Here at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating, we’re keenly aware of the rapidly shifting food sovereignty situations occurring around the globe. Whether we’re talking about organic foods, poverty, or the environment, these websites are all discussing topics worthy of our attention and action. The list below is not in a particular order, but we’re offering them up for educational purposes and to give some recognition to those who work so hard to help keep us awake when it comes to what we put in our mouths and how it impacts the planet. They’re all ranked highly in our eyes!
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1. American FarmLand Trust – American Farmland Trust is the leading national organization dedicated to saving America’s farm and ranch land, promoting healthy farming practices and supporting farms and farmers. As the vital link among farmers, conservationists and policy-makers, we’re focused on ensuring the availability of fresh food, a healthy environment and strong local economies across the nation.
2. The Lunch Tray – Bettina Elias Siegal is a former lawyer, freelance writer and a parent of two children, aged 11 and 13 – she moved into the cultural awareness when she was chosen as Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution “Blog of the Month”. Actively working to improve school food in Houston ISD, The Lunch Tray is about school food reform, broader questions of food policy, and even what’s going on in Congress.
3. Beth Hoffman – Beth Hoffman has been reporting on food and agriculture for more than ten years, for NPR, The World, Latino USA, Living on Earth. She studies the food system in depth as a fellow and co-lecturer in the Africa Reporting Project at UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism and has completed several documentary projects including a year cooking with immigrant women in their homes and telling their stories. Awesome writer!
4. Canning Across America – Canning Across America is a nationwide, ad hoc collective of cooks, gardeners and food lovers committed to the revival of the lost art of “putting up” food. Our goal is to promote safe food preservation and the joys of community building through food. We believe in celebrating the bounty of local and seasonal produce and taking greater control of our food supply. “Together, we can.”
5. Center for Food & Environment - The Center for Food & Environment, housed at Teachers College Columbia University, is a leading research and education center in the area of food and nutrition education, research, and policy change.
6. Center for a Liveable Future - The Center for a Liveable Future discusses the interaction between diet, health and the growing body of work being developed around human-generated environmental hazards and their impact on the health of communities. Less studied and documented is how our industrialized food production systems impact human health and the natural environment. Population growth worldwide and growing disparities between rich and poor imbue our work with a sense of urgency to find solutions and inform public policy.
7. Chelsea Green Publishing – Looking to expand your eco-friendly section of your home library? Chelsea Green has been the publishing leader for books on the politics and practice of sustainable living. They lead the industry both in terms of content—foundational books on renewable energy, green building, organic agriculture, eco-cuisine, and ethical business.
8. Cooking Up a Story – Cooking Up A Story (CUpS) is an online television series offering a variety of original short form video programming that examines our food system, up close and personal. CUpS brings you unique documentary stories, talks, interviews, and leading edge agricultural information from farmers and ranchers, food artisans, and others whose lives center around sustainable food and agriculture.
9. John Robbins’ Food Revolution – Bestselling author, social activist, and humanitarian, John Robbins has been on the forefront of our food culture, industrial complex and how to eat for good health and a healthy planet for more than 20 years. This is a great portal to discover all his newest work and ventures.
10. Culinate – Culinate is engaged in the ongoing conversation about eating well. They offer up great articles, cooking tips, interviews, recipes, podcasts, and food news, After all, food is fundamental, but there’s more to dinner than meets the eye. “Where does our food come from? How is it produced? What does the phrase “you are what you eat” mean in the 21st century?” These are just these kinds of questions that the Culinate community is interested in asking.
11. Eat Drink Politics – Michele Simon is a public health lawyer specializing in legal strategies to counter corporate tactics that harm the public’s health. She has been researching and writing about the food industry and food politics for nearly 20 years. While Eat Drink Politics is a private consulting firm, you got to check out the blog!
12. EcoTrust – Ecotrust’s mission is to inspire fresh thinking that creates economic opportunity, social equity and environmental well-being. Their goal is to foster a natural model of development that creates more resilient communities, economies, and ecosystems here and around the world.
