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	<title>LivingSmall &#187; food politics</title>
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		<title>Linky Roundup</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/05/06/linky-roundup/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/05/06/linky-roundup/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 May 2010 18:38:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Thinking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[agriculture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oil spill]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=2377</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m in a deadline zone, but here are some interesting links from around the intertubes that I thought you all might like: Weeds, being what they are, have developed their own Roundup-Ready varietals. Guess that whole GMO thing was so well-thought-out, eh? I have to confess, I used to resort to a little casual Roundup use around the LivingSmall ranchero, but between the frogs, and the cancer cluster in which I grew up, and my amazing Bernzomatic Outdoor Torch, I now just burn weeds up instead of spraying them with the dreaded Atrazine. Fellow Ethicurean, Steph Larsen, has incurred my ever-lasting jealousy by buying a 12-acre farm in Nebraska where she intends to grow fruits and vegetables and chickens. The LA Weekly has a roundup of the weekly food sections from around the country. Columbia Journalism Review has a terrific interview with Tom Philphott of Grist about class, local food, and the economics of revamping our food system. If you haven&#8217;t been following ShutUpFoodies, you must go there right now and check it out. Both hilarious and prescient. My dreams are coming true with the establishment of the FoodCorps, a volunteer organization along the lines of AmeriCorps who are working [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>The Snack Issue &#8230;</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/04/27/the-snack-issue/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/04/27/the-snack-issue/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:01:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Thinking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainability]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cooking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=2353</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[So I was browsing around this morning and came across A Year of Inconvenience, a blog written by a woman who manages a food co-op and yet, who after watching Julie &#038; Julia, and reading The Omnivore&#8217;s Dilemma, decided to see if she could spend a year avoiding the central aisles of her own store, the place where the &#8220;convenience&#8221; foods reside. Like a lot of these &#8220;project blogs&#8221; I would probably quibble with some of her definitions of &#8220;convenience foods.&#8221; As far as I&#8217;m concerned, canned tomatoes, canned beans, pasta, and reasonably plain crackers (I&#8217;m a big fan of the Stoned Wheat Thin) are staples. And I&#8217;m not really her target audience &#8212; I rarely shop the middle aisles, and when I do I&#8217;m in there for staples like flour or rice or pasta or beans, or Asian condiments. I don&#8217;t buy mixes, or &#8220;simmer sauces&#8221; &#8212; I don&#8217;t even like spaghetti sauce in a jar because it tastes too gloppy to me. I just don&#8217;t think about cooking that way, in part because I like my own food better than most prepared stuff, and I&#8217;m cheap &#8212; the pre-packaged stuff seems so expensive most of the time for [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/04/27/the-snack-issue/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>7</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>More School Lunch News</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/25/more-school-lunch-news/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/25/more-school-lunch-news/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:14:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Thinking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainability]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school lunch]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=2294</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[More news about school lunches: High School kids in Chicago protest the junkiness of their school lunches to the school board. When school officials defend serving a daily menu of nachos, pizza, burgers and fries, they often say they&#8217;re just giving students what they want. But you wouldn&#8217;t know it by listening to an angry coalition of high school students who plan to speak out on Chicago Public Schools meals Wednesday at the monthly Chicago Board of Education meeting. One of those students is Teresa Onstott, a sophomore at Social Justice High School who last week practiced a speech that details the &#8220;sickening pizza, chicken sandwiches and nachos&#8221; the district serves each day and urges the board not to renew the contract for the company providing the food. Kids who bring a sack lunch, are less likely to be obese: Compared with kids who brought lunch from home, those who ate school lunches: Were more likely to be overweight or obese (38.2% vs. 24.7%) Were more likely to eat two or more servings of fatty meats like fried chicken or hot dogs daily (6.2% vs. 1.6%) Were more likely to have two or more sugary drinks a day (19% vs. [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/25/more-school-lunch-news/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>Tester Takes on E.Coli Problem</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/24/tester-takes-on-e-coli-problem/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/24/tester-takes-on-e-coli-problem/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:31:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Thinking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainability]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[e. coli]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[slaughterhouses]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=2286</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This