Technology

Eating Green

• Contractors selected for USDA food box program raise more red flags May 29, 2020
  About two weeks ago, Scott DeJoseph, owner of Premier Catering & Events in Prescott, Arizona, got a strange, short email from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA): He’d won a million-dollar contract to deliver food boxes in his area.  It came as a surprise. He hadn’t applied to be a contractor for the agency’s […]
  H. Claire Brown
• FDA rolls back ingredient and calorie labeling regulations, citing supply chain disruptions May 28, 2020
  Four days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic in March, the head of one of the food industry’s biggest lobby groups met with President Donald Trump to discuss supply chain concerns. Chief among the trade association’s requests was that the federal government suspend all decisions on new food regulations […]
  Jessica Fu
• My advice for coping with Covid-19 anxiety and depression: Eat like a raccoon May 27, 2020
  The day before New York’s shelter-in-place order took effect, I went to Flushing to buy 200 frozen dumplings. The next day I placed an online order for three pounds of fancy cheese. I told myself these lavish purchases were an act of compassion, a way to get cash in the hands of small businesses I […]
  Max Falkowitz
• The Shutdown Notebook: Last week’s reality would have been this week’s misstep, as Gavin Kaysen abandons one re-opening plan for another May 27, 2020
  If a single word was thrust into the limelight by Covid-19, it is surely “pivot.” There are pivots big and small, from campus life to online universities, from supermarket lines to contactless pick-up lines—and three months into the virus era, they show no sign of pivoting into oblivion. We wake up to newly-discovered pivots, obsolete […]
  Karen Stabiner and Gavin Kaysen
• I won’t remember how unforgiving Covid-19 was to people like me. Instead, I’ll remember Sunday dinner. May 27, 2020
  When my great-grandmother Little Mama died, so did her Sunday dinners.  After church services—which, when I was a kid in Minneapolis, rivaled one-day music festivals without the fresh air, fried candy bars, or pop music—we’d gather and eat together as a family. Little Mama made it mandatory for all eight of her children to attend. […]
  Leslie Lamar Parker
• At least three recent E. coli outbreaks in lettuce linked to nearby cattle May 22, 2020
  Remember Thanksgiving? We were crowding airports and sharing food. Our dinner tables were buzzing with never-ending impeachment chatter. WeWork was imploding. We were blissfully unaware that the virus that causes Covid-19 was starting to circulate in Wuhan.  But at the time, a pathogen of a different sort was making all the headlines: Just days before […]
  H. Claire Brown
• In Bristol Bay, Alaska, locals fear Covid-19 will arrive along with 12,000 temporary salmon workers May 22, 2020
  Usually Ronalda Angasan sees her family once a year, during the two months she spends fishing in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska each summer. She grew up there, so like the sockeye salmon she’s aiming to catch, her own internal homing device tells her it’s time to return for a ritual that has been […]
  Bailey Berg
• Pandemics aren’t limited to people: How the world’s most famous seed vault defends plants against their next big outbreak May 21, 2020
  In March, plant physiologist Stephanie Greene zipped herself into a padded snowsuit made to withstand sub-zero temperatures and trudged from a shuttle van parked at the bottom of an icy hill to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault—a small, secure site chiseled into rock and buried under permafrost about 650 miles from the North Pole. Outside […]
  Simran Sethi
• Shorter, warmer winters are killing Georgia peaches. Three new varieties could help fix that. May 20, 2020
  Last week, the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) research arm released three new varieties of yellow peaches. Optimistically named Liberty Joy, Crimson Joy, and Rich Joy, the trio check all the boxes expected of a good peach: They’re reliably round, sweet yet tart, buttery in texture, and firm enough to withstand the impacts of packing and […]
  Jessica Fu
• Fast-growing animals make the meat industry billions. But as slaughter plants close, scientists seek new ways to put livestock on a diet. May 20, 2020
  Since graduating with his PhD and starting work as an animal nutritionist, Bart Borg’s work has primarily revolved around one goal: helping animals grow as big as they can, as fast as they can, for as little cost as possible. Then the pandemic hit. When processing plants across the nation began closing or reducing capacity in […]
  Emma Penrod