13. The Edible Schoolyard – The Edible Schoolyard Berkeley (ESY) is a one-acre organic garden and kitchen classroom for urban public school students at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School. This model program for edible education is fully funded by the Edible Schoolyard Project. At ESY Berkeley, students participate in all aspects of growing, harvesting, and preparing nutritious, seasonal produce during the academic day and in after-school classes, in order to foster a deeper appreciation of how the natural world sustains us and promotes the environmental and social well-being of our school community.
14. The Ethicurean – The Ethicurean is a group blog about the politics of food; whether your passion is learning more about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the Farm Bill, E. coli outbreaks, cloned meat, the milk wars (raw, rBGH-free), eating locally, and organic vs. conventional labeling – well, then you’re in the right place!
15. The Feminist Kitchen – Between keeping up with two young sons, writing about food for the local daily newspaper, working with the local food blogging community and being a feminist in her own kitchen, Addie uses the Feminist Kitchen as a platform to write about the sometimes sticky and always changing intersection of women and food.
16. Food & Agriculture – The Union of Concerned Scientists puts rigorous, independent science to work to solve our planet’s most pressing problems. Joining with citizens across the country, we combine technical analysis and effective advocacy to create innovative, practical solutions for a healthy, safe, and sustainable future.
17. Food & Environment Reporting Network – The Food & Environment Reporting Network, Inc., is an independent, non-profit news organization that produces investigative reporting on food, agriculture, and environmental health. Our stories fall under the classic mandate of investigative reporting–to reveal corruption, abuse of power, and exploitation wherever it happens; to expose activities and subjects that the powerful work to keep hidden or which are simply overlooked by major media; and to give a voice to the voiceless.
18. Food Democracy Now! - Food Democracy Now! is a grassroots movement initiated by farmers, writers, chefs, eaters and policy advocates who recognize the profound sense of urgency in creating a new food system that is capable of meeting the changing needs of American society as it relates to food, health, animal welfare and the environment.
19. Food First - The Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First, is a “people’s think-and-do tank.” Their mission is to end the injustices that cause hunger, poverty and environmental degradation throughout the world; a world free of hunger is possible if farmers and communities take back control of the food systems presently dominated by transnational agri-foods industries. We carry out research, analysis, advocacy and education with communities and social movements for informed citizen engagement with the institutions and policies that control production, distribution and access to food.
20. Food Inc. – In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment.
21. Food for Thought - Tom Philpott is the cofounder of Maverick Farms, a center for sustainable food education in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. He was formerly a columnist and editor for the online environmental site Grist and his work on food politics has appeared in Newsweek, Gastronomica, and the Guardian.
22. Food Politics – Marion Nestle – Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health (the department she chaired from 1988-2003) and Professor of Sociology at New York University. A beloved member of the field of nutrition and health, she is the author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety, What to Eat, and Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics, among others. She writes a monthly Food Matters column for the San Francisco Chronicle, and blogs daily (almost) at www.foodpolitics.com and for The Atlantic.
23. The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation – The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation is a nonprofit charity dedicated to planting edible, fruitful trees and plants to benefit the environment and all its inhabitants. Our primary mission is to plant and help others plant a collective total of 18 billion fruit trees across the world (approximately 3 for every person alive) and encourage their growth under organic standards.
24. The Giving Table - The Giving Table cooks up delicious ways to make a difference by empowering everyone to do good with food!
25. The GreenHorns – The Greenhorns is a non-traditional grassroots non-profit organization made up of young farmers and a diversity of collaborators. Their mission is to recruit, promote and support the new generation of young farmers by producing avant-garde programming, video, audio, web content, publications, events, and art projects that increase the odds for success and enhance the profile and social lives of America’s young farmers.
26. Growing Cities – Growing Cities is a feature-length documentary that examines the role of urban farming in America and asks how much power it has to revitalize our cities and change the way we eat.
27. Grow a Farmer - Since 1967, UC Santa Cruz has been a destination for those interested in learning organic farming and gardening skills through the Apprenticeship training program at the UCSC Farm and Garden. The Apprenticeship is the premiere experiential education program of UCSC’s Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS). The Grow a Farmer website serves Apprenticeship alumni along with the growing community of beginning farmers with resources, event information, and a beginning farmer forum.
