Locavore: A person that prefers to eat locally produced food. These people promote buying from local businesses and or growing food themselves. Since the food is grown locally they are often produced with significantly less preservatives. Although the locavore moments claims to promote sustainability and be eco-friendly, critics claim that does not contribute to helping the environment whatsoever. Barbara Kingsolver, author of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral is a famous locavore and author that has had an important role in promoting the locavore movement.
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/344/locavore.html
Slow Food: An international movement that discourages fast food and promotes traditional and regional food that comes from local regional agriculture. It also promotes sustainability and locally produced foods and is very politically active in fighting globalization of agricultural products. The slow food organization has over 100,000 members across 150 countries. Their motto, “Good, Clean and Fair Food” are used as a compass to describe what you should and shouldn’t eat. The organization also puts on many events the celebrate food culture and community and promote healthy eating.
Polemic: A polemic is an attack on the opinions of another person or group. This is often seen in food writing has an attack on the ways of eating of groups of people. For example, some of the slow food group may be polemicists, fighting against McDonald’s for planning to build a restaurant.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polemic
http://polemicfood.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/polemic-food-what-the-heck-does-that-mean/
Government Subsidy: A government subsidy is financial assistance by the government that it used to reduce the cost of a product. This is seen in the world of food by the government giving out billions of dollars to reduce the cost of food. Many groups like the slow food organization support subsidies to organic and locally grown food in order to promote healthy eating and help local businesses. However, the people that need government assistance to purchase their food the most are not going to want subsidies of more expensive organic food, as it is not their priority to eat healthier because they have less money.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Government+subsidy
http://polemicfood.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/polemic-food-what-the-heck-does-that-mean/
Processed Foods: Processed foods are any foods that have been altered from their natural state, either for safety reasons or convenience. This could be a result of canning, freezing, refrigeration, dehydration, or aseptic processing. These foods are often thought as of bad for your health and are used to label factory foods, but in reality processed foods are not any less healthy. To some extent, processed foods are better for your health. For example, milk is considered processed because it is pasteurized to kill bacteria, while those who prefer raw milk can suffer from bacteria-related illnesses. Conversely, the majorities of processed foods are bad for your health and contain many trans-fats, saturated fats and significant amounts of sodium.
http://nutrition.about.com/od/askyournutritionist/f/processedfoods.htm
Natural Food: Many foods are marketed as natural because they are minimally processed and lack manufactured ingredients. Many countries have jurisdictions on using the meaning (like the word “organic”), but the word has no meaning in the United States when it comes to food.
http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/fssa/labeti/guide/ch4ae.shtml
Austin Wolf 