Eat Food and Die

By Baylen J. Linnekin / On May 4th, 2016
What happens when warnings about processed meat's cancer risk collides with California's absurd Prop 65 (over)warning law?

Seedless bananas and monocultures: a perfectly bad combination

By Andy Dyer / On March 28th, 2016
The Cavendish banana was truly fortunate to have been discovered by humans. Without our adoption, this sweet and attractive—but seedless—banana would have disappeared into the jungle long ago because, as a genetic mistake, it was doomed to be an asexual and probably short-lived anomaly. Instead, like winning the big lottery, the Cavendish became the most famous of all bananas, despite having no evolutionary future whatsoever. However, the time has come, the course has been run, and the Cavendish is now likely to disappear, but only to be replaced in the grocery display by another genetic anomaly, another as-yet-unknown seedless banana.

How Local Food Systems Build Resilience for Turbulent Times

By Laurie Mazur / On July 6th, 2015
Consider, for a moment, that lettuce leaf on your plate. It probably traveled a long way to get there—about 1,500 miles, on average.1 In fact, your dinner has probably seen more of the world than you have: the average American meal contains ingredients from at least five countries outside the United States.2 The complex, globalized system that puts food on our plates is a technical and logistical marvel, delivering unprecedented quantities of food at historically low prices.3,4

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