Alexander Eichler, The Huffington Post, March 28, 2012
Here in the United States, growing numbers of people can't afford that most basic of necessities: food.
More Americans said they struggled to buy food in 2011 than in any year since the financial crisis, according to a recent report from the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit research group. About 18.6 percent of people -- almost one out of every five -- told Gallup pollsters that they couldn't always afford to feed everyone in their family in 2011.
One might assume that number got smaller wrapped up with the national unemployment rate falling for several consecutive months. In actuality, the reverse proved true: the number of people who said they couldn't afford food just kept rising and rising.
The findings from FRAC highlight what many people already know: The economic recovery, in theory now more than two years old, has done little to keep millions of Americans out of poverty and deprivation. Incomes for many haven't kept pace with the cost of living, and for a large swath of the country, things today are as bad as ever, or worse.
Forty-six million people lived below the poverty line as of 2010, a record number, according to the Census Bureau, and one that's not even as high as some other estimates would have it. Take a further step back and the situation appears even more dire. About 45 percent of people in the U.S. have reported not being able to cover their basic living expenses, including food, shelter and transportation, according to the group Wider Opportunities for Women.
The official poverty rate is about 15 percent, but over two-fifths of Americans have so little saved that one financial emergency is all it would take to put them in poverty, according to the Corporation for Enterprise Development.
These high rates of financial insecurity -- a consequence of the weak job market, and the prevalence of jobs that don't pay very well -- are making themselves felt at the level of everyday spending.
Recently, for example, a Center for Housing Policy study found that a growing number of middle-income owners and renters are paying more than half their earnings just to keep a roof over their heads. And as of 2009, almost one in five Americans over 50 years old were skipping on doctor visits, switching to cheaper medications or forgoing some medicines entirely out of financial necessity, according to a recently published study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a think tank.
As for widespread hunger of the kind recorded by FRAC, research shows that the entire country ends up paying one way or another. While the people who can't afford food are obviously suffering the worst, the social costs incurred -- from the money spent to keep food pantries open to the lifelong diminished earning power of impoverished children -- come to about $167 billion a year, or $542 for every man, woman and child in the country.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
What Are We Really Eating?
Reporter Goes Undercover to Reveal the Real Story of Our Broken Food System
Kerry Trueman, AlterNet, February 23, 2012
Tracie McMillan's The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table takes us on a vivid and poignant tour of a place we don't really want to go: the mostly hidden, sometimes horrible world of the workers who form the backbone of our cheap, industrialized food chain. Sound grim? It is, at times, but McMillan's lively narrative and evident empathy for the people she encounters make her sojourn into the bowels of Big Food and Big Ag a pleasure to read.
From the fields of California's Central Valley to the produce aisle of a Michigan Walmart, and lastly, the kitchen of a Brooklyn Applebee's, McMillan gives a firsthand account of the long hours, lousy wages and difficult conditions that are par for the course in these places. This is tricky terrain for a white, relatively privileged middle-class American woman, and McMillan navigates it with grace and humility, remaining acutely aware of the pitfalls inherent in such a project.
I sat down with McMillan recently to chat about her populist odyssey and found her to be just as down-to-earth and plucky as her prose.
Kerry Trueman: What was the hardest part of going undercover?
Tracie McMillan: This was the first time I had gone undercover to do work like that, because I believe very strongly in the importance of being upfront with people about what you're doing and who you are and I am not a good actress (laughs). So the place where I was culturally the least good of a fit, in the fields, I was really protected by the fact that I didn't speak the language. I just seemed like a kind of dumb white girl, and that was really helpful.
The first thing was getting over my anxiety over doing that kind of project and coming to terms with it. It meant that I had to be dishonest with my coworkers. I don't really care so much that I'm not honest with the companies. It's very interesting, the same year that I was working at Walmart during the holiday season, Stephanie Rosenbloom at the New York Times went and worked for a day at a Walmart with the company's permission, and she had a very different experience than I did.
And that's why you do it. Companies and supervisors do not treat you the same, and coworkers won't be as honest with you, or as open. I've come out of this very convinced that undercover work is worthwhile, but it's a complicated thing. There's a tendency to think "I can totally do this, and how else can I get this information?" but I also understand why people react badly to it sometimes.
So there was the undercover thing, and then there was finding the right balance between my narrative and talking about the people I was with. It's not supposed to be about me as a white girl having that experience; the idea is that I can only tell my story and what I observed, but I'm using that to get to the stories of the other people around me.
KT: You found that farm work in California's Central Valley was extremely demanding, sometimes dangerous, and routinely underpaid. What do you think it would take to provide the people who pick our crops with better working conditions and paychecks that don't deliberately shortchange them?
TM: I was typically working alongside undocumented immigrants. You always hear the stories about how undocumented immigrants work for very low wages and how they get treated. It's one thing to hear about it, it's another thing to see how terrified everybody is, how unwilling they are to say anything.
They complained about it outside of work, we'd talk about how bad the wages were and the women were like, "Why don't you say anything?" For me that was really awkward, because I wanted to say "That's terrible, and I will march off and I will fix everything!" Which is not something you can do as an undercover reporter.
Even if you're undocumented, you still have legal rights, but they don't necessarily know that. And even the ones that do, it's not like they have a guaranteed job, you could be hired or fired at any moment. There's no job security. So, you keep working, and at least you have the stability of knowing that you will get your eight hours of work for which you're paid $25 to $40. How do you fix that? You enforce the existing labor laws. You don't necessarily need new ones. I think it's important not to stifle businesses' ability to do their job, but I did observe when I was working in the fields that every week I was asked to sign a piece of paper stating that I had taken food safety training that I had never taken.
And one of the arguments around food safety is that farmers should be allowed to self-regulate that. I saw in my work that self-regulation wasn't working. And in terms of labor law enforcement, you need some sense that people are going to get in trouble if they cheat workers. The average fine levied under the Agricultural Worker Protection Act is about $350. During my time in the fields I was underpaid by about $500.
A farm advocate in Ohio explained to me that it's cheaper to violate the law and pay when someone complains than it is to follow the law.
KT: Can you even imagine how different conditions would have to be for it to not be an anomaly to have someone with your own background choosing that kind of work?
TM: That's called unionization and massive social change! Factory work in the early 20th century was really dangerous and it didn't pay very well, but those became really good jobs because there was unionization and legislation to protect workers. My grandfather raised my mother and her two brothers and took care of my grandmother on the salary he earned working for Ford.
So, if you could figure out a way to make farm labor a better job in terms of wages and working conditions, more people would do it. The reason why people don't do farm labor isn't because they're, like, "Oh, we're too good to be in the fields," it's because it's really hard work that often doesn't pay minimum wage. Picking up garbage is a shitty job, too, but people still go do that, because it's a decent gig.
KT: What were your most miserable moments?
TM: This belies my upwardly mobile aspirations (laughs). For me, what was the most emotionally miserable was working the night shift at Walmart. I didn't see any daylight for the most part. That's also really physical work, so I would move half a ton of sugar and a half ton of flour in a night, by myself. It's isolated work, you're in an aisle stocking by yourself, so there's no social aspect to it.
But what I found most draining about it was that most of my coworkers, many of whom were married and had families, had been there for seven, 10, 15 years. One coworker was earning $11 an hour after working there for seven years, and she talked about how if you worked at Walmart for 15 years that's actually really good because you get a lifetime discount card.
