The Food Chain

Fred Provenza, Professor Emeritus of Behavioral Ecology in the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University.  Author, Nourtishment:  What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom

Yellowstone Park in winter is a cruel place for the wildlife that can no longer endure its cold, snow and hunger.  And yet what is cruel for some can be a blessing for the corvids of Yellowstone’s winter   And so we ask:  

Can anyone love the black birds of Yellowstone’s white winter?

Topics include speculation as to why people have always disagreed about the best way to eat; a discussion of the nutritional and environmental elements of the different ways of eating; and a common sense approach to putting the argument to rest.

 

 

David Blume,  Farmer at Whisky Hill Farm in Freedom, California, Author of Alcohol Can Be A Gas, proprietor of Blume Distillation, & Candidate to be Robert Kennedy Jr’s Food & Energy Coordinator  

 

They are moving on Washington, DC with the battle cry, “Make America healthy again!” Their battle cry leads us to ask: 

How can America be made healthy again?

The Food Chain Radio Show - Podcast with Michael Olson hosts US HHS Food and Energy coordinator candidate David Blume for a conversation about how he would help Robert Kennedy Jr make America healthy again.

Topics include why Kennedy believes America’s food chain must undergo a revolutionary change; ways in which that change might be made; and how revolutionary change can be made given all the money lined up to prevent it from being changed.

 

 

They are moving on Washington, DC with the battle cry, “Make America healthy again!” Their battle cry leads us to ask:

How can America be made healthy again?

The Food Chain Radio Show - Podcast with Michael Olson hosts US HHS Food and Energy coordinator candidate David Blume for a conversation about how he would help Robert Kennedy Jr make America healthy again.

Topics include why Kennedy believes America’s food chain must undergo a revolutionary change; ways in which that change might be made; and how revolutionary change can be made given all the money lined up to prevent it being changed.

Michael Olson with Catherine Barr, Executive Director, Monterey Bay Area Certified Farmers Markets

In the 1826 edition of The Physiology of Taste, Jean Brillat-Savarin wrote, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” 

Then in the 1863 edition of Spiritualism and Materialism, German philosopher Ludwig Feurerbach wrote, “A man is what he eats.”

Today, in the 1377^th edition of the Food Chain Radio Show, Michael Olson is jumping into the conversation by saying, “If we are what we eat, then we are what our food ate.”

Following that thought will take us deep into the soil, where everything is eating everything.  It is the great smorgasbord of life that we do not see, and therefore just take for granted, like we do with all that food that fills the grocers’ shelves. 

But if we really want to know what we are, we must come to grips with what our food eats.  That is not an easy thing to do, because so much of what we eat now comes to the table wrapped in fancy packaging from thousands of miles away.  What that food has eaten should be listed on the package label, but that means we must trust in the truthfulness of whoever wrote the labels, and they are in the business of selling food to people they will never meet.

There is one way to really know what food our food has eaten, and that is to look directly into the eyes of the farmer who grew that food, and ask him or her. Aside from the farm itself, there is one place where one can shop and be guaranteed that the food for sale is real food.  And so we ask:

Where can one be guaranteed the food for sale is real food from a real farmer?

Michael Olson with Tereza Corragio, Author, How to Dismantle an Empire

America’s big money oligarchs are buying up the world’s farmland and its fake-food companies.  Guessing at what their intentions might be leads us to ask: 

Can we escape the tyranny of oligarch food?

Topics include how communities lose their food and financial sovereignty to the empire of debt; how the empire of debt might be dismantled with community banking; and how to begin the dismantling.

A FOOD CHAIN RELEASE FROM MICHAEL OLSON 

The hungry baby is crying for food.  The harried parent is short on time.   The solution:  Give baby a baby food pouch.   But that solution leads us to ask:

Do convenience pouch foods do a baby’s body good? 

 

The Food Chain Radio Show & Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Dr. Elizabeth Dunford, Research Fellow, George Institute, Assistant Professor of Nutrition, University of North Carolina, and Author of “An Evaluation of the Nutritional and Promotional Profile of Commercial Foods for Infants and Toddlers in the United States,” for a conversation about feeding babies and toddlers.

Topics include a look at what Dr. Dunford’s study found in baby convenience foods; the possible consequence of feeding babies convenience baby foods, and what time-poor parents might do to feed their babies and toddlers good food.

 

Show Host:  SantaCruzVoice.com “Feeding Babies Pouch Foods” (#1376)

Producer Host:  www.metrofarm.com:  Share your story, win the business!

Michael Olson hosts Nicolette Hahn Niman, Author, Defending Beef: The Ecological and Nutritional Case for Beef

We have been told that cows cause the climate to change by emitting greenhouse gas.  Now we are told to replace the beef we eat with patented, manufactured meat-like substances.  And so we ask:

Should beef be banned?

Topics include a look at why some believe the cattle industry should be terminated to save the environment; why others believe we must work with cattle to save the environment; and a consideration of the nutritional value of eating beef.

 

Host Michael Olson with guest Nicholas Sullivan, Senior Researcher, Tufts University, Author of The Blue Revolution

Fishermen used to rely on good luck to haul in the big catch.  But when they began relying on information, instead of luck, they almost caught all the fish in the sea.  That leads us to ask:

Can we catch fish so there will be fish left to be caught?

Topics include how the world’s most productive fisheries were fished out; what some nations are doing to create sustainable fisheries; and how the farming of fish is replacing the fishing of fish.