USDA Forbids Fruits & Vegetables

The sponsors of the food guide pyramid have a policy that is markedly out of line with the healthy eating recommendations it purports at mypyramid.gov: keeping small time farmers from growing fruits and vegetables.

The recent New York Times article My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables) by farmer Jack Hedin, tells his tale of fighting to grow healthy foods for his community. It’s heartbreaking. He ends up paying a fine for growing produce on designated commodity acreage.

The truth seems to be that the USDA is implementing the commodities program at any cost. Even if it means a disproportionate amount of unhealthy foods flooding the market in the form of processed snacks items, beverages sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, grain fed animals for meat and dairy. This policy promotes production of these foods, the overeating of these foods, and thus, it supports the burgeoning of obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers.

As a dietitian who works with an urban poor patient population, I know full well the barriers to obtaining and eating fresh produce. What would benefit my clients, our nation’s school children, the elderly, and the population at large, would be a food policy that supports the growing of fruits and vegetable.

The farm bill, currently being debated, not only impacts small farmers like Jack Hedin but all the eaters of America. The farm bill funds food stamps, the commodities program, conservation, and other programs fundamental to the nation’s wellness. Last fall myself, and many others, sent letters to senators urging them to support an amendment to the farm bill that didn’t pass. Now it’s anyone’s guess what’s going to happen if the house doesn’t produce a final bill this week- the current bill is due to run out March 15th.

As the cost of food rises, fruits and vegetables will be unreachable for many food insecure families. Unless something changes.

Bottom Line:
We’re a long way from achieving five to nine serving of fruits and vegetable, in a rainbow of colors.

Support a healthy farm bill. Petition your representative to make meaningful changes to our nation’s food policies. Check out Oxfam’s pages on the farm bill. And please leave a comment if you know of any more up to date legislation information.

In the meantime, seek out and support alternative sources of produce at farmers markets, through CSAs, gardening, and urban agriculture.

Food Safety Needs Proactive Approach

The 143,000,000 pounds of meat recalled last month sparked quite a debate. But while legislators cry outrage, the food industry seems to be lobbying quite successfully for the status quo to remain in place; aiming to patch holes in the dam of swelling food hazards.

Food Navigator (an online Food & Beverage Industry media outlet) reported "last week the US House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a meeting to discuss which measures work best in safeguarding the nation's food supply. It was attended by representatives of leading companies in the food processing industry....The Committee urged food manufacturers to provide serious recommendations and strongly support legislation to ensure the safety of the nation's food."

Now the US Grocery Manufacturers Association is recommending congress increase funding for the FDA's food safety inspection and testing. In a recent press release the GMA outlines their proposed plan:

-A requirement that every food company have in place a mandatory foreign supplier quality assurance program to ensure that foods and food ingredients arriving on American shores from overseas meet food company and federal government standards.

-Food companies will voluntarily share confidential test results, laboratory data and sourcing information with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) so that the government can focus its limited resources on high-risk products and countries, such as China.

-The federal government, in consultation with the food industry, will work with foreign governments to raise overseas food safety standards and improve the quality of food and ingredients processed overseas.

-We have asked Congress and the Bush Administration to double the FDA food safety budget over the next five years to allow the agency to hire more inspectors and scientists, upgrade its antiquated information systems and expand its laboratory and testing capability.

-We have called for the establishment of new regulations governing the harvesting and processing of fresh fruits and vegetables to cut down on food-borne outbreaks.


Of the five recommendations the GMA makes, three focus on the hazards of imports. This effectively diverts attention from our significant national problems. Quality is inherently at risk in a globalized food system, and food manufacturers must address this if they continue to import more food from far away, but current mandatory food safety & quality assurance standards have failed in our own country, why expand the same ineffective rules to a larger system?

In the fourth recommendation, the GMA asks the government to allocate more money for inspectors and testing and the last recommends increased regulation for fruits and vegetables.

None of these recommendations deal with the hazards that U.S. factory farms pose to food safety. In our current paradigm, cattle are raised in such high-stress settings with such poor nutrition, that the animals are at higher risk of disease. The wide spread use of antibiotics aims to stem the tide of infection, but medicine can’t replace the benefit of fresh grass to eat and space to roam for these herbivores. Factory farming and high volume slaughterhouses/processing plants create more problems than increased inspection and testing could ever hope to solve. The waste of factory farms then runs off into waterways that are used for irrigation, fishing, swimming, and drinking. Is this not a serious food safety issue?

To continue our national policy of cheap food in general and cheap meat specifically is a food safety issue in and of itself.

The position paper of the American Dietetic Association on Food and water safety acknowledges the importance of safe food and water for the health of a population. Historically dietitians have seemed to focus mostly the food safety issues of hand washing and safe internal temperature for cooking meats, but a growing number of dietitians are beginning to expand the conversation to include more proactive approaches to keeping consumers safe and well fed. Increased advocacy for safety includes working towards a clean food system.

Bottom Line: The best option for safe and clean food is to reduce our dependence on an unsafe system. While much of the recalled beef has already been eaten by schoolchildren there are proactive steps to take. Get to know your farmers. Learn to cook local, seasonal foods. Buy grass-fed beef. Eat more vegetarian meals.

Visit a website like http://www.foodroutes.org/ or Marion Nestle's blog http://www.whattoeatbook.com/to start.