2008 February | Healthy Living

Hosting Transfer

Update Tuesday 3/4: Things are almost done. Thank you to Debbie at Bird on a Wire for suggesting the switch to Host Gator. So far they have been great with their customer service and support and I love using cPanel.

A very big thank you goes to JD at Techfun for answering my questions and helping with some frustrating technical issues. These problems were mostly related to a bug in WordPress that damages XML files exported using the WordPress export tool. The bug is discussed here, the WordPress ticket is here, and the code fix is shown here. Make sure you read and appy the fix before you ever use WordPress export. This bug has been in the code for many months, but will not be fixed until WordPress version 2.5 which, at least according to the WordPress Roadmap site, is still scheduled for March 10th.

I have a couple of plugins left to install and configure and a few more tweaks to the theme. If you notice anything not working please let me know. All email is back to normal, including the "Contact" tab, above.

Thanks for your understanding and patience while I made this much needed move.

February 27th, 2008 Posted By: Will | 3 Comments |

Categories: Will Taft . com
Trackback: http://willtaft.com/will-taft-com/hosting-transfer/trackback/

Wordless Wednesday 2-27-2008

I had these "words" in the first comment, but I moved them up here to better explain this Wordless Wednesday photo. I know some of you other great WW participants homeschool also. The photo represents one of the perks of being homeschooled and being on good terms with your teacher! This is my 7th grade daughter who has decided that this blustery spring day was just too nice to stay inside. So she has climbed out her window and up on her dormer roof to do her algebra.

February 26th, 2008 Posted By: Will | 28 Comments |

Categories: Homeschooling
Trackback: http://willtaft.com/homeschooling/wordless-wednesday-2-27-2008/trackback/

Organic and Ethical Food - The Road to Your Table

After my article on our local food co-op efforts went up a few days ago, I received an email asking me why buying food from such a store was more “responsible” than buying organic food from a large chain. I might not have used the term responsible, and I would prefer to see people buying healthy food from a big chain instead of health damaging food from a local corner grocer. Having said that, here are a few reasons I would buy from a locally owned co-op or market rather than a big chain store.

First, let me say that I do not decry the fact that organic food is now available from places like Costco, Fred Meyer, or even Wal-Mart. I may choose to shop as little as possible at stores like Wal-Mart, but it is not because I think they should not be selling organic food. Admittedly, I sometimes feel strangely conflicted on the issue, but I guess having organic food available in as many places as possible is a good trend. I will try out my new polling software again and thank you for answering this question yourself at the bottom of this post.

Although there are many other benefits, here are two things that a local food co-op provides that a big chain does not. First, the food co-op can buy locally produced products, thereby keeping some of our money in our own community. Please read about the corn in this article for an almost comic example of what a large grocery chain called “local”.

Second the local store can make individual buying decisions, often based on the suggestions of their customers. Try suggesting to Wal-Mart or Costco that they should change the source of their organic peanut butter because it is made by a company owned by a huge food conglomerate that does not exactly represent the image of what would be called a producer of healthy food. As monster corporations see profits in the organic and health food industry, more small independent producers of ethical food are being brought under the large corporate labels.

The ownership of “small” organic suppliers is probably something for another article, but I’ll list just a few examples here. Did you know that the organic seed company “Seeds of Change” is wholly owned by the M&M Mars Corporation? Or that Kraft owns Boca Foods and Back to Nature? That General Mills owns Cascadia Farms and Muir Glen? Or that Cargill, discussed here , has its corporate tentacles in more health food companies than you can count? These examples do not necessarily mean that the subsidiary companies are not still true to their original mission, but it might be a concerning trend. There are many other examples of these disparate corporate relationships in the organic and health food industry. One place you can see some of these relationships represented in a graphical PDF file is here.

