Too Good to Go

A young group of entrepreneurs in the UK launched their digital app, Too Good to Go, this year to help cut down on the estimated 600,000 tonnes of food that is thrown away by restaurants every year. The iOS and Android app links hungry users to local restaurants that are willing to offer high-priced foods for less than half the normal price during specific time slots, typically during closing hours or after lunch and dinner. The new app empowers small-chains and independent restaurants to reduce the amount of trash they contribute into the waste-stream and even make money selling off the food they otherwise would’ve thrown away!

6 Common Food Additives Banned Abroad

For many consumers a trip to the supermarket (or markets because it’s not always a one-stop-shop) is never easy, simply because so much of our time is spent scouring the product labels for nutritional information and hazardous ingredients. Though Obama recently passed a law—or what is called by many food justice experts as the DARK act—to make labeling more clear, the issue remains that many harmful food additives are still legal here in the U.S. despite them being banned in other (ahem, European) countries. If you scan the shelves of any convenience store or watch TV advertisements then you might already notice the ubiquitous presence of conglomerate food companies like Kraft or Heinz (big offenders in hiding their use of GMOs while also pandering to average consumers with confusing labels like ‘all natural’) with these food additives. And more importantly, is the shockingly strong and unchecked influence that these large companies in the food industry have on the Food and Drug Administration, making this issue one of the biggest challenges we face as consumers.

The Injustice of Lifetime Food Stamps

Since President Clinton’s 1996 Welfare Reform Law, which banned drug-convicted individuals access to food stamps, at least eighteen states have chosen to opt out or soften their deprivation of food stamps, and Alaska is the most recent (yay!). According to many public health specialists and social justice experts, taking away disadvantaged individuals’ rights and reducing their access to food doesn’t make any sense. In fact, one study clearly shows that without food, the pressure to make money is increased and thus leads more often than not to health risks and criminal behavior.

Homes with a Harvest

Recent developments in Long Island City, Queens, have urban dwellers excited and working in on-site gardens, harvesting bounties of strawberries, string beans, Swiss chard and arugula. Built atop an affordable housing complex in a 2,300-square-foot space, the garden is run by GrowNYC and tended to by residents and club members. Similar to other community gardens, members must volunteer a certain number of hours per season and attend workshops in order to maintain membership and receive permission to work in the gardens. The pay-off is more than cultivating and sharing the harvest, rather the establishment of a community gathering space for green-thumb enthusiasts and the like!