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This, the first and only issue of The Ration magazine, is the product of 10-weeks in 2011 spent exploring the intersections of food and health.

People have been thinking seriously about food in Berkeley since before your correspondents were even weaned, so the proposition of making a magazine about food was both exciting and daunting. We wanted to go beyond just celebrating food to learn how it shapes our landscape, culture and economy.

In this issue, we trace the trajectory of a superfood, build a better nutrition label and meet the hippies who sowed the seeds for today’s sustainable food movement, even as their dreams of an agrarian utopia fell apart. We meet an animal rights activist whose undercover videos spurred Iowa legislators to propose a ban on filming at farms. We hear food addicts talk about their struggles to keep eating from ruling their lives and we examine the type of food advertising Latino children see more of.

We are a team of 18 journalists from the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, the University of Missouri and City University, London, taking part in News21, a national journalism training initiative funded by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism.

Find more of our stories at TheRation.com