Gorgeous Portraits of America’s Wild (and Surprisingly Delicious) Edible Plants
Photographer Jimmy Fike thinks often of the stories his grandmother liked to tell him, in a lively Southern drawl, about her youth on a farm in rural Alabama. She hunted for wild game and picked persimmons, filberts, and blackberries for cobblers. In 2008, feeling disillusioned with traditional landscape photography and inspired by these family memories,…
The Secret History of Why Soda Companies Switched From Sugar to High-Fructose Corn Syrup
Lemon_tm/iStock In a mesmerizing recent article, Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy recounts the surprising backstory of one of corporate marketing’s greatest flops: Coca-Cola’s quickly aborted 1985 effort to tweak its formula and convince consumers to accept “New Coke.” Tim Murphy is on this week’s episode of Bite, talking about New Coke and doing a blind taste-test:…
Truck Heists, Dog Poisonings, and Murder: Inside the Brutal World of the Truffle Trade
PIER PAOLO CITO / AP Why does it cost so much to have a chef shave the bulbous fungus we call a truffle over some pasta? Most truffle species, unlike their mushroom brethren, develop underground, giving them protection and time to produce “small, potato-like structures,” scientists say, with “fruit-bodies” packed with aroma and flavor. These…
Farmers Have a Secret Weapon to Save Your Food From Climate Chaos
Rye farmer Tom Franzen Tom Philpott This spring’s relentless storms severely delayed planting in the Midwest and will likely pinch this year’s corn and soybeans. Fifth-generation farmer Brian Corkill called 2019’s the wettest spring he’d ever seen in his 29 years of tending the land. Volatile, rainy springs are already on the rise in the…
This Refugee-Run Catering Company Cures Homesickness With Hummus
Getty On a recent afternoon in a kitchen in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, Chef Diaa Alhanoun drizzled olive oil over creamy hummus and garnished it with pita bread. Diaa grew up in Syria. There, he barbequed meats and crispy kibbeh, or potato croquettes, that are stuffed with minced beef, onion, and spices,…
You Don’t Have to Be a Vegan to Be a Climate-Friendly Eater
Dom Civiello Last October, scientists convened by the United Nations issued a dire warning: Unless carbon emissions fall by about 45 percent by 2030, we will face a world of climate chaos—more frequent droughts and floods, decimated coral reefs, and cities swamped by rising seas. Soon after, the Trump administration quietly released a similarly terrifying report…