If we had our way, here are 5 floats we would have included in the parade today:

1) Willie Nelson on a bio-diesel float singing “It Ain’t Easy Being Green”

2) Alice Waters, Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan on a garden float launching locally grown produce into the audience.

3) Cheerleaders dressed as Tofu dancing to “Veggie Veggie Fruit Fruit”

4) A Wall-E giant balloon made out of plastic bags

5) A corporate bailout float in the shape of the Capitol Building with money pouring out of the windows. And CEOs running around to catch the falling cash.

takepart with City Harvest

Today’s Feeding the World Conference in London will address the hotly debated use of genetically modified(GM) crops to address the global food crisis (apologies to British readers who didn’t get the word sooner).  While proponents of GM crops argue that the benefits of increased yields and nutritional value outweigh concerns over genetic manipulation, recent studies are reinforcing support for organic solutions to  global food concerns.  I fully believe that GM crops are not the answer, and that we can find ways address the problems of worldwide hunger through organic methods.  There are too many risks involved with GM crops, which place control of food in the hands of a few multinational corporations and reduces food security.  Many people argue that we already produce enough food to feed everyone and that the real problem lies in the politics of distribution.

Here is an excerpt from a  panel discussion at the Slow Food Conference some of us attended over Labor Day weekend, with Vandana Shiva laying it down about GM technology:

takepart and learn more with Participant Media’s upcoming film Food, Inc.

Taking a bold and admirable stance, the U.N. has announced that subsidies and production of biofuels are contributing to increased food prices and food shortages.   Echoing the warning call of environmentalists and many scientists, the U.N. argues that the recent mad dash to produce biofuels, has pushed farmers to plant commodity crops like corn to create ethanol, leaving little room for food people can eat, including wheat.   Food supplies go down, prices shoot up, and more forests are cleared to plant biofuel crops. The U.N. report says that biofuel policies should be:

urgently reviewed in order to preserve the goal of world food security, protect poor farmers, promote broad-based rural development and ensure environmental sustainability,

We obviously want to end our addiction to fossil fuels, and while plants sounded like a very green replacement, the approach that has been taken is more like covering your body with nicotine patches to quit smoking:  

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Have diets gone the way of jazzercising? According to yesterday’s New York Times an increasing number of people are steering clear of deprivation diets and instead savoring more fresh, wholesome foods. Disillusioned by the broken promises of weight-loss fads and tired of calorie counting, many consumers are discovering that they can enjoy a delicious home-cooked meals prepared with healthful ingredients.

Following the wisdom of writers and chefs, like Alice Waters, Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle, and organizations like Slow Food, the country is rethinking their relationship with food. We are walking away from the unhealthy confines of processed and refined foods, and making our way out into the wide-open fields, or at least the closest farmer’s market.

Yesterday I met an inspiring mother and her two children, overweight and battling diabetes who, fed up with impractical diets, have decided to add more vegetables and whole grains to their diet. Working together and with a nutritionist they are devising a meal plan that includes healthier versions of food they already love. And they aren’t eliminating their favorite treats, but instead scaling the portions down and keeping out of the house, so a nibble of chocolate includes a healthy stroll around the block . They are discovering that despite being time and cash strapped, they are able to enjoy healthier meals together, with some simple adjustments.

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I just came back from Slow Food Nation in San Francisco. It was a delicious, inspiring, invigorating weekend. Anyone who has read the likes of Marion Nestle, Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and Alice Waters (to name a few) know that food politics is complicated. From organics and Monsanto to climate change and oil, and from GMOs and the Farm Bill to animal rights and human rights. Vandana Shiva, my hero and a true force of nature, eloquently said “Everything is food, everything is someone else’s food.”

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Slow Food Nation is heating things up in San Francisco next week with the first-ever American gathering to unite the growing sustainable food movement

Food enthusiasts, chefs, bloggers, filmmakers, policy makers and change makers will experience tastings, panels and films to introduce people to food that is good, clean and fair.

