Winter 2014

Table of Contents

The Food for Health Issue

From the Editors

How To Eat Like Our Lives Depend On It: Rediscovering the Many Joys of Food

It’s time to reclaim the well-being and exuberance that is part of healthy food culture.

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Potato Latkes

Stand Up to the Food Industry: Rediscover the Pleasures of Cooking and Eating Real Food

Junk food may have captured the American palate, but a few simple ingredients and techniques can win it back.
Arun Gupta
Just the Facts

Infographic: The Link Between Cooking at Home And Living Longer

We spend less time in the kitchen than ever. But here's why Michael Pollan says cooking could be an important solution to our public health crisis.
Doug Pibel
Wild West Ferments photo by Trinette Reed

6 Reasons to Eat Fermented Foods

Live-culture revivalist Sandor Katz explains why letting some foods go bad makes them even better—increasing both flavor and nutrition.
Sandor Katz
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Why Soak Your Oats? What Our Ancestors Knew About Preparing Food

8 methods that make everyday foods even healthier—including soaking, drying, sprouting, and pounding.
Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz

Italy’s “Slow Food” Pioneer: How My Love for Food Ripened into a Life’s Work

“Our philosophy is good, clean, and fair food: Good because it is healthy and tasty; clean because it is produced with low environmental impact and with animal welfare in mind; and fair because it respects the work of those who produce, process, and distribute it.”
Sarah van Gelder
Bananas photo by Jirka Matousek

What I Learned About Living Well In My Mother’s Puerto Rican Kitchen

When I was growing up, the conveniences of modern life took over my mother’s kitchen, and our health declined as a result. Here’s what happened when we went back to the way our ancestors dined.
Melinda Gonzalez
Goat Photo by Mrs. Ya/Shutterstock

A Chef’s Perspective on Revering Life—Even When It’s Raised to Be Slaughtered

I always knew the goats across the street were raised for food, but this was my first personal relationship with an animal that would later become my food.
Lisa Harris
Ken Gordon photo by Paul Dunn

The King of Portland’s Deli Scene Cured His Diabetes Through Diet

After I was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes, I figured out how to get healthy without giving up my favorite foods.
Ken Gordon
Juicing Photo by Shutterbean

What Occupy Oakland Taught Me About Healthy Eating

We came to Occupy because of America’s dangerous gap between rich and poor. But equally distressing was how many of us suffered from diseases created by a food system that makes healthy food inaccessible to the poor.
AshEL Eldridge
Carrots photo by Paul Dunn

Delicious Food Is Not an Indulgence—It’s a Way to Solve Our Ecological Crises

Food became my teacher, and I aligned my taste buds with what the people and planet need.
Frances Moore Lappé
Nettle Tea photo courtesy of Shutterstock

How a Cup of Nettle Tea Taught Me How To Live Well and Remember the Past

I am a Muckleshoot Indian, but little of what I used to eat bore much connection with the landscape I lived in, which had fed my ancestors for many generations. When I discovered nettle tea, it was as if I were remembering what it was like to feel well.
Valerie Segrest
Kale photo from Shutterstock

8 Lifestyles for Healthy Eating (and They All Include Kale!)

Have a New Year's resolution to eat better in the coming year? We set out to find out what a healthy diet really looks like. Turns out, they all have a few things in common.
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The Surprising Healing Qualities … of Dirt

A doctor discovers exposure to healthy farm soil holds keys to healthy bodies.
Daphne Miller
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Portland’s Food Trucks Bring Fast Food and Social Justice

Immigrants and other restaurant workers get a way to rise in local economies. Communities get the best fast food they've ever had.
Abby Quillen
Vandana Shiva photo by Paul Dunn

Why Vandana Shiva Says Saving Seeds Is a Political Act

‘‘A seed sown in the soil makes us one with the Earth. It makes us realize that we are the Earth.”
Sarah van Gelder
Refarm family

Veggies at the Liquor Store—and 5 Other Ways to Bring Food to Your Community

Out-of-the-box ideas for putting healthier food on our neighborhood plates—and make friends doing it.
Shannan Lenke Stoll
Beyond GMOs Infographic

Infographic: The U.S. Food That Europe Won’t Touch

13 ways the European Union differs from the U.S. on food safety issues like GMOs, hormones, questionable chemicals, and other food additives.

Solutions We Love

Explore Section
Winston Churchill at the Potsdam Conference

What If Winston Churchill Were Leading the Fight Against Climate Change?

"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close."
Tony Juniper
Justice Photo by Brent Lewis

How a Chicago Mom Liberated a Foreclosure and Got a Home for Her Four Kids

Displaced by foreclosure, this family took direct action—and got a place to live.
Laura Gottesdiener
Austerity Politics photo by 401(k) 2012

The Facts Are In: Austerity Politics Doesn’t Work

From England's double-dip recession to Portugal's spiking unemployment, there is now conclusive evidence of the complete failure of austerity.
Sally Kohn
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People We Love

When Her Photo Became an Anti-Feminist Meme, This College Woman Fought Back—and Thousands Joined Her

From internet memes to campus quads, young people are reworking feminism to meet today's challenges.
Erika Lundahl & Ray Stoeve
Lightbulbs photo courtesy of Shutterstock

An Economy That Benefits Ordinary People? What We Learned From the 1%

When thinking 40 years into the future, people step out of the current political situation, and our sense of what's possible becomes much more expansive. We are not only able to think bigger—we crave it.
Bree Carlson & George Goehl

Culture Shift

Explore Section
YES! Magazine Illustrations by Helga Lin and Owatta / Shutterstock.
Yes! But How?

Be a Maptivist! (And 4 Other Tips to Unleash Your Inner Cartographer)

Feeling a little lost? Looking for some direction in your life? Here are five unconventional ways to help you get where you're going.
Erika Lundahl & Ray Stoeve
Bill McKibben photo by David Garten

The Education of Bill McKibben: How the Unlikely Activist Learned to Break the Rules

“Sometime in the course of the past decade I figured out that I needed to do more than write—if this fight was about power, then we who wanted change had to assemble some.”
Madeline Ostrander
Their Fate is Our Fate: How Birds Foretell Threats to Our Health and Our Worldby Peter DohertyThe Experiment

Do Backyard Bird Feeders Spread Salmonella? The Human Role in Avian Disease

Immunologist Peter Doherty shows us that the fate of birds and humans are more connected than we might think.
Greg Harman
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Remember that Famous Study About Obedience to Authority? Here’s How Stanley Milgram Got it Wrong

According to conventional wisdom, psychologist Stanley Milgram's famous experiment revealed that human beings are hardwired to obey authority. But author Gina Perry looked at Milgram's data—and she's not convinced.
Andy Lee Roth

“Escape Fire” Doc Explores the Fight to Rescue American Healthcare

Beyond the Affordable Care Act, the film explores how to make a healthier America.
Valerie Schloredt
Capitol photo by Shutterstock

Abolish the Aisle: Would Divided Legislators Work Together If They Had to Sit in Alphabetical Order?

Marco Rubio would be next to Bernie Sanders, and Paul Ryan would rub elbows with Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan. If we closed the personal gap, maybe we could close the political one.
Fran Korten