It’s looking to be a beautiful weekend, so really you should be out enjoying the changing leaves, the nip in the air, and the corn mazes / hay rides our local farms have to offer.

But, if you find yourself looking to catch up on your food news, start here:

A Lovely Squash Ripe for Roasting or Stuffing: The New York Times expounds on the glory of the delicata squash. I used to be a butternut kinda gal, but delicata has a hold on me this year, too.

Schools Ban Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, But Why Stop There?: A good question. Do you thin schools should stop selling “hyperpalatable” food? Added bonus: the featured photo of the Houston middle schooler’s “lunch” is kind of astounding.

The Full School Food Equation: Just swapping out chicken fingers and French fries for healthier calories isn’t enough — not when the typical elementary student gets only 3.4 hours of nutrition education and is bombarded by food ads promoting high-fat, sodium, or sugar products. Lots of good stuff here.

Americans Eat Their Weight in Genetically Engineered Food: On average, people eat an estimated 193 pounds of genetically engineered food in a 12-month period. Did you know that? I didn’t.

Test Your Food IQ: Do We Need More Farms To Grow Fruits And Veggies For All?: Think you know your food and farm facts? Take this quiz from the James Beard Foundation to find out.

A Simple Fix for Food: A new study at Iowa State University shows that incorporating crop rotations and livestock can reduce pesticide and fertilizer use, increase crop yields, and keep profits at the same rate. Put simply: we can grow all the food we need, and profitably, with far fewer chemicals.

Foodie Fortnight: Two solid weeks of Food Day events happening here in Charlottesville. If that doesn’t cement our claim to “locavore capital of the world” then I don’t know what does.

Food Day Twitter Conference: And while we’re on the Food Day tip, how about this: a five hour chat on Twitter featuring Food Day’s 5 main priorities. Use hashtag #FoodDayConf

Have a great weekend!

• Was anyone else outraged by Nina Federoff’s piece in the New York Times hawking GMOs? If so, you’ll enjoy this great rebuttal by Anna Lappe.
• A brilliant op-ed in the Baltimore Sun suggest that we can feed the world’s hungry — and local consumers — by improving the efficiency of harvesting, shipping and selling food.
• Are Paula Deen and her deep fried butter bombs part of the obesity problem…or could she be part of the solution? Jane Black thinks the latter.
• Tom Laskawy at Grist ponders the latest jump in farmers markets (and suggests some investment in distribution systems) — and then decides, guess what? We need more veggie eaters, too!
• Ever wondered just how big of a backyard you need to live off the land? Check out this neat infographic.
• What a great conference just announced by the crew at Slow Money. Who’s going? And who wants to take me with them?!
• Farm Hack! Check out how the Coolbot works.
• Wendell Berry is speaking at the American Draft Animal Days festival-thingy in Lexington on September 1oth. Tickets are only $10…

Also: UVA! Come see us at O’Hill on Monday evening to kick-off Meat-Free Mondays.

image credit: Sean Patrick Cook/Creative Commons

• More colleges offer organic and sustainable agriculture programs. Why? Because organic and sustainability experts are in demand.
• The standard American diet… in a pie chart (ha). Interesting: grains provided nearly 1/4 of daily calories for the average American in 2009. Also: more than 1000 calories came from added fats and sweeteners.
• Food Corps launched this week. Awesome!
• This post over at Food Safety News (more interesting than it sounds): Safe, Organic Animal Foods Too Expensive? Eat Less
• Colorado is bringing back fresh foods and actual cooking to school cafeterias.
• Scottsville’s finest! Our senior apprentice Brian at the Scottsville Farmer’s Market.

Have a great weekend!

Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds just announced a super suprise concert on August 20th at the Charlottesville nTelos Wireless Pavilion. This special concert will give fans a unique opportunity to help create a better world, by directing the full value of their ticket purchase to the charity of their choice through JustGive.org. There are so many amazing nonprofits in our neck of the woods, that really, no one can lose here. Of course, we do hope you’ll chose Local Food Hub as your nonprofit! Your support keeps our truck on the road, and gets more fresh, local food in school lunches, hospital cafeterias, and local stores throughout the Charlottesville region. Tickets on sale August 5th.

Now, onward for the links:

• Mark Bittman puts forward a solid piece advocating a new tax policy to cure the American diet woes: how about taxing junk food and subsidizing vegetables and other healthy foods? Even if you think “No way,” it’s worth a read.
• Poll: Majority of Consumers Prefer Organic Foods. Well, whattaya know?
• This year’s dead zone in the Chesapeake is on track to be the largest ever. What’s to blame? Lots of rain…and lots of chickens. Get more in Tom Philpott’s latest screed: Your Chicken Nuggets Are Killing Your Crab Cakes.
• Permaculture goes mainstream — in the New York Times, no less!
• The Atlantic goes inside Polyface Farm, mecca of sustainable agriculture.
• Ever wondered about the history of the watermelon?
• That’s not trash...that’s dinner!

image credit: hiromama/Creative Commons

• Chipotle vows to more than double its use of local produce this year…and they also choose to define local as “farms within 350 miles.” Hmm.
• The USDA’s handy Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food website is at risk from Republican budget cuts (despite the fact that the program doesn’t actually have…a budget).
• Anyone seen the new food magazine, Lucky Peach?
• Is organic food from China safe?
• 30,000 people have asked Trader Joe’s to stop wasting food. Join them…and while you’re at it, ask them to also start supporting local producers.
• Think GMOs should be labeled? (us, too).
• A new piece from the UVA Food Collab’s very own Ben Cohen: Trust Me. Hucksters!