There's something really sobering when what you're aspiring to is that if you stick it out at $10, $11, $12 an hour you're going to get a lifetime 10-percent discount card.
KT: Walmart keeps touting its commitment to fresh healthy produce, but in your experience, they treated fresh fruits and vegetables just like any other non-perishable consumer good. Their blasé attitude toward the fresh produce engendered so much waste! How do you square that with their famous obsession for maximizing profit?
TM: I was really shocked to be working at Walmart and to see how inefficient the place I was working was. I have no idea if that department was just an anomaly, or if that's a broader problem.
Randy, the manager, was incredibly young, didn't really know what he was doing, and didn't particularly care. For that, I would fault the store management. It's one thing to be really bad at your job, but why did somebody give you that job?
What was really upsetting to me was that one of my colleagues, I think I call him Sam in the book, who's a black man, he had come to Walmart after the grocery store he worked at closed down. He had been working in produce for five years and knew a lot, so I could ask him anything, like "How do I tell if this is ripe?" Sam had applied for that job and they had given it to Randy instead. I have no idea who on the planet would have picked Randy over Sam, because Sam knew produce, whereas Randy had a background in electronics.
KT: You write, "When cooking instruction is paired with basic nutrition education, Americans cook more and eat more healthfully--even when money is tight." What's your prescription for battling kitchen illiteracy?
TM: Almost everything people are eating at home involves some degree of convenience foods. That kind of thing usually tends to have a lot of salt and preservatives in it. But it's actually no more time-intensive to do a Hamburger Helper kind of thing from scratch, and it's actually cheaper.
The thing that sucks about a box isn't that it's quick--it's that if you don't already know how to cook, you think you can't make a cake without a box. We need to start thinking about cooking as a basic life skill, not something that's optional. Incorporating that into public education to me seems like a smart idea. It can be a really great way to teach people other stuff. It's great for math, right? And for reading comprehension. Or learning to write recipes. It's an important survival skill.
I think one of the things you can support, no matter what your politics are, is that our schools should be teaching our kids how to be self-sufficient, how to take care of themselves and not to have to depend on large institutions. I would include in that not just government but also corporations.
We don't want to be raising kids who depend on corporations to tell them what to eat and how to eat. That's a really important part of American culture. People talk all the time about a nanny state, but there's the corporate nanny, too. And I don't like that either! If we want people to be self-sufficient, cooking and eating is a part of that. So, we need to include cooking as part of public school education. I also understand fully the difficulty of educational reform, but I think it's an important point to start discussing.
Buy a copy of Tracie McMillan's book through our partnership with Powell's Books.
Kerry Trueman, AlterNet, February 23, 2012
Tracie McMillan's The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table takes us on a vivid and poignant tour of a place we don't really want to go: the mostly hidden, sometimes horrible world of the workers who form the backbone of our cheap, industrialized food chain. Sound grim? It is, at times, but McMillan's lively narrative and evident empathy for the people she encounters make her sojourn into the bowels of Big Food and Big Ag a pleasure to read.
From the fields of California's Central Valley to the produce aisle of a Michigan Walmart, and lastly, the kitchen of a Brooklyn Applebee's, McMillan gives a firsthand account of the long hours, lousy wages and difficult conditions that are par for the course in these places. This is tricky terrain for a white, relatively privileged middle-class American woman, and McMillan navigates it with grace and humility, remaining acutely aware of the pitfalls inherent in such a project.
I sat down with McMillan recently to chat about her populist odyssey and found her to be just as down-to-earth and plucky as her prose.
Kerry Trueman: What was the hardest part of going undercover?
Tracie McMillan: This was the first time I had gone undercover to do work like that, because I believe very strongly in the importance of being upfront with people about what you're doing and who you are and I am not a good actress (laughs). So the place where I was culturally the least good of a fit, in the fields, I was really protected by the fact that I didn't speak the language. I just seemed like a kind of dumb white girl, and that was really helpful.
The first thing was getting over my anxiety over doing that kind of project and coming to terms with it. It meant that I had to be dishonest with my coworkers. I don't really care so much that I'm not honest with the companies. It's very interesting, the same year that I was working at Walmart during the holiday season, Stephanie Rosenbloom at the New York Times went and worked for a day at a Walmart with the company's permission, and she had a very different experience than I did.
And that's why you do it. Companies and supervisors do not treat you the same, and coworkers won't be as honest with you, or as open. I've come out of this very convinced that undercover work is worthwhile, but it's a complicated thing. There's a tendency to think "I can totally do this, and how else can I get this information?" but I also understand why people react badly to it sometimes.
So there was the undercover thing, and then there was finding the right balance between my narrative and talking about the people I was with. It's not supposed to be about me as a white girl having that experience; the idea is that I can only tell my story and what I observed, but I'm using that to get to the stories of the other people around me.
KT: You found that farm work in California's Central Valley was extremely demanding, sometimes dangerous, and routinely underpaid. What do you think it would take to provide the people who pick our crops with better working conditions and paychecks that don't deliberately shortchange them?
TM: I was typically working alongside undocumented immigrants. You always hear the stories about how undocumented immigrants work for very low wages and how they get treated. It's one thing to hear about it, it's another thing to see how terrified everybody is, how unwilling they are to say anything.
They complained about it outside of work, we'd talk about how bad the wages were and the women were like, "Why don't you say anything?" For me that was really awkward, because I wanted to say "That's terrible, and I will march off and I will fix everything!" Which is not something you can do as an undercover reporter.
Even if you're undocumented, you still have legal rights, but they don't necessarily know that. And even the ones that do, it's not like they have a guaranteed job, you could be hired or fired at any moment. There's no job security. So, you keep working, and at least you have the stability of knowing that you will get your eight hours of work for which you're paid $25 to $40. How do you fix that? You enforce the existing labor laws. You don't necessarily need new ones. I think it's important not to stifle businesses' ability to do their job, but I did observe when I was working in the fields that every week I was asked to sign a piece of paper stating that I had taken food safety training that I had never taken.
And one of the arguments around food safety is that farmers should be allowed to self-regulate that. I saw in my work that self-regulation wasn't working. And in terms of labor law enforcement, you need some sense that people are going to get in trouble if they cheat workers. The average fine levied under the Agricultural Worker Protection Act is about $350. During my time in the fields I was underpaid by about $500.
A farm advocate in Ohio explained to me that it's cheaper to violate the law and pay when someone complains than it is to follow the law.
KT: Can you even imagine how different conditions would have to be for it to not be an anomaly to have someone with your own background choosing that kind of work?
TM: That's called unionization and massive social change! Factory work in the early 20th century was really dangerous and it didn't pay very well, but those became really good jobs because there was unionization and legislation to protect workers. My grandfather raised my mother and her two brothers and took care of my grandmother on the salary he earned working for Ford.
So, if you could figure out a way to make farm labor a better job in terms of wages and working conditions, more people would do it. The reason why people don't do farm labor isn't because they're, like, "Oh, we're too good to be in the fields," it's because it's really hard work that often doesn't pay minimum wage. Picking up garbage is a shitty job, too, but people still go do that, because it's a decent gig.
KT: What were your most miserable moments?
