The Food Chain

Michael Olson hoss Professor Catherine Keske, Ag Economist, University of California, Merced & Author, “Fast Food is Comforting, But…,”

It does not take long for weeds to take over one’s garden.  The same can be said for how quickly fast food can displace good food in one’s diet.  And so we ask:  

How does fast food displace good food?

Topics include the extent to which poor communities, like college students, rely on fast foods; how fast foods displace good foods; and what might be done to bring good foods back into the community’s diet.

Guest: Mark Cushing, CEO of Animal Policy Group and author of Pet Nation

Twenty years ago, Duke the Dog lived out in the backyard.  Now he lives in the house and sleeps in a bed.  And so we ask:

How did the United States become  a Pet Nation?

Topics include a look at how animals became pets that fly on planes with us; how the transformation from working animals to pets was made; and how pets are now transforming the nation’s economy.

A decade-long study of baby food released by Healthy Babies – Bright Futures claims that 95% of commercial baby food contains heavy metals that can result in autism spectrum and attention-deficit disorders.  And so we ask…

 

Should grocers be allowed to sell baby foods that contain toxic heavy metals?

Topics include how heavy metals like arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury pollute 95% of the nation’s baby food; what government and industry are doing to reduce the heavy metal pollution in baby food; and how attorney groups are putting the red-hot poker of litigation to the efforts of government and industry to reduce the pollution.   

 

Michael Olson with Washington State Congressman Dan Newhouse

China is buying up America’s farmland…  with the money we send it to manufacture stuff for us in their coal-burning factories.  Some say this a good deal because we don’t have to work in those factories.  Others say it’s a bad deal because we are selling out our future.  And so we ask: 

Should China be allowed to buy up America’s best farmland?

Topics include why China is having trouble feeding its people; how China is buying up America's farmland; and whether Congressman Dan Newhouse and fellow legislators can stop China from buying up America's farmland.

Food Chain Radio Podcast with Michael Olson features Michele Thorne, Executive Director of The Good Meat Project

Given the economies of consolidation, 99% of chickens, 98% of hogs and 70% of cows are now grown and processed on industrial-scaled farms, most all of which use antibiotics, pesticides and pharmaceuticals.   

 

Topics include how the production of meat has been consolidated into the hands of very few, very big businesses; the consequence of that consolidation on the quality of food and environment; and how one might localize one’s meat supply chain with ethical meat from ethical farmers.

 

Have you ever purchased meat from its farmer?

 

Before the horse we walked everywhere, and it was a downright slog to get there.  But 4,750 years ago, a mutant gene began working its way through the horse herds of the Eurasian Steppes.  Then, about 800 years ago, Genghis Khan raced those horses throughout the World to conquer one and all.  And so we ask:

Have you ridden a horse?

The Food Chain Radio Show - Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Ludovic Orlando, Molecular Archaeologist, Founder of Anthropology & Genomics Institute, and Author of Horses: A 4,000 Year Genetic Journey Across the World, for a conversation about the search for the World’s first horses.

Topics include how the search for the World’s first horses was conducted; where the most likely birth place of the horse was found; and how the evolution of the horse was directed by the various needs of people.

The fight is on for one-third of the food we eat.  On one side is a ferocious vampire mite, on the other side is human ingenuity.  The battleground is Apis mellifera – the Western Honeybee.  This fight leads us to ask:

 

Can human ingenuity save the honey bee and our food?

Michael Olson hosts Bonnie Kaplan, PhD, Co-Author, The Better Brain

The Golden State of California appears to be losing its collective mind.  You can see evidence of that loss on the streets of San Francisco, and that leads us to ask:

Can we eat our way out of mental dystopia?

Topics include how San Francisco uses bureacracy to care for people who can’t care for themselves; how the bureacracy’s efforts always seem to exacerbate the problem; and whether nutrition might prove to be the real solution to society’s mental dystopia.