28. Gary Yourofsky – Vocal Vegan Advocate and Animal Rights Activist, Gary Yourofsky has given 2,388 lectures to more than 60,000 people at 178 schools in 30 states and 5 Israeli cities, including the U. of Alabama, U. of Florida and Georgia Tech. As of June 2013, his lecture has been translated into more than 30 languages for over 6 million YouTube hits. Lecturing is a softer approach for Yourofsky, who has been arrested numerous times for random acts of kindness and compassion, and banished by five countries from entering their borders. An incredible speaker.
29. GRIST – Grist has been dishing out environmental news and commentary with a wry twist since 1999 — which, to be frank, was way before most people cared about such things. Now that green is in every headline and on every store shelf (bamboo hair gel, anyone?), Grist is the one site you can count on to help you make sense of it all.
30. Homegrown – Farm Aid created Homegrown.org to be a place where we can connect to the land and each other – today it continues to be a gathering place for celebrating the “culture” in agriculture and sharing skills like growing, cooking and food preservation.
31. Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall’s Landshare & Fruitshare Programs – Although it’s only happening in the UK – it’s a great model to reconnect communities with the oldest reason to gather of them all – food! Landshare seeks to connect those who have land to share with those who need land for cultivating food. Since its launch through River Cottage in 2009 it has grown into a thriving community of more than 55,000 growers, sharers and helpers. And in 2013 – Hugh and Team launched Fruitshare: a collaborative project to get our kids engaged with fruit growing, bringing together our fruity partners to make a real difference across the country. Hopefully this will really catch on in other countries too!
32. Jane Black - Jane Black is a food writer who covers food politics, trends and sustainability issues. Currently, she’s working on a book about one town in West Virginia’s struggle to change the way it eats and whether the food “revolution” can cross geographical, cultural and class boundaries. Great writing!
33. Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution – Jamie Oliver, the beloved Naked Chef, wants to mobilize the huge response to the Food Revolution so far and turn it into a movement for change in which America leads the world. It will bring together millions of people and inspire the nation to fight obesity with better food. At its heart is a powerful strategy to get people cooking again.
34. Journey to Forever – Journey to Forever is an overland expedition through Asia and Africa to Cape Town, South Africa. It’s organised by Handmade Projects, a small international non-profit organisation that also runs a small organic research farm and appropriate technology development centre, and operates this website. This also has one of the largest article databases we’ve ever seen on farming, nutrition and soil health!
35. Marler Blog – Bill Marler provides commentary on food poisoning, public outbreaks and their litigation. He is an accomplished personal injury and products liability attorney. He began litigating foodborne illness cases in 1993 with a focus on representing individuals, mostly children, in litigation resulting from E. coli, Salmonella, Shigella, hepatitis A, and other food-contamination cases, and has represented victims of nearly every large food-borne illness outbreak across the country.
36. Michael Pollan – A powerful voice in the field of local foods, health and cultural nutriiton for the past twenty-five years, Michael Pollan has also been writing books and articles about the places where nature and culture intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in the built environment. He is the author the forthcoming book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (available April 23, 2013) and of four New York Times bestsellers: Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (2010); In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008); The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) and The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001).
37. Vandana Shiva’s Nandanya – Home to the work of Dr. Vandana Shiva, Navdanya, meaning “9 Seeds” (symbolizes the protection of biological and cultural diversity) and also the “new gift” (for seed as commons, based on the right to save and share seeds. In today’s context of biological and ecological destruction, seed savers are the true givers of seed. This gift or “dana” of Navadhanyas (9 seeds) is the ultimate gift – it is a gift of life, of heritage and continuity. Conserving seed is conserving biodiversity, conserving knowledge of the seed and its utilization, conserving culture, conserving sustainability.
38. Politics of the Plate - Stints working on a dairy farm and a commercial fishing boat as a young man convinced Barry Estabrook that writing about how food was produced was a hell of a lot easier than actually producing it. Tomatoland, Barry’s book about how industrial agriculture has ruined the tomato in all ways–gastronomic, environmental, and in terms of labor abuse–was published in the summer of 2011 by Andrews McMeel. He lives on a 30-acre tract in Vermont where he gardens, tends a dozen laying hens, taps maple trees, and (in an effort to reduce his alcohol footprint) brews hard cider from his own apples that no one except him likes.
