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By Darby Minow Smithon 17 Jun 2015commentsShare
Chipotle uses more than 800,000 tortillas a day. Right now, those tortillas are made from 11 ingredients. Any cook worth her salt knows that you need just a handful of ingredients (including salt) to make home-made tortillas. The extra ingredients are only required when making tortillas on an industrial scale.
Now, Chipotle wants to change that. The company is teaming up with the Bread Lab — an offshoot of the Washington State University’s ag program that is one part cutting-edge science lab, one part bakery — to come up with a mass-producible tortilla that uses just whole-wheat flour, water, oil, and salt.
Of Chipotle’s recent (sometimes controversial) moves — including offering better employee benefits, going GMO-free, and dropping a pork supplier that didn’t meet the company’s animal welfare standards — this one registers on the good/bad meter as: Hell Yes, Chipotle!
Take it from here, New York Times:
Chipotle wants to raise the nutrition in fast food, so its tortillas are made from whole wheat. Dr. Stephen Jones, a plant geneticist who is the director of the Bread Lab said: “The skilled baker can make the perfect anything with white flour. Whole wheat is more challenging.”
Bethany Econopouly, a doctoral student whose research in wheat breeding is underwritten by the Clif Bar Family Foundation and, now, Chipotle, was enlisted. From the beginning, she understood that there was a certain degree of consumer stealth required. “We’re working with hard, white wheats,” Ms. Econopouly said. “Those are really great because they’re light in color, so people who are naturally averse to whole wheat are less aware of them.”
She has identified a couple of varieties that work well for the tortilla and is evaluating about 100 more in the field now that will be harvested in August.
If the Bread Lab can crack the code, and if Chipotle offers better prices for the winning strain of wheat, this could be huge for wheat farmers.
For more on the Bread Lab, watch our explainer on why it’s on the cutting edge of wheat science:
Source:
Chipotle’s Quest to Develop a Better Tortilla
, New York Times.
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Mother Jones
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On Friday, Mike Huckabee, the Baptist preacher and former Republican governor of Arkansas, let it slip that he recently formed an exploratory committee in anticipation of a potential presidential bid. He followed up by appearing on Bret Baier’s evening Fox News show to announce that… he will soon be announcing whether or not he will run for president.
The 59-year-old has hinted for over a year that he might run in 2016 after he sat out the 2012 race and failed to win the nomination in 2008. Since leaving office in 2007, Huckabee has maintained a high profile, hosting a Fox show for several years and writing books, including the 2015 manifesto God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy.
Huckabee would face tough competition in a field that could draw plenty of social conservatives—think Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry—but he has had some success before, having taken the 2008 Iowa GOP caucuses decisively.
Here’s some of the best of Mother Jones‘ coverage of Mike Huckabee.
His leadership PAC didn’t give much to fellow Republicans, but it gave nearly $400,000 to his family.
Huckabee criticized Hillary Clinton over the email scandal. Maybe he shouldn’t have, considering his administration’s hard drives were destroyed on his way out of office.
He made some serious dough while he was toying with a presidential run.
Could Huckabee beat Rick Santorum in the Duggar Primary?
When he ran in 2008, did Huckabee the candidate shun Huckabee the pastor?
If you need a good chaser after that, read up on the fringe historian beloved by social conservatives, including Huckabee.
See the article here:
Mike Huckabee Has Launched a 2016 Exploratory Committee. Read These 6 Stories About Him Now.
Mother Jones
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Matt Yglesias takes a look at an economic blueprint from the Center or American Progress and suggests it’s a useful proxy for Hillary Clinton’s upcoming presidential campaign:
In some ways, it defies stereotypes of the Clintons as standard-bearers for neoliberal centrism by endorsing fiscal stimulus and a strong pro-labor union agenda while downplaying the strong education-reform streak of the Obama administration. But it’s also notable for the Obama-era liberal ambitions it pushes aside. In the main recommendations for the United States, there’s no cap-and-trade or carbon tax in here, no public option for health care, and no effort to break up or shrink the largest banks. Nor is there an ambitious agenda to tackle poverty.
Instead, you get a multi-pronged push to boost middle-class incomes. After an extended period in which Democratic Party politics has been dominated by health care for the poor, environmental regulation, and internecine fights about Wall Street, Hillarynomics looks like back-to-basics middle-class populism. It should in many ways further infuriate Clinton’s left-wing intellectual critics — and then further infuriate them by turning out to be an agenda that makes the party’s voting base perfectly happy.
….The report is especially striking for its endorsement of labor market regulations not normally associated with the Summers wing of Democratic thinking….On the non-wage front, inclusive growth calls for paid (gender-neutral) parental leave, expanded Family and Medical Leave Act eligibility, and universal paid sick days and paid vacation days — all loosely under the banner of increasing women’s labor force participation. Clinton has, in the past, field-tested feminist frames as a means of selling big government.
