Wisconsin FOOD DAY 2011 Webinar Series

SAVE THE DATE(S)!

All webinars start at 3:00 PM CST. Registration and login information will be sent prior to each webinar. Contact fooddaywi@gmail.com with questions or to request webinar registration information.

Monday, October 10
What you need to know about the farm bill – Important updates and information related to community and regional food systems

Monday, October 24
Finding a common ground – How can agriculture and public health work together? Ideas from the CDC and USDA

Monday, November 7
Where do we go from here in Wisconsin? – Coordinating activities to promote public health through food system innovations

Nutrition and physical activity news digest.

Can a National Food Day Convince Americans to Start Eating Right?
The Atlantic
September 15, 2011
In essence, Food Day is the "Stone Soup" of the food movement: Center for Science in the Public Interest puts the day out there, like a kettle with a stone in it, offering a chance to turn your carrot and my onion and her urban agriculture program and his hunger relief efforts into something remarkable. If groups and individuals organize thousands of Food Day events, big and small, we'll all start to understand not just that public health, sustainability, and food justice are related, but how they are related. It will help us begin to make changes in our own lives and our community's and country's institutions.

Why Americans can’t afford to eat healthy – The real reason Big Macs are cheaper than more nutritious alternatives? Government subsidies
Salon.com
Not surprisingly, the subsidies have manufactured a price inequality that helps junk food undersell nutritious-but-unsubsidized foodstuffs like fruits and vegetables. The end result is that recession-battered consumers are increasingly forced by economic circumstance to “choose” the lower-priced junk food that their taxes support. Corn — which is processed into the junk-food staple corn syrup and which feeds the livestock that produce meat — exemplifies the scheme. “Over the past decade, the federal government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop … artificially low,” reports Time magazine. “That’s why McDonald’s can sell you a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for around $5 — a bargain.”

Offer of soda-industry funds fell flat, as it should have
Philadelphia Inquirer
September 14, 2011
Discusses Philadelphia mayor’s rationale for rejecting funds from soda industry for an anti-obesity program. "It seems to me that accepting money from the beverage industry to fight obesity would be like taking money from the NRA to fight gun violence or from the tobacco industry for smoking cessations," Mayor Nutter said. "I mean, it's ludicrous."

Playground and Park Design: Getting Our Children to Exercise
The Atlantic
September 27, 2011
The current epidemic of obesity among our children and adolescents calls for creative, multidisciplinary approaches to address the problem. Improved nutrition at home, at school, and in the community is critical. Increased exercise is similarly important, but it is well known that the amount and quality of physical exercise declines as young children grow up and continues to decline into adulthood. A recent study looked at the types and amount of exercise that kids engaged in in public parks and offers some insights as to how to improve the physical activity levels of our youth through improved park planning.

Let's Make Let's Move! Even Better
The Atlantic
September 27, 2011
With plenty of room for more food access, farmers' markets continue to provide the most inexpensive, culturally sensitive, and effective option to get fresh produce into America's seriously underserved urban and rural communities. These markets provide jobs and fertile ground for inventive, entrepreneurial approaches to launching food businesses that require low investment -- and can have high impact, creating new jobs and equity opportunities to low-wage workers.

Harvard plate v. USDA MyPlate: an improvement?
Food Politics by Marion Nestle
September 15, 2011
Harvard School of Public Health students adapted the USDA MyPlate to offer more specific guidelines for healthful eating.

Wisconsin Receives $23.5 Million Grant for Healthy Transformation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 27, 2011

Contact:
Julie Swanson, Wisconsin Clearinghouse for Prevention Resources
● Office - 608.262.7469
● Mobile - 608-206-9117
● jswanson@uhs.wisc.edu

Wisconsin Receives $23.5 Million Grant for Healthy Transformation

MADISON, Wis -- The Wisconsin Clearinghouse for Prevention Resources, a unit of University Health Services at UW–Madison, announced today that they have received a $23.5 million Federal grant to make it easier for Wisconsin residents to be and stay healthy.

