Food Rights Network

Food News Roundup

September 19, 2011

• Here’s a fun new version of USDA’s MyPlate:
   

  (Click the link for an analysis of USDA’s MyPlate and an improved version by a Harvard professor.)

• Michele Simon asks: Did Walmart buy urban agriculture group’s silence?
• This week the UN is considering epidemics of food-related chronic illness, i.e. diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Click the link for Marion Nestle’s excellent commentary… and her note that “In 2004, the U.N. caved in to pressures from food companies and weakened its guidelines and recommendations.” Think we can expect any different in 2011?
• Gender bent fish found downstream of a pharmaceutical plant. Scary.
• Arsenic in apple juice? Maybe because it’s all from China.
• Parke Wilde of the U.S. Food Policy blog has a GREAT rebuttal to the recent anti-locavore rant that appeared in Foreign Policy. Although it needs to be said: What benefits from GM seeds?
• Ed Bruske, school lunch reporter extraordinaire, tells how school lunch looks in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Darden restaurants (i.e. Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Bahama Breeze) received the First Lady’s praise for their agreement to cut calories. Anna Lappe doesn’t think the accolades are warranted. Is it really that impressive that they will reduce their calories so diners don’t eat slightly less than TWO DAYS worth of calories in ONE MEAL… and they need FIVE YEARS to do it?
• “USDA, FDA get an F on livestock antibiotics” says Tom Laskawy.

Filed under: In the News