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Food MythBusters

Food Mythbusters is a new one-stop shop where you can get your burning questions about food answered through short films, Q&As with experts and links to essential research.

Peter Rothberg

October 24, 2012

Did you know that today is National Food Day? Created by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the goal is to strengthen the anti-corporate food movement, to bolster the cause of sustainability, and to expose and indict the American food system’s daily diet of salty, processed packaged foods, high-calorie sugary drinks, and fatty grain-fed factory-farmed meat.

A great way to start treating food with the respect it deserves is to check out Food Mythbusters, the brainchild of author, activist and sometime Nation writer Anna Lappé. Offering a wealth of online resources, the project seeks to expose the real stories behind the foods we eat and urge action on key food battles. It’s essentially a one-stop shop where your questions about food are answered through short films, Q&As with experts and links to essential research.

To wit:

The most urgent upcoming battle will take place in California on November 6 when the state votes on Proposition 37, which would ban the marketing of GE-tainted foods as “natural” and require Genetically Engineered foods to be labeled as such. Recent polls show a majority siding with the proposition but Monsanto, Big Ag, and the rest of the pesticide and junk-food manufacturers began flooding the California airwaves on October 1 with one million dollars a day in deceptive TV and radio ads, relentless messaging that will continue through the election.

Here’s how you can help: If you live in California, join massive leafleting campaigns at grocery stores over the next three weeks aimed at countering the corporate PR blitz. Sign up here. If you live outside California, volunteer for a national phone bank to call millions of California voters.

Meanwhile, everyone should share info about this new initiative, sign up for Food Mythbusters’s new email alerts and check back regularly at foodmyths.org.

Peter RothbergTwitterPeter Rothberg is the The Nation’s associate publisher.


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