Earlier this week I was catching up with Jason Seiden. We covered a ton of topics, but one thing that we kept coming back to is how frustrating it can be to work in the careers space. Why? Because, as Jason said, “Truly valuable career advice is like vegetables–you can’t give it away.” This is so true. You can try to force things on people, but you won’t get anywhere unless they want what you’re selling. Super Sprowtz is a company that is trying to change the way people–namely children–think about vegetables. They’re based in New York, NY, and they’ve seen how powerful cartoon characters can be in affecting children’s food choices, so they’ve developed a cast of “vegetable super heroes” to “entertain and educate children about healthy eating habits.” I started out thinking this was pretty weird, but I’m kind of warming to the idea.
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Even though I’m not a huge fan of turkey, I love Thanksgiving. It’s an all around great holiday for spending time with family and friends, and it gives me the opportunity to do some serious cooking. Some of my favorites are yams with marshmallows on top, brussels sprouts with bacon and onions, and apple pie. I’ve also been known to make a maple syrup slathered, bacon covered turkey, but I usually get overruled by people who inexplicably love bland, overcooked, dry white breast meat. I’m actually dying to try America Test Kitchen’s recipe, which includes brining and putting ice packs on the breasts so they cook slower than the rest of the bird. Anyway, I’ll likely be doing some shopping at Whole Foods Market this afternoon. I used to shop at normally priced supermarkets, but there’s one thing that keeps me coming back to bougie grocery stores like Whole Foods: bacon. You can’t get good quality bacon at a regular supermarket. And once you’re buying fancy bacon, you might as well get organic brussel sprouts and grass-fed beef and those awesome salted, chocolate-covered caramels that they sell.
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Ten days ago we took a look at Rodale Institute, a non-profit that is “dedicated to pioneering organic farming through research and outreach.” We talked about how industrial farming has led to amazing boosts in productivity, but it’s also created a lot of problems. Marrone Bio Innovations is a Davis, CA based company that is taking a natural approach to one specific area of agriculture: pest control. They’re aiming to be “the world leader in natural product innovation” by making “natural, effective, safe, environmentally friendly products the mainstream future of pest management.” Usually you don’t hear organic and pesticide in the same sentence, but Marrone Bio Innovations’ business is predicated on bringing the two together.
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Last week I got an e-mail from a One Day, One Job reader who is just wrapping up a seasonal position and looking for her next gig. In doing so, she realized that other readers might be interested in her current position, so she wrote me to tell me about it. When I saw the name Rodale Institute in her e-mail, I swore to myself that I had already featured the organization, but it was actually a publishing company named Rodale that was started by the same person as the Institute and used to be financially linked to it as well. The Rodale Institute is a Kutztown, PA based non-profit organization that is “dedicated to pioneering organic farming through research and outreach.” They’ve been at it since 1947, and they’re going to keep “researching the best practices of organic agriculture and sharing [their] findings with farmers and scientists throughout the world” because they believe that eating organic is the healthiest option for people and for the Earth.
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While my dad was in college, he and a few of his friends started a café. More than 30 years later, that café is still thriving and was one of my favorite brunch spots when I was at Cornell. The restaurant industry usually chews people up and spits them out, so it’s pretty unusual to see any restaurants last that long, let alone one started by a bunch of amateurs. Hopefully we’ll be seeing more college town success stories like Café Dewitt come out of CoFed, which is a Berkeley, CA non-profit that is “empowering students to create ethically-sourced, community-run cafés on college campuses.” CoFed is all about the triple bottom line, as they not only want to start successful cafés that offer delicious food, but they want to do it in a humane and sustainable way.
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We’re supposed to reach a high of 56 degrees today in Chicago, which is great even if it’s foggy and gloomy. Spring is on its way, and in only a couple of months it will be farmers market season again. Although my city is short on farms (we have a few, really), there are a ton within driving distance. Many of them haul the food that they produce into the city on a weekly basis and sell it to the yuppies who love eating fresh, organic, locally grown food (also known as me). One of these farms is Tomato Mountain Farm, which is based in Brooklyn, WI. They have a presence somewhere in Chicago 6 days per week, and their produce offerings range from basil and beets to watermelons and zucchini. Obviously, they also grow a lot of tomatoes.
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Agriculture has done a lot for us over the past few millennia. It’s by far the biggest development in the history of our species, as it’s pushed us forward into all kinds of other technological advances. Sadly, most of us have left agriculture behind—we couldn’t possibly feed ourselves without supermarkets and restaurants. That’s not really a problem, but it’s still a bit disheartening. Luckily, there are some non-profit organizations out there like Portland, ME based Cultivating Community that are using agriculture to enact positive change. Cultivating Community, for example, grows “tens of thousands of pounds of organic produce with and for people with low incomes” while using “community food work as a platform for youth empowerment programs.” It almost sounds too good to be true.
