- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The associate director of the UC Berkeley Center for Weight and Health, Gail Woodward-Lopez, said USDA's new food icon, MyPlate, is more in line with current nutrition science, according to The Bay Citizen.
"It has the potential to be more effective," Woodward-Lopez was quoted. "The pyramid involved counting the number of servings for the day. So when do you make that decision? When you go to bed at night?"
She said the plate in consistent with the Center's...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A campaign on Facebook is encouraging Americans to assert "food independence" on July 4th and enjoy sustainable holiday picnics as an inspiration to others.
The effort drew the attention of Huffington Post columnist Leslie Hatfield, who declared in an article published yesterday that "eating local food is patriotic."Hatfield contacted the director of UC Cooperative Extension in Ventura County, Rose Hayden-Smith, to get her take on food and patriotism. Hayden-Smith just finished her dissertation on...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A commentary that appeared on the Web site Drovers.com, an information source for beef industry insiders, said the dialog at the Farm, Food & Health Conference held March 2 and 3 in Kansas City was "unbalanced and unrealistic."
"Much of the conversation at the . . . conference," Drovers editor Greg Henderson wrote, "centered around the idea that a 'movement' is taking shape in America to change our food system."
In the article, Henderson quoted conference speaker Larry Yee, director emeritus of UC Cooperative Extension in Ventura County and co-founder of the Association of Family...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
This week's Time magazine cover feature doubles as an opinionated rant about what ails the US food system. Perhaps some of it should be taken with a grain of salt; but there are plenty of ideas that make sense, even if they aren't scientifically proven.
I confess it is something of a stretch to include it in the ANR news blog, which covers news of ANR activities and experts. (It wasn't until the final page that I found information sourced from the University of California, perhaps from this ANR news...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
This week, the Pioneer Press, which serves Minnesota's Twin Cities, ran a Washington Post story about a new food trend. This time, the trend isn't a new product or fad diet, but emerging university-level education about the politics, psychology and production of food.
The story noted that Boston University and New York University have offered food studies programs for more than a decade, and Yale's food studies program includes a high-profile on-campus farm and dining halls stocked with organic and local food. Now, however, food is entering the "academic mainstream," it said.
To wit, the University of New Hampshire will launch a...