On Food Stamps

Local Food at LAX? - latimes.com

2010-04-17T12:05:00.001-07:00

LAX hopes to give taste buds quite a ride - latimes.com

Posted using ShareThis

Workin-with-what-you-got Salad

2010-04-14T19:26:00.001-07:00

Eating well on a budget means that every week one must commit to finding a way to combine everything that is left in the fridge into a delicious meal. No food can be wasted.

So, what do you do when your fridge has limes, oranges, a bell pepper and some eggs?

Make dinner!

I made a delicious salad with a slightly weird combination. Here is the recipe:

Chop 1 pepper
Peel and cube 1 orange
Drizzle olive oil on the chopped salad
Squeeze lime juice over the salad
Add a pinch of salt and Toss it!

I ate this salad with a hard boiled egg.

What combinations have you made on fridge clean-up days?

Meatless Mondays in San Fran!

2010-04-11T23:52:00.001-07:00

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Rice Balls

2010-03-05T20:50:00.000-08:00

I fear, sometimes, that I am slowly becoming obsessed with not wasting food.

The other day I realized I went out to lunch for my boss's birthday. The Mexican restaurant had such large portions that I was left with another meal's worth of leftovers. This extra food put me over the edge - I already had more pre-made healthy lunches lined up for the week than I could finish, and now there was no way I'd get through all the food I had. So, I left the Mexican food leftovers on 5th and Main Street in Downtown L.A. while I went to a bookstore. I came out 15 minutes later and they were gone. Probably didn't hurt that I was 2 blocks from skid row.

A few things to think about when leaving food for someone on the street:
(1) I always label my to-go boxes with a friendly note and a date and a description of the food.
(2) I always try to include disposable silverware if the meal requires a fork and knife to eat.
(3) Good places to leave the food include the top of trash cans, near bus stops, or anywhere that homeless individuals might find it easily.

Another example of this obsession with not wasting food: tonight, I made rice balls.
Yes, rice balls.

I realized again that I had too much food, and this extra rice in my fridge was killing me. It was getting soggy and so unappetizing... but I just couldn't throw it out!

Here is the recipe I created:

RICE BALLS

1 large bowl of cooked rice
1 egg
flour - add as you go
crushed nuts (I used pecans)
quick-oats
spices of your choice (I used basil flakes...)

Crack the egg into the bowl of rice and mix well. Start adding flour little by little until you get the rice mixture to a consistency that will ball up easily when rolled in your hands. Turn the oven to 425 and start making rice balls! I rolled mine in either oats, crushed nuts, or spices. (Basil flakes, for example.) Pop the balls in the oven on a cookie sheet and cook for 20-25 minutes. You might also try flattening one batch to make rice-ball-pancakes.

I'm planning to eat my recycled rice creations w/ a fried egg and salsa from the Farmers' Market tomorrow morning for breakfast. Any other ideas of how I might make rice balls more exciting?

Honestly, what a thing to be doing on a Friday night...

At least there was great music!

Cabbage by Candlelight

2010-02-25T19:16:00.000-08:00

One of the most important things about eating well on a budget is embracing creativity and reinvention in a situation of limited resources. You've got to get down with using the same ingredients over and over again. Don't think of it as boring. Think of it as creatively challenging. The better you get to know those familiar ingredients throughout a given week or season, the more comfortable you get with being creative in how you prepare them.

Tonight was one such experience.

The cabbage and tofu dish I cooked the other night is now gone. But, there is still cabbage in my fridge (for the 4th week in a row since it is winter...). There is still tofu. There is still dill. The scallions and onion were gone, and the fridge was pretty empty besides.

So, I had to get creative. I checked my new favorite cookbook, pictured above, to see what it had to say about cabbage. Many cabbage recipes called for sweet and sour combinations. Interesting.

What else did I have?

Hm.

Miso paste. A few limes. Dried hot chilies. Kinda reminds me of Pho.

I started to see some possibilities. Here is a recipe for a totally different dinner with essentially the same main ingredients from two nights ago. Only the flavoring elements and ratios of liquid have changed.

Sweet and Sour Soup

3/4 head of cabbage
grated ginger (2-3 teaspoons. Fresh!)
a teaspoon of minced garlic
several sprigs of dill
cubed tofu (firm)
miso paste
dried hot chilies
key lime or normal lime juice
wild card "secret" ingredient: LOCAL WILDFLOWER HONEY

Put 2 teaspoons of olive oil in a deep, soup-friendly pot. Once its hot, add the garlic, ginger and chilies. Saute for several minutes, stirring often.
Add chopped cabbage to the pot and stir to cover the cabbage in the spicy oil. Cover for 5 minutes. Stir more.
Chop tofu. Check cabbage. Stir it?
Dance. Taste it. Dance.

Psychic City (Classixx Remix)
(Choice line = "And the kitchen might say... hang around baby, we'll be baking a cake for you...")

Ok, now it is heating up. Add a few cups of water to the mix and drop in little bits of miso paste. Stir to help the paste dissolve. Cover more. Amuse yourself somehow for several minutes.
Add squeezed lime juice. Add a dill, as much as you think you'll like. The broth should be getting interesting.
Cover and really let the flavors mesh.
Now, taste it.
Add honey. As much as you think it needs.
Let the whole thing come together for a bit by leaving the pot for a few minute with the lid on. Keep tasting. Add salt and pepper if needed.
Done!

Dill + Soy Sauce = Fuck Yea

2010-02-23T19:13:00.001-08:00

Cookin up a storm...

I needed Tofu tonight for some reason, so I listened to my body and hit up A-Grocery Warehouse on the way home from work.

I walked into my apartment with tofu.

In my fridge I had several items that were cheap at this week's Echo Park Farmers' Market: Scallions, Dill, Cabbage and an onion.

I tried the following:

Dice up an onion
Chop the tofu into 1/2 inch squares
Chop scallions
Cut 1/4 of the head of cabbage into slices (none of this is precise, just chop away!)
Wash dill

In a frying pan with decent depth to it, start heating a few tablespoons of olive oil. Once the oil is hot, toss in the scallions, fresh dill and onion. After two minutes, toss in the tofu. Stir the sizzling tofu often to be sure it doesn't burn. After a few minutes, put the cabbage in the pan and cover. Let the whole mix simmer for a bit. Take the lid off and drizzle in some soy sauce. Cover and let it simmer for a bit more. Sip your wine. Dance for a little bit. (I was listening to Steeldrivers. Bluegrass music mixes well with wine, tofu, and dill.) Uncover the dish and stir. Pretty soon it will be done. Enjoy!

Lesson of the day: don't be afraid to mix dill and soy sauce.

Soda = The New Tobacco

2010-02-15T21:18:00.003-08:00

Thank you New York Times, for this great Valentines Day article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/weekinreview/14bittman.html

Soda = The New Tobacco

2010-02-15T21:18:00.001-08:00

Thank you New York Times, for this great Valentines Day article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/weekinreview/14bittman.html

Bad Apples

2010-01-25T21:30:00.001-08:00

For the first time in a very long time I bought apples from a large chain supermarket.

During the holidays I won two gift cards to Ralphs/Food-4-Less in an office raffle, and after my trip to San Francisco ($$$) I decided it was time to break down and use them to buy my week's groceries.

In order to get the most bang for my buck I went to the Food-4-Less near where I work. I bought mostly produce - lettuce, a few mangoes (on sale), a cucumber and the apples you see above.

I have to say, I have found these apples to be really disappointing. Compared to the Farmers' Market apples my taste buds have gotten used to, these are like eating wet sawdust. My mouth can tell that they were grown to travel well, not to taste good.

Never again, Food-4-Less, never again...

P.S. Kitchen craft Idea: check out the cork board I made in the background. I had my friend who works at a restaurant collect the wine corks for me and hot glued them into a tray I bought at the Goodwill store. Yeah for recycling!

Local Food. Local People. Avedano's Meats.

2010-01-24T22:13:00.001-08:00

Vegetarianism is a major pillar of sustainable eating for me. Few things would bring me to venture into a butcher shop, but when I came across this place in Bernal Heights in San Francisco I was curious.

Maybe it was the "Local Food. Local People." thing. Whatever it was, I found myself talking to a young man over a display case of meat.

Turns out, this butcher shop has quite the mission:

We believe that exceptional meals start with exceptional raw materials—and with a combined 40 years experience in the food industry, we should know. We source premium products our customers can feel good about: grass-fed beef, wild-caught and responsibly farmed fish, seasonal local and organic produce, and handpicked gourmet pantry items. Our menu of prepared foods changes daily so that we can select from the freshest, best ingredients available each day. Our mission is to provide our customers with great food they can feel confident eating.

I admire, once again, this small business with a clear mission that aligns profit with conscience. As my dad likes to say, "Doing good while doing well."

I bought a Carmel candy in support. That says a lot.

Pie on a Mission

2010-01-21T21:45:00.000-08:00

I stopped by Mission Pie while I was in San Francisco.

I LOVE their business mission statement:

Mission Pie is a corner café, bakery, and neighborhood gathering place in the Mission District of San Francisco, located at the intersection of two busy streets and several vibrant, interwoven communities. Our seasonally shifting menu of pies, baked good and light savory fare focuses on the produce of nearby farms that employ organic and sustainable methods. We are here every day to engage folks toward a deeper relationship with and responsibility to the environments, enterprises and people that sustain us.

Through creative choices in all aspects of the business, from our energy-efficient kitchen to our delicious Fair Trade/organic tea and coffee to the reclaimed and recycled materials with which the café is constructed, Mission Pie is guided by a commitment to environmental, social and economic justice. We offer a wholesome and supportive atmosphere not only for lovers of great coffee and pie, but for our workers as well, as we collaborate with local youth advocacy organizations to provide a positive work environment to San Francisco youth. As a thriving, progressive, for-profit business, we relish the opportunity to reinvest productively and creatively not just in the quality of our ingredients and equipment, but in the lives of the people and communities around and within us.

Ok, what if this type of business mission statement existed for large farming corporations? I love the concept of the for-profit business that honors a bottom line beyond just financial profits. Horray for reinvestment in the community. Horray for a big picture view of sustainability and community impact. Horray for great pie that I can feel great about eating!

Garden in the Alley

2010-01-19T22:57:00.000-08:00

Creative vegetable gardening in San Francisco. That Kale looks delicious.

Nice use of barrels in the alleyway!

Healthy Foods in Disguise

2010-01-11T21:31:00.000-08:00

I want to thank Mike for his comment about the Orange Juice. Orange Juice, like many other foods, is one of those tricky things that might seem healthy but secretly is not. OJ is often as loaded with sugar as a soda! I tend to stick to water or club soda and simply add lime or lemon juice for flavor.

Juices and dried fruits are always dangerous - not as healthy as the seem.

I had my own "Nutritious Foods in Disguise" experience this weekend.

A friend of mine from work invited me to take a cooking class with her called How to Make Vegetables Taste Great. Right up my alley! I signed up.

While I certainly learned a great deal from the class and really enjoyed making everything from saag paneer to roasted Brussels sprouts, there was one point that really disappointed me. Many of the recipes relied heavily on oil or butter for flavoring. I was really frustrated because the class seemed to just reinforce the notion that veggies are not tasty or satisfying, that they require a lot of fat and "doctoring" to taste good. Of course, a little butter makes anything taste better, but I have found that an open mind and some re-training of the palette can lead to a genuine enjoyment of vegetables and their natural flavor.

Some of my favorite ways to prepare vegges include:

Sauteing with ginger, lime juice and a bit of soy sauce
Steaming in fruit juice in general - lime, lemon or orange work great
Steaming and adding cracked pepper and salt in moderation
Sauteing in a small amount of olive oil and apple cider vinegar
Cooking in "Hot Vinegar" - apple cider vinegar + hot sauce
Roasting with a bit of olive oil and cracked pepper/salt
Cooking in a curry sauce that does not use too much oil - cumin, curry, cinnamon, coriander, clovers, cardamom, turmeric, mustard seeds and paprika are all great to mix around in a curry
Steaming in miso broth (which I make myself by simply adding miso paste to water)
Stir frying with ginger, garlic, soy sauce, mustard, honey and some spicy pepper

There are lots of way to make vegetables taste great without 3,000 calories worth of butter! Please tell me how you like you prepare your veggies in the comments section. Always looking for new ideas...

Dr. Seuss Fruit

2010-01-09T19:58:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, when I am eating the local seasonal produce in Southern California I feel like I am living in a Dr. Seuss book.

Have you ever tried a Cherimoya?

These fruits are in season right now and were relatively cheap at one of my favorite farmers' stands. I was skeptical at first - as you can see, the fruit looks pretty ugly from the outside.

The farmer broke one open for me with his bare hands. Inside there is tender white fruit gathered around dark black seeds in a flaky way that feels almost like white fish. I asked him how to eat it. He motioned to me to just stick my mouth into it. I did. It was delicious.

I just finished eating another Cherimoya. This flavorfully rewarding fruit is a reminder that one must be open to trying new things in order to eat seasonal produce from the Farmers' Market.

I want to throw up

2010-01-07T18:10:00.000-08:00

I can watch 5 seconds of this ad, tops, before I want throw up. Seriously. I will give you a prize if you can watch the whole thing.

This is an incredibly successful campaign because it grosses me out beyond belief. Never ever ever drinking soda again! Ah!

New Year: New Tactic

2010-01-04T23:42:00.000-08:00

In many cultures and in many households people pray before they eat.

I did not grow up praying before each meal and always felt a little bit awkward when I found myself a guest at a "pray before we eat" table. I never quite knew what to do. As a child I was always a little bit afraid someone might ask me to offer the blessing. Despite many regrettable mornings at my local Catholic church's Sunday School, I did not feel prepared to offer a pre-meal prayer.

Instead of a "pray before we eat" family, I grew up in a "non-mindful eating" family. A grazing, snacking family. Not an obese family, but a family where your mother might eat the food off of your plate. Or where you (as I often did) might eat something standing in front of the fridge right before dinner because you were hungry and impatient about it. It was a family where you wouldn't get scolded for eating out of the fridge before dinner really, either. Mindful eating was not something we emphasized.

Now I am beginning to think more about the ritual of putting food in my body. Maybe I should be "praying" before I eat. Prayer before a meal has a lot of important functions:

it slows us down and forces us to pause
it gives us a chance to meditate on where our food came from and what efforts went into bringing it to our table - from harvesting to cooking. (This might lead us to place greater value on sustainability and home cooking over fast food alternatives.)
it directly draws our mind's attention to the fact that we are, indeed, about to eat. Certainly the opposite of devouring a bag of chips by mistake while watching TV.
it makes meal times special and bestows a ritualistic weight upon them

I have a feeling that taking a moment to pray in whatever fashion feels appropriate would be a big help in the quest for a nutritious diet and sensible portions.

Therefore, every day before I eat from here on out I am going to try to take a moment to pray in my own way. For me, that prayer is simply several deep long breaths. My prayer consists of thinking about the journey my food took to arrive at my table and being mindful of each bite and how those bites make my body feel. It is taking the time to feel my body in a state of hunger so that I can be more in tune with the signals of being full. It is about expressing gratitude and respect for the food I have before me, not wasting it by eating more than I need or throwing any away.

I am very interested to hear from you:

1. Do you have any food-related 2010 Resolutions?
2. If you try a pre-meal prayer or gratitude ritual, does it change the way you experience your meal time at all? Does is impact your eating behavior or the culture of your table?

Happy New Year everyone!

Zen Cooking

2010-01-04T23:39:00.000-08:00

Are you drinking the pounds?

2009-12-30T21:40:00.001-08:00

Several months ago I posted about this jarring public health ad campaign.

It shows a bottle of soda being poured into a glass. As the soda pours out it turns into human fat. The poster asks the viewer: "Are you drinking yourself fat?"

Over the holidays I was in New York and got to see the ad for myself.

What do you think of this ad?
Does it gross you out enough to put you off soda?

Late Night Text

2009-12-30T21:01:00.001-08:00

Got the following text from my best high school friend last night:

Think im eating too much to compensate for feeling inadequate!

This text followed her update to me that a situation with a certain boy had not gone as she'd hoped. I was super impressed that she wrote that down and sent it to me. How many of us know but never admit that we're eating in direct response to our emotions?

When I think of emotional eaters I think of a girl that just got cheated on wolfing down a gallon of Ben and Jerry's while watching Bridget Jone's Diary. So, if I'm not doing that, then I'm not an emotional eater, right?

False. I have been known to eat because I'm bored, to reward myself for something (ironically, that something is sometimes exercise!), even to punish myself for something. Yes. I have certainly eaten junk to "punish" myself for eating junk in a sick guilty cycle. Its that whole "Well, I already fucked up my healthy eating streak... might as well go all the way..." mentality. All too familiar at holiday time! As if I need me to help me make it harder to get back on track after the holidays are over. Alas, sometimes I do it.

Why not just savor the treats in moderation and then stop when I've had enough instead of sliding down that icy slope? I think that in my case it is because guilt gets wrapped up in there and makes me "hate" myself a little bit for eating something I don't think I should eat. Once I get in that "self-hate" mindset, no matter how subtle it is, I am more likely to continue to bring myself down. I feel weak and powerless because I gave into the bad food once, so it is that much easier to do it again.

What would break the cycle?

Probably detaching that guilt and self judgement would help. When I write it out it seems very cruel to admonish oneself for too many Christmas cookies, no? But I know that in a subconscious way, that is my mental process.

The text conversation progressed as follows:

Me - Major step twds stopping is realizing that. I swear therapy has helped me lose weight more than exercise haha
Her - Haha i know. Cheers to drinking water when u feel u want to eat!
Me - or tea!

It is true what I said to my friend. I have been taking much better care of my emotional health in the last 6 months, and it has actually greatly improved my diet and physical health. I am a real believer in the strong bond between spiritual, emotional and physical health. Journal writing, therapy and self love really do do wonders for the body.

Now here is the thing. So far I have been talking about Christmas cookies in my parent's nice comfortable house in New England, or cupcakes at a co-workers birthday. I am talking about my emotional relationship to eating sweets, but I want to add in another element.

What if instead of Christmas cookies I was talking about fast food. And, instead of just eating it myself, I was feeding it to my children. The guilt was not only a matter of the food being tasty but fattening, it was also a matter of money and time. In addition to beating myself up for not having enough self control to resist the fatty indulgence, I might also feel guilty that I do not have the time or the money to feed my children low-calorie, nutritious foods. They rarely get enough vegetables and are both slightly pudgy from the fast food heavy diet. I would not only feel "weak" for giving in to the forbidden food and setting that example for my kids, I would also feel inadequate because I was unable to provide for my children in the way I wanted to. Talk about feeling powerless.

I know that if that were my situation, I would find it pretty hard to scrape my emotions off the linoleum kitchen floor and get myself to a Farmers' Market to buy some raw vegetables to cook, weather or not they accept my Food Stamps. Would I have the confidence to waltz into that market, pick up an unfamiliar vegetable and bring it home to cook?

Hot Pepper Vinegar

2009-12-30T20:39:00.000-08:00

Greens are an important part of a healthy Food Stamps diet.

I love kale, and have recently been experimenting with whatever type of green (collards, mustard, turnip, or good old kale) is the cheapest.

TIP: shop for your greens 15 minutes after your Farmers' Market is scheduled to close. Most farmers will be trying to get rid of those greens fast and will be willing to give you a good deal!

This week I had collards, and found a recipe in my new cookbook - Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. (Thank you Santa, aka, Mom.)

The recipe was very simple but it called for something I'd never encountered: Hot Pepper Vinegar.

As it turns out, Hot Pepper Vinegar is quite simple to make.

You could make it just by looking at the picture. In case you want the proportions, here is Moosewood's recipe:

1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp - 1 tblsp (depending on your spicy tolerance) hot sauce
You can also mix in some cayenne to taste

In a cruet or glass jar, combine the vinegar and hot pepper sauce and cayenne to taste. Shake it up! Hot Pepper Vinegar keeps indefinitely, refrigerated or not.

I'm putting mine in the fridge just in case. Makes for some easy, flavorful greens and I want it to stick around for awhile.

To make my greens:

Saute 1 onion or shallot in a little bit of olive oil in a big pot.
Add some garlic.
Put in your well washed greens, roughly chopped. (You should soak greens first to remove any dirt or grit, then rinse them off in a strainer before chopping.)
Pour a bit of water and some hot pepper vinegar over the greens and cover to let them steam. The amount of liquid you add depends on the quantity of greens you are cooking.

I sprinkled some rubbed sage on my greens at the end.
Optional, but tasty.

Can Food Companies Self-Regulate?

2009-12-16T22:17:00.001-08:00

Apparently not, according to this article in yesterday's LA Times:

Companies fall short in advertising healthy foods to children

More than a dozen major companies pledged to push healthier foods two years ago, but study found ads for sugary cereals, fast food and sweet snacks made up more than 70% of the total.

This articles tells us that despite agreements several years ago, 70% of the advertisements targeting children during the period studied are for fast food or sugary snacks.

Ok. So, kids are getting an overload of information persuading them to eat these unhealthy foods.

What about the information about health, nutrition, and sustainable lifestyle choices?

Are there commercials persuading them to eat whole greens and plenty of vegetables?

How about extensive programs in their schools educating them about the basics of eating well, and cooking vegetables?

Not last time I checked.

What continues to concern me, is how much of what most Americans know about nutrition comes from advertisements. Nutrition and health education in American public schools are not arming people with the knowledge they need to make good decisions about what they put into their bodies. And, given the findings of this study that is really cause for concern.

Cooking with Coolio

2009-12-10T22:56:00.000-08:00

I just bought this book.

Can't wait to get it!

5 Star Meals at a 1 Star Price? By Coolio? I'm SOLD!

Will report back with a book review...

New York Times Readers Debate about the Economics of Eating Well

2009-12-10T22:49:00.000-08:00

From the New York Times Room for Debate:

December 7, 2009, 7:37 pm

Food Stamps: The Economics of Eating Well

By THE EDITORS

Andrew Henderson/The New York Times Using a food stamp card in Brooklyn.

A recent article in The Times by Jason DeParle and Robert Gebeloff detailed the effects of the soaring dependence on government food stamps in the United States. The social stigma of using them has faded, the Times writers found, yet judgments are still made.

If people buy fresh vegetables or other relatively expensive though nutritious foods, they are considered to be living high on the hog at the taxpayers’ expense. But if they buy cheap foods like hot dogs they are criticized for poor health habits.

Despite these common complaints, does the system work? Are the current rules fair in regulating what people can buy and not buy? Or should the requirements be changed? Should un-nutritious products like soda be banned? Is there a better way to distribute free food and promote nutrition in this country?

Click on the title to go to the original page and see what other food policy experts and Bloggers have to say.

What I am really excited about is the heated comments section that follows this piece. What a great discussion it generated!

Just how bad is the obesity problem?

2009-12-06T17:28:00.000-08:00

I have drawn the comparison between smoking and unhealthy eating before in this blog and I found an interesting new study that compares the two in this week's Los Angeles Times.

I am always thinking about what we can learn from the problem of Smoking in America. At one point, smoking was the biggest public health concern in our country. Just like we see with the food industry today, tons of large and powerful tobacco corporations had a lot at stake. There were major profits involved, but alarming numbers of people were dying.

This week, I found an article in the Los Angeles Times that really startled me.