TM: This belies my upwardly mobile aspirations (laughs). For me, what was the most emotionally miserable was working the night shift at Walmart. I didn't see any daylight for the most part. That's also really physical work, so I would move half a ton of sugar and a half ton of flour in a night, by myself. It's isolated work, you're in an aisle stocking by yourself, so there's no social aspect to it.
But what I found most draining about it was that most of my coworkers, many of whom were married and had families, had been there for seven, 10, 15 years. One coworker was earning $11 an hour after working there for seven years, and she talked about how if you worked at Walmart for 15 years that's actually really good because you get a lifetime discount card.
There's something really sobering when what you're aspiring to is that if you stick it out at $10, $11, $12 an hour you're going to get a lifetime 10-percent discount card.
KT: Walmart keeps touting its commitment to fresh healthy produce, but in your experience, they treated fresh fruits and vegetables just like any other non-perishable consumer good. Their blasé attitude toward the fresh produce engendered so much waste! How do you square that with their famous obsession for maximizing profit?
TM: I was really shocked to be working at Walmart and to see how inefficient the place I was working was. I have no idea if that department was just an anomaly, or if that's a broader problem.
Randy, the manager, was incredibly young, didn't really know what he was doing, and didn't particularly care. For that, I would fault the store management. It's one thing to be really bad at your job, but why did somebody give you that job?
What was really upsetting to me was that one of my colleagues, I think I call him Sam in the book, who's a black man, he had come to Walmart after the grocery store he worked at closed down. He had been working in produce for five years and knew a lot, so I could ask him anything, like "How do I tell if this is ripe?" Sam had applied for that job and they had given it to Randy instead. I have no idea who on the planet would have picked Randy over Sam, because Sam knew produce, whereas Randy had a background in electronics.
KT: You write, "When cooking instruction is paired with basic nutrition education, Americans cook more and eat more healthfully--even when money is tight." What's your prescription for battling kitchen illiteracy?
TM: Almost everything people are eating at home involves some degree of convenience foods. That kind of thing usually tends to have a lot of salt and preservatives in it. But it's actually no more time-intensive to do a Hamburger Helper kind of thing from scratch, and it's actually cheaper.
The thing that sucks about a box isn't that it's quick--it's that if you don't already know how to cook, you think you can't make a cake without a box. We need to start thinking about cooking as a basic life skill, not something that's optional. Incorporating that into public education to me seems like a smart idea. It can be a really great way to teach people other stuff. It's great for math, right? And for reading comprehension. Or learning to write recipes. It's an important survival skill.
I think one of the things you can support, no matter what your politics are, is that our schools should be teaching our kids how to be self-sufficient, how to take care of themselves and not to have to depend on large institutions. I would include in that not just government but also corporations.
We don't want to be raising kids who depend on corporations to tell them what to eat and how to eat. That's a really important part of American culture. People talk all the time about a nanny state, but there's the corporate nanny, too. And I don't like that either! If we want people to be self-sufficient, cooking and eating is a part of that. So, we need to include cooking as part of public school education. I also understand fully the difficulty of educational reform, but I think it's an important point to start discussing.
Buy a copy of Tracie McMillan's book through our partnership with Powell's Books.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Bittman on Regulating our Sugar Habit
Mark Bittman, The New York Times, February 26, 2012
When Ronda Storms, a Republican state senator in Florida, is accused of nanny-state-ism for her efforts on behalf of a sane diet, it’s worth noting. When she introduced a bill to prevent people in Florida from spending food stamps on unhealthy items like candy, chips and soda, she broke ranks: few of her party have taken on Big Food. And as someone who has called for the defunding of an educational Planned Parenthood program and banning library book displays supporting Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, she is hardly in her party’s left wing. Not surprisingly, she’s faced criticism from every corner: Democrats think she’s attacking poor people, and Republicans see Michelle Obama. Soon after Storms proposed the bill, she told me, “Coca-Cola and Kraft were in my office” hating it.
Yet she makes sense. “It’s just bad public policy to allow unfettered access to all kinds of food,” she told me over the phone. “Why should we cut all of these programs and continue to pay for people to use food stamps to buy potato chips, Oreos and Mountain Dew? The goal is to feed good food to hungry people.”
To some, dictating what recipients of benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program can eat seems unfair. But when the program began in 1939 it aimed both to feed the unemployed and to aid farm recovery. Participants received $1.50 in stamps for every cash dollar spent, 50 cents of which was designated for purchase of agricultural surplus. That’s already a directive on spending, but perhaps more important is that nearly three-quarters of a century ago almost the only thing you could buy — with or without regulation — was real food. Since then Big Food has moved our diet in the wrong direction, and now we have a surplus of empty calories.
The argument for limiting the use of food stamps to actual food is consistent with established policy. They’re already disallowed for tobacco, alcohol,vitamins, pet foods, household supplies and (with some exceptions) food meant to be eaten on premises. Payments have been based on the cost of a “nutritionally adequate diet.”
Let me state the obvious: there is no nutritional need for foods with added sugar.
All of this is part of the bigger question: How do we regulate the consumption of dangerous foods? As a nation, we’ve accepted the need to limit the marketing and availability of tobacco and alcohol. The first is dangerous in any quantity, and the second becomes dangerous when overconsumed.
And added sweeteners, experts increasingly argue, have more in common with these substances than with fruit. In a recent paper in Nature, Robert H. Lustig, Laura A. Schmidt and Claire D. Brindis remind us that for the first time, chronic diseases pose a greater health threat than infectious ones, and of the three main risk factors for chronic diseases — alcohol, tobacco and diet — two are regulated and one is not.
The authors specifically target “any sweetener containing the molecule fructose (which makes sugar sweet) that is added to food in processing” as the key problem in our current diet, and correlate the rise in consumption of sugar with a rise in disease, listing the many ways in which sugar’s effects on the body are similar to those of alcohol. Their contention is that sugar is hardly “an empty calorie,” but rather an actively harmful one: “Fructose can trigger processes that lead to liver toxicity and a host of other chronic metabolic diseases.”
Added sugar is not the only dangerous food. But unlike animal products, for example, which we also overconsume, it has no benefits. Yet we down it at the rate of 150 pounds per person per year, and while scientists argue whether it is addictive in humans (it meets the criteria for addiction in animals), it is most certainly habit-forming. Lustig and his co-authors suggest that actions like imposing taxes on added sugar or establishing a minimum age for purchase of sodas (they mention 17 in their paper) would reduce consumption.
The question “Is this necessary?” is unavoidable. But as obesity and its consequences ravage our health care system, we struggle not only with our own diets but also with preventing our children from falling into the same traps. Last year a brigade of parents stood watch outside a corner store in North Philadelphia in an attempt to prevent their kids from buying junk food.
They’ve been called foot soldiers, but you might call them vigilantes. Vigilantism occurs when people believe the government isn’t doing its job. We need the government on our side. It must acknowledge the dangers caused by the most unhealthy aspects of our diet and figure out how to help us cope with them, because this is the biggest public health challenge facing the developed world.
When Ronda Storms, a Republican state senator in Florida, is accused of nanny-state-ism for her efforts on behalf of a sane diet, it’s worth noting. When she introduced a bill to prevent people in Florida from spending food stamps on unhealthy items like candy, chips and soda, she broke ranks: few of her party have taken on Big Food. And as someone who has called for the defunding of an educational Planned Parenthood program and banning library book displays supporting Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, she is hardly in her party’s left wing. Not surprisingly, she’s faced criticism from every corner: Democrats think she’s attacking poor people, and Republicans see Michelle Obama. Soon after Storms proposed the bill, she told me, “Coca-Cola and Kraft were in my office” hating it.
