last weekend’s chef and kitchen witch, liz blake, just shared this from the NYT.
By JEFF D. LEACH
OVER 7,000 strong and growing, community farmers’ markets are being heralded as a panacea for what ails our sick nation. The smell of fresh, earthy goodness is the reason environmentalists approve of them, locavores can’t live without them, and the first lady has hitched her vegetable cart crusade to them. As health-giving as those bundles of mouthwatering leafy greens and crates of plump tomatoes are, the greatest social contribution of the farmers’ market may be its role as a delivery vehicle for putting dirt back into the American diet and in the process, reacquainting the human immune system with some “old friends.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/opinion/lets-add-a-little-dirt-to-our-diet.html?_r=1&src=recg