Gov Ag Policies and Obesity

Just what do government agricultural policies have to do with obesity? 

It seems, to me, a short jump from current government ag subsidies to our toxic, obesogenic and diabetogenic food environment.  If we are what we eat and we eat what’s available and what’s available is what we grow a lot of (read: subsidized corn and soy) and what’s not available is a lot of whole plant foods (read: unsubsidized vegetables) then we end up eating a lot of the easily accessible, cheap, processed junk.  But we know this. 

Maybe the thing to ask ourselves is, “why are we eating a lot of cheap junk?”  Is it because we are human and born with a sweet tooth and are wired to eat whenever able?  I think so. Yes. In part.  Eating past our current caloric needs is evolutionarily ingrained.  It wasn’t until very recently in history when humans had more than enough to eat.  “Feasting” was protective for the once commonplace times of “famine”.   We can blame it on our genes.  But not completely.  Because the genes for problems like Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity are really only expressed when the environment promotes it.  It also wasn’t until very recently in human history that we had twin epidemics of diabetes and obesity.  Take home point: when we flood the market with consumable junk, we consume it. 

In light of this dynamic, I found it interesting to read, on the same day, one article about how the USDA has agreed that a soda tax would help combat obesity, and another article about how the USDA is entrenched in subsidies (which prompt cheap soda.)

In the American Prospect article “Slowed Food Revolution” author Heather Rodgers does a great job explaining why organic/sustainable food costs more, why small farmers aren’t able to make a living, and exploring why our policy makers in Washington are opposed to change.

One of the salient points she makes is that the USDA is trying to support organic while not altering support for industrialed ag.  This climate makes it impossible for the small organic farmer, in part because it interferes with the real costs of food to show up at supermarkets.   Without changing the way the USDA treats industrialized ag, artificially cheap food (propped up by subsidies and other support mechanisms) will continue to be cheap at the market while small farmers can barely keep their land, let alone pay themselves a decent wage.

If the USDA agrees that a “sin tax” on soda would result in a significant decline in obesity, why would they continue to, literally, subsidize it?

The average American child and adolescent gets 10-15% of their total calorie intake from beverages.  With more than a third of our children overweight or obese this is a major problem requiring a significant shift in policy and perspective...

The upcoming 2012 Farm Bill is the major battleground in which these issues will be fought over.  Many have argued the name changed to Food Bill because it is the primary instrument of the government to shape national food policy (think school lunch, food stamps, subsidies and so on.)   Changing the Farm Bill to include real food policies will make a difference for real people.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:  The vast majority of government support for ag in this country is geared toward big time, industrialized operations.  To review: subsidized corn and soy is turned into the vast quantities of processed foods and feed lot animal products that line our supermarket shelves.    What if we instead supported sound ag practices?  Like growing fruits and vegetables.  And pasturing animals.  Then supermarkets aisles might not be so crowded with cheap junk.  And the nations’ eaters might not be so sick.  

Endangered Apple Finds A Home

The concept of food biodiversity and it's essential role in health of people and planet has been explored here in past blog posts on this site.  All food groups have suffered loss of diversity at the hands of industrial agriculture, including the dear pomme. Read about the work we've been doing locally to help recover forgotten fruit on the Slow Food USA blog. And for more information about endangered foods of Southeast Wisconsin, check out Food Biodiversity.

Gulf Grief

Image from Huffington Post slideshow of oil spill photos.

The BP oil spill warrants the growing outrage with its monstrous impact.  While most people I speak with are worried about how this will impact the price of gas, I’m worried about the price of fish.  Not about how it will affect my wallet, but what it means for ocean ecology as  hundreds of species are at risk.  Add this insult to the already injured—the Gulf of Mexico, an important biological, economic and gastronomic region, has not been thriving for quite some time.  The notorious dead zone, a hypoxic area the size of New Jersey created by Midwestern industrial ag fertilizer runoff carried to the Gulf via the mighty Mississippi, has already taken a toll on aquatic life and industry. Now, post oil spill, thousands of miles of Gulf waters are closed.

Who knows how this will affect seafood prices at your local grocery store.  Sources disagree as to how much of our nation’s fish intake comes from the Gulf catch; I’ve read as little as 1% and as high as one-third.  But certainly, we get most of our seafood from places far, far away.  Gulf shrimp is one of the many edible sea creatures that will certainly be affected by the spill, and unfortunately, Gulf shrimp is one of the few sustainable shrimp options.  Most of the shrimp eaten in the states come from places like the shrimp farms of Malaysia: where the factory like methods of raising shrimp degrade coastal habitats and communities.  (See the Environmental Justice foundations article: Farming the Sea - unregulated shrimp farming, the environment and people.)  Can we continue to export these ugly practices just so we can buy our seafood cheap?  

