Friday Sampler Platter

by: JayinPhiladelphia

Fri Apr 17, 2009 at 15:15:00 PM PDT

• A nice piece from Civil Eats keeps us up on what's going on in Montana's local food movement.

• PETA has called on Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker to ban construction of new fast-food restaurants in the city.  A 2007 study shows that 34 percent of Newarkers are obese, as opposed to the NJ statewide average of 22 percent.  I'd like to see more projects like this around the city, myself.

• Willamette Valley Vineyards has just launched what they claim is the world's first cork recycling program.

• This map allows you to follow the movements of 11 tagged grizzly bears throughout the City of Anchorage, Alaska.

• This week's edition of Eugene Weekly has a few cool pieces as part of this year's Earth Day edition.

• Blue whales are returning to the British Columbia coast for the first time in decades; but it's more likely due to a regular pattern of following food as ocean temperature cycles change, rather than an increase in the whale population.

• A piece from Seattlest covers an ongoing conflict caused by bycatch in the Alaskan pollock industry.

• If you happen to find yourself at the new Yankee Stadium hopefully to root heartily against the home team this year, the (Newark, NJ) Star-Ledger's Munchmobile covered the new food options at the stadium at yesterday's home opener.  Props to Peter Genovese for mentioning zeppole, which I haven't had (or even found!) since Summer '06 down the Jersey Shore.  My heart and arteries probably thank me for living 3,000 miles away from Jersey Shore food now, though.  Heh...

Wednesday Night Sampler Platter

by: JayinPhiladelphia

Wed Apr 15, 2009 at 17:00:00 PM PDT

• Two pieces from the LA Times: one on the connection between fast food and happiness in children (as the commenter says: of course there's a connection!  The stuff acts like a drug...); and another on the increasing sexualization of fast food advertising.

• Connecticut is now one step closer to banning the sale of plastic baby bottles, food containers and cups containing the dangerous industrial chemical bisphenol a.  The measure, which would also require warning labels on all food products sold in packaging containing BPA, unanimously passed a state legislative committee on Tuesday.  Connecticut would be the first state to pass such a ban.  Oregon, California, Hawaii and a handful of other states are also currently considering such legislation.

• A piece about a different BPA:  from High Country News, an investigation into the Bonneville Power Administration's influence on salmon research in the Columbia Basin.

• The volunteer work of a pair of law students working out of a Lewis & Clark Law School-based environmental nonprofit helped lead to this week's criminal sentencing of a Washington fish processing plant for spewing "chemically rendered chicken goo" into the Columbia River in violation of the Clean Water Act.

• A nice piece on a Washington family's mission-oriented worm raising business.

• Some good wildlife news from Alaska: the populations of two caribou herds in the state have recently jumped significantly.  The downside is that two other nearby herds are decreasing in numbers.

• Two pieces from Civil Eats: the Berkeley (CA) Farmers' Market has become the first market in the nation to eliminate all plastic bags AND plastic packaging; and Part 2 of a great interview with Gary Nabhan.

Food News: Vegan Pet Food? Smoke Shop Food Stamp Fraud?

by: Curtis Abbey

Sat Mar 28, 2009 at 03:59:25 AM PDT

Vegan pet food -- and the decision to force one's pet to go vegan -- is suddenly very buzzy. ABC News reports that it's a bit easier for a dog to go vegetarian than it is for a cat, and one person they interviewed said she suspects that "vegan" cats are supplementing their diets by hunting.

What would a vegan do in a situation where their vegan cat was caught with a mouse, or a fly, or whatever it is kitty attempts to dine on? Would you scold it? Or attempt to stop him/her from the action?

Warning this is a long blog!

Tuesday Afternoon Sampler Platter

by: JayinPhiladelphia

Tue Mar 17, 2009 at 12:00:00 PM PDT

• An op-ed in today's San Francisco Chronicle takes on the way our government develops dietary guidelines.  Ouch -

  Here is a daily diet that meets [current] nutrition guidelines: Breakfast: 1 cup Fruit Loops; 1 cup skim milk; 1 package M&M milk chocolate candies; fiber and vitamin supplements. Lunch: Grilled cheddar cheeseburger. Dinner: 3 slices pepperoni pizza, with a 16-ounce soda and 1 serving Archway sugar cookies.

  This helps explain why 12-year-old schoolchildren develop thickening of their carotid arteries to the brain, and 80 percent of 20-year-old soldiers, dying in combat, are found to have coronary artery heart disease.