Yet she makes sense. “It’s just bad public policy to allow unfettered access to all kinds of food,” she told me over the phone. “Why should we cut all of these programs and continue to pay for people to use food stamps to buy potato chips, Oreos and Mountain Dew? The goal is to feed good food to hungry people.”
To some, dictating what recipients of benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program can eat seems unfair. But when the program began in 1939 it aimed both to feed the unemployed and to aid farm recovery. Participants received $1.50 in stamps for every cash dollar spent, 50 cents of which was designated for purchase of agricultural surplus. That’s already a directive on spending, but perhaps more important is that nearly three-quarters of a century ago almost the only thing you could buy — with or without regulation — was real food. Since then Big Food has moved our diet in the wrong direction, and now we have a surplus of empty calories.
The argument for limiting the use of food stamps to actual food is consistent with established policy. They’re already disallowed for tobacco, alcohol,vitamins, pet foods, household supplies and (with some exceptions) food meant to be eaten on premises. Payments have been based on the cost of a “nutritionally adequate diet.”
Let me state the obvious: there is no nutritional need for foods with added sugar.
All of this is part of the bigger question: How do we regulate the consumption of dangerous foods? As a nation, we’ve accepted the need to limit the marketing and availability of tobacco and alcohol. The first is dangerous in any quantity, and the second becomes dangerous when overconsumed.
And added sweeteners, experts increasingly argue, have more in common with these substances than with fruit. In a recent paper in Nature, Robert H. Lustig, Laura A. Schmidt and Claire D. Brindis remind us that for the first time, chronic diseases pose a greater health threat than infectious ones, and of the three main risk factors for chronic diseases — alcohol, tobacco and diet — two are regulated and one is not.
The authors specifically target “any sweetener containing the molecule fructose (which makes sugar sweet) that is added to food in processing” as the key problem in our current diet, and correlate the rise in consumption of sugar with a rise in disease, listing the many ways in which sugar’s effects on the body are similar to those of alcohol. Their contention is that sugar is hardly “an empty calorie,” but rather an actively harmful one: “Fructose can trigger processes that lead to liver toxicity and a host of other chronic metabolic diseases.”
Added sugar is not the only dangerous food. But unlike animal products, for example, which we also overconsume, it has no benefits. Yet we down it at the rate of 150 pounds per person per year, and while scientists argue whether it is addictive in humans (it meets the criteria for addiction in animals), it is most certainly habit-forming. Lustig and his co-authors suggest that actions like imposing taxes on added sugar or establishing a minimum age for purchase of sodas (they mention 17 in their paper) would reduce consumption.
The question “Is this necessary?” is unavoidable. But as obesity and its consequences ravage our health care system, we struggle not only with our own diets but also with preventing our children from falling into the same traps. Last year a brigade of parents stood watch outside a corner store in North Philadelphia in an attempt to prevent their kids from buying junk food.
They’ve been called foot soldiers, but you might call them vigilantes. Vigilantism occurs when people believe the government isn’t doing its job. We need the government on our side. It must acknowledge the dangers caused by the most unhealthy aspects of our diet and figure out how to help us cope with them, because this is the biggest public health challenge facing the developed world.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
New Guidelines Planned on School Vending Machines
February 20, 2012
New Guidelines Planned on School Vending Machines
By RON NIXON
¶ WASHINGTON — The government’s attempt to reduce childhood obesity is moving from the school cafeteria to the vending machines.
¶ The Obama administration is working on setting nutritional standards for foods that children can buy outside the cafeteria. With students eating 19 percent to 50 percent of their daily food at school, the administration says it wants to ensure that what they eat contributes to good health and smaller waistlines. The proposed rules are expected within the next few weeks.
¶ Efforts to restrict the food that schoolchildren eat outside the lunchroom have long been controversial.
¶ Representatives of the food and beverage industries argue that many of their products contribute to good nutrition and should not be banned. Schools say that overly restrictive rules, which could include banning the candy sold for school fund-raisers, risk the loss of substantial revenue that helps pay for sports, music and arts programs. A study by the National Academy of Sciences estimates that about $2.3 billion worth of snack foods and beverages are sold annually in schools nationwide.
¶ Nutritionists say that school vending machines stocked with potato chips, cookies and sugary soft drinks contribute to childhood obesity, which has more than tripled in the past 30 years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about one in every five children are obese.
¶ No details of the proposed guidelines have been released, but health advocates and snack food and soft drink industry representatives predict that the rules will be similar to those for the government’s school lunch program, which reduced amounts of sugar, salt and fat.
¶ Those rules set off a fight between parents and health advocates on one side, who praised the standards, and the food industry, which argued that some of the proposals went too far. Members of Congress stepped in to block the administration from limiting the amount of potatoes children could be served and to allow schools to continue to count tomato paste on a pizza as a serving of vegetables.
¶ Nancy Huehnergarth, executive director of the New York State Healthy Eating and Physical Activity Alliance in Millwood, N.Y., said she expected a similar fight over the vending machine rules.
¶ “I think the food and beverage industry is going to fight tooth and nail over these rules,” Ms. Huehnergarth said.
¶ But representatives of the food and beverage industry say they generally support selling healthier snacks and drinks in schools.
¶ “But we are a little concerned that they might make the rules too stringent,” said James A. McCarthy, president of the Snack Food Association, a trade group in Washington.
¶ Mr. McCarthy said the industry supported nutritional snacks and was working with the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation, headed by the former president, in an initiative called the Alliance for a Healthier Generation to establish voluntary guidelines for healthier foods in schools.
¶ The foods include baked rather than fried potato chips, dry-roasted nuts and low-sodium pretzels, Mr. McCarthy said.
¶ Christopher Gindlesperger, director of communications for the American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola and Pepsi, said his industry had also worked with schools to reduce or eliminate sugary drinks and replace them with healthier alternatives.
¶ “Our members have voluntarily reduced the calories in drinks shipped to schools by 88 percent and stopped offering full-calorie soft drinks in school vending machines,” Mr. Gindlesperger said.
¶ But a study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine released this month shows that despite industry efforts and those of others, snacking behavior among children remains largely unchanged. One reason is that healthier snacks were being offered alongside less nutritious offerings.
¶ Between 2006 and 2010, the study found, about half of the schools had vending machines, stores and cafeterias that offered unhealthy foods.
¶ The availability of high-fat foods in schools followed regional patterns. In the South, where rates of childhood obesity are the highest, less nutritious food was more prevalent. In the West, where childhood obesity rates are lower, high-fat food was not as common, the study found.
¶ Health advocates say the study points to the need for national standards.
¶ Jessica Donze Black, director of the Kids’ Safe and Healthful Foods Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, gave the food industry credit for trying to reduce sugary drinks and fatty snacks, but said the voluntary guidelines did not go far enough.
¶ “What we have is a fragmented system where some schools do a good job of limiting access to junk food and others don’t,” she said. “We need a national standard that ensures that all schools meet some minimum guidelines.”
