Physician, Heal ThySelf

Are the teabaggers ready to stop throwing tomatoes and start growing tomatoes? Glenn Beck’s latest sponsor, The Survival Seed Bank, is banking on Tea Party paranoia to sell a product it calls the “Full Acre Crisis Garden.” As Stephen Colbert noted on Wednesday, “nothing moves product like the hot stink of fear.”
For $164, you get [...]

At a farmers market in Los Angeles, Chip Brantley bit into a plum-apricot hybrid, known as a “pluot,” and contrary to expectations found that it was not mealy or tasteless but remarkably sweet and juicy. As Brantley knows, lately consumers have been experiencing unmemorable plum-eating experiences. Why do the nicest looking plums often taste unremarkable?
In [...]

A public interest and environmental advocacy group says San Francisco’s free compost, used by community, backyard and school gardens in the Bay Area, is processed sewage sludge – the product of anything flushed, poured or dumped into the wastewater system, including industrial, chemical and pharmaceutical toxins.
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Gramercy Tavern is voted the “most popular” restaurant in New York all the time. It’s a restaurant with regulars like most don’t have anymore. People go there to eat in an unfazed New York, where restaurant eating remains a polished, “Now I shall dine,” sort of affair. Popularity is an unfortunate thing to vote on, [...]

The failure of the Copenhagen climate talks taught us one thing-that hoping for intelligent responses to climate change from the world’s governments is an exercise in futility. It’s just not going to happen in time.
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View full post on Organic Consumers Association News Headlines

The city government of Seattle has declared 2010 the Year of Urban Agriculture. The program, developed through the Department of Neighborhoods, aims to make locally-grown produce affordable and available to as many of Seattle’s diverse residents as possible, while supporting the urban and exurban farmers who grow it. New zoning laws will allow backyard farmers [...]

Just got these letters in: 
” Dear Dr. Daniel: I  watched your interview on View from the Bay.    Something you said alarmed me. You said giving soy to babies is bad because it’s the ONLY thing they’re getting. Further, you won’t see the damage till puberty. In boys, they may develop slower or [...]

In light of the new USDA rules (see yesterday’s post), I’ve been collecting information about organics.
PRODUCTION: the USDA’s latest (2008) survey results come in 59 tables giving data on organic acres, productivity, and anything else you might want to know about the this piece of the agricultural sector – crops, vegetables, and animals. Interesting [...]

This week, Jamie Oliver received a prize of $100,000 from TED, a non-profit about spreading ideas, for his efforts in bringing attention to the obesity crisis. He also gave a talk at the TED conference, which is famous for their twenty-minute videos. His talk focused on obesity in America, specifically on what kids are eating [...]

Chris Masterjohn’s posting “Does Meat Really Leach Calcium From the Bones?” is “must reading” for anyone who believes in the bone-building benefits of vegetarian or plant-based diets. I’d like to add some information about sulfur to the discussion. Sulfur, after all, is widely considered to be the evil element found in eggs, [...]