Tag Archives: #BAD11

In Search of a Good Burger

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Today is Blog Action Day 2011. It is also World Food Day. This year’s theme for Blog Action Day is Food. Bloggers all over the world are writing about this one theme, from their own unique perspective. To find out more, visit the Blog Action Day website. Read more of our Blog Action Day posts on Heifer Blog here. 


The following post is by Tina Hall, communications director at Heifer International. 

I am a meat eater surrounded by vegetarians and vegans and even something called freegans that I learned about this week. Apparently freegans eat food that has been thrown into the garbage. This goes well beyond the 30-second rule and George Costanza eating an éclair plucked from a kitchen trash can: “No, no, no. It was not trash … It wasn’t down in. It was sort of on top.”
My burger love extends back to childhood with Happy Meals for good report cards and memories of holiday barbecues with my family. How can something so good be so bad?  The adult version of me has fought against a growing awareness of how those hamburgers I eat have an impact not only on our waistlines, but also the environment.
So imagine my happiness to find a restaurant called b.good on a recent trip to Boston. The owners Anthony and Jon explain on the company website, “We loved fast-food, but hated how it made us feel. So, we created a place where you can feel good about burgers and fries.” Their approach includes making all food themselves with the assistance of local farmers and growers.
Is it still meat? Yes, of course, but at least words like all-natural and local are involved in the conversation. And yes, it was a very good burger.
As we vote with our dollars in favor of locally or sustainably sourced meat (or at least not ground beef treated with ammonia), more and more restaurants are providing us with burgers not so far from home. Are there restaurants in your city or town serving local meats or other foods?

Reasons and Tools for Transitioning to Vegetarianism and Veganism

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Today is Blog Action Day 2011. It is also World Food Day. This year’s theme for Blog Action Day is Food. Bloggers all over the world are writing about this one theme, from their own unique perspective. To find out more, visit the Blog Action Day website. Read more of our Blog Action Day posts on Heifer Blog here. 


The following post is by Erin Snow, communications manager at Heifer International. 

The reasons people decideto adopt a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle can be numerous and, even despitesimilarities, very personal. I grew up eating meat at most meals, but it wasnever my favorite part. I always preferred the starches and leafy green vegetables.Looking back, I never really felt good about eating something that lost theirlife so that my meal could be “complete,” but I didn’t make any real changes tomy diet until 1999 when a medical issue caused me to look more closely at thefood I consumed and how it affected my health. As a single mom to aone-year-old daughter, I was determined to be proactive about our future andkeep whatever I could control in check. At that time, vegetarianism seemed thelogical answer. Over the past 12 years, I’ve been a lazy vegetarian, not eatingmeat, but definitely not eating enough vegetables and fruit to be healthy. I’vealso dabbled in pescetarianism, where seafood is okay, but all other flesh isout, a choice made while visiting my now-husband in New Orleans, where shrimp,crab, oysters and other aquatic jewels can be found as far as eye can see. Po’Boys and crawfish and gumbo, oh my! In an effort to be serious about my healthand safeguard against predisposed laziness, I’ve recently taken the next stepand become vegan.


Sticking to a diet that isvoid of animal-derived products has been educational, for sure. Fortunately, Ihave a couple of vegan friends, Rena Wrenand Meredith Simonds, who have happily shared recipes, websites, books andgeneral tips for being vegan in a carnivore world. Meredith’s website, The Vegan Pledge, features a pledge,blog and other resources. Alicia Silverstone’s The Kind Life website and book, The Kind Diet, have been my go-toresources on my vegan journey. Kris Carr, who went vegan for health reasons,also has an extremely helpful website, CrazySexy Life, and books, including CrazySexy Diet. Did you know there’s such a thing as wine that is not vegan?Isinglass, a collagen that comes from dehydrated swim bladders of fish, isoften used in the clarifying process for beer and wine. Barnivore is a great website guide forfinding insinglass-free vegan beer, wine and liquor.


These resources have beenvaluable tools on a lovely and healthy lifestyle journey that I’m having funfiguring out.

Eating with the Seasons

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Today is Blog Action Day 2011. It is also World Food Day. This year’s theme for Blog Action Day is Food. Bloggers all over the world are writing about this one theme, from their own unique perspective. To find out more, visit the Blog Action Day website. Read more of our Blog Action Day posts on Heifer Blog here. 


The following post is by Kim Machnik, senior coordinator of school programs at Heifer International. 

