Yikes! We are now in deficit spending of our planet’s natural resources. As of August 13th, 2015 humans around the world had already used up the equivalent of this entire year’s worth of available resources if life and the survival of the planet are to be sustained. From our food supply to fuel for transportation and business operating practices, our choices are drawing down our resource supply faster than it can replenish itself.
Read about how EARTH OVERSHOOT DAY each year marks the beginning of when we start dipping into the future to continue our way of life, according to the calculator created by the Global Footprint Network think-tank. Their calculator tools are used by the United Nations and many individual countries to understand and evaluate how our collective lifestyle choices worldwide are seeing humanity’s demands for resources far exceed our Earth’s ability to sustain us.
Check out a chart of our World Footprint and search by nation to see exactly we are threatening our very survival by our own choices.
Or, hop over to the resource-rich Overshoot Day website that will help each of us learn how to make choices every day to enable our planet to provide for future generations. From TAKE ACTION to FOR KIDS AND TEACHERS, there are ideas and activities to create positive change.
Many restaurants in our greater Bay Area and other cities are slowly shifting their practices in favor of greater wage equality for all restaurant workers and better salaries. This is good food justice news and a move in the right direction for a living wage. Read the article in Bay Area Bites from KQED.
Our farmers markets are ripe with all colors of melons this time of year and there are as many different tastes as there are variations of orange, honey and green.
Netted melons (Reticulatus) are wrapped in a network of surface veins and come in delicious shades.
Here are a dozen varieties reviewed and pictured so you’ll be ready for your next market shopping trip!
Whether they are topping yogurt, ice cream or a salad, seeds of many kinds offer our bodies additional vitamins, minerals and many healthy nutrients that are often hard to find in other ingredients. Read the details about pumpkin, sunflower, hemp and sesame seeds.
In recent years, a body of research has shown that beneficial microbes play a critical role in how our bodies work. And it turns out there’s a lot of communication between our gut and our brain.
Organic farmers say they need crop varieties that were bred specifically for conditions on their farms. Clif Bar & Company decided to back their cause with up to $10 million in grants.
In a New York Times article a few months back, our local sustainable food system advocate-rockstar, Michael Pollan wrote about his journey in learning about how the microbial organisms in our intestines impact our overall feeling of health – or not. With references to the crowd-sourced American Gut Project and other research activities afoot in our land, Pollan links food’s nutrition content to our digestive systems so we can ponder our next meal from a new vantage point.
As temperatures climb through the summer months, we all think about putting more in the refrigerator for cold storage and that planned picnic a few days away. Here’s an article that offers tips for which foods fare better and how to package them for best results.
Scientists are trying to predict what might happen if genetically modified salmon escaped growth facilities. It’s a scenario often raised by critics who don’t want the FDA to approve sale of the fish.
The White House has ordered a review of the government’s system for regulating products of biotechnology, including genetically modified crops. That system has been controversial from the start.
"SLOW FOOD unites the pleasure of food with responsibility, sustainability and harmony with nature."
- Carlo Petrini, Slow Food International
Founder and President
