Fast Food Nation

Is Packing My Kids' Lunches a Privilege or a Pain in the Apple?

School lunches have come under some serious scrutiny as of late, and, it seems, not a moment too soon. As Americans try to find explanations for our growing obesity epidemic, the food available to children during the school day is being fingered as one of myriad culprits. I was horrified to read about the low cost, low quality, highly processed junk consistently fed to American children, day in and day out, under the National School Lunch Program. I was fired up and inspired after watching Jamie Oliver’s impassioned TED prize acceptance speech and call to arms to try to recapture our lost food culture by teaching children about cooking and eating good, fresh food.

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An Open Letter to Our Children: We're Sorry About School Lunch

I recently had the chance to sit down with a handful of sixth graders at Sanford Middle School in Minneapolis. The students had been complaining that the lunches they were being served tasted bad and made them feel sick, and their teacher asked me to come answer questions, provide context, and make suggestions.

For an hour, these thoughtful students and I discussed healthy food choices, growing a garden, being pressed for time (a 12 year old girl told me she didn't have time to put an apple in her backpack in the morning), eating on a budget, and how to affect change. I've been thinking about the discussion ever since.

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My Local Food All Star Team

As a kid, I spent countless hours, days, weeks, months - heck, even years - thinking of nothing but baseball. With 2 brothers and 3 step-brothers in my family hanging around each summer, it was easy to get a game going any time, and each night was spent in front of the TV, watching our beloved Yankees (I'm from New York) attempt to destroy the competition. My brothers and I developed special cheers for Don Mattingly, Ricky Henderson, Dave Righetti, and the rest of the team. When I moved to Minnesota, I helped my family adjust to the idea by telling them that Dave Winfield was born in St. Paul.

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What's at the Movie Theater This Summer? Food!

You might think, on the heels of the recent Minneapolis debut of the documentaries "Fresh" by ana Sofia joanes, and "Food Inc," (expertly reviewed by Kristen at Food Renegade this week), that we've had our fill of food at the cinema this summer. Even James Bond only releases one movie each year, right? Wrong! Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the most intelligent movie-going summer in recorded history.

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Fast Food Makes You Stupid

Great recent post by Jill Richardson in La Vida Locavore entitled Fast Food Makes You Stupid (Yet We Serve It In Our Schools). Here's an excerpt:

[A recent study found that] children scored between 58 and 181 points in the reading tests, gaining an average score of 141.5. But after taking other factors into account, pupils who ate fast food between four and six times a week scored almost seven points below average. Children snacking once a day fell 16 points, while pupils indulging three times a day dropped by 19 points. Similar trends were noted in maths. In total, children scored between 47 and 151 points in the test, with average results of 115. But those pupils eating fast food dropped by between 6.5 and 18.5 points.

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10 Ways Local Food Has Changed My Life

It was just over 6 weeks ago when I joined my first CSA, bought Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and started hunting down restaurants serving local, sustainable foods.

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"Food Inc." is All About Production

The Foodcycles blog writes about a new film called Food Inc., featuring Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

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