Recently a few Red Hook beekeepers began noticing that their bees, and their honey, were an usual color. Instead of their natural golden browns, theses bees were bright red. Bright, marishino cherry red — kind of like the color of the huge outdoor vats of syrupy cherry juice at the Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company in Red Hook.

The beekeepers discovered that yes, the bees were cruising over to factory and drinking the cherry juice, rather then feeding on the nectar of flowers found closer to their hives. But why would they go to all this effort?

According to Dominus, the unhealthy but extremely sweet nectar is just that appealing to the bees. They will go to a lot of extra effort to consume the cherry syrup, which is not only sweet, but also readily available in huge quanitites.

Sound familiar? Just like the bees, we are bombarded with images and advertisements for sugar-filled processed foods. They are everywhere — cheap and in large quantities.

When you hear about the bees and their sugar-addiction, don’t you just want to say: “Hey Bees! That’s not healthy. Look,  you are literally turning another color from that stuff!” So can we say the same things to ourselves when we gravitate towards the nearest processed and HFCS filled food? After all, unlike bees we have the power of rational decision making. We don’t have to drink the marishino cherry juice.

To get a beekeepers opinion on all this, I spoke with Matt Deprizio, who runs Matt’s Honey House at the Columbus Circle Holiday Market in New York City. Matt sells Golden Rule Honey — which is raw, unheated, unfiltered, natural honey. According to Matt, when bees don’t have enough forage in their environments, they seek out fructose from other sources, like soda spilled on the street, or in the case of the Red Hook bees, vats of cherry juice. This is why bees do so well in more rural and natural setting — there are tons wildflowers to feed from. In New York City there just aren’t that many flowers and plants for bees.

Matt also told me some unfortunate things about commercial beekeeping and honey. Here are 3 things I learned:

1. Most generic honey is heated to 160 degrees F and then cooled rapidly. This kills all the enzymes in honey that are good for you! Raw honey is not heated, treated, or tampered with — so it keeps all it’s healthy compounds.

2. Many large-scale commercial beekeepers make their money not from honey production, but from contracts with large agriculture corporations. They bring their bees to massive mono-crop farms and let the bees pollinate. This isn’t the best environment for the bee — they do better with a more diverse environment. But it is good for business.

3. Big honey producers also intentionally feed their bees high fructose corn syrup! It’s cheaper and easier than letting them pollinate naturally, but ultimately affects the quality of the honey, and diminishes its positive health benefits.

Raw, natural honey doesn’t do any of this. It’s made by bees who forage on wildflowers, and left untreated. It’s delicious, and good for you. (Raw honey has been used for centuries for digestion, curing colds, and many, many other uses.)

Go visit Matt at the Columbus Circle Holiday Fair to learn more and get some good, natural honey.

*Thanks to Bria for helping out with this article.

school lunches on the verge of a change

After over a year of hard work by organizations, parents, and people who care about the health of kids — months spent organizing, pressuring elected officials, signing and circulating letters and petitions, speaking up, blogging, and meeting with representatives . . .

On December 2, the 2010 Child Nutrition Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives!

The Act, which is officially known as the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, already passed the Senate in August, and it now heads to President Obama to be signed into law. This is a great accomplishment and we congratulate everyone who worked to get this done! Special big-ups to: Kristen Mancinelli and everyone in the New York City Alliance for Child Nutrition, and the National Farm to School Network.

So what does this act do? A lot actually.

* It increases the amount of money schools receive from the federal government to reimburse them for school lunches. The increase? 6 cents per meal. Less than what school food organizations originally pushed for, but it still makes a difference.

* Food sold outside of cafeterias, in vending machines for example, will now to subject to the same nutrition standards of food sold in cafeterias. Will this bring the end to junk food sold in school? We hope so . . .

* The Act requires $50 million for Farm to School programs around the country who work with farms to bring fresh food directly into schools.

* Lots of kids get subsidized lunches during the day, but go hungry in the morning, after school and during the summer. The act provides support and funding to increase kid’s access to food outside of school hours.

There are many exciting things about this victory — first, that it brings together all the issues of food justice: supporting farms, increasing access, and prioritizing healthy food. And second, it is also great to see the hard work, dedication and agitation of all these organizations and people pay off. It’s a good day, good day.

peace out!

Enjoy it in this vegetable-packed stew, courtesy of The Go Green East Harlem Cookbook.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup brown rice
• 1 cup vegetable stock
• 1 handful of fresh okra
• 1 red pepper, stemmed and diced
• 1 green pepper, stemmed and diced
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 clove finely chopped fresh garlic
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• pinch of cumin
• pinch of basil
• 3 pinches of parsley
• pinch of oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon gumbo file

Directions:

1. In a small pot, add water, brown rice, 1/4 cup vegetable stock, and bring to a boil. Simmer 40 minutes or until rice is soft.
2. Wash fresh okra and cut into 1/2-inch pieces. Place okra in a small pot of boiling water, cook for 30 seconds, remove and drain.
3. In a large skillet, add 1/8 cup of vegetable stock, cooked okra, green and red peppers, and cook over medium heat until mix becomes fragrant. Transfer to a small pot.
4. Add remaining vegetable stock to pot and bring to boil. While stirring, add all spices except gumbo file.
5. Continue to stir, cook until okra is golden brown, and then add gumbo file.
6. Cook for 10 minutes longer and serve on brown rice.
7. Enjoy!

SERVES 4

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.

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?

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 MUSEUM
10899 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles CA 90024 # 310.443.7000

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.

Discovery’s Planet Green will re-broadcast What’s On Your Plate?  on

• March 27th at 10 p.m.
• March 28th at 2 p.m.

Go to Planet Green to find your local listing and download our Screening Toolkit to make it an event

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.

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.

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.