Have a great weekend!

image: Emily Manley / Blueberries at Twin Springs Farm.

This week’s Clean Your Plate is dedicated to the supercenter behemoth. Why? Well, like everything about Walmart, it comes down to size. With more than 2,750 superstores nationwide, Walmart owns a whopping 25 percent share of the U.S. grocery market. In other words, of every dollar Americans spend on groceries, a quarter goes to Walmart.

So, a two-pronged pledge that involves 1) reducing sodium, trans fat and sugar in its Great Value brand of packaged foods and 2) somehow reducing the prices of fruits and vegetables, has the potential to make a huge dent in our waistlines. Or does it?

There’s no doubt that Americans are consuming too much bad stuff — but will changing the recipe (in relatively small ways) really make a difference? And, will making fruits and vegetables even cheaper (without making the prices on processed food more accurate) mean more people will buy and eat them? And don’t get me started on a particularly insidious part of the plan that involves addressing food deserts by, you guessed it, building more Walmarts.

In any case, other people have written more extensively and eloquently about the announcement — a selection of my favorites appears below. I think you’ll find the difference of opinion quite interesting.

Have something to say about the new plan? An article you think we should read? Let us know in the comments.

• Jane Black: Why Walmart got it right
• Tom Philpott: Walmart vows to use its power for good food, not evil
• The Atlantic: The meaning of Walmart’s healthy foods announcement
• Marion Nestle: What are we to think about Walmart’s healthy food initiatives
• Fooducate Blog: Walmart’s nutrition initiative: PR or substance?
• Melanie Warner: Why the Walmart-Michelle Obama plan for healthy eating is doomed

A few other Walmart articles you might enjoy:

• Fresh Air: The bigger the Wal-Mart, the fatter the shoppers
• Anthony Flaccavento: Walmart and the end of the local food movement
• Change.org: Walmart would kill jobs, lower wages in NY

image credit: mjb84/Creative Commons

Here we go:

• A great new years resolution piece by our favorite agri-poet, Wendell Berry. Highly recommended to lift your spirits.
• Keeping with the theme, check out Francis Lam’s 2011 goal: no more cheap chicken. Could you do it?
• Maybe you could just replace chicken with some invasive species instead! Forget locavores, invasivores are where it’s at!
• Great piece by the chairman of Burpee Seeds: Let’s make 2011 the year of the vegetable!
• Think you don’t have time to cook real food?  Think again.  Three easy, basic recipes to add to your repetoire.  Gotta love Bittman.
• The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love: a great book review.  Haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my list.
• Frustrations grow over schoolyard gardens in MD, thanks to some pretty silly comments and concerns by the Superintendent.  We’re lucky here in C’ville, that’s for sure.
• Suggestions and thoughts on eating locally in the winter (granted, not particularly helpful at this point).
• And finally: is anyone taking part in the Fourth Annual Dark Days Challenge? Basically you cook four meals each month (1 per week) focused on SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients, write about it on your blog. See the link for more details. Anyone?

Have a great weekend, and stay warm out there!

image credit: chiots run/Creative Commons

In other news, here’s your weekend reading material.  Stay cool!

• A downside to farmer’s market growth? An interesting article about local food access…
• A Michigan teen farms her backyard.  How awesome is this girl!?
• No more “lip-service locavores” — New York chefs are walking the walk.
• Fascinating study that suggests why processed food might be more fattening than whole, even when calories are the same.
• The Ethics of Eating: a nice NPR piece with Barbara Kingsolver.  Definitely worth a listen.
• Planning for next years garden, yet?  How about growing sweet potatoes in a bag?
• Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though — here’s a handy online calculator for planting your FALL garden!

Enjoy the weekend, folks. And a reminder: follow us on Twitter to get the full scoop!

• Survey says: fruit and veggie consumption dropped in 2009.  Bummer — let’s get that number up again in 2010.
• Find out how a grassroots push for student loan forgiveness could remove a barrier for new farmers…
• First year farmers: a nice piece on a small family farm chronicling the joys (and the growing pains) of starting up.
• All you can’t eat: the sad story of food waste in our country.
• Going hungry: The hunger action group FRAC just released some distressing numbers on the rise of hunger in the U.S: 1 in 5 people experienced food insecurity in the last year.

And finally — don’t miss the chance to apply for our paid apprenticeship out at the educational farm.  A seriously once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

image credit: Todd Ehlers/Creative Commons

• DIY Backyard Beekeeping slideshow and tutorial.  If you can garden, you can beekeep!
• New article from The Atlantic (if you haven’t banned them after the Caitlan Flanagan drama): Why Big Ag Won’t Feed the World.   Choice quote: “In 2008 more food was grown than ever before in history. In 2008 more people were obese than ever before in history. In 2008 more profit was made by food companies than ever before in history. And in 2008 more people went hungry than ever before in history.“
• You dropped food on the floor. Do you eat it?  Cheeky.
• Still going: a school gardener strikes back with evidence from the field.
• Tales from a DC school kitchen – the first of a six-part series in which Ed Bruske spends a week in the kitchen at H.D. Cooke Elementary School observing how food is prepared.  It’s not pretty.
• Food insecurity in Haiti, a nation of farmers, where hunger was part of everyday life even before the earthquake.

image credit: Christine Wells Vrooman