As published in An estimated 27,500 people in Los Angeles, 20,000 in Seattle, and 18,500 in the Bronx: Bernie Sanders is sparking some of the biggest crowds in primary history. For millions across the country, his message is clearly resonating. It’s refreshing to hear someone running for the country’s highest office finally articulate (without any prodding!) […]
by Anna Lappé for Al Jazeera America What is it about corporations trying to sound hip that so often hits the wrong note? It comes off like your mother ending a text with “LOL.” It doesn’t sound cool; it sounds out of touch. That’s just what I thought perusing the website of Mixify, a […]
by Anna Lappé for Al Jazeera America McDonald’s is having a bumpy year. It just installed a new CEO after a mere two-and-a-half-year stint by his predecessor. In January it announced its latest returns — and the news was bad. It included such shareholder downers as a “global comparable sales decrease of 1 percent, reflecting negative […]
There was good news last week about the Gates Foundation dumping about $1 billion worth of stock in Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. Whether it was a sign that the Foundation realizes these companies don’t have a rightful place in a portfolio of an organization promoting health and well-being or that their financial analysts are smart on […]
As Mark Bittman says in The New York Times, “The report is not a paradigm shift, but it does contain significant improvements.” Here’s what is most exciting to me about them: For the first time the scientific advisory committee on dietary guidelines did a radical thing: it recommended we eat less sugar and red meat, […]
by Anna Lappé for Earth Island Journal The face of Berkeley vs. Big Soda is the face of mainstream America At Tuesday night’s Berkeley vs. Big Soda victory party in the heart of downtown, the results rolled in slowly, but spirits were high. Early returns around 8:00 p.m., with only 8 percent of precincts reporting, showed the […]
by Anna Lappé for The Nation Drive around the streets of Berkeley, California and you’ll see “Yes on Measure D” signs everywhere. This morning, on the one-mile drive to my daughter’s elementary school, she and I counted ten. Measure D, also known as the soda tax, would seem a shoo-in for this city of […]
by Anna Lappé for Al Jazeera America This past weekend, biotech giant Monsanto paid bloggers $150 each to attend “an intimate and interactive panel” with “two female farmers and a team from Monsanto.” The strictly invitation-only three-hour brunch, which took place on the heels of the BlogHer Conference, promised bloggers a chance to learn […]
by Anna Lappé for Al Jazeera America McDonald’s isn’t having a very good week. On Monday it made the news for expired meat turning up in as many as a quarter of its restaurants in China. And on Tuesday it released its second-quarter earnings report, which revealed stagnating profits and falling same-store sales, continuing […]
#82055765 / gettyimages.com by Anna Lappé for Al Jazeera America One hundred and six million people tuned in to watch the Broncos take on the Seahawks in this year’s Super Bowl; almost as many saw the McDonald’s ad that ran during the game, featuring a dunk contest between basketball stars LeBron James and Dwight Howard. Using […]