In her article, Rising Obesity Rates Imperil Health Gains, Jeannine Stein explains that while the decrease in smoking over the past few decades has increased the average American's life expectancy, recent increases in body mass index have actually decreased the life expectancy enough to make for a net life expectancy reduction.

This is a short article, and I recommend reading it through.

This is a big deal.

What it says to me is that obesity and poor diet are enough of an issue in America right now to demand a bit more attention than they're getting.

Just think of everything that we've done to discourage and educate people about the dangers of smoking:

We've put out massive anti-smoking PSA advertisement campaigns.
We've flooded our schools with education programs to prevent our children from starting this deadly habit early.
We've banned these hazardous substances from school grounds, from restaurants, and many public spaces.
We've taxed the hell out of them to discourage people from buying them.
We've sued the corporations that push these substances in billion dollar class action lawsuits to get a little payback for the costly harm their product has produced for our society and to our health care system.
We've created aids from gum and patches to step by step programs and support groups to help people break their addiction and get their health back on track.

Given the fact that the obesity is taking such a major toll on the American life expectancy, might we start doing some of those things to help ourselves kick the "bad food" habit?

Food Waste While 49 Million Go Hungry

2009-12-02T21:32:00.000-08:00

Check out this little piece about hunger and food waste in America.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

"Ok, America. That will be 1 Large Diabetes Epidemic. And your total is..."

2009-11-30T19:34:00.000-08:00

While we were all chowing down on mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie this weekend, the University of Chicago released a new study about the rise of Diabetes in America. Get a load of this:

2009 - 23.7 Million people in America have Diabetes 2034- 44.1 Million people in America are projected to have Diabetes according to this study.
It is no surprise that with the prediction that the number of cases of Diabetes will nearly double, comes the prediction that spending on Diabetes care will also increase. The study estimates that by 2034, spending on Diabetes care will TRIPLE to about $336 Billion.

Wow.

Meanwhile, the United States Senate returns from their Thanksgiving recess to debate the greatly anticipated Health Care Bill. Of course, the financial aspects of the bill are of great concern to all parties - how much will it cost in the short term? How much will it save us down the road? Can we afford to wait any longer?

Well, I sure hope those Senators caught CNN's story about this University of Chicago study. Here is a great quote. Really, my favorite:

"It is estimated that if we could control diabetes we could save $217 Million dollars PER YEAR in health care costs."

And here is another one.

"What do we have to do to slow this increase in Diabetes cost and prevalence?" the News Anchor asks the reporter.

The reporter replies, "You know, there is nothing mysterious here. We're talking diet and exercise."

Now, I have proudly watched my mom get her pre-Diabetes condition turned around with some healthy diet and lifestyle changes in the last year. It wasn't easy, but she's doing it, so I know that it is possible! [Click here to read a previous post in which my mom wrote in about this experience.]

The big thing here is that if we are really going to ask people to do their part to help save our health care system (not to mention our economy and our planet) by changing their habits to avoid diabetes, we need to make it a bit easier on them.

Money: Good healthy food needs to be affordable. Maybe we could shift some of the federal subsidies from corn and soy and big farm production to make fresh local produce more affordable for a change?

Knowledge: People need to learn about health, food and cooking from informed and objective sources, not food advertisements. Maybe we could education people about nutrition in school so that they can make empowered decisions at the grocery store or (better yet) Farmers' Market?

Support: Healthy habits and life style changes must be rewarded and supported in our communities and our work places. What if you got an extra 15 minutes for your lunch break if you used that time to take a brisk walk outside? What if you saved money on your health care co-pays if you lost weight or got control of your Diabetes?

Who else has an idea for my list? What would make it easier for you or people you know to eat better and get healthier? I'd love to hear it!

NYTimes: Food Stamp Use Soars

2009-11-29T21:39:00.000-08:00

Big article in today's New York Times:

The Safety Net

Food Stamp Use Soars, and Stigma Fades

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

A GROWING NEED FOR A PROGRAM ONCE SCORNED Greg Dawson and his wife, Sheila, of Martinsville, Ohio, help feed their family of seven with a $300 monthly food stamp benefit. Center and right, the food pantry in Lebanon, Ohio, where residents can also enroll in what is formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.

Eggplant Experiment

2009-11-24T19:34:00.000-08:00

Japanese eggplant is very cheap at the Asian Grocery Mart and also at the Farmers' Markets in my neighborhood, and I recently came up with an interesting recipe to share.

One thing about living alone and having a looser food budget (around $50/week now, including a cheap meal out!) now is that I am much more willing to really experiment with food. I am coming up with crazy combinations like this one:

Balsamic and Curry Eggplant

(Seriously. Just hear me out.)

Wash your Japanese eggplant and cut it into large chunks.

In a bowl combine several teaspoons of olive oil, several teaspoons of balsamic vinegar, 1 teaspoon of curry powder and mix well.

Toss the eggplant in the above mixture until it is all covered.

Put eggplant in a pan to roast, but before you put it in the oven drizzle honey over it.

Pop it in the oven at about 425 degrees for 30-45 minutes.

Enjoy!

Fighting Hunger in LA

2009-11-23T20:35:00.000-08:00

This is me at my day job...

If the video doesn't work well for you within my blog, view it directly by clicking here.

It was great to work with Shawn on this video. He does fantastic renegade philanthropy all over the world, and he recently landed in LA. Check out more of Shawn's adventures on his YouTube Channel.

Break Through with Beets

2009-11-15T18:16:00.001-08:00

Today, I went to the Hollywood Farmers' Market to get my week's groceries, and I had an incredible impromptu cooking lesson from a man selling beets.

I walked up to his stand to buy some beets, planning to roast them as usual.

I noticed that he had samples. "So, are these roasted?" I asked. "No," he answered, "raw."

Hm. I popped one in my mouth.

Incredible!

He'd used a traditional combination from Mexican cuisine in a way I have never encountered before: lime juice, salt and paprika on thinly sliced BEETS. On mango, ok, I might expect this combo. It is very common in the fruit stands all over Los Angeles. But, BEETS? Unexpected and incredibly delicious.

I ran home and made my own version of this Mexican Beet Salad just a few hours ago.

Here are the directions:

Wash beets thoroughly
Peel off the skin
Slice them as thinly as possible
Squeeze lime juice all over them, making sure to toss them in the juice so that they are fully covered in citrus-y goodness. For 3 beets I used 3 limes, but number of limes will vary depending on how juicy your limes are.
Sprinkle paprika and salt to taste
Party in your mouth!

An Email from London

2009-11-11T21:35:00.000-08:00

When I was in college I lived in a house with 12 people and 1 working kitchen. We organized a fantastic partner co-op meal system. Each person had a partner for cooking and a partner for dishes. Each partner set had one night to cook for twelve, one night to wash dishes for twelve, and every other night to come home to a warm meal and a table full of friends. It was really a great system. Since each partner pair only had to cook once per week, they inevitably got really into the whole thing and put a good deal of effort into the evening meal.

My partner for Fall semester was my good friend Dave. Dave just moved to London after spending a year in San Francisco, and last night he sent me the following email "P.S.":

Hey - I totally forgot one of the other things I was contacting you about. I am trying to eat healthier and thought you would be a good person to ask for some input. I am having a hard time cooking for myself every night when I get home from work and a long commute - whenever I am tired/lazy I tend to resort to not as good food. Started making a fair amount of salads etc, but was wondering if you had any staple foods, meals etc that you like/resort to. I don't plan to go completely vegetarian but I don't think that should matter. I have been to a couple farmer's markets, but I can tell you it's definitely not California anymore so your local produce knowledge might not be too applicable. Anyway, any input that you might have would be greatly appreciated. Talk to you soon. Hope you are doing well.

Wow, Dave, you asked the right person.

I too am struggling with the balance of money, time and health. When I was doing the On Food Stamps challenges I felt like every waking minute was devoted to cooking or getting food. I had no time for socializing, exercising or painting/crafting. Now that things have calmed down a bit, I have found some really great foods that make it possible for me to eat well on a budget without spending all of my time cooking.

Here are a few suggestions:

1. LENTILS

Lentils are my best friend. I buy a week's worth of lentils for less than $2 and have found a million ways to cook them. Lentils work well with any of the following:

curry or other traditional Indian spices
coconut milk
lemon, lime or any other flavorful citrus juice
diced tomatoes in a can

I try to eat my lentils over fresh greens or with a vegetable rather than rice all the time.

2. DEPENDS HOW YOU CUT IT...Cut down on prep time by watching how you cut your food.

Working veggies like zucchini, eggplant or squash into the meal can be a real time drain if you try to chop the veggies into small pieces. Tonight I experimented with cutting large chunks of zucchini instead of small circles and it worked out great. By minimizing prep time you can create meals much faster.

Cutting pieces as you see above required only 2 cuts per zucchini rather than the 15-20 cuts required to cut the zucchini into even little circles. Major time saver!

3. OVEN vs. STOVE

Stove top cooking tends to require a lot of stirring and prep work. Baking or roasting dishes in the oven can be a lot easier. In most cases you can pop something in the oven and do other things while your meal cooks. And by the way, I am using the term "oven" loosely. If you don't have a working oven don't worry, I don't either! I have a great little toaster oven that I use for all of my baking and roasting. Since I am cooking for one person these days, the smaller oven really makes sense. I got the little toaster oven pictured below for free at a tag sale, and it has really been an awesome addition to my kitchen.

I suggest the following:

SQUASH: Not sure about London, but the winter months in my corner of the world mean squash and root vegetables galore. I have found that cutting a butternut or acorn squash in half, drizzling some olive oil over it, adding some cracked pepper and popping it in the toaster oven takes less than 10 minutes. I can forget about this squash for an hour, and when I return it is ready to eat. Sometimes I put it in the fridge and save it for breakfast or lunch the next day.
ROASTED VEGGIES: Similarly, I recommend getting comfortable with roasting vegetables. All it takes is a glass dish, and a little olive oil and basil over chopped potatoes, zucchini, eggplant, carrots and onions. Throw in some cherry tomatoes as well! I roast my veggies at around 450 degrees until they seem soft enough, usually 40 minutes or so.

4. BE CAREFUL WITH SALADS

This is a bummer. I love salad, but when I'm pressed for time I just can't make them, and I think that Dave is asking a lot of himself when he turns to salads for a healthy meal. Washing lettuce and chopping veggies takes a lot of time. Salads also tend to be pretty expensive to make - mixed greens are costly. I've had success lately roughly chopping veggies such as jicama, cucumber or carrots (any veggie that tastes good raw is great) and drizzling homemade dressings over them. I make dressings with oils and vinegar, soy sauce, mustard, herbs and fruit juices.These chopped raw vegetable concoctions are much like salad, but they incorporate cheaper produce and take me less time to prepare.

5. DESIGNATE 1 DAY PER WEEK FOR COOKING

It is really hard to get home from work and cook every night. I have found that establishing a "cooking day" each week is key to preparing cheap and healthy meals.

Sunday is my day, and I really look forward to it. On any Sunday around 4pm you will find me wearing an apron and dancing around my kitchen to great music. Most likely there are beets or squash medleys in the oven, lentils simmering in a pot, and broccoli or zucchini steaming away in garlic and spices all at once. I usually cook enough food for at least 75% of my week's meals during my Sunday cooking session. Its almost as if I make my own "TV Dinners" in a sense.

I rely heavily on my army of Tupperware containers to carry my pre-prepared meals to work. This system works out fantastically for me because once I am cooking one dish it doesn't take too much more effort to put a pot of lentils on the stove or pop some veggies into the oven to roast at the same time. Using containers to separate the cooked food into meal size quantities also helps me control my portions. It is all about being economical with your time.

Does anyone else have any food prep time saving techniques to suggest to Dave?

"Whats in the Fridge Soup"

2009-11-11T21:15:00.000-08:00

Special thanks to Karoline Dehnhard submitting a great recipe.

As any penny-pinching health nut would know, letting produce go bad in the fridge is no good. In fact, it is forbidden in my apartment. Karoline made an awesome soup out of what was left in her fridge. Check it out!

A note from Karoline:

To me, the point of making soup is to use up food that might otherwise go bad. My leftovers in this case are broth, pinto beans, my last broccoli stalk and some spinach. The rest of the ingredients should be available in all active kitchens as they keep well.

A note from me:

Try adding miso paste to create a flavorful broth. Or, get in the habit of saving the water you use to steam veggies for "Whats in the Fridge" soups. I know I used the last of my carrot water from last week tonight, and it made the my dinner more flavorful. Using leftover homemade veggie broth also incorporates more nutrients into your meals.

I love Karoline's use of random left overs. It is very On-Food-Stamps of her. Feel free to tell me about your creative use of left overs in the comment box.

Here is Karoline's Recipe:

What’s in the Fridge Soup with Turmeric

Ingredients:

4 cups broth*

1 celery stalk

1 potato

1 onion

2 carrots (outer layer scraped off with knife)

1 broccoli stalk

hot peppers to taste (Karoline grew these peppers herself in a little pot over the summer.)

2 garlic cloves

handful of pasta (could add rice or another leftover grain)

handful fresh spinach leaves

1 cup leftover pinto beans

turmeric to taste

parmesan cheese (optional), salt and pepper if needed

Preparation time: 1 to 1 1/2 hours, Servings: 4-5

Directions:

Start heating your 4 cups broth (cover pot with lid)
Chop 1 celery stalk, 1 potato and slice 1 onion and add to pot
Chop 2 carrots and add. When broth comes to a boil, reduce to simmer and leave a little opening for the steam to escape.
Chop broccoli stalk and add to pot (everything but the tough outer layer of stalk)
Thinly slice hot peppers and add to pot (turn heat up if necessary to simmer)
Chop garlic and add to pot along with a handful of pasta
Sit down and relax for 5 minutes and then do a taste test
Add handful of spinach leaves (optional: chopping might make eating easier!)
Add water if needed (I added 1/2 cup)
Add 1 cup leftover pinto beans
Add turmeric (try 1/4 tsp at a time)

*the extra flavoring you might need will depend on what is in your broth. If you have no broth, you can use water and add flavoring as needed.

Thanks Karoline!

Split It

2009-11-10T20:46:00.000-08:00

The waitress in me can't believe I'm writing this post, but here it is.

Now that the extreme Food Stamp Challenge days are over I am back to the normal flow of going out occasionally to eat with friends. However, my budget is still very tight, so I'm really conscious of money while eating out, even if it is at the $7.99/per entree Indian food place. (Young, Broke and Fabulous. Yes.)

At the same time I have conversed with many of my women friends about our mutual desire to eat well and keep our portions under control. What is interesting is how often "Seriously. You've got to help me stick with it this time. I really want to lose weight and eat better." leads to ordering another round of drinks and asking to see the dessert menu while everyone moans about being too full.

Why do we do this?

What is with the weird binge-guilt dynamic that so many of us engage in around the table?

I think much of this is a part of our cultural relationship to food. In Arianna Huffington's book On Becoming Fearless, she touches on this topic in a section called "Stop the War with Food". She compares her food-centered Greek upbringing, which featured lots of fresh seasonal produce, olive oil and gastronomic pleasure to our food culture in America:

"[American women] have come to view food as the enemy. We starve ourselves, deny ourselves carbohydrates, rid our systems of all fat, and then, when we feel we 'deserve' it or have earned it after weeks of denial, we turn 180 degrees and indulge in binge eating."

Add on the money component: because I need to be careful how I spend every dollar, I rarely go out to eat. When I finally allow myself a restaurant meal, it isn't pretty. Its just like Arianna describes above, but with money: I'm suggesting everyone split a spread of appetizers, ordering my own entree, drinking two glasses of the more expensive wine. Something inside of me keeps screaming "Oh come on! Its time to reward yourself - spare no expense!" (And then when the bill comes something else inside of me is screaming. Its my checkbook.)

Either way, finding a healthy and moderate way to indulge one's desire for pleasure seems like the answer to this troubling pattern so many of us know too well.

This weekend I had one such experience, and it really merits unpacking. My friend Stacey and I agreed to meet up for a hike and then some sort of meal. I really needed to save money, so I suggested we either just have coffee after the hike or split something if we did decide to eat. We agreed on that idea, so the expectations were already set before we met up. Despite the fact that we started our hike with a conversation about our efforts to be healthier, in my sweaty post-hike glory I found myself tempted to suggest we order our own Vegetarian Breakfast Burritos. But, given the fact that we'd already established we were going to split something I felt really awkward about suggesting that we each get our own, and I stuck to the deal.

I walked in to order. One Vegetarian Breakfast Burrito, cut in half, please. Total: $7.00 + tax.

Splitting the Burrito only saved me about $4, but that is an important price point in my money-conscious brain. If I'm spending less than $5 on a meal it feels fine (more like a coffee than a meal, really). It is fine, actually. Once I hand over a Hamilton I feel like I am really spending something. The decision to split the food was certainly an important one from the money standpoint. I felt free of guilt when I paid.

I will admit, my half of the Burrito looked pretty small when I brought it back to the table and sat down. In my brain I briefly wished again that I had my own food, and I think Stacey did too. Once I finished eating though, I really felt fine and satisfied after about 10 minutes. It took a few minutes once the food was gone to feel that pleasant satiation feeling, but there it was.

Normally I leave a meal out with a friend feeling slightly too full and guilty about the food, the money, or both. I walked away from the split Breakfast Burrito experience extremely happy and light. So here is my suggestion: SPLIT IT.

Next time you go out, see if you can agree to split the entree with a friend and order way less food than you think you need. I'd love to hear how it works out for you.

Just don't forget to leave the waitress a fat tip.

Cubicle Recipe Trade

2009-11-07T19:57:00.000-08:00

Conversations about lunch at work have started getting really important for me.

My new cubicle mate Wendy and I have established a great rapport: we're both trying to eat better, and we're both working within pretty tight food budget constraints. It helps that we are both very open to trying new foods. We're always trading recipes and bites during lunch, and I think this supportive atmosphere is really helping me stick with eating well.

This week, Wendy copied a recipe for me.

Baked veggie casserole courtesy of a magazine she picked up while waiting for the bus. I'll report back once I make it.

She also got me talking about flavoring water. Drinking water is an important part of wellness and appetite control. But, sadly, water can be boring. Wendy made me lemon water at work this week.

Other things that make water Fabulous:

Oranges
Strawberries
Frozen fruits (I'm a fan of black cherries)
Mint (cheap and GREAT!)
Limes

In return I shared my newest recipe creation. When I'm making up a recipe I like to draw it out on huge paper and hang it near the stove. When I'm cooking and dancing and wiping my hands on my apron in order to scrawl ingredients up on this huge paper with a sharpie, I feel fantastic. Just sayin'.

Here's a close up so you can make it yourself.

Directions:

Slice up the carrots and boil them until they are super soft.
Take them out of the pot and set them aside. Save the carrot water!
Put a few tablespoons of oil in the pot and start sauteing the ginger. Add some onions and garlic if you like!
Once that gets going, I bust out the blender and potato masher.
Put some of the carrots in the pot with the oil and ginger and mash them up.
Put the rest of the carrots into the blender, adding enough of that carrot water you saved to allow the blender to work up a good orange swirl. The liquid to solid ratio is up to you.
I also had some left over roasted spaghetti squash on hand. I recommend adding a little bit of some thing besides carrot to your soup. Try a potato, an apple, or a roasted squash. Simply cook the extra ingredient (bake the apple!) and put it in the blender to add some variety to the carrot-y-ness.
Once you get enough pureed carrot (and squash, or apple, or whatever you add) from the blender, add that to the roughly mashed carrots in the pot.
Add the curry, basil, and coconut milk.
Salt and pepper to taste.

Yum!

I'm back

2009-11-07T19:35:00.000-08:00

There is a new person working next to me these days. Her name is Wendy, and we share a cubicle. We both only have 30 minutes for lunch each day, so we tend to eat at our respective cubicles. (Grumble. I know. That is bad.) Since we are right next to each other we are always seeing what the other is eating.

Wendy paid me an incredible compliment recently.

She came in to work in the morning and she said, "Julie, I thought about you when I was buying groceries this weekend. I thought, 'She always eats healthy.' Look, I brought carrots today."

Wow. Now that is awesome. Looks like I did, indeed, Lead a Meal Time Revolution. Hell. Yes.

From here on out this blog is going to record my experience with the American Food Revolution and my real-time quest to eat better. (I put that whole "American Food Revolution" thing in caps in an effort to will it into existence. I'm rooting for the movement for better food to gain enough momentum that it deserves an all caps title. Looks pretty good like that, don't you think?) The posts may not be as frequent and I won't be doing extreme food challenges. But, the way I see it, I'm living my own real life food challenge every day. My budget it still tight - I cannot afford to spend much more than $50 a week on food. I am still searching for ways to get healthier and eat in a sustainable way without breaking the bank. And, I still have a lot to say about food culture in America.

What I want to focus on now is that fact that I am not alone. In my office, in my circle of friends, at my neighborhood Farmers' Market... people around me share these goals. I'll be writing about my adventures with food and my interactions with others who are on the same page, starting with me and my cubicle mate, Wendy.

Passing the Torch: Hunger Action Month

2009-09-07T15:24:00.001-07:00

The summer has ended, and my blog project is coming to an end.

Since May I have learned a great deal about access to nutritious food. I feel that this project barely scratched the surface on the issues it discussed, and I am now looking forward to exploring new ideas and projects on the same theme.

I am working, for example, with the manager of my local Farmers' Market on a CSA/Market Basket type program to increase access to Farmers' Market produce for everyone in my neighborhood. I will continue to blog about these follow-up projects intermittently on this page, so stay tuned for monthly updates if you wish!

Through the On Food Stamps blog I have had a good fortune to connect with tons of other people who are doing great projects about food access, too. I have linked many of them on the right side of this blog. One of my favorites is Mother Connie's Food Stamp Cooking Club.

Mother Connie is a retired Senior Citizen living on a limited Social Security income. She does not qualify for federal food programs such as SNAP/Food Stamps, WIC or the Senior Farmers' Market Nutrition Program. Gas to drive to her "local" food pantry, Angel Food Ministries, is prohibitively expensive. As you can imagine, Mother Connie lives on a pretty tight food budget. But, she also loves to cook so she didn't let her limited budget get her down. As she became increasingly skilled at eating well on the cheap, Mother Connie thought about others in her community that might be in a similar situation.

"I was concerned," Mother Connie wrote to me "about those people who believed that they could maintain a life with Ramen noodles." So, Mother Connie developed a website devoted to educating people about how to prepare healthy meals with little income. Her project grew to incorporate a cooking class which has really brought people in her community together around healthy food in a great learning environment - Mother Connie's small and charming kitchen!

I really admire Mother Connie's work. It is a testament to the fact that all of us can do something in our communities - be it at the family dinner table, the break room at work, or our entire city - to help the movement towards healthy, sustainable eating gain momentum.

September is Hunger Action Month, and I am asking everyone who has been following my blog project to accept my passing of the torch. As I bring my project to a close, I am asking each and every one of you to accept my challenge: Make a commitment to do something in your sphere of influence to keep the momentum going.