¶ Still, some school districts question whether students would buy healthy foods offered in vending machines and school stores. Frequently vending machines with healthy alternative snacks are ignored, and children bring snacks from home or buy them at local stores off-campus during lunch periods. Roger Kipp, food service director for the Norwood school district in Ohio, said children could be persuaded to eat healthy foods and schools could still make a profit.
¶ Two years ago, Mr. Kipp eliminated vending machines and school stores in his district and replaced them with an area in the lunchroom where they could buy wraps, fruit or yogurt. Children ate better, and the schools made some money.
¶ “It took a while, but it caught on,” Mr. Kipp said. “You have to give the kids time. You can’t replace 16 years of bad eating habits overnight.”
¶This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
¶Correction: February 21, 2012
¶An earlier version of this article misquoted Christopher Gindlesperger, director of communications for the American Beverage Association. He said the group’s members have voluntarily stopped offering full-calorie soft drinks in all school vending machines, not in elementary school vending machines.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Prince Charles and The FUTURE OF FOOD
Feeding the planet sustainably is one of the world’s most pressing challenges.
In his keynote speech at the Future of Food conference, HRH Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales, sounded the alarm for an earth on the brink of agricultural disaster.
Soils are being depleted, demands for water growing ever more voracious, and the entire system is at the mercy of an increasingly fluctuating price of oil.
Although the Prince seemed an unlikely messenger, he drew upon his nearly 30 years of organic farming experience and sustainable food advocacy, artfully revealing the true costs of industrial agriculture — from soil degradation to water contamination — while raising hope for a future that is more ecologically viable.
“So far as I know, only one eminent person has had both the clarity to see and the courage to speak candidly about the obvious failures and dangers of industrial agriculture. That person is Prince Charles of the United Kingdom, who took his stand and made his challenge to industrial agriculture many years ago.” — Wendell Barry
From Speech to Book
Environmentalist and author Laurie David was in the audience that day. She immediately connected with the Prince’s message and, recognizing an opportunity to make a greater case — to a wider audience — for more sustainable food systems, David teamed with Rodale Books and GRACE Communications Foundation, a co-sponsor of the event, to create a printed publication of the speech. GRACE also created this site as a place where people can learn more about the issues raised in the book, and what we can individually and collectively do to create positive change.
The book contains a foreword by Wendell Berry and an afterword by Will Allen and Eric Schlosser, all preeminent voices in the sustainable food movement.
“The Prince of Wales gave an important address on the heels of one of the biggest events in his life — his son’s wedding. With the eyes of the world upon him and his family, the Prince shined a spotlight on the dangerous nature of our current food system, clearly laying out how we got into this mess and how we can get out.” — Laurie David
About Laurie David
Laurie David is the author of The Family Dinner, a cookbook and guide to the most important hour of the day. Laurie is also known as the producer of the Academy Award winning An Inconvenient Truth, the game-changing documentary she persuaded Al Gore to make after seeing his Keynote slide show on the perils of climate change. Learn more at http://www.thefamilydinner.com/.
About GRACE Communications Foundation
GRACE Communications Foundation builds partnerships and develops innovative media strategies that increase public awareness of the relationships among food, water and energy systems. By mobilizing philanthropic resources and collaborating with like-minded non-profits and academic institutions, GRACE educates consumers and advocates for policies that address the environmental and public health effects of industrial food systems and support the development of sustainable food distribution networks. Learn more at http://www.gracelinks.org/.
“It was so inspiring to hear such a distinguished figure as Prince Charles speak so passionately and eloquently about the urgent need to change the industrial food system. Based on a lifetime of practice and commitment to the sustainable model, his will be a powerful new voice in the US to invigorate the movement. This landmark address is a call to arms for all of us advocates to mobilize our intellectual and economic resources to meet the Prince’s challenge for systemic change.”
— Helaine Lerner, President, GRACE Communications Foundation
About Rodale Inc.
Rodale is a global media company with a heritage, mission, and authority dedicated to the health and wellness of the individual, community, and planet. Through a broad portfolio of leading media properties, Rodale reaches more than 70 million people around the world through multiple distribution channels, including magazines, books, online, e-commerce, direct-to-consumer, and video. The company publishes some of the best-known health and wellness lifestyle magazines, including Men’s Health, Prevention, Women’s Health, Runner’s World, Bicycling, Running Times, and Organic Gardening, and is the largest independent book publisher in the United States, with a collection of bestselling titles including Al Gore’s Our Choice, Howard Schultz’s Onward, Alicia Silverstone’s The Kind Diet, Flat Belly Diet!, and the Eat This, Not That! series, among others. Rodale is also a leader in direct-response marketing and has more than 25 million active customers in its database.
Learn more at http://www.rodaleinc.com/.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Competition in Fight against Obesity
HealthPartners and ChildObesity180 Seek the Best in Innovative School Physical Activity Programs as Part of National Competition in Fight against Obesity
Reuters, Tue Feb 7, 2012 12:17pm EST
First Lady Michelle Obama encourages schools to participate in video message
HealthPartners is proud to announce our support of the Active Schools Acceleration Project’s (ASAP) Innovation Competition, an initiative of ChildObesity180. Announced by First Lady Michelle Obama Tuesday, ASAP’s Innovation Competition is designed to identify, reward, and scale the very best approaches and technological innovations in school-based physical activity.
The contest will award a total of $500,000 in prizes, with individual awards of up to $100,000 for school-based programs and technological innovations that promote physical activity for children. The winners will be judged on creativity, impact, and potential for scale. In addition to monetary awards, top winners will participate in fully-funded pilot studies aimed at expanding both reach and impact.
The competition will accept submissions from February 7, 2012 through April 2, 2012. All competition details and a message from the First Lady can be found at www.ActiveSchoolsASAP.org.
HealthPartners has worked to improve the health and well-being of our community through innovative, evidence-based workplace programs, through our yumPower better-for-you eating initiative. Because of that, being one of 13 leading health plans nationally to partner with ChildObesity180 to recognize and expand school-based physical activity programs was a natural fit.
Nearly one third of children and adolescents in the U.S. are overweight or obese according to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. HealthPartners is currently working with Twin Cities public schools and providing students with fruit and vegetable trackers to encourage students to incorporate fresh food in their diets and help them learn to eat well at an early age.
“Childhood obesity is an issue of particular concern to HealthPartners,” says Donna Zimmerman, HealthPartners senior vice president of government and community relations. “Research shows that habits developed at a young age often last a lifetime, so this is a great opportunity to help reverse the obesity epidemic in our community and our nation.”
ASAP is calling for entries from schools, teachers, technology developers, entrepreneurs – anyone with a passion and a plan to get students active and healthy. The competition features two categories: “School Programs” and “Technology Innovation.”
Teachers, schools, or entire districts are encouraged to submit their in-school physical activity programs to the competition in the “School Programs” category. This may include any curriculum, activity, environmental modification, event, or other initiative that promotes quality school-time physical activity and is currently being implemented with their students.
Winners of the “Technology Innovation” category will demonstrate how their existing or emerging technology can be used to inspire kids to be physically active. This may include devices, tracking and measurement systems, software applications, innovative uses of social media, gaming, smart phones, and more.