Photo by NancyK. Creative Commons.

It’sOctober, and where I come from, that means it’s time to celebrate. The applesare here. During the summer, we’re busy with sugar-sweet berries, juicy cornthe color of butter, and tomatoes bursting with sunshine, but those are pastnow. It’s the season of the apple, and with it the sensation of spicy steamfrom a mug of mulled cider against the backdrop of trees in their Sunday bestand air crisp as the pages of a new book. The first bite of a freshly pickedCortland apple is the trumpet call of autumn for me- anticipated but somehowunexpected.


Judgingon the basis of flavor alone, one has to conclude that to eat seasonally ispreferable. I can say with confidence that there is no one who prefers ananemic tomato shivering in a produce bin in February to a late-July braggart ofa fruit, puffed up with its own evident importance and months of sunshine andwarm soil. A limp head of November lettuce, compared to its rigid and robustMay counterpart? No contest. And it may just be me, but no apple from a supermarketshelf in March will ever compare to that jeweled treasure plucked from abeneficent tree in October.


Whata loss it has been to our society to step away from eating foods in their ownseasons! To wait through the dark months for the first stalk of tender greenasparagus, to cry with joy at the first appearance of a raspberry on its bush,to settle in to the first frozen night of early winter with a deep bowl ofcreamy-spicy squash soup- these are profoundly human, deeply culturalexperiences that help us to richly experience the passage of time. Born andraised in Massachusetts, when I bake my first apple pie of the year, I amconnected to generations of New Englanders who have celebrated the turning ofthe seasons in the same way. In Arkansas, my current home, it’s greens in thespring and peaches in the summer that have been celebrated and enjoyedcommunally for time immemorial. 


Whatis more worthy of our patience, anticipation, and joy than that which sustainsus? What greater earthly reward for our forbearance is there than a gift fromthe soil and sun, presented at its absolute prime? What keeps us connected toour homelands and communities better than the shared experience of the best oftheir bounty? I contend that there is nothing. If you disagree, I suggest you findyourself an orchard and pick some apples.

Food and Family

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Today is Blog Action Day 2011. It is also World Food Day. This year’s theme for Blog Action Day is Food. Bloggers all over the world are writing about this one theme, from their own unique perspective. To find out more, visit the Blog Action Day website. Read more of our Blog Action Day posts on Heifer Blog here. 


The following post is by Kim Nixon, assistant to the senior director of Branding and Communications at Heifer International. 


This is just about myfavorite time of the year. The holidays are almost here and for most peoplethis is when things start to get a little crazy – Halloween trick-or-treating,planning Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping, making sure Santa still exists toyour children, etc. For me, this is a time for family and food.   

I’m sure you’re thinking“Halloween is a time for family and food?” My best memories of Halloween arewearing costumes with my brothers and walking door to door asking for candy. Ilove the question “trick or treat.” As a kid I always wanted the treat becauseI loved having a big bag of candy. When I got home, I would always sort thecandy. I only realized later that my parents were checking the candy foranything to suggest that it may have been tampered with. For me, it was alwaysabout what kinds of candy I received – chocolate, suckers, hard candy, chewycandy, candy corn, etc. Finding pictures of us dressed up like vampires andangels remind me of a simpler time.


Thanksgiving is always afun time of the year. Apart from it being celebrated on or around my birthday,it’s a time for my extended family to get together. My dad is one of ninechildren. Every Thanksgiving, we all get together for the weekend – aunts,uncles, cousins, grandkids. We’re a growing bunch. For three days we laugh,play and cook together. Thanksgiving Day is particularly enticing. You wake upto the smell of chocolate gravy, biscuits, eggs, sausage, bacon and coffee.You’ve seen the cartoons where the main character is lifted from their bedfollowing the aroma of whatever is cooking. That’s my family. And it doesn’tstop there. As soon as breakfast is over, it’s time to start the Thanksgivingmeal which is somewhere between lunch and dinner. (I’d like to call it ‘lunner’or ‘dinch’ but it doesn’t have the same ring that ‘brunch’ has for the breakfast/lunchcombination.) With everyone in or around the kitchen, it’s fun to watch auntstelling cousins how to make the stuffing (which is a family secret) or kidsrunning in between everyone cooking. It’s a little crazy at times, but I’mthankful for my wonderful family. They truly make the meal with love. You wouldthink that Thanksgiving day is where it ends, but for my family this cooking andeating together continues until Sunday.

