Check out On the Future of Food. Prince Charles has taken up the challenge of promoting a saner, healthier food system to improve public health and protect our fragile planet. You can read a primer on Prince Charles' advocacy on behalf of food system reform here, at Civil Eats. 

Food Day

Center for Science in the Public Interest released a report on Food Day 2011 activities today. The report captures stories and photographs from how communities across the country marked Food Day. Take a look!

Food Day webinars archived.

Catch up with any Wisconsin's Food Day webinars that you missed at this link.

From October 10

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

From October 24

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

From November 7

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

#4. If You’re Not Hungry Enough to Eat an Apple, Then You’re Probably Not Hungry

Michael Pollan has released a new illustrated version of Food Rules. Read more at CivilEats.

Students and campus food workers unite for Food Day.

This Food Day story illuminates our national food conversation from several angles, from fresh food preparation to food insecurity and food justice:

"They took our knives and gave us scissors to open bags of frozen food. I want my knives back so I can cook again." That's what a kitchen worker at a prominent university told me recently at one of a dozen of gatherings around the country convened by our union, Unite Here. The idea was to bring food service workers and college students together to discuss the intersection of food and work in anticipation of Food Day, a national day designed to "bring together Americans from all walks of life to push for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way."

. . .

"Food is love," said one cook at a university in Chicago. "Bringing in packaged food ... is sort of an insult. We actually want to chop, we want to make sauces and make our own stocks, we want to make food with our hands."

But this widely felt sentiment is only one reason we're drawing attention to food service workers on Food Day. After spending so much time in campus kitchens, we know that workers are important allies in transforming our food system and we want to bring that to the foreground of this important national event. They're allies in part because they have so much at stake: Food workers are among those most affected by the food crisis. They are frequently underpaid and they suffer from food insecurity and diet-related illnesses at alarming rates.

Read more at Grist.org.

To mark the first-ever Food Day, we’ll take a look at food insecurity in the United States; the potential impact of cuts to nutrition programs, food safety programs and support for farmers producing fruits and vegetables in the federal budget; thoughts on Denmark’s “fat tax” from Marion Nestle; smartphone apps for foodies; spray-painted commentary on fast-food menu offerings; and a laugh brought to you by The Colbert Report.

Good: Empty Pantry: The scary truth about food insecurity (infographic)

SlowFoodUSA: Budget cuts could be a recipe for change or disaster

Food Politics: Marion Nestle on Denmark’s “fat tax”

Eating Rules: Foodie Smartphone Apps
- Profiles 27 smartphone apps that will enable you to do everything from scan barcodes to receive complete information on nutrition, pesticide exposure and food additives to where to find seasonal produce in your area to searchable recipe databases you can access from the grocery aisle.

Burger King Billboard Bombed with Diabetes Graffiti:

Stephen Colbert objects to MyPlate: “Americans don’t use plates anymore!”

And don’t forget to check out today’s installment in Wisconsin FOOD DAY 2011 webinar series at 3:00PM CST!

Update on Food Day

You can read a column written by Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest at The Atlantic.

The way our food is grown, transported, processed, marketed, and ultimately eaten is not sustainable -- for the environment or our health. Diet, together with a sedentary lifestyle, cause obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, and cancers that result in several hundred thousand deaths each year. Raising livestock uses enormous amounts of energy to grow and transport feed; cattle feedlots stink up vast areas; and the animal manure often pollutes waterways. The animals generally endure miserable conditions, as do the packinghouse workers.

My organization, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, has long fought for consumer protections -- food labeling, vigilant food safety programs, and more-healthful foods. I have to admit that we, like most advocacy organizations, are usually toiling within our "health" silo. But because reforming America's food system is such a daunting task, organizations need to climb out of their silos and start collaborating with one another to make faster progress. Health groups should work with farm-animal welfare groups. Anti-hunger activists should work with sustainable agriculture advocates. Nutrition advocates should work with environmentalists. While those disparate groups don't see eye to eye on everything, there are countless opportunities where they can build on each other's strengths...

Keep adding any events you have planned for Food Day to the Food Day map!

Great interview with Slow Food USA President Josh Viertel

Q: What are your top three wish list items for fixing our food system?

A: First, that people cook together, and that it be fun. Second, it needs to become easier to buy real ingredients than to buy processed junk. Third, we have to make the economics work. We have to be able to grow food sustainably, while paying the farmer a living wage. And that food has to be sold at a price that’s affordable to someone else who’s making a living wage. A person should be able to grow and sell food and make a living wage without having their customers only be wealthy people. Everyone should able to eat that kind of food every day.

I believe in growing local for healthy bodies, communities and natural spaces.

The New Agtivists: FoodCorps Foot Soldiers on Grist

Interviews with three FoodCorps service members about working to change the food system.

Q. What makes all this hard work worthwhile?
A. I think it really hit me on my first day in the school cafeteria with table full of zucchinis. We had samples of a roasted zucchini recipe and I was doing basic veggie identification. I realized that when kids have freedom to engage with food experiences -- where it's not a requirement, where it's a choice -- they take a much more active role in their food decisions. I noticed that kids already had stories and experiences of their own. Even the second and third graders would come to me saying, "My mom's zucchini are twice that size."
Sometimes just trying things under different circumstances makes a huge difference.

I feel like I'm this ambassador, or a link in the web between all these people who are connected through food but don't always get to talk to each other.

Being able to share the stories of food -- that's one of the most rewarding parts of the job. We're all working to improve it, but sharing stories and connecting the community around the same goals -- that makes it feel so relevant.

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.

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.