A new decade brings new opportunities and challenges. The interaction between diet and health received significant attention during “The Aughts.” What will we do during this next decade to respond to the call for action for a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle? This is the fourth in a continuing series highlighting 10 ways you can help this [...]

It is disappointing to see members of the media spread misinformation due to their own ignorance, gullibility, or, worse, disinterest in digging for the truth — especially when it has to do with the health of children. Case in point, a reporter from a South Dakota talk radio show apparently believes that Baltimore City Public [...]

This week, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced plans to drastically change the nation’s food aid policy.  As Reuters reported, he said the U.S. will focus more resources on helping developing countries increase their agricultural capacity, as opposed to relying on emergency food aid grown on U.S. soil.
 “‘It is a more comprehensive, holistic view of food [...]

Video games, fattening snack foods and the parents themselves are often blamed for the dramatic spike in overweight and obese kids during the past 30 years or so. But speakers at the National Conference on Childhood Obesity last week in Washington, D.C. attempted to frame the issue in a different light, looking at the bigger [...]

During my TV-news days, I supported the old axiom; it must be a balanced report if we’re getting just as much negative feedback as we are positive responses. I found the same rule of thumb to hold true on Capitol Hill. Good legislation usually means each side had to make serious concessions, inevitably leaving a [...]

Now is the time to grow organic.  According to a new report released by the USDA, the demand for organically produced food continues to outpace supply.   Organic food sales have increased more than five-fold since the late 1990s, while organic production has slightly more than doubled in that time.
Organic food accounted for three percent of total U.S. food sales [...]

“This is not rocket science. You put some seed in the ground. Water. Add sun. Plant grows. Eat food.”
The quote above is from Tony Geraci, the charismatic new director of food and nutrition for Baltimore schools, in a City Paper article from last week which does a pretty good job summing up his no-nonsense philosophy [...]

I was privileged to spend the past few days at the Inaugural Meeting of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), a well-organized group of stakeholders from around the country ranging from farmers to policy wonks (who are sometimes one in the same) working in coalition on important issues. In addition to learning an incredible amount [...]

At the 9th annual Dodge Lecture yesterday at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (video will be posted on CLF’s website soon), world renowned scientist and environmentalist Vandana Shiva stated that the most important issues in sustainable agriculture today are the disappearance of nutrition in food (a major public health concern) and localization of [...]

On Tuesday Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said he would like to see a single food safety agency as opposed to the current system where food safety for the millions of Americans is overseen by two separate agencies, the USDA and the FDA.  “We are the only industrial nation to have two systems,” said Secretary Vilsack, [...]