This brings us toChristmas. Christmas in my house is full of goodies. My mom cooks all of ourfavorite sweets – peanut butter balls, humdingers, and more. These are thingswe only make once or twice a year. Growing up, we made cookies for Santa. EachChristmas, I’d place them out and go to sleep with visions of sugar plumsdancing in my head. Well, it may not have been sugar plums but it wassomething. Each Christmas Day, Santa would have eaten a cookie or two and drankhis milk. And I would usually get something from my Christmas list under theChristmas tree. As you get older, some of these traditions stop…although Istill took pictures with Santa until I was well into my 20s. With atwo-year-old niece, we’ll be making cookies for Santa again.


Food has always been a wayto bring our family together whether it’s the joy of cooking our meal togetherin a cramped kitchen or enjoying the food prepared with conversation andlaughter. Most people think of Paula Deen when they think of Southern food –butter, butter and more butter. For me, Southern food is about family. It’s thememories you create that last long after the food is gone.

Waste Not, Want Not: Stop Wasting Food

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Today is Blog Action Day 2011. It is also World Food Day. This year’s theme for Blog Action Day is Food. Bloggers all over the world are writing about this one theme, from their own unique perspective. To find out more, visit the Blog Action Day website. Read more of our Blog Action Day posts on Heifer Blog here.

Here’s my disclaimer: my family and I are just as guilty of accidentally letting food go to waste. Typically, it’s produce I’ve purchased from the farmer’s market with very good intentions (I know, I even wrote that blog post about how to stop wasting produce, for shame!). So, this lecture is directed to myself every bit as much as it is to you.

We, the Americans living in the United States, waste 55 million tons of food–40 percent of our food supply–every year. Worldwide, roughly one-third of the food produced is lost or goes to waste. That’s disgusting on several levels. Recently, a software company did some calculations and found that food waste is responsible for 135 million tons of greenhouse gasses each year. That’s 1,800 pounds per average family–400 pounds per individual–every year. That’s not the food we’re eating… 135 million tons of greenhouse gasses per year from food we throw out.

Photo by Dan Bazira

In developing countries, post-harvest food loss is the biggest culprit. Inadequate food storage, poor roads, etc. leads to food going to waste between the field and the plate. While this is a sad fact, especially considering the number of hungry people in developing countries (906 million), these are surmountable obstacles. In Uganda, Heifer participants are building small-scale grain storage containers to protect their harvests from spoilage. Roads can be built. Not only would such investments help cut down on food losses, they could also provide an incentive for farmers to increase their production. If I were a dairy farmer with new roads by which to transport my milk to a milk collection facility or my vegetables to market, I might start raising more livestock or sowing more seeds when I could afford to.

Photo from Flickr/superk8nyc. Creative Commons.

In industrialized countries, food waste comes after it’s hit the grocery store isles, our refrigerators and shelves, and even our plates. With food prices on the rise and 13 million people in the Horn of Africa literally starving, wasting food is an even bigger no-no than usual. Once your checkout at your local store or market, that food is yours. Yours to prepare. Yours to eat. Your responsibility.

How you and I cut down on our household food waste? Well, we can purchase less to begin with. Shop from a grocery list based on a weekly meal plan. We can follow some easy (though sometimes easier written than followed) directions on how to store fresh produce. We can, gasp, lower our standards. I’d hate for anyone to get sick off my advice, but I can tell you I frequently eat leftovers well after “they” tell you to throw them away, and I’m doing just fine. Have a toddler? They don’t know the difference between fresh crackers and stale! Cooked too much for dinner? Invite your neighbors over and make new friends.

Has your food gone bad, despite your efforts? Keep it out of the landfill by composting it. Or get some backyard chickens.

Cut back on greenhouse gas emissions and save some money. That researcher I mentioned above: he found that “if household food waste could be cut in half, a family of four could save $600 a year.” What could you do with $600? I’d suggest a water buffalo, a sheep, a llama, some tree seedlings and a flock of geese.

Food Insecurity Still Exists in South Africa

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Aliziwe Matyholo, age 9

Today is Blog Action Day 2011. It is also World Food Day. This year’s theme for Blog Action Day is Food. Bloggers all over the world are writing about this one theme, from their own unique perspective. To find out more, visit the Blog Action Day website. Read more of our Blog Action Day posts on Heifer Blog here.

by Claire Hawkridge and Magdalena Wos – Heifer South Africa

Food security means knowing where your next meal is coming from. It means not having to worry about whether your children will get sick because they don’t have the right food to eat. Food security means growing up healthy and being able to take part in the bright future of the country. For 12 million South Africans, food security is a distant dream.

Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Repporteur on the Right to Food, visited South Africa in July. In his report to the government he said that 12 million people in this country are food insecure, 70 per cent of those in rural areas.* World Food Day on 16 October 2011 is a celebration for those who have enough. For those who are food insecure, it is another reminder that they do not have access to regular, safe, healthy food. Heifer International South Africa (Heifer) is working hard to raise awareness about this significant and growing problem in our country this World Food Day.

Food insecurity is particularly prevalent in rural South Africa. The country’s agricultural sector is divided into well-developed large-scale commercial activities and underdeveloped small scale producers, many of whom are subsistence farmers. This isn’t the way it works in many other countries, where many products are grown on small farms by small-scale commercial producers because it makes better economic sense. Small farms can be profitable businesses when the conditions are right.

In South Africa, the food system positions poor rural families as consumers rather than producers. This makes them extremely vulnerable to volatile food costs and the high cost of travelling to urban areas or purchasing from small, expensive local shops. Without the resources and skills to produce high-quality food locally or market access to sell their produce, poor rural families are doubly disadvantaged – they struggle to find employment or income generating opportunities and they must pay more for food because the transportation costs from urban centres are so high.

Heifer International South Africa believes it doesn’t have to be this way. The thousands of families we’ve helped to become small farmers over the past decade agree. Heifer works with impoverished rural communities to end hunger and poverty in South Africa and to care for the earth. With the help of our donors, we provide rural families with training, agricultural inputs (seeds, fruit tree saplings, livestock), assistance with business development and on-going support. Project members move from struggling to find enough to eat, to producing food for themselves and their immediate families and finally to micro agro-business development, where they work together to effectively market their produce, build up their businesses and eventually create jobs for other community members. Animals are used because of the income generating and food security opportunities they provide, both through animal products and through the use of manure as fertilizer to grow fruit and vegetables.

But it isn’t only the people who receive livestock from Heifer International South Africa who benefit. Building food secure communities means helping individual families achieve greater, more regular access to healthy food but it also means helping those families to help others around them. Through Heifer’s unique Passing on the Gift® concept, each family that receives animals (and begins to build a business) also gives an animal to another family. Families pass on food security and income generating opportunities to each other.

World Food Day is an important opportunity for all South Africans to learn about the real hunger and poverty that still exists in our country. It is also an opportunity to remember that it doesn’t have to be this way. There are ways to transform the food system and the lives of those who still face the fear and indignity of not knowing where their next meal will come from. Consumers can choose to buy food, whenever possible, from small farmers. Government, business and civil society can work together to improve market access for small farmer cooperatives. And everyone can donate to organisations like Heifer International South Africa who are working with communities to help them change their own situation through livestock, training, support and Passing on the Gift. For more information on what Heifer is doing to end food insecurity, please visit www.heifer.org.za.

This article originally appeared on the Heifer South Africa website.

The Famine and What You Can Do To Help

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Today is Blog Action Day 2011. It is also World Food Day. This year’s theme for Blog Action Day is Food. Bloggers all over the world are writing about this one theme, from their own unique perspective. To find out more, visit the Blog Action Day website. Read more of our Blog Action Day posts on Heifer Blog here.Food. It’s a basic necessity. Nearly one billion people don’t have enough of it.

But right now, 13 million of those hungry happen to be in the Horn of Africa, an area which is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. The drought, coupled with years of instability from armed conflicts that have prevented aid organizations from helping mitigate hunger, the area has been thrust into famine.
Mbaatian, her husband, Lmantasian, and Roniti
We know, we know. You’ve heard us and a million others talking about it since July. So, why should you care? Because you can help do something about it. Right now.
Mbaatian Lemungat is a Heifer beneficiary who lives in the rural village of Ngurunit, Kenya. Not long ago her family received camels and training in their care.
But Mbaatian’s family hasn’t escaped the clutches of the drought. Her eldest daughter died after drinking contaminated water from one of the nearby wells that hasn’t yet dried up.
Mbaatian is now caring for her granddaughter, Roniti, who is also sick. Right now the camels are still providing milk that is helping supplement the nutrition the little girl needs. But without intervention to help keep the camels alive, Roniti may die, too.
Even though Heifer typically focuses on long-term results and not immediate relief aid, helping those in the Horn of Africa is a priority. Keeping their livestock alive keeps them alive.
We’re launching a project in the area where Mbaatian and her family live to assist those suffering from the drought. Our Families in Crisis Fund will help:
  •  Provide access to grass feed and veterinary drugs by purchasing and distributing 270 tons of grass hay and veterinary supplies to 2,600 Samburu pastoralists in Ngurunit, Arsim and Tuum locations as short term response.
  • Provide access to water for both domestic (drinking water, hygiene & sanitation) and livestock consumption by constructing three water dams in Samburu district to serve more than 20,000 families and their livestock.
  • Establish a fodder production enterprise through irrigation of 500 acres owned by 1,000 families in Garissa.
  • Establish two community-owned facilities in Garissa irrigation scheme designed to handle 1,500 heads of cattle each at any one time for fattening and rearing heifers for replacement/restocking after the drought
Help these families today. Go to www.heifer.org/drought to learn how.