The project will address public demand for proven prevention strategies that decrease obesity and tobacco use across Wisconsin. It will also increase early screening for chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer. The award, called the Community Transformation Grant, is granted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“Wisconsin’s public health movement rallied around this application, and will be a powerful force in creating a healthier Wisconsin going forward,” said Tom Sieger, UHS director of prevention services, “The grant will help improve the overall health and well-being of Wisconsin residents, lower the rates of life-threatening chronic diseases, and bring down healthcare costs for us all.”

The award will be spread over five years with be distributed to local community-based coalitions in 10 Wisconsin cities and a statewide coalition of public health partners including the YMCA, Health First Wisconsin, UW Department of Nutritional Sciences, the Wisconsin Cancer Council, and many others.

"YMCAs across the state of Wisconsin are thrilled to collaborate and help make this healthy transformation happen for Wisconsin” said Carrie Wall, President and CEO of the YMCA of Dane County. “Not only does the Y help kids move more and educate them about making healthy choices, but we are also committed to working with community leaders to institute policy and systems changes that increase physical activity and improve access to healthy foods."

For more than 35 years, the Wisconsin Clearinghouse for Prevention Resources has advanced public health and prevention efforts in the state through accurate, up-to-date information, training and technical assistance to help Wisconsin youth, families, schools and communities in the promotion of healthy practices and the prevention of injury and disease.

In keeping with the Wisconsin Idea, the organization strives to make information about environmental strategies, research-based programs, and new technologies and practices available to residents beyond the university and throughout the state.

###

• Information on how the Prevention and Public Health Fund is helping to promote prevention in every state



• Information about the Community Transformation Grants, including a complete list of 61 funded states and communities



• Information on how the Community Transformation Grants will address health disparities

We need to go back and give people safe ways to get out there, to be active, to get where they need to go.

Bike Infrastructure Hits Congressional Speed Bumps on NPR's All Things Considered.

This NPR story discusses the need for cities and communities to accommodate multimodal transportation, and the challenges facing bike and ped advocates across the country.

David Goldberg of the advocacy group Transportation for America calls this is a "watershed moment," as communities revert to an earlier time when roads weren't owned by cars.

"We stripped [roads] down to be essentially sewers for cars, and for years we thought the throughput of vehicles was the be-all and end-all," he says. "There's been a significant change in recent years where cities, towns, large and small, are taking a very different approach, and they're going back and reclaiming a little bit of that landscape."

It's not just bike lanes that are funded by the transportation enhancements program. Pedestrian improvements such as sidewalks and better-marked crosswalks are also funded. In part, Goldberg says, the money is being spent to reduce pedestrian deaths, most of which occur on roads built to earlier federal guidelines without proper crosswalks, for example, that are unsafe for pedestrians and other users.

"This is a national issue of having created safety problems in community after community, where we need to go back and give people safe ways to get out there, to be active, to get where they need to go," he says, "and this is not a frill, this is a very critical piece of our infrastructure."

It's not clear what lies ahead for the transportation enhancements program in the long term. Republicans in Congress want to give states the flexibility to opt out of it, and that worries safety advocates who say that without prodding from Washington, some states will focus only on cars to the detriment of everyone else on the road.

Links for upcoming communications webinars

Get the Message Out: Practical Communication Planning
September 8 at 1:00PM
Spencer Straub, Tobacco Prevention and Control Program Media and Communications Coordinator
Emily Dieringer, re:TH!NK Winnebago County Coalition Coordinator

Inspire Action: Messaging Principles that Work
September 22 at 1:00PM
Sarah Apple, UW Clearinghouse for Prevention Resources Communications and Training Coordinator


These webinars are open to everyone, so please feel free to share with colleagues from other program areas!

United Nations to consider the effects of food marketing on chronic disease
from Marion Nestle's Food Politics

In what Bloomberg News terms an “epidemic battle,” food companies are doing everything they can to prevent the United Nations from issuing a statement that says anything about how food marketing promotes obesity and related chronic diseases.

The U.N. General Assembly meets in New York on September 19 and 20 to develop a global response to the obesity-related increase in non-communicable, chronic diseases (cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, type 2 diabetes) now experienced by both rich and poor countries throughout the world.