You don't have to be Michael Pollan, you don't have to produce a film like Food Inc. You don't have to be Michelle Obama and plant a vegetable garden. You don't even have to do a food stamp challenge. There are plenty of ways to influence the people around you in a positive way when it comes to food, even if your budget is tight.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Shop at your local Farmers' Market.
Just ask: When you do go to the chain grocery store, ask the employees about the produce you see there. Where was it grown? What types of sprays or pesticides were used? Most likely they will have no idea, even if you ask for the store manager. The important part is that you are expressing the fact that you, as a consumer, care about these questions. CREATE THE DEMAND for healthier, locally grown products in your chain grocery market. We'll never get the things we want if we don't ask for them.
Improve your diet: Eat more vegetables, and keep your portions small. Anything you do to eat better will be noticed by the people around you and it will create the right kind of social pressure, as we've discussed throughout this blog.
Eat healthy dinners with your friends or family. Make it an event. Enjoy preparing food together, and invest some time and money into what you are putting into your body.
Tweet, post, or link anything that gets you thinking about food in a positive way. In this age of social media, each and every one of us is a self publisher. You may not have a website or blog of your own, but do you have a Facebook news feed or a Twitter account? Use it to get a conversation going about sustainable food!

Feel free to email me and let me know what you have done to accept the torch and work for a better food system in your own community and sphere of influence. I'd love to hear from you.

In the meantime I am signing off for awhile. Thank you for following my blog. I couldn't have done this project without your comments and support.

The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread: Have We Arrived at an Evolutionary Crossroads?

2009-08-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

I have calmed down from yesterday's rant about dieting shortcuts.

I might even be singing a different tune. Well, slightly.

This evening was full of food conflict. I got home late. I wanted something healthy, mostly vegetables. However, I really really didn't want to cook. I wanted to read and meditate and write in my journal. I was in the mood for some higher level activities, some genuine spiritual evolution, not hours in the kitchen. Hm. Healthy fast food? No, I was too broke to hit up the Whole Foods salad bar or anything of that sort.

So, I sucked it up and spent an hour chopping and cooking. It wasn't enjoyable. I felt rushed. I just wanted to get it over with so I could do the things I wanted to do. I honestly felt that cooking tonight was holding me back somehow from pursuing much more important tasks. It felt primitive.

It got me thinking about what hunting and gathering must have been like for Homo sapiens living on the verge of the first Agricultural Revolution. Think about that for a second. Imagine being an upright walking hunter-gatherer with an ever increasing amount of brain function. You're cranial abilities call you to develop a written language, study the astrological calendar, build permanent dwellings, develop religions and civilizations... but you aren't quite there yet. Every member of your species still has to spend nearly every waking hour acquiring food like the rest of the animals. Imagine what it must have been like to live through any part of that slow Neolithic transition from nomadic to sedentary civilization.

While the transition was slow and complex, the development of agriculture was a huge part of man's evolution at this stage. It allowed for surplus time which led to specialization of labor and increasilying sophistocated societies, for one thing. At that point in time, "faster food" was a major asset to man's evolution.

Flash back to me in the kitchen. I'm chopping. I'm cutting. I'm 10 pounds overweight. I wish I was reading and increasing my brain power. I wish I was free to develop in more sophistocated ways. Faster food would have been a real asset to my personal evolution.

Am I in the middle of another evolutionary food crossroads for humanity?

Gone are the days, in America at least, in which taking in enough calories to survive is a challenge. Instead, I am surrounded by cheap, fast, incredibly calorie dense foods. As a human trying to acquire food in 2009, I am faced with a perplexing situation. Food choices that match up with my animal instinct to maximize calories and keep the cost of acquiring those calories low are everywhere. As far as the primitive Homo sapien in me is concerned, McDonald's is a really good deal.

Lots of calories at a low cost.

"Bingo," says the primitive being inside of me.

That is when the evolved being inside of me speaks up. It brings my awareness to the fact that those calorie dense foods are actually harming my body. Unfortunately, as calorie dense food has become cheaper and easier to get, I have become more sedentary and need less and less of it to thrive. I don't hunt for a living anymore. I sit in a chair. Hopefully, my brain has developed enough to internalize that fact and respond with more self control. Hopefully, my brain is sophistocated enough to turn down the animal voice inside of me that wants more fats and sugars, and turn up the voice of higher brain functioning. Let's be honest, many Americans (myself included sometimes) feel stuck in that primitive place where we know what our bodies need and don't need, but we can't seem to intellectually overpower the physical cravings for harmful, calorie dense foods.

In my better moments I transcend the calorie craving animal inside of me and think even bigger. I tap into that part of myself that is really educated, that has even become mentally sophistocated enough to grasp the impact that my food acquisition methods have on the rest of my environment. If I am really on, I might move beyond the battle of self control to the desire to be a benevolent force in the universe, to make sure my food choices weren't contributing to pollution or the exploitation of other living creatures.

But lets face it, evolutionarily speaking, most Americans don't seem to be there yet. I know that I certainly don't always eat as a highly evolved human, and I write a blog about sustainable food access. That certainly says something, don't you think?

I admit it. I had a spoonful of Nutella with Peanut Butter before I wrote this post. The calorie craving animal in me took over, God damn it! I just couldn't be bothered thinking about the production of Nutella, and how much fossil fuel was spent shipping that vat of sugar and chemicals to their spot in front of me on the counter. All I could think about was the sweet flavor of Nutella on my tounge.

My spiritual evolution it still young and fragile, and it failed. Then my intellectual evolution failed. Then, finally, my self control also failed.

So, faced with the consequences of this all too common pattern of human behavior (Need I say it? An obesity epidemic, a collapsing health care system, an industrial agriculture system that is raping the pilaging the environment... yada yada yada...), what do we do?

Do we accept that self control and highly evolved eating habits are just beyond most of us right now and develop a mechanism to correct for this limitation? Humans are really good at recognizing our limitations and building tools to overcome them, after all. That is what separates us from most animal species.

I'm thinking futuristic, space-age food solutions here: an iPhone application (50 years from now, when iPhone technology has become as basic in America as running water) that measures exactly how many calories we need in a day given our activity level. The technological application communicates with our fridge, via USB cord maybe, and out pops a meal with the appropriate level of calories. This meal was produced in an incredibly efficient and sustainable way. All the veggies in the meal were grown on the roof of our home, for example.

In this futuristic world of carefully prescribed sustainable food solutions, we wouldn't have to have self control, and we wouldn't have to spend time on food. Ever. Instead, humans would spend time on spiritual evolution and intellectual growth. We'd invent things that helped our planet thrive in harmony with other species and with other planets in the solar system. We'd be highly evolved creatures.

Not a bad sci-fi vision, if you ask me. The only problem is that in the above system, all of the sensuality is taken out of food preparation. Although, given the fact that Americans spend about $1 billion on fast food every year, maybe that wouldn't bother most of the population that much after all.

Part of me screams, "No! No! Don't take away cooking. Food production is an essential sensory human experience, like sex. It helps us connect with our most basic physical needs. It is essential to our awareness of our bodies!"

But, then I wonder - did primitive man feel that way about hunting?

The Path to Good Nutrition

2009-08-24T20:17:00.001-07:00

Looks like the good people of Herbalife were kind enough to pay my little car a visit today while I was at work. Thanks, guys. I was looking for a path to Good Nutrition. I bet your overly priced vitamin supplements are just what I have been looking for.

Before I got home and started Googling, my biggest problem with Herbalife was that it was a product that advertised itself as being a "natural" miracle weight loss solution. I know that getting healthy and losing weight is hard, and I am suspicious of anything that promises incredible results with no effort or sustainable lifestyle changes.

These types of products really play into our collective denial about health in America. We want our food to be fast, cheap, and easy, and that system makes us fat. Once we are fat, we want our health solutions to be fast and easy at least. Herbalife is exactly the type of product that perpetuates the dangerous denial we are in - most of us can't seem to admit that sustainable health solutions require us to commit to healthy lifestyle changes and maintain them.

That was how I felt about Herbalife before I started Googling.

I soon realized that in addition to perpetuating unhealthy shortcuts, Herbalife seems to be quite a scam. A child of the web 2.0 generation, I have no problem judging things based on the words that my Google search query associates with them. So, when I typed in "Herbalife" and found that Google offered me secondary words like "scam" and "complaints" I became even less of a fan of Herbalife. While some people on message boards swear by it, it sounds like a house of cards to me. A really unhealthy house of cards.

Conversations at a Bar: Food Made with Love

2009-08-22T13:08:00.001-07:00

This week I have been doing a lot of my eating with people I love. I am thinking more about how the energy that goes into food preparation affects our bodies, and about the social dynamics of healthier eating.

Last night I was out with a group of close friends, and the conversation took a turn that is particularly relevant for this blog.

We began talking about the similarities between quitting smoking and quitting eating crappy food. I have made the comparison between poor eating and smoking before in the context of voluntary behaviors that cost our health care system a good deal of money. In this case, we were talking about the "tipping point" when choosing not to engage in a unhealthy behavior (like smoking or eating a gallon of ice cream) changes completely. At a point it stops being about holding yourself back and resisting doing something you are craving to do, and it starts being about listening to how your body feels and actually being grossed out the by unhealthy behavior.

Getting to this point clearly takes some effort. You have to slow down, and you have to listen to your body. Those are two things that many Americans find hard to do, especially in the context of food. We are really attached to the idea that food is quick, cheap, and easy. Listening to our body after we eat it would require a change in our food culture, which tends to revolve around packaged food eaten on the fly.

Stacey said, "I keep hearing that how you eat is almost as important as what you eat."

Hm. The conversation was getting good. We all decided to go for another round of the $3 Syrah and dig a little deeper.

My friend Tera was in Paris last year, and she made the inevitable comparison between how Americans eat and how the French eat. One thing she said she noticed while in France was that the food seemed to be alive. People interacted with it in a really special way. They made it for each other with fresh, live ingredients. They ate it slowly, and often with their hands. The food and the food experience was all about life.

In America, she said, food arrives in front of us in a package, like a carcass. It is a dead, scientifically modified and factory produced product. Listening to that comparison, I had flashes of the type of futuristic nightmare world you read about in sci-fi books: food looks like astronaut ice cream. It only comes in a box. Maybe even just as a pill. Wow. All of a sudden the current American packaged food system seemed a bit like a horrific sci-fi book to me.

Who produced that sci-fi looking packed food? No one seems to know.

What kind of energy went into the production of that food? We started to discuss the difference between packaged food and food made by someone who loves us. We all seemed to agree that food that was alive with the energy of loving preparation was much better than the factory produced alternative.

Everyone knows this is true. The idea that "mom's home cooking" is the best food there is is pervasive in America, ironically. We all agree with this fact, but instead of looking to our mom's to cook and teach us how to eat we have begun looking to companies like Stouffers that market "home made family style macaroni and cheese - just like mom's!" Trust me, if the link between mom's home cooking and quality wasn't heavily ingrained in the American mindset, Stouffer's a similar companies wouldn't have bothered to hijack it.

The trouble is, Stouffer's type food is not just like moms. It wasn't prepared by someone who loves us. It was prepared in a factory by people who have no problem making us fat. It was made with tons of weird ingredients. It was frozen and shipped across the country. It isn't particularly healthy for us, but it is engineered to make us want more after we finish eating it.

Some might think this point is too abstract, but I think the energy that went into the preparation of food is a pretty big deal because it impacts how we consume the food as well. When someone makes us something with love, we eat it with love. We eat it slowly, we express gratitude for the food, and we focus on it while we are putting it into our mouths. That level of presence in the moment while eating leads us to register what we have eaten and therefore eat more sensible portions.

At the close of our conversation, my friend and I vowed to start eating dinner together on Sunday nights. We have decided that we are all in agreement that the energy that goes into food preparation is really important. We are all trying to be healthier, and we all want to support each other in this effort with some healthy pot-luck dinners full of lovingly prepared food.

Role Models

2009-08-17T21:18:00.000-07:00

My own efforts in the last 6 months to eat really well have certainly illustrated to me just how much our diets are effected by the eating habits of the people we surround ourselves with. The social dynamics of the food environment are a huge part of the healthy eating equation.

This week, my own experience is reinforced by yet another study linking social environments to food consumption. The August issue of American Journal of Clinical Nutrition released a study that looked at children's eating behaviors when paired with friends or strangers with varying body types. Here is what the researchers found:

Results showed that friends who ate together consumed more food than participants who were paired with someone they didn't know, and that friends were more likely to eat similar amounts than participants paired with a stranger.

However, overweight children who were paired with an overweight peer, whether friend or stranger, ate more than the overweight participants who were paired with a normal weight youth.

I am not surprised by these findings. I think most of us tend to eat more when we are in the company of people we know because we have established our eating habits with them already; they know how much we eat at mealtime, and we are less concerned about being judged based on our food consumption.

Most human beings, unfortunately, take their cues about when to stop eating from their external social environment and not from their bodies. It is a lot easier to pig out on a pint of Ben & Jerry's with a friend who is doing the same than it is with a friend who eats only salads. It is not surprising, really, that kids who ate in the company of obese peers wound up consuming more food. Something about the obese peer, be it their eating habits during the study or their size, made these kids feel ok about eating more calories.

These findings really underscore the importance of the right kind of social pressure in the quest for healthy, sustainable, and affordable food. The message is clear: in order to eat better, we need positive role models to send us the right social clues. And, all of us have a duty to become better role models to the people in our lives by improving our own dietary habits.

Last Monday the LA Times ran an article titled "Does it matter what the doctor weighs?" Apparently, there is a war going on about healthy role models. On one side there are people who are calling on doctors to practice what they preach about diet and exercise and lead by example. This camp feels that Obama's nominee for surgeon general - Dr. Regina Benjamin - is carrying around too many extra pounds and is thus sending the wrong message to the American public. We are in the midst of an obesity epidemic, after all.

On the other side are the people of the Fat Acceptance Movement. They say, first of all, that a doctor's size does not matter because people come in all shapes and sizes. On a more exteme level, proponents of Fat Acceptance call for Fat Pride and decry descrimination again the obese. Some even challenge the claims that obesity is really all that harmful to one's health, saying that current research has blown the health consequences of obesity way out of proportion. Two years ago the New York Times explored the growth of the Fat Acceptance Movement with a look at a new academic discipline: Fat Studies.

Since then, Fat Studies and the Fat Acceptance Movement have continued to gain momentum, and I am pretty concerned about that trend. I consider most elements of the Fat Acceptance viewpoint to be a considerable barrier in the quest for healthy and sustainable lifestyles. I actually think radical Fat Acceptance is downright dangerous.

No one should be persecuted for their size, and we certainly need to recognize that overweight is a very complicated issue involving a mixture of voluntary behavior, heridity, and involuntary barriers to a healthy lifestyle such as lack of access to good food and lack of education about nutrition. I do not in any way think that obese Americans should face cruently or discrimination. No one should.

But, I do agree with the scientific evidence that suggests that obesity is indeed bad for one's health. I think it is dangerous to encourage people to be proud of a condition that has been so clearly linked to preventable diseases and early death. Rather, we need to be compassionate to our friends and ourselves in this regard, recognizing that we all need support in getting healthy - from the people around our dinner tables to the people sitting around conference tables making decisions about food policy in Washington.

I think that a doctor's size does matter. Do doctors and health care professionals have to be perfect, muscular, and totally fit? Of course not. In fact, a doctor who has had to work at establishing a healthy lifestyle is a huge asset to the profession because they are able to empathize with patients who are struggling with diet and weight issues. A doctor doesn't have to be perfect, but I do not think it is ok for them to be "dangerously overweight and proud of it" either. There is a line between being obese and being a healthy, curvy, non-supermodel human being, and I think the more radical voices in the Fat Acceptance Movement are missing that line.

Don't get me wrong, I celebrate Love Your Body Day with the best of them. But, I think that part of loving your body is respecting it enough to keep it healthy with good food and adequate exercise. Health care professionals should make an effort to be good role models by loving their own bodies and taking care of them.

Dr. Regina Benjamin is overweight. She is also an incredibly accomplished woman who probably works crazy hours and has little time to exercise. But, instead of declining to comment publicly about her weight, Benjamin could have addressed the issue head on. What barriers has she faced in the quest for better health? Benjamin is blessed with a huge megaphone: she is a well known public figure, and people will listen if she talks. So, why not talk about the challenges she is facing? Why not set an example but setting some goals? Hell, she could even blog about her own quest to get healthier and thus inspire other Americans to do the same.

If I am aware of the fact that study after study continues to suggest that our eating habits are heavily influenced by social and societal clues, I am sure the nominee for Surgeon General is aware of them too. I would like to see her sending a better message, because role models do matter.

The Food Bank for New York City has a fantastic campaign on their website called The Change One Thing Pledge. This campaign calls on people to make one diet change that will simply move them towards "a more active, longer and healthier life." I would like to see doctors around the county, especially Dr. Regina Benjamin, take this pledge. Maybe I should send her the link?

(I am not blessed with a huge megaphone. Yet.)

Cooking: Bon appétit!

2009-08-15T14:49:00.000-07:00

The movie Julie & Julia hit the box office this past week, and it seems to be getting pretty positive reviews. It made about $20 million in the first weekend. The New York Times likes it, my mother likes it, and this weekend several people I know included "seeing Julie & Julia" in their weekend plans.

Anytime a movie is a hit, it impacts our culture. Julie & Julia is no different.

People are seeing this movie, and it turns out that as a result they are talking more about cooking. The LA Times reported that since the release of Julie & Julia, cookbooks are selling off shelves and cooking academies are experiencing a marked spike in class enrollment. The article interviews people who had never been into cooking in the past, but were inspired by the film to buy a Julia Child cookbook and tie on an apron.

While Julia Child has published numerous cookbooks, her classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking seems to be the most popular right now. In their review of the film, the New York Times addressed the title of this book:

The book is “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” — not “How To” or “Made Easy” or “For Dummies,” but “Mastering the Art.” In other words, cooking that omelet is part of a demanding, exalted discipline not to be entered into frivolously or casually. But at the same time: You can do it. It is a matter of technique, of skill, of practice.

Suddenly the title of the cookbook and the fact that Amazon.com is selling out of it becomes significant. One of the barriers to accessing healthy, affordable, and nutritious food that I have explored in depth is the whole "cooking" thing.

It is impossible to achieve a healthy diet on $30/week if you are unwilling or unable to cook. Unfortunately, most Americans do not cook. They don't know how to cook, and they do not or cannot make the time to teach themselves. Many would rather hit McDonald's on the way home from work than buy a Julia Child book an start julienning vegetables.

I think one of the largest problems with our food system is that as a culture we Americans are unwilling to devote time or energy to cooking food. It has become ingrained in our thought process that food should be quick, cheap, and easy, that spending time preparing food is a bad thing. Since "quick, cheap, and easy" tend to be in conflict with "healthy" in the American food system, the result is pretty bleak.

My spirits are bolstered by the fact that Julie & Julia is being seen by so many people, and that it is actually motivating people to learn to cook. It is awesome that a pro-cooking message is being shot out to people on a mass level. The revolution continues...

Diabetic Diet: How'd I do?

2009-08-13T22:13:00.001-07:00

While I was in San Francisco I met Brieze Keeley. Brieze is a Holistic Healthy Counselor, so I asked her if she would take a look at my food diary and give me a critique. Brieze was kind enough to write up the below guest post for me, dissecting my diet. Hope it is helpful.

Overall, Julie’s vegetarian diet is quite healthy, especially when one considers her food budget. She eats an average of five to seven servings of fruits and vegetables every day, has a whole grain such as oatmeal or brown rice at most meals, and features sensible portions (1-2 Tbsp or ¼ Cup) of healthy fats in her daily diet, including nut butters, avocados, and yogurt (fuller fat varieties).

In addition, Julie eats at least one ½ cup serving of plant-based proteins such as beans (mostly lentils or pintos) every day. She also eats yogurt regularly, which can be an excellent vegetarian source of protein as well. (I would caution anyone eating yogurt to choose the Plain or Unsweetened varieties to avoid high levels of sugar, food dyes, and other unsavory ingredients. To sweeten it, simply add a teaspoon of a natural sweetener like honey, which is also high in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants when unrefined.)

Ensuring an adequate protein supply is very important for anyone following a vegetarian or vegan diet, as protein deficiencies can occur over time. In addition to beans and low-fat dairy, nuts and seeds offer some protein as well, so I’m pleased to see them regularly featured in Julie’s diet.

Finally, Julie’s food choices have the added benefit of being mostly local and seasonal, as she does the majority of her shopping at the Farmer’s Market. Owing to this and to the minimal level of processed foods she is eating, Julie’s diet is likely much higher in nutrients than the typical American diet. Indeed, many people (the budget conscious and otherwise) would do well to try out a modified version of her experiment. For some, it could mean not only a fatter wallet, but a slimmer waistline as well.

Nonetheless, there are a few suggestions I would make to Julie and others like her. When possible, she should try to include more variety in her food choices from day to day. I realize this could be difficult on a tight food budget, but some experimentation may be possible especially during summer, when produce variety is most abundant.

For instance, I would like to see more varieties and servings of leafy green vegetables in Julie’s diet. In addition to kale and broccoli, she could try spinach, Swiss chard, and dandelion greens. Not only are these greens cleansing and rich in different nutrients than her staples, they are also abundant and affordable at most farmers’ markets during the summer.

The same holds true for other areas of her diet: she could try millet instead of brown rice, for example, or black beans instead of pinto beans. In general, variety is important to ensure an adequate supply of a wide range of nutrients, rather than an oversupply of just a few.

If a restricted budget does not allow for much variety, I would advise her to add a liquid multivitamin to her daily regimen (such as Liquid Source of Life Multivitamin). Julie might also do well to add more Omega-3 Fatty Acids to her diet (fish oils are best, though flax oil also works if she doesn’t want to eat any animal products) and a Vitamin-D3 supplement, both of which can be hard to find in sufficient quantities through diet alone.

In addition, I notice that Julie tends to graze on smaller meals throughout the day. This may work well for her. Others, however, may need to sit down to three square meals (with a snack thrown in somewhere, perhaps), to avoid overeating.

Most importantly, I’d like to remind readers that no one diet works for everyone. Julie’s diet is a high-carbohydrate, lower protein, and lower fat vegetarian diet. For her, this diet seems an excellent choice, as evidenced by her thriving health. Yet one’s response to such a diet can vary widely based on ancestry, blood type, and metabolic character (fast, medium, or slow burning). People with Type O blood, for example, may develop issues ranging from chronic fatigue and weight gain to more serious health problems like Candidiasis, hair loss, and dry skin in response to such a diet.

Therefore, my advice is to trust and listen to your body. If you find that a vegetarian diet suits you, go for it! If you have taken on such a diet and find yourself feeling chronically unwell, this diet may not be right for you. You may have to include small amounts of animal protein in your diet and watch your carbohydrate intake more closely.

Finally, I would also encourage everyone to get outside and take walks when possible and experiment with different forms of exercise such as yoga or swimming. These habits can do wonders to reduce stress and improve health. If you are interested in learning more about these topics, try reading Your Body Knows Best, by Ann Louise Gittleman, M.S, or feel free to visit my website: www.briezekeeley.com. Best of luck!

Thanks Brieze!

Benito's Garden

2009-08-10T21:42:00.001-07:00

The other day I was walking back to my apartment, when all of a sudden I noticed that there were huge young corn stalks shooting out of the ground at the base of the building next to mine. Someone had planted a tiny urban garden, making use of a 6 inch wide strip of land to grow corn, mint and peppers.