Even if the cost of shrimp doesn’t go up, this has cost us.  At the rate we are spoiling ecosystems and waterways it is becoming increasingly hard to support a growing population on this small planet.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line: Finding sustainable seafood appears to be getting harder, but the nutrition benefits make it worth researching.  SlowFood USA recently stated in their monthly Food Chain, “We can also support the ongoing rebuilding of the Gulf and other regional seafood industries by making sure the seafood we buy is domestic and sustainably harvested.”  See past post: Finding Sustainable Seafood to learn more.  And if you’d like to get involved with relief efforts, consider supporting organizations like the Gulf Restoration Network.

Another Reason to Go Organic

                            Crop Dusting Helicopter-(Ironically Beautiful)

Not to be overly dramatic, but toxic chemicals in our food may be messing with our kid's heads.  

The newest addition to the growing list of reasons to choose organic food: high urinary organophosphate concentrations have been linked to twice the incidence of ADHD in children 8-15 years old.  Organophospates (OP), which are used in agriculture precisely because they attack the nervous system of insects, are known to accumulate in human tissues, though its often believed to be in low enough levels to not impact our health.  We are, afterall, a lot bigger than insects.  But if size matters, than wouldn't our children be the canaries in the coal mine?   A new study in the journal Pedriatrics, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Urinary Metabolites of Organophosphate Pesticides, explores the high rates of ADHD and pesticide metabolites.   From the authors:

WHAT’S KNOWN ON THIS SUBJECT: Exposure to organophosphates has been associated with adverse effects on neurodevelopment, such as behavioral problems and lower cognitive function. Studies have focused, however, on populations with high levels of exposure, relative to the general population.

WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS: We conducted a study with 1139 children 8 to 15 years of age, representative of the US population. The findings showed that children with higher urinary levels of organophosphate metabolites were more likely to meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD.

So what does this mean for eaters?  Though this study has not shown a causal relationship (meaning we can't say that OPs cause ADHD) I do think it is better to be safe than sorry. I whole heartedly recommend choosing foods grown without toxic pesticides (or at least those grown without a lot of pesticides or those that are known to have lower residues of pesticides.)  The Environmental Working Group has published a list, called the Dirty Dozen, of the twelve typically most  contaminated fruits and veggies: peaches, strawberries, apples, domestic blueberries, nectarines, cherries, imported grapes, celery, sweet bell peppers, spinach, kale, collard greens and potatoes.  These foods would be best to buy organic or to grow naturally in your own garden plot. The foods found by the EWG to have the least pesticide residue, the Clean Fifteen, (sixteen are actually listed) are onions, sweet corn, sweet peas, asparagus, cabbage, eggplant, sweet potatoes, avocados, pineapples, mangoes, kiwi, domestic cantaloupe, watermelon, grapefruit and honeydew.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:  Eat your organic veggies and fruits and plenty of them!  For a clear explanation of what organic means and many more reasons why you might want to choose organic, read the past blog post, "Is Organic Better for You?".  For those folks who don't have the extra money for pesticide free food at the market, consider growing your own.  Check out Kitchen Gardeners International or the Milwaukee's own Victory Garden Initiative for more information and gardening resources.

Earth Day 2010

Earlier today, someone asked me what they could do to celebrate Earth Day. I responded, "Planting a tree or giving up factory farmed meat for a day (or forever) would be a good place to start."  Then I found this brilliantly begun message in my inbox and felt I had to pass it on....

Dear Jennifer,

You are destroying the ocean. We all are. We're polluting oceans with plastic waste and chemicals, we're overfishing, and we're causing climate change to warm and acidify our ocean waters.

But this Earth Day, you can do something about it. Since we are the problem, we can also be the solution. We can change our habits and protect our oceans forever.

We've partnered with our friends at Participant Media, the entertainment company behind such films as An Inconvenient Truth and Oceans, to help start a movement of people dedicated to taking simple steps to reduce three of the main threats to oceans: plastic waste, overfishing and climate change.

This Earth Day, you can make a difference by signing a public pledge to take at least one action to help save our oceans »

Here are the three most important steps you can take to help protect our oceans:

1. Choose reusable bottles and bags instead of plastic ones. Americans together use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour and each use 500 plastic bags annually. These can take anywhere from 1,000 to 1 million years to degrade, and are why plastic constitutes 90% of all trash floating on the ocean's surface.

