Sept. 21, 2014
I not only enjoyed writing a quick piece for the delightful Eater website about what inspires my work, and why I think food can change the world, but am honored to be among 71 (!) other food world names, most of whom are way plenty more accomplished than me.
You can read the whole package here, or skip to my little bit.
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. Continue reading “72 Ways that Food Can Change the World: Tracie McMillan”
Weekends With Alice Witt, MSNBC • Sept. 8, 2014
A new study shows the food gap between the rich and the poor has worsened. I joined Alex Witt to discuss on MSNBC Weekend.
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. Continue reading “Gap in Diet Quality Between Wealthiest and Poorest Americans Doubles, Study Finds”
“The Craig Fahle Show” WDET • April 18, 2014
Author of New York Times’ bestseller, “The American Way of Eating,” Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism and Oakland County native Tracie McMillan joins Laura and Travis to discuss an article she recently wrote for The Guardian that debunks stereotypes about who wants and who’s buying organic food. She breaks down the article and talks about Wal-Mart’s role in bringing organic food to the masses. Continue reading “Wal-Mart and Organic Food”
The Guardian • Apr. 14, 2014
A man who applies pesticides to Iowa fields for $14 hour might not seem a likely organic enthusiast. But when I met Jim Dreier last fall, and he mentioned the backyard patch he and his wife had planted with vegetables in the spring, he told me he didn’t use any pesticides. When I asked him why, Dreier surprised me: “I don’t want to eat that shit,” he said. When I went grocery shopping with his wife, Christina, she surprised me, too, by picking out a bag of organic grapes even though she was paying with Snap – food stamps – for exactly the same reason.
Continue reading “Organic food: it’s not just for yuppies anymore”
I got a nice surprise this morning when a friend forwarded me The American Prospect’s Labor Day email highlighting their most important labor pieces from the last year. More to the point (for my purposes here, anyway) was the way they sold it: Continue reading “I’m blushing: Nice shout-out from The American Prospect”
This sharp piece from Slate’s LV Anderson brings class angst to the fore, and while I don’t envy her target — Jamie Oliver, the celebrity chef who entertained us by descending on America’s fattest town with dancing flash mobs brandishing woks and utensils—I am flattered to be held in esteemed company: Continue reading “Nice shout out from Slate’s LV Anderson as she tears into Jamie Oliver”
In These Times • June 26, 2013
“Is Michael Pollan a sexist pig?” asks Emily Matchar in her new book, Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity, published in May by Simon & Schuster. Matchar wants to know why many young, middle-class women are returning to the home after their feminist forebears rushed to leave it—and whether the revival of domestic arts like home cooking and canning is also reviving some of the sexism that kept women moored to these tasks. “It’s easy to forget in the face of today’s foodie culture,” Matchar writes, “that cooking is not fun when it’s mandatory.” Continue reading “Food Fight: Feminists and Femivores”
Slate • May 3, 2013
When I was 10, and my family needed to take some kind of snack to parent–teacher conferences, I pulled out the Betty Crocker Cookbook and made croissants from scratch. (They recalled, in taste and appearance, those from a Pillsbury tube.) By 14 I was buying whole pumpkins from farmers down the road to make pumpkin bread, and at 17 I pickled a dozen eggs as a joke for a friend. I have always been, in other words, a cook—and one who wants to do it herself. Continue reading “Kitchen Elemental”
