Food Archive

• 

  Good night - by frog

  
  
  
  As I understand the electoral law, I’m not allowed to post new web content tomorrow until the close of polling booths at 7pm. And from 7pm onwards I intend to be at the Green Party Party, not in front of a computer typing.  So this is me signing off for the day.  Expect coverage to [...] read more
  November 7, 2008 8:29 pm - 18 Comments
• 

  Powering our farms with sunshine not oil - by frog

  
  
  
  Graham Harvey, the author of The Carbon Fields, has a good opinion piece here, where he talks about our lack of food security: Our food supply is now more dependent on globally traded grains than at any time in our history. This makes it inherently unstable and vulnerable to the kind of catastrophic meltdown that [...] read more
  November 5, 2008 3:06 pm - 15 Comments
• 

  Horticulture NZ launches new CoOL campaign - by frog

  
  
  
  Horticulture New Zealand and others have launched a new campaign for CoOL, or Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling of food.  It notes that the campaign is pretty simple really – it’s about consumers’ right to know that they are buying: We believe Kiwi shoppers deserve the right to choose. CoOL is not a ‘buy local’ [...] read more
  November 4, 2008 4:19 pm - 10 Comments
• 

  Peak phosphate - by frog

  
  
  
  I followed the link to Farmgeek’s blog this afternoon and came across this fascinating post on phosphate asking if we have time to mitigate before we run out. It’s a month old now but incredibly important to our food security: Graphic from The Oil Drum NZ currently uses about a million tonnes of phosphate fertiliser [...] read more
  October 30, 2008 4:42 pm - 8 Comments
• 

  Eat the view - by frog

  
  
  
  It seems Michael Pollan was not alone in calling for the next US president to lead the way on self sufficient food production by growing his own food on the White House lawn. There is a whole movement at Eat the View focused on the fact that today American food travels an average of 1500 [...] read more
  October 28, 2008 12:19 pm - 12 Comments
• 

  Food matters - by frog

  
  
  
  I haven’t seen this movie yet but its trailer suggests it could provoke some important debate about the links between our food industry, diet and our pharmaceutical industry. According to the website the film starts from the premise that: With nutritionally-depleted foods, chemical additives and our tendency to rely upon pharmaceutical drugs to treat what’s [...] read more
  October 22, 2008 9:48 am - 5 Comments
• 

  A diet of contemporary sunshine - by frog

  
  
  
  Food guru Michael Pollan has another must read article –this time an open letter to the next American president explaining why food is the political issue he will be spending most of this time in the White House on – including its integral relationship to climate change, peak oil, foreign and trade policies, health care [...] read more
  October 17, 2008 6:40 am - 11 Comments
• 

  Finally, some support for Country of Origin Labelling - by frog

  
  
  
  I’ve just noticed on the Hand Mirror that at least one Labour Party candidate disagrees with his party’s policy on refusing people the right to know where their food comes from – Paul Chalmers from Whangarei: Question 10. Women do the vast majority of cooking and shopping, and increases in food prices are a burden [...] read more
  October 15, 2008 3:42 pm - 11 Comments
• 

  Monsanto and Michael Pollan discuss food production - by frog

  
  
  
  read more
  October 13, 2008 8:39 am - 1 Comment
• 

  Impoverished food - by frog

  
  
  
  There is a vibrant food debate going on between New Zealand blogs Object Dart and In a Strange Land on the politics of food. It began last week when No Right Turn pointed to this Guardian article about Jamie Oliver’s latest television show, where Oliver attempts to teach people to cook and eat healthy food. [...] read more
  October 10, 2008 1:14 pm - 50 Comments
• 

  Knowing about your food - by frog

  
  
  
  This is something a bit ironic.  Here in New Zealand we are not allowed to know where our food comes from because it could undermine our trading ambitions. Yet the country we harbour the most lust and ambition to trade with, and with whom we are about to enter trade negotiations, has just bought into [...] read more
  October 1, 2008 2:25 pm - 6 Comments
• 

  Labour and National vote down consumers’ right to know - by frog

  
  
  
  The Southland Times has a powerful editorial on Labour and National’s collaboration to reject the 39,000-signature petition supported by the Green Party calling for country of origin labelling on food. It notes Labour and National’s contention that we have lots of choice is all fair and true if the you are looking for the sort [...] read more
  September 30, 2008 8:26 pm - No Comments
• 

  Knowing where your milk powder comes from - by frog

  
  
  
  Here’s some more from Question Time in the house yesterday.  The government has a longstanding position that Country of Origin Labelling on food is not a food safety issue and so it refuses to protect consumers’ right to know where their food comes from. That assertion that the safety of food has nothing to do [...] read more
  September 24, 2008 9:02 am - 5 Comments
• 

  Rats prefer organic food - by frog

  
  
  
  Yum, organic baking! According to Mother Earth News, via Ecoscraps: 40 lab rats were offered a choice between organic and conventional biscuits by Swiss and Austrian scientists.  The rats preferred the organic biscuits, which makes you wonder if rats are smarter than humans. Those are some pretty lucky lab rats getting the biscuit tasting job [...] read more
  September 16, 2008 1:27 pm - 4 Comments
• 

  GM chinese food - by frog

  
  
  
  I always figured when I bought food that might contain US ingredients I needed to be especially careful checking what the ingredients were and where they came from if I wanted to avoid GE food.  Not that I can check of course because there is no requirement for anyone to tell me what they are [...] read more
  September 8, 2008 4:37 pm - 25 Comments
• 

  Rats - by frog

  
  
  
  The international food crisis is having strange effects.  For instance: PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials said on Wednesday. Things could have been worse, as Freakonomics notes, rats have been fleeing to higher [...] read more
  September 2, 2008 11:09 am - 6 Comments
• 

  Protecting food safety - by frog

  
  
  
  Mother Jones has an icky story about imported Chinese food in the USA involving contamination, salmonella, bateria and pesticides. At one [poultry] plant, inspectors had found paint from the ceiling “on the table used for edible product,” while workers at another facility wiped down meat-handling areas with dirty cloths. Parts of a third factory, designated [...] read more
  August 28, 2008 3:57 pm - 5 Comments
• 

  Jamie and the chicken - by frog

  
  
  
  As promised last night. See also here. read more
  August 27, 2008 8:42 am - 12 Comments
• 

  Jamie Oliver serves chicken - by frog

  
  
  
  Tonight TVNZ is showing Jamie Oliver’s The Big Food Fight: Jamie’s Fowl Dinners where the English chef as he usually does, hosts a dinner, but this time to demonstrate the reality of how chickens live and die to put food on our plates: With the help of poultry farmers and experts, Jamie brings together consumers, [...] read more
  August 26, 2008 5:03 pm - 32 Comments
• 

  Conservative support for the green food movement - by frog

  
  
  
  John Schwenkler from The American Conservative has an interesting article on how green food movements like Locavorism and Slow Food exemplify conservative values. The production, distribution and preparation of food is an emotive sustainability and health issue. So it’s not surprising that food distributed by small, independent farms fits tidily into Schwenkler’s conservative ethos. The [...] read more
  August 15, 2008 7:35 am - 12 Comments