World Food Day: Food Prices–From Crisis to Stability

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Today is Blog Action Day 2011. It is also World Food Day. This year’s theme for Blog Action Day is Food. Bloggers all over the world are writing about this one theme, from their own unique perspective. To find out more, visit the Blog Action Day website. Read more of our Blog Action Day posts on Heifer Blog here.


Happy World Food Day, everyone.

When you have plenty, food is something to celebrate. For those who lack enough, however, it can be a daily struggle. Food security is defined by the World Health Organization as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.” Before Heifer enters the picture, our project participants are food insecure. When you’re food insecure, you might have enough food to feed your family breakfast and lunch, but not dinner. You might have enough food for your children, but not yourself. You might have enough food five days a week, but not seven; or during the harvest months, but not the thin months.

Food insecurity is scary, and there are many factors that contribute to the situation. A significant factor that has been getting a lot of attention lately is the rising cost of food. That’s the theme for this year’s World Food Day: Food Prices–From Crisis to Stability. Today we are called to “look seriously at what causes swings in food prices, and do what needs to be done to reduce their impact on the weakest members of global society.”

Those weakest members of society? Those are Heifer’s participants. At least, that’s one way to describe them before they receive their gifts of training and livestock. Our work can play a big role in helping families protect themselves against the negative impacts of volatile food prices. Because when you’re empowered to grow much of the food your family needs, you’re way less reliant on the global–and even local–food economy. That’s just as true here in the United States, but it’s strikingly more significant in developing countries, which account for 98 percent of the world’s 925 million hungry people in 2010.

What do you think? What else can be done to reduce the impact of rising food costs on the poor and hungry?

Today is also Blog Action Day, which has the appropriate theme of Food this year. Stay tuned here on Heifer Blog for a series of posts by some of our own Heifer staff with their thoughts on food.

Weekly Article Roundup: Preparing for World Food Day 2011

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Maegan’s taking a much needed mini-vacation, so it’s Brooke here with your Weekly Article Roundup.

I’d like to use this Roundup to prepare us for World Food Day, which is Sunday.

This year’s topic for World Food Day is Food Prices–From Crisis to Stability. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations wants us to consider what causes major swings in food prices and what can be done to reduce the impact of food prices on the poor and hungry in the world.
We posted about a New York Times editorial back in December 2010 warning of a food crisis in 2011. It’s terribly unfortunate that this prediction has come true. Rising food prices has been a significant factor in the famine in East Africa.
Rising food prices is a complicated situation, and it’s happening over much of the world. In Bolivia, the price for quinoa–an extremely nutritious crop grown and consumed in Bolivia for centuries–has risen to a price many Bolivians can’t afford. The cause: the increased demand for quinoa in the United States and Europe. The effects: poor Bolivians are eating cheaper, less nutritious foods instead.
In June this year, Maegan wrote about the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2011-2020 and asked us what changes we’ve had to make in our own lives to avoid higher grocery bills. 
Rising food prices aren’t just affecting the poor in developing countries. Families in the United States are being hit by higher grocery bills. Even Sesame Street is tackling food insecurity.
And if you need a reminder of why we need to work to stabilize food prices–so children and families won’t starve–you can go back to this video and see for yourself. We must act now; we must act fast; we must act big.
In addition to Sunday being World Food Day, it’s also Blog Action Day 2011, which has a complimentary theme of Food. Stay tuned for a series of posts from Heifer staff on topics related to food on Sunday in honor and celebration of the day.