a free event and all are welcome. The ride will start and finish at Boston's Franklin Park, beginning at 9:00am and concluding by 1:00pm. Pre-registration for the ride is required. For more information about the Tour de Farm and to pre-register, contact Mark Smith at Farm Aid, 617-354-2922, or via email to mark@farmaid.org.

This event is our usual Potluck format. Please bring a food item or $10 in lieu of food.

DIRECTIONS: To get to the zoo, just use www.googlemaps.com and enter Franklin Park Zoo, Boston MA. Once you get to the zoo, pass the first entrance on Columbia Road. Columbia becomes Jewish War Veterans Dr. Pass a golf course and take the next right, Pierpoint Rd. We will be set up about 100 yards down Pierpoint on the left. We'll have a picnic beneath two large trees. Unload there. (If you drive to baseball fields, you've gone too far.) After unloading, drive past the baseball fields and park there.

Any questions, please email cindy@consciousconsuming.org.

Eating Locally on a Budget

I've often heard of concerns about eating locally through a farmer's market because it can cost more than the food at a conventional supermarket. This can be true, but one reason for this is because small, local farmers aren't receiving the same subsidies as industrial agriculture.

This blog post on Wise Bread talks about this further and gives great tips on how to save money at the farmer's market. Many farmer's markets, such as the ones in Boston and in my current town of New Haven, also take WIC and food stamps so that local food can reach a wider audience.

Some tips that I would add are:
1. Browse the entire market before buying -- often, some stands have cheaper produce than others.
2. Eat in season -- the most abundant fruits and vegetables will often be the cheapest. The more you buy out of season, the more you'll pay.
3. Buy in bulk -- along with eating in season, you can find good deals if you're willing to buy a few more carrots or tomatoes. This is also a great time to stock up on fruits and vegetables to can or freeze to have local produce available throughout the year.
4. Befriend your local farmer -- I'm not suggesting scamming our beloved farmers, but those who I have gotten to know and been loyal to have very generously given me deals on their produce. They know, too, that this business is all about relationships (well, that and good food).

Day 6 of National Downshifting Week: Eat Locally

Thursday - Day 6 of NDW US ~ What Have You Been Up To?

Purchased Local Produce from a Farmers Market, Co-op or CSA: Plan in August for local, winter produce.

Summer meals in the garden state of New Jersey are easy. We get to eat a lot of fresh produce, and everything in season is cheap! Fresh, local, blueberries, strawberries, and peaches have been a staple all week. August in NJ is sublime, with fresh tomatoes and Silver Queen corn, but alas, another month to wait. I just finished Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (which made for great porch reading), about her family's year of eating local produce, and found it very inspirational! I plan to start making my own bread and soft cheeses to augment the fresh produce I already grow and glean from my local farmer's market and CSA.

I have always complained that eating locally only works in temperate climates like California, but I've been inspired by Kingsolver's book to begin to Put Food By. Canning is largely a lost art in metro and suburban US, but I plan to learn. I am starting with blueberry jam!

It's Day 7 of NDW tomorrow ~ what are you going to do, to 'slow down and green up'? Click here for a copy of our Downshifting Manifesto.

Philanthropy through your food!

Here's an interesting way of thinking of local foods: as a way of spending your money wisely.

Those with philanthropic tendencies can use the local food market, through shopping farmer's markets or demanding local foods in grocery stores, as a way of giving to their community and supporting healthy neighborhoods. This has the added bonus of helping philanthropists eat better, too!

This is one of many ways that shows that you don't have to be rich to be a philanthropist -- it's all about the choices you make in life. For more articles about philanthropy and areas we care about, visit www.philanthromedia.org.

Speaking of low impact living....

There's an article in today's New York Times that describes how one couple is living in New York City on a No Impact pledge for a year.

Although the article's author is sometimes baffled by their choices in typical New York Times speak, the articles is good at chronicling the difficult decisions that the couple has to face in a materialistic world. When living in a Compact, do you accept gifts? Is a birthday dinner at a restaurant ok?

You can read more on their blog: http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/

100 Mile Diet: Local Eating for Global Change

One of the many exciting things we talked about at our last potluck was the concept of a one hundred mile diet: eating foods that come from no further than 100 miles away from your home. The idea is that everyone can find what they need close to home, and doing so allows consumers to support farmers in their community, at the same time eating in season and saving the environmental costs that come from shipping food halfway across the world.

One couple from Canada record their journey of a year on this diet at 100milediet.org. Check it out!

"Local or Organic? It's a false choice"

Even though there is still snow on the ground in New England, it's time to start thinking about your summer menu. If you plan to eat locally grown foods this summer for optimal health and taste (benefiting the planet as well by reducing carbon emissions and fuel use), check out Local Harvest to find farmer's markets, community supported agriculture programs, and farms that sell direct in your area.

If you live in the Boston area, we will be hosting a potluck on March 11th in Jamaica Plain titled "Local or Organic? It's a false choice" to talk about the benefits of both. According to Samuel Fromitz, author of Organic, Inc: Natural Foods and How they Grew, the local and organic markets account for only 2% of total food sales. Instead of worrying so much about whether buying local trumps buying organic (from California), the larger job is to convince the majority of Americans to try either. For more on this topic, see Samuel Fromitz's Grist article. Come on March 11th to hear about the options, opportunities, and obstacles (there is still snow afterall) to eating sustainably in the Boston metro area. An Evite to our event will follow later in the week.

Judging by the growth of farmer's markets around the country (the number of farmer's markets has more than doubled in the past 10 years according to data from the USDA, and has increased more than 18% in the past 2 years), the American public is catching on. As Michael Pollan notes in his best-selling book The Omnivore's Dilemma:

"...a successful local food economy implies not only a new kind of food producer, but a new kind of eater as well, one who regards finding, preparing, and preserving of food as one of the pleasures of life rather than a chore. One whose sense of taste has ruined him for a Big Mac, and whose sense of place has ruined him for shopping for groceries at Wal-Mart."

Won't you join us in becoming a new kind of eater?