Americans want healthy school lunches and they want them now. Both a study administered by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and a report written by ex-military leaders are advocating for school lunch reforms.
A recent survey conducted by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation concludes that people in America are unhappy with their children’s school lunches. Sixty three percent of parents of school-aged kids described the school lunches in their local school as “poor,” or at best, “fair.” School lunches normally serve tater tots, corn dogs, pizza, and chicken nuggets several times a week, all of which are high in sodium and fats. The study shows that 70% of all Americans want pizza served in school lunches once a week or not at all, and over 60% would want chicken nuggets and hamburgers served once a week or not at all.
Parents of school-aged kids aren’t the only ones who want change. Retired military officers also came out with a report, titled “Too Fat To Fight: Retired Military Leaders Want Junk Food Out of America’s Schools.” It reveals that in one decade (ending in 2008) the states that recorded over 40% of their youth as overweight or obese increased from only one, Kentucky, to a total of thirty-nine. The report also stated that 80% of all the overweight kids aged 10-15 years were obese by the time they were 25. Americans have increased their daily calorie intake by 250-300 calories.
These studies have recognized vending machines filled with junk food as the primary culprit. We hope that something is done fast about this issue, and that kids are offered healthy and nutritious lunches at schools.
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Earth Day is fast approaching, Internet. In fact, it’s tomorrow. In the holiday spirit, check out this article on supermarkets and what they throw away. It turns out that when food reaches its “sell by” date, supermarkets tend to just throw it out. That means a single store can throw out tons of food (literally tons) per year. However, some community-minded stores have started programs in which the expired food (which will probably be safe to eat for a few days at least after the sell by date) is donated to food banks and homeless shelters. Not only does this cut down on waste, but donations of perishable food are incredibly valuable for these organizations, which get a lot of non-perishables, like canned foods, but really lack fruits, vegetables, and meats. The article lists five major supermarket chains and details their food disposal policies.
I think articles like this are really cool. First, I totally hadn’t thought of donating expired food that is still perfectly edible, and I just like that idea. Second, I think lists like these comparing supermarkets can potentially be a big help in changing food systems. Part of what WOYP is trying to accomplish is to show people the ways that local, organic food systems can benefit communities. If people start thinking about the larger community when they choose where to buy groceries, big supermarkets will take local and organic ideas into account when they decide how to run their stores. There aren’t laws requiring extra food to be donated to those who need it instead of thrown away, but if people look at this article and keep it in mind when they shop at one supermarket instead of another, even big companies like Wal-Mart might have to wake up and realize that people expect supermarkets to be responsible within their communities.
Hey, New Yorkers of the Internet, have you heard about the New Amsterdam Market? It’s a monthly market, with all kinds of vendors (seriously all kinds, from meat and produce to readymade soups and sandwiches, bread, seaweed, anything edible) that’s trying to be a permanent one. New York used to have a few year-round markets like that one, and the Fulton Fish Market is one of the surviving ones, and such markets still exist all over the world, but New York is in dire need of a year-round all-kinds-of-food public market. If you’ve ever been to a big public market, you probably know they’re awesome. Huge, often maze-like places filled with stalls and stalls of vendors, with delicious food to take home and cook with, or eat right there, and lots of people yelling at you to buy something awesome. It’s kind of like a farmers’ market that is there every day, but with much more stuff for sale (wholesale as well as resale, and cooked food as well as ingredients). They’re meant to be places you spend a few hours at, or maybe half a day, and you can never see the whole thing. Markets like these draw vendors selling food you can’t get anywhere else, as well as stall for your favorite restaurants and farms. I’m getting really excited here, but seriously, I love the idea of a huge public market in New York City, pulling the best of the city’s food and more from miles around into one overwhelmingly crowded mass of delicious food. It would be worth it for the smell of walking through it alone. The point of this post is that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is on the case, pushing for the New Amsterdam Market to be a 365-day institution in this great city. Go to the market’s website, donate a few dollars, tell your friends, and get excited.
