Food and Agriculture

The upscale restaurant and fine-dining scene is undergoing a major change.  Over the past several years, a wave of well-known, upscale restaurants have announced transitions to plant-based menus. Many vegan and vegetarian restaurants — like Pietro Leemann’s Joia in Milan Italy, the first vegetarian restaurant to earn a Michelin star in Europe, or King’s Joy […]

A new study finds how nanoplastics journey up the food chain, from being absorbed from the soil by lettuce, moving to insects, and eventually winding up in fish. The authors note this could pose potential health risks if this process is replicated with other crops and organisms. There’s been growing concern about the presence of […]

A new startup in Israel called BioBetter wants to use tobacco crops to make cultivated meats less expensive. The company plans to use tobacco plants as plant-based growth factors (GFs) required in cellular agriculture, which produces cultivated meat. Cultivated meat is made from animal cells arranged in similar structures as animal tissues to produce real […]

If you want to eat only sustainable seafood, American lobster (Homarus americanus) is now off the menu. The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s influential consumer and retail guide Seafood Watch has added the crimson crustaceans to its “Red List” of seafoods to avoid because of the dangers that lobster pots pose to critically endangered North Atlantic right […]

They’re exactly what they sound like.  Ecovillages are intentional communities designed to be environmentally, socially, and/or economically sustainable. The concept gained popularity in the 1960s and 70s when communes became more widespread, although many traditional, rural communities have long engaged in these practices. Following the publication of the landmark study “Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities” by […]

Billions of dollars are spent each year on food and beverage advertising in order to sway people’s food choices. In an effort to reduce the consumption of meat and the greenhouse gas emissions it produces, the Dutch city of Haarlem will become the world’s first to ban advertisements for meat in public spaces. Haarlem, the […]

What Is the Local Food Movement?  The local food movement is the push to eat food that is grown and harvested nearby to where it is purchased. It is often contrasted with the contemporary mainstream food system, in which avocados from Mexico are purchased in January from a big-box grocery store in New England. It […]

By Elizabeth Claire Alberts On April 10, 2019, a fishing vessel known as Da Wang left Taiwan to sail out into distant waters in search of tuna. Two months into the voyage, a disturbance occurred: the first mate reportedly beat one of the crew members so badly that he died from his injuries. The following […]