I started asking everyone hanging out outside of the buildings who was responsible for this incredibly creative use of land. "It is Benito," everyone told me. "Benito did that."

I was overjoyed when I heard this; Benito and I are already quite good friends.

Benito is probably about 80 years old. He has the leathery skin of someone who has worked outside for decades. He was born in Mexico, and he and I only speak to each other in Spanish. On the weekends he sits outside of our building with his friends drinking beer and listing to Mariache music very loud on his portable hand held radio. Some might find this annoying, but I feel safer in a ground floor apartment when he is there. I think his presence protects me, in a way. It is eyes on the street, at least. During the week Benito washes cars in our neighborhood. Every other week I let him wash mine. He charges me $8 and hand washes the thing from top to bottom until it shines. I always overpay him, and I also always give him my recycling instead of putting it in the city bin. He is willing to go through all the effort of taking it to the recycling center for the rebate - more power to him. We have quite a good relationship, Benito and I, and I was so pleased that he was responsible for the garden.

I found him right away and started asking him about it. He insisted that I take some mint, and told me all about his garden.

I really love this garden that Benito built because it isn't in an organized community garden space. He found that our landlords were not open to his gardening, so he moved his plantings next door where the landlords would look the other way. This is exactly the type of micro-micro-farming I have been talking about, and here it is, right next door to my apartment!

Technology

2009-08-09T21:26:00.000-07:00

Technology has played a very important role in my quest for healthy, sustainable, and nutritious food over course of this blogging project.

As I struggle to eat well as a diabetic this week, I have relied every more heavily on technology. It just occurred to me that everything I have learned about eating better as a diabetic I have learned on the Internet.

I've depended on websites and online calorie calculators to help me learn about diabetes and to keep my diet on track. I've received very valuable encouragement from my online community through emails and blog post comments. I've felt less alone and less isolated thanks to the wealth of diabetes resources on the Internet.

As the week comes to a close, I can't help but give a big 'ole shout out to Internet technology. And of course, this gets me thinking... what about those who do not have a home computer or reliable Internet access?

While most people in North America are online, there is no doubt in my mind that low-income Americans have less reliable access to the Internet than their wealthier countrymen. Low-income Americans may also be less equipped with advanced research skills, which really come in handy when researching a disease that requires a total diet overhaul.

After this week, I am very aware of how Internet access and research skills impact one's ability to succeed in the quest for a healthier diet. I know that if I didn't have my laptop or the Internet this week I would have failed miserably at following a diabetic diet. I wouldn't have known where to start, and I wouldn't have had my online community to bolster my spirits and feed me more resources. I imagine that trying to shape up and turn your diet around is near impossible if your family is unable to afford a home computer or Internet service.

Education

2009-08-07T22:04:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who responded with information and resources to help me with my Lentil classification problem. Stacey gave me a fantastic link to the American Diabetes Association Food Advisor page; it is turning out to be a great resource. Thanks, Stacey!

The whole Lentils-are-a-grain scare got me thinking about just how little I know about nutrition and diet. I would say that I know much much more than the average American does about health, nutrition and food sustainability, but I also feel that I barely know anything at all about these topics and still have so much to learn.

I am armed with a pretty privileged upbringing, a good public high school education and an Ivy League college degree, but I know very little about how food affects my body and the environment. Clearly, health and sustainable food have not made it into the American curriculum.

If I feel I know so little about nutrition and I have had all of the aforementioned educational advantages, it suddenly makes sense to me that Americans are so obese and our health care system is such a mess. We have never been taught how to take care of ourselves. We have never been taught how to eat right. (And if we were, we'd be hard pressed to find the time and money to act on our new knowledge.) Most of the information Americans get about food comes from advertisements from huge food companies, not informed and beneficent educators. We form bad habits and pass them on to our children, and no one ever steps in to intervene.

It has been a bit of a struggle for me to learn this stuff. I have really had to teach myself and actively seek out teachers and advisers. So, what were all those Health classes in high school about if they didn't teach me to take care of my body and eat properly? Oh, right. They were about abstinence and drugs.

Granted, maybe my high school tried to put their limited health education dollars towards the issues they felt were most pressing and dangerous to teens, so I will try to cut them some slack. Still, I know that the rates of teen pregnancy and drug abuse are high, but aren't rates of Obesity and Diabetes higher and thus more alarming? I am pretty appalled at how little I have been taught about nutrition, and I know that most Americans know less than I do.

I would like to see some major public policy muscle put behind educating people about food. So many of us are really in the dark on this stuff, and that is really impacting our quality of life in a negative way. The food system is never going to change or improve in America unless people demand that it changes. But, no one is going to demand that it changes if they don't understand the first thing about food or nutrition.

Clearly, stakeholders who have interests in maintaining the broken status quo are not going to start educating people about eating better. If we did that, they wouldn't buy so many Doritos.

A note on the photo: Campbell's Tomato Soup is an iconic image of mass produced food and overall food confusion. To the average American, a can of this soup might seem like a really healthy meal, one to pat yourself on the back after. It is a vegetable serving right? And, isn't it low fat? A slightly more discerning eye will see that its nutritional value is questionable, and its lack of sustainably is undeniable. And, it isn't even that cheap!

Joy

2009-08-06T20:38:00.000-07:00

The Diabetic On Food Stamps challenge is turning out to to be different from my month as a Vegan On Food Stamps in some surprising ways.

In the past few months I have developed skills that make last round's challenges less of an issue. For example, I have gotten very good at sourcing cheap, sustainable, and healthy food. I know where and when to shop. I have tons of tricks to save myself time. I have more experience cooking these new cheap foods, and now that I have certain recipes memorized my cooking goes faster. On the last round, time and money were the biggest barrier issues, but I have now moved beyond that. (Stay tuned for a wrap up post with all of my best practices.)

I have found, however, that thinking about my food in portions is quite challenging. When I did the Vegan on Food Stamps experiment, I thought about food in terms of rationing. It was "How much can I eat of this and still have enough for lunch tomorrow?" My portions were based on stretching food to last the week, on maximum possible food intake, and not on how much I should really be eating.

Actually, I was kind of obsessed with the whole rationing thing. At the beginning of each week I felt like a squirrel storing up acorns for winter; I would eat small amounts, hording food for myself to eat at a later date. I was always worried I would be hungry or run out of food, so I developed a mildly unhealthy preoccupation with eating. When the end of the week came, and I realized I had enough food left, I would find myself overeating. It was a weird cycle of deprivation and overindulgence. Apparently, this is pretty true to real life on food stamps. Many food stamp recipients experience the same type of cycle. When benefits arrive at the beginning of the month, it is feast time. When they dry up after a few weeks and the money for food is scarce, it is famine. Really, this is not a healthy way to eat.

Now that I have some practice, I am not afraid anymore that I will run out of food. I know I have plenty to last me through the week. I feel I can eat as much of my healthy and sustainable food as I want. But in reality, I can't - not as a "Diabetic" at least.

The portion control thing is hard. I now feel deprived on TWO levels instead of one. Before, I just had to say "no" to myself when I was at the market buying food. Now, I have to say "no" to myself at the market, and while I'm cooking, and when I want a snack, and when someone offers me free unhealthy food, and at the table when I sit down to eat.

I have a feeling that if I really stuck with this for a few more weeks it would get easier, too. I would get used to the smaller portion sizes just as I got used to the tighter budget. But for now, eating is more stressful than it is joyful.

And there is one thing that I don't think I'd ever get over - how all of this rationing and limiting and deprivation affects my social life. Don't get me wrong, most of my friends are young and broke too. We are all used to saving money, ordering PBR and Tecate instead of Martinis. Cheap is ok when you can be cheap in the company of others. Cheap and unable to go out at all leads to a lot of isolation. It is lonely when you can't eat with anyone because your diet is super restrictive. Again, eating just isn't as fun for me right now.

The truth is, I think eating is supposed to be fun. It is supposed to be fulfilling in more than just a physical sense. Eating is about nuturance, sharing, pleasure, and good company. It is supposed to bring us joy and leave us feeling good afterwards. It is supposed to be relaxing and joyful.

In my experience, eating on a Food Stamp budget hasn't been joyful at all. First, it is lonely. My dietary restrictions isolate me because few people want to partake in what seems to them like militantly healthy cuisine. Eating feels full of NO's, and it would probably stay that way until I get used to a new pattern.

I found that after 1 month of eating as a vegan on $31/week, the whole thing did get easier. It felt less and less like deprivation and more and more like my reality. In fact, in between now and the end of that challenge months ago I did continue to eat for close to $35/month. I'd gotten used to it. It wasn't all that hard. And, once I recalibrated my expectations about food I was able to find fulfillment within that budget and my normal vegetarian diet guidelines.

The hardest part was the beginning. I am in that space now with the Diabetic challenge, and I am reminded of just how hard it is. What I am realizing is that this exact period, the month or so that it takes to recalibrate your food habits and expectations, turns out to be a real barrier. Changing one's diet isn't too hard once you get used to it, but the initial commitment is very painful. Again, I am sure I'd get used to these measured portions after a month and it would get easier. Right now it feels like I've sucked all the joy out of eating.

What I have to do is shift what types of joy I expect to get from food. I used to seek out the taste-bud kind of joy. The immediate gratification of salty, sugary, or otherwise tongue-pleasing foods. Now I am more in tune with how I feel after I finish eating, and through this Diabetes challenge I am learning to stop equating the freedom to eat until I am stuffed with joy. I look at measured Diabetes-friendly portions as restrictive, but they are probably just about right. The fact that I can't keep eating until I am absolutely full seem like a crime to me- a real deprivation- when in reality the portions I am measuring out allow me to consume plenty of food.

I am beginning to realize what a major barrier changing the way we think about joy and enjoyment of food really is. It takes awhile to internalize a change in what we consider to be an enjoyable food experience. One has to work pretty hard to go from feeling that eating an entire carton on ice cream is a guilty yet joyful pleasure, to feeling that eating a moderate portion of kale salad and feeling rejuvenated and healthy afterwards is a joyful pleasure.

There is a critical period when dietary restrictions go from feeling like rules to feeling like a comfortable habit or familiar pattern. Until the new habit takes, dietary change is very difficult. As far as portion control is concerned, I guess I'm still stuck in food joy purgatory.

Lentils: Grain? Pulse?

2009-08-05T21:30:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a pot-luck picnic with a group of young women I was meeting for the first time. On my way to the dinner I stopped at Albertson's (big California chain grocery store) to get carrots and hummus as a contribution to the feast. I was hoping I could buy my pot-luck contribution without blowing over my budget, but it didn't happen. I spent a little over $8 on the whole thing, so I am now over budget by $1.28. Despite their widely publicized "20% price cut" campaign, Albertson's isn't cheap.

I'm not so upset about being over budget because I am reasonably sure that the food I have bought so far will last me more than a week in the end. Still, I am only on day 2 of the week's challenge, and I have no wiggle room left at all. Oops. At least I have lots of extra carrots and hummus.

The interesting part of the experience tonight was the group eating environment. If you haven't noticed, group eating environments tend to be my downfall (see previous post, for example). I have found that I am not so good as self control when I am eating around lots of people in a situation where there are tons of different types of foods to graze from. This picnic was exactly the type of environment I would fail miserably in.

While my eating was not perfect tonight, it was certainly no cupcake bender. I probably consumed a little bit too much sugar and about 1/2 cup more of carbohydrates than I should have as a "diabetic," but it could have been much worse. I tried to steer clear of the pasta as much as possible. I tried to stick to the greens. I tried to be aware that my choice to put more food on my plate probably had more to do with the fact that I was in a group of totally new people (and thus, a bit nervous) than it did with being hungry.

I'd give myself a C- on this one. Probably no diabetic shock, but I am going to watch my sugar, carbohydrate and fruit, intake tomorrow to make up for tonight's imperfections.

Thinking about limiting my carbohydrate intake tomorrow brings me to an important problem I encountered last night: I am not sure how to categorize Lentils.

Lentils are my savior food. They are incredibly cheap. A bag that costs about $1.20 can feed me for 6 meals. I tend to eat lentils with brown rice to make a complete protein. I eat them all the time and rarely worry about over-doing it because in my head I consider them a bean-like vegetable. However, as I do more research about food groups I am seeing that some sources consider Lentils a "grain" since they fall into the Pulse category. Now, I don't really care so much about the labeling. What I do care about is knowing how lentils affect my body. If I am trying to stick to the guidelines of a diabetic diet and I eat lentils with brown rice, am I consuming two portions of grains, or one portion of grains and one of vegetables?

My misunderstanding about how lentils are categorized is a real problem, and it really highlights how lack of knowledge about nutrition can serve as a major barrier to a healthy, sustainable diet. I have been happily chomping away on lentils for 6 meals per week for the last month, never thinking that I might be consuming WAY too many carbohydrates in the process. I thought I was being smart. I thought I was eating really well. Was I just making a big mistake the whole time?

Ah! This nutrition stuff is complicated. I am glad I caught this problem early in the week, but my error about the lentils is making me wonder what other things I might be doing "wrong" in blissful ignorance. Until I can decide how to categorize the lentils I am going to eat them with veggies on the side instead of rice.

Does anyone have any advice about how to count the lentils in my diet charts?

I am also curious to hear if anyone has had a similar dietary shock experience. Ever eat something for awhile without realizing that it wasn't as good for you as you thought it was?

Diabetes Grocery Run

2009-08-04T20:52:00.000-07:00

I did some major shopping over the past two days to get everything I need for this week's Diabetic Food Stamp Challenge.

Unfortunately, I missed the weekend's Farmer's Markets since I was in San Francisco. I would prefer to shop for my week's groceries at a Farmers' Market, but the limited hours made it is impossible this week. Once again, limited Farmes' Market hours have proved a barrier to me in my quest for sustainable foods.

Next best thing to a Farmers' Market? The local ethnic grocer. Every low-income neighborhood has one, mine included.

In my case the local ethnic grocery store is A-Grocery Warehouse. I haven't been to A in awhile, and I forgot how wonderfully cheap it is. Yesterday I bought the following for a grand total of $9.73:

1 cantalope ... $0.34
1 head of iceberg lettuce ... $0.69
1lb bag of lentils... $1.19
1 avocado (rock hard)... $0.99
15 ounce can of black eyed peas... $0.99
1.47 lb of lemons at $0.69/lb ...$1.01
2.44 lb head of cabbage at $0.79/lb... $0.81
1.05 lb red bell peppers at $0.79/lb... $0.83
1.56 lb of broccoli at $0.79/lb... $1.23
1.66 lb of purple chinese eggplant at $0.79/lb... $1.31
1 english cucumber at 3 for $1... $0.34

Notice that nearly every produce item is less than $1/lb. It was so cheap I almost didn't mind that I had no idea if the produce was local or if it had been sprayed with pesticides. But, then I thought about my friends at the Echo Park Farmers Market and vowed to be there on Friday for the rest of my groceries.

Then, I hit up "California Market" in Koreatown today. This place would also fall under the local ethnic grocer category. The prices were much higher than I'd hoped; the incredible assortment of exotic Asian food was tempting, but I didn't buy much. I'm quite a price snob now. No way was I buying a small bag of rice for $2.99 when I knew I could get a 5 lb bag for $3.99 at A-Grocery Warehouse. I bought the following:

1 orange at 2lb/$0.99.. $0.32
2 bunches of Kale... $1.18 (cheaper than the Farmers' Market, where Kale is always $1 a bunch. Granted, Farmers' Market Kale is free of pesticides.)
32 oz. plain lowfat yogurt... $3.29 (making Taziki)
0.19 lb of peeled garlic (I'm lazy) at 1lb/$1.79... $0.34

Total: $5.13

Wow. Only four food items for more than half of what I spent for 11 food items at A Grocery Warehouse. Never again, California Market, never again.

I have some other ingredients I am also using this week, so I need to subtract a bit more out of the week's $30. For the following items I am taking out an additional $8.42 (prices based on my best guess):

Trader Joe's Natural/Organic Peanut Butter ... $2.79
Brown rice (last 1/3 of a 5lb bag)... $1.33
Trader Joe's dried peaches... $3
Oatmeal... $0.30 (still working that HUGE $1.89 tube of oats)
Almonds... $1 worth of a previous bulk purchase

Total: $23.28
Remaining: $6.72

Proper portions are really important for controlling diabetes, so when I was packing my lunch for today I carefully measured out 1 cup of brown rice and put it into my tupperware container. 1 cup of rice did not look like much to me. I estimate that I am normally eating about 50-75% more rice than that, probably at least 1 1/2 cups with my lunch and again with my dinner. I was a bit worried that I'd be really hungry with only 1 cup, but I found that I was fine today.

Throughout this week I will be carefully recording everything I eat. At the end of the week I will have my food diary rated to see how my diet stacks up to one that is prescribed to someone who needs to control their Diabetes.

Wishe me luck trying to go to boxing on that 1 cup of rice later this week. Hopefully I'll be used to smaller portions by then!

P.S. I had to say no to a Rootbeer Float today. Sigh.

Diabetes Day 1: Recovering from a Bender

2009-08-03T21:14:00.000-07:00

I spent this past weekend in San Francisco visiting my friends from college. It was truly a fantastic and relaxing weekend. Great to just be; in the kind of way one can only do with familiar old friends.

On my own in L.A., I can get a bit tightly wound. So, while I was visiting my friends I really made an effort to let it all go and just chill. No strict self-imposed rules.

Emotionally, that was very healthy for me. Physically, not so much. I actually think that as far as food is concerned I took the whole "chill out" thing a bit too far. I ate, frankly, whatever the fuck I wanted at all times for three whole days. I was with different groups of people for different meals, so there wasn't even a twinge of embarrassment about eating too much two meals in a row. I feel like my food consumption can be summed up in 3 B's: Burritos, Brownies, Beer.

Needless to say, I now feel like shit. Mondays are always hard after a long weekend away, but this Monday was exceptionally difficult in a very physical way. I didn't have trouble focusing or working. My mind was there. But my body was really out of wack.

It was extremely difficult to eat only my usual serving of 1/2 cup of oatmeal for breakfast today. I just wanted more food. Clearly, my stomach had enlarged after 3 days of huge portions. The enormous salad I ate at lunch was followed by an office birthday celebration. Good thing, too, because that salad just didn't feel like enough either. The potentially harmless little "singing and cake break" completely did me in.

There was box of gourmet cupcakes. Each was different and beautiful, in that newly-trendy and expensive cupcakes kind of way. I had the great idea of splitting the cupcakes into quarters so that everyone could try some of each type. Who can choose between red velvet and chocolate peanut butter cup, or vanilla cinnamon and a berry topped masterpiece?

Everyone seemed pleased at my suggestion. One co-worker even joked "Great idea! You know, 1/4 cupcakes have no calories. It is only whole cupcakes that have calories." Everyone laughed. Her joking comment on eating psychology was spot on, at least in my case. In 1/4 cupcake increments, I probably ate 2 whole cupcakes. (Wow. I am seriously embarrassed to admit this, but I think it might be true. At least 1 and 1/2 cupcakes.)

Had I eaten the cupcakes whole, I never would have eaten 2. Eating them in small pieces really let me off the hook for a few reasons:

I was eating in a "picking" or "grazing" fashion, rather than sitting down with one concrete portion in front of me. When you are grazing over a plate of tiny desserts in a room with a lot of people, it is easy to just keep eating.
Each 1/4 piece was a totally new burst of flavors and sugary combinations, so though the cupcakes were incredibly sweet and rich I never had the chance to tire of the intense flavors. I just switched from one new intense flavor to the next.
I felt like no one was able to keep tabs on how many 1/4 pieces I ate so I didn't feel that anyone would judge me for overeating. Everyone else seemed to go back for more. I did too. I only stopped once I was literally sick from all the sugar and everyone else had stopped going up to the table to get more 1/4 pieces of cupcake.

I really overate during this break, and I felt absolutely horrible about it afterward. Not only had I eaten more than was healthy for me, I had also made a suggestion that enabled others around me to eat too much as well. Everyone felt that they had eaten more than they should have after the cupcake session was done. While everyone sat moaning about being too full, I couldn't help but feel partially responsible.

I suggested cutting the dessert in such a way that made it easy for everyone to eat too much. Worse, I also personally overate and thus sent out a social clue to my co-workers that it was very ok for them to eat too much also. This would have been a great opportunity to lead by example and try to control my own portions in a hope that my behavior would influence others to do so also. Instead, I totally cut loose and sent out a horrible message to anyone who observed and took any clues from me.

What a winning streak, eh? Four days of unabashed horrible eating.

What interests me is that I really, really feel it. I can totally tell that my body is different after that bender. Last Thursday night I was at the apex of health and was feeling incredibly good. I had been on a healthy streak for about two weeks. I felt really strong and flexible during my workouts, and it wasn't hard to eat small healthy portions. I was on a roll. I actually felt better than I'd felt in months.

Coming from such a place, I found that my body's reaction to big portions, too much booze, and lots of sweets was pretty noticeable. By Saturday afternoon in San Francisco, I actually wondered if I might be coming down with something. I was exhausted and wired at the same time; I felt sluggish and mildly nauseated. I was flushed and wondered if I might have a small fever. By Sunday afternoon I did not notice how crappy I felt as much as I had the day before, and I could barely control my cravings for sweets. In the span of 3 hours I ate half of an incredibly rich brownie, a very ripe peach, and an ice cream cone. I had totally fallen off the wagon and was not only getting used to eating crap, but craving it.

The window in which I felt myself decline due to a poor diet was small, and the signals were subtle. Still, I noticed the changes and thought that they likely had something to do with my declining diet. This feedback from my body reminded me of a passage from the book I am reading right now. It is called Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein explore the many factors which influence how people make choices throughout their life in an effort to develop some suggestions as to how governments and institutions might help people help themselves make better choices (and thus improve their health, wealth, and happiness).

In the Fourth chapter the authors look at why certain types of decisions are particularly hard for people. They offer explanations about why, on a psychological level, people might engage in harmful behaviors (such as eating too much or consuming an overall poor diet). One category relates to Feedback. The authors write that people have lot of trouble breaking bad choice cycles when the feedback on their decisions is unclear or slow.

So if, for example, you immediately put on 10 pounds after you ate 2 cupcakes, you would probably be less likely to eat 2 whole cupcakes. Unfortunately, feedback about bad food choices is very subtle and very slow. We don't immediately gain weight when we eat too much dessert. Alarms don't go off. Kittens don't explode.

In fact, the opposite happens. We have very clear and positive sensations in the taste department when we eat dessert. And, we typically eat more to keep those positive sensations coming. The association between the yummy taste and the cupcake in our mouth is indisputable. The slower consequences - feeling sluggish after crashing from a sugar rush, feeling gross all day, gaining weight, getting diabetes... those are all much slower feedback signals. They are also quite subtle, and are thus not so clearly related in our minds to the cupcake we ate after lunch. We might blame our afternoon sluggishness on lack of sleep the night before rather than our recent sugar frenzy, unless we are really paying attention.

This weekend I felt the slow and subtle feedback from my body about a bad diet like never before, but I really had to listen. As I said, the window of time in which I noticed it was small and the signals were subtle. Still, they where there. I have found that being more in tune with my body has allowed me to tap into what it is trying to tell me much more effectively.

