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.
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Internet, this is exactly what we’ve been saying. Pretty much every cafeteria in the elementary school world derives its menu from the dreaded “kids’ meal” concept. That is, for reasons so mysterious and so dogmatically followed as to be entirely occult, kids are assumed to abhor vegetables, and to only eat greasy food with lots of cheese, meat that has been ground up and re-molded, small portions cut into primary shapes, and bright colors whenever possible. It’s completely irrational, yes, but for some reason no one ever thought that kids might like to eat like regular humans. Well, it turns out they do! A bunch of kids in Chicago got together and demanded that the school district feed them better. It’s about time, too. I mean, kids can be tougher than adults, they tend to bounce back from all kids of things, but eating sloppy joes and translucent fries every day for years is something no one should be subjected to. It’s a little sad that kids have to tell school officials that they want to eat real food, you’d think adults would remember the lunches they got stuck with in school, but I’m excited to see kids pushing schools to do better for them.
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
Massachusetts is taking a step in the right direction, Internet.
After considerable dispute, the Massachusetts state Senate voted unanimously in favor of the “School Nutrition Bill.” It is going to ban sodas, sports drinks, and all junk in general, from being sold in schools. They hope to sell low-fat dairy products, fresh and dried fruit, and 100 percent fruit juices without any added sugars or carbonation. It should also increase farm-school involvement in the coming years. Needless to say, we are very excited for this bill to be passed.
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.
Internet, check this article out. Scary graphic, right? But it got me thinking. What this means, essentially, is that the way we eat is determined by a larger system of food production, which limits our choices as consumers. I think most people have known this for a long time, but bear with me. I think we pretty much asked for the food system we suffer from today. Not that we deserved it, but we voted with our dollars, with what we payed attention to and what we ignored, we gave our tacit approval (intentionally or not) to this food system, and now we live with it. What I think that means, is that it is possible to create a healthy, sustainable food system in the not-so distant future that will be every bit the unstoppable corporate leviathan that our current one is. People didn’t always eat the way they do now, and processed food was never actually forced down anyone’s throat (figuratively speaking). What happened was that these foods were invented, or a few early ones were, and made cheaply available because of the production cost, and people bought them. Then, as people began making money off processed food, the idea that people valued low cost and availability over anything else in food, processed food grew in popularity. As the industry grew, it built manufacturing infrastructure, advertising infrastructure, and lobbying infrastructure to go with it, which became entrenched and encouraged more growth in the industry until things reached the food world of today. To me, that is a story of a disastrous and harmful system built around a society that kept encouraging it, not a story of conspiracy or devious mustache twiddling on the part of food companies. What needs to happen is that we need to be extremely clear about the change in the food industry, and that will only happen with slow, deliberate cultural change. We ended up with all this terrible food because we bought it without knowing what it would do to us, and to create a new food system that is not only healthier and more sustainable, but won’t end up completely backfiring on us, we need to be better consumers. Every time we buy food or don’t buy food, that sends a message to food producers. As a country, we are still sending the message that we like our food cheap, heavily processed, and tremendously unhealthy, and that is exactly what we’re getting.
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.
