Almost eleven years later, a small group of food retailers and manufacturers from the Global Sustainability Summit, hosted by the Food Marketing Institute and Grocery Manufacturers Association, weathered the New Orleans heat and humidity for a guided tour of the restored homes in this historic district. In truth, many of Katrina's scars linger in the ninth ward - strange concrete configurations randomly rising from the ground of some properties - the foundational outlines of structures viciously erased by the flood are tombstone-like reminders of the homes once resting there. But alongside these scarred lots, now stand some of the most energy efficient homes in the U.S.

Full Cycle Bioplastics joined top innovators among food waste prevention, food donation and food waste recycling companies at the FMI/GMA Global Sustainability Summit this week and competed in a business plan-pitch style event. Andrew Falcon (right) represented the winning group of the Food Waste Start-Up Challenge, Full Cycle Bioplastics. The company turns organic waste into a fully biodegradable plastic and repurposes the outputs into consumer products. Their finished products even break down in the ocean! Competitors had three minutes to pitch a panel of experts and the full conference audience, followed by a line of questioning from the panel. Mondelez sponsored the challenge.

My grandson is a big fan of the latest Disney movie Finding Dory. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie yet, Dory, a forgetful blue tang fish, embarks on a journey to find her family after her memory is sparked. Like most kids, the movie caused my grandson to ask a lot of questions about fish, his favorite being, “Where did they come from?”

In our recent Shopping for Health report, conducted with Rodale Inc., we asked parents with children, ages 0 – 17, about their shopping, cooking and family meal habits. We know that juggling work, kids and the busy demands of daily life can make it difficult to achieve a family meal at home. Here’s what we found.