Our pal Marie sent us an email yesterday asking about places that deliver fresh fruit. Marie works at a library, and there are cookies delivered every day, but every once in a while, they get fruit instead of cookies and everyone seems much happier. So, Marie asked us, are there places that deliver fresh fruit right to your door every day? There totally are! Fruit Guys is a San Francisco-based company that delivers to homes, offices, and schools across this great nation. That’s great and all, but it seems a little weird that there aren’t smaller local fruit delivery services all over the place that take food from local farms to local people every day (or week). Somebody should totally start that business (hint hint).
Which brings me to my next rant. One of the things that really bugs me about our crappy food system is the idea of buying in bulk. It’s fine for things like grains, or dried fruit that will keep for a while, but as a rule, we expect to buy food as infrequently as possible, and to stock up on food when we do. So we get food with lots of preservatives to make that possible. Really, the whole idea doesn’t make much sense. I really like the idea of having fresh food delivered daily, especially in big cities. I think milkmen are pretty cool. You get a small amount of milk every day or every couple of days, you drink it before it goes bad, it works out. Food goes bad, that’s just what it does, and by trying to buy things like fruit and vegetables in bulk, we’re pretty much asking to get our food saturated with preservatives. Fruit delivery sounds like an excellent idea to me (or daily trips to the grocery store if you prefer) I think offices and schools could seriously use a regular supply of fresh fruit straight from the farm. And I think we should readjust our eating and buying habits to stop trying to stock up on fruits and vegetables. Fruit only stays fresh for so long, no matter what the supermarket would like you to think, so it makes perfect sense to have a little but of fruit delivered every day or every few days (or to go out and buy it) eat it before it goes bad, and get more. That’s the schedule the fruit works on, so why not adjust to it?
let’s make this happen.
We have yet more reasons not to drink sugary coke.
At the risk of becoming infertile, scientists suggest that men drink fewer caffeinated products. Researchers from the American Journal of Epidemiology tested 2,554 young Danish men to see if there was a connection between their fitness, the amount of soda they drank, and their fertility rates. The results implied that a moderate soda-drinker may not experience decreased semen quality, however a large intake is associated with reduced sperm count. An intake of 800 mg of soda a day – or 14 half-liter bottles a week – could decrease sperm concentration.
You may also be paying more for soda now. The Coca Cola company is increasing the price by two or three cents per ounce of coke. That may not seem like a ridiculous amount, but keep in mind that those cents add up to a 50-140% increase. You’re getting a whole lot less for more. And this is from the people who threw hissy-fits when asked to raise a cent-per-ounce in the soda tax!
Our blogger, Cassie wrote an article supporting the soda tax. Although soda may seem tasty and affordable, its damages hormones which help signal your brain when you are no longer hungry, leading to obesity. This tax could decrease obesity and soda consumption by 10%, and generate 1.2 billion dollars. Already over 72% of NY residents favor it, and it seems like the obvious solution. This begs the question, when will it be passed?
Here at WOYP? we suggest that people trade in soda for a healthier alternative anyway, unless you want to hazard infertility or pay 140% more for it than what you normally would.
Internet, let’s talk about science. Specifically, let’s talk about the intersection of science and food. I have two bits of information to share with you: the first is an article on PepsiCo’s new form of salt, just out of the lab, that dissolves more efficiently on the tongue, so that a smaller amount of salt will taste more salty. The second is a TED talk by Dan Barber explaining a method of fish farming used in southern Spain that produces large numbers of tasty fish while actually improving the local ecosystem.
