Okra is a delicious, high-fiber food with great taste and texture.
Enjoy it in this vegetable-packed stew, courtesy of The Go Green East Harlem Cookbook.
Ingredients:
Directions:
SERVES 4
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Hello, I am Cassie and I blog here.
Jasper and I
Some tidbits about me:
1. I’m from the DAIRY CAPITOL OF THE WORLD and currently live in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. 2. I compost in my kitchen and garden in Queens. 3. My greatest joy is taking my dogs to the Prospect Park Dog Paradise. (Mornings before 9 a.m. dogs take over Prospect Park. It is Lovely and Amazing) 4. I study video & radio documentary, media advocacy, and journalism in the Integrated Media Arts graduate program at Hunter College. 5. I have a radio show where I interview friends and colleagues about their art & activism. 6. I hop around NYC yoga studios in search of a good deal. 7. I love driving across the country and sleeping outside. 8. I’ve been at WOYP since October and have relished the opportunity to champion find my favorite topics: media activism, the healthy life, community, and growing things in the dirt.
How about this one:
Long term consumption of soda and sugary beverages alters your hormone functioning – making it harder for your brain to know when you are full.
The debate over the New York soda tax continues. While both Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg support a 1 cent-per-ounce tax on soda and other sugary beverages, there has been extensive lobbying against the tax by the beverage industry. And this seems to have influenced many NY politicians.
The pro-soda tax camp is rallying too though. A article from the Sunday New York Times profiled Dr. Richard F. Daines, the NY state health commissioner, who has been traveling around the state drumming up support for the soda tax. This issue is bigger than soda, he explains. It also has to do with what’s advertised to you, and the kinds of food available on your block.
From the NY Times:
“I raised my kids on Park Avenue. You can walk at least from 60th Street to 96th Street on Park Avenue. You won’t see a single soda billboard, you won’t see a single fast-food outlet, and I don’t think you could buy a soda. Basically, a child raised in that corridor has a soda-free day after school.”
But walk 30 blocks north to Harlem, he said, and the picture is different.
“This is cheap, it’s heavily advertised, it tastes really good. And then we plunge kids into that environment, and we say, if you have a problem, you lack self-control.”
Indeed. While what you eat is a personal choice, it is greatly influenced by what’s affordable and at your fingertips. In order to deal with our obesity epidemic we have to get past blame and shame, and work on solutions.
Another New York Times article gives a scary reason why drinking soda can lead to obesity: Prolonged consumption of fructose causes a resistance to leptin — the hormone that signals to the brain when hunger is satiated.
Not only does soda give you unnecessary calories, it actually disrupts your body’s natural hormone functioning.
There truly are so many reasons to support the soda tax. And according to the NY Times 72% of New York residents favor the soda tax if the revenue is used for obesity prevention. The tax could generate $ 1.2 billion and reduce soda consumption buy as much as 10%.
It seems like an obvious solution. So why why why isn’t this idea picking up steam in Albany?
WHAT’S ON YOUR PLATE?
makes it’s Los Angeles premiere at
the HAMMER MUSEUM
on THURSDAY APRIL 1st at 7 PM.
Join Director Catherine Gund and WOYP star Sadie Hope-Gund for this special screening, featuring a Q & A with actors and activists ED BEGLEY JR. and ESAI MORALES, and eco-chef and food justice leader BRYANT TERRY.
This event is FREE! Tickets are required, and can be picked up at the box office an hour before show time.
For more information: THE HAMMER MUSEUM10899 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles CA 90024 # 310.443.7000
ED BEGLEY JR.
Turning up at Hollywood events on his bicycle, Ed has been considered an environmental leader in the Hollywood community for many years. He has served as chairman of the Environmental Media Association, and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. He still serves on those boards, as well as the Thoreau Institute, the Earth Communications Office, Tree People and Friends of the Earth, among many others. His work in the environmental community has earned him a number of awards from some of the most prestigious environmental groups in the nation, including the California League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Coalition for Clean Air, Heal the Bay and the Santa Monica Baykeeper. He currently lives near Los Angeles in a self-sufficient home powered by solar energy.
Bryant Terry is an eco chef, food justice activist, and author of critically acclaimed Vegan Soul Kitchen (VSK): Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine (Da Capo/Perseus March 2009). For the past ten years he has worked to build a more just and sustainable food system and has used cooking as a tool to illuminate the intersections between poverty, structural racism, and food insecurity. His interest in cooking, farming, and community health can be traced back to his childhood in Memphis, Tennessee, where his grandparents inspired him to grow, prepare, and appreciate good food.
2 more chances to see WOYP on TV!
Discovery’s Planet Green will re-broadcast What’s On Your Plate? on
Go to Planet Green to find your local listing and download our Screening Toolkit to make it an event
*** click on image to download pdf
Presenting our new Family Cook-In! Screening Toolkit. Designed to take your family through an afternoon of learning about food and cooking together — it has games and activites for all aged kids, places to record family recipes, and ideas for real ways you can make a difference.
