Six months ago, South Los Angeles enacted a moratorium on new Fast Food Restaurants in effort to bring healthier choices to the neighborhood’s low-income residents and curb the high rate of obesity there. Councilwoman for L.A.’s 9th District, Jan Perry, spearheaded the action and spoke recently on KCRW’s Good Food about the legislation’s impact at mid-year.
The kids are fighting, your head is pounding, the car is overheating, and a McDonald’s is right across the road. What do you do? Make a tire screaming u-turn, of course, and forget every promise you ever made to never let your kids eat fast food.
Let’s face it, most of us are going to end up in a fast food restaurant whether we like it or not. But there are a few ways you can do to tweak things in a healthier direction.
Let’s read on to see seven different ways you can green your fast food.
If you’re in an area with a choice of restaurants, go for the one that offers what you want. Some great new organic fast food joints are popping up here and there.
You can also zero in on conventional fast food restaurants that are adding healthier menu items. Fatburgr.com is one web site that catalogs nutrition information for many different fast food chains in a user-friendly format.
The Journal of the American Dietetic Association just published a study that answered my question, “Why Eat at Fast-Food Restaurants: Reported Reasons among Frequent Consumers.”
According to the study, the main reasons people eat fast food:
Fast, easy, cheap. These are the defining terms for the relationship with our food for nearly one in four adults and children daily, and at least three times a week per person.
More study results after the jump.
Subway follows Taco Bell, Burger King, and McDonald’s by pledging to pay one cent more per tomato in order to give workers a living wage. However, the fight now turns to the growers themselves, who have objected to the campaign and refuse to pass the money on to the workers.
”We’re hopeful that the growers will stop resisting this change and help us to get the money to the workers, rather than setting up barriers,” said Julia Perkins, a Coalition of Immokalee Workers spokesperson. “With every new company that signs on, it provides a lot of incentive for a forward-thinking grower to be willing to pass on the penny per pound.”
Prices for regular diesel have been historically high nationwide, and all over the U.S. people are turning to backyard biodiesel as a way to make cheap fuel — a fairly straightforward process that can be accomplished for less than $1/gal.
One of the most copious sources of inedible oil to make biodiesel is the nasty, used fryer grease leftover from commercial kitchens — and what cheaper way to obtain it than stealing?
It’s early in the pre-dawn dark hours of the morning. A group of Northern California pseudohippies just finished a game of Zonk — or rather, the game just stopped because somebody quoted a line from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and everybody forgot what they were doing.
Yet, by a stroke of luck, the conversation about Harold and Kumar reminds the group of their real reason for staying up so late. They pack into a truck and head down to the local fast food joint looking to load up — but it’s not the food they’re loading up on, it’s the nasty, half-rotted, leftover fryer grease.
Editor’s Note: This post was provided by one of our paid sponsors, Earth Cinema Circle, the only DVD club dedicated to increasing social & environmental awareness through entertaining films. Written by Ariellie Ford.
Behind America’s 99-cent hamburgers and 72-ounce sodas is a key ingredient that silently fuels our fast-food nation — Corn. In KING CORN, we meet two college buddies, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who move from the east coast to the heartland to really learn where their food comes from. They relocate to northern Iowa, home of their great-grandfathers, with a mission. They will plant an acre of corn, follow their harvest into the world, and attempt to understand what all of us are really made of — Corn. This entertaining and informative film is now available from Earth Cinema Circle. The following is from an interview with Curt Ellis, co-producer of the film.
And you think you’re busy? Zoë Bradbury has three thousand strawberry transplants to plant, two acres of row crops to sow including a diversified mix of everything from carrots to beets to lettuce, thirteen and a half tons of lime to work into the soil for organic fertilizer and a team of draft horses galloping in any day now. And don’t forget the experimental celeriac patch. Add in the role of accountant, office manager and marketing chief and you cook up the range of farmer responsibilities resulting in their annual crazy spring schedule.
The farmers’ market season may not yet be in full swing so we don’t see — nor appreciate — the flurry of farm activity going on across the country as growers get ready to keep us freshly stocked all summer. But Bradbury, a fledgling Oregon farmer starting her growing venture this season, along with thousands of small-scale, family farmers across the country, have been putting in long work days for weeks.
There are times when I wonder if I am raising my child so different from the norm that her friends are going to think she is a geek. If she has friends. Usually these thoughts occur to me just as our lifestyle choices slam us up against typical American habits, especially food.
Like this moment from a couple years back. We’re at this petting zoo, like an educational farm. We still go there often. The kiddo gets to walk a lot and see lots of animals and plants that you find on farms, feed baby goats, ride a pony, drive little tractors … It’s fun, actually. Alright, I am a bit too tall for the tractors, but I get to push and make engine noises at least. The baby goats like me.
(recipe after the jump)
Do you really need all of those napkins, straws, forks, or packets of ketchup? Probably not. At least not that many. While convenient and hygienic, these small things add up to a lot of waste. The next time you stop in for a quick bite, cut back on the take-away of your take-out.
Reduce what you grab. Instead of taking handfuls, take just a few. One
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