Let’s Move — Michelle Obama’s Campaign Against Childhood Obesity
It may sound impossible, but Michelle Obama, the self-proclaimed “Mom-In-Chief“, has made it her goal to end childhood obesity within a generation. Â (You can read the official memorandum here). Though, really, her campaign began long before the official Let’s Move program. Â She reinstated the White House garden – the first since seen since Elanor Roosevelt was there during WWII- as a way of showing the nation how easy it was to have healthy and fresh foods in hand. Â She invited schoolchildren to tour and help tend the garden to emphasize the importance of good nutrition for our youth. Â In a similar vain, she also declared it her mission to improve school lunches across the nation.
In all, she’s pushed health and nutrition to the forefront of our nation’s conscious since she stepped into the Oval Office. Uh-hem, since her husband stepped in the Oval Office. Â In any case, she’s certainly creating hope that the rise in childhood obesity will not continue and making tangible change to that effect on her own.
Let’s Move has an ambitious goal, but also an equally impressive amount of support from governmental bodies, businesses, and local  non-profits all across the nation:
The Let’s Move campaign will combat the epidemic of childhood obesity through a comprehensive approach that builds on effective strategies, and mobilizes public and private sector resources. Let’s Move will engage every sector impacting the health of children to achieve the national goal, and will provide schools, families and communities simple tools to help kids be more active, eat better, and get healthy.
To support Let’s Move and facilitate and coordinate partnerships with States, communities, and the non-profit and for-profit private sectors, the nation’s leading children’s health foundations have come together to create a new independent foundation – the Partnership for a Healthier America – which will accelerate existing efforts addressing childhood obesity and facilitate new commitments towards the national goal of solving childhood obesity within a generation.
This task force is combating childhood obesity in four key areas simultaneously: helping parents make healthy family decisions, Â improving the nutritiousness of food available in schools (where children routinely consume half of their calories), promoting physical activity, and ensuring access to healthy and affordable foods. Â This blog has detailed how difficult it is for some poorer families in poorer neighborhoods to access fresh fruits and vegetables.
I’d say this task force has a lot on its plate. But, Let’s Move has a powerhouse of leaders who support and believe in the importance of its mission.  In a world that seems to be at a standstill when it comes to any progressive policy, we could certainly use some superheros.  Could these be the  new Fantastic 4?
"First lady Michelle Obama walks through the White House east colonnade with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, left, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, second from right, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, as they meet regarding the childhood obesity initiative." By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY
February 27, 2010
Tags: change, heroes, moms, nutrition, obesity Posted in: Health, Politics 
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Peanut Butter Crisis A Year On
The strange and disturbing result of last year’s crisis with salmonella tainted peanut butter is that there hasn’t been much change at all. In fact, the criminal investigations into the now bankrupt Peanut Corp. of America (and its top executives) resulted in no charges whatsoever. The outbreak was linked to 700 sicknesses and 9 deaths across the US. It seemed like every product that had peanut butter in it was pulled off the shelves.
Major changes in food inspections methodology were called for nationwide. Yet, food-born illnesses continue to grab headlines.
Under the scrutiny of media outlets everywhere, Georgia, home state of Peanut Corp. of America, got its act together super-fast. It now requires regular food testing by manufacturers and that they report any contamination with 24 hours. “Plants must open internal records to inspectors and detail methods to ensure that any contamination is destroyed before a product is shipped” (link). However, an amendment to that bill lets companies bypass self-testing by submitting a “food safety plan” to the state. It’s a step in the right direction, I guess.
Needless to say, Congress has been slower to react. Well, more precisely, the Senate’s bill has stalled…like it has on health care, cap and trade, etc.:
On the federal level, a coalition of 18 groups including grocery and food industries and consumer safety organizations wrote a letter this month to Senate leaders imploring them to vote soon on the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009. The House has passed its version of the bill, which would require food companies to develop food safety plans, require regular inspections of food plants and give the FDA more power.
Thanks, Senate!
***
A depressing question that comes to mind is Should we be thankful for the peanut butter crisis? Many foodies and health experts have been clamoring for increased food safety for years. And, some of those advocates say that without the salmonella outbreak we wouldn’t have this chance at really good reform. Well, not to be ungrateful (and sarcastic), but I’m sure the families of the victims of the countless food-borne illnesses in the US are comforted by that.