Enjoy with curious kids and a good meal. Cheers.
News from a favorite blog: Fed Up With Lunch: the School Lunch Project
Mrs. Q — the teacher in Illinois who is eating school lunch everyday in 2010, taking pictures, and blogging about it — has started bringing it guest bloggers. Teachers from around the country, and the world, are reporting on the state of their own schools lunches. The contrasts are quite stark. Let’s take a look:
First, a typical meal from Mrs. Q’s public school:
Here’s what she had to say about it:
Wow. Truly monumentally bad. I couldn’t get through the main entree. I was hungry too… I bit the cheese lasagna and it didn’t even pass muster as pasta! Al dente? No, al crappy. The pasta couldn’t hold its form and it crumbled. I ate two bites and I was done. Yuck.
Meanwhile, at a nursery school near Hiroshima, Japan, eating school lunch is a different experience. Guest blogger Daniel Ferguson took this photo:
From Daniel:
At lunch, we waited until all children, about 60 total, had been served soup, fish, and sushi before saying “itadakimasu”, a kind of secular grace said before eating in Japan, meaning thanks to those who prepared the food. The cook teachers also joined us and everyone thanked them for the meal they had been preparing all morning. Then they walked around the room responding to children saying “oishii” meaning delicious. And as they always do, the children ate everything, stacked their dishes, and put their chopsticks and cup away to be used again tomorrow.
Wow. Respect and thanks for the lunchroom cooks, teachers and students eating together, delicious looking food, happy kids cleaning their plates, and to top it off: reusable plates and utensils. I’m a huge fan of Mrs. Q. Not only for exposing the grossness of her own school food, but also for showing us that another way is possible.
BIG NEWS!: The New York City Department of Health just decided today to legalize beekeeping throughout the city. For the past decade beekeeping has been illegal — under a health department code that put bees in the same category as dangerous and venomous wild animals.
The ban didn’t stop hundreds of residents from keeping hives secretly in backyards. The risk of getting caught however was steep — fines up to $2,000.
Just Food and other groups have been working hard for almost 2 years on a campaign to lift the ban. We salute you.
Come out and celebrate tomorrow night with The New York City Meetup Group, Gotham City Honey Co-Op, The Commons, Just Food and other bee-lovers.
Here is New York there is a debate going on about soda. Specifically: should the government place a one penny per ounce tax on bottled sugary drinks? The tax could bring in $7.6 billion annually to the state — money Bloomberg says would go to support education and health care. The opposition argues: “Taxes never made anyone healthy! And this tax is unfair to poor people!”
First, let’s be skeptical about the beverage industry standing up for the rights of the poor to drink soda.
To address the real issue, of whether a soda tax is unfair to people already struggling to afford food for their families: theoretically, yes, a tax on food items will be felt more by those with less money. Sugar and fat rich foods pack in more calories per dollar, and in the U.S.A. it’s cheaper to eat heavily processed, nutrient-void food than fresh, healthy food. This is the current reality. But no one benefits from us collectively throwing our hands in the air and saying, “Oh well! That’s life!” And no one benefits from a continuation of the status quo. As so many people have argued, the cost of eating junk may be cheaper in the short term, but in the long term is is hugely more expensive. 2 in 3 American adults are overweight. 1 in 3 kids. The money saved at the grocery store is being felt on a nation-wide scale in the rising costs and expenditures in health care.
A tax on soda would be a step towards changing this discrepancy. However, the solution is not to raise the price of processed food so it is as expensive as fresh food and therefore less appealing. We must also lower the cost of fresh food so healthy stuff is affordable for regular working people.
The question we should ask about the soda tax is: what will this money subsidize? Will it directly fund school lunch programs that provide fresh healthy food to kids on free or reduced lunch? Will it be used to change our food system so healthy options are available and affordable?
So far, the soda tax is being touted as a two-for-one fix: funding Medicaid and education, and addressing childhood obesity. Bloomberg has specifically said that this money would go towards keeping teachers in classrooms and preventing further cuts to public education. But I think we should get specific: If this tax is really being done in the interests of nutrition and health, than some of the money should be used specifically to fund healthy food programs. We can’t just make junk more expensive, without making the good stuff affordable.
But that’s just my opinion. What you think readers? Soda Tax: Yay or Nay?
Last Friday team WOYP headed over to the Neighborhood School in NYC for some screening, eating, and talking. There was a signup for the Angel Family Farm CSA (Season 2! alright!), homemade tamales, a Q&A, and a chance for parent and kids to see their school on the big screen.
Remember the part from WOYP that takes place in a school cafeteria? Going into the kitchen and kids talking about school food and their lunches? That was the Neighborhood School. There’s other neat stuff happening over there as well: a school garden which also serves as science classroom, and ongoing projects to make the school green and sustainable.