The increasing demand for food that is organic, hormone free, cruelty free, and ethical in general is a welcome trend. However, because I have seen the occasional dismaying performance of large corporations when it comes to truth in advertising, truth in production and ingredients, and oversight of production facilities, I am a bit concerned. Even though this concern may be somewhat misplaced and unrealistic in our global economy, the closer to home my sources of food are, the more comfortable I feel. In a local co-op, if the people stocking the store feel as committed to healthy, ethical food as I do, I believe they will research their buying decisions and buy with the concerns of their customers in mind. And I will certainly feel better eating food that has traveled that particular road to my table.

Poll:

Loading ...

February 24th, 2008 Posted By: Will | 10 Comments |

Categories: Organic Food
Trackback: http://willtaft.com/organic-food/organic-and-ethical-food-the-road-to-your-table/trackback/

Opening a New Food Co-Op

An enthusiastic group of people in our community have been working for the past couple of years to get a food co-op started. Although there are over 1,000 people who have shown their support by purchasing $100.00 memberships, opening the store is still a ways off. This is partly due to the complicated and expensive process of funding any sort of start-up business. There are, however, some hurdles unique to starting a co-op that have contributed to slower than anticipated progress. We joined over a year ago and remain optimistic that the doors to a viable and much needed community store will eventually open.

My involvement, beyond just being a member, has been limited to volunteering at several functions, helping to clean out one potential storefront, and attending meetings to contribute ideas and opinion. There are several very dedicated people who recently took over the lead in the effort to get the store opened. The original group of founders was very committed to the getting a co-op opened, but the new group brings some much needed business and start up skills to the effort.

Why is this on my mind today? Well, yesterday someone asked me if I thought that, because of the overall higher cost of the food and other products health-food and co-op stores sell, the opening of out local co-op might be in jeopardy. They had just read an article describing how the number of young people dipping into retirement savings to pay for food and shelter had doubled in the past year. Their thought was that the “worsening” economy in the U.S. will hurt the specialty retailers and benefit stores like Wal-Mart.

I did not have a definitive answer to their question, but my gut tells me that this will not be one of the more difficult hurdles to clear in order to make our co-op successful. What do you readers think? Am I biased because of my fervent belief that healthy, organic, and ethically produced goods are not “specialty” items, but the way products should be produced in the first place? Am I Pollyannaish in my view of what many consumers want?

There is a very successful community food co-op in a neighboring city. However, that city is a bit different than most in that it is a progressive, fairly affluent town. Do you think a progressive and affluent clientele is necessary for the success of a food co-op? I don’t. It is an unfortunate fact that organic, sustainably produced food and ethically produced and marketed goods in general, are more expensive. The people and families that shop for these products have made the choice to spend a bit more to feel safer and more responsible in their buying choices. I do believe that any food co-op that wants to be successful must pursue price as well as quality when buying and reselling goods. One of the most exciting things I think a local food co-op has the chance to do is educate and promote the idea of ethically produced food.

I have written about ethical food here, on other web sites, and in print publications. I am a big believer in our ability to bring some change to the food and diets of people. Although I understand some of the reasons contributing to the higher cost of ethical food, I also have some unconventional ideas that lead me to believe the cost differential is significantly wider than it should be. I have struggled to write succinctly about the topic, starting several articles and then abandoning them. It is easy to get carried away in the criticism of our modern food production industry, and sometimes difficult to be honest in critiquing the things that need to change in the ethical food market. I promise to spend more time writing on this topic, if for no other reason than to help myself feel that my ideas and opinions on this subject are as well thought through as they possibly can be.

For today, however, I leave you with the questions I posed above and these few more. Do you try to make ethically produced food part of your diet? Do you go beyond organic and humane food to try and purchase other commodities in an ethical fashion? Do you have a community health food store or food co-op in your community and if you do have one, do you shop there regularly? If you do have one, would you describe your town as affluent and progressive or representative of places like our own middle income, working class, community? Do you have any thoughts, ideas or questions on the subject that I am missing here? Please feel free to voice your experience and opinions.

I just installed a WordPress plugin that allows me to embed polls into the site. If you answer the poll question at the bottom of this post, I would be grateful. And, if you see any errors or problems when recoding your vote, please comment or use the contact button above to let me know. Thanks!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~