Meryl likes her food. On Sunday, veteran actress Meryl Streep has a chance to take home her third Oscar, for portraying Julia Child in Nora Ephron's film "Julie & Julia." (It's Streep's 16th nomination.) As charming as Streep is as the towering, funny-voiced woman who revolutionized American cooking, she deserves more accolades for another role she has played in the history of food in America: that of longtime activist.

Over at the Natural Resource Defense Council's site Simplesteps.org, Wendy Gordon interviews Streep about her involvement in the environmental and food movements. The two women have known each other since they worked together to publicize the NRDC's March 1989 report about weaknesses in the regulation of pesticides used in food production. That report launched what was known as the "Alar scare," the national stampede toward the then-nascent subset of organic agriculture. Streep and Gordon helped create Mothers & Others, a now-defunct group that fought for tougher pesticide residue standards -- and eventually saw them passed into law 10 years later. They didn't stop there, writes Gordon:

We encouraged stores to stock organic products, shoppers to support farmers' markets and CSAs. We distributed lists of rBGH-free milk and safer food and beverage storage containers. We published dozens of product reports on everything from paints and wood finishes to personal care products, home furnishings and children's toys. Mothers & Others was transformational, using the power of the concerned consumer to change the marketplace, everything from the way we grow our food to the way we make our stuff. And Meryl was a transformative leader in the environmental health and green consumer movements. She connected the dots for people, brought it home, made it personal.