If you are trying to eat a sustainable, healthy, and affordable diet, I suggest you work at paying more attention to exactly how different foods make you feel. This is a holistic process that involves getting enough sleep, exercising, and establishing an overall tendency towards good eating. It isn't easy, but it is possible and probably worth it. My body gave me some feedback this weekend, and it has really motivated me to clean up my act.

Today marks the first day of the Diabetic Food Stamps Challenge. I just ate some broccoli and less than half a cup of brown rice for dinner tonight. So, ok. Here we go again.

A Letter from Mom

2009-07-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

The following is a guest post from my mother, Marianne Szeker Flynn. Mom has been kind enough to write to me a little bit about her experience with food growing up. Thanks Mom, I love you. Readers - Enjoy!

Julie,

Recognize that chubby girl in the photo?

It’s me, your madre, mother.

Can you see past the size and find me in there, just waiting to walk out?

I told you I came from a family of hardworking eastern European over-eaters, happiest with other relatives cooking, baking, eating and drinking (and I don’t mean water). Farmers from both sides of the family emigrated to America in the early 1900’s with hearty appetites and unforgettable eating traditions they passed on to me.

I remember rolling out Babka dough on the kitchen, pinching sweet tufts off the sides when it was baked and then smearing butter over thick slabs we’d toast. Or, how about learning the art of making cream puffs or stuffing potato into doughy crescents and then frying them in browned butter? Or eating all the bacon so you didn’t taste the fried liver! You see, we weren’t just eating smores-food for dessert, we were eating it all day long! Big surprise, I was a chubby kid.

Tea. 1953. My first experience of drinking tea began when I was about 4 years old and my Ukrainian grandmother, who didn’t speak any English, would call my friends and I up for “tea”. We ran up Sophie’s stairs and hugged her pillowy waist through the faded apron. She had diabetes, which I didn’t know about. She showed us how tea was made. First, 3 teaspoons of sugar, then cream. Lastly, dunk soft buttered rolls into the steamy liquid and watch the yellow swirls melt into the white cream.

Lunch. 1955. My best friend, Marie lived in a multi-family house with her grandmother, who had her specialties too. I’d go to her house for lunch occasionally and we’d eat spaghetti warmed up in butter and sauce until it was sticky. Or sometimes, she’d cut pork fat into kernels. We’d pop in the salty crunchy fat into our mouths like popcorn.

Dinner. 1956. Our new home in New Jersey. In my immediate family there were 4 of us, 3 with double chins. My one brother, your uncle Peter, was a rebel and avoided meals. He didn’t have a double chin. He was thin and handsome and all the girls at our new school wanted to meet him. Of course, I was fat, tall, and permed and usually called fatso. Or, fat bathtub. Never, ever understood what that meant. Ugh.

A lot of activity in the New Jersey house centered around the kitchen. Everyone congregated there, talking while my mother cooked. Our favorite food was fried chicken, which was fantastic. To this day I have never tasted fried chicken that beat my mother’s. MMMM… Deep pots of fat with floating sizzling chicken.

It took a long time to cook and talk. Dinner was often late, and when I complained I was getting hungry my mother would suggest buttering bread and putting gravy on it to hold us off. I ate buttered bread with gravy while I waited to eat the deep friend chicken. Really. That is how we ate.

SURPRISE. 2008. Mom has diabetes. At first, it scared me. I learned that I was probably eating 2-3 times more carbohydrates and fat than my body could process at one time. So, while I wasn’t overweight like my diabetic mother and grandmother had been, I looked older than I was. The extra carbs were turned to sugar which went into my bloodstream. The trouble is that oxygen is supposed to be in our bloodstream, not sugar.

Once I learned how to change my diet and got over the shock, I found that eating right really really isn’t that hard. I just took it one day at a time, and I had to re-teach myself how to eat. The food culture I grew up with certainly didn’t hold the answers. My new eating style felt like a game of choices. I can still have a lot of great foods, just not all of them in large quantities all of the time. I have to choose.

Hey, it gives me something frivolous and colorful to think about…counting strawberries, splitting my bananas in half so has not to overwhelm my body with sugar (even the natural kind!), savoring a few orange wedges. I discovered I don’t even like gravy. Give me olive oil and lemon juice. In moderation, of course.

Trust

2009-07-29T21:53:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is pretty frightening. The LA Times published a piece recently titled Dialysis patients at risk from 'enhanced' meats. Apparently, two doctors from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey found that poorly labeled meat products in supermarkets can contain additives which are dangerous for dialysis patients.

Now, this might seem like an overly specific gripe, but hear me out.

Imagine your kidney have failed, maybe from Diabetes actually, and you are on dialysis. Since your body can no longer regulate the compounds circulating around in your blood properly, you are very vulnerable. You must rely on a dialysis machine to remove certain substances - extra phosphorus and potassium, for example.

You are most likely going to great lengths to monitor your diet and eat in a way that will keep your fragile body in balance. And, how are you going about that? Well, you are probably shopping at your local market, eating the foods your doctor suggests, and above all reading the labels of everything you consume.

Stop there.

You are reading the labels on the foods you buy and eat to make sure you are not going to create a dangerous imbalance in your now unregulated blood stream. Ok. So, you are putting a great deal of trust in the hands of the people who produce and label the food you buy. You are trusting that somewhere along the line your government has (1) required food companies to label their products with everything that you need to know and (2) enforced the labeling requirements to insure that the food companies actually follow through and do what they are required to do.

Well, Dr. Richard A. Sherman and Dr. Ojas Mehta of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey give us reason to think otherwise. They found that 8 of 25 random samples of meat and poultry plumped up with additives to make the meat more attractive (the term used was "enhanced") were not labeled properly.

In this case the improper labeling was highlighted because it posed a specific risk to dialysis patients. Managing a body with failed kidneys is hard enough already; having to worry that foods are not properly labeled or vetted before they hit the supermarket shelves should not have to be an additional concern.

Zoom out even more. In the context of what seems to be a growing number of food scares (think spinach, tomatoes, PEANUTS) this evidence of failed regulation and labeling is disconcerting.

Supermarkets carry massive amounts of processed foods. Lots of them that we all know are highly processed contain labels. Those labels can be really hard to read and understand, but at least we are on our guard when it comes to the foods they describe. Someone who must carefully monitor their diet would hopefully be aware that processed foods should be approached with caution. But what about foods that we don't consider to be "processed"? Foods that we don't approach with our guard up like meat, or eggs, or fruits or vegetables?

What if you are trying very hard to monitor your diet because you have failed kidneys, and your doctor says that chicken is ok for you to eat, and then it turns out that the chicken you trusted all these channels and safety checkpoints to deliver to you contains harmful ingredients that aren't even on the label? Ouch.

This specific example fits into the context of a larger problem. Can we really trust the big companies and supermarkets that get the food to our neighborhood stores to have our best interest at heart? Can we really be sure that the person who runs the huge poultry company 3,000 miles away from us cares that our loved one has failed kidneys and depends on proper food labeling to stay alive? I guess we can't.

With food producers so far removed from food consumers and with so little known about the health implications of processed and "enhanced" food products in the long term, eating in America today is fraught with danger.

I am immensely frustrated that even people who are overcoming massive barriers to make a real effort to watch what they eat might still be in danger. It seems that even being conscientious about food, consulting your doctor, and reading labels is not good enough anymore.

I don't know about you, but I am sticking to the Farmers' Market where I can feel at least a bit better about the ingredients in my food, and I'm continuing to steer clear of meat. Most vegetables don't have incorrect ingredients labels, at least. And while I do not pretend that Farmers' Markets are the perfect solution to safer food (soil and growing methods are always still a concern), at least my food producer has to look me in the eye when I thank him and skip off with a bag full of his peaches.

Cigarettes and chocolate milk...

2009-07-27T22:55:00.000-07:00

I found another article which draws a parallel between cigarette smoking an obesity. This comparison continues to be very intriguing to me whenever it pops up.

Smoking cigarettes, like eating a poor diet, is a bad behavior that negatively impacts our health.

Those of us that are smokers tend to wind up getting very sick and requiring treatment that costs our health care system, and thus our fellow tax payers, a great deal of cash. Similarly, the health consequence of obesity and related issues such as diabetes and heart disease are majorly straining the already floundering American health care.

For decades, billions of dollars went into making smoking not only socially acceptable but glamorous and sexy. I can't count how many times an adult around my parent's age has told me about the days when everyone smoked, when no one even knew smoking was a bad thing, when doctors endorsed certain brands of cigarettes as better than others. The same can be said of the Big Food industry, which has also spent billions and billions of dollars developing and marketing highly processed, sugar loaded products and making us think that eating them will somehow make us sexy. Just as changing the culture of smoking was challenging because the tobacco industry was so powerful, so has changing our food culture proved difficult in the face of food industry stakeholders. As Ellen Goodman says in her article, the culture of overweight America, like the culture of the American addiction to tobacco, "is not some collective collapse of national willpower, but a business plan."

Clearly, as Goodman also admits, the smoking/obesity comparison is not perfect. It all but ignores the barriers to healthy food access for low-income people which I have discussed in this blog, which suggest that smoking is a much more voluntary activity than consuming bad food.

Still, what interests me is the fact that in a matter of a few decades smoking cigarettes has fallen off of its pedestal. No longer is this bad habit a perfectly socially acceptable, openly admired practice. Once we discovered just how unhealthy it was, we slowly but surely shifted our societal view of smoking. We were up against one hell of a big, rich, and powerful industry, and it didnt' happen right away, but we did it. People still smoke, of course. But, they feel guilty about it. Our views have certainly changed.

I would really like to look at what made that shift possible, and see what parts of the anti-tobacco smoking movement might also work in an effort to make certain food consumption habits taboo as well.

Here is what Ellen Goodman has to say in her article "Is the public turning against big food?" :

Michael Osbun / Tribune Media Services

By ELLEN GOODMAN

Published: Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 5:54 p.m.

What caught my eye was not just the ashtray sitting forlornly on the yard-sale table. It was the sign that marked it “vintage,” as if we needed to label this relic of midcentury America.

Click to enlarge

Ellen Goodman

Ashtrays that once graced every airline armrest, coffee table and office have gone the way of spittoons. Today the car’s cigarette lighter is used to juice up the cell phone. Ask any restaurant for the smoking section, and you’ll be shown the doorway.

If I had to pick the year attitudes changed, it would 1994, when seven CEOs of Big Tobacco came before Congress and swore that nicotine wasn’t addictive. A lobby too big to fail and too powerful to oppose began to lose clout. Smokers are no longer seen as sexy and glamorous but as the addicted dupes.

I don’t know that we will ever have such a dramatic moment in the annals of Big Food. But I have begun to wonder whether this is the summer when the (groaning) tables have turned on the obesity industry.

Now that two-thirds of Americans are overweight, the lethal effects of fat are catching up to those of smoke. We regularly hear the cha-ching of obesity costs in the health care debate. And we are beginning to see that Overweight America is not some collective collapse of national willpower, but a business plan.

A measure of the moment is “Food Inc.,” a documentary chronicling the costs to the land, worker and customer of a food industry that’s more grim factory than sylvan farm. A system that makes it cheaper to buy fast food than fresh food.

A more personal measure is David Kessler’s best-seller, “The End of Overeating,” which is both a thinking person’s diet book and an investigation into an industry that wants us to eat more.

The former head of the FDA had crusaded against smoking, but found himself helpless before a chocolate-chip cookie. So this yo-yo dieter set out to discover what exactly we’re up against.

Kessler is a scientist, not a conspiracy theorist. But he writes about how the food industry has learned to produce “hyperpalatable combinations of sugar, fat and salt” that not only appeal to us but “have the capacity to rewire our brains, driving us to seek out more and more of those products.”

And if words that Kessler uses like “craveability” and “conditioned hypereating” sound exaggerated, he takes you to an industry meeting where a food scientist on a panel called “Simply Irresistible” offers tips on “spiking” the food to make people keep eating. We eat more when more is on the plate. We eat more when snacks are ubiquitous, when flavors are layered on and marketed as “eatertainment.” As one food executive admitted to Kessler, “Everything that has made us successful as a company is the problem.”

Sometimes it seems that our consumer society sets up the same conflict again and again. Sophisticated marketing campaigns hard-sell everything from sex and cigarettes to the 1,010-calorie Oreo Chocolate Sundae Shake at Burger King. And we’re told to stay abstinent or tobacco-free or skinny by resisting them. We are even promised “Guiltless Grill” entrees at Chili’s that can weigh in at almost 750 calories and are only guilt-free when compared to an order of Texas cheese fries that tip the scales at 1,920 calories.

The analogy between Big Tobacco and Big Food is imperfect. You can’t quit eating or wear a food patch. We are also quite torn between “size acceptance” — a fight against the fat bias that has even been aimed at the new surgeon general nominee’s waistline — and criticizing fat as a health risk.

But if the campaign against smoking provides a model, it’s in the effort to label restaurant foods and expose the tactics of Big Food. It’s also in recasting the folks who bring us bigger food, drinks and snacks as obesity dealers. As Kessler writes, “The greatest power rests in our ability to change the definition of reasonable behavior. That’s what happened with tobacco — the attitudes that created the social acceptability of smoking shifted.” Are we the addicted dupes of the Frappuccino? The honchos at McDonald’s may never confess how the Big Mac made us bigger, and the food scientists at Frito-Lay may not explain why we “can’t eat just one” potato chip. But maybe this will be the year when an entree of chicken quesadillas with bacon, mixed cheese, ranch dressing and sour cream — 1,750 calories — begins to look just a little bit more like an ashtray.

Ellen Goodman is a columnist for the Boston Globe.

On Eating Alone

2009-07-26T09:39:00.001-07:00

The social aspect of eating is an incredibly complex and, to me, interesting element of the food access equation. So far I have written about negative group eating culture, but what about eating alone? I live by myself, so I wind up eating alone most of the time. I thought this was worth investigating.

In general I find that I don't mind eating alone. In some regards it has helped me to be healthier.
I have complete control over the food that is in my apartment. There is no one else here to buy foods that will sabotage me; none of that "I don't buy this crap but it is in the house so I wind up eating it" excuse. My will power only has to go as far as the grocery store or Farmers' Mark, and that is not too hard. I am also free of all of the possible negative social pressures that are a part of eating with other people. No one offers me junk food at home, no one indulges in bad eating habits in front of me thus tempting me to do the same.

When I eat by myself, I am alone with the food I chose to buy and my eating habits, for better or for worse. This weekend I have had some very positive social eating experiences, and it made me realize that eating alone may not be all it is cracked up to be.

When I eat alone, there is no negative social eating pressure, but there is no positive social eating pressure either. Solo eating is also somewhat depressing. It becomes cruder. All the ritual and fanfare is sucked out and it becomes more about filling the belly than enjoying cuisine. When I'm alone, for example, I sometimes eat out of the pan because I don't want to wash an extra plate. Wow. That is so depressingly practical, to eat with more consideration for the dishes that will need to be washed than the eating experience itself.

I also tend to read or flip through a catalogue while I eat when I am alone. That means I am distracted and not focusing on my food in a way that will help me register that I am full.

I get lazy too. I won't heat leftovers up sometimes, I'll just eat them cold. They are much less satisfying that way. So, when I am done eating I still feel unfulfilled because the eating experience has not been pleasurable, and I go back for more regardless of weather or not I need more food. When I am alone I am more likely to "graze" through an entire mealworth of food. I'll eat standing up. I'll eat with the fridge door open. I would never do that kind of thing if I didn't live and eat alone.

This weekend's eating experiences were different. Quite healthy in fact.

The first positive experience happened on Friday night. After I loaded up on produce from the Farmers' Market, I hit the kitchen and started cooking for two. I made kale in a sauce of garlic, cumin, and tomatoes. I made a salad of various colorful tomatoes with red onion, cracked pepper, and lemon basil. I steamed some brown rice in Miso broth, and then my friend Rashi arrived. We ate and chatted. It was leisurely and social. I noticed that I ate much more slowly because I was focused more on catching up with my friend than I was on shoveling food into my mouth. Rashi is a slow and patient eater, and I found myself matching her pace. She did not go back for seconds after her plate was clean, and so neither did I.

If she had not been there I would have engaged in one of my bad eating-alone food habits: eating more as I pack up the food and wash the dishes. Since I cook in bulk portions most of the time, there is always a lot of food around on cooking days. I find that as I return to the counter to wash my dishes and put all that extra food in Tupperware containers I tend to eat a few more spoonfuls of everything. Before I know it I have eaten too much.

The second good eating experience happened yesterday. I ate a delicious and healthy lunch with a family and their friends at a lovely beach house. The eating environment was very pleasant; we were outside on a terrace near the ocean, about 10 of us gathered around the table. People were quite relaxed and happy. There were bowls of salad, fruit, vegetables, and burger condiments all over the table. Again, the pace of eating was slower because everyone was chatting. I was also aware that everyone at the table ate very reasonable portions and didn't continually go back for more. I followed their lead. Eating more food, in most cases, required asking others at the table to pass the food around. If I was going to eat more fruit salad, everyone was going to notice; I had to announce it with a loud "Could you please pass me the fruit?" I found this simple fact deterred me from eating too much. If the other 10 people at the table have totally stopped eating and you are continually asking them to pass you more food, you feel embarassed. In this case the social pressure was not about over eating, it was about reasonable portions and eating slowly.

This meal really made me realize how positive eating around a table with ones family can be if your family members have healthy, reasonable eating habits. Especially when it comes to small children, eating as a family can be a crucial teaching environment about food consumption. This page from the Washington State University offers a good breakdown of the pros and cons of eating together with one's family.

My own experience suggests that while eating alone can be beneficial for me, it is also probably a good idea to make an effort to eat with others more often. It will slow me down and allow me to observe and hopefully adopt the positive eating habits of others. I also understand how a single low-income senior citizen living alone on food stamps might wind up with some eating habits that reflect a lonely, depressing eating environment. Or, how a 10 year old girl who is put in front of the television with a bag of chips before dinner might eat the whole thing.

1/2 Cup of Food is Not Much

2009-07-23T21:16:00.000-07:00

Vegetables Examples of 1 serving:

Examples of 2 servings:

Examples of 3 servings:

Before I launch into the Diabetic on Food Stamps scenario and try to stick to the portions above, I want to take a look at what an average eating day is for me.

This week has been a very average eating week:

I am eating a vegetarian diet.
I am working with fruits and vegetables bought at last Friday's Farmers' Market (about $25 worth) and a few items from A-Grocery Warehouse (about $12).
Tomorrow is shopping day again, and I have a surplus (as usual). I still have enough for about 5 meals left. Since I have extra food, I will spend even less this week to even it out.
While this is not a perfect quote, I estimate that I have consumed about $30 worth of groceries this week.
On one occasion I did go out to lunch. The salad and Tadzhik cost me $11. The splurge of the week. It was nice. Worth it.
I have actually hovered pretty comfortably around the $30/week food budget, minus that one time I ate out. This has become typical for me. Now that I have learned how to eat this cheaply, I haven't really gone back to blowing $70/week a Whole Foods. The only difference is that I do go out once or twice a week for cheap meals now that I am not doing the Vegan on Food Stamp Challenge.

Within this average week, today was an average day:

For breakfast I ate 1/2 cup (1 serving) of oatmeal with a teaspoon of natural honey and some cinnamon. This was a carefully measured serving since oatmeal requires the right ratios of oats to water. I ate it at my desk because I had been in a rush in the morning.
At around 10am I accepted my cubicle-mate's offer of "Chocolate Roasted Almonds." I am not proud of this decision. First of all, I have a thing against any food that comes in a 100 Calorie Pack. That tends to mean right of the bat that it is: (1) In a pack. So, packaged and processed food. (2) Probably bad enough for me that I shouldn't eat a lot of it. And, (3) Likely addicting in the "Once you pop you just can't stop" kind of snack food way. Best to steer clear. But, I didn't. I ate one of those 100 Calorie Packs. And I felt guilty.
For lunch I had about 1 1/2 cups of brown rice and 1 1/2 cups of lentils with curry, almonds, spinach, and some other spices. I probably didn't need to eat that much, but I did because that was how much was in my Tupperware containers.
I ate about 10 Organic baby carrots with (I am guessing here) 1/2 cup of Ceder's Original Hummus. That was at about 3:30pm.
At 4:30 I accepted a Watermelon flavored Jolly Rancher candy. Lots of sugar all over my teeth. Whatever. Everyone else was having one.
I got home from Boxing at 8:30. By 9pm I had eaten: 1 1/2 cups of zucchini cooked in a bit of olive oil and soy sauce, half a steamed ear of corn, 3 bites of lentils (same ones as lunch - my fridge is stocked) and 1/2 cup of brown rice. I kind of wanted more food but I kicked myself out of the kitchen.

Starches Examples of 1 serving:

Examples of 2 servings:

Examples of 3 servings:

How did I do? I am going to look at how many servings I had of each of the items listed on the Meal Plan guide chart from my last post, and I am using the serving size guidelines posted on that same page (some of which are pictured in this post):

Vegetables: About 4 cups or 8 servings
Starches: About 2 cups or 6 servings
Fruits: Wait, Watermelon Jolly Ranchers don't count as fruit? ZERO
Milks: ZERO
Meat and Meat Substitutes: ZERO
Fats: 4 servings (Olive oil for cooking + the crap junk food)

So, based on my meal plan chart that is way too many vegetables (8 not 3 servings), on point with starches, too many fats/junk food items, and no fruits, dairy, or meat substitutes. I am not sure if the lack of fruit, dairy, or meat substitutes is necessarily a bad thing. And, I don't think that too many vegetables to compensate for these other categories is a bad thing either. What do you think, nutritionist readers?

I think I'm going to be ok on this diet. It will be hard for me to always say no to sweet things; I have a sweet tooth. I'm going to have to watch my starches too. I was quite close today. I am concerned though, about how many times I am going to have to say no to food that people offer me or avoid dangerous/tempting food environments like office birthdays etc. How isolating will this be?

Why Diabetes?

2009-07-21T21:00:00.000-07:00

My next challenge is quickly approaching. I have chosen to explore barriers to accessing healthy and sustainable food on a budget through the lens of a disease that is common among minority populations in America: Diabetes.

The American Diabetes Association tells us that 23.6 million people in the United States, or 8% of the population, have diabetes. The disease is alarmingly more common each year. From 2005-2007, the total prevalence of diabetes increased 13.5%.

About 95% of people with Diabetes have type 2 or late onset diabetes. Type 2 Diabetes is strongly linked to a sedentary life style, poor diet, race/ethnicity, and obesity . In fact, the International Diabetes Federation states that 80% of people with type 2 Diabetes are overweight.

Spending on Diabetes is also a major concern. Right now, lawmakers in America are struggling to create a better health care system. I think they need to take a hard look at what is going on with Diabetes and the broken food system that is so rapidly increasing its prevalence.

Last Fall news outlets all over America highlighted a study by researchers from the University of Chicago and Stanford University. The study found that the cost of drugs for Type 2 Diabetes cared had DOUBLED from 2001-2007. We are developing and prescribing new drugs to treat Diabetes, and spending more and more money on them even though not everyone seems to agree about just how effective the new drugs are. Another study by the American Diabetes Association study titled Economic Costs of Diabetes in the U.S. in 2007 concludes that the total national cost of Diabetes in 2007 was $174 billion. That $174 billion is comprised of $116 billion in medical costs, and $58 billion in lost productivity resulting from the disease.

