Politics

Whenever I’m hunting for a movie to watch on a Friday night, I inevitably find myself scrolling through the documentaries on Netflix. Thankfully, there are quite a few great ones, particularly in the food space. Here are 10 food documentaries you should add to your Instant View queue: Jiro Dreams of Sushi Good for: Sushi lovers and those who believe discipline and hard work is the key to everything. Synopsis: Jiro Ono is arguably the greatest sushi chef in the world.

The Trump administration is directly aiming at food policy for the next area to loosen regulations. Last week, the federal government separately pinpointed two areas where they plan to make changes for consumers: school lunches and calorie labels on menus. The former will see looser rules, while implementation of the latter has been delayed. Here’s what you need to know about both.

Bryant Terry is an energetic and passionate man, self-described as an eco chef, author, and social justice activist. He first came to my attention in 2006 when he co-authored the book Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen with his friend Anna Lappe. He has since gone on to author two more vegan cookbooks, with a third one in the works. What does this spokesman for local, sustainable, and delicious food think are the top essentials for a modern, socially engaged, soulful kitchen?

In 2013, 49.1 million Americans lived in households struggling with hunger, a stark number which includes 15.8 million children and 4.8 million seniors. Food insecurity is a daily reality for about one in seven households. So why do we only seem to talk passionately about it when a celebrity is involved? If you paid any attention to the recent controversy surrounding Gwyneth Paltrow’s $29 SNAP grocery shopping challenge, you know what I mean.

Ina Garten and Taylor Swift have a few things in common. The pair has been good friends, ever since they cooked together for a now iconic spread in Food Network Magazine. They both churn out mega-hits (cookbooks and albums), have huge fan bases, are both (fairly) universally beloved, and until very recently, were both pretty mum on the topic of politics. Just last week Ina told HuffPo: “I don’t talk about politics.

Images and stories of Central American families split apart at the border have become the topic of conversation for families of all ethnicities over the past month. But how do parents handle such a delicate subject with their children at dinner? More than breakfast or lunch — almost always rushed affairs where conversations lean toward the superficial or mundane — dinner is what anchors families as a unit and as individuals.

After you cast your ballot today (and you did vote, right?) here are a few small ways to de-stress while the numbers roll in.

Have you seen these new TV ads? The backlash against high fructose corn syrup is getting its own backlash from the Corn Refiners Association…We’ve seen two ads so far. One involves two moms discussing HFCS over a jug of juice. The other has a couple debating the health risks of a popsicle (above). In both, the general script goes something like this (paraphrased):Person 1: “You’re serving me a product with high fructose corn syrup?

Here at The Kitchn, we’re passionate about local honey and love being part of the chain that connects a region’s flowers, bees, beekeepers, and consumers. (Joanna highlighted one of these regional producers, Chicago Honey Co-op, earlier this week.) Local honey can often be found at farmers’ markets and other specialty shops. We’ve also posted about an online Honey Locator that lets users search by state and type.

We’ve heard it before: Plastic containers can release chemicals into the food and liquids we store in them; It’s not smart to microwave food in plastic or leave plastics, including water bottles, out in the sun. I’ve avoided these behaviors, but thought I was safe using BPA free water bottles and take out containers. Well, a recent study reported by NPR suggests otherwise. It’s one of those articles you hate to read. NPR reports that a new study has found that most (most!

Location, location, location. Where you buy your liquor, how much you pay for it, and the selection available to you: these things are all determined by the region in which you live. Join us – and weigh in with your own experiences – as we take a closer look at the way liquor is sold in different U.S. states. (Readers who live in other parts of the world, we’d love to compare notes with you too.) Let’s suppose you’re looking to buy some gin.

A Germany grocery store has made a strong statement on racism and xenophobia by modifying their supermarket’s product lineup. Edeka, one of Germany’s largest grocers, recently pulled all foreign food items from the shelves at their store in Hamburg. The stint lasted one day, but it showed consumers how limited their culinary choices would be if diversity were eliminated from the food world.

There’s a lot of attention focused on an actress-cum-political-candidate’s “gross” bagel order. On September 9, 2018, New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon appeared on camera at a campaign stop at Zabar’s on the Upper West Side. There, Gothamist captured Nixon’s order of a cinnamon raisin bagel with lox and cream cheese, topping “the mess” with red onions, capers, and tomato.

It is difficult enough for adults to process the Trump administration’s recent actions of separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border, let alone put them into words that make sense to children. But last weekend a powerful movement emerged in support of reuniting the families separated at the border, centered around a summertime staple that even children can understand: the lemonade stand.

