Articles by Tom Philpott
Tom Philpott was previously Grist's food writer. He now writes for Mother Jones.
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Is Walmart our best hope for food policy reform?
Photo: Code PoetTwo years into the Obama administration, most of the energy around food-policy reform resides in the East Wing, in the form of the first lady’s Let’s Move! campaign. So far, Let’s Move has been about Michelle Obama pursuing what I have called a “soft power” campaign — that is, using her stature to […]
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Donning stilettos, Beyonce says: Let’s Move your booties, kids [VIDEO]
As a fan of R&B divas — I stand second to no one in my admiration for Erykah Badu and Amy Winehouse — I found this Beyonce video irresistible. Produced on behalf of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to improve children’s health, the choreography and staging dazzle, Beyonce plays the camera like it’s a fiddle, […]
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Government-backed corn ethanol lurches on, paving a road to nowhere
During the Bush II administration, I used to groan that the closest thing we had to a concerted policy response to climate change was the federal government’s slew of goodies for corn-based ethanol. It was a monumentally depressing situation, because propping up corn-derived fuel is expensive and (despite industry hype) doesn’t actually do much, if […]
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Students fight to save innovative garden-based public school in Detroit
When I visited Detroit last summer, I found it to be a place of extremes. On the one hand, a city buckling under the weight of decades of deindustrialization, white flight, and abandonment — a city so gripped by economic malaise that it contained not even a single full-service supermarket. On the other, it also […]