morning&#8217;s Billings Gazette had a story about Senator Tester, with the help of a local slaughterhouse owner, taking on the lack of accountability in the nation&#8217;s meat testing protocols. Montana&#8217;s one of the few states where small slaughterhouses still exist, which is a good thing if you want to buy local meat. I have a friend in Colorado, for example, who has a ranch, but doesn&#8217;t raise cattle for her family in large part because they&#8217;d have to be sent to a big feedlot operation to be processed. What&#8217;s the point in that? How would you even know if you got your own meat back? From the article: “If nothing changes, we are virtually guaranteed there will be ongoing outbreaks and recurring recalls as a consequence of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s unwillingness to trace contamination back to the source,” said John Munsell, a former Miles City butcher and advocate for reforming food safety laws. Eight years ago, a USDA inspector found E. coli in beef at Munsell’s family meat processing plant, Montana Quality Foods. Munsell told the USDA the contaminated beef came from the slaughterer ConAgra Beef Co., but under existing food safety laws, the government’s investigation stopped [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/24/tester-takes-on-e-coli-problem/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Jamie Oliver&#8217;s Food Revolution</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/22/jamie-olivers-food-revolution/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/22/jamie-olivers-food-revolution/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:45:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Thinking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainability]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=2270</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I caught the first episode of Jamie Oliver&#8217;s Food Revolution last night (full episodes available online here). I like Jamie Oliver &#8212; I realize he grates on some folks, but he&#8217;s got great energy, and unlike a lot of &#8220;foodies&#8221; he seems genuinely concerned for the well being of people who don&#8217;t eat in fancy restaurants, for kids, and for lost adolescents. His enthusiasm, and his perennial conviction that cooking &#8220;from scratch&#8221; is a skill that anyone can learn, and that by learning and practicing it we can improve the quality not only of our meals, but our health and well-being, is something I&#8217;ve always appreciated. (And I have some serious envy for his outdoor oven he featured in his show, Jamie at Home.) At any rate, I thought there were a couple of things worth mentioning. First of all, the school he invaded has a whole crew of lunch ladies, who actually know how to cook, and who have real kitchen equipment: ovens, and stovetops in particular. As many of us who are interested in school lunches are learning, this has become increasingly rare in American schools, most of which don&#8217;t have full staffs of people who actually have [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/22/jamie-olivers-food-revolution/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Politics, Food and Otherwise</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/18/politics-food-and-otherwise/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/18/politics-food-and-otherwise/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:32:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Thinking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=2259</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A few items from around the intertubes: While I appreciate that Iowan&#8217;s are using the stupendous agricultural natural resources with which they are blessed to move away from agribusiness models, I do grow tired of the eternal surprise of journalists when they discover, yet again, that the midwest is full of interesting people. Here&#8217;s a French journalist who took a tour of some of the state&#8217;s more interesting agricultural entrepreneurs. Civil Eats has a terrific interview with Mollie Katzen, author of The New Moosewood Cookbook. She&#8217;s written a book called Get Cooking: 150 Simple Recipes to Get You Started in the Kitchen and has put a series of videos on YouTube. She describes her goal for Get Cooking here: The very basic act of cooking is becoming a radical necessity. That’s why I wrote Get Cooking, because people asked me to lay out the simple basics of how to cook. I wanted to give people the tools they need to make easy recipes, four to five things you can cook well. It sounds simple, but that’s the key to people digging their way out of bad food. They need to know how to shop and how to make food in [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>Michael Ruhlman: Why Cook?</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/04/michael-ruhlman-why-cook/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/04/michael-ruhlman-why-cook/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:00:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Making]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cooking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=2161</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VJgb2bCfzE Michael Ruhlman started a meme a couple of weeks ago where he asked people to blog about why they cook. Above is his TEDxCLE talk about why cooking is essential to making us human, to making us families, and to making us reasonably healthy human beings. It&#8217;s well worth the fifteen minutes (and he&#8217;s sort of adorably nervous, as one would be). He says in the video, and on the follow up post on his blog, that we need to make cooking an imperative. With which I agree. But I guess one of the things I&#8217;ve been trying to figure out by writing about it (the only way I ever figure anything out) is why we need to make cooking anything. How did we get