In the past several months, I have contacted my senators and representatives so often that even Resistbot has to be like “You again? Really?” And, if I develop some kind of thumb arthritis over the weekend, it could be from all the times I’ve texted the words “net neutrality” this month. I’m apprehensive and afraid of what could happen after the FCC voted to overturn the regulations ensuring net neutrality. What does that mean?

“Ethnic food” is a phrase most of us have heard, possibly even recently. But what does it mean, specifically? If “ethnic” means to come from a certain national or cultural tradition, then literally all food would be ethnic food.

Food waste is a global problem. To spotlight the issue, Anthony Bourdain has a new documentary — Wasted!: The Story of Food Waste — focusing on the matter. Slated to have a theatrical and video-on-demand release on October 13, the 90-minute film is directed by Anna Chai (The Mind of a Chef and The Layover) and Nari Kye (The Mind of a Chef and No Reservations), and produced by the team behind Bourdain’s popular CNN series Parts Unknown.

Back in 2003, a global movement called Meatless Monday called on people to abstain from eating meat once a week. An initiative created between The Monday Campaigns and the Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the goal was two-fold: to better our health and improve our environment.

In his first public appearance since leaving office, former President Barack Obama discussed the connection between food and global warming at a summit focused on climate change and food availability in Milan, Italy on Tuesday. Obama, who shared the stage at the Global Food Innovation Summit with his former chef Sam Kass after delivering opening remarks, discussed food from an environmental, policy, and tech angle.

Independent restaurateurs are rallying together to create a safe space for immigrant workers amidst President Donald Trump’s immigration policy. Trump signed an executive order last week that would pull federal funding from sanctuary cities in America that refuse to cooperate with immigration authorities to deport non-violent undocumented immigrants.

Starbucks has responded to Trump’s immigration ban by promising to hire more refugees. President Trump signed an executive order on Friday that stops the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the United States and bans immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority nations (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen) for 90 days.

When you have your morning coffee or cereal, what kind of milk do you normally add to each? Do you reach for regular cow’s milk, or do you go for one of the many (many) different kinds of plant-based milks now available? A few years ago most people might have answered cow’s milk, but the popularity of plant-based milk — like almond and soy — has changed the tide.

Here at Kitchn we don’t normally cover politics unless it’s related in part to food policy. But last week when #DumpKelloggs was trending on Twitter, we took notice. A little confused about why social media ostensibly has it out for cornflakes? Here’s an explanation. It all started when food company and pantry staple Kellogg’s announced last Tuesday that it would remove its ads from right-wing political website Breitbart.

Does your stomach lean more conservative or more liberal? Time looked at customer order data from Grubhub, a food delivery service, to help determine if you eat like a Democrat or a Republican. According to Time,”out of 175 popular items ordered on Grubhub, 75% had significant correlations to the partisanship of those districts.” The very short quiz presents you with 10 different pairs of popular delivery items and asks you to choose one of the pairs.

Ben Corey-Moran is the Director of Coffee Supply at Fair Trade USA where it’s his job to develop and strengthen the supply chain between the small coffee farmers of Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America and coffee buyers from all over the world, some of them as large as Walmart. He’s been in the coffee business since 2003 and has an intimate understanding of the whole picture, from the harvest of the fruit to how to create the perfect cup at home.

Several years ago, we posted Dan Barber’s amazing TED talk about how he witnessed a more humane way to produce the delicious but controversial fatted goose liver called foie gras. The talk is classic Dan Barber, full of self-deprecating humor and his clearly passionate relationship to food. After his discovery of this more humane method, which eschews gavage, or force feeding, Barber (sort of) vows to never serve conventional foie gras in his restaurants again.

Ever bite into a blueberry muffin and taste a clump of blue sugar? This week the LA Times reported on findings that this phenomenon is widespread across some major supermarket brands. Many popular brands of muffins, bagels, and cereals labeled as blueberry don’t actually contain any of the little berries. Did you know?This isn’t much of a surprise to most of us, but what is news to me is the lengths food companies will go to describe these falsities in ingredient lists.

Pick up a bottle of Italian wine and you’re likely to see one of these designations somewhere on the label. What exactly to these letters stand for and what do they mean? Read on…In the second half of the 20th century, Italy decided to establish a series of laws to safeguard the quality and authenticity of their wine.These safeguards take the form of protected zones where growers and producers must adhere to strict regulations in order to be certified by these laws.

It keeps happening: discoveries like the one reported on the front page of today’s New York Times (High Mercury Levels Are Found in Tuna Sushi) keep telling us that eating tuna just isn’t a great idea.After being pregnant last year, I all but completely removed it from my diet. But lately, there are some interesting “lower” and “lowest” mercury options out there, which Burrows’s article neglects to discuss.