Salt policy

Some major food companies -- Kraft, ConAgra, Unilever -- have announced voluntary initiatives to reduce salt. In other countries, such as the United Kingdom, public policy plays a bigger role alongside voluntary measures. On WBUR's syndicated radio show Here and Now, host Robin Young today covers salt policy. She interviewed Cheryl Anderson at Johns Hopkins University and myself.

New York City is calling on the food industry to cut back on sodium. The plan is voluntary and its goal is to reduce the amount of sodium people eat by 25%. Recent research shows that a decrease in sodium would cut new cases of coronary artery disease by 60,000 a year. Our guest is Dr. Cheryl Anderson of Johns Hopkins University. We’re also joined by Parke Wilde of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who discusses the role of public policy in debates about diet.

A list of food policy blogs at blogs.com

I was asked by blogs.com from Six Apart to compile a list of 10 food policy blogs.

In this list, [Parke] looked beyond the excellent sites that already appeared in a recent list at Culinate, which included Ethicurean, Green Fork, ChewsWise, Food Politics, Politics of the Plate, Grist, Civil Eats, and Obama Foodorama. Parke’s list adds some more blogs from within what might loosely be called the “good food movement,” but it emphasizes other selections that he reads to maintain diversity in his information stream.

Food Law Prof Blog
For legal news and insight, a member of the Law Professor Blog Network. More legal blogging comes from the Agricultural Law blog.

Amber Waves
The dry but substantial electronic magazine from USDA’s Economic Research Service, with accompanying RSS feed, is enough like a blog to make this list. In the same vein, one could mention Choices electronic magazine from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA).

La Vida Locavore
A thick stream of news and policy commentary from a local food perspective.

Blogriculture
By the staff of Capital News agriculture newspaper.

Farm Policy
A thorough summary of daily agricultural news coverage, with excerpts and little editorial commentary.

Fooducate
Practical food shopping advice. No pills. No industry affiliation.

Center for a Livable Future Blog
Focusing on industrialized food production systems.

Marler Blog
Commentary on food poisoning outbreaks and litigation.

TEFAP Alliance Blog
News about food assistance programs and the anti-hunger movement.

Daily Bread
The food business blog at Slate’s site, The Big Money.

New Entry featured on NPR

The New Entry Sustainable Farming Project (NESFP) was featured on NPR's Here and Now last week highlighting two farmers, one from Zimbabwe and the other from Cameroon, that have transitioned to their own farms. The segment is titled Pumpkin Greens Grow in Massachusetts.



NESFP's mission is to

"assist people with limited resources who have an interest in small-scale commercial agriculture, to begin farming in Massachusetts. The broader goals of New Entry are to support the vitality and sustainability of the region's agriculture, to build long term economic self-reliance and food security among participants and their communities, and to expand access to high-quality, culturally appropriate foods in underserved areas through production of locally-grown foods."

You can access their blog here.

Time Magazine on "America's Food Crisis"

Time Magazine today gives a polished and highly readable summary of contemporary issues in U.S. food policy, titled "America's Food Crisis."

The report by Bryan Walsh is strongly worded, and the choice of sources for commentary seems daring.

The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans. Those hidden prices are the creeping erosion of our fertile farmland, cages for egg-laying chickens so packed that the birds can't even raise their wings and the scary rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among farm animals. Add to the price tag the acceleration of global warming — our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.

And perhaps worst of all, our food is increasingly bad for us, even dangerous. A series of recalls involving contaminated foods this year — including an outbreak of salmonella from tainted peanuts that killed at least eight people and sickened 600 — has consumers rightly worried about the safety of their meals. A food system — from seed to 7‑Eleven — that generates cheap, filling food at the literal expense of healthier produce is also a principal cause of America's obesity epidemic. At a time when the nation is close to a civil war over health-care reform, obesity adds $147 billion a year to our doctor bills. "The way we farm now is destructive of the soil, the environment and us," says Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

Many readers will have seen most of the article's themes elsewhere already, but the major news magazine's writing style gives these themes some mainstream appeal without watering them down very much. The article addresses both personal choices (local buying decisions) and policy issues (nontherapeutic antibiotics). It includes both non-commercial responses (home gardening) and commercial responses (Niman Farms, Chipotle, Bon Appetit) to environmental and sustainability concerns. The accompanying multimedia is slick, including a nice photo essay about two farmers and the video below about organic vegetable gardening (you'll have to excuse the advertisement and the quirky references to "generation x" as a description for young people).

