The Future of Food - Introduction

What seems like a long time ago, I accepted the challenge of writing about organic versus modern farmed foods and whether, or not, organic was "better".  I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  I started by reading a book on the subject (Tomorrow's Table by Pamela C. Ronald and R.W. Adamchak).  The Authors are a married couple, Ronald is a Professor of Plant Biology at UC Davis and Adamchak manages the campus' organic farm.  This book led me to source after source on the subject, some very good sources and some very bad.  After picking my way through the maze of often times conflicting information, I settled on a few sources that seemed to offer balanced and rational views on the subject.

So, for the purposes of this blog, which is not a scholarly paper nor a claimed authority of any kind, I will list here my sources for the information that will appear in future posts in this series.  By doing so, I hope you will all track down these sources and read, listen and watch them yourself so that you can hold me accountable for my opinions and decide for yourself what methods seem to offer the best solutions for the problems facing humanity in the future.

This series of posts will be broken into 4 sections: Part 1 The Challenge; Part 2 The Organic Response; Part 3 The Case For Science; and Part 4 Protecting the Future.  If I feel any particular section is getting too long I will break it into sub-sections.  I sincerely thought that this issue would simply be a matter of finding out which foods were the most nutritious, finding some taste test results to determine what people preferred and moving on; boy was I wrong.  I think as you read you will come to realize, as I did, there are no easy answers when it comes to food, and it is especially hard to know who to trust when it comes to information about what we eat.  Hopefully, we will all find the questions we need to ask suppliers in order to provide the best nutrition for our families while maintaining the environment for future generations.

Sources for future posts:

Tomorrow's Table P.C. Ronald and R.W. Adamchak, Oxford University Press March 2008

The Open University- Genetic Modified Foods, The Issues (Multi-Media Podcast available free iTunes)

Yale School of Forestry- Food and Sustainable Agriculture (Lecture Series available free iTunes)

Oregon State University- Food for Thought (Lecture Series available free iTunes)

The Future of Food (Two part documentary available here)

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Dangour, A., Lock, K., Hayter, A., Aikenhead, A., Allen, E., & Uauy, R. (2010). Nutrition-related health effects of organic foods: a systematic reviewAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 92 (1), 203-210 DOI:10.3945/ajcn.2010.29269

Mader, P. (2002). Soil Fertility and Biodiversity in Organic FarmingScience, 296 (5573), 1694-1697 DOI: 10.1126/science.1071148

http://www.foodwithlegs.com/organic-food-taste-test/

http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/content/101/6/290.full

http://www.pewenvironment.org/