“Many schools have found creative ways to incorporate physical activity into the daily routine of their students, helping them to build lifelong healthy habits,” said Christina Economos, PhD, Vice-Chair and Director of ChildObesity180, and a leading researcher in the field of childhood obesity prevention. "This competition is about recognizing those champions and identifying opportunities to bring their innovative solutions to scale."
“We believe that the Innovation Competition is an excellent complement to other obesity-prevention initiatives HealthPartners has championed, including our yumPower better-for-you dinning app for iPhone users and our TrackWell app to help keep track of daily activity. We are proud to partner with ChildObesity180 in support of this exciting initiative,” Zimmerman said.
About HealthPartners
Founded in 1957, the HealthPartners (www.healthpartners.com) family of health care companies serves more than 1.36 million medical and dental health plan members nationwide. It is the largest consumer-governed, nonprofit health care organization in the nation providing care, coverage, research and education to improve the health of members, patients and the community. HealthPartners is the top-ranked commercial health plan in Minnesota and is also ranked in the top 25 in the nation according to NCQA's Health Insurance Plan Rankings 2011-12 - private.
Reuters, Tue Feb 7, 2012 12:17pm EST
First Lady Michelle Obama encourages schools to participate in video message
HealthPartners is proud to announce our support of the Active Schools Acceleration Project’s (ASAP) Innovation Competition, an initiative of ChildObesity180. Announced by First Lady Michelle Obama Tuesday, ASAP’s Innovation Competition is designed to identify, reward, and scale the very best approaches and technological innovations in school-based physical activity.
The contest will award a total of $500,000 in prizes, with individual awards of up to $100,000 for school-based programs and technological innovations that promote physical activity for children. The winners will be judged on creativity, impact, and potential for scale. In addition to monetary awards, top winners will participate in fully-funded pilot studies aimed at expanding both reach and impact.
The competition will accept submissions from February 7, 2012 through April 2, 2012. All competition details and a message from the First Lady can be found at www.ActiveSchoolsASAP.org.
HealthPartners has worked to improve the health and well-being of our community through innovative, evidence-based workplace programs, through our yumPower better-for-you eating initiative. Because of that, being one of 13 leading health plans nationally to partner with ChildObesity180 to recognize and expand school-based physical activity programs was a natural fit.
Nearly one third of children and adolescents in the U.S. are overweight or obese according to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. HealthPartners is currently working with Twin Cities public schools and providing students with fruit and vegetable trackers to encourage students to incorporate fresh food in their diets and help them learn to eat well at an early age.
“Childhood obesity is an issue of particular concern to HealthPartners,” says Donna Zimmerman, HealthPartners senior vice president of government and community relations. “Research shows that habits developed at a young age often last a lifetime, so this is a great opportunity to help reverse the obesity epidemic in our community and our nation.”
ASAP is calling for entries from schools, teachers, technology developers, entrepreneurs – anyone with a passion and a plan to get students active and healthy. The competition features two categories: “School Programs” and “Technology Innovation.”
Teachers, schools, or entire districts are encouraged to submit their in-school physical activity programs to the competition in the “School Programs” category. This may include any curriculum, activity, environmental modification, event, or other initiative that promotes quality school-time physical activity and is currently being implemented with their students.
Winners of the “Technology Innovation” category will demonstrate how their existing or emerging technology can be used to inspire kids to be physically active. This may include devices, tracking and measurement systems, software applications, innovative uses of social media, gaming, smart phones, and more.
“Many schools have found creative ways to incorporate physical activity into the daily routine of their students, helping them to build lifelong healthy habits,” said Christina Economos, PhD, Vice-Chair and Director of ChildObesity180, and a leading researcher in the field of childhood obesity prevention. "This competition is about recognizing those champions and identifying opportunities to bring their innovative solutions to scale."
“We believe that the Innovation Competition is an excellent complement to other obesity-prevention initiatives HealthPartners has championed, including our yumPower better-for-you dinning app for iPhone users and our TrackWell app to help keep track of daily activity. We are proud to partner with ChildObesity180 in support of this exciting initiative,” Zimmerman said.
About HealthPartners
Founded in 1957, the HealthPartners (www.healthpartners.com) family of health care companies serves more than 1.36 million medical and dental health plan members nationwide. It is the largest consumer-governed, nonprofit health care organization in the nation providing care, coverage, research and education to improve the health of members, patients and the community. HealthPartners is the top-ranked commercial health plan in Minnesota and is also ranked in the top 25 in the nation according to NCQA's Health Insurance Plan Rankings 2011-12 - private.
About ChildObesity180
Active Schools Acceleration Project (ASAP) is an initiative of ChildObesity180, an organization which fosters cross-sector collaboration through a portfolio of high-impact initiatives which aim to reverse the trend of childhood obesity within one generation’s time. The ChildObesity180 membership is comprised of national leaders from the public, nonprofit, academic, and private sectors who are using their reach and expertise to drive an integrated national strategy of high-impact initiatives to prevent childhood obesity. ChildObesity180 is chaired by Peter Dolan, former CEO of Bristol Myers Squibb. Leading childhood obesity researcher Christina Economos, PhD, serves as the Vice-Chair and Director, and Miriam Nelson, PhD, as the Co-Director. Drs. Economos and Nelson are faculty of the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Founded in 2009, ChildObesity180 is conducted in collaboration with Tufts University; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation serves as a core strategic partner. For more information about ChildObesity180, visit www.ChildObesity180.org.
Active Schools Acceleration Project (ASAP) is an initiative of ChildObesity180, an organization which fosters cross-sector collaboration through a portfolio of high-impact initiatives which aim to reverse the trend of childhood obesity within one generation’s time. The ChildObesity180 membership is comprised of national leaders from the public, nonprofit, academic, and private sectors who are using their reach and expertise to drive an integrated national strategy of high-impact initiatives to prevent childhood obesity. ChildObesity180 is chaired by Peter Dolan, former CEO of Bristol Myers Squibb. Leading childhood obesity researcher Christina Economos, PhD, serves as the Vice-Chair and Director, and Miriam Nelson, PhD, as the Co-Director. Drs. Economos and Nelson are faculty of the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Founded in 2009, ChildObesity180 is conducted in collaboration with Tufts University; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation serves as a core strategic partner. For more information about ChildObesity180, visit www.ChildObesity180.org.
HealthPartners
Sarah Haverkamp, 952-883-5305Sarah.j.haverkamp@healthpartners.com
or
ChildObesity180
Tufts University
Julia Bloom Herzog, 617-636-3563Julia.Bloom@tufts.edu
or
Nate Whitman, 617-636-6818Nathaniel.Whitman@tufts.edu
Sarah Haverkamp, 952-883-5305Sarah.j.haverkamp@healthpartners.com
or
ChildObesity180
Tufts University
Julia Bloom Herzog, 617-636-3563Julia.Bloom@tufts.edu
or
Nate Whitman, 617-636-6818Nathaniel.Whitman@tufts.edu
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
90% of Americans eat more sodium than is recommended for a healthy diet.
February 2012 Vital Signs Issue: Where's the Sodium?:
"About 90% of Americans eat more sodium than is recommended for a healthy diet. Too much sodium increases a person's risk for high blood pressure. High blood pressure often leads to heart disease and stroke. More than 800,000 people die each year from heart disease, stroke and other vascular diseases, costing the nation $273 billion health care dollars in 2010. Most of the sodium we eat comes from processed foods and foods prepared in restaurants."