As the Bloomberg account explains,

Company officials join political leaders and health groups to come up with a
plan to reverse the rising tide of non- communicable diseases….On the table are
proposals to fight obesity, cut tobacco and alcohol use and expand access to
lifesaving drugs in an effort to tackle unhealthy diets and lifestyles that
drive three of every five deaths worldwide. At stake for the makers of snacks,
drinks, cigarettes and drugs is a market with combined sales of more than $2
trillion worldwide last year.

Commenting on the collaboration of food companies in this effort:

“It’s kind of like letting Dracula advise on blood bank security,” said Jorge Alday, associate director of policy with World Lung Foundation, which lobbies for tobacco control.

The lobbying, to understate the matter, is intense. On one side are food corporations with a heavy financial stake in selling products in developing countries. Derek Yach, for example, a senior executive of PepsiCo, argues in the British Medical Journal that it’s too simplistic to recommend nutritional changes to reduce chronic disease risk. [Of course it is, but surely cutting down on fast food, junk food, and sodas ought to be a good first step?]

On the other side are public health advocates concerned about conflicts of interest in the World Health Organization. So is the United Nations’ special rapporteur for the right to food, Olivier De Schutter. Mr. De Schutter writes that the “chance to crack down on bad diets must not be missed.”

On the basis of several investigative visits to developing countries, De Schutter calls for “the adoption of a host of initiatives, such as taxing unhealthy products and regulating harmful food marketing practices…Voluntary guidelines are not enough. World leaders must not bow to industry pressure.”

If we are serious about tackling the rise of cancer and heart disease, we need to make ambitious, binding commitments to tackle one of the root causes – the food that we eat.

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2004 Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health must be translated into concrete action: it is unacceptable that when lives are at stake, we go no further than soft, promotional measures that ultimately rely on consumer choice, without addressing the supply side of the food chain.

It is crucial for world leaders to counter food industry efforts to sell
unbalanced processed products and ready-to-serve meals too rich in trans fats
and saturated fats, salt and sugars. Food advertising is proven to have a strong
impact on children, and must be strictly regulated in order to avoid the
development of bad eating habits early in life.

A comprehensive strategy on combating bad diets should also address the
farm policies which make some types of food more available than
others…Currently, agricultural policies encourage the production of grains, rich
in carbohydrates but relatively poor in micronutrients, at the expense of the
production of fruits and vegetables.

We need to question how subsidies are targeted and improve access to
markets for the most nutritious foods.…The public health consequences are
dramatic, and they affect disproportionately those with the lowest incomes.

In 2004, the U.N. caved in to pressures from food companies and weakened its guidelines and recommendations. The health situation is worse now and affects people in developing as well as industrialized countries. Let’s hope the General Assembly puts health above politics this time.

Marion Nestle on the new school nutrition law from the USDA.

"New School Nutrition Law Takes Youths' Health to Heart" at FoodPolitics

Much is at stake here. School food matters because schools set an example. Schools that offer poor-quality food because it is cheaper are telling children that what they eat is not important. If a school promotes sales of sodas and snacks, it reinforces the idea that children are supposed to be eating junk foods.

Not me. I'm going on a strict diet sometime in early 2022.

For those of us who haven't started our long weekends yet, a laugh, courtesy of The Onion.

Start Early: Promoting healthy eating in child care settings

A new position paper released by the American Dietetic Association makes the case for establishing benchmarks for nutrition in child care settings, including the following guidelines:

• Foods and beverages served in child care should be nutritionally adequate and consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.



• Child care providers should model and encourage healthful eating for chilren.



• Child care providers should work with children to understand feelings of hunger and satiety and should respect children's hunger and satiety cues, once expressed.



• Child care providers should receive appropriate training in child nutrition, and nutrition education for children and families should be a component of the child care program.
  


• Child care providers should work with families to ensure that foods and beverages brought from home meet nutrition guidelines.

ADA also outlines a role for policy change to promote healthful eating and active play.

You can read a related article here:

Study: Obesity prevention should focus on day care

Experts say the fight against childhood obesity should have a new focus: day care.
Studies show that about 82% of American children under age 6 are in child care outside the home while their parents work.

That means many meals are no longer eaten around the family table, but at day care, where parents may have little control over what toddlers are eating.

