Friday, April 1, 2011

Headlines catching my attention recently

A few things showed up in my twitter feed and on the front page of a couple online news sites today that caught my eye.

It would seem that super foods and whole body (holistic) nutrition is becoming more and more mainstream, as is the desire for wholesome local food.

First Huffington Post: Why Holistic Nutrition is the Best Approach, an interesting article on needing to treat the whole body and not individual symptoms with individual nutrients/foods. Exactly what we are learning in school after only two sessions.

Second, a new super food! And a yummy one too. Now I wouldn't suggest you go out and pour a jug of maple syrup on everything. In my opinion it still should be used sparingly. It's still a sugar, just a pure, unrefined one. I also read a follow up article that was quite negative regarding this story, but that's OK, because it gets people talking about good, natural, unrefined yummy food. As long as people stop buying the "syrup," aka corn-sugar and the even worse the "sugar-free syrup," which is simply jar of chemicals, and support our local producers, life will be grand.

Finally, is a story straight out of my home province and close to my heart. Local free range eggs. The story kind of "blew up" a few weeks ago when a local B&B owner who fed his visitors eggs from his own chickens was told to cease the practice because the eggs were not inspected. If you know anything about the food system you'll know that food safety issues do not arise from small local farmers, but from large-scale unnatural operations.

A great deal of resistance has risen out of this story, which quite frankly is amazing. Watching it from a distance and from a friend and local foodie on PEI, it's quite fascinating how it's becoming an issue that's been brought to the forefront of islanders' minds and perhaps might make people think twice when they pick up their next carton of eggs or other items at the grocery store.

4 comments:

  1. Ooh - I got a mention in your blog! Yay! I love reading your posts :) The egg issue is still very much alive and I heard some promising words this weekend from one of the small-scale producers. Sounds like all the public pressure on the government may, in fact, be having an impact. I'll keep you updated! In the meantime, check out this town's ordinance on eating local - they have got it right:

    http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/sedgewick-maine-passes-revolutionary-food-freedom-ordinance/

    http://www.sedgwickmaine.org/images/stories/local-food-ordinance.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've seen those links circulating around on Facebook last week. Too cool for school! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey check out the link below - ignore my introduction, but the talk by Paul Offer might interest you along with Rob Paterson's talk, Sally's talk and some of the other folks from A Local MEAL. I wish I'd had an RHN do one of the talks! Next time maybe :)

    http://alocalmeal.wordpress.com/get-involved/

    ReplyDelete
  4. Awesome. Watched all that were posted last night. I went to school with Jen. I didn't recognize her name at first, because she obviously got married. But wow! See PEI is not so bad! :)

    ReplyDelete