Food and agriculture shows hit the radio waves

A few radio shows have emerged lately on topics related to the good food movement and sustainable agriculture. I thought I would share some of my favorites:

First, fellow Registered Dietitian, and friend, Melinda Hemmelgarn has started a weekly 1/2 radio program – taped interviews with innovative, insightful and interesting guests who will help listeners "think beyond their plates" and connect the dots between food, health and agriculture.

The show airs on Thursdays at 5:00 p.m. Central and you can listen live on line at: www.kopn.org or listen to podcasts as they're posted. KOPN is a 35-year-and-still-going-strong community–owned, volunteer-run radio station – Free press at its finest with NO commercials.

Second, as previously posted, Tufts very own Jessica Ilyse Smith is a producer and journalist for the Public Radio International show, Living on Earth. Though the show is not entirely focused on sustainable food, she covers food issues as much as possible. Some topics she has covered include food deserts and the pros and cons of GE corn ethanol. Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy also has its own Internet Radio Program that Jessica contributed to along with our own blog contributor Aliza Wasserman.

Third, Heritage Radio Network(HRN) is "a cutting edge internet-based radio station designed to protect and advance our country’s rich cultural roots in the form of interviews, reflections, musings and ramblings from America’s leading farmers, food mavericks, filmmakers, artists and tastemakers. The live radio shows are then uploaded onto heritageradionetwork.com where content is archived into audio bits and pieces and searchable by keywords or phrases. This is an unprecedented venue for future historians who want to research their past, our present."

HRN has plenty of shows and topics to choose from. Some of my favorite shows:

• Edible Communities Hosted by: Kate Manchester, Marla Camp and Deborah Schapiro Celebrating the abundance of local foods, season by season.

• Heritage Farm Report Hosted by: Heather Hyman and Lorenzo Ragionieri A day in the life of a Heritage Farmer. America's leading farmers discuss the history of their land, avant-garde farming techniques, and farming how-to's.

• Greenhorn Radio Hosted by: Severine von Tscharner Fleming Greenhorn Radio: Radio For Young Farmers, By Young Farmers. Acclaimed activist, farmer, and documentarian Severine Fleming surveys America's cutting edge, under-forty farmers.

Fourth, The National Center for Appropriate Technology's Sustainable Agriculture Spotlight is a weekly Internet radio show. The show covers a wide range of topics on sustainable agriculture, including on-farm production of biodiesel, integrated pest management, growing crops for farmers' markets, organic crop certification and federal farm policy. Each week host Jeff Birkby, ATTRA outreach directory, interviews regional and national experts. The show airs live Thursdays at 10 a.m. Pacific Time on the Green Talk Network. Archives are listed 24 hours after the show.

Last, but not least, is my new favorite guilty pleasure: Agritalk Radio: The Voice of Rural America. I download Agritalk as a podcast and listen to it on my way to school. The show is hosted by Mike Adams and may help us "agricultural intellectuals" understand issues important to American farmers. There is a ton of policy discussion and guest interviews from agricultural state representatives and agricultural committee members. Scattered throughout the show are commercials from our favorite big agricultural corporations, Checkoff programs, and the AdCouncil. My favorite episode is the June 2nd show: The Growth of Small Farms with guest Agricultural Economist, John Ikerd.

Happy listening!

Cross-posted from Epicurean Ideal.

The irony of Oprah's KFC coupon nightmare

The quick-serve restaurant industry publication QSR reports that KFC's coupon promotion for grilled chicken, featuring Oprah Winfrey, has been a public relations "nightmare."

Why a nightmare?

Was it the blistering criticism from Paula Crossfield at Civil Eats?

If she would have taken the time to think about all this, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she would see that encouraging these practices is not in line with the Eckhardt Tolle, Live Your Best Life, “We will all be judged on how we treat the least among us” persona she sells on her popular television show. Individual choices do matter, especially the choices of those with enough money to buy every person in the United States two pieces of chicken.

Was it the pointed contrast noted at Ethicurean between Oprah's KFC promotion and her earlier reporting on production practices (as described by Eating Liberally)?

Naw. The restaurant executives and QSR reporters never noticed those commentaries.

The "nightmare" in the QSR headline is the overwhelming demand for chicken from the coupon-wielding masses, causing what Gawker describes as near-riot conditions in some store locations.

