Eggs have played a fairly controversial role lately. So it was with more than a little dismay that I read Compassion in World Farming's press release on Monday. It seemed that Pick n Pay were about to celebrate World Egg Day (I didn't know there was such a day, but nonetheless it is celebrated on the second Friday in October) by making a 60 000 egg omelette – using battery eggs.

But it appears that Pick n Pay has bowed to consumer pressure and Jonathan Ackerman has agreed to make the omelette using free range eggs. Victory to the hens, and kudos to Pick and Pay who obviously realise the power of their shoppers to make life more than a little uncomfortable for them...

Radically radish, the 2-tone sunrise smoothie, wild mushroom soup, brazil nut milk, Thai coleslaw and lemon tart with a twist (it's raw!) are what you can expect from Peter and Beryn Daniel's raw food recipe book entitled Rawlicious.

We fell on this book when it arrived. It really re-inspired us to eat more raw foods (we've always juiced and had smoothies and salads, but other dishes in Rawlicious are pretty enticing), particularly when I realised how easy some of the foods are to prepare.

It's brimming over with easy, delicious food that is healthy for you and goes a long way to...

- and what we can do about it.

Robyn O'Brien is an American mother. She is also a mother of children with allergies, something American (and South African) children appear to be suffering from at an alarmingly increasing rate. And Robyn wrote a book about why.

Her delvings have led to her being called the 'Erin Brokovich of the food industry' because she exposes the hidden dangers in the apparently 'safe' ingredients we feed our children and families.

1 out of every 3 American children today has allergies, asthma, ADHD or autism. There has been a 400% increase in allergies, a 300% increase in asthma, and a 400% increase in ADHD in the last 20 years.

Most of us have no clue how much sugar we consume on a daily basis, but seeing firsthand the effects of a sugar rush on a three year old (it ain't pretty) we've become more sensitive to the sugar content in foods. Sugar Stacks is a useful site to visualise just what 39g of sugar looks like.

There is sugar and then there is sugar. Not all types of sugars are metabolised equally and we would argue that naturally occuring fructose sugars in fruit would logically be healthier for you than added sugar in processed products.

As the sugar stackers say, "we don't differentiate between different types of sugar - i.e., sucrose, fructose, cane sugar, corn syrup, honey, etc., although there are differences in how these sugars are metabolized. We just used cubes of white sugar as a visual aid."

Sugar junkies can also follow the stackers blog.

If you're not already aware of Activist's newest campaign, then now is the time to sign the petition pressuring Pick n Pay, Shoprite Checkers and Spar to follow Woolworths' lead and immediately stop selling battery eggs.

Debeaking, where a beak is melted away by being pressed against a red hot blade, is inflicted on 22.8 million chicks in South Africa every year – just one of the attrocities battery hens undergo in order to lay eggs in a battery cage. Only a ban on battery farming for laying hens can stop this mutilation.

Compassion in World Farming (read about 'kind food' in our green your diet guide) have provided an interview with Mike Bosch that is well worth reading.

Zimbabwian born farmer Mike Bosch has a free range chicken farm near Bela-Bela in the Limpopo province of South Africa that is green...

The down turn in the economy is making us all second-guess what we buy. In the US, a market research company revealed recently that organic food sales rose only 4 percent in the four week period ending October 4th, compared to 20 percent a year in recent years. What's keeping shoppers from purchasing organic food? Cost. No question.

Just why is organic food usually more expensive?

First, organic food is more expensive to produce. Without cheap fertilizers and pesticides, farmers have to do a lot more manual labour, and people are much more expensive than petrochemicals. Additionally, organic farming operations aren't big enough to achieve economies of scale.

Secondly, demand has outstripped supply -- there simply are not enough people growing and producing organic ingredients. And when demand is greater than supply, prices are higher.

But don’t give up on the health of your family. You do not need to give up on organic - just curtail your organic spending and focus on the area where you get the biggest return for your money...

I recently attended the Superfoods Elements of Health Raw Food Course after wanting to do it for some time. We've been juicing, sprouting, and making smoothies, on and off for a while now, but I was interested in taking it to a new level, and to see whether we can add more variety and interest to what we eat. There is after all only so much one can do with muesli, surely...

The course is not a cooking course, but rather an introduction to a whole new approach to doing food. If you have an interest in nutrition, want to improve your health, and still eat delicious food then this is the course for you. In short it is a mind expanding, consciousness altering kind of course - it will change the way you think about food. Peter and Beryn's positivity and passion for their subject is infectious, and because everyone attending the course has a shared interest, it makes for a great weekend of learning and interaction.

It's not common knowledge yet, but the sprouts do, well, um, grow their own sprouts. We've also (occasionally) been known to wear tie-dye, but don't knit our own clothes yet. I guess calling ourselves urban sprout would have alluded to this, but no doubt it will shock some distant relatives: yes we grow and love sprouts. I think this is our first post about sprouts and when you think about it, it's quite strange that it took us so long to broach the topic.

Sprouting is the easiest form of "growing your own" that you can do and incurs the lowest number of "food miles" to get your food from where it's grown to your plate. We're talking food centimetres here. Also anyone without green fingers can easily make a success of growing sprouts in the kitchen.

Sprouting Equipment
Equipment needn't cost a fortune. You can start with an old glass jar (around 500ml or greater), a piece of muslin or cheese cloth (or nylon mesh) and an elastic band. Or you can go to the other end of the scale and buy an automated self watering sprouter (probably overkill for home use!)

After getting fair mileage out of our little plastic Italian sprouter, acquired a few years ago, and looking slightly worse for wear, we recently upgraded to

XDR-TB is an extremely drug-resistant strain of TB. It has been identified in 49 countries as of June 2008.

Legendary photographer and 2007 TED prize winner James Nachtwey spent a year shooting the worldwide health crisis. He’s put together the following video and from 3 October is exhibiting his photographs in major cities throughout the world – Times Square, Union Square and Columbus Circle in New York City, the National Theatre and Barbican Centre in London, film festivals in Los Angeles etc - to create awareness of the killer mutation of tuberculosis.

Many people think of TB as a disease of the past, but in 2007 alone, TB killed 1.7 million people. That’s 4,660 deaths a day, or one death from TB every 20 seconds...

The Department of Trade and Industry has handed down a ruling for mandatory labelling of genetically modified foods in South Africa.

From now on, you have a choice as to whether or not you want to buy GM, but better still, you will actually know which foods contain GM.

The ruling came after a clause about labelling, which had been removed from the draft Consumer Protection bill last year, was reinstated. SAFeAGE has been lobbying for two years to have this clause reinstated; one that gives shoppers the right to choose once the Bill is implemented.

At the moment no GM foods on the market are labelled as such. The Bill will mean that GM food can be tracked from farm to fork, linking any long term issues with GM food directly to the parties responsible.

The only downside to the exciting ruling, is that “our multinational-friendly, people-unfriendly department of Agriculture” (to quote the ethical blog) remains responsible for determining the thresholds and technical requirements of the new regulations. We need to remain vigilant, in other words...

For more about GM foods on urban sprout

Visit the SAFeAGE website