Food for decoration

Iowa decided to reconsider taxing pumpkins - because pumpkins are mostly used for decorations and not for food, the argument was made that it should be taxed (unless you filed a waiver saying that you planned to eat the pumpkin.
The start of October brought Hallowe’en decorations. Ghosts, cobwebs (supplemented by an abundance of natural [...]

Ads vs. Reality

From Hungry Girl - the advertising versus the reality of fast food
When you see them together, one thing that pops out to me is that the delicious-looking food in the ads is actually cold (well, either that or plastic), since the cheese is always unmelted. Much less appetising now?
H/T Greg Laden.

New Michael Pollan book

Michael Pollan has a new book out: In Defense of Food.  From an interview with Grist:
The new book is called In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. It’s a book that really grew out of questions I heard from readers after Omnivore’s Dilemma, which was basically so how do you apply all this? Now that [...]

Fruit species blog

Fruit Species is a blog devoted to fruits from all over the world.  So far, there are 19 species on the page, including avocado, guava, rambutan (which I tasted for the first time a couple weeks ago) and soursop.  The descriptions include common and scientific names of the species and several paragraphs of information about [...]

Serendipity and the origin of crops

In Puerto Rican dry forest, one of the most striking dichotomies is between forests dominated by native species and forests dominated by exotic Leucaena leucocephala. Most forests that have regrown on abandoned agricultural land are dominated by Leucaena. The colonisation of these areas by native tree species is slow - either the native [...]

Can organic agriculture feed the world?

I have always loved the idea of organic agriculture but I have struggled with one big question: can we afford the decline in production? Of course, as long as we are feeding huge amounts of grain to cattle, the option to divert that grain to feeding people always exists. Reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s [...]

Fuel and economics

Trust me, I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Biofuels are a really hot topic these days, especially since the Bush administration has set a goal of 35 billion gallons of “renewable an alternative fuel” by 2017. On the surface of it, renewable fuels seem like a perfect solution to the joint problems of fuel [...]

Omnivore’s Dilemma

The fast food industry wants to make you fat. Um, yeah, like that’s news to anyone. And after Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, we know that they want to kill us as well. But why? Sure, it’s good for any individual company to get us to eat more, and the way [...]