Participant media is hosting a conversation and screening on Sunday August 31st. Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan are joining us for a conversation with Food Inc director Robert Kenner. The discussion will be followed by a screening of Pressure Cooker.

Let us know if you will be at Slow Food Nation and takepart by sending us your healthy food tip!

See you in San Fran!

Related:
Hungry for Change

The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out our most popular articles of the week on a variety of subjects, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.

Katie:

Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan Surfaces 120 Years Later

Hallelujah For American Idol, Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen

* * *
Nicole:

Google Gives Free Voicemail to San Francisco Homeless

Gabriel Garcia Marquez Turnes 80

* * *
Giulia:

Patrick Swayze’s Cancer Battle

Koby Bryant’s PSA for ASR

* * *
Gina:

Reese’s Empowering Bracelet

“Chop Shop” - Dreams In a Place of Despair

* * *
Kerry:

Bamboo Laptop: Will Apple Be Green with Envy?

The Explosive Truth About Twinkies

There are simple carbohydrates, complex carbohydrates, and then there’s the Twinkie, made from military industrial-complex carbohydrates. It’s got some of the same ingredients as tracer bullets and artillery shells, as I learned from reading Steve Ettlinger’s Twinkie, Deconstructed.

Ettlinger’s book, just out in paperback, documents the 39 ingredients it now takes to make a Twinkie, many of them minerals and chemicals, some derived from crude oil. This petroleum-based pastry is about a million food miles removed from your grandma’s yellow sponge cake, which had a shelf life of maybe two days, max.

Today’s Twinkie, on the other hand, stays frighteningly “fresh” for an unnaturally long time (officially, 25 days, but we all know it’s really more like 25 months.) Real butter turns rancid too fast, so the Twinkie gets its butter-like taste and texture from petrochemical-based ingredients like diacetyl, a close cousin to acetylene welding gas, and butyric acid, a flavor which Ettlinger gleefully informs us is “a natural component of Parmesan cheese, rancid butter, and, unbelievably, vomit and perspiration.”

Twinkie, Deconstructed may amaze and appall you, but the fact is that while a Twinkie is not particularly good for you, it’s not all that bad for you, either. It’s just an amalgam of industrial ingredients and artificial flavors posing as an actual pastry. How did we ever fall for this oily oblong cake with the mystery “cream” filling?

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Is there no end to Michael Pollan’s influence? Now he’s got Rand Waddoup, Wal-Mart’s Senior Sustainability Director, pondering the sorry state of our current food chain. Waddoup posted an entry on Wal-Mart’s corporate blog today entitled “Sustainable Industrialized Food?” :

Having finished Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma just a few nights ago, I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic and in general about food, health, and sustainability. Quoting Michael Pollan from In Defense of Food, “We are eating a lot of edible food-like substances, which is to say highly processed things that might be called yogurt, might be called cereals, whatever, but in fact are very intricate products of food science that are really imitations of foods.”

So Waddoup, whose big box boss is the number one food retailer in the U.S., wants to know what Wal-Mart can do to make things better:

I know food, in general, is a very sensitive topic for a lot of people, but what do you think should and can be done in the short term to make the industrialized food chain better? What products should Wal-Mart have that they don’t to meet your desires for a more sustainable food assortment? If you could choose one item you would want removed from stores, what would it be?

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Well, of course, where else would you expect to find America’s first feng shui’d fast food outlet? A McDonald’s in the Los Angeles suburb of Hacienda Heights has opted to bag the golden arches’ classic red, yellow, and plast-icky décor in favor of “leather seats, earth tones, bamboo plants and water trickling down glass panels.”

 As the AP reports:

“the restaurant’s owners say the designs are aimed at creating a soothing setting that will encourage diners to linger over their burgers and fries, and come back again.   

One of the owners, Mark Brownstein, explained that he and his partners hope to benefit from their proximity to a renowned Buddhist temple, which is supposed to bring good luck. They’re also betting that the more serene setting will attract the area’s growing Asian population, as well as other customers seeking to “tap their inner Zen,”  as Brownstein put it.

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