Poor Quality Food vs Food Deserts

Prince George’s county in Maryland is trying to get rid of some of its fast food restaurants. Currently there is a two block stretch that has 11 fast food restaurants on it. I agree that fast food is unhealthy to eat.  It is high in calories, fat and sodium and has few micro-nutrients or dietary fiber. So, getting rid of fast food chains would be great, esp with the number of children that visit these restaurants. However, my concern is that if we limit the number of fast food stores and replace them with nothing or more expensive restaurants it will create a storage of food for the people who live in PG county.

Obama’s budget includes $50 million for a “Healthy Food Financing Initiative” to bring grocery stores and other healthy food retailers to under-served communities. These food stores need to be established before we removed the current food options, even if the current options are less than desirable.

I think that people are looking for a solution and as a result they sometimes miss the big picture. And here the big picture is bad food is better than no food. Therefore, before we can get rid of these fast food chains (which is take a while) we need to lay a foundation for high quality, fresh foods to replace these heavily processed and unhealthy foods.

Congrats SARE

The President’s budget request invests in the future of sustainable agriculture by increasing funding for the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) competitive grants program to a total of $30 million.  In its twenty-two year history, SARE has funded cutting-edge research and widespread extension of sustainable agricultural systems that improve the profitability of small and mid-sized farms in ways that conserve energy, solve environmental problems, and promote entrepreneurial and community-based agriculture.  Structured differently than other USDA research programs, SARE is farmer-driven and regionally-led.

The President’s budget request divides the $30 million between research and education activities ($15 million), a new federal-state matching grants program ($10 million), and extension ($5 million).

I was their intern 2 years ago.

Demand Organic Cotton

I spend a lot of time talking about food on this blog. However, food is not the only thing we raise or grow. A lot of our clothing comes from plants and animals as well. The first two clothing materials, that come to mind and come from farms are cotton (plant) and wool (animal- sheep).

Just because these substances do not enter our bodies does not mean that we should not consider how they are grown and try to reduce the environmental implications of growing these plants or raising these animals. According to the Rhodale Institute and Greenpeace, organic cotton farmers in India are having a hard time keeping their farms GMO-cotton free.

The farmers are willing to invest time and money into keeping their fields GMO free, but they need the help of customers that buy products made from their GMO-free cotton. This means that more people need to demand organic cotton or else it will be hard for these farmers to compete against cheaper GMO-cotton seeds.

Why should we care? Because tradition cotton farmers use high quantities of pesticides. These pesticides have a huge impact on local biodiversity, are very expensive for farmers and runoff into the surrounding environment and alter the breakdown of species.

How do we beat childhood obesity if Michelle Obama can’t?

Michelle Obama created a lot of chatter when she started a garden at the White House. Sadly, her garden could not be certified organic, but she was able to bring up the issue of growing food and eating whole foods at home and how important that is. Mrs. Obama does not have to prepare her own meals or pick out her own foods and she started a garden and a lot of people started talking about it. Then a farmers market opened up next to the White House on Thursday afternoons. And recently Mrs. Obama announced that she wants the fight against childhood obesity to be her legacy.

The fact that 18% of American children are obese is something that should be discussed. Children require so many more calories than adults. Their bodies are growing, their metabolisms are faster, they have more energy and they “play” much more than adults and still even at this time in their lives our children are obese. And if the problem is this bad when they are young what is going to happen when they grow up and their bodies slow down and their muscles naturally make way for more fat?

Mrs. Obama believes that we can attack this problem by:

• improving school lunches
• more physical activity (including school phys-ed cut due to budget constraints)
• access to fresh and healthy foods in all communities (nutrition deserts are all too common in poor urban areas)
• nutrition education for kids and their parents

All of those seem like logical ways to attack the problem. However, a post on last week on Fooducrte blog state that Mrs. Obama will fail. The basis of their argument was money. It may be expense to treat the diseases caused by obesity but it will be even more detrimental to our economy if we prevent obesity.

