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Originally published on the PBS Next Avenue blog.

If you are an African-American of a certain age, you know what "soul food" has meant to our culture and history. Each of us has a story to tell about a favorite (or least favorite) dish that our mother or grandmother made back in the day. But as our rates of obesity and chronic illness rise — in 2010, for example, African-American women were 40 percent more likely to be obese than white women, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — increased attention is being paid to our traditional diet's role in the crisis.

Now filmmaker and activist Byron Hurt, 42, has taken a deeper look at the connection between our food and our health in the Independent Lens documentary, "Soul Food Junkies," airing on PBS stations around the country tonight.

"I grew up on soul food," says Hurt, whose parents are from Milledgeville, Ga., "and my mother is a good cook. It was always there on a consistent basis. We ate it for holidays and after church on Sundays."

Hurt's decision to examine the health-related impact of soul food came after pancreatic cancer was diagnosed in his father,...

Ask a dozen food activists what political change they want to see in 2013 and you’ll get a dozen different answers, maybe two dozen: Restrict sodium in packaged foods. Label genetically modified ingredients. End subsidies to big farms.

All are critical. But I couldn’t see any of those getting a bunch of tattooed chefs or idealistic college kids or suburban moms, let alone all of them, to lobby their member of Congress. But there was one thing that might: Getting antibiotics off the farm and out of the food supply.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States — about 28.8 million pounds — are given to animals that are raised for food. Most of those animals are perfectly healthy, but they receive regular doses of medicine to make them grow faster, to make up for cramped conditions on industrial farms. Those two “benefits” are part of how producers keep the price of meat cheap. The problem is that antibiotic overuse breeds drug-resistant ­superbugs that can move from animals to people in numerous ways, including via the meat we eat.

In this month’s Smarter Food column, I argue that food activists should and can–and should–come together to push Congress to ban antibiotics on big farms. The move would keep antibiotics working for humans and go a long way to cleaning up factory farms. ...

Council member Ken Cockrel must be trippin’! On Tuesday, December 11, after he, along with Saunteel Jenkins, James Tate, Gary Brown, and Charles Pugh, voted to approve the ill-conceived Hantz land sale proposal, he was quoted in the Detroit Free Press as saying, “a ‘no’ vote would have sent the message to the world that Detroit isn’t really serious about urban agriculture.” The foremost advocates and practitioners of urban agriculture in Detroit opposed the Hantz proposal. It is groups like Feedom Freedom Growers, Earthworks Urban Farm, the Garden Resource Program and D-Town Farm that have informed the nation and the world that Detroiters are serious about urban agriculture.

Councilman Gary Brown is trippin’ too! In the same article, referring to the vocal opponents of the land grab, he was quoted as saying “very few of them talked about the Hantz Farms project. It was mostly about a dysfunctional city government that makes it hard for them to buy” land. There have been many arguments waged against the scale and type of farming that Hantz proposes. There have been calls for an environmental impact survey. There were pleas to hold off on this deal until after Detroit's comprehensive urban agriculture ordinance is passed by the city council (which is expected to be next month). There were major...

Originally published in Baby Center.

The note on my desk began like this: “Dear Mom, I will no longer eat anything with a face.”

Huh?

Of course, I was eating a turkey and bacon sandwich at the time.

This declaration from my daughter that she wanted to become a vegetarian was quite a shock. Especially, as a meat loving mother. I mean, I’m a grilled chicken, lean turkey and the monthly medium well burger, kind of meat lover. But a meat lover nonetheless. Oh, and bacon is my weakness. Or as I tell my girlfriends, “Bacon is the truth.”

I’m proud of my daughter for thinking about her food choices. I raise my children to read food labels, think about sugar and sodium content, eat healthy food and we even spoke to the manager at our local (and beloved) Chipotle, during an intense campaign to get Chipotle to join the Fair Food Program to improve wages and working conditions for tomato farmers in Florida. (they eventually did!).

But let’s just put it out there, I was really thinking about myself. As a single parent, meal planning is already a challenge, now I would have to factor in a second meal or meatless version of our planned dinners?? Oy! And what do I know about tofu?? Quite frankly, anything that can...