39. Permaculture Research Institute – The Mission of the Permaculture Research Institute is to work with individuals and communities worldwide, to expand the knowledge and practice of integrated, sustainable agriculture and culture using the whole-systems approach of permaculture design. This will provide solutions for permanent abundance by training local people to become leaders of sustainable development in their communities and countries. If you haven’t seen Geoff Lawton’s YouTube: “Greening the Desert” – it’s a must see!
40. Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain – Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown is an Emmy Award winning American travel and food show on CNN which premiered in 2013. In the show, Anthony Bourdain travels to places that are not tourist attractions, which one source claims are unknown to most people, hence the title. Locations include Myanmar, Colombia, Morocco, Libya, the Congo, Detroit and Jerusalem.
41. The Sistah Vegan Project – The Sistah Vegan blog isn’t about veganism as much as it is about what life and phenomenon look like through the consciousness of black vegan girls and women. They’re also interested in using this platform of posts and videos to break down everything, using critical race, feminist, decolonial, as well as vegan frameworks.
42. The Salt from NPR – The Salt is a blog from the NPR Science Desk about what we eat and why we eat it. With a pinch of skepticism and a dash of fun, The Salt covers food news from the farm to the plate and beyond.
43. Slow Food USA - Slow Food USA is working to change the food system through a network of volunteer chapters all over the country. It is part of a global, grassroots movement with tens of thousands of members around the world.
44. The Weston A Price Foundation – The Weston A. Price Foundation was founded to disseminate the research of nutrition pioneer Dr. Weston Price, whose studies of isolated non-industrialized peoples established the parameters of human health and determined the optimum characteristics of human diets. The Foundation is dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to the human diet through education, research and activism. They’re on the forefront of the Raw Milk campaign and national food rights, in addition to providing nutrition instruction, organic and biodynamic farming, pasture-feeding of livestock, community-supported farms, honest and informative labeling, prepared parenting and nurturing therapies. Incredible resource!
45. Whole Systems Design – Ben Falk and his team at WSD identify, design, and develop human habitats – landscape and infrastructure systems – that yield perennial abundance in adaptive, resilient and secure places for a future of peak oil, climate instability, and deepening economic insolvency. They design and implement regenerative food, fuel, and shelter systems that operate on current solar energy. These are homesteads, farms and schools fit for a challenging future of peak oil, climate change and economic transition. They also host their Permaculture Design Certification Training on site. Please check out the videos and Ben Falk’s book: The Resilient Farm and Homestead: An Innovative Permaculture and Whole Systems Design Approach.
46. We Are What We Eat – The Movie – We Are What We Eat is a film in progress. It focuses on our food systems because agriculture touches everything. Every thing we eat has a consequence, a consequence to our physical being, a reverse consequence to the soil that food was grown in and everything in between and beyond. Each decision we make in the process of buying and eating food enforces a specific paradigm. This film is an odyssey, and a quest for clarity in what seems to be a very hazy time in our adaptation as a species on this planet.
47. The Sustainable Table – Sustainable Table celebrates local sustainable food, educates consumers about the benefits of sustainable agriculture and works to build community through food. Our new site offers brand new content, updates to many of our pages, and tried-and-true tools like Eat Well Guide and The Meatrix movies.
…. and more to come!
We’re almost there but we need your help to complete the list!
Where do you go stay abreast of all the food world news?
Let us know: info@psychologyofeating.com
ENJOY!
IPE STAFF
P.S. -
If you haven’t had a chance to check out our FREE information packed video series – The Dynamic Eating Psychology Breakthrough – you can sign up for it HERE. It’s a great way to get a better sense of the work we do here at the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. If you’re inspired by this work and want to learn about how you can become certified as an Eating Psychology Coach, please go HERE to learn more. And if you’re interested in working on your own personal relationship with food, check out our breakthrough 8-week program designed for the public – Transform Your Relationship with Food HERE.