Social Issues

According to one expert, “The risk of air pollution on the brain is a much broader risk factor than we’ve given it credit for.” Discover how the effects of air pollution may be impacting your brain.

The industrialized food system is great at providing cheap commodity items at scale — until something threatens global supply chains. It’s great at employing millions of people — but gives them little or no voice in company policy. It’s great at shipping goods around the world — but terrible when it comes to compensating local growers and producers fairly. For all these and many other reasons, food co-ops are a valuable, community-based, principled alternative. But what is a food co-op? What does co-op stand for? And why might you want to join (or shop at) one?

Growing a vegetable garden is a great way to enjoy delicious, fresh, healthy produce that can nourish you and your family. But those same plants can also nourish insects that would like nothing better than to beat you to those flavors and nutrients. Instead of giving up or poisoning your crops with commercial insecticides, try these natural homemade sprays to keep the pests from stealing your harvest.

For many people, hiking is one of the great joys of life. During a hike, you immerse yourself in the natural world and can boost both your physical health and your emotional well-being. But a lot of traditional hiking food undermines both reverence for nature — producing a lot of waste and contributing to environmental deterioration — and personal health. In this article, we’ll explore healthy, convenient, and delicious plant-based hiking food options.

Have you ever wondered what you could do with food scraps instead of tossing them in the garbage? While the latter can be automatic for many of us, reducing food waste is easy — and even small steps toward repurposing food scraps can be instrumental for helping your health and the environment.

Pineapples can be a delicious part of a health-promoting diet. They’re sweet, flavorful, and versatile, and they contain a powerful enzyme that’s attracted the interest of the nutritional sciences. But are there ethical or environmental downsides to the “King of Fruits”?

In our overview of vegan statistics from around the world, see why so many people are going vegan and eating plant-based — from athletes to celebrities to everyday people. Plant-based diets are here to stay.

Food waste is a huge problem, and its corresponding methane emissions have a major impact on climate change. Now, many US states and cities are introducing legislation to curb food waste in landfills and encourage recycling and composting programs. But what do these initiatives accomplish, and do they work?

Monocropping — the growing of a single crop over and over on the same piece of land — was invented to increase the food supply and combat hunger. Unfortunately, its unintended consequences threaten greater global food insecurity and worsen climate change. In this article, we'll explore monocropping pros and cons (spoiler alert: more cons than pros) and look at alternative growing methods that you can support.

When some people think of fresh veggies, they picture summer gardens full of tomatoes, zucchini, and cucumbers. Summer and fall are definitely good times in the garden, the farmers market, and the grocery store, but the fun keeps going when the thermometer drops, as many winter vegetables provide their own special flavor, energy, and nutrition. In this article, we’ll look at why you might want to add more winter veggies to your year, and show you how to go about storing and preparing them.

Nitrates and nitrites are in some of the healthiest and unhealthiest foods around. So what’s the deal? Are nitrates bad? Should we avoid nitrates and nitrites whenever possible? Does the source matter? This article summarizes what you need to know to get the good out of these compounds while avoiding the bad.

GMOs — or genetically modified organisms — are a lightning-rod issue. For some, GMO crops represent the height of human ingenuity, and anyone who says otherwise is a science denier. For others, GMOs represent an unprecedented and irreversible experiment on the entirety of life on earth, as we place the power to create life into the hands of transnational corporations whose agenda is monopolistic control of the global food supply. But what is a GMO, where are they found, and how concerned should you be?