That is a hell of a lot of money spent on a disease that is, in most cases, preventable. I want to explore just how difficult it is to stick to a Diabetes Menu Plan on a SNAP/Food Stamp budget. Nicole Laverty, Dietitian at Manna, a non-profit organization in Philadelphia which delivers nourishing meals to low-income people with life threatening diseases, suggested several great resources to me. I found the following on the website for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

How much should I eat each day?

Have about 1,200 to 1,600 calories a day if you are a

small woman who exercises
small or medium-sized woman who wants to lose weight ** This is me
medium-sized woman who does not exercise much

Choose this many servings from these food groups to have 1,200 to 1,600 calories a day:
6 starches	2 milks
3 vegetables	4 to 6 ounces meat and meat substitutes
2 fruits	up to 3 fats

Now, clearly in order to follow the above chart I am going to have to investigate just what a "serving" of my favorite foods really looks like. Serving sizes in America are much too large, and while I eat healthful foods, I know that small portions are not my strong point.

In preparation for this challenge I'm going to start measuring my food. I bet I'll be in for a shock!

List

2009-07-20T21:20:00.000-07:00

After about 4 hours on hold at AT&T (where I jammed out to "your-call-is-very-important-to-us" Musak the whole time) my Internet is back up and running. I haven't blogged in a week so this is a bit overwhelming. So much to say.

When I am overwhelmed I find making lists helps me out, so this post will be a bit list-ish. Hope you don't mind. Since we last spoke:

1. I have fallen in love with my local Farmers' Market. For awhile I found making it to the Farmers' Market was bit of a pain. The one closest to me was only open on Fridays from 3-7pm, and getting to it required me to skip my boxing workout. I wasn't sure if it was much cheaper than A-Grocery Warehouse, and it was generally difficult to get myself to go. Despite all those deterrents, I finally made a public commitment on this blog to work harder at buying local and Organic, and during this period of Internet malfunction induced silence I have indeed followed through. Three Fridays in a row I have made it to the Farmers' Market. I am now officially hooked.

The biggest draw, for me, is that I am actually beginning to establish relationships with the people who produce my food. I have talked to the soap maker about how his mother taught him to make soap and candles when he was a child growing up in Mexico. After 3 weeks, he remembers me and knows my name. I have befriended the hunched little Jewish man who sells plumbs and peaches, and I let him convince me to buy fresh prunes this week. I'd never tried them before, but after a few taste tests I was sold. I talked to the girl who sold me Lemon Basil last week about how I incorporated her fresh herbs into my cooking, and I bought Cinnamon Basil this time around on her suggestion. I told the honey vendor about my seasonal allergy problem, and she convinced me that a teaspoon of local honey a day will help my immune system build up a resistance to local pollen. She told me to report back to her through the coming months about my allergy problems; she wants to know if her local honey improves my health. Wow. My local food producer actually cares about my health. Imagine that.

Granted, there are some things I still can't buy at the Farmers' Market. For those items I do have to trek to A-Grocery Warehouse. But, after I have begun to befriend my local farmers I don't mind the extra trip. It is seriously worth it for me to put in that extra effort to make it to the Farmers' Market in my neighborhood, and shopping there hasn't even broken the bank. I am still comfortably within a $40/week or so budget for food. I think I spent around $30 this week so far, and I have no doubt that I can make it to next Friday on the food I have right now.

2. I have been inspired by several other people working hard to make their communities healthier. First, there is Elenor Brownn, founder of Sisters Staying Healthy - a group devoted to supporting black women in their quest to improve their health. After she learned that black women were among the most unhealthy population in America, Elenor embarked on a crusade to organize her peers and help them get healthy. Click on her name to read the LA Times article which tells her story.

Then, there is the 12 year old boy who I posted about earlier today. His blog, Happy Chickens Lay Healthy Eggs, is a fantastic resource. It makes me feel genuinely optimistic about the future of our food culture. He posted trailers about the HOME project movie, which is really worth seeing as well.

Finally, I have talked to several people in my office who are making a concerted effort to improve their diet. This may seem like a little thing, but it isn't. In the span of 1 week I have talked to three of my co-workers about their efforts to get heathier. I am not sure if they have chosed to talk to me about their own efforts because they know about my blog and my Food Stamp Challenge, but either way it has inspired me. One person has sworn off soda. Another is counting her calories and cutting back portions. Talking to people in my immediate community about their efforts to get healthier has inspired me to keep on track and continue to improve my own diet. I am all the more convined that the food choices of our family members and co-workers have a major influence on how we eat and weather or not we succeed in making healthy choices.

3. I have done some major research about Diabetes. As soon as I run out of the food I bought at this week's market, I am going to embark on a 1 week, $30 Diabetes Challenge. I have been overwhelmed by the amount of resources out there for Dibetics. I am glad it is out there, but it also reminds me how prevelant Diabetes truly is. From my research thus far, it seems like my Diabetes challenge will be all about vegetables, whole grains, limited intake of sweets and fruits and above all PORTION CONTROL.

This is going to be very difficult for me. I am good at eating veggies and whole grains. I am good at avoiding junk food. I am NOT good at eating small portions. I imagine that measuring everything out to insure that I do not take in too much of any food at once will be difficult. Stay tuned!

Back in action!

2009-07-20T19:49:00.000-07:00

WOOOO HOOOO my internet is FIXED.

I am cooking a huge batch of lentils and will do a full post after. Dancing to music, drinking Sangria made w/ plums and peaches bought at the Echo Park Farmers' Market.

For now, I want to share my new favorite blog.

12 year food activist. Awesome. His motto is : Happy Chickens Lay Healthy Eggs. Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/HappyChickens.

Truck Farm

2009-07-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

The Internet in my apartment is completely out of commission so I have not been able to post. I am working to get this technical glitch taken care of this weekend, and in the mean time I am researching for the Diabetic on $30/week scenario (which will start next week assuming my Internet is up and running). If anyone has any resources they recommend for creating a good Diabetic Meal Plan, please pass them along in the comments section.

For now, I want to share this quick video clip with you. I love this idea. If you don't have a roof to farm on, why not try the bed of an old pick up truck? Urban Farming at its most creative!

Money Talks

2009-07-13T22:57:00.001-07:00

BIG and exciting news.

Many of you may have read a post I wrote in early June for the website change.org. In this post I explored why so few SNAP/Food Stamp recipients redeem their benefits at Farmers' Markets in their neighborhoods, despite the fact that many local governments have gone to great lengths to make sure the markets accept them.

While the benefits of shopping at Farmers' Markets are many, they are often not enough to outweigh issues relating inconvenience and unfamiliarity, which drive low-budget shoppers away. Many of the benefits, such as supporting local farmers, protecting the environment and avoiding pesticides are just not as valuable or important to people who are wondering where their next meal will come from and are living in neighborhoods plagued by gang violence. My own experience living on a tight food budget proved to me that there would have to be some major incentives to make Farmers' Market shopping more attractive to America's urban poor.

Enter the Wholesome Wave Foundation.

Did someone say major incentives?

Well, how about DOUBLING the value of SNAP/Food Stamp benefits when they are redeemed for Farmers' Market produce? I know it would get me to go to a Farmers' Market. That is for sure.

Through various funding sources, the Wholesome Wave Foundation has been able to offer SNAP/Food Stamp recipients this incredible deal. When the money available for food is doubled, waking up early on a Saturday to hit the Farmers Market is suddenly worth it.

What I really love about this program is the fact that it speaks to what really motivates people: MONEY. Education about nutrition and the impact that individual shopping choices have on the environment and small farmers is all well and good. It might persuade people to alter their behavior. But, the truth is that financial incentives will always be much stronger than the slow patient persuasion of education and outreach. The Double Value Coupon Program provides a no-nonsense incentive that is hard to ignore. It is rare to see a social program cut to the chase so well. It seems very raw, and I really like that.

I have no doubt that this program will motivate many more people to shop at Farmers Markets. I hope that a few months of doubled benefits will be enough to get people hooked on Farmers Market shopping so that they return even without the powerful financial incentive. People get into routines in life, and food shopping is no exception. The misconceptions and worries that often prevent people from changing their patterns can be cleared up by introducing new ways of doing things, but you have to make it worth it for individuals to part with their comfortable routine. No one really likes venturing into the unknown all that much at first. It is scary. It is risky. It is, well, unknown. So, doubling people's money if they're willing to try something new is really a great idea.

At first I had trouble going to Farmers' Markets because of the limited hours and extra effort it required. I recently pledged to work a bit harder to prioritize local and organic buying, and I have thus wound up at the Echo Park Farmers' Market the last two Fridays in a row. Even without a doubled dollar, I am falling in love with going to the Market. Sure, it is annoying that I have to worry about parking meters and can only shop during a three hour window. But, I am starting to get to know the farmers and the produce quality is incredible. I find that I am starting to get hooked. I am forming a good habit. All I needed was a kick in the pants to get myself there.

I can't help but imagine what would happen this type of thing happened all across our food system. What if a salad was cheaper than a fast-food burger? What if the price of local, in season produce plummeted while the price of Oreos and Wheat Thins stayed the same? What if we did't have to try quite so hard to eat healthfully and sustainably? It just reminds me how truly messed up it is that calorie dense, nutrient poor, highly processed foods are so cheap and convenient in America. The food industry has made it so incredibly easy to fail at keeping yourself healthy, especially if you don't have much time or money to spend on quality food. While I am excited that this type of incentive is being offered, I also can't help but be a bit sad that it is necessary to incentivize healthy food habits so heavily.

Chinatown: Food as Medicine

2009-07-11T17:43:00.001-07:00

I just got back from my first visit to Chinatown in Los Angeles.

In LA, unlike San Francisco or New York, Chinatown seems to get lost in the list of interesting ethnic neighborhoods, trumped by Little Tokyo, Koreatown, Little Ethiopia and any of the colorful Hispanic boroughs. Nonetheless, I found this little area east of Downtown a very interesting experience in food culture.

My first observation was that grocery stores were very different. Today, most large American grocery stores have several elements: they sell food, household goods, plenty of toiletries and over the counter drugs, and might have one of those "Seasonal" aisles in the middle with themed items depending on the time of year. Some have full service pharmacies, but in most cases the filling of prescriptions and the buying of Tylenol is left to the big pharmacy chains.

Not so in the Chinese grocery stores I saw today. These were relatively small, neighborhood establishments without a huge amount of floor space to sell their products. Yet, again and again I noticed that each grocery store had an entire section (and team of staff) devoted to healing herbs and teas. The pharmacy was in the grocery store. Every time.

This is probably because Traditional Chinese Medicine puts substantial emphasis on the relationship between diet and health. I am no Chinese Medicine expert, but I do know that experts in this area view food as a vital tool in the quest to restore balance and harmony to organ systems and thus cure illness.

The thought that a diet which is out of balance, unhealthy, or generally taxing to the body might be the root cause of a lot of human ailments does make a lot of sense. It is logical to wed food and medicine, as these Chinatown grocery stores seem to do. But, when Super Stop & Shop puts food and medicine together it is a white or metal pharmacy counter stuck as far away from the produce section as possible, dispensing transparent orange bottles with neat white labels. A lot of these transparent orange bottles contain pills to counteract or cure the sicknesses that result eating too much of the "food" items that take up the rest of the store.

When Chinese super markets put food and medicine together it seems to be much more organic. There are herbs in clear jars right next to the teas, and bulk bins of medicinal roots next to bulk bins of rice. The distinction between food and medicine is blurred. The whole thing seems more fluid. Food and medicine and mixed together because they are in harmony with one another.

I also noticed that the proportion of processed and packed foods was very small. Instead of dominating the entire center of the store, processed foods were in one tiny section at the end of a row. Most of the items sold in the Chinatown grocer were raw food items.

Further down the street I found another type of food shop: the candy store. This was really incredible. Way to the back of the shop there was a small section of items that I recognized as "Candy" - chocolates, highly processed candy bars, a few American name brands. The rest of the shop was filled with huge glass drums of dried fruits or sea creatures. You could get dried spicy crabs, shaved dried octopus that looked kind of like shaved coconut, dried lychee, pickled mangoes... any type of natural sweet snack you could imagine. You could taste everything: every single one of these drums had a cup inside with bit sized pieces and toothpicks. (Take that, Whole Foods.) There were no packages with name brands or advertisements. No nutrition labels. No ingredients labels because the name on the jar - "Pickled Mango" - said it all. The place was really bustling. I couldn't get over how different the selection was from the candy aisle at Walgreens.

Quite a culture shock. Right here in my home town.

Obesity: Gobbling California Whole

2009-07-09T19:45:00.000-07:00

Today, the California Center for Public Health Advocacy released a study titled The Economic Costs of Overweight, Obesity and Physical Inactivity Among California Adults – 2006.

The CCPHA worked with a consulting firm to estimate just how much obesity, overweight, and physical inactivity cost the state of California in health care expenditures and lost productivity.

So, just how much does obesity cost the Golden State?

CCPHA says 41 billion dollars.

I am wary of the category of "lost productivity" as this seems very difficult to accurately measure. So, lets pretend we cut out the cost of obesity, overweight and inactivity in terms of lost productivity and just focus on the health care costs of these three conditions. The number is still pretty astounding: $20.7 billion in health care costs associated with the three conditions, according to this report.

The state of California started issuing IOUs this week. It is dealing with a budget deficit of about $24.3 billion right now, and counting. Be careful, it would be an over simplification to juxtapose those two numbers and say that California's budget deficit could be solved if everyone the state shaped up and got healthy. But, considering the current budget deficit does put that $20.7 billion number in perspective.

Right now people are panicking about a $24.3 billion budget deficit. That number is high enough to be a panic number. So, I don't think it is too much to say, at least, that any public health issue that is costing us anything in the ballpark of $20 billion (and remember, I am cutting the reported cost estimate of this study in HALF already) is cause for major concern.

The exciting thing about this study is that it makes a good case for some of the preventative measures such as education and social services to reduce obesity that are often cut when funding is tight. It seems that it might really be worth it to invest in creating better food environments and helping people learn to be healthier.

Obesity is really a tough issue though. In one sense, health problems resulting from obesity and overweight can be viewed as voluntarily begotten, like the problems that result from cigarette smoking. NPR ran a story today about the fact that states all over the nation are hiking cigarette or "vice" taxes; apparently this tends to be a popular fund raising tactic in a recession. Mississippi State Rep. Cecil Brown is all for taxing people whose voluntary bad health choices drain the state coffers. He was quoted as saying:

"The Medicaid budget in our state is just about to eat us alive, and a substantial number of people who are on Medicaid are smokers. If people are going to choose to smoke and it's a voluntary activity, and they are costing the other taxpayers in the state money, then they should contribute to the cost."

Does the same go for obesity? Is obesity really a condition arrived at by purely voluntary activity?

My own experience living on a low budget would suggest that it isn't, at least not in all cases. Sourcing healthy and affordable food is quite challenging, and many low income neighborhoods do not support good food choices. As my blog has explored, the elements like time, money, culture, social conditioning, education, and geographical layout of food sources all come into play.

Whats more, the fact that obesity and poverty are very clearly linked suggests that obesity has quite a bit to do with lack of education and financial resources. But, I am not going to totally let the citizens of America and Los Angeles County (where the rates of financial costs of obesity, overweight, and inactivity were the highest) off the hook totally here. A portion of the obesity problem is also the result of laziness, apathy, lack of desire to change, and straight up over consumption of shit quality food items that people know are bad for them. We're at a point where we know Big Macs are too big and no good, but we're still in the drive through line, and that has to be addressed.

I would not say that obesity is voluntary, but it is a condition we can do something about. It is not a disease without a cure. It is the direct result of poor diet and lack of exercise. Punto. As far as I'm concerned, this is just another call to action across the board from dining rooms to urban planning maps and legislative offices.

Variety

2009-07-08T18:44:00.000-07:00

While I am not technically in the middle of any On-Food-Stamps scenario right now, I have been trying to eat on an extremely tight budget for the past two weeks. (See my post "This is not a test.")

I am happy to report that I have done pretty well. Two weeks ago I made it through most of the week on about $11 worth of groceries and a few items already stored up in my cupboard. This week I have spent $20 and have more than enough food left to get me through the week. Apparently my 1 month, $31/week Vegan scenario really taught me the ins and outs of budget shopping, eh?

Hunger has not been an issue at all. In fact, sometimes I have eaten too much and been overly full. What is beginning to concern me is that my diet seems very out of balance.

In order to eat cheaply and within my dietary restrictions (I am a vegetarian), I have had to stick to a few simple and cheap foods.

On Sunday night of this week, for example, I cooked a huge batch of lentils with tomatoes, onions, garlic and a touch of miso. I also prepared about 6 servings of quinoa. I am a big fan of both of these foods, and I don't really mind eating them over and over again. I accept that food boredom is just sort of part of the picture if you want to save money.

What concerns me are the potential health implications of this lack of variety.

For 4 straight days now 1 of my meals has consisted entirely of well cooked and then reheated lentils and quinoa. Tomorrow will make day 5 of this meal.

Breakfast has had a bit more variety - toast with peanut butter and oatmeal, a banana on two days, and today a fried egg over quinoa.

For three dinners straight I have eaten the same Japanese Eggplant with spinach which I sauteed in olive oil and cumin.

All of these foods are pretty healthy. However, I am getting the exact same nutrients over and over. I am not eating anything raw or uncooked. While I am not a raw food diet die hard, I do know that cooking food decreases its nutrient value and that having some raw food in my diet is very important. My grain intake consists of qunioa, for the most part, again and again.

Here is my dilemma. I do have the ingredients in my fridge and in my cupboard to have more variety each day. I could have cooked a smaller batch of qunioa and made brown rice for a few days before returning to qunioa again, for example. But, variety would really cost me time.

Cooking in bulk saves me tons of time. I have eaten 5 lunches this week off of a single 3 hour lentil and quinoa cooking session on Sunday, and that extra time is very valuable. I am discovering that variety and bulk cooking do not go together.

I am really curious about the health implications of eating the same food over and over for a week at a time or longer.

Lentils and quinoa have been major staples for me for two weeks now. The combo is cheap, filling, low-fat and good for me. I have now become very familiar with my favorite method for preparing these foods, so cooking time is shorter. Me, and my lentils and quinoa have a routine and I like that. I doubt I will switch out lentils for beans next week; experimenting with a new food would slow me down. Suddenly I really understand how easy it is to get into a deep food rut. When you find something that is cheap, satisfying, and easy for you to prepare, it is very hard to diversify.

I am not a nutritionist, so I am not sure if my concern over lack of variety in this case is valid. I wonder, at what point does eating the same foods over and over negatively impact a person's health? I suppose it depends on the balance created by those foods, but I am finding that I am eating a huge proportion of cooked vegetables and whole grains. Not too much fruit. Hardly anything raw. Should I be both worried AND bored?

What Do Sub-Saharan Africa and South Central Los Angeles Have in Common?

2009-07-07T20:37:00.000-07:00

Malnutrition, apparently.

This past weekend, Dr. Cyril O. Enwonwu, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, wrote in to the Baltimore Sun pointing out that in some cases overweight children also suffer from malnutrition.

This excerpt draws a comparison between two 14-year-old boys, one suffering from malnutrition in Nigeria, the other suffering from the malnutrition in Baltimore:

Today, global health research tells us that malnutrition is as much about what we eat as what we do not; it is either a lack of adequate food or an overabundance of nutritionally bankrupt foods.

Take a 14-year-old African-American boy living in Baltimore. Like many Americans, he eats too much junk food, while watching hours of television or playing video games.

He knows he is obese. What he doesn't know is that his body is starving for omega–3 fatty acids and other essential nutrients like vitamins and minerals required for good development and health.

Now take a 14-year-old boy from Nigeria. He has poor, uneducated parents and has to share a small bowl of rice and legumes with his three siblings every day. He walks several miles to school daily, often in intense heat. He is emaciated and frequently endures pangs of hunger. For Nigerian children like this, malnutrition usually starts before they are born due to poor prenatal care.

They are an ocean apart, yet both boys suffer from malnutrition, ranging from undernutrition with resulting short stature and below normal weight for the Nigerian to overconsumption of high-fat foods with little or no exercise leading to obesity for the American.

Clearly, the overall quality of life for a low income American is much much higher than that of an impoverished Nigerian. If I had to choose between being an obese boy in Baltimore and a starving boy in Nigeria, I would pick a life in "Charm City" in a minute. This is in no way meant to compare the two situations overall.

What I am glad that Dr. Enwonwu pointed out is simply that the face of malnutrition is not necessarily that of an African child with a distended belly. Malnutrition is also the much too chubby kid in the housing projects of an American city. Malnutrition is a problem that I doubt many Americans would claim; it falls into the "that doesn't happen in my country" category.

Unfortunately, malnutrition does happen here, in one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations in the world. I guess our food system is indeed that broken. I am embarrassed.

A Big Fat F

2009-07-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

Today, the Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released the 6th annual version of their study called "F as in Fat, 2009."

Their findings?

Well, simply put, too many Americans are too fat. The obesity epidemic is threatening our health care system and the productivity of our country as a whole.

I guess this isn't really a surprise, but a few facts that blew me away:

Currently, two-thirds of American adults are either obese or overweight.
In 1991, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent. In 1980, the national average for adult obesity was 15 percent.
Childhood obesity rates have more than tripled since 1980.
9 of the 10 states with the highest rates of obese and overweight children are also states that rank as having the highest rates in poverty. (Ok, we know there is a correlation between poverty and obesity but that fact sure drives the point home, eh?)

I am just really having trouble getting my head around the fact that 2 out of every 3 adults in America have an obesity problem. In a lot of communities, that means, being overweight is not only socially acceptable but it is the norm. The physical health consequences of obesity are often talked about, but I am more concerned about what it says about our mental and emotional health. What is going on in our families and our communities when a health issue that is very preventable is so widespread?

To me, this is an outrageous problem. I'm pissed. But, I'm not sure where to direct that outrage.

Natalie pointed out a recent story for me that serves as a great analogy for my outrage direction dilemma. Recently, a Baltimore mother was charged with neglect when authorities deemed her 14 year old son's weight had become a major concern. The kid weighed 555 pounds.

That level of obesity, like the level of obesity in America as a whole, is crazy. But, who is at fault?

The mother? Maybe, but the poor lady worked multiple low wage jobs and probably didn't know how to handle her son's problem. She says that she couldn't make the many appointments that social service officials tried to make her attend to get her son's weight under control. She couldn't afford the gas.

The son? I mean, 14 is old enough to know when to stop, right? But then I think that the poor guy probably wasn't having an easy time with his mom gone all the time working these jobs to try to make ends meet. Maybe he was eating as a comfort. Maybe no one ever taught him how to address loneliness or emotional difficulties in a healthy way.

What about social service officials? They claim they tried to intervene but that the mother wouldn't cooperate. But what I want to know is, how realistic were the demands they placed on her given her level of poverty and lack of free time?

In the end, the blame for this kid's obesity, like our nation's, could go a lot of places. The full version of F as in Fat 2009 study calls primarily on the US Government to step in and take control of America's weight problem but I'm not totally convinced. While legislative reform is important, it can also be very slow and in this case might seem a bit too Big Brother if administered incorrectly.

I am still a fan of quiet dinner table revolutions. I think we might be able to see more tangible, personal change that strengthens our communities if we step up as individuals to lead by example in our various spheres of influence.