Jobs and revenue that will be lost:

• Junk food manufacturers (over 100 billion dollars in annual revenues)
• Weight Loss (tens of billions of dollars)
• Supplements (tens of billions)
• Healthcare (over 100 billion dollars annually in obesity related treatments)
• Fast food establishments (over 300 billion dollars)

The argument states that if prevent obesity instead of encouraging it and then trying to rid ourselves of it the economy will be damaged. We will lose all the money listed above. Also, these are huge businesses and they are not about to stand by and let their client base slim down and not need their services anymore. So, if people start eating less junk food then the junk food companies will advertise more. And dollar for dollar they will win.

Mrs. Obama is one person (even if she has the support of the government and nonprofits) and these are huge companies (with huge budgets).

However, while the odds seem to be stacked against her, I still think it is an important stance to take. And we have to start somewhere.

Educating students is an important step, but I think it is more important to lead by example. Therefore, the first thing we should do is put P.E. back in schools and improve school lunches. If you give students healthier lunches and highlight the items that are local, sustainable, free-range. Using these words on the childrens’ food at school will teach them the options they have when eating. Currently food is not something we think about. It is lunch time so children go to the cafeteria and get a tray of whatever is available. (I think adults do the same thing, its lunch time so they go to the first sandwich place they see.) But it is important to think about our food options and what we put into our mouths.

I understand that P.E. was cut in many schools as part of budget cuts- (I am not sure why P.E. is such an expensive class- but that is a research project for another day). However, our children spend almost 8 hours a day in front of a screen (tv, computer, game boy) and they do not play outside. Children need to run around. (Adults also need to exercise.) Playing games outside is exercise and it can be fun and it is very healthy. We need to encourage our children to exercise.

I believe that educating children is a great way to spread an idea. Children have a lot of influence in their families and are constantly exposed to new ideas that they share with other people. Plus if we teach them to make smart eating choices now then they will grow into adults that make healthy food decisions. I think that presenting students with healthy meals and exercise will make an impression and encourage good behaviors. However, I do think that adding education on top of the food and exercise will be extremely beneficial.

Adding nutrition and health education to our classes will be a huge challenge. The school gardening programs are generating a lot of talk. Also, we have a hard enough time teaching our students all of the material they should learn between kindergarten and 12th grade its asking a lot of educators to add in more materials. Plus, this is information that will not help the students on standardized exams, which determine school funding, so convincing educators to spend time on these topics will be very difficult.

Junk food and weight loss diets are not going out of style any time soon. They will be around for a long time. But we need to make healthy choices for ourselves and for our children. And even more importantly than that, we need to teach children about the options they have and that food is a very integral part of out lives. Food should not be an after thought of your day- it should influence your day. What you eat has a huge impact on your body and even how you feel and science is continuing to prove this.

So, we might no be able to rid the country of junk food and replace it with locally grown vegetables, but we need to take a stance, we need to encourage conversation. Fooducate is right, we have a very long and difficult road ahead – but we have to start somewhere.

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Reduce Methane Emissions, Finish your Peas

There is a lot of talk about the amount of methane gas produced by cows. Methane (CH4) is another green house gas (like carbon dioxide) that is released into the atmosphere. Methane is a more potent gas than carbon dioxide.  A lot of people make jokes about cow farts- and its true cow farts do release methane into the environment and all of this is true. However, cows and farting are not the only way in which methane is released.  It is also released into the atmosphere when organic matter decomposes. That means any food products that you don’t finish and they go into a landfill somewhere will lead to the release of methane into the environment. Have you ever noticed those pipes sticking out of landfills- yep that’s why they are there, to prevent gas build up from the organic matter as it breaks down.

Maybe you are not ready to go vegetarian yet, but you do want to help reduce the amount of methane released into the atmosphere. All you have to do, is finish the food on your plate. The EPA has a website that gives visitors “Basic Information about Food Waste,” here are some of the highlights.

