Portside

Poor diet is not just about individual choice, but about the systems that make eating poorly the default for most Americans.

Seven of the biggest olive oil manufacturers in the US have been cutting their products with cheaper, inferior oils (such as sunflower oil or canola oil) in order to minimize the cost of production. This prompted the University of California to carry out studies on 124 imported brands of extra virgin olive oil, and they found that over 70% of the samples failed the test.

Farm-to-table's sincere glow distracts from how the production and processing of even the most pristine ingredients — from field or dock or slaughterhouse to restaurant or school cafeteria — is nearly always configured to rely on cheap labor. Work very often performed by people who are themselves poor and hungry.

Boiled down, there are a few simple rules when it comes to the best way to eat your vegetables. Just as eating a variety of vegetables is a good idea, enjoying them in a variety of ways seems to maximize their health benefits.

Chef Tom Colicchio is dropping the name of his newest Manhattan restaurant, Fowler & Wells, after learning that it has historically racist connotations. It was named for a publishing company and scientific institute that once operated in a building on the same site.The men who started the company were proponents of phrenology, a 19th-century practice used to justify slavery and beliefs in African-American inferiority.

'Jane Austen and tea' is after all, a comely capitalist hustle that has spawned a cottage industry of crockery, tea towels, tea bags, tea rooms and boutique brews. What we get from Austen's novels is the role of this extremely popular national beverage in upper class Regency society. Austen lived at a time when tea, which had become popular in England in the late 1600s, was drunk by everyone, from the elite to the working classes.

In his new book, Einstein’s Beets: An Examination of Food Phobias, the distinguished writer and scholar, Alexander Theroux, discusses some of the current scientific and psychological research into food preferences and aversions

3D printing has started to make its way into the culinary world and a handful of chefs are experimenting with printing beautiful, edible designs, but are we ready for this technology? Is 3D printing poised to revolutionize the way we eat?

According to the findings of the International Food Information Council Foundation’s 12th Annual Food and Health Survey, Americans are consuming food information from more sources than ever before, yet our nutritional literacy is sorely lacking – and our health may be suffering as a result.

Olive oil fraud abounds: some producers blend cheap nut, seed, or other vegetable oils with just enough olive oil to lend the look, taste, and aroma of the real thing. Other perpetrators dilute extra-virgin olive oil with lower-grade olive oil, or mislabel lesser olive oil as extra-virgin. Last, though not nearly as appalling, packers intentionally mislabel the country of origin.