My thoughts on this are similar to what I want done with health care reform; We need lots more focus on preventative action. Why suffer through the flu when you can get a flu shot? Why suffer food poisoning when manufactures could keep the rats and bacteria out of the food in the first place?
How about it, Senate?
February 7, 2010
Posted in: Uncategorized No Comments
Al Gore Denounces Factory Farming
Al Gore says he’s going to get crazy in order to get politicians to take note of the urgency of climate change. And, well, if those ideas sound a little too crazy, he does have other ideas.  Along with increased energy efficiency, relying on sustainable agricultural practices is the way forward. The funny is up until about 3:15, then comes the serious talk about what we need to do to stem climate change:
This follows on the heels of a controversy over Al Gore eating meat despite it’s well-documented damage to the environment. Some environmental activists have called him a hypocrite for continuing to eat meat while campaigning for climate change measures.
I say, if Al Gore is eating grass-fed, non-factory farmed meat, it’s not as terrible as all that. He’s showing that you can keep eating meat (something a lot of people fear giving up) and still help the environment. It’s true that cutting meat out of your diet would help reduce your carbon footprint a lot more than even switching to a Prius. But, we all know that as sad and as bad as it is for the environment and the animals (especially when factory-farmed) some people are just never going to stop eating meat. For those people, I say eating sustainably raised products is the best and least they can do.
Happy (free-range, organic, vegetarian, antibiotic-free) Turkey Day!
A quick word about the annual Presidential turkey pardon. This year, the turkey is named Courage:
The Turkey Pardon tradition was officially established in 1989, by President George H.W. Bush, and has gone on each year since. There are actually two turkeys each year; an “alternate” is always chosen, just in case the first bird is unable to “perform its duties.”
It’s safe to say that the staff in the press office at the White House is getting very creative. Check this pre-event video out:
November 25, 2009
Tags: change, factory farms, farmers, heroes, veganism, vegetarianism Posted in: Politics No Comments
Martha Stewart To Have A Vegetarian Thanksgiving
Jonathan Safran Foer has been talked about and to in nearly every major media outlet since his book Eating Animals came out. Where Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma tiptoes around the treatment of factory farmed animals, Eating Animals blows the doors wide open on the modern day “farm”.
In an email to Erik Marcus of vegan.com, Jonathan Safran Foer described his more recent adventure with the professional craft-maker and (television) host, Martha Stewart:
I was on Martha Stewart today, along with the director of Food, Inc.
, a veg chef, and a family farmer. I couldn’t possibly have been more impressed by how Martha handled things. Firstly, to devote an entire show to the horrors of the meat industry without feeling a need to offer the industry a voice. Secondly, she came right out and said the meat industry is bad. She didn’t mince her words. She wasn’t cagey or indirect. She spoke plainly and openly about the secrecy, about how they went after Oprah, about how they torture animals (her words), about how she’s going to have a vegetarian Thanksgiving. She told her audience, “You’ll probably agree with just about all of the conclusions in Jonathan’s book.” Frankly, she came off as further down the spectrum than I did.
Jonathan Safran Foer
You know it’s a really great book when it infuriates some and inspires a whole lot more to change.
I think I know what’s on my shopping list this holiday season.
November 22, 2009
Tags: change, farmers, food, food event, heroes, veganism, vegetarianism Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health No Comments
Chestnuts and Wassailing, Blight and Good Old Fashioned Holiday Cheer
Okay, I’ll admit it. I actually like going to the mall at this time of the season. Even if I am not particularly interested in buying anything at the time, the holiday lights create a commercialized nostalgia that makes me all warm inside. And yes, I love Christmas music. I am the type of person that will listen to Christmas music any time during the year. However, there is one line of that I always sang with fake emotional attachment. It goes like this: “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”
Just what is a chestnut? Was roasting chestnuts really so common? Here’s the low-down on the nuts more often sung about than eaten:
American Chestnut
On the tree, the chestnut is surrounded by a thick coat of burrs. When the nut is big enough to harvest, their burr lining cracks and the nuts fall to the ground with a plop. They still have a hard shell at that point, and, as far as anecdotes go, they are mean suckers to peel. “They make fava beans look like convenience food.”