• Americans throw away more than 25 percent of the food we prepare, about 96 billion pounds of food waste each year
• The US spends about one billion dollars a year to dispose of food waste
• The food industry estimates that 4% to 10% of food purchases become waste before ever reaching a guest
• In 2008, about 12.7 percent of the total municipal solid waste (MSW) generated in America was food scraps

And these statistics do not include paper and yard trimmings that make up nearly 45% of our MSW.

I am sure we could find a better way to spend the one billion dollars that goes to disposal of food waste. Plus, there are starving people in the world. And as the world population increases we are continually worried about how to feed everyone, maybe the answer is that Americans shouldn’t throw away so much food. And finally, everyone wants their quick and easy ways to save the world – well this is it. Even if you don’t want to build a compost bin or pile to generate a value by-product from the breakdown of this organic matter, you can easily eat the food you make for yourself! That simple task will lead to a reduction in methane and green house gases!

Making Time for Dinner

I am often guilty of rushing through my day and not planning time to prepare and eat my food. On those days, what I am eating is an after thought; I just need something quick and easy – to sustain me. Unfortunately, this is where we get into trouble. In these instances we are generally doing something else while we are eating and/or eating prepackaged and heavily processed foods. I rarely eat prepackaged meals, but I have been known to eat while walking somewhere or sitting at my work desk. Sadly, almost 40% of families eat dinner with the TV on.

The importance of having mealtime comes up in at least one of Michal Pollan’s books (they call blur together for me). And meal time should be a time where people sit together and socialize over food and not in front of a TV or while you are working. It’s not always possible, but last night I experienced a wonderful dining experience that really brought this point home for me.

I went to a restaurant with my friend Denise. We talked for a while, and then the waiter took our drink order. After a while longer he came back and we ordered dinner and he left us with bread. We talked as we ate our meals and drank our wine. Neither one of us ordered too much food but we ate slowly because we were talking. Dinner wasn’t a race. We didn’t have the TV on and we didn’t check our phones every five minutes. We just enjoyed the food and the company.

Then almost three hours later we realized that we had been sitting at this table for almost three hours and that everyone else had left the restaurant. In contrast to the 10-15 minutes it takes me to eat dinner when I am home alone during the week (actually eating time, generally it takes me longer than that to prepare.)

This is what meal time should be. Eating should be a planned part of your day. You should make plans and put time and energy into what you are eating. Plans can include organizing times to eat with other people or picking out recipes to cook at home.

We have transformed into a culture, where food is an after thought and we no longer value the food we eat or the relationships we build and foster over meals.

I can’t wait for our next dinner date.

Can we feed 9 billion people?

How much food would we have to produce to ensure that no one went hungry? Would we have to utilize all of the land and setup more fisheries in the ocean? How much of our resources are we willing to use and what technologies are we willing to adopt? The truth is that we might already be there.  Josh Viertel, President of Slow Food USA wrote a very interesting article for the Atlantic Food Channel and in this article he claims that in 2008 globally we produced enough food for 11 billion people.

I know this number leads to a lot of questions and I was not able to find a valid  source to support this claim. I am sure that the first question you will ask is: how can this number be true if  the global population was 6 billion people in 2008 and we still have millions of people dying of starvation?  It is plausible even undeniable that the number of calories available is not distributed in a way to ensure that the most people are feed. Think of the number of overweight humans in the world. Those are calories that are produced and are not making their way to those that are starving. Even scarier is the number of overweight pets in the United States and Western Europe. Again, those are calories that are produced and could have been used to feed starving humans. And I hate to think about the number of calories we throw out every year. I am not saying that if I finish my peas that fewer people will strave in Africa- I am just proving that maybe we are asking the wrong question.

I don’t think the question is how do we produce enough food to feed 9 billion people, I think the question we need to ask is how do we ensure that the food we produce gets to the 9 billion people.