None of this should come as a surprise. The Great Recession spawned a great deal of government help to the poor from the Obama administration but not a lot for the middle class, and politically the biggest problem Democrats now face is offering concrete programs for the middle class to compete with yet another round of tax cut proposals from the Republican field.
But the truth is that this helps the poor too, in the long run. Middle-class workers with stagnant incomes have become less and less willing to support more spending on the poor. That’s just human nature. But if Hillary can successfully get the economy into a higher gear and funnel some of that money to the middle class, eventually things will ease up and it will become easier to win support for higher benefits to the poor.
I don’t know if Hillary’s proposals will go far enough, but they’re the right thing to do. For the time being at least, Washington needs to focus on the middle class for a while.
Read this article:
Hillary Clinton Is Focusing on the Middle Class—And That’s a Good Thing
Mother Jones
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Considering it seems like everyone from Tim Cook to the whole state of Connecticut is incensed by a new law that allows Indiana businesses to refuse service to LGBT customers based on “religious grounds,” it seems crazy to think anyone is still out there actually defending it—at least openly. Alas, here’s Bryan Fischer of “gay sex is terrorism” notoriety and head of the American Family Association, to prove otherwise:
The pressure Big Gay has put on Indiana is proof they are not about “marriage equality” but “homosexual supremacy.”
— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer)
Indiana will soon find it is impossible to satisfy the homosexual lobby. They will immediately be back for more. And more.
— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer)
Indiana to Christian wedding vendors: in any conflict between you and Big Gay, we’re coming down on the side of Big Gay.
— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer)
Gov. Mike Pence may now be trying to play down criticism the law discriminates against gay people, support from people like Fischer make it difficult to make such an argument.
This article:
Backer of Indiana Law Says "It’s Impossible to Satisfy the Homosexual Lobby"
Mother Jones
This is a breaking news story. We’ll be updating this post regularly.
Ellen Pao’s $16 million lawsuit against her former employer, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, has captivated Silicon Valley for the past month. Pao, now the interim CEO of Reddit, sued her former employer on charges of gender discrimination and retaliation. Many have called the trial Silicon Valley’s version of the Anita Hill hearings, in part because it offers a rare glimpse into the challenges faced by women at the Valley’s elite companies, where cases of this rank usually settle rather than go public. At 2 PM pacific today, the jury returned a verdict, voting no on all four counts of alleged gender discrimination and retaliation by Kleiner Perkins.
But the official verdict barely lasted a half hour, thanks to an error in basic math: The judge asked each juror to list their individual verdict for the court. This revealed that on the fourth count—which alleges that Pao’s termination was retaliation for raising concerns about gender discrimination and filing her lawsuit—4 of the 12 jurors, two men and two women, voted yes. The judge ruled that 8-4 was an insufficient majority—a consensus among nine jurors is needed—and asked the jurors to return to the deliberation room for further discussion. That means that there hasn’t yet been an official verdict. We’ll keep updating this post as news unfolds.
Update, Friday, 7:45 p.m. EDT: After the first jury miscount, an official verdict is in and venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins has prevailed on all counts. The jury returned to the courtroom after several hours of additional deliberations to deliver the verdict. Juror 3, one of the four original “yes” votes on the retaliation count, flipped his vote. With a consensus of nine jurors or more on all counts, the case is over. Ellen Pao gave a brief statement to the press, thanking her family and friends for their support throughout the trial. “I have told my story and thousands of people have heard me,” she said. “If I’ve helped level the playing field for women and minorities in venture capital, then the battle was worth it.”
View this article:
Ellen Pao Loses Her Gender Discrimination Lawsuit Against Silicon Valley VC Firm Kleiner Perkins
Mother Jones
President Obama released a statement Friday on the death of Leonard Nimoy. The actor, best known for his role as Spock on Star Trek died at the age of 83 earlier today.
Long before being nerdy was cool, there was Leonard Nimoy. Leonard was a lifelong lover of the arts and humanities, a supporter of the sciences, generous with his talent and his time. And of course, Leonard was Spock. Cool, logical, big-eared and level-headed, the center of Star Trek’s optimistic, inclusive vision of humanity’s future.
I loved Spock.
In 2007, I had the chance to meet Leonard in person. It was only logical to greet him with the Vulcan salute, the universal sign for “Live long and prosper.” And after 83 years on this planet––and on his visits to many others––it’s clear Leonard Nimoy did just that. Michelle and I join his family, friends, and countless fans who miss him so dearly today.
Upon meeting for the first time, Nimoy said the president greeted him with the iconic Vulcan salute.
In the past, Obama has been criticized for being too “Spock-like” or methodical in his proceedings, to which the president once playfully responded, “Is that a crack on my ears?”
Nimoy’s death has sparked an outpouring of eulogies from fans, fellow actors, and politicans alike. Earlier, Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted:
Spock is gone – and so is our last chance for a Vulcan mind meld with a great son of Boston. Sad day. #LLAP
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma)
RIP.
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