Death of the chestnut:
Chestnut trees were the East Coast’s sequoia, dwarfing surrounding trees and often outnumbering them as well for they accounted for about 1/3 of the trees running from Maine to Mississippi (Link ). It was even one of the most numerous tree on the North American continent. A fungus carried over on an imported chestnut tree from either China or Japan in the early 1900’s quickly decimated the very susceptible American population. The people of Appalachia who depended on the tree for its wood and nut exports were economically devastated the most (Link). Between 3 billion and 4 billion trees died, leaving only a few isolated trees on the entire continent by the 1950’s.
American Chestnut Habitat
The root system of the American chestnut can still survive against the blight, but the shoots do not grow very far before they are attacked by the blight. The full-grown chestnut trees in America are now mainly either of European or Asian descent. But, a whole throng of American chestnut trees were found along a hiking trail not far from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia (Link).
A born-again chestnut:
Two blight-resistant American chestnuts have been bred in California and are slowly taking up root across America, helping to reintroduce the memory of roasting chestnuts on an open fire to the next generation of carollers (Link ). You can even pre-order some from next season.
More holiday cheer: Wassailing
“Now we go a wassailing” meant in the Middle Ages let’s go get drunk and sing to our apple orchard so that the next year’s harvest will be good. Wassail is from the Anglo-Saxon Wes hal (other spellings include Waes hael), which means “Be in good health” (read).
Photo by Kate Hopkins at AccidentalHedonist.com
4 large McIntosh apples
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1/4 cup apple juice or cider
3 12-ounce bottles of ale
1 cup sherry
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
zest of 1 lemon
1. Preheat oven to 350*F.
2. Slit the skins of the apples horizontally about halfway down. Place in a greased baking dish and sprinkle with 1/4 cup of the brown sugar and the apple juice. Bake, basting frequently for about 40 minutes until all the apples are soft. Remove from oven.
3. Pour the ale and sherry into a saucepan. Add the 2 tablespoons brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and lemon zest. Simmer for 5 minutes. Add the baked apples and their juice, stir thoroughly, and serve hot. Here’s another version of wassail.
Enjoy!
November 14, 2009
Tags: agriculture, alcohol, food, food event Posted in: Science & Technology One Comment
Illegal Immigrants and Food Cost Or How Strict Immigration Policy Kills the American Farmer
For years now whenever someone made the battle cry, “Let’s get rid of all the illegal immigrants” I would counter with a question to directly jab where it hurts the most–the pocketbook. “Do you want to keep food prices as low as they are? How much of your paycheck are you willing to put for food in order to keep the immigrants out?” It was an easy argument to make. I knew that migrant workers, paid a few dollars a day for their menial labor, helped to keep the US’s food costs to a surreal minimum. It seemed a no-brainer–take away cheap labor and you no longer have cheap food.
And I didn’t think about my argument much beyond the fact that usually got the Pro-Migra people to think twice before demanding blanket immigration policies. However, that was until I went looking for evidence to help prove my point. In the age of refrigerated trucks, the free market, and a little help from NAFTA, ejecting migrant workers from the United States would not mean the end of our cheap food supply. Instead, it would be the American farmers that rely on the cheap labor to hand pick fragile fruits and veggies that would become barren. We mass consumers would still enjoy our strawberries and avocados from Mexico, our cucumbers from Canada, and bananas from Costa Rica. We mostly rely on them for our off-season needs now, but swift upward trends do not forecast bounty in our farmers futures.
American producers have been cheating in the price wars. Importing cheap labor and keeping transportation distances low, our farmers have been able to undercut the competition from migrant workers’ own homelands. Plus “Made in America” sells. However, “for the last several years, crackdowns on illegal immigrants and the lack of comprehensive immigration reform have increased anxiety among [New York State] farmers, many of whom rely on a migrant labor force from Latin America to work their fields.” Many farmers have already scaled back harvest sizes or switched to less labor-intensive products. (Link.)
American Gothic (1930), oil on beaverboard, 74.3 x 62.4 cm. All rights reserved by The Art Institute of Chicago and VAGA, New York, NY.
So, the next time someone says they want to expel the migrant population from the US, I won’t tell them how doing so will destroy their pocketbooks, but rather something closer to the heart–the idyllic dream of the American farmer.
November 2, 2009
Tags: agriculture, food, policy Posted in: Politics No Comments
Finally An Intelligent Move: RIP Smart Choices
After creating quite a stir in the foodie blogosphere, the mainstream media, and even riling up the lethargic FDA, the industry led Smart Choices label is voluntarily suspending the promotion of its program. Â They even had the Attorney General of Connecticut after them–Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced that he was investigating the program and some of the companies that participate in it to see if they had violated a consumer protection law that bars deceptive marketing claims.