"About 90% of Americans eat more sodium than is recommended for a healthy diet. Too much sodium increases a person's risk for high blood pressure. High blood pressure often leads to heart disease and stroke. More than 800,000 people die each year from heart disease, stroke and other vascular diseases, costing the nation $273 billion health care dollars in 2010. Most of the sodium we eat comes from processed foods and foods prepared in restaurants."
Thursday, February 2, 2012
EU Parliament veto on nutrition claims is 'bitter pill' for industry to swallow, FDE
Jane Byrne , Food navigator, February 2, 2012
The European Parliament has blocked a proposal to amend food labelling laws that would have allowed new 'percentage less' claims on nutrition content, such as sugar, salt and fat - a move the food industry says is a bitter pill for the food sector to swallow.
MEPs, voting in the Parliament’s plenary session this morning, vetoed the European Commission’s bid to revise Annex of EC Regulation 1924/2006 which was aimed at encouraging food makers to make incremental reformulation efforts.
The politician opposed to the proposal concluded that the new food labeling could have confused or misled consumers. Today’s vote mirrors the resolution of MEPs involved in Tuesday’s Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) committee’s poll on the same topic.
"The European Parliament has defended the interests of health-conscious consumers, who need to be able to make clear comparisons when shopping for food", said Matthias Groote, chair of the ENVI Committee, in reaction to today’s plenary vote.
The Commisson had sought to introduces two new nutrition claims into the Annex - namely, the ‘Now contains X% less’ claim as well as the ‘No added salt /sodium’ claim.
Back to square one
But Parliament's veto - 393 votes in favour, 161 against and 21 abstentions - sends the Commission’s proposal back to the drawing board.
The amendments, if passed, would have allowed, for example, a "15% less sugar" claim, which would be based on a previous formulation of the same product.
But MEPs said this would be hard to compare - or could misleadingly appear healthier - than a ‘reduced sugar’ label, which must contain 30% less than other similar products, under existing EU legislation on health and nutrition claims.
Lack of informed choice?
"It means that consumers will not be informed of important reformulations to foods so that they can make an informed food choice thus driving positive changes in dietary habits. Secondly, it serves a ‘bitter pill’ to food operators who have strived to voluntarily reformulate their products in line with consumer taste and public health expectations over the years.
It is difficult to comprehend how member states who agreed on the merits of informing consumers about these claims, and which were taken up within the EU High Level Group on Nutrition and under the EU Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, yet, members of the European Parliament have failed to understand that reasoning."
The UK food and drink industry also expressed disappointment and concerns about the potential impact on industry’s reformulation work.
Barbara Gallani, director of food safety and science at the Food and Drink Federation, commented: “Today’s result is a blow for consumers and industry alike. ‘X% less’ and ‘no added salt’ claims would have supported the food industry’s drive to gradually reformulate products."
Public health impact
DG Sanco, the Health and Consumer Policy directorate at the Commission, claimed an incremental approach to food and drink reformulation such as proposed under the ‘percentage less" claim was in line with the viewpoint of the EU platform for action on diet, physical activity and health.
A spokesperson for DG Sanco said last week that modest reductions are more feasible and achievable by “more operators”. and, he argued: “A wider range of reformulated products with such modest improvements but acceptable by more consumers could become available and therefore lead to a bigger impact in term of public health, compared with the 'light' products which are consumed by a limited [number of] consumers.”
The European Parliament has blocked a proposal to amend food labelling laws that would have allowed new 'percentage less' claims on nutrition content, such as sugar, salt and fat - a move the food industry says is a bitter pill for the food sector to swallow.
MEPs, voting in the Parliament’s plenary session this morning, vetoed the European Commission’s bid to revise Annex of EC Regulation 1924/2006 which was aimed at encouraging food makers to make incremental reformulation efforts.
The politician opposed to the proposal concluded that the new food labeling could have confused or misled consumers. Today’s vote mirrors the resolution of MEPs involved in Tuesday’s Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) committee’s poll on the same topic.
"The European Parliament has defended the interests of health-conscious consumers, who need to be able to make clear comparisons when shopping for food", said Matthias Groote, chair of the ENVI Committee, in reaction to today’s plenary vote.
The Commisson had sought to introduces two new nutrition claims into the Annex - namely, the ‘Now contains X% less’ claim as well as the ‘No added salt /sodium’ claim.
Back to square one
But Parliament's veto - 393 votes in favour, 161 against and 21 abstentions - sends the Commission’s proposal back to the drawing board.
The amendments, if passed, would have allowed, for example, a "15% less sugar" claim, which would be based on a previous formulation of the same product.
But MEPs said this would be hard to compare - or could misleadingly appear healthier - than a ‘reduced sugar’ label, which must contain 30% less than other similar products, under existing EU legislation on health and nutrition claims.
Lack of informed choice?
"It means that consumers will not be informed of important reformulations to foods so that they can make an informed food choice thus driving positive changes in dietary habits. Secondly, it serves a ‘bitter pill’ to food operators who have strived to voluntarily reformulate their products in line with consumer taste and public health expectations over the years.
It is difficult to comprehend how member states who agreed on the merits of informing consumers about these claims, and which were taken up within the EU High Level Group on Nutrition and under the EU Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, yet, members of the European Parliament have failed to understand that reasoning."
The UK food and drink industry also expressed disappointment and concerns about the potential impact on industry’s reformulation work.
Barbara Gallani, director of food safety and science at the Food and Drink Federation, commented: “Today’s result is a blow for consumers and industry alike. ‘X% less’ and ‘no added salt’ claims would have supported the food industry’s drive to gradually reformulate products."
Public health impact
DG Sanco, the Health and Consumer Policy directorate at the Commission, claimed an incremental approach to food and drink reformulation such as proposed under the ‘percentage less" claim was in line with the viewpoint of the EU platform for action on diet, physical activity and health.
A spokesperson for DG Sanco said last week that modest reductions are more feasible and achievable by “more operators”. and, he argued: “A wider range of reformulated products with such modest improvements but acceptable by more consumers could become available and therefore lead to a bigger impact in term of public health, compared with the 'light' products which are consumed by a limited [number of] consumers.”
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Finally, Good News About School Lunches
Mark Bittman, The New York Times, January 31, 2012
Thirty-two million kids — 10 percent of the American population, and the future of the country — are about to start eating better. That’s the bottom line of the new Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) guidelines for government-subsidized school meals, announced last week. The new rules are the first changes to the program in 15 years, and come as part of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act.
The guidelines are imperfect (what isn’t?) but worth celebrating: this is the single most significant improvement the Obama administration has made in the realm of food. The rules will double the amount of fruits and vegetables served in schools, set limits on damaging trans fats and salt, increase the amount of whole grains served, make low-fat milk the norm and establish suitable ranges for daily caloric intake.
And, incredibly, the U.S.D.A. moves will cost less than half of the agency’s original proposal. Even more stunning is that it’s doing this by scaling back on meat — abandoning requirements that schools serve meat or “meat alternatives” at breakfast. That is perhaps most commendable; teaching kids that nutritious meals don’t necessarily center on “protein” is one of the most important steps we can take in creating a sane diet for generations to come.
Yes, the Obama administration has disappointed many of its enthusiastic supporters by reneging on campaign promises, a number of them food-related. But these particular changes deserve praise.
