- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A Michael Pollan opinion piece that appeared in yesterday's New York Times is reverberating in the ag community. Pollan contends that the United State's high spending on health care can be explained by the country's obesity crisis, and that fact will eventually pit health care interests against agribusiness.
". . . Our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry," Pollan wrote.
Here are some comments from Pollan about a brewing bout between health insurers and...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Writer Charlotte Allen wrote a scathing column for the Los Angeles Times last week about a new food movement in the United States aimed toward more sustainable and socially responsible consumption.
Titled "Keep your self-righteous fingers off my processed food," the article takes to task "social critics (who) inform us that we're actually spending too little for the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the furniture we sit on and the gasoline that runs our automobiles." The concept, Allen suggests, goes way beyond Marie Antoinette saying "let them eat cake."
The Allen column generated many outraged letters to the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
At the recent ANR Statewide Conference, historian James McWilliams gave UC Ag and Natural Resources staff and academics a new mantra to consider. For years we've been trying to "think outside the box." McWilliams shared the revelation, "There is no box." That gave UCCE Ventura County director Rose Hayden-Smith something to ponder in her blog, posted today on the Web site Civil Eats.
McWilliams probably jarred most of the people in the ANR audience with his comments.
- He said it is simplistic to think of food in terms of chemicals vs. no...