2. Eat non-endangered seafood. Due to our over-consumption of seafood, 90% of the world's large fish, such as tuna, swordfish, flounder and sharks have been killed in the past 50 years. If we continue at our current rates, all salt-water fish could be extinct by 2048.

3. Reduce your carbon footprint. Carbon intensive activities such as driving, flying, and inefficient home heating are warming ocean waters, which could be catastrophic for millions of ocean species unable to adapt to higher temperatures. The extinction of any number of these species could in turn cause a collapse of the marine food chain, affecting everything from plankton to polar bears.

We can change all this by together changing our own individual behavior. Together we can ensure healthy, clean oceans for future generations. It all starts with people like us deciding to make small changes that can have a big impact.

Sign the pledge today and commit to help save the world's oceans »

Thank you for taking a stand,

– The Change.org Team in partnership with Participant Media

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:  There are many ways to celebrate Earth Day with good food.  If you need more ideas, check out last year's post Eating Green for Earth Day.

smaller = < climate change

"Can we imagine smaller?"  Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy, The End of Nature, and now Eaarth, asked in talk last Friday night at the Urban Ecology Center.

Smaller, as opposed to business as usual, is what it will take to mitigate the very worst effects of global warming.  Smaller seems revolutionary, but as we are already running into the limits of growth, what is really radical is not doing anything.  Smaller is necessary to slow down the heartbreaking losses related to climate change that are already occurring: the arctic melting, island nations disappearing, glacial water supplies being lost faster than they can be replaced, extinction of species, increased flooding & stronger storms.  "We are not allowed to bet on this," said Bill.  We are not allowed to gamble away the things we collectively need and love as humans.

Bill explained how we have already "built a new" planet in the past 200 years of burning fossil fuels, releasing carbon into the atmosphere that took millions of years to lay down.  The result: the earth's temperature has been raised by one full degree, there is 5% more moisture in the atmosphere, and 30% increase in oceanic acidity.  Each of these changes has led to myriad of problems, as mentioned, but the things that make it seem real to us are the stories with which we can identify.  In the face of all the dramatic stories, I was surprised how deeply I was saddened when Bill shared, very matter of factly while he was really talking about something else, that his home state of Vermont (once my home state) is losing their maple trees.  Just imagine; no sugar on snow.

Many people, especially leaders of large nations such as ours (as evidenced by the outcome of Copenhagen,) are in a state of denial, but the science is clear: it's real, we've caused it, and we need to take some drastic actions now.  The safe level of carbon in the atmosphere is 350 parts per million (ppm), as found by leading climate scientist Jim Hansen and his team (tipped off when the arctic started melting in 2007.)  We're now at 387ppm.

Enter the 350 campaign.  Bill Mckibben and a few grad students have started a global campaign to draw attention to climate change.  350.org is home to a global network of citizens of the earth concerned about the present and the future.  October 24, 2009, the international day of action on Climate Change,  was reported by CNN the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history.  Go to 350.org to see thousands of pictures of people from every continent taking action.  Maybe you'll see the photo of the Bangladeshi orphans who apparently sent a not along with their photo that said something like, "even though no one cares for us, we care about the earth."  The environmental movement is often seen as elitest, but Bill made the (too often missed) point that those with the least resources suffer the worst from environmental disasters; climate change is no different.

The 350 campaign has announced 10/10/10 as a Global Work Day.   From the website:

2010 is the year we
Get To Work.

With ideas and input from thousands of organizers from around the world, we've formed a climate action plan for 2010.
We'll get to work to start changing our communities, and get to work to make our leaders realize that they actually need to lead. It's a plan that may well break the logjam and get us moving. But only, of course, if we work together to make it happen.

What will you do in your community?

One final point that resonated with me and I think is important for us all to think about.  When asked about personal lifestyles, Bill responded by talking about how our choices do matter, but that we should be, "saving some of the energy we use to perfect our own lives" to get political.  Global warming is a global problem.  The 350 campaign is a way to move world leaders to the end result of putting a price on carbon to reduce emissions significantly everywhere.


Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:  The food system accounts for an estimated 20% of carbon emissions.  See past blog posts Changing Climate Change, Industrial Nutrition, and 50% Less Meat, and for ideas on low-carbon diets.  Changing our food system to one that emits less doesn't have to be all drudgery either.  One study found that people, on average have ten times more conversations while shopping at a farmer's market than while at the supermarket.  I'd love to see a study exploring how much more famer's market shoppers enjoy their local, fresh food too:)

Jamie's Food Revolution

If you haven't yet seen British chef Jamie Oliver's new reality show, Jamie's Food Revolution, about trying to change school meals in one of the unhealthiest places in America, you can watch full episodes on ABC.com.  It's worth a watch: his earnest desire to help a town combat its alarming rates of overweight and obesity by serving real food instead of processed food at school stirs up mixed responses from residents.  While Huntington, WV has been singled out due to a CDC report that named it the most obese city in the country, its eating habits, its school lunch, and its public health picture is found in the towns and cities across America.    Jamie's show uncovers some of the shocking realities of school lunch, like french fries counting as a serving of vegetables.  It also puts a face to the "obesity epidemic" by featuring residents whose lives have been severely impacted by obesity. 

Jamie (and viewers) may not realize that there is a long standing grass roots food movement in America, one arm aimed directly at improving school lunch.  He might have a better chance of success if he calls on the expertise of people like Ann Cooper, the Renegade Lunch Lady, and Chef Greg Christian of Chicago's Organic School Project.

My hope is that the show will get more people involved in ongoing projects to improve school food or to start their own project.  A starting point may be to find out about a school's (federally mandated) wellness policy.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:  Kids do spend a large amount of time at school and the food served there has a dramatic impact on their overall diet quality.  School lunch funding is not adequate to serve quality meals.  The federal Childhood Nutrition Act, which regulates the school food spending, is being reauthorized and so this is an important opportunity for change.  Let your congress people know you support healthier food in schools. Learn more at Slow Food USA's campaign for good food in schools website: Time for Lunch.

Food Biodiversity

 Ag Biodiversity in FAO

Food biodiversity (variation of life forms within the food system) is essential for good nutrition and global food security.  Traditionally, humans have relied on a wide diversity of plants and animal species foods.  Today over 98% of foods have disappeared or are at loss of disappearing. This is due to a multiplicity of factors; our industrialized food system has been built on principles of uniformity and effieciency.  The result is our monocrop agriculture has led to monocrop diets.  People have little variety in their diets, with a few varieties of corn, soy, and meat filling the national appetite for convenient and cheap meals, but our health is suffering.

The United Nations has declared 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity.  It's time recognize the extent and the scope of the problem and find a way forward.  

Joining the many initiatives working to protect and preserve agricultural biodiversity worldwide (such as the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity and the Food and Agriculture Organization) is a local educational effort to promote at risk foods linked to Southeast Wisconsin.  Building off the work of Slow Food USA and its RAFT Alliance and Ark of Taste, is Endangered Food of SE Wisconsin.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottomline: To be a bit kitchy--variety is the spice of life.  But in all seriousness, the wide variety of food traditions that is our human heritage can help us to address the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease and offer alternatives to the current food system's destructive effects on the environment and our communities.

Grains

This post is part of a series exploring the primary environmental and health issues in a particular food group.



Bread made from Turkey Hard Red Winter Wheat, an heirloom grain on Slow Food's Ark of Taste.


The cultivation of grains can arguably be called the most influential happening in the history of human kind. When the farming of cereals began, so did civilization.

Grains are an important part of a healthy diet, but much of the grain we eat today is in a refined form and heavily processed to offer us little of the nutritional benefits of whole grains. And much of this grain is grown unsustainably, profiting only agribusiness, with the ecosystem, family farmers, and eaters reaping little reward.

The Health Benefits of Whole Grains

Whole grains like whole wheat, rye, barley, spelt, oats, stone ground cornmeal, brown rice, wild rice, quinoa, popcorn, buckwheat, teff and millet support wellness. In their intact form, grains provide carbohydrates, dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, lignans, phytoestrogens, and phenolic compounds. When the outer bran and inner germ of the grain seed kernel are removed, as in the case of white bread and white rice and the like, we are left with solely the starchy endosperm. Stripped of the rich B vitamins and antioxidants of the germ, and the fiber of the bran, carbohydrate is the primary nutrient left. In refining, the whole grain easily goes from a nutrient dense food to a source of empty calories.

The Dietary Guidelines for American’s recommendation is to “Make half your grains whole.” At least. The DGA’s go on to say, “Consuming at least 3 or more ounce-equivalents of whole grains per day can reduce the risk of several chronic diseases and may help with weight maintenance.” The benefits of whole grains stretch from reduced risk of certain cancers to lowered cholesterol to improved gastrointestinal functioning. Whole grains have been found to reduce the postprandial blood sugar surge and to increase satiety; these effects can aid in improved diabetes control as well as weight control.

