* The prize for the worst food innovation ever goes to the Iowa State Fair, which offered 57 varieties of deep-fried food-on-a-stick (think corn dogs), including deep fried butter! A half-stick of cold butter, covered in funnel cake batter, fried, then glazed with honey. I do not think they can come up with worse.
* Every major food manufacturer chipped in generously this past election season, in order to run ads to defeat California’s Proposition 37. $34.4 million dollars went to prevent a law that food labels indicate the presence of genetically modified ingredients. Prop 37 didn’t ban GMOs, it only affected labeling. You know, so people could make informed choices about what they eat. If GMOs have to be kept secret, perhaps we shouldn’t even be eating them at all.
* Muskegon is a great place to get great food, with a wonderful farmer’s market, a great organic farmer’s market, and a number of CSAs (community supported agriculture) to select from. If you are looking for good food, www.localharvest.org can help you find what is available near you. Enter your zip code and the website will search for local farmers, farmers markets, artisans, and others in your area.
* Say “Detroit” and a lot of people will think collpse, drugs, poverty. But Detroit is seeing an urban agricultural renewal. Detroiters have formed groups such as Grown in Detroit, a popular food co-op, Freedom Freedom, a community garden that supplies local restaurants, People’s Kitchen Detroit, a mobile food bus and gardens for low-cost, high-quality food, and more. All of this local innovation means good jobs and economic opportunities, as well as better nutrition.