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You’ve probably heard the term “heirloom,” in reference to fruits or vegetables. For the longest time I had no idea what it meant, but eventually I asked someone and the gist of the definition is “any garden plant that has a history of being passed down within a family, just like pieces of heirloom jewelry or furniture.” More often than not the plants are passed down in the form of seeds. Heirloom breeds of plants are important not only for sentimental reasons, but also because they provide genetic diversity. By maintaining old breeds of plants with their unique resistance to disease and pests, we are able to ensure the security of our food supply. Seed Savers Exchange is a Decorah, IA based non-profit that “saves and shares the heirloom seeds of our garden heritage, forming a living legacy that can be passed down through generations.”
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I don’t know if you’ve heard of açaí, but apparently it’s all the rage these days. In fact the buzz has gotten so big that the newest Internet scam is to push açaí as celebrity-endorsed weight loss products. This is giving açaí, a berry that has “30x the antioxidants of red wine, and an essential fatty acid profile similar to olive oil,” a terrible reputation. I think that we all know that this berry isn’t going to solve all of your problems, but that doesn’t mean that you should miss out on “getting with the purple berry.” Sambazon is a company that does açaí right. They “promote sustainable management of the Brazilian Amazon by providing the highest quality whole food, organic, fair trade Açaí products to consumers.” In other words they make products like juices, smoothies, energy drinks, sorbets, and supplements (with no false promises of instant weight loss like the scammer/spammers). I think that I first heard about Sambazon over a year ago from the Inc 5000, but I’ve been waiting for them to post some jobs that I can feature here.
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Do you look at the labels on all of the food that you buy? Not only the nutritional facts but also the ingredients? If you answered yes, then you’re probably a health conscious consumer, or maybe you have a specific food allergy. Well what about the stuff that’s in your food that isn’t on the ingredients label? No mater what kind of drugs they pump into the cow that your hamburger is coming from, it’s always just going to be labeled beef. How about that bottle of water that you’re drinking from right now? It’s just water, or is it? A salmon from Lake Ontario is still just salmon, even if it’s full of PCBs (at least you can’t buy those in the grocery store). There’s a lot of stuff in our food and water that we don’t know about, which is why Washington, DC based Food & Water Watch exists. They’re “a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food.”
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In case you missed the message last week, we’re celebrating One Day, One Job’s first birthday today. We have “party favors” for you, so go check our birthday blog post. I considered featuring a special birthday related company, but we’ve already covered Hallmark’s entry level jobs, so I’m out of ideas. Instead, we’re going to do what ODOJ does best and tell you about an awesome company that is looking to hire outstanding college students. Tom’s of Maine is a company that specializes in natural personal care products. What is natural care? It’s “creating safe, effective natural products free of artificial dyes, sweeteners, and preservatives; by harvesting, processing, and packaging with respect for our natural resources; by not testing on animals or using animal ingredients; and by donating 10% of our profits and 5% of our employees’ paid time to charitable organizations.” Tom’s of Maine makes toothpaste, soap, deodorant, mouthwash, shaving cream, and more – not the kind of products that most people get excited about, but people get excited about them when they’re made by Tom’s of Maine.
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It always seems like you never have Chapstik – er, lip balm – when you really need it. Even Napoleon Dynamite was plagued by that little tube’s ability to disappear from his pocket and end up sitting on his desk at home. Some will argue that they never use lip balm because it just makes the problem of chapped lips worse, but I know for a fact that those people give in as soon as their “lips hurt real bad.” As life saving as lip balm can be at the right time, you’d still never expect it to allow a guy who lived in a turkey coop to be the face of a billion dollar business. Yes, Burt’s Bees was sold last year to Clorox for just shy of a billion dollars.
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Organic food is back. First it was for hippies. Then it was for wealthy foodies. Now it’s hitting the mainstream with many every day supermarkets having an organic aisle. In just a few short centuries, we’ve come full circle from all organic farming (there were no other options), to chemically dependent factory farming, back to organic. Organics may be a little more expensive, but there is a growing population that is willing to pay a premium for food that they consider healthier, more humane, and better tasting. Organic Valley is a cooperative between 1201 farmer-owners that allows small organic farmers to combine their growing power and sell products on a scale that is usually reserved for industrialized farming operations. Yes, it’s true. One Day, One Job finally has a post for the aggies out there (although Organic Valley also has plenty of opportunities for people with a non-agricultural background).
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