Robert Kenner's new movie: Food, Inc.

Marion Nestle went to a press screening of Food, Inc., and reported:

It’s a terrific introduction to the way our food system works and to the effects of this system on the health of anyone who eats as well as of farm workers, farm animals, and the planet. It stars Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, among others, but I was especially moved by Barbara Kowalcyk, the eloquent and forceful food safety advocate who lost a young son to E. coli O17:H7 some years ago. I can’t wait for the film to come out so everyone can see it. I will use it in classes, not least because it’s such an inspiring call to action.

Time use, food preparation, and risk of overweight

USDA's Economic Research Service has just posted 2007 results from the special module on eating and health in the American Time Use Survey (ATUS).

I frequently hear questions about time use and food policy. For example, many people wonder if the high cost of healthy food prevents Americans from choosing good diets. On reflection, many healthy and affordable food options are mixed in with the junk on the market. Next, many people wonder if some combination of price and the time burden of buying and preparing healthy food is to blame.

So, let's turn to the facts.

Here is my graphic based on Table 6 of the 2007 results on the ERS website. I left out the activities for sleeping, working, and eating and drinking as secondary activities while doing something else as a primary activity. You can follow the link for the table to confirm that the omissions just simplify the picture without cherry-picking. The graphic shows the number of minutes spent in several activities, for adults, computed separately according to the responding adult's weight status based on self-reported weight and height.

The questions are: (a) is it true that lack of shopping time and food preparation time are preventing us from eating healthy? (b) what time use activity is most noticeably and systematically associated with weight status?

In short: (c) what is the elephant in the room when it comes to time use?

Paying attention to the small stuff

A former student writes to ask if this seems like an odd product placement for Special K in the New York Times' feature about efforts to recover the belongings of the passengers on the US Airways plane that landed safely in the Hudson River:

And Mr. Wentzell lost a box of Special K cereal that he travels with, for a lower-cholesterol breakfast than hotels usually provide.

Like any student of nutrition science and policy, my correspondent knows that almost no cereal contains dietary cholesterol, which is found only in animal foods.

Ironically, the moral of the article is, essentially, "how can one worry about the small stuff in the midst of great and important events?"

Green Patriot Posters

Reader Mari, fellow Friedman student and author of the cool blog Projects to Finish Someday, brought a cool site to my attention.

It seems the old propaganda posters are gaining traction as a mechanism for rallying people to help fight global warming and create energy independence. You can see people's new poster submissions at Green Patriot Posters or get inspired by some of the old WW2 posters on their site. It is interesting to me that many of the same themes of decreasing consumption, self reliance, and sustainability are the same issues we are facing today.

My favorites so far are:

Mellow Your Yellow by pocktlynnt -Conserve at home by reducing water wastage on unnecessary flushes.

Change by BPaulR -Human contribution to global climate change now appears irrefutable. We now know that humans can affect global climate for ill, but we can affect it for good too. We have changed the climate before, we can do it again. Make better change now.


And this one, which really encompasses the theme of a propaganda poster:

Use Less by iheartjavelinas -Uncle Sam reminds us we've tightened our belts before and we can do it again.


I would encourage any creative foodies out there to create some food and agriculture related posters. I collected some interesting facts from Sustainable Table and the Take a Bite out of Climate Change page( a project of the Small Planet Institute) that may help get your creative advocacy juices flowing:

• If 10,000 medium-sized U.S. farms converted to organic production, they would store so much carbon in the soil that it would be the carbon-saving equivalent to taking one million cars off the road. -Rodale Institute

• With one-third of the world's cereal harvest and 90 percent of the world's soy harvest being raised for animal feed, the energy required to grow those crops are a major factor in these on-farm emissions. -Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Speech at Compassion in World Farming, London, September 8, 2008.

• The sheer number of animals being raised for meat on the planet is another reason livestock production accounts for nearly one-fifth of all the globe's greenhouse gas emissions. In 1965, 8 billion livestock animals were alive at any given moment; 10 billion were slaughtered every year. Today, thanks in part to confined feeding operations that have spurred faster growth and shorter lives, 20 billion livestock animals are alive at any given moment, but nearly five times that many—55 billion—are slaughtered annually. -United Nations FAO- The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming Tony Wies.
  

To see more or vote on your favorites, visit Green Patriot Posters.

Cross posted from Epicurean Ideal

Cheap food at all costs?