Of course, there are limitations: advocates for good food are correctly disappointed that the U.S.D.A. ultimately let corporate interests deter the agency from pursuing an even more aggressively healthy set of rules. Following recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine, the U.S.D.A. originally proposed limiting the amount of starchy vegetables in school meals — which up until now have been unlimited — to one cup per week.
Lobbyists for the potato industry made a fuss and the Senate stepped in to make sure that didn’t happen, and that concession is integrated into the new rules: Potatoes will still be unlimited[1]. Similarly, you might remember that Congress and industry worked together to make sure that the tomato paste on pizza would continue to qualify it as a vegetable.
Undoubtedly, it’s infuriating that sound science and nutrition policy can still be trumped by the interests of Big Food, especially when the health of kids is on the line. And yes, good food advocates should be making noise about further improving these guidelines.
But let’s remember that a Republican administration likely would have moved school lunches even more in the direction they were headed: inferior versions of bad fast food. Read this article from 2003 about the desperate state of school lunches and you’ll appreciate how much progress is being made. (In short, the story is that the U.S.D.A. long purchased “surplus” beef and dairy and loaded school lunch menus with it. This was considered a win-win situation, because it gave farmers a safety net while schools got free food. But left out of the equation was what this actually meant for kids’ lunches, which became beefier and cheesier.)
Of course, the U.S.D.A. still supports (and makes unacceptable concessions to) industry, but these current guidelines are a major step away from that.
So their importance can barely be overstated: this is movement in the right direction.
The fact that industry lobbyists are griping demonstrates that; compromise, by its nature, can leave everyone dissatisfied. But after taking a beating for generations, advocates of good food should see the new guidelines as a real victory.
As should everyone else, because in food, as in most other arenas of our lives, corporate interests have long enjoyed disproportionate and increasing influence, and shifting that balance of power is among the biggest challenges facing Americans right now. Government can be an ally or an enemy in that fight, and the new guidelines are a welcome example of it using its weight to benefit most of us. The school lunch program is at the forefront of the uphill battle to feed kids well in this country, and — one way or the other — it will set an example for them five days a week, probably until that example spreads to society at large.
[1] Giving school districts the option of serving potatoes at every lunch is undesirable not only because “potatoes” often means “fries,” which pack a triple-whammy of unhealthy fat, near-useless carbs and a missed opportunity to serve a healthier vegetable or whole grain. It’s also because even non-fried potatoes are a less-than-ideal food; a Harvard study named them as the single worst food you can have in your diet if you want to control your weight.
Still, as Ron Nixon reported in The Times, potato lobbyists aren’t entirely happy: “The National Potato Council, which had opposed the attempts to limit the serving of potatoes, said that it was pleased with the new rules but that it still had some concerns.
“’Despite the fact that Congress said the U.S.D.A. could not limit potatoes in school lunches or breakfast, we still feel like the potato is being downplayed in favor of other vegetables in the new guideline’ said Mark Szymanski, a spokesman for the council. ‘It seems the department still considers the potato a second-class vegetable.’”
Actually? It is a second-class vegetable, one that, generally speaking, is best enjoyed occasionally, not daily.
Thirty-two million kids — 10 percent of the American population, and the future of the country — are about to start eating better. That’s the bottom line of the new Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) guidelines for government-subsidized school meals, announced last week. The new rules are the first changes to the program in 15 years, and come as part of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act.
The guidelines are imperfect (what isn’t?) but worth celebrating: this is the single most significant improvement the Obama administration has made in the realm of food. The rules will double the amount of fruits and vegetables served in schools, set limits on damaging trans fats and salt, increase the amount of whole grains served, make low-fat milk the norm and establish suitable ranges for daily caloric intake.
And, incredibly, the U.S.D.A. moves will cost less than half of the agency’s original proposal. Even more stunning is that it’s doing this by scaling back on meat — abandoning requirements that schools serve meat or “meat alternatives” at breakfast. That is perhaps most commendable; teaching kids that nutritious meals don’t necessarily center on “protein” is one of the most important steps we can take in creating a sane diet for generations to come.
Yes, the Obama administration has disappointed many of its enthusiastic supporters by reneging on campaign promises, a number of them food-related. But these particular changes deserve praise.
Of course, there are limitations: advocates for good food are correctly disappointed that the U.S.D.A. ultimately let corporate interests deter the agency from pursuing an even more aggressively healthy set of rules. Following recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine, the U.S.D.A. originally proposed limiting the amount of starchy vegetables in school meals — which up until now have been unlimited — to one cup per week.
Lobbyists for the potato industry made a fuss and the Senate stepped in to make sure that didn’t happen, and that concession is integrated into the new rules: Potatoes will still be unlimited[1]. Similarly, you might remember that Congress and industry worked together to make sure that the tomato paste on pizza would continue to qualify it as a vegetable.
Undoubtedly, it’s infuriating that sound science and nutrition policy can still be trumped by the interests of Big Food, especially when the health of kids is on the line. And yes, good food advocates should be making noise about further improving these guidelines.
But let’s remember that a Republican administration likely would have moved school lunches even more in the direction they were headed: inferior versions of bad fast food. Read this article from 2003 about the desperate state of school lunches and you’ll appreciate how much progress is being made. (In short, the story is that the U.S.D.A. long purchased “surplus” beef and dairy and loaded school lunch menus with it. This was considered a win-win situation, because it gave farmers a safety net while schools got free food. But left out of the equation was what this actually meant for kids’ lunches, which became beefier and cheesier.)
Of course, the U.S.D.A. still supports (and makes unacceptable concessions to) industry, but these current guidelines are a major step away from that.
So their importance can barely be overstated: this is movement in the right direction.
The fact that industry lobbyists are griping demonstrates that; compromise, by its nature, can leave everyone dissatisfied. But after taking a beating for generations, advocates of good food should see the new guidelines as a real victory.
As should everyone else, because in food, as in most other arenas of our lives, corporate interests have long enjoyed disproportionate and increasing influence, and shifting that balance of power is among the biggest challenges facing Americans right now. Government can be an ally or an enemy in that fight, and the new guidelines are a welcome example of it using its weight to benefit most of us. The school lunch program is at the forefront of the uphill battle to feed kids well in this country, and — one way or the other — it will set an example for them five days a week, probably until that example spreads to society at large.
[1] Giving school districts the option of serving potatoes at every lunch is undesirable not only because “potatoes” often means “fries,” which pack a triple-whammy of unhealthy fat, near-useless carbs and a missed opportunity to serve a healthier vegetable or whole grain. It’s also because even non-fried potatoes are a less-than-ideal food; a Harvard study named them as the single worst food you can have in your diet if you want to control your weight.
Still, as Ron Nixon reported in The Times, potato lobbyists aren’t entirely happy: “The National Potato Council, which had opposed the attempts to limit the serving of potatoes, said that it was pleased with the new rules but that it still had some concerns.
“’Despite the fact that Congress said the U.S.D.A. could not limit potatoes in school lunches or breakfast, we still feel like the potato is being downplayed in favor of other vegetables in the new guideline’ said Mark Szymanski, a spokesman for the council. ‘It seems the department still considers the potato a second-class vegetable.’”
Actually? It is a second-class vegetable, one that, generally speaking, is best enjoyed occasionally, not daily.
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