The ever popular refined white flour, pasta, rice, cereals, snack foods, and sweets can be eaten without the negative consequences of high blood sugar or chronic weight gain, but the amount of these refined grain we eat as American’s is way too much for our own good and too often is joined by added sugars, fat, and sodium; contributing to higher risk of weight increases, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. People who choose to eat whole grains at most meals reduce their risk of these problems. Unfortunately, there is confusion about what constitutes a whole grain, so here are some tips to help identify whole grains:

Ø Check the ingredient label as described above: the first ingredient should be a whole grain.

Ø Look for the grams of fiber listed on the Nutrition Facts Label: a good source of whole grains will have a higher fiber content. A good rule of thumb is to look for 3 grams of fiber for each serving, like a one ounce slice of bread.

Ø Watch for the whole grain council label. This is voluntary labeling so while anything with the whole grain stamp will be a source of whole grains, not every whole grain has a stamp.

Ø Buy raw whole grain ingredients from the bulk bins or directly from a farm or mill. Steel cut and rolled oats, whole wheat berries and flour, quinoa, wild rice, or brown rice are all clearly whole grains.

A Step Towards Sustainable Choices

If eating whole grains helps protect your own health, then choosing local and organic whole grains is a step towards protecting the health of the planet.

Locally grown grains can reduce transportation emissions as well as support your local and regional farmers. Organic grains are grown without synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and fungicides, toxic pesticides, sewage sludge, and are not genetically engineered. Both reduced transportation and reduced chemical use helps to reduce toxic runoff into our increasingly susceptible waterways. The run off from the industrial farms of the Midwest drains into the Mississippi River and is one of the major contributors to the notorious “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico—an area the size of New Jersey in which life has basically been suffocated; destroying biodiversity and the livelihood of many of the Gulf’s fishing communities. Closer to home, organic farming allows for more life to flourish on the farm and in nearby ecosystems like birds, bees, and small mammals.

Organic foods, by law, cannot contain any GMO ingredients, which is useful to those consumers looking to avoid GMOs because they are not labeled in this country. GMOs, Genetically Modified Organisms, are defined as “organisms with manipulated genes to introduce new, or alter existing, characteristics, or produce a new protein or enzyme” by Food Processing Technology. The biotech industry promotes GMOs as the answer to just about everything, but especially to feeding the world’s growing population while solving our environmental crises. But there is much reason to be skeptical about the claims of this very controversial industry. Around the world, people are protesting GMOs for environmental, food sovereignty, health, cross contamination concerns, and more.

“Agricultural biotechnology has been promoted as the key tool to combat global hunger and poverty by increasing the productivity of farmers worldwide...The biotechnology industry promised that farmers could increase their yields, lower production costs and reduce agrochemical use. Instead, American farmers have faced higher costs without higher productivity, risked law suits from seed companies, and applied more agrochemicals as weeds and insects have developed resistance to the genetic crop traits.” - Food and Water Watch

While the biotech industry courts favor with high level players interested in solving world hunger, it is important to keep in mind that hunger stems from the inability to afford food, not lack of food in the global supply. While global hunger increases, large agro-companies like Monsanto and Cargill are making record profits. Even the American Dietetic Association, a fairly conservative and industry friendly organization, acknowledges there may be a problem with biotech. While the 2007 ADA Position Paper on Sustainability states, “ADA affirms that food biotechnology has many potentially positive applications,” the paper goes on to say, “genetically engineered seeds present some significant contradictions regarding ecological sustainability.”

The ADA shows no concern over the potential human health impacts of GMO consumption, though certainly there have been cases of novel allergens introduced into foods like corn and kiwi. To date, there are no long-term studies that can show us that the regular consumption of the most commonly eaten GMO foods (corn, soy, canola, and cottonseed oil) is absolutely safe. We will find out someday as most Americans are now eating GMO foods on a daily basis.

At its most basic level, the fundamental problem with biotechnology seems to be that it perpetuates an industrial paradigm that furthers the pollution of our waterways and leaves the soil bereft of nutrients, requiring huge inputs of fertilizer to grow anything at all. This is no way to move forward in the face of climate change in a world of finite resources.

Finding Good Whole Grains

Local sources of grains can be found in much of the U.S. When Milwaukee’s Eat Local Challenge began a few years ago, we sought out local sources of every food we could, but had some difficulty finding local wheat. We found some freshly milled wheat flour in a farm store at the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, but that required a 45 minute drive from the city—not all that environmentally friendly.