Kids in full-time day care can get two-thirds of their daily calories there, “so it’s really other adults who are driving the nutritional value of what children consume,” says study researcher Sara Benjamin Neelon, PhD. She's an assistant professor in the department of community and family medicine at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

In a new study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Benjamin Neelon and her colleagues reviewed 42 studies of obesity prevention related practices in day care.

They found that most states have minimal requirements for healthy eating and physical activity in child care that may differ from public health expert recommendations. Experts who were not involved in the research praised its scope and said that while it points to substantial problems, it also suggests that day care can be an important place to make lasting changes in a child’s life.

Starting Young

“In general, there’s been an increasing awareness that we have to start tackling obesity very early in a child’s life,” says Alice Ammerman, DrPH, a nutrition professor and director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“I think things are moving in the right direction, but I think there’s a lot of potential for greater improvement,” particularly through day care, Ammerman says.

Communications tips from Prevention Institute - share your prevention work!

With August Recess winding down, we want to make sure that our legislators continue to hear about the good prevention work our communities are accomplishing. It is up to all of us to speak up and make sure that we are actively shaping the dialogue around community prevention, so that the media and our legislators can understand what we already know: prevention works.

Here is just a sampling of the media coverage our community has accomplished so far during the recess:

• In an op-ed in the Wisconsin State Journal, "Getting kids to eat their vegetables," health educator Maggie Smith captures her community’s resolve to develop local solutions to better the health of their children: “The success that La Crosse County and others implementing Farm to School programs are enjoying could never happen without the commitment, dedication and contributions from the wider community.”
  


• In the Portland Tribune,"We all have a stake in fighting obesity," public health officer Dr. Gary Oxman pens an op-ed effectively responding to a piece that ignored the environment’s role in shaping our health: “…obesity didn’t just 'hit' our community. It took decades of complex and often subtle shifts in what children eat and how much they move.”
  


• In a Miami Herald feature, “Miami-Dade initiatives target childhood obesity,” Penny Parham, Miami-Dade Public Schools’ food and nutrition director, deftly cues the environment first when describing her program’s goals: “We need to give our kids the best foods from which to select and then teach them to want to make the right selections.”



• “New options in store at two tienditas” in the San Antonio-Express News highlights why changing the environment in San Antonio is crucial to changing behaviors and ultimately health outcomes: “People buy what's available. It's easier to walk across the corner to pick up (whole) milk instead of taking two buses in 100-degree weather to buy skim at H-E-B.”

It’s not too late to broadcast your community’s successes, too. Here are the core messages we need to share with legislators and media alike:

• Community prevention is evidence-based.



• Community prevention is local.



• Prevention is good for business.



• Government has a role in public health.



• The American people want prevention.

We’ve compiled all of our media advocacy resources, including talking points, sample op-eds, and messaging and framing strategies in one easy-to-use Media Advocacy Toolkit for your review.

What you can do

• Send a letter to a Member of Congress to educate your legislator about the importance and value of community prevention. Prevention Institute provides easy-to-use, tailored e-mails that you can send directly to your legislator.
  


• Write an op-ed, blog post, or letter to the editor of your local paper.



• Issue a press release highlighting the work taking place in your community.

From Prevention Institute.

Keeping "First Food" part of the conversation.

“First Food” is Real Food Justice on Civil Eats

I’ve got a problem with the food system conversation in the U.S. It neglects to include what I call the “first food”—breast milk—and emphasize the critical importance of breastfeeding. No conversation about equitable food systems can truly exist without including the first food and understanding how the racial and social inequities around breastfeeding adversely affect vulnerable populations.

If access to healthy food is a basic human right then doesn’t that right start at birth? Shouldn’t our smallest and most vulnerable citizens have fair and just access to the healthiest food for them?

Read more...

What in health is going on here?

We need stronger connections between public education and public health. We need to recreate public schools as healthy learning environments, so that wherever students go -- classrooms, gardens, cafeterias, field trips, after-school activities, student clubs -- and whatever activities they are engaged in, they receive a consistent message about health:

"Your school cares about your health and wellbeing. Your school practices what it teaches..."



Source: What in Health is Going on Here? by Ann Evans for the Center for Ecoliteracy