Since 2001, Tracie has produced award winning work, receiving recognition from the Sidney Hillman Foundation, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the James Beard Foundation, the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists, the Harry Chapin Media Award, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, the Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism, and more. Read more
National Public Radio (NPR)
NPR.org – The Salt • Dec. 12, 2014
Farm workers in America have long been among the nation’s poorest paid and most abused workers. But conditions have been improving for Florida tomato pickers, and those advances may soon reach other farm fields, according to the annual report released Thursday by the Fair Food Standards Council, or FFSC, a labor oversight group based in Sarasota, Fla.
Slate and Food & Environment Reporting Network
Slate; Food and Environment Reporting Network
Nov. 19, 2014
(1) “Everybody Was Talking About It”
A couple of years ago, as winter gave way to spring, Toyoda Ruff began to think about changing how she ate. Ruff had always been heavy, but her son, Tarik, a freshman honor student, had recently crossed the 300-pound mark, prompting Ruff to ferry him to appointments at a children’s weight loss clinic, 11 miles away in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood, and to document everything he ate for two months. At 270 pounds, her husband, Jermaine Harris, wanted to slim down, too. Ruff was beginning to see her family’s weekly fast-food habit and visits to Golden Corral’s all-you-can-eat buffet as a problem.
As Ruff mulled over these changes, a friend cajoled her into joining a healthy cooking class at their church. Ruff was on medical leave from her job as a probation officer due to an injury, and the break gave her time to consider her meals. The more she thought about eating healthy, the more intrigued she was by a new store: Whole Foods, which had just opened in Detroit. “It was on the news. People were talking about it at church,” Ruff said. “Everybody was talking about it.”
Eater
Eater.com • Sept. 21, 2014
Writing about food is the only way I’ve found to get Americans to talk about class without being jerks. That’s my meta-objective: to foster cross-class understanding so we can fix problems like poverty and education. That’s a high bar, though. I’d settle for seeing fresh, healthy food be as cheap and accessible as junk food is today.
National Geographic
National Geographic.com • Sept. 1, 2014
The diets of low-income Americans have worsened in the past decade, even as the diets of the wealthiest Americans have improved, according to a new study that is among the first to measure changes in diet quality over time by socioeconomic status. Overall diet quality in the United States remains poor, said the lead author of the study, published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine.
National Geographic
National Geographic • August 2014
On a gold-gray morning in Mitchell County, Iowa, Christina Dreier sends her son, Keagan, to school without breakfast. He is three years old, barrel-chested, and stubborn, and usually refuses to eat the free meal he qualifies for at preschool. Faced with a dwindling pantry, Dreier has decided to try some tough love: If she sends Keagan to school hungry, maybe he’ll eat the free breakfast, which will leave more food at home for lunch.
National Geographic
National Geographic Daily News Online • July 16, 2014
Her face was small and pitiful: a brown-eyed, blond-curled toddler, eyes darting, lying on a doctor’s table. First we saw her belly, rounder than her skinny legs would suggest, prodded by a physician. And then the camera pulled back, showing the filthy, caked bottoms of her feet.
OnEarth
OnEarth • July 8, 2014
A few early-summer visits to the local farmer’s market are usually all it takes to turn us into cheerleaders for the American farm. But if you really want to know about the current state of farming in the U.S.A. (as opposed to merely knowing the current state of this summer’s heirloom tomatoes), you’ll need some real, hard facts.
The Chautauquan Daily
The Chautauquan Daily • July 1, 2014
When we talk about food in America, it’s often to celebrate our abundant agriculture or explore a cuisine. When we talk about hunger, we often turn our eyes abroad to developing nations. But there is a quiet, persistent problem with hunger here at home — and last fallNational Geographic sent me to explore it.
For the magazine’s “Feeding a Hungry Planet” series, I visited three parts of the United States — rural Iowa, suburban Houston and New York City’s Bronx borough. Building on the field work of photographers Amy Toensing, Kitra Cahana and Stephanie Sinclair, I met with food bank directors and elementary school principals; shared meals with families who forage for vegetables in the woods and families who subsist on food bank mac and cheese; and talked to experts from around the country.
Once on the road, some of the most basic ideas I had heard about Americans and food were turned on their head.
Zócalo Public Square
Zócalo Public Square Up For Discussion • June 2, 2014
It’s easy to confuse a food fad with a revolution. Restaurant and food media exist to cover new food fads much as TMZ exists to cover celebrity snafus—trends must die, or there will be no news. But a food revolution? That’s harder to market to viewers, because it requires a fundamental shift in our relationship with food.
OnEarth
On Earth • May 19, 2014
Back when Gwen Clements worked at the Perdue chicken plant in Beaver Dam, Kentucky, she stood beside a conveyor belt blanketed in chicken parts for eight hours each day. Usually she packed drumsticks, but whichever part of the bird she happened to be packing on a given shift, the smell was as constant as it was noxious: a combination of raw poultry and chlorine, the latter emanating from the pathogen-killing chemical bath that the carcasses—often contaminated with fecal matter—would receive during processing. Every one-and-a-half seconds or so, Clements would grab a piece of meat with her gloved hands
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