The FDA had sent a letter to several major food companies saying that they would be looking into whether not certain food labels and logos mislead consumers about the health benefits of certain items, and cracking down on inaccurate food labeling. Â The FDA did not name names or give a time line of enforcement. Â However, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, has expressed the administration’s interest in standardizing and streamlining front-of-package labels.
”There’s a growing proliferation of forms and symbols, check marks, numerical ratings, stars, heart icons and the like,” said Hamburg. ”There’s truly a cacophony of approaches, not unlike the tower of Babel.”
She says Americans need a label they can trust to inform them about building better diets. Â The FDA’s letter may not have named specific the offending, trust-crushing products, but Dr. Hamburg wasn’t afraid to comment on the loose standards of a certain egregious labeling campaign, noting that ‘there are products that have gotten the Smart Choices check mark that are almost 50 percent sugar”. Â In a phone interview with reporters, she repeatedly reference the UK traffic light system as a guide for present label guideline efforts.
In making their own labels, the industry was obviously trying avoid regulation that would make them use a structure so bluntly honest as the UK’s traffic light system: These things are bad for you; This is how much of the bad stuff this item has in it. Smart Choices attempted to avert this by only touting only the good in a food–mostly in the form of added vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Â Â Thanks to its very lax standards on other nutritional information, like calorie and fat content, nobody trusted the Smart choices campaign.
Putting “Smart Choices” on things like Froot Loops and mayonnaise (yes, mayonnaise) may have immediately corrupted its image of doing good for the consumer, but it did help intensify the FDA’s efforts to rework its own guidelines.  Because “helping consumers make better, healthier choices for themselves is a critical part of the FDA’s public health mission,” the agency said in a statement Friday. “Consumers want and have a right to clear, accessible nutrition information that they can trust to help guide their food choices.”  Officials said that by early next year, the FDA will issue proposed standards that companies must follow in creating nutrition labels that go on the front of food packaging.  New, exciting “science- and nutrition-based” food labels could be seen on packages at the end of next year!
Still, Mike Hughes, the program’s chairman, said in a statement that they continue to “believe in the science behind the Smart Choices program”.  Adding that the “impetus for the Smart Choices program was that there were and are too many systems,” he said. “We applaud the concept of having one system nationwide.”
Yes, the reason the industry added another labeling system was because there were too many systems.  Of course. It makes perfect sense.  You know what actually makes sense?  Ending the stupid, Smart “Froot Loops are better than a donut” Choices program.
October 26, 2009
Tags: blogs, change, education, FDA, Health, heroes, nutrition, policy Posted in: Health, Politics, Science & Technology 3 Comments
Personal Pleas For Food Safety, Will The Calls Be Heeded This Time?
It’s been 16 years since the Jack-In-The-Box E. coli in 1993, where hundreds were injured and four children died after eating undercooked hamburgers from the chain. Â Court documents later showed that the “fast-food chain knew about but disregarded Washington state laws that would have prevented the deadly 1993 outbreak of E. coli food poisoning” (link). Â 9-year old Brianne Kiner survived her ordeal with hemolytic uremic syndrome after being a coma for three weeks, but was left with brain damage, asthma, and diabetes.
In 2001 Barbara Kowalcyk’s 2-year old son, Kevin, died after contracting E. coli O157:H7 from a hamburger. Her son’s death thrust her into a life of food-safety activism. Â She started the non-profit Center for Foodborne Illness and continues to lobby Congress for an improved food safety system. Â She has tried in vain for many years to get “Kevin’s Law” passed, which would give the FDA the authority to shut down plants that repeatedly produce pathogen contaminated foods. She recently talked with Evan Kleiman, host of KCRW’s Good Food, about her struggles with food safety advocacy.
Within the last month, The New York Times and The Washington Post showcased two more cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome caused by E. coli contaminated foodstuff – Stephanie Smith suffered after eating hamburger, and the other has been hospitalized since May after eating contaminated Nestle cookie dough.
Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.