to this place where cooking, and I&#8217;m not talking elaborate, or slow food, or gourmet, or any of those things, I&#8217;m just talking about the simple act of cooking our meals on a regular basis has become so strange? Where cooking for yourself and your family has become the exception, not the rule? I cook because it would be weird not to. I cook because it&#8217;s cheaper to cook for myself than to eat [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/04/michael-ruhlman-why-cook/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Eat Real Food</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/03/eat-real-food/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/03/eat-real-food/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:46:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Living]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[domestic life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[organic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[real food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[slow food]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=2148</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve read several articles in the last few days that have me all het up about the food thing. There seems to be a new and annoying meme out there, that eating real food will make one a &#8220;slave&#8221; to one&#8217;s kitchen. That somehow, &#8220;cooking from scratch&#8221; is so difficult and so time-consuming that no one can really do it. It&#8217;s just too hard. Well maybe it&#8217;s too hard if you&#8217;re being an obsessive yuppie about it. People, grow some common sense. Exhibit A is this article in the Sacramento News Review, &#8220;Fast vs. Food: How the sustainable-food movement drove one busy family to the brink and back again.&#8221; Like a number of articles on this topic I&#8217;ve seen lately, the author seems to take an all-or-nothing approach. Either they&#8217;re making all their own bread, pizza dough, eating only from CSA boxes and going to the Farmers Market or they&#8217;re eating microwave meals from Trader Joes. Or then there was this one, featured on CNN.com, &#8220;An Inconvenient Challenge, Eat &#8216;Real Food&#8217; For a Month&#8221; in which Jennifer McGruther, food blogger at The Nourished Kitchen is so restrictive about her definition of &#8220;real food&#8221; that she has people throwing out everything [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Local Hospital, Local Food</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/02/25/local-hospital-local-food/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/02/25/local-hospital-local-food/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:09:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Making]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=2100</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There was a good article in the Billings Gazette this week about our local Livingston Hospital. They&#8217;ve been making the change to local product and cooking &#8220;from scratch&#8221; (as long-time readers know, this phrase is one of my pet peeves). It&#8217;s been a big success, with 3000 more meals served this year than last, and folks who aren&#8217;t sick, or visiting someone, actually going to the hospital cafeteria for lunch. We have such great product around here, and it sounds like Jesse Williams is doing a lot of the same things that Rick Bayless does in his restaurants, thinking ahead, putting up food during times of abundance, building relationships with vendors. In the midst of all these stories about the abysmal state of school lunches, and the way we&#8217;re treating our kids like human garbage disposals for processed food, this one gave me real hope. Here&#8217;s the quote: “When we stopped just reheating prepared food and started cooking again in the kitchen, they (staff) pulled out the stops,” said Jessie Williams, the hospital’s food and nutrition services manager. Not only has the hospital shifted its focus to whole foods, but it’s buying a large share of those foods from Montana [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/02/25/local-hospital-local-food/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/02/24/reauthorize-the-child-nutrition-act/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/02/24/reauthorize-the-child-nutrition-act/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:56:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Thinking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=2089</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here&#8217;s a link to the USDA News Release about the Child Nutrition Act and what&#8217;s been added to it. The list looks promising. It includes: Improve nutrition standards. Establishing improved nutrition standards for school meals based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and taking additional steps to ensure compliance with these standards; Increase access to meal programs. Providing tools to increase participation in the school nutrition programs, streamline applications, and eliminate gap periods; Increase education about healthy eating. Providing parents and students better information about school nutrition and meal quality; Establish standards for competitive foods sold in schools. Creating national baseline standards for all foods sold in elementary, middle, and high schools to ensure they contribute effectively to a healthy diet; Serve more healthy food. Promoting increased consumption of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and low- and fat-free dairy products and providing additional financial support in the form of reimbursement rate increases for schools that enhance nutrition and quality; Increase physical activity. Strengthening school wellness policy implementation and promoting physical activity in schools; Train people who prepare school meals. Ensuring that child nutrition professionals have the skills to serve top-quality meals that are both healthful and appealing to their student [...]]]></description>
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