• Idaho may become the next state to change assets tests in order to allow more people to become eligible for food stamps.

• The Nature Conservancy purchased the 4,136-acre Shasta Big Springs Ranch in California, including the entire 2.2-mile length of Big Springs Creek, in an effort to restore salmon in the Klamath River system.

• A group of medical and fisheries experts in Canada are making a health and environmental argument to reduce fish consumption in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

• Is the Grocery Manufacturers Association part of a frightful (boo!) "socialist experiment", too?  Or are they just hypocrites?

  Although a spokesperson for the Grocery Manufacturers Association broadly welcomed the news that the legislation had been put forward, he criticized the proposal that industry should pay for plant inspections. He told FoodNavigator-USA.com: "We believe that food safety is a right that all Americans have...and that it should be paid for by Congress appropriating general funds."

  How about paying some taxes then, guys?

Monday Evening Sampler Platter

by: JayinPhiladelphia

Mon Mar 16, 2009 at 18:26:29 PM PDT

• A couple of really cool interactive tools from Periscopic; all kinds of maps, graphs, historical data, etc on the state of Pacific salmon - State of the Salmon, and the Visual Marine Stewardship Council web tool

• NOAA Fisheries Service proposed last week to list Pacific smelt as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.

• The Corvallis Environmental Center in Corvallis, OR (home of Oregon State University) is organizing a tour of local homes who keep chickens and ducks.

• The first salmon-eating Columbia River sea lion was just killed at Bonneville Dam last week, under a new policy that will relocate or kill up to 30 sea lions from Bonneville this year.

• The Klamath, California-based Yurok Indian tribe is in discussions with wildlife experts and state and federal officials to re-establish condor populations in Oregon, where the largest North American land bird hasn't been seen in over a century.

• The US government on Saturday permanently banned downer cows from our food supply, replacing the temporary partial ban that has been in place for the last 5 years.

Sampler Platter

by: Jill Richardson

Fri Mar 13, 2009 at 16:00:00 PM PDT

• Planning your garden? Check out the Cool Foods Garden Guide for all kinds of useful help! This is the garden guide I think I've needed my whole life. They break it down so easily, I really think I might be able to grow something!! If only I had a yard...

• Bill Marler shares the story of Stephanie Smith. She was a dance instructor when she ate an E. coli-tainted burger at age 20. Now, ate age 21, afer nine months in the hospital (including two in a coma), she hopes to be able to walk again. Wow.

• Set your Tivo for HBO's Death on a Factory Farm, premiering March 16 at 10pm. It's a documentary that follows an animal rights undercover investigator for six weeks on a factory hog farm in Ohio. Just a word of caution - it's pretty graphic.

• Bryant Terry, co-author of Grub with Anna Lappe, has a new book out: Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine. Hmm, I might be interested in this one.

• Alternet says our greatest concern isn't diet or exercise - it's neighborhood. Very interesting comment on Americans' health problems.

• An interesting trend in wine-making: Making the bottles lighter to use less glass and have a lighter footprint on the planet.

• A tax on chocolate? Ohhh, hell no! Fortunately, this wasn't proposed in the U.S. And even if somebody DID tax chocolate, I'd still eat it.

• Will Obama appoint a salmon czar? Some groups are asking him to do so, to coordinate fishing and protect wild salmon so that we can continue to have a sustainable salmon supply.

• Is the banana in trouble? This article takes a look at bananas' lack of genetic diversity. This opens it up to great risk if a disease were to start wiping it out, and it looks like that might happen...

• On the subject of bananas, Chiquita wants a suit against them dismissed. The suit alleges that Chiquita paid off Columbian paramilitary groups that killed a lot of people in Columbia.

Friday Night Sampler Platter

by: JayinPhiladelphia

Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 19:25:09 PM PST

• Under growing public pressure, six major companies will stop selling hard plastic baby bottles containing the dangerous industrial chemical BPA; in a major victory for human beings, and the first of what will hopefully be many losses for pseudo-scientific shills who place corporate profits over human health.

• In other BPA news, recent tests have found the toxic hormone-mimicking substance exists in at least 96% of soft drinks tested in Canada -

  Dr. vom Saal says there is also a growing body of scientific literature, based on animal experiments, that has found harmful effects due to BPA at concentrations up to 1,000 times below Health Canada's safety limit.

• The Federation of Canadian Municipalities will vote Saturday on a proposal urging cities and towns across Canada to ban sale of bottled water within / on municipal facilities and properties.