On some level it is a no brainer, produce food and give it to those people that need it. However, the reality of food production is much more complex. Simply put it has to do with money (like everything else). People that can afford to buy food or grow their own food will eat and people that can afford to buy protein will eat diets that are varied and include more than just cereal grains. However, what we eat as individuals does not influence the number of overall calories we produce, or the number of calories a person needs to consume per day to survive. On average humans require 1,500 – 2,500 calories per day. Currently, we need to produce 1.2*10^13 (or 120,000,000,000,000) calories per day to feed everyone for one day.

That number of calories is just a number. It does not imply what percentage will come from cereal grains and what percent from meats or dairy products. Nor does it consider the healthiness of the diet. Soda has tons of calories but it has very little nutritional value.

My question is harder to answer. Asking how to produce enough food requires innovative farming partices, additional land for farming and more technological advances. That question is about numbers we need to produce x amount of calories annually how can we achieve that. My question is more about social justice and choices. We claim that we want to rid the world of hunger- well how do we do that, once we have enough food. Do we reduce the cost of food? Do we give it away? Do we encourage more people to become farmers and give them the tools to support themselves?

I have no doubt that we can produce enough food to feed a population of 9 billion people (even if we can’t right now).  However, I do not think that producing more food will solve world hunger, nor do I believe that everyone can continue eating the way people in developed countries eat today. We need to make changes to our diets.

This is not a case of simple math.

To find out more information about food production around the world click here

DC Bag Tax Working

I did not know the bag tax was coming to D.C. before I returned from my trip to Florida and started seeing signs at stores all over town. Since I never saw an original plan or proposal, I do not know what the official goals of the bag tax are, nor do I know where the money is going. That being said, I would like to say that based on my evaluation the bag tax has been extremely successful.

I graded the bag tax using three different categories. Most of the data I am quoting came from this Washington Post article that was published on Saturday January 23rd.

1. Number of bags used-

• Managers at stores that sell food or beverages say the switchover has cut the use of plastic bags by half or more.
• One Safeway in Northwest reports a falloff of more than 6,000 bags a week, about half of its former volume.
• Spice Express on Vermont Avenue, said his Indian takeaway is using about 60 percent fewer bags than before the year began.

2. Changes in behavior.

• More and more are bringing the reusable bags that many grocery stores have been giving away in recent weeks
• People are putting small purchases in their purses or briefcases
• Planning out your day before hand, to avoid getting bags
• Not shopping in DC

3. Increase conversation

• My poker group
• Additional Washington Post articles

The Post article above talks about the crazy lengths people are going to avoid taking bags. It is completely irrational to risk breaking $71 worth of wine to save $.10. But as people avoid paying the tax and plan their days around when they are shopping they are thinking about the bag tax. Eventually, paying $.05 per bag will become part of shopping, but right now it is causing a lot of chatter and personally, I believe that, that in its own makes the bag tax a huge success.

As a country we are not making huge steps toward reducing our carbon emissions or preserving our natural resources. This weekend alone, Congress announced that they will not sign a bill to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions (stating that it will cost the economy too many jobs, in a time when unemployment is already very high) and there was a huge oil spill (11,000 barrels of oil).

So if the big things aren’t getting better, maybe we need to start small and change the things we can.

Innocent until Proven Guilty

I understand why we take an innocent until proven guilty stance in the courtroom, but I don’t understand why we have this stance with our health.  We allow chemicals, synthetic agents and genetically modified organisms to enter our food system based on the understanding that it is safe and then we do the research to determine what the consequences really are.

Bisphenol A (BPA) was discovered to be a synthetic estrogen in the 1930s. It is a chemical that is used in the manufacturing of many hard plastic food containers such as baby bottles and reusable cups and the lining of metal food and beverage cans, including canned liquid infant formula. This week the FDA announced that it has concerns about the safety of BPAs. Growing scientific evidence has linked the chemical to a host of problems, including cancer, sexual dysfunction and heart disease. Federal officials said they are particularly concerned about BPA’s effect on the development of fetuses, infants and young children. Up until now the American Chemical Council (ACC) has funded research into the safety of BPA. Many people are concerned about the bias of the ACC.  The Department of Health and Human Services has established a two year reasearch project that will investigate the safety of BPA. NIH, CDC and the FDA will have $30 million to determine if BPA is safe.

