Tag Archives: kiera-butler

Introducing "Bite," Our New Podcast About Food Politics

by RamonKraegen901 Posted on March 6, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Earlier this winter, an essay on the food and culture website First We Feast laid out some complaints about contemporary food journalism: “Food media has felt, for lack of a better word, soft,” editor Chris Schonberger wrote. To find investigative reporting on food issues, readers must look outside the “food media” bubble. As legendary culinary writer Ruth Reichl told Schonberger and company: “If you’re interested in the politics of food, you can go to Mother Jones or something.”

Indeed, Mother Jones has delved into food and agriculture’s thornier topics for decades. We’ve taken full advantage of our tagline of “smart, fearless journalism” to expose the nut industry’s voracious thirst, observe fast-food’s sway on nutrition policy, illuminate the environmental toll of snacks’ excessive packaging, and examine the industry cover-up of sugar’s health risks. And now, we’re excited to take this knack for no-bullshit reporting to a brand new medium: Bite podcast.

Bite is a podcast for people who think hard about their food. In each biweekly episode, my co-hosts Tom Philpott and Kiera Butler and I will interview a writer, scientist, farmer, or chef to uncover the surprising stories behind what ends up on your plate. We’ll help you digest the major food news of the week. We’re interested in how your food intersects with other important topics like identity, social justice, health, corporate influence, and climate change.

Don’t worry—we’ll have some fun, too. We’re happy to indulge in some full-on foodie-ism from time to time. (Check out our recipes for wine-braised short ribs and cranberry salsa.) We’ll reflect on the weirdest things our guests have eaten as of late. And we’ll try to solve your food mysteries—especially if you get in touch with us on Twitter or Facebook, or by sending an email to bite@motherjones.com.

Subscribe to Bite on iTunes to hear our teaser, and get ready for our first episode, which will drop very soon. We hope you’re hungry.

View original article: 

Introducing "Bite," Our New Podcast About Food Politics

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Introducing "Bite," Our New Podcast About Food Politics

Good Stuff on the Intertubes Today

by KindraPVLC Posted on August 24, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Everyone is writing about my pet topics today!

Aaron Carroll busts the myth that you should drink eight glasses of water every day.
Kiera Butler sings the praises of food irradiation.
Dylan Matthews writes that Intuit and H&R Block continue to oppose any effort to make taxes easier to file.
Larry Summers makes the case for continued low interest rates because “the global economy has difficulty generating demand for all that can be produced.”

Go read them all.

Source:  

Good Stuff on the Intertubes Today

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Good Stuff on the Intertubes Today

America’s BBQ Grills Create as Much Carbon as a Big Coal Plant

by LucilleMickle Posted on July 2, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

As your neighbors fire up their barbecues this Independence Day, the most popular day in America to grill, they won’t just send the scent of tri-tip or grilled corn over the fence in your direction—they’ll also send smoke. As my colleague Kiera Butler wrote about here, even the “cleanest” gas grills emit pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every hour they’re used. So how many emissions can we expect from dinner barbecues on the 4th?

Roughly eighty percent of American households own barbecues or smokers, according to the Hearth, Patio, and Barbecue Association. Let’s say all 92.5 million of them decide to grill on Saturday. A 2013 study by HPBA found that 61 percent of users opted for gas grills, 42 percent for charcoal, and 10 percent for electric (some respondents had multiple grills). If that reflected all households across the United States, and each household used its grill for an hour on the 4th of July, then we’d get a calculation like this:

(56.425M gas grills*5.6 pounds of CO2) + (38.85M charcoal grills*11 pounds CO2) + (9.25M electric grills*15 pounds CO2 ) = 882 million pounds of CO2

That’s roughly as many emissions as burning 2145 railcars of coal, or running one coal-fired power plant for a month.

But let’s be honest—no one wants to give up summer grilling, and these emissions stats probably won’t convince your neighbor to turn off the barbecue. You might instead offer up ideas on recipes with ingredients that are friendlier to the planet—like these 4 veggie burgers that don’t suck.

Source:  

America’s BBQ Grills Create as Much Carbon as a Big Coal Plant

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on America’s BBQ Grills Create as Much Carbon as a Big Coal Plant