Stephanie Smith, 22, had been a children’s dance instructor, but will never walk again, let alone dance. Â US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, has heard the emotional pleas for better food safety regulation and efficient enforcement and has pledged to enhance food safety. Â But, food safety experts think he’s not doing enough, fast enough. Â Even some from Congress are frustrated with the lack of accountability; Â After reading the NY Times article, Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn), a longtime champion of food safety, wrote an open letter to Vilsack demanding an investigation into tainted beef and asking larger slaughterhouses to demonstrate responsibility and accountability. Â During the House campaign to pass HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, she noted in her debates that when over 3,000 Americans were killed on 9/11, America went to war immediately. Â Yet, 5,000 Americans die annually from food poisoning and still we do nothing to enhance the safety of our food system.
Apparently,we can only leap to action when culpability lies elsewhere…
Or do they all have to die at the same time to get Congress to notice?
This, of course, is asinine and unacceptable. Â Concerned Americans want action, and they want it before Thanksgiving:
A bipartisan collection of Senators got visits from food poisoning victims–or their surviving family members–[October 7th] , as part of preeminent food poisoning attorney Bill Marler’s campaign to get meaningful food safety legislation passed in the Senate before Thanksgiving. During their visits, the food safety advocates passed out the packages in the photo, above, which contained a T-shirt with Marler’s Put a Trial Lawyer Out of Business logo, as well as an info sheet about what meaningful legislation actually means. Currently, there are four different food safety Bills under consideration by the Senate, in various stages of hearing and mark up. Any meaningful legislation that gets enacted should include mandatory recall powers for FDA, mandated inspections and testing on a regular basis for food producers, and major changes in what USDA considers acceptable pathogens in meat that’s allowed in the food chain.
Think we should wait until Thanksgiving to have safe food?  After the article in the New York Times, a ton of people wrote in expressing their concerns for food safety.  Now, it’s your turn to write.  Find your representatives online on the House site and the Senate website. Tell them you want to give thanks for not having to worry about whether you’ll end up spending the holiday season in the hospital.
October 12, 2009
Tags: change, FDA, food safety, Health, policy, USDA Posted in: Health, Politics 2 Comments
Great Food Politics Blogs
Parke Wilde teaches graduate level courses in food policy and statistics at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Â Along with some of his graduate students, he keeps the U.S. Food Policy.
He recently wrote a sort of ‘top ten’ list of food policy blogs for blogs.com:
In this list, he looked beyond the excellent sites that already appeared in a recent list at Culinate, which included Ethicurean, Green Fork, ChewsWise, Food Politics, Politics of the Plate, Grist, Civil Eats, and Obama Foodorama. Parke’s list adds some more blogs from within what might loosely be called the “good food movement,” but it emphasizes other selections that he reads to maintain diversity in his information stream.
Food Law Prof Blog
For legal news and insight, a member of the Law Professor Blog Network. More legal blogging comes from the Agricultural Law blog.Amber Waves
The dry but substantial electronic magazine from USDA’s Economic Research Service, with accompanying RSS feed, is enough like a blog to make this list. In the same vein, one could mention Choices electronic magazine from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA).La Vida Locavore
A thick stream of news and policy commentary from a local food perspective.Blogriculture
By the staff of Capital News agriculture newspaper.Farm Policy
A thorough summary of daily agricultural news coverage, with excerpts and little editorial commentary.Fooducate
Practical food shopping advice. No pills. No industry affiliation.Center for a Livable Future Blog
Focusing on industrialized food production systems.Marler Blog
Commentary on food poisoning outbreaks and litigation.TEFAP Alliance Blog
News about food assistance programs and the anti-hunger movement.Daily Bread
The food business blog at Slate’s site, The Big Money.
Damn straight...
October 7, 2009
Tags: blogs, education, food, Health, policy Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health 2 Comments
Lobbyist Run Non-Profit Scams
Rachel Maddow is pretty awesome. Â She tells it like it is. Â Listen to her dish it out against the Center for Consumer Freedom. Â Really, that should be “consumer freedom“:
If you are further interested in what a crackpot Richard Berman is, you can find out about him and his expertise at bermanexposed.com. Â Essentially, there are a lot of high paid lobbyists fronting as non-profits.
With consumer skepticism over the Smart Choices program, mandatory calorie labels on menus, the FDA developing nutrition label revisions (pdf), and the words ‘soda taxes‘ on the tip of every tongue, it is no wonder that industries are bringing out all their guns, pulling no stops when it comes to, well, their freedom to confuse consumers and obfuscate facts. Â The moral here? Â Always read the small print. Â Sometimes, though, they make so easy for us:
October 5, 2009
Tags: Health, heroes, innovation, marketing, obesity, soda, sugar Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health, Politics No Comments
