by Ari LeVaux ANYONE FOLLOWING California’s deepening water crisis has heard about the state’s thirsty agriculture industry, which uses 80 percent of the state’s water. And they’ve probably had a crash course in almond farming, which…

by Ari LeVaux A RECENT MOVE by the World Trade Organization (WTO) threatens to put more mystery in your meat, while undermining our national sovereignty. On May 18 the WTO ruled that American meat labels violate Canadian and Mexican…

by Ari LeVaux AMERICANS SPEND ABOUT $33 billion a year on dietary supplements, many of which promise things like weight-loss, enhanced cognitive function, and increased muscle mass. According to Dr. Pieter Cohen, a practicing MD and…

by Ari LeVaux THE QUESTION OF how far food should travel between where it is produced and where it is consumed has become a frequent matter of passionate debate. The popular rule of thumb is that the more local the food, the better it…

by Ari LeVaux WHILE DINING AT a Mexican restaurant in Albuquerque, NM, I was shocked to eat something that reminded of my mom’s East Coast Jewish cooking. I had taken a chance on a bowl of meatball soup called albóndigas, as it was a…

by Ari LeVaux THE HUMBLE LENTIL is found in the earthiest of foods. Not the kind of fancy dishes that tap dance around the table atop a frozen cloud of nitrogen, but simple, nourishing foods like Indian dal or hippy mush, foods that feed…

Editor: Zoe Ash is a Junior at Ann Arbor Skyline High School and an intern at The Ann Arbor Independent. Beginning this week, she will be working on a project called Businesses of Ann Arbor. The photo essay project is a riff on the "Humans…

IT’S EASY TO conclude that pricey meals and national media coverage might guarantee that a restaurant would be free from the most serious violations of a state’s restaurant health code. In March 2014, New York’s Per Se, with its $310…

IN 2013, THE newspaper did a comprehensive look at the restaurant inspection reports for Ann Arbor’s Main Street restaurants. The number of priority violations (violations, such as holding food at improper temperatures, or lack of…

The Washtenaw Food Policy Council (WFPC), the County appointed food policy group, recently approved a 23 point agenda, aggressively prioritizing support for a viable, economical, and sustainable local food system. The policy agenda…