Lead a Meal-time Revolution

2009-07-05T15:10:00.000-07:00

The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research released a policy brief recently that suggests that parents' eating habits play a significant role in teen obesity.

The study, titled Teen Dietary Habits Related to Those of Parents, found that adolescents are more likely to eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day if their parents do. Contrarily, teens whose parents eat fast food or drink soda are more likely to do the same.

The study also pointed to very poor food environments in low-income areas as a major concern.

Read an abridged version of the findings here.

The overall theme of this study to me was that our environments have a major impact on what we eat. Bad food habits in family kitchens will lead us to bad food choices for all of the individuals in that family. And, if our neighborhood food culture centers around the liquor store on the corner we're probably not going to eat too well either. I am not surprised that this UCLA study has found that the eating habits of individuals, especially children and teens, are affected by the food environments that surround them.

I know I have found that I eat differently depending on who I am with and what type of environment I'm in. I also know that I have absorbed a great deal of information and social conditioning about food from my parents and my social network over the years. In my case most of this has been positive, luckily. But, if you are a 14 year old boy living in South Central Los Angeles this is likely not the case.

More likely you've been fed a lot of fast food by a mother who is struggling, alone, to hold down two jobs and feed you something, anything, when dinnertime rolls around. You probably haven't developed much of a taste for vegetables over the years, and you certainly don't know how to cook some of the weird stuff that shows up in that Farmers' Market that cropped up in your neighborhood last year. Most days after school you and your friends hit up the hot dog lady with the push cart of crackling greasy sausages outside your school. Maybe you go to the Mini-mart (which is the only place to buy food in walking distance of your house) to get chips or Coca-Cola. Even if your mom did pack you an organic apple for an after school snack, you'd be laughed at if you passed on Hot Cheetos to eat it.

Bad food environments and habits don't only exist in low-income urban areas, though. While poverty and obesity are very strongly linked, overweight and poor diet are problems that transcend class in America. Honestly, we're all pretty fat, and most of us aren't eating too well, weather we are poor or rich.

I grew up in a place very different from the food deserts in South Central that I often focus on in this blog. I grew up in a semi-rural, upper-class Connecticut town. While most of the food information I absorbed as a child was relatively positive, there were certainly some problems. I was greatly influenced by a culture of overeating in my house and among my peers. To this day I am still trying to get my portion sizes under control.

I was a child that grew up with a wealth of processed after school snacks - Fruit by the Foot! Pop-Tarts! Handi-Snacks! Dunk-a-roos! Those rolls of slice-and-bake cookies (we always just ate the dough and gave up on baking cookies). In the teenage years it was restaurants. My family and friends and I would go out to dinner pretty often, and we would eat until we were stuffed. Everyone would admit that they were very full, but we'd order a dessert to split anyway. Then we'd all moan and laugh about how overly-full we were; sometimes it was downright physically uncomfortable but totally socially acceptable. In the morning we'd all head to the gym or hit the trails to run off that 600 calorie dinner of Chilean sea bass on couscous followed by a "famous" flour-less chocolate cake. Next weekend, we'd do it again.

There was always this weird glut and guilt thing going on in my childhood food environment. No one was obese really, but there was a back-and-forth between habitual overeating and strict dieting. The concept of smaller controlled portions as a lifestyle wasn't really there. Instead of eating until I wasn't hungry anymore and then putting my fork down, I learned to eat until the food was gone or I was going to burst. I learned to eat too much and feel really guilty about food. Granted, urban food deserts are certainly more of a struggle, but my experience illustrates that even in upper-class rural Connecticut we absorb the bad food habits present in our environment.

This UCLA study gives me some real hope though. If people are so significanly impacted by the eating habits of those around them, then one individual's shift to a healthy diet can have a real impact in their social circle. (Enter Michael Jackson with "Man in the Mirror: "If you want to make the world a better place take a look at yourself and make that change..." - see previous post.)

I have heard many people tell me that they think it is stupid or futile to be a vegetarian or eat locally/healthfully themselves, because the problem of our food system is so big that one person's dietary choices make no real difference. They say that we need to change the way we farm and produce food, not the way we eat as individuals. That is too small and it doesn't matter. I think this is bogus. And, I think its a cop out for people who want to sound informed but don't want to deal with changing their diet. If that statement aliented you, I am sorry. But, that is the way I feel.

The UCLA study only makes me feel more strongly about this. Our eating habits have a major influence on how those around us eat. Think about how many people each of us interact with every day at home, school, and work. Every day we eat at least 3 meals, and in most cases we do that in the company of other people. So, every day we have 3 chances to lead by example and to open up the dialoge about food and the significance of what we eat.

Should every meal be a soap box lecture about sustainable food and healthy diet? Of course not. But, does one person's general eating habits have a major impact on their community? Yes. Is it lame to say that you keep eating meat and highly processed foods because your diet is insignificant in the grand scheme of things? Yes. Sorry. It is.

Personally, this study is pretty strong evidence that it is important for me to stick to my previous pledge to eat locally and sustainably more often. I am also going to make a real effort to break free of that over-eating culture I grew up with, especially now that I am more aware of how much it affects the people I eat with.

On Kale

2009-07-03T15:31:00.000-07:00

I've had some requests for a post explaining a bit more about my favorite super food - KALE. I had this on my "To-Post" list, but I just found a fantastic post on the topic on the fivedollarday blog. Couldn't have said it better myself. Check out the post on Kale.

Photo Credit: theallorganicfarm.com - got this off Google images, can't seem to load the website...

No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer

2009-07-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

I have had a strong emotional reaction to Michael Jackson's death. I can't stop listening to his music, all I want to do is drive and rock out to his masterful pop hits. The man had a hard life, and I feel a great deal of compassion for him. To me his death sends a message about compassion and forgiveness, recognizing the good with the bad, that really "[couldn't] have been any clearer."

One of my favorite Michael Jackson songs is "Man in the Mirror." Seriously. I know it is possibly a bit cheesy to some, but I spent many nights in my small hometown in Connecticut driving around at night blasting that song with my best friend and singing it at the top of our lungs to the snow covered tobacco fields. Its a great tune, back-up singing chorus ladies and all.

When I watched the video above - with all the people reacting so strongly to this call for each one of us to change our lives to help better the human race - I cry. I actually cry and get goose bumps all over my arms.

If you don't know the lyrics, check them out. I have italicized and bolded the lyrics that are particularly relevant to this post :

"Man In The Mirror"

I'm Gonna Make A Change,
For Once In My Life
It's Gonna Feel Real Good,
Gonna Make A Difference
Gonna Make It Right . . .

As I, Turn Up The Collar On My
Favourite Winter Coat
This Wind Is Blowin' My Mind
I See The Kids In The Street,
With Not Enough To Eat
Who Am I, To Be Blind?
Pretending Not To See
Their Needs
A Summer's Disregard,
A Broken Bottle Top
And A One Man's Soul
They Follow Each Other On
The Wind Ya' Know
'Cause They Got Nowhere To Go
That's Why I Want You To Know

I'm Starting With The Man In The Mirror
I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways
And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World
A Better Place
Take A Look At Yourself, And
Then Make A Change

I've Been A Victim Of A Selfish Kind Of Love
It's Time That I Realize
That There Are Some With No
Home, Not A Nickel To Loan
Could It Be Really Me,
Pretending That They're Not
Alone?

A Willow Deeply Scarred,
Somebody's Broken Heart
And A Washed-Out Dream
They Follow The Pattern Of
The Wind, Ya' See
Cause They Got No Place To Be
That's Why I'm Starting With Me

I'm Starting With The Man In The Mirror
I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways
And No Message Could Have
Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World
A Better Place
Take A Look At Yourself And
Then Make A Change

I'm Starting With The Man In The Mirror
I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways
And No Message Could've
Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World
A Better Place
Take A Look At Yourself And
Then Make That . . .
Change!

I'm Starting With The Man In The Mirror,
I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways
No Message Could Have
Been Any Clearer
You Can't Close Your . . .Your Mind!
That Man, That Man, That Man, That Man
With That Man In The Mirror
That Man, That Man, That Man
I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways
You Know . . .That Man
No Message Could Have
Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World
A Better Place
Take A Look At Yourself And
Then Make A Change
Gonna Feel Real Good Now!

I'm Gonna Make A Change
It's Gonna Feel Real Good!
Come On!
Just Lift Yourself
You Know
You've Got To Stop It.
Yourself!
I've Got To Make That Change,
Today!
Hoo!
You Got To
You Got To Not Let Yourself . . .
Brother . . .
Hoo!
You Know-I've Got To Get
That Man, That Man . . .
You've Got To
You've Got To Move! Come
On! Come On!
You Got To . . .
Stand Up! Stand Up!
Stand Up!
Stand Up And Lift
Yourself, Now!
Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!
Aaow!
Gonna Make That Change . . .
Come On!
You Know It!
You Know It!
You Know It!
You Know . . .
Make That Change.

What I love about this song is that Michael recognizes his own need to change something about himself to make the world better, and then he goes on to call on everyone else to do the same. The end where he is chanting and repeating "stand up! gonna make that change! you know it!" really gets me, and that part relates very specifically to this blog and my "Fix Our Food System" message.

I feel very strongly that each one of us has a responsibility to make small changes to increase the healthfulness and sustainability of our eating patterns, especially given the current state of the environment. When I went to the Save-a-Lot this Monday, I bought food that came from all over the place. It wasn't local. It wasn't sustainable.

My oats came from Earth City, MO.
My grapefruits and key limes from Mexico. (And I live in Southern California!)
My canned soup from Monrovia, CA.
My multi-grain bread from a plant in Fort Worth, TX.
That gyoza package is gone by now, but I image those vegetarian dumplings were not from Southern California.

Personally, I need to make more of an effort to eat local and make it to those Farmers' Markets. Sometimes it is hard. Sometimes, like on Monday, it is impossible. But for the most part I can do it, and I am going to make that change from now on. I am really going to focus on buying local and sustainable more heavily from here on out.

What about you? What change are you making? Do you think it makes any difference in the overall health of our food system?

Trying to get a Supermarket in an underserved residents

2009-06-30T21:05:00.000-07:00

Check out the article.

This is not a test

2009-06-30T19:51:00.001-07:00

What you see above is a pile of bills and receipts, and my dinner: a bowl of green beans, oatmeal, and 2 Vegetable Thai Gyoza from Trader Joe's all steamed in miso broth.

What do these two things have in common?

They have a cause and effect relationship. This is a tough financial week for me, for real.

Rent is due, and I just got a parking ticket (I was literally 2 minutes late. I screamed really loud on the street when it happened.) and a bill from the DMV to renew my registration ($242.00). My trip home and to New York was great, but it wasn't free. Honestly, I'm fucking broke. I already had to transfer money from my savings account into my checking to cover this week's expenses, and spending money on groceries just isn't an option. I have Friday off for 4th of July, which is a good thing. But I hope to god that it doesn't mess with pay day. I hope I get my paycheck early or something. Will that happen? I doubt it. More likely I'm going to have to get through to Monday on essentially NO money.

Luckily, I am already quite skilled at eating cheap. The stakes are higher this time though, and the actual budget is about 1/3 of what I spent on my Food Stamp budget before.

In my pantry I had a reserve stash of 2 cans of soup from Trader Joe's and a bunch of quinoa I bought in bulk at $2.99/lb a week ago. There were also two jars of peanut butter. This week I'm using the Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Peanut Butter I bought at the Peanut Butter & Co. shop in New York. In my freezer I had 6 frozen vegetarian dumplings, frozen peas, frozen spinach, and 1 pack of those green beans I froze weeks ago. In the fridge I had a bag of limes and that miso paste.

I had to go shopping Monday morning before work to avoid eating out. I had no other option but to hit Save-a-Lot in Echo Park at 7:30AM. This is what I bought:

1 head of broccoli at $0.99/lb = $0.44
1 bag baby carrots = $0.99
1 block of cheddar cheese = $1.79
Goya brand lentils, 1 pack = $1.19
2 grapefruits at $1/2lb = $0.87
A loaf of whole wheat bread, the best I could find in that store = $4.29 (OUCH. I almost put it back when it rang up...)
1 sweet potato at $0.79/lb =$0.40
another huge thing of Quick Oats = $1.89 (Fuck yea. This baby is worth at least 30 breakfasts, as I learned last time.)

Total = $11.86

That is it. I am trying to get through the entire week on what I have already and what I spent on Monday. This is not a test. This is for real this time.

Tonight I wound up eating a weird food combination, but I actually discovered that oatmeal can indeed be a savory food. I cooked the green beans, dumplings and oatmeal in miso broth and found that oatmeal for dinner is actually quite ok if not downright good.

I made a huge batch of lentils and quinoa last night and had that for lunch today and will again tomorrow and the next day. The bread will go with that awesome peanut butter for breakfast. I think I'll make it through the week alright but this is certainly an interesting twist no?

As I mentioned early in this blog, the Food Stamp challenge arose primarily from my interest in exploring issues of food access. However, it was also an important way for me to save money while trying to set up my apartment and get settled in a new city. While I will not pretend that I know what it is like to actually be on Food Stamps and try to feed a family on that money, I do know what it is like to make my food choices based on my bank account. I do it every week. And this week is especially tight. It just goes to show that if you don't have much of a financial cushion unexpected things like vehicle renewal notices or parking tickets can really put you over the edge.

"Food Stamped" Documentary

2009-06-29T23:40:00.001-07:00

A similar project being made into a documentary. Can't wait to see it. Thanks to Jasmine for sending it my way!

New documentary “Food Stamped” explores whether you can eat healthy on food stamps

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“Eat Green” Messaging: What do we swallow?

2009-06-29T22:03:00.000-07:00

I am now back in L.A...

During the long periods that I am away from home in Connecticut, my mom saves articles in newspapers and magazines that she thinks will be of interest to me. Whenever I return home I find a nice little stack of reading material beside the bed I slept in growing up. As usual, mom got it right despite my long absence.

She left me, among other things, a February 2009 issue of Bon Appétit magazine. There is a huge steak on the cover. At the top is printed, in green: Special Feature/ 50 Easy Ways to Eat Green P. 68 To drive the point home, the Bon Appétit magazine title below has the “o” and that neat little accent above the last “e” also printed in green.

I immediately flipped to page 68.

On the left side of the spread is the title of this Special Feature, nice and big. On the right side is a close up shot of a huge juicy burger and a sneak peak at Tip #5: MAKE A BISON BURGER.

Wow.

First, lets talk about audience for a second. Bon Appétit magazine boasts a total average circulation of 1,426,992 . The readers are mostly female (73%) and have a median age of 49. The median household income of Bon Apetite readers is $83,563. Who is reading this article? Late middle aged women with a comfortable disposable income.

I admire the encouraging, upbeat tone of this article. I think it aims to make sustainable eating accessible and downright fun to this wealthy, middle aged female audience. The opening paragraph tells us a bit about the audience here: “If only eating green were as simple as going to a farmers’ market, buying organic, and reusing that shopping tote at the grocery store.” (Record screech sound effect, here.) Ok, sorry, Bon Appétit. Even when I am back to my normal, $50 a week shopping budget for 1 person (plenty generous, I think) shopping organic and going to farmers’ markets is not easy by any stretch. And, when I was shopping on less than $35/week, accomplishing both of those things was very difficult.

No matter what my budget, eating local and sustainable is still, unfortunately, inconvenient in America. It requires a lot of commitment to plan your weekend around a Farmers’ Market that is open only 3 hours on a Saturday morning and to accept that while you get your food at that market you’ll have to run another set of errands to buy the non-food items you need.

I am glad that Bon Appétit seems to know that to its readers buying organic and shopping at Farmers’ Markets is now a given. In one sense, I find that pretty encouraging. On the other hand, I think it is likely a little bit out of touch with the shopping habits of a lot of Americans, and I think it skips over some of the deeper issues of sustainable eating.

I am afraid that the tone of this article goes back to a theme I have discussed in the past. That is, I do not think that we are ever going to be able to improve the way we eat on any type of mass or egalitarian scale unless we acknowledge how difficult it is to do so. Changing the way we eat is just not as simple as “50 Tips to Eat Green,” and I’m not convinced that cutesy list-articles that suggest food reform is a matter of buying Bison instead of beef are even a good thing.

I found the tips in this feature were very light hearted. Some were good (“Ask Your Farmer…”) and some were ridiculous: “Buy More Chocolate” (follow a plug for a specific fair trade chocolate company). I suppose it is good that the article is recommending sardines instead of over-fished tuna and recommending that readers choose grass-fed beef from local farmers, but it barely addresses the larger issue that eating meat in general, no matter how “local” or “cage free”, is significantly less “green” than eating a vegetarian diet.

There were several instances where this article seemed a great example of the type of “consumerist explosion” I referred to in the previous post. The article has a very upbeat “try this new thing!” tone, rather than a tone that urges readers to make any food choices that require sacrifice or real change in behavior.

I don’t doubt this is because no one wants to sacrifice or change, and that an article that lectures people about changing their diet is certainly not going to sell magazines. People like nice little lists of “Tips” that are short and cute.

Bon Appetite’s 50 Easy Ways to Eat Green reveals something pretty essential about where our collective head is at in the quest to move towards more sustainable, local, and healthful foods:

Eating better is on our mind. We’re talking about it and writing about it in various media outlets. It is trendy. Buzz words like “Eat Green” are selling magazines. Restaurants that serve local, sustainable fare are getting positive press. But we still want it to be easy. We still want it to be fast. We don’t want to cook, and we don’t want to make any big changes like, say, cutting down on our meat consumption in any significant way. It is pretty ingrained in our American culture that food and eating are associated with quick and easy.

So, either we make sustainable food quicker, cheaper, and easier, or we need to talk a bit more about the fact that maybe we need to reframe the way we think about food and eating. And, that neither that conversation nor that change is going to be easy or quick.

As with all things, I think the answer to the American food crisis is a balance of the two. I’d like to see us start with actually talking about the issues though, and maybe investing in things like educational campaigns about sustainable nutrition and incentives for people living healthier, more sustainable lifestyles.

P. S. In the meantime, Hellman’s Mayonnaise is launching an ad campaign to convince us that eating Hellman’s is synonymous with “eating local.” This is a prime example of the fact that “green” and “local” have become major, hot-sell buzzwords. I am quite sad that I have been unable to find you a You Tube version of a commercial for this campaign. Has anyone else seen these ads? For now, the website will have to suffice: www.eatrealeatlocal.ca/ Note: the website is geared towards Canada, but commercials for "Eat Real. Eat Local." are running in America as well. I saw one. And I scremed. (Really, I did. Ask my dad.)

Is it a bad thing that audiences clearly have positive associations with the words “green” and “local”? Of course not. Does it trouble me that the information most Americans are getting about reforming their diets to make more sustainable food choices comes from a Hellman’s Mayonnaise commercial? Yes.

Depression Era Moms: Green Before Green Was Cool

2009-06-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

The last page of Whole Life Times most recent issue has a great article in which a woman talks about growing up with a mother who lived in very environmentally sustainable lifestyle “not out of any kind of ‘green’ philosophy or liberal political identity, but because that was the way she lived in the world.”

Back in the day, sustainable living was part of an overall culture of frugality, of a Great Depression inspired desire to reduce waste and eek the most out of every product we every bought. While its great that Green has become both a chic identity label and a household term, I am sometimes concerned that our efforts are misdirected.

Have you ever felt that the whole Green Living and Sustainable Food thing has just provided people with more products to consume? Sometimes I feel that way when I walk into yet another chain store selling its brand of reusable bags to “reduce plastic bag use.” Ok, but how many of those damn reusable bags are we producing? And, how many of those do we all have in our trunk already each time we buy a new one?

Sometimes the whole thing doesn’t seem genuine. I’m glad that Save-a-Lot sells reusable bags now, but it would be a lot better if I was at a Farmers’ Market instead of the Save-a-Lot check out line. The author of this article seems to agree with me. She says that her mom would have been “appalled by the consumerist explosion of the environmentalist movement” that has led people to buy things like cool little racks to dry out zip lock bags after washing them.

The mom in this article tended a compost pile and cultivated the majority of the family’s fresh produce in the back yard. When harvest was high, she was in the kitchen drying fruit and stewing tomatoes, storing produce for the winter months. Instead of liquid hand soap, she conserved the family’s bar soap slivers and tied them into the foot of an old pair of pantyhose. She encouraged her kids to bring home glass bottles and tin cans they found on the road to return them for a deposit. My favorite line in the article is when the daughter writes “It wasn’t until I went to college that I realized that other people threw away Ziploc bags after just one use.”

For her, reuse was about frugality and eliminating waste as a basic value. NPR has reported a little bit about this fact that not too long ago, frugality was virtuous. I will be honest. I am 23, and I was not told that frugality (in the way I eat, spend money, or consume any type of food or product) was a virtue when I was growing up. Frugality was not part of the Messaging Points from my parent’s generation, it seems. I grew up in a house where we bought so much food that produce routinely rotted on the shelves before anyone got around to eating it.

Today is my last day in New York before I go back to my hometown. As I continue to get closer to my home and my parent's fridge, I am thinking about how it differs from mine back in LA. There is no wasted food in my apartment, no rotting produce on my fridge shelf. Maybe it is left over from the Vegan /$35 challenge, but I think it’s the fact that thanks to the Recession I have a lot of values in common with Depression Era moms all of a sudden. Since I knew I was leaving for New York, I didn't go food shopping last weekend. Instead, I stretched last week’s food through Tuesday night of this week, and for those extra two days this week I ate brown rice and frozen peas for 4 of 6 meals. (That's all I had left.) Maybe the Recession is going to help us get a little more conscious of how we buy and consume food. That would be a silver lining, no?

More on Food Deserts

2009-06-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

I have mentioned Food Deserts several times in this blog, but today’s post will go further. Food Deserts, again, are areas characterized by limited access to healthy or affordable food. Research has suggested that the poor food environment in these areas, which are typically in low-income neighborhoods, contribute to negative health outcomes for individuals who live in the Food Deserts such as obesity and heart problems.

I work in a food desert. There are few supermarkets, but plenty of mini-marts and liquor stores. Farmers Markets are small and offer limited selections. There are lots of low-income residents, and they rely on the bus for transportation. Fast food restaurants are everywhere, plunked at the middle of each busy and uninviting intersection. Suffice to say I bring my nice little vegetarian lunch to work every day.

If I forget my lunch well, I’m usually shit out of luck. There is this one little oasis area of food establishments that I can go to in a pinch. It has a place called the Salad Farm (which serves what its name suggests) and a few healthier Subway-type sandwich places. It takes me my entire 30 minute lunch break to drive there, park, get my food, and get back to my desk, and the salads cost about $8. Lots of effort, lots of $, and the only way I can do it is because I have a car. Even then, it is a pain to get a salad.

Working in this industrial and economically depressed zone, I have begun to learn what a food desert feels like, and I have become very interested in how this vacuum of good food options impacts the people who live there. My sense, from my own experience trying to get a salad once in awhile or buy an apple to supplement my brown-bag lunch, is that the food desert situation creates some major barriers for low income individuals trying to access affordable, nutritious food.

Food Deserts are getting more research attention, and they are also the topic of some debate on several fronts. For example, there is the question as to weather or not they actually exist or are just based on anecdotal experiences. I work in one, so I can tell you that they do, but anecdotal evidence only goes so far.

