I usually choose “local” or even “affordable” when it comes right down to it!
Katie

And I’m sure you can make a better one yourself, next time, anyway. Butter and cream cheese icing sounds great. Real buttercream icing is great, too: Butter, egg yolks, and sugar is basically all you need. At least two of those things are good for you. Use turbinado sugar if you can.
.-= Alex Lewin´s last blog ..Real Food Face-Off =-.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! You raise some important points.

As far as grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef: Grass-fed seems to be better for the health of the animals. Cows digest grains too quickly, and their rumens get really acidic, which causes infections, necessitating antibiotics, and so on.

Also the meat and milk from pastured cows have a better nutritional profile than the meat and milk from grass-fed cows. Also the antibiotics issue.

Here’s a good quick summary of some of the points of grass vs. grain:

http://eatsleepfast.blogspot.com/2010/02/grass-fed-vs-grain-fed-beef.html

As far as organic goes, there are definitely times when organic is not a win in the carbon department. “Organic” and “conventional”, as you indicate, are HUGE categories, and there are so many different growing techniques within each category that it’s hard to generalize. Also, in some cases and from some points of view, some local-conventional might be better than some nonlocal-organic. From a nutrition and health point of view, however, I’ll take organic every time.

Complicating the issue is that “Certified USDA Organic” does not always correspond to exactly what we might think of, intuitively, as “organic”.
.-= Alex Lewin´s last blog ..Real Food Face-Off =-.

I think the most influential food books I’ve read, in the order I read them, were probably Natural Health Natural Medicine (the Andrew Weil book that got me interested in health), Fast Food Nation, Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, and Nourishing Traditions.
.-= Alex Lewin´s last blog ..Real Food Face-Off =-.

Something about this book I really appreciated was the chart Katz includes showing the web of control had by the major food corporations in the world – Cargill, Kraft, ConAgra, Coca Cola, Unilever, General Mills, Campbell’s Soup, etc. and all the subsidiaries under them that you might mistakenly think are “good, healthy, organic” companies.
.-= Raine Saunders´s last blog ..The Face-Off Continues With Kitchen Stewardship! =-.

The book actually doesn’t talk very much about microwaves being bad…although I’m fairly sure that they are, and it’s vaguely depressing that the mainstream aren’t waking up to that fact, or even wondering about it.

Here’s what I say about the book on my blog page:

The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements, by Sandor Ellix Katz: “The personal is political”, in the context of food. A sobering and inspiring book about food movements, infused lovingly throughout with the author’s feelings about food. This is one of the most powerful books I’ve read on any subject. It’s a great book for anyone saying, “Who cares what we eat,” and it’s just as good a book for folks who know that they care intensely.
.-= Alex Lewin´s last blog ..Real Food Face-Off =-.