• Vancouver, BC's City Council voted unanimously on Thursday to allow urban backyard chickens, and hopefully soon a group of citizens of Salem, Oregon will be able to overturn that city's current ban as well.

• A new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, published in the journal Bioscience, concludes that the greatest threat to Northwest salmon are invasive species -

  The study, which was published in the journal Bioscience, is sure to be controversial because much of the Northwest's multi-billion dollar salmon recovery work is centered on improving habitat, mitigating the damage of power-producing dams and curtailing commercial or recreational fishing.

  This report argues the greatest threat to fish are non-native species like crappie or bass that can eat up juvenile salmon as the make their way downstream from their birthplace to the ocean.

Fish Sampler Platter

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Feb 26, 2009 at 17:49:58 PM PST

• In Another Bad Year for Wild-Salmon Barbie, Greenspace takes up the cause of the Chinook salmon in California:

  Last year the feds, for the first time ever, shut down the salmon season before it began. Although returns on some rivers are better this year, they're probably not enough to convince officials at the Pacific Fishery Management Council to let commercial anglers out of port.

• Also about salmon, fisheries officials are looking for ways to keep California sea lions from eating all the endangered fish. They claim they aren't going after all of the sea lions, just the ones who are real problems - and they might opt to relocate the sea lions instead of killing them. Still, the Humane Society is not terribly happy and rather concerned about what will happen.
  (Bad news update - The govt is going to proceed killing sea lions. First they will try to relocate them but after they run out of places to put them, they will kill them. I am very upset.)

• In the comments, JayinPortland tells about a store in Portland that allows customers to trace their fish back to the fisherman who caught them.

• Natasha Chart writes about eating safe fish - safe for the continuation of the fish species and ocean ecology, and safe for us to eat.

• Civil Eats asks us to stop picking on whales. Aaron French says that fisheries are looking for a scapegoat (or a scapewhale?) to blame depleted fish stocks on:

  Much to my surprise, there has been a scientific debate raging for decades about the role that whales play in depleting fish populations. The argument goes like this: whales eat fish, therefore we should kill whales to protect the fish.  And then get to eat the whales, too.

• In Big fish, little fish, Tom Philpott compares large and small fisheries. Small fisheries win on using less fuel, catching fish more efficiently, minimizing bycatch, and employing more people worldwide.

• The Monterey Bay Aquarium offers up a sustainable sushi pocket guide (PDF).

Salmon: Extinction? Restoration, Poaching, CA-Gov, News, Pics!

by: Curtis Abbey

Mon Feb 02, 2009 at 11:09:04 AM PST

"It is possible that 65 percent of the 31 native California species of trout and salmon will become extinct soon. California has such tremendous species diversity due to the Pacific's California Current and other factors, but human development has affected those species adversely.

"At this time, only 10-percent of California's ocean population of salmon are wild, the rest are hatchery-produced. This tends to reduce the fitness of the natural population, we need to consider ways to adapt and reform hatcheries. We also know that many ocean-harvested fish are from endangered runs. Marking all hatchery fish may be a possible strategy.

If this recession continues poaching will increase, water wars may tilt away from environmental concerns, and habitat restoration projects will be frozen at the state level. A federal stimulus package with money for the states could bring needed funds to vastly expand restoration of fisheries and habitats.  

Fraudulent Foods

by: Jill Richardson

Sat Jan 24, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PST

This isn't terribly surprising to me, given what I've heard about cheese with milk protein concentrate (that's a fancy sounding word to mean the remains of milk after anything valuable has been removed... it's cheap and that's why they use it) and at one point there was some noise about re-defining chocolate so you could replace cocoa butter with cheaper ingredients.

Here's USA Today's list:

• Wild salmon: In a study, over half were actually farmed salmon.
• Red snapper: Sorry, it's usually actually tilapia.
• Olive oil: A percent of your oil may actually be a cheaper oil like soybean oil - or it might be olive oil, just a lower grade of it that is labeled and priced as extra virgin. (I recommend Temecula olive oil to make sure you're getting the real stuff)
• Honey: You might be getting beet sugar instead
• Maple syrup: This may be diluted with water or sugar
• Vanilla: Might actually be vanillin

Random News Thread: Salmon Escape, Food Banks, and Birds of Prey Make a Home in Portland City Parks

by: JayinPhiladelphia

Mon Jul 07, 2008 at 19:53:20 PM PDT

Because I think a regular random news / open thread-type thing around here would be really cool and increase participation.

Follow me below the fold, where one of the articles I mention contains the phrase 'osprey poop'.  Which might be a first-ever thing for a food blog...