Round up the usual suspects….

Added fats and sugars are in the news again, and as usual, the message can be summed up very simply: cook and eat whole foods in moderation; avoid highly processed foods with lots of fats and sugars.

A few pieces worth checking out:

Civil Eats: Where Do Americans Get Their Calories? - a super-cool interactive graphic looks at our collective plate from the 70s to today.

The Civil Eats chart is dissected a bit on Grist: The American diet in one chart, with lots of fats and sugars.

And more on the role of sugar in our diets (looooong but very worth the read!): NYT Magazine’s Is Sugar Toxic?

Central Paradox in the Central Valley

“Food Desert” is a term that’s quickly becoming familiar to those interested in the so-called “good food movement.” (If you’re interested in learning more about the problem of food deserts, check out this 2009 report by the USDA: “Access to Affordable and Nutritious Food.”)

Most people imagine that food deserts are something one finds in America’s inner cities (think Chicago and Detroit), but at Grist.org, writer Beth Hoffman describes the existence of a seemingly paradoxical food desert in the heart of California’s produce country: “The ‘food desert’ in the heart of California’s farming region.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone in the Central Valley of California, which reportedly produces up to 1/2 of the produce grown in America, going without fresh produce, but that is exactly what is happening. Kudos to Hoffman for writing so eloquently and concisely about the problem and raising our awareness of another facet of the food system’s problems, the question of social justice.