The BBC World Service radio talk show World Have Your Say had an interesting programme today about tradeoffs between food costs and other nutrition and environmental goals. After reading an earlier post on U.S. Food Policy, they called to ask whether I thought it was essential to seek cheap food at all costs. They were juggling a bunch of other interesting interviews with callers from places like Nigeria, Kenya, and India, with a lot of insight into hard food choices in less developed countries.

My own hunch is that the tradeoff between healthy food and cheap food for hungry people is overdrawn. Several factors can make food too expensive: more packaging, more processing, air freight, placement high on the food chain (animal products), rare or exotic sourcing (caviar), and nutrition and environmental quality (organic, local boutique farming). Most of those factors suggest healthy wholesome food and low cost can be complementary. Even when these goals are competitive to an extent, as in organic food, the tradeoffs probably don't break the budget. It would be folly to pursue cheap food at all costs.

Does watching TV make us happy?

The question -- "Does watching TV make us happy?" -- is one I have been asking for many years. It is also the title of a recent article by Bruno S. Frey, Christine Benescha, and Alois Stutzer in the Journal of Economic Psychology.

The traditional economic theory holds that people's decisions reveal their preferences, as the authors explain:

Individuals are assumed to know best what provides them with utility and are free to choose the amount of TV consumption that suits them best. By revealed preference, it follows from the fact that individuals watch so much TV as has been empirically observed that it provides them with considerable utility.

But, is this the right way to look at it? Here is the full abstract:

Watching TV is a major human activity. Because of its immediate benefits at negligible immediate marginal costs it is for many people tempting to view TV rather than to pursue more engaging activities. As a consequence, individuals with incomplete control over, and foresight into, their own behavior watch more TV than they consider optimal for themselves and their well-being is lower than what could be achieved. We find that heavy TV viewers, and in particular those with significant opportunity cost of time, report lower life satisfaction. Long TV hours are also linked to higher material aspirations and anxiety.

Of course, TV watching also has a strong association with nutrition issues such as childhood overweight and obesity. Some researchers suspect that TV watching is simply correlated with other types of dysfunction, which in turn contribute to overweight and obesity. Other researchers think TV watching contributes directly to weight gain because it displaces active time with sedentary time, provides a venue for continuous snacking, and exposes the viewer to thousands upon thousands of advertisements for junk food.

There is an active scientific debate between these alternative explanations for the strong association between TV watching and weight status. But, I am struck how even market-oriented conservatives recognize that one or another of these explanations is correct. For example, Todd Zywicki at George Mason and his coauthors at the Federal Trade Commission work very hard to convince the reader to oppose a ban on television advertising for junk food, because it may not be the ads themselves that contribute to obesity:

More plausible causal explanations for the observed correlation between television viewing and obesity exist. First, television viewing is a sedentary activity; thus, at least some of the time that children spend watching television might otherwise be spent on more active pursuits.... Second, there seems to be a tendency for both children and adults to snack while watching television, thereby increasing calorie intake. Of course, the snacking may be triggered in part by exposure to food ads; as previously discussed, however, children's ad exposure has been found to have a very small impact on their snacking. Another possible explanation for the link between snacking and TV is that it is simply easier to eat while watching television than while pursuing other activities.

If you think about it, does it really matter which of these explanations is correct? Don't they all reflect very badly on TV watching?

Print media, weblogs, and food policy reporting

The blogspotting column in the August 13 issue of BusinessWeek has a kind word by Michael Loeb about U.S. Food Policy (p. 14, apparently not online, or not yet). The weekly newsmagazine enjoyed our Farm Bill coverage, which is heavily indebted to reporting at weblogs like Mulch and Ethicurean and the news summary at FarmPolicy.

Of course, FarmPolicy in turn relies heavily on quotes from original reporting in the major national, regional, and industry-specific newspapers and newsmagazines, as well as online sources. I could not possibly read all those sources myself. In addition to the hard work of blog veteran Keith Good, FarmPolicy also has contributions of policy analysis by Dan Morgan, who I associate with the Washington Post's stellar coverage of agricultural policy. FarmPolicy has support from the German Marshall Fund, where Good and Morgan each have a fellowship. Most articles in the Post have generous automated links back to related blog commentary. Like BusinessWeek, many other traditional news sources now cover online sources almost as their own beat.

For all the tension between new and old media, which I follow with interest on BoingBoing, the adjective I would use to summarize the traditional media's attitude toward new media is gracious.