Green Your Diet Now
By Siel
Already get your tomatoes in season from the farmers’ market or — even better — grow your own organic produce? If you compost like a pro, sew your own reusable napkins from pre-loved fabric, and never, ever forget your organic cotton shopping tote, you might be feeling smugly self-satisfied about (continue reading...)

Yes, We Chicken
By Lisa M. Hamilton
When I told Tony, my neighbor, that I wanted to get chickens, his response was a litany of reasons why I should not: Noise. Smell. Bird flu. One by one, I dismissed each of his fears with a breezy reason why it was nothing to worry about. When he ran (continue reading...)

You Are More Than What You Eat
Conversations — Interview by E.B. Boyd
Raj Patel used to not give much thought to food. He grew up in a London convenience store, surrounded by, as he puts it, “all kinds of crud.” And in graduate school, where he pursued studies in development sociology, Red Bull was his fuel of choice. But while helping to (continue reading...)

Cooling Crops
On Our Radar —
Confronted with an exponential increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, many scientists are looking into global-scale solutions to slow climate change. Some of these “geo-engineering” schemes sound far-fetched, such as the plan to build a giant solar reflector in space that will divert the sun’s rays from our warming planet. But (continue reading...)

Blame it On the Rain
On Our Radar —
Throughout most of modern history people have treated rainwater like a nuisance to be flushed away. As a result, our roads, driveways, gutters and storm sewers now send millions of gallons of polluted water right into our treasured waterways every time it rains. But smart landscaping choices are (continue reading...)

Get Active!
On Our Radar —
Surfing the web for funny penguin pictures? Clicking through the first lady’s fabulous fashion slideshow? Googling yourself just to get an ego boost (or not)? Yeah, we caught you… you’re wasting time on the Interwebs again. Not to worry, if you’re addicted to the other small screen, we’ve definitely got (continue reading...)

What Counts?
On Our Radar — Compiled by Jenny Rough
86%: A drop in the number of consumers buying hybrid cars since the summer due to cheaper gas prices (California is the state with the highest number of hybrid sales, Illinois is fifth and Washington is seventh). 90,000: Number of cattle and calves slaughtered for food every 24 hours (continue reading...)

Urban Essentials
Urban Essentials — By Andrea Manitsas
Don’t Panic, It’s Organic From NorCal sustainable restaurateur Jesse Ziff Cool comes Simply Organic, a lusciously photographed cookbook full of ooh- and ahh-worthy delights. Bold, yet still beginner friendly, the recipes here are arranged by season to give you year-round farmer’s market inspiration ($24.95, chroniclebooks.com) Handy Woman (continue reading...)

Meet Shmeat
Healthy Living — By Lou Bendrick
Last April, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals announced it was sponsoring a one million dollar “X-Poultry Prize” for the creation of affordable, humane and “commercially viable” test-tube meat by 2012. This announcement, not at all surprisingly, piqued public curiosity (for starters, why is PETA endorsing anything with the (continue reading...)

ParaYoga
Healthy Living :: Yogapedia — By Julia Levitt
Origins: Opening a window from the 21st century onto the ancient principles of Tantra, the classic yet contemporary practice of ParaYoga was founded by Colorado-based master teacher Yogarupa Rod Stryker. ParaYoga harnesses subtle energies in the body and mind to empower students in a joyful but disciplined way. The practice (continue reading...)

D to Prevent C-sections?
Healthy Living :: Body Talk — By Elizabeth Barker
Running low on vitamin D might raise your risk of delivering a baby by caesarean section, according to recent research from the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Scientists followed 253 women for two years, finding that those who were D-deficient at the time of delivery had almost four times (continue reading...)

A Moveable Feast
Healthy Living :: Tastebuds — By Jeanne Storck
A friend and I drive down a Berkeley street well past dusk. The lights in most houses aren’t on just yet — except for the one whose windows glitter and beckon like Christmas. All we have is this address, and a very promising menu, which reads like a poem. (continue reading...)

Vegan Soul Kitchen
Healthy Living :: The Mindful Menu — By Bryant Terry
The seed for my new cookbook, Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African American Cuisine, was sown back in 2003 when I was asked to submit a recipe for a new book celebrating the growth of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement in America. I dug deep to come (continue reading...)

An Extravagant Hypothesis
Prophet Motive — By Daniel Pinchbeck
As a hypothesis, I propose that humanity may be undergoing a rapid transition from the biological to the psychic phase of species evolution in the next few years. The inertia of physical forces, chemical processes and cellular mechanisms, precisely coordinated over billions of years, has brought us to this make (continue reading...)

Looking Upstream
Art & Soul —
A man was standing beside a stream, when he saw a baby struggling in the water. Without a thought he jumped in and saved it. No sooner had he placed it gently on the shore than he saw another and jumped in to save it, then another and another. Totally (continue reading...)

Reviews
Art & Soul —
I am averse to advice books. Don’t tell me How to Live — that’s why I have an autonomic nervous system! But Henry Alford’s book is not some souped-up self-help tome. Instead, it is as its subtitle advertises: A (continue reading...)

Around the Bay in Eighty Restaurants
From the Editor —
In the summer of 2007, my man and I moved from the sunny shores of Santa Monica to a studio apartment on the edge of Bernal Heights. The place was a sublet, a simple room to store our stuff while we followed the Craigslist divining rod to the neighborhood we’d (continue reading...)

Birth Announcement: GAIA Takes Manhattan
Letters to the Editor —
Attention New Yorkers: there’s a new kid on the block! Back in August, we debuted the NY edition of our magazines — which we named GAIA. Next time you’re on the right coast, be sure to look us up! —The Eds. A copy of your latest edition found (continue reading...)

Stephanie Bernstein
People In Your Neighborhood — By Andy Isaacson
Berkeleyite Stephanie Bernstein founded To-Go Ware (to-goware.com), which sells reusable utensils, food containers and accessories made from sustainable materials and crafted by artisans in the developing world. Her neighborhood contains a cornucopia of places to reduce her forkprint. Why is your company uniquely at home here? There (continue reading...)

Big Sky Mind
Life, the Universe and Everything — By Emilie Rohrbach
It wasn’t my intention to fall from the sky. Actually, it was never my intention to be so far from Earth that skydiving out of a Cessna was my only choice of return. Options are usually pretty important to a girl like me. Yet there I was, hunched (continue reading...)