The Centers for Disease Control just released a Canadian study called A Systematic Review of Food Deserts, 1966-2007. This study is one of the first I have seen that compares Food Desert environments in different countries. Researchers systematically reviewed evidence in an effort to confirm or deny that Food Deserts exist in low-income areas. They found that in the United States “a high proportion of low-income or African American residents were underserved by food retails compared to more advantaged areas.” In other words, YES, there are concrete structural inequalities in the food system in urban America. Other countries studied, such as Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, did not yield conclusive enough results to confirm once and for all that Food Deserts exist in those countries. America was another story.

The CDC study made some recommendations for policy initiatives that might mitigate the current food access problem in low-income urban America. Among other things, they called for government interventions to facilitate supermarket development in these communities.

This type of intervention, encouragingly enough, actually seems to be happening. On June 17th, New York Times ran a story titled “With a Little Help, Greens Come to Low-Income Neighborhoods.” The article explains a campaign in NYC inspired by the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, which provided grants and tax credits to retailers who invest in creating or improving stores in low-income neighborhoods. New York officials have also experimented with relaxing zoning laws for developers who put supermarkets on the ground floors of buildings in underserved areas.

Will it work?

Well, the Pennsylvania program has led to 69 projects so far with a very low failure (store closure) rate and the residents interviewed in the article seemed thrilled. Some smaller markets and wholesale vendors complained of unfair competition with the federally subsidized projects, and Goldman Sach’s (a high profile urban investment group) thought the city’s efforts were admirable but warned that even heavy subsidies might not lead to success in this weak economy.

Here’s my two cents: getting supermarkets into these food deserts is great, but it is really just the first step. Obviously, if you are trying to help residents in low-income neighborhoods access good food you have to first get that food to where they live. Once its there, a host of other access barriers remain. You have to teach people to cook differently, introduce them to new foods; you might even have to change their taste to help them learn to like vegetables. You have to get them to alter their diets to include the fresh produce that is now available to them. You have to intervene in a food culture that is dominated by fast food chains and Hot Cheetos, and educate people about nutrition and you’ll be up against multi million dollar junk food ad campaigns competing for their attention. And, you have to hope that people even prioritize nutrition and their health at all when they are already burdened by the many difficulties and inconveniences that come with poverty. Frankly, you have to get them to care, and I would argue that unfortunately, that is not easy.

Just as our national “food problem” is connected to weaknesses in our education, health care, and environmental system, so are individual poor dietary habits connected to a host of other issues including lack of education and resources, cultural influences, and income levels. It is important to put the food issue back into the bigger picture here, because it reminds us what a truly complex social problem lack of access to healthy, sustainable, and affordable food really is.

Speaking of lack of access to healthy, nutritious, and sustainable food, I just bought a sandwich in LAX airport for a whopping $10. Oh, airport food. That $10 could have lasted me through at least half a week of healthier fare…

Nia Vardalos & the Big Fat Secret to Health

2009-06-21T19:55:00.000-07:00

I am not usually one to follow celebrity or Hollywood gossip. But, when I got wind of Nia Vardalos's recent post about her weight loss on CNN's AC360 Blog, my ears perked up.

Now, I wasn't even aware that Vardalos- writer and lead actress in My Big Fat Greek Wedding- had lost weight. Apparently she has. And, apparently it has been getting quite a lot of attention.

Vardalos recently lost 40 pounds.

Why? How? What is her secret?

Well, on June 12th she posted a response to these questions on Anderson Cooper's 360 Blog.

In this post, Vardalos talks a bit about her frustration that her weight loss has gotten so much attention when she has also had some major career and personal accomplishments within the last year - mainly releasing a new film (My Life in Ruins) and adopting a baby girl. She seems frustrated by how image and weight obsessed most Hollywood reporting and press publicity tends to be. She talks a bit about the differences in issues of appearance for men versus women. But, I think the most interesting part of her post is the section in which she talks about how people react to her explanations about her weight loss.

When people ask her about losing those 40 pounds, Vardalos puts it very simply: "I had a blood sugar problem so my Doctor ordered me to lose weight, it was really hard but I did it through diet, exercise and it took a year."

And, she says, most people do no want to hear that answer. Vardalos writes that she can see most people go glassy-eyed and tune out as soon as they hear the words "health reasons" "diet" "exercise" or "took a year" in her answer.

That is not a sexy answer. It is not glamorous. It is not tied to any product (like, say, my good old favorite the Lap Band), nor will it sell any books or pouches of powdered shakes.

I am really happy that a celebrity is coming out and saying that she lost weight the good old fashioned way- through diet, portion control, exercise, and yes, hard work. In my one month trying to eat as a vegan, I became much more aware of just how intense the social pressures around eating were in my life. I talked about how dietary changes can impact relationships because one person's reformed eating habits can be threatening to those that do not want to change. And, I touched on the fact that adhering to a stricter, healthier diet was just plain hard. There were days when I hated it, days I wanted to quit, days when I cheated and then felt weird and guilty about it. The truth is that changing your diet isn't easy, and genuine sustainable change is never going to come down to one big secret or one miracle pill.

I think that our denial about this reality is a major part of the obesity problem in America and a barrier to food reform, so I applaud Vardalos for speaking out so honestly about her experience.

If we are ever going to change the way we grow, buy, and eat food, we have to come out and admit that (#1) a lot of people in America - our friends, our family members, our neighbors, maybe even ourselves- absolutely need to lose weight for health reasons that impact not only individuals but the environment and our nation's health care system and that (#2) losing weight and changing our diets to be better for our bodies and better for the environment is NOT easy.

If we could wrap our heads around those two things, really face them, we might have a fighting chance. At least then we could support each other in our quest to improve instead of denying that we even need to change at all.

While my 1 month Vegan challenge is over, I am continuing to try to eat better and exercise more. I'm not kidding myself; I'd be better off if I lost 10 pounds. In order to do that I am going to have to control my portions better, drink less beer on the weekends, and limit my consumption of sweets. Oh, and I'm going to have to work out a bit more too. It is a process, and I'm working on it. Sometimes it is really hard.

One thing that makes it much much easier is that I have several people in my life who are outwardly trying to make the same changes. For example, I have a colleague at work who is also working very hard to get healthier, and the camaraderie between us on this issue has been immensely helpful to me. When I see her eat a small sliver of cake and say no to seconds, or drop a few more pounds, I am inspired to keep at it myself. I am grateful for this positive social pressure around food. It is helping me get and stay healthier. I think this type of social pressure could really catch on, but first we have to admit that there is no new, simple, Big Fat Secret to health.

Props, Nia. Thanks for putting the message out there.

Let no fruit go to waste

2009-06-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

I recently got wind of a fantastic grass roots effort going on in the LA area. This new initiative prioritizes local food, reduces waste, and addressed the issue of food insecurity among low income residents in and around Los Angeles.

The organization is called Food Forward. The graphic on their homepage (above) is sweet, and their site is simple and well organized. They must have a great graphic designer on their team. More important than their cool looking site though, is their work.

Check out their description of what they do:

FOOD FORWARD is an all volunteer grassroots group of Angelenos who care about reconnecting to our food system and making change around urban hunger.

Several times a month we convene at a private property we have been invited to and glean the excess fruit on their trees, donating 100% of it to local food pantries.

Our current receiving partner is SOVA Community Food and Resource Program, a 501c.3 program of Jewish Family Services, which distributes food to over 7,000 clients a month across Southern California.

I am majorly impressed by this effort.

While their site lists all of their major picks, they have also launched a blog to keep people up to date on more last minute opportunities. It seems that they sometimes get more last minute offers for picking, so the blog allows them to invite followers more spontaneously. You can also follow them on Twitter.

There are several reasons why I am a fan of this effort. The fact that it brings local, and in most cases organic produce to food pantries is clearly a great thing. This project certainly benefits low-income Angelenos. However, I am also really happy about the impact it has for those who volunteer to pick the fruit and those who allow the trees on their property to be gleaned. Through Food Forward, pickers are able to reconnect with natural sources of food in their climate. I imagine that picking large amounts of fruits for a day makes people think more about where their food comes from; it may even lead them to prioritize buying local or organic in the future. Furthermore, the resident who offers their tree or orchard for picking is clearly thinking more about waste and trying to reduce it. That is encouraging. I am sure donating their excess produce to a food pantry also makes tree owners more aware of the issue of food insecurity among the poor in their city.

Happy Friday everyone.

P.S. You can also follow me on Twitter. Most of my tweets relate to this blog, some relate to my life. Its not an exclusive blog-content account, but it is a way to follow my project and learn more about me if you care to do so.

Farm on the Roof

2009-06-17T20:53:00.000-07:00

Photo Credit: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Maybe it is just the fact that my trip to NYC is quickly approaching, or it could be that I just got my New York Restoration Project newsletter in the mail, but I am feeling jealous of urban gardeners and sustainability enthusiasts in the Big Apple today.

I am a huge fan of Green Roofs. In my senior year at Brown, a few of my fellow urban studies classmates and I designed a Group Independent Study Project to learn about and eventually construct a green roof for course credit. At the end of the semester we actually laid the groundwork for a pretty sweet deck and roof garden on a remodeled brownstone on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

In his famous 1926 publication, 5 Points of New Architecture, Le Corbusier asserted that roof gardens were an essential element to any work of architecture. In his view, the roof garden served to restore the space that was taken up by the building to the earth, and was really a no-brainer. To Le Corbusier, building a roof garden was an essential element of balance in any building project. Over 80 years later the green roof movement is finally gaining some momentum.

The photo above comes from an article in yesterday's New York Times titled Urban Farming, a Bit Closer to the Sun. Thanks to my buddy Colleen Ferguson for bringing it to my attention. The article has an impressive laundry list of green roofing projects. From restaurant owners to bloggers (creator of Civil Eats - linked on the right side of my page, for one), to entire public schools, people are planting edible plants on their roofs. There is a enviable amount of movement towards greener, more edible urban planning in New York right now.

One of the most exciting parts about this article, to me, was that it talked a bit about the impact of tax incentives designed to encourage green roofing projects in New York and Chicago.

It is incredibly exciting to me to see state and local governments encouraging people to make their roofs greener. I also find it really heartening that several of the urban roof gardeners profiled in this article were chefs or restaurant owners who were in part responding to the demand for local and organic produce from their clients. Sweet.

The New York Restoration Project newsletter highlighted the Million Trees NYC initiative, which aims to plant 1 million new trees in the 5 boroughs of New York City within the next decade. Since it was launched in 2007, MillionTreesNYC has planted over 200,000 trees. Before this effort began only about 15,000 trees were planted in New York each year. To me, that is pretty incredible.

My one recommendation would have been that they plant a high percentage of fruit trees that would naturally thrive in New York. Apple trees might be nice. Since they're focusing on planting in public housing projects and underserved neighborhoods, an element of food provision would have been a great touch.

Ok, Los Angeles. Lets get with the program and put some money behind edible green roofs. We've got a fantastic growing season.

Ants on my Figs

2009-06-16T21:31:00.000-07:00

I went for a run today at the reservoir in Silverlake and found more public fruit. This time, it was FIGS. After a bit of searching around the tree I found four figs that came off of their branches easily. I don't know much about picking figs, but when a fruit comes off of its branch easily that is usually a good sign as far are ripeness is concerned. I practically skipped back to my car. Figs! For free! Hanging into the sidewalk! I LOVE CALIFORNIA! (Those are my thoughts.)

I got back home and cut them open. One was overly ripe and already had some ants living in it. I left the other three alone for a few moments, and when I got back there seemed to be ants all over all of them. Determined to make this work, I washed the fig with the fewest ants and cut off a little piece. It didn't taste too ripe to me. Suddenly I started to think this might not be the best idea. I googled "poisonous figs" just in case. I didn't come up with anything alarming, but the ants had really ruined the whole experience for me. I chucked the figs.

Later, I tried those lemons from yesterday. They were not what I was expecting. They weren't sour at all. In fact, they were sort of sweet. Like a mix between a lemon and an orange. It was a very strange experience because I tasted the slice I cut with my entire mouth bracing for the familiar sour flavor of a normal lemon. It reminded me of drinking flat Sprite when you think you're getting water. Not unpleasant, just a weird mouth sensation.

I started googleing lemon varieties to see what I might have picked. It seems there are many different types of lemons out there, but I couldn't pin down a description that matched my roundish, yellow, and sort of sweet citrus fruit. I'm keeping those mystery citrus fruits, but I'm not sure how to use them. I have to get more comfortable with their flavor.

Clearly I have a lot to learn about California fruit varieties before I get too excited about public fruit. And, if we're going to use our urban space for micro-farms like I suggested earlier, we might have to be more strategic about planting familiar edible plants. (With respect for native varieties, of course!)

If anyone has any idea what that lemon thing is that I picked, let me know. I'm going to sleep a bit disappointed that my recent public fruit triumphs turned out to be... well, failures.

Lemons in my alleyway

2009-06-15T21:01:00.000-07:00

After I spent several hard earned dollars on 5 non-organic, not necessarily local lemons at Trader Joe's (which I drove to) I realized that there is a perfectly great lemon tree bursting with fruit in the alley across from my apartment (50 foot walk). This tree is located within the gates of a motorcycle repair shop, but a huge bough full of fruit hangs over into the alley, which according to most sources makes the fruit public.

Public or not, there were a ton of squashed, wasted lemons on the ground, and the tree was hanging heavy with fruit. Even if it wasn't public fruit, no one seemed all too concerned about harvesting these lemons so I had at it. I picked 5 lemons - more than enough to last me through the week. I was elated.

This discovery brought me back to something I've been wanting to write more about for awhile. In the post that was published on Change.org I touched on the fact that I thought a new urban planning model that made room for urban farms and community gardens could go a long way to fix the food problem in this country. I still feel very strongly about this idea.

The concept of public fruit is an interesting one, and it is getting more attention lately. There is a very cool activist art project going on in my very own neighborhood of Silverlake called Fallen Fruit. This project involves the mapping of fruit trees that hang over into sidewalks, parking lots, and other public spaces. By mapping where these public food resources are located the group hopes to bring about more local eating and less waste of perfectly good produce.

On June 9th, the New York Times published an article titled Neighbor, can you spare a plumb? This article talks about the growing movement of fruit and vegetable sharing across the nation, and mentions public fruit harvesting projects similar to Fallen Fruit all over the country.

The organization Urban Farming's mission says it all: Urban Farming's mission is to create an abundance of food for people in need by planting gardens on unused land and space while increasing diversity, educating youth, adults and seniors and providing an environmentally sustainable system to uplift communities. The organization plants food anywhere they can find space. They even hang edible gardens off of walls.

It is really encouraging to me that people are starting to unite and share food in this way.

I mean, we've done it before. During the peak of the Victory Garden movement during WWII, small plots in suburban backyards and urban communities alike yielded 40% of the produce consumed in America. Today, most of what we eat is specially engineered to travel great distances to get to us, and it arrives wrapped in packaging with all sorts of nutritional claims on it. It isn't local. It isn't simple, sustainable, or necessarily good for us. It is built to travel and make a profit. And, judging from the obesity, diabetes, and heart disease going on in this country right now it hasn't gotten us any healthier.

So, what if we focused a little more on using our urban space more efficiently? For one, a lot of food producers and advertisers would lose a lot of money. On the other hand, a lot of us (including mother earth) would be a lot healthier.

Imagine an urban landscape where some of those medians at street intersections had fruit trees in them. Or, where the roof tops of our apartments had planter boxes on the perimeter with lightweight soil and space for some tomatoes. What if your boss brought the extra oranges from his tree in to work to trade you for the mint growing wildly all over your yard? How much fruit could we grow if we installed vertical planting walls on the walls of building in our cities? Maybe enough to make a difference, block by block, in the food insecurity issue in low income communities.

I know I said "imagine" up there in that paragraph, and I know I put most of my sentences into questions, but I am serious. I don't think this has to be a hypothetical necessarily. It would be a matter of a change in priorities.

Small start: lets start taking advantage of the public fruit and urban farming resources we already have. I'll tell you, as long as that lemon tree in my alleyway is bearing fruit I'm not wasting any gas to get to Trader Joe's and buy a bag of lemons. I'd love to hear about the public fruit you found in your neighborhood or the trade you orchestrated to get some peaches in exchange for your surplus of basil.

Why food?

2009-06-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of social issues out there to put your passions and energies behind. Even if you narrowed your focus to issues in American cities, there would be hundreds of thousands of things to try to make better or to be outraged about. So, why food?

Why would access to nutritious food trump other social issues?

Because food and inadequate nutrition are incredibly connected to a host of other issues that impact the quality of life for low and high income Americans alike.

Food insecurity impacts a child's ability to learn and grow. Not having enough food at home can lead to trouble focusing in school, aggression/anger, and can impede physical and mental development.

The fact that most of what we eat travels for thousands of miles to get to us impacts our environment. That fact that most of it is highly processed and over packaged is also a drain on mother earth. Everything we eat affects our environment, and in the case of our current food culture the affect is harmful most of the time.

Education about food and health is also pretty basic, and it is surprising how little most people know about this fundamental part of personal health care. I've had to work pretty hard to learn about how what I eat affects my body, and I would still not consider myself any sort of expert on nutrition. The fact that most low-income Americans really do not have access to reliable and practical information about food doesn't make our education system look very good.

Lack of access to nutritious food has a major impact on our health care system. On my first post of this blog I wrote a little bit about how poverty, food insecurity, and obesity are linked. Obesity is a major concern. I was speaking to a nurse at a free clinic yesterday, and she told me she felt like "everyone" had diabetes these days. She said that a disturbing percentage of the clients she sees walking through the doors of her clinic - where they do not refuse anyone based on ability to pay- are overweight and suffering from heart problems or diabetes as a result. Now, this is purely anecdotal, but Diabetes is certainly on the rise. I found an article which explains the global Diabetes epidemic pretty well. The article asserts that since 1985, the number of people with diabetes worldwide has grown from 30 million to 230 million, and the World Diabetes Foundation estimates 3.5 million people die from the disease annually.

If that seems like a lot to you, check out this map of US obesity trends from the CDC which Jasmine suggested to me - it shows the spread of obesity and overweight across America since 1985. Its pretty disturbing. Look and that map and think about how much overweight is associated with diabetes. Then think about how much health care Diabetes requires. Think about how broken and over burdened our health care system is, and how many Americans are uninsured or under insured. Then check out the facts on the World Diabetes Foundation website. Do you see the one that says 80% of type 2 diabetes is preventable by changing diet, increasing physical activity and improving the living environment. ?

What would happen if we started eating better and cut down drastically on overweight, obesity, and diabetes in America?

I think our health care and education systems would be a lot stronger.

Unfortunately, the last month of eating well on $31/week has shown me that "eating better" is pretty complicated. What would it take to incite a mass movement of healthier eating?

Well, a cultural shift for one. People would have to learn how to cook nutritious foods, and they would have to have a lifestyle that allowed them the time to do it. Healthy food would need to be more accessible and more affordable. Processed food would have to become more taboo and less socially acceptable. People would have to care enough to put some effort into eating better and exercising, and those that did care enough would have to have the tools (time, for example) to make it feasible to even do that.

I'm down to start the revolution, but I'm pretty intimidated by what I'm up against. How about you?

Cabbage and the WIC Cookbook

2009-06-13T19:55:00.000-07:00

Remember that cabbage I bought at the Hollywood Farmers' Market two weeks ago?

Well, I hadn't cooked it yet frankly because I just didn't know what to do with cabbage. I have worked with it in a few dishes in the past, but I have never really found a great go-to cabbage recipe, I just haven't had any desire to tackle learning to cook a new vegetable. Cabbage isn't something I typically buy either. Its not a very exciting vegetable and has a reputation, like brussel sprouts, for not being very tasty. But, it is incredibly cheap and goes a long way, so I'd bought it because it was one of the few things in my price range at the Hollywood market two weekend ago. Since then I'd cooking and eaten every single piece of produce in my fridge and never touched the head of cabbage. Today out of bare necessity I broke down and decided to cook the damn thing.

I pulled out a few of my vegetarian/vegan cookbooks, and I also consulted the WIC program cookbook, which I picked up early last month at the South Central Farmers' Market. This cookbook wasn't totally new to me, I'd leafed through it before, but I hadn't realized quite how fantastic it was until today.

What is WIC? The website describes the program well: WIC provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk. Just think Women, Infants, and Children. The name makes sense.

If you drive through a low income neighborhood you will likely see markets, mini-marts, and stores with signs saying that they accept WIC. In a lot of cities there are also special WIC stores that pop up; there are several near where I live. WIC is different than food stamps because it is more specific about which foods you can buy with your benefits. If you go to a grocery store that accepts WIC benefits, you will probably see certain items marked with the WIC logo to show shoppers that these items are WIC approved. This page give more information about which foods are WIC eligible.

As you can imagine, going into a store where only some of the items are "allowed" can be difficult and frustrating. I bet it isn't particularly fun to take your small children to a grocery store where they will see tons of snacks and foods they want, and stick to only a few specific WIC approved items every time. It makes sense that WIC-only stores spring up in low-income neighborhoods. I bet these stores make shopping with WIC benefits much easier.

The WIC program in LA is currently engaging in a lot of outreach to get mothers to use their benefits to purchase more fruits and vegetables. Like food stamps, WIC benefits are accepted at Farmers' Markets around the city, and when I went to the South Central market WIC was running a nutrition class and handing out information. The Healthy Harvest cookbook was one thing they were really trying to get out there.

The cookbook's sub heading is "Recipes and Tips for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables". In the box at the bottom of the cover this text appears:

South Los Angeles Health Projects
WIC Program
We care about you and your family!

Inside the cookbook there are different types of fruits and vegetables. It starts with apples and goes all the way to winter squash. Each vegetable or fruit gets one page. At the top there are three sections - one on how to select the particular produce item, one on how to store it, and one on use in general.

The Cabbage listing looked like this:
Select: Firm heavy heads that are free of yellowing leaves, bruises, splits or spots
Store: Cabbage in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks (Phew. Two weeks. I just made it!)
Use: Rinse well and remove damaged and wilted leaves. Slice thin and team to use with sauces, or cut in larger chunks and steam to eat with vinegar, or butter and salt.
Then down below there were two very simple, easy to follow recipes.

I was really impressed with this resource. It not only makes produce accessible by staring with the basics of how to choose good produce and store it so it stays fresh, it also provides realistic and quick recipes that wouldn't require a ton of cooking know how.

As this week progresses I am going to try recipes from the WIC cookbook. I'll let you know how they go.

Tonight I settled on a cabbage recipe from another cookbook. I essentially simmered the cabbage in canned diced tomatoes with onions, garlic, salt and pepper. I had a lot of basil left over so I threw that in too. In the spirit of wasting nothing, I diluted some of the tomato sauce that the cabbage was cooking it in and used it to cook my rice. This way I conserved some of the nutrients from the cooking cabbage and tomatoes and wound up with more flavorful brown rice.

The dish I came up with was really great, and I think it is safe to say that I won't avoid the cabbage for so long next time around. Still, I really do want to express how long I put off cooking this vegetable simply because I didn't know how. If you are not used to cooking vegetables in general, I can imagine integrating more produce into your diet would seem like a real pain. Lack of knowledge about how to cook and eat produce is a major barrier, and I am glad this WIC cookbook is out there.