The Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op brought a fresh perspective to sustainable farming last Friday. Forty community members gathered for a screening of “Fresh: The movie”— a film by Ana Sofia Jones that focuses on sustainable agriculture. Proceeds from the film sales will benefit the co-op’s One Farm at a Time project. The documentary follows sustainable farmers in America, including pig farmers, chicken farmers and an urban farmer  who farms in the middle of a metropolitan city, to demonstrate the contrast to industrial mass-produced agriculture. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” author Michael Pollan said in the film that “cheap food is an illusion.” Feed lots used in factory farming that hold

Joanne Neft is on a mission to change the poor eating habits common in many households today. "We're eating really inappropriately," she explained to dinner guests at her home this past week. She pinpoints Americans' "inappropriate" eating habits to the cause of many problems. "We eat subsidized food because it's cheap, forgetting the huge price we pay for the resulting obesity, diabetes, cancer, and coronary problems. Americans pay a high price for cheap food." She is currently self-employed and owns a couple of commercial properties but these days she is putting most of her energy and passion into a crusade against poor eating habits found in the form of a cookbook. Neft and her clos

Keep this in mind the next time you're trying to decide what to buy at the grocery store to stay healthy: Too much of what's sitting on shelves today isn't really food. It's nothing more than "edible substances." That's what best-selling author Michael Pollan told a sellout crowd during Wednesday night's California Lecture at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1300 N St. The Knight Professor of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley, has won national acclaim for such books as "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food." "What is food?" was just one of the questions Pollan addressed in a question-and-answer format led by California's food and ag czar, A.G. Kawamura. That suc