The Pepsi article points out that, while the new salt would mean that the salt content of snacks made by Pepsi, like Lay’s Potato Chips, could be significantly lowered, the effect on the health of Pepsi’s customers would likely be small. The article mentions Sweet ‘N Low, which reduced the amount of calories in food where it was used, but in the long run probably helped us eat more sweet foods and might have made matters worse. As happens so often with food research, Pepsi has, through years of expensive and painstaking research, provided us with a product incredibly similar to one readily and cheaply available in nature, except that it helps us feel better about consuming larger quantities of Pepsi products. I love science, and the idea that people can make anything they think up, simply by methodically working out a solution. But it bothers me that Pepsi employs research chemists to work on something as inane as tastier salt. There are still diseases out there to cure, fossil fuels to replace, or if you aren’t into chemistry, there are oceans to explore, a whole universe to fathom. There are enough exciting, humanity-benefiting goals out there for everyone on the planet to be working on them, let alone everyone with a PhD in chemistry. It’s a terrible waste of talent, and a symptom of how we treat science in our society, but it’s no use moping over where research grants come from.
Which brings me to Dan Barber’s TED Talk. Barber’s lecture centers around a very cute metaphor (the fish he fell in love with) and makes some excellent points about what it means to be sustainable. Barber compares two methods of fish farming, one that relies on external (and kinda gross) feed for the fish, and one that takes advantage of an entire ecosystem to feed the fish and raise better meat, at the cost of a slightly lower output. The first farm initially seemed a model of sustainability. By the traditional metric of fish farm sustainability, the feed conversion ratio (how many pounds of food go into raising one pound of fish), the farm was exemplary (2.5:1), it was also far enough out at sea that the fish waste was able to disperse, instead of concentrating, which is often a problem. As it turned out, this farm was feeding their fish chicken, essentially raising one artificial population to feed another artificial population, and burdening multiple ecosystems in the process. The second farm is run by a biologist who figured out how to cultivate a ecosystem that would essentially raise delicious, relatively disease-free fish all by itself. The fish eat what they would in the wild, and the water that runs through the farm actually comes out more pure than when it got there. Incredible? Totally. Amazing? Yes. Sustainable? Yeah, and it brings up a neat little point: sustainability is actually how the world works, or how it tries to. Sustainability in an industrialized society takes a bit more work, but not as much as you might think. This is where my opposition to food science breaks down. I see no point in figuring out how to make saltier salt, or low-fat ice cream, or brighter-colored tomatoes, but I can’t think of a more noble project for a biologist than creating a fish farm that not only takes pressure off our oceans’ plummeting fish populations, but actually enriches a local ecosystem with its presence. In the end, I’m as excited about the one as I am angered by the other. Pepsi researching saltier salt is a huge waste of time, resources, and talent. Hardly worth the lab coats. Farms that mutually benefit the farmer, the consumer, and the local ecosystem should get Nobel Prizes.
The New York Times just alerted me to a strange trend out there in the internet world. It seems that a lot of people like to take pictures of their food and post them on blogs, flickr, what have you. The thing is, a lot of people are doing this with everything they eat. Like, at every meal, even snacks. On the one hand, it totally makes sense. There’s some good lookin’ food out there, and pretty much everybody can relate to getting excited about delicious-looking food, so the impulse to share the visual joys of food seems pretty natural. But isn’t it a little weird? I can totally get behind blogs like Fed Up With School Lunch, which documents food at a particular school. In Fed Up, pictures of food form an overall narrative, the blog makes a point, I feel enriched for having read it. But one of the things I look for in the food reform movement, and in the general awareness of food that is growing in this country, is that our attitude toward food should become less neurotic. Pictures of good food look tasty, and sometimes seeing a really delicious meal makes me want to go out and try new foods, or new recipes, but if there is one thing we shouldn’t have to obsess over, it’s food. Good food is wonderful, it should be eaten with friends, talked about, savored, remembered fondly, but maybe not compulsively photographed.
As you may or may not be aware, Internet, the WOYP crew was just in Los Angeles for a screening at the Hammer museum. While they were in the neighborhood, Sadie, Safiyah, and Catherine took a trip up to San Francisco for a screening and Q&A session at the Julia Morgan School for Girls. The screening went great, and the students asked some great (tough) questions. We hear there’s a video of the Q&A out there somewhere, and we hope it’ll make its way to the web soon. We’re always glad when people watch WOYP, but what we really want is for people to talk about food, so we get really excited when people see the movie and start asking questions. Debate, Internet, is what it’s all about.
While in San Francisco, Sadie, Safiyah, and Catherine also stopped by to visit Oliver Taylor, who has been raising money to get WOYP screened at his school in Lafayette, CA. Oliver has been working with The Urban Farmers, helping to plant fruit trees in downtown Lafayette, and it was really cool to finally meet him.
Thanks for a great time, San Francisco!
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?
I’m sure you’ve heard, Internet, but rumor has it that Michelle Obama is getting serious about child nutrition. More specifically, she’s got a program called Let’s Move that aims to end childhood obesity in the U.S. She’s also got a vegetable garden right on the White House lawn, and is just generally using her position as First Lady to confront issues of child nutrition. This is a wonderful thing. I especially like that she always talks about getting better nutrition for kids as an important part of parenting, something she worries about as a mother, and a sort of moral imperative for her as a mother in the public eye. I was reading the always-excellent blog, Fed Up with School Lunch and Mrs. Q talked about Michelle Obama’s use of the word obesity in her campaigning. She uses the word because it’s a good political choice. Everybody wants to fight obesity. No one is going to take obesity’s side in this debate, that much is pretty obvious. But what is also fairly obvious is that Mrs. Obama isn’t actually campaigning against obesity, but working for better child nutrition, and that’s a much harder sell. And that leads us into a very weird thought process, or at least it led me into one.
I know that when Michelle Obama says she wants to stop childhood obesity in this country, she is really talking about improving child nutrition by improving this country’s food culture, both at home and at school. I know that good nutrition isn’t just about not being overweight, I know that obesity doesn’t come from eating too much nutritious food, but from eating too much food without nutrition, and actually not getting enough nutrients. But I also know that Michelle and Barack Obama do hang out a lot, and that they probably have similar styles of achieving goals, and I know that Barack Obama is a pragmatist. So then I assume that Mrs. Obama will probably be very practical about how she tries to accomplish her goals. When Barack Obama talked about a major spending freeze to hold back the increasing deficit, and then Michelle Obama talked only days later about improving school food, I knew that both Obamas were going to be pragmatic, and that improving child nutrition would probably take a fiscal backseat to the much scarier and more immediate problems of the economy. Basically, I know that Mrs. Obama probably won’t demand radical change from schools or food manufacturers, or tell the country to stop going to McDonalds and start going to farmers’ markets, or even talk about a lot of the big, specific changes that need to happen in our society, even though I’d bet that she knows how badly these things need to happen. I know that as much influence as Michelle Obama has, and as exciting as it is to have the First Lady make child nutrition a priority, immediate change is not a practical goal.
But on the other hand, I know that Michelle Obama knows just as well as I do that “obesity” alone is not the goal here, better nutrition is. The Let’s Move website lists the program’s goals as to “give parents the support they need, provide healthier food in schools, help our kids to be more physically active, and make healthy, affordable food available in every part of our country.” And that is exactly what child nutrition activists work for without even mentioning obesity. So if I know that the real object of Michell Obama’s campaign against obesity is the far better and much more difficult goal of better child nutrition, but I also know that the program will probably focus on small steps and gradual change, what should I expect? How do small goals and difficult compromises help us reach our ultimate goal? More importantly, should those of us who are a little less famous, less visible, channel our energies into pragmatic, reachable aims? We have less leverage, but we also risk less when we aim higher. I think the lesson here is that the most highly visible, farthest-reaching incarnations of the food reform movement must be somewhat conservative, and must compromise in order to gain any ground at all. However, at the local level, we can actually be more ambitious, and achieve much more through personal choices and local action.