In the mean time the FDA has not ban BPA, nor have they issued a statement saying that products containing BPA should be avoided. The FDA is seeking to increase regulations on the use of BPA but has not taken a strong, public stance on the substance.

While the FDA remains fairly silent in this matter parents and baby stores continue to act based on wide spread concerns about BPA’s safety in baby products. In 2008, Babies R Us and other major retailers told suppliers they would no longer stock baby bottles made with BPA. Last year, the six largest manufacturers of baby bottles announced they would voluntarily stop selling bottles made with BPA to consumers in the United States.

We know that our bodies and the environment are very fragile. Maybe it was not common knowledge 40 years ago, but why has it taken so long to figure out that a synthetic sex hormone might have a huge impact on our bodies. Shatter-proof bottles are great, but at what expense? And to stay in line with the topic of my blog, if the BPA can leech out of the cans and bottles into our food, even at cold tempatures – how much BPA is leeching out of the bottles and cans we are throwing out and what impact does that have on the surrouding environment. I know human health is the most important and research will start with baby food, but we also need to know how BPA impacts the ecosystem.

For more information on BPA please visit the HHS website on BPA: http://www.hhs.gov/safety/bpa/

Sources:

HHS website on BPA

Washington Post

Protect us from BSE but not High Blood Pressure

As Americans how do we decide how much we want to be regulated? From where I stand there is no consensus on this topic. I started thinking about this as people continue to discuss the new initiative to decrease the amount of salt in food in NYC by 25% over the next five years.

First of all, New York has already banned trans-fats and requires restaurants to post the number of calories in each item. So, those two steps are okay, but salt is taking it a step too far?

Our food is regulated. Everything is or is supposed to be inspected by a government agency. The best time to see how carefully our food is tracked is when there is a recall. If there is a beef recall the contaminated beef can be traced back to the processing plant, the slaughter house and we can even figure out which individual cows the contaminated meat came from. And it’s not just meat. When there was the contaminated peanut scare last summer we could figure out exactly what was causing the illness and where it came from.

So, Americans are okay with regulation. They want the fields, feedlots, farms, factories, slaughterhouses, processing plants and restaurants inspected, but they don’t want their food to contain a reasonable amount of salt? First I want to know if the people that are against this rule understand the impact of a high sodium diet and where in their diet the sodium is coming from. And secondly, I want to know if these people take responsibility for themselves in other aspects of their lives. We claim that we want to make our own choices but the people sue the tobacco companies for producing a deadly product.

Maybe it’s not clear that sodium is just as dangerous as the chemicals in cigarettes. Maybe as Americans we have not reached a consensus on what parts of our live we believe should be regulated. Maybe it’s a lack of information about the dangers of sodium or how important it is to eat a healthy diet. And where do these people fall on the lack of regulation on GMO crops, European nations don’t allow them because we don’t know enough about the repercussions of growing and consuming these crops, but the US allows them and Americans continue to eat them. I don’t think I can give a concrete answer.

I believe that Americans should take responsibility for their own actions. However, I understand that when individuals choose not to take responsibility they impact the rest of us. Obesity and heart disease are issues that impact all Americans not just those that are fighting these diseases.  If we don’t allow mammals to be fed animal by-products, because it could cause BSE and possibly translate CJD then why should we stop a law that would cap sodium intake? The odds of someone getting CJD is a million times lower than having high blood pressure from a diet that contains an excess of sodium. We have accepted sodium induced disease as part of our lives, but CJD and BSE are so scary that we are okay with regulating against those. Should the disease that impacts the most people be the one that our government protects us against?