Published Work Archives - Page 8 of 23

One by One, Food Companies Pledge to Quit Animal Testing

January 22, 2025July 16, 2015

National Geographic

“The Plate,” National Geographic • July 16, 2015

Executives at pasta giant Barilla recently made a surprising announcement: The company will ban animal testing throughout its operations immediately, and plans to require members of its supply chain to do the same.

“We believe, big time, that this is the right commitment,” says Luca Virginio, chief communication officer of Barilla. “Animal testing is absolutely against the way we interpret our role in the society.”

But that begs a bigger question: Since when do food companies worry about animal testing?

A Fairer Tomato

January 22, 2025July 1, 2015

Eating Well

Eating Well • July/August 2015

Fair-Food Tomatoes: What Are They and Are They Worth It?

The terrible working conditions in tomato fields have become the subject of hot debate. We talked with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and executive producer of the James Beard Award-winning film Food Chains, which is about the tomato-worker revolution.

5 Modern Families That Left The Grid Behind + How They Did It

January 22, 2025July 1, 2015

Rodale’s Organic Life

Rodale’s Organic Life • July/August 2015

The first time I reconsidered what off-grid meant, I was in Detroit’s North End, trailing the Reverend Joan C. Ross. Red-spectacled and in a second career after selling off her McDonald’s franchises, Reverend Ross was showing me a solar demonstration house, a once-abandoned beauty she had helped bring back to life. There was fine trim in a Victorian parlor, a porch that screamed for a summer afternoon, a toilet that used wastewater to flush, a yard designed to catch runoff and prevent flooding, and a thatch of solar panels on the roof.

“You’re not paying into companies who are burning fossil fuels, or destroying the planet,” she said. “You’re relying on the sun.”

I would have expected this

An Insider’s Guide to Detroit

January 22, 2025June 19, 2015

Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal “Off Duty” • June 19, 2015

FRESH OUT OF BANKRUPTCY and angling toward boomtown, Detroit is attracting an influx of creative young professionals and entrepreneurs to its middle- and working-class mix.

What Could The Pacific Trade Deal Mean for Diets?

January 22, 2025May 11, 2015

National Public Radio (NPR)

NPR The Salt • May 11, 2015

If you think trade deals are just about business, think again. They can also have a sweeping effect on how people eat. Take all those avocados, watermelon and cervezasfrom Mexico we now consume, and the meat and feed corn for livestock we send there in exchange.

The Obama administration hasn’t shared much detail about the provisions in its controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free trade deal between the U.S. and 11 countries currently being negotiated. But if it’s anything like prior free trade agreements, two things are likely, trade experts say.

Food Fetish

January 22, 2025May 1, 2015

OnEarth

OnEarth • May 1, 2015

Last summer I asked Tamar Adler—the only professionally trained chef I know well enough to invite over to my house—to come help me clean out my fridge. I had reached a point where my kitchen was full of decrepit leftovers and castaways. I described the project as “sort of like Iron Chef, but broke.”

Frida Kahlo’s Double-Fried Chicken Recipe

January 22, 2025March 20, 2015

Yahoo! Food

Yahoo! Food • March 20, 2015

More than 60 years after her death, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is having a banner spring in the United States.

This March has seen the opening of both an opera and a (shared) retrospective at the Detroit Institute of Art, and in May, the New York Botanical Garden will unveil a show themed on the painter’s fascination with the natural world. Along with these celebrations of Kahlo’s artwork, some attention is at last being paid to one of her lesser-known oeuvres: cooking.

Why Some Schools Serve Local Food And Others Can’t (Or Won’t)

January 22, 2025March 15, 2015

National Public Radio (NPR)

NPR The Salt • March 11, 2015

For many years, if a public school district wanted to serve students apples or milk from local farmers, it could face all kinds of hurdles. Schools were locked into strict contracts with distributors, few of whom saw any reason to start bringing in local products. Those contracts also often precluded schools from working directly with local farmers.

A Detroit Opera Celebrates Frida Kahlo’s Life And Cooking

January 22, 2025February 25, 2015

National Public Radio (NPR)

NPR.org — The Salt Feb. 25, 2015

The life of Frida Kahlo seems tailor-made for an opera: pain, love, art, travel and revolution. So the Michigan Opera Theater’s decision to mount a production of the opera Frida, opening Mar. 7 in Detroit — where the iconic painter lived with her husband, Diego Rivera, for nearly a year, and where she survived a miscarriage that marked a turning point in her art — isn’t so surprising.

But here’s something that is: The opera is celebrating not only Kahlo’s art and life, but her recipes and cooking, too.

How NAFTA Changed American (And Mexican) Food Forever

January 22, 2025February 13, 2015

National Public Radio (NPR)

NPR.org — The Salt • Feb. 13, 2015

If you were to try and list the biggest game-changers for the American food system in the last two decades, you might note the Food Network, or the writing of Michael Pollan, or maybe even the evolution of Walmart.

But you’d probably overlook NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

And that would be a mistake, according to a lengthy report out early February from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.