The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Trying to eat a sustainable diet? One big reason the whole Eating Locally trend has caught on is that a lot of environmentally conscious consumers have started thinking about their carbon footprint. Now a group of Minneapolis restaurants has taken the next big step - composting kitchen wastes to cut down on landfill.

Restaurants produce a lot of trash, and most of it winds up in landfills, where they produce methane, which contributes to global warming. Composting, by contrast, turns the waste into nutrient-rich soil.

Back in the late 1980's, when I was weaning my oldest child and attending meetings of the breastfeeding network La Leche League, I became convinced that pasteurized milk was the root of all evil.

Hey, I was 22 years old. I'd fed my darling infant nothing but 100 percent pure breastmilk for the first 10 months of his life, and then, for another 9, only bits of organic baby food and pasture-fed meat in addition to on-demand nursings. The thought of putting antibiotic-ridden cow's milk into his perfect little body made me quail.