Sustainable Dish

Taco Bell is touting its new “Fresco” menu options as a legitimate path to weight loss yet somehow, I don’t think it’s the best diet plan.  I’m not even really sure where to begin wailing on this one – the factory farmed meat, the sodium, the processed food, the chemicals. All I’m going to say is that you must have a pretty poor diet to begin with if you belive Taco Bell is your weight loss salvation. Read more in the New York Times.

I recently found a Forbes op-ed entitled “America’s Agricultural Angst”, but instead of being angsty about Big Ag taking over the world, the author was angsty in the opposite direction. “The liberals are threatening to kill the American agriculture business! How will we feed the world?” Ok, I made that quote up, but you get the idea.

The Chinese government is kind of scary, and if they told me to stop putting melamine in my dairy products, I would probably follow their orders. According to the New York Times however, even after the melamine crackdown of 2008 after six children were killed and thousands sickened, companies are still tainting products with the dubious substance.

Mainstream mag Time gives props to grass-fed, even going so far as to say it might save the world. Perhaps this claim is a little strong, but the article makes a good argument for carbon sequestration in all that healthy land those cows tread upon.

James McWilliams, locavore-basher extraordinaire, contributed an entry on grass-fed beef  to the Freakonomics blog on the NYTimes. Not so much a legitimate argument, it seems to be more of a dig at terminology on corn-fed vs. grass-fed. Come on James, you can do better than that.

As you probably already know, First Lady Michelle Obama is on a crusade to lower the rates of childhood obesity. The blog Fooducate believes that she will fail, arguing that it is much simpler and more profitable for many industries to “fix” obesity than to “prevent” it. It’s a good point; how will the weight loss, pharmaceutical and junk food industries make any money if we’re all thin and happy – it would be a travesty!