Growers and Grocers

King Arthur Flour, purveyor of some of the best flour available to consumers, has released a new line of baking mixes.
Though making a cake from scratch is only slightly more involved than using a mix—as far as I can tell I just get more bowls dirty when I bake from scratch—I have always maintained a […]

Washington State is one of many states in the U.S. currently considering a ban on the sale and production of foie gras, the fattened liver of a force-fed goose or duck. The law mimics the one in place in California, even coming into effect in 2012 alongside that state’s.
One editorial in The Herald claims that […]

Barbara Fisher, my peer at Well Fed blog Paper Palate, sent me a link to Consumer Reports’ guide to buying organic food on a budget. They offer plenty of good tips for getting bang for your organic food buck, but they make the common mistake of discounting the time it takes to shop around and […]

Before one can talk intelligently about Genetically Modified (GM) food, it’s important to understand what’s really at work. Why is Genetically Modified food being introduced to our diet at brisk pace? Who truly benefits? Is the motivation for GM foods altruism? Or is it
something more?
Over the course of the next few weeks and months, I’m […]

Parke Wilde, who publishes the excellent U.S. Food Policy blog, points to Catholic Rural Life’s latest publication, Visions for Farm & Food Policy. Though some of the articles connect farm policy to Catholic doctrine, many are of interest to readers outside the Church. The various articles propose an ideal vision for how the United States […]

I just discovered this article by food writer Jim Churchill on the Edible Communities website. The essay tries to give the reader an overview of the current state of American agribusiness. Churchill covers the shifts in government policy over the last few decades, government subsidies, the way large corporations benefit, and why you should care.
Though […]

Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks sent me a link to Mighty Foods, a new group blog she helped start. It took me a while to visit it, but now that I’ve looked it over, I’ll be adding the site to the Links section on the right.
The group is focusing on “natural foods” with “veg-friendly” […]

These days big supermarket chains are selling small numbers of “odd fruits” in the produce section. Maybe the store is trying to compete with the large variety of fruits at upscale grocers or perhaps they think that these fruits are in demand by the “ethnic” shoppers in the area. Maybe they figured out that some […]

There’s conflicting news about America’s poultry today.
Max at the snark-ridden bad things blog points to this article in the St. Louis Dispatch, which conveys U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns’s message: The poultry supply is safe. That’s a relief.
But someone should tell the poultry producers of this country that Johanns cleared their birds, since they’re […]

The Sacramento Bee’s Mike Dunne has written a light profile of Bill Niman, whose Niman Ranch brand is a popular choice for consumers who care about quality ingredients and ethical meat production.
The most interesting aspect of Niman Ranch, to my mind, is how they leveraged their reputation in beef to support ethical production in pork […]