Meet Me At the Table
My goal with this blog is to bring you perspectives from my past, peppered with insights and facts on the future of food, farming and health – providing “food for thought, action and personal responsibility.” As a registered dietitian and a sixth generation farm owner in Kentucky, the connection of farm to plate is part of my DNA. I have spent my career navigating the connections between food, health, agriculture and consumer behavior. Together, we will dig into the complex and ever-changing story of who grows our food, what’s in our food, and how food affects our health and ultimately our lives.
“Weathering” the Economic Risk — From Orange Groves to Wheat Fields — for Food on the Table
A weather radio sat on my kitchen table. I woke up every day to Radio 700 AM broadcasting weather and news. Weather dominated our conversations. The memories and realities of whether it was going to "rain or shine” controlled the order of the farm day (other than the...
Farm to Table — Local to Global Gift Guide
All things “global are local” thanks to the speed of delivering food and food experiences far and wide. Over the year, several farms and food venues have been gracious to offer their time and words of wisdom for my blog content (and personal experiences). Each of...
The Farm to Table Movement Alive and Well — Kentucky Chef Ouita Michel
The “Farm to Table” Movement seemed to be a simple concept, or perhaps not a concept at all, for those of us who grew up on a farm. Our vegetables were from the gardens we grew, milk came from the cows in the barn, and eggs came from the chickens in the hen house. But...
5 Tips to Keep Holiday Food Safe and Prevent Waste
It’s Thanksgiving Week … and our thoughts turn to food! Whether we’re in the middle of thawing turkeys, baking pies, or placing a last-minute order, how we store and prepare our food needs to be top of mind! Here are five essential tips for your list! With this year’s...
Beneath the Glass, How Does our Food Grow? Insights on Indoor Farms
“How do we feed more people with less land and less environmental impacts?” is a question that has kept agricultural-minded folks up at night for years. In the past five years, coupled with recent pandemic-based food supply disruptions and the American quest for...
Focus on the End Game: It’s Time to End Hunger
Report from The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health "In America, no child should go to bed hungry. No parent should die of disease that can be prevented," President Joe Biden stated as he opened the September 28th White House Conference on Hunger,...
Is “Healthy” Really Healthy? FDA Wants to Make It So
We talk about “Eating Healthy,” “Healthy Food” or certain ingredients being “Healthy,” but has all this talk changed our eating habits? Probably not! The reality is that 80% of consumers in the U.S. aren’t eating enough vegetables, fruit and dairy (despite the...
Moving Beyond the Bandage Approach: Healing Hunger, Nutrition and Health
We all look for quick fixes, whether it’s for personal weight loss or solving community issues. We recognize a problem and we want to fix it immediately! It’s a mindset that is worthy but often not achievable. You can patch a leak … but if the source of the problem...
Taking A Bite Out of Food Waste Starts with Savvy Produce Storage
Headlines highlight it, grocery stores address it and consumers talk about it, but how serious are we about the cost of food waste? In a recent Forbes article citing the cost of food waste, it is estimated that $400 billion dollars or 100 billion pounds of food are...
Water — The Ultimate Food Fight?
Water is the core to our existence, from how our bodies perform to the availability of our food! For some of us in the Eastern U.S., the lack of available water and rain may not be an issue (especially with the recent rains/floods), but for others it is. The reality...