Jessica Naudziunas

KCUR and Harvest Public Media reporters recently received several journalism awards for their reporting.

What's plentiful in upstate New York? Cows and prison inmates, to name a few things.

Reformists in the two communities don't make natural allies, but organizer Lauren Melodia is trying to do just that.

"I was living in this prison town, and at the same time, the dairy industry was in a lot of turmoil," Melodia tells The Salt. "We thought this [dairy] might be the perfect ally in trying to build a different economy in upstate New York, and shift some of the economic dependency away from the prison system."

Pick up your favorite packaged food and read the ingredient list. If you stumbled over any of the words or a color jumped out at you, you might be looking at what’s known as a food additive.

Walk into your neighborhood grocery store looking for healthy food and you might get lost amid a sea of confusing labels and dubious claims. Consumers looking to eat right may get the wrong ideas.

HyVee, like many grocery chains, is trying to part that sea and simplify nutrition for consumers who may not want to read the fine print on their food.

At HyVee stores, you’ll find NuVal. It’s a scoring system on a scale of 1 to 100. The healthier the food, the higher the score.

About half the gasoline sold in the U.S. today contains 10 percent ethanol.

But the ethanol industry, arguing that a 15 percent blend (E-15) is safe for all cars, last year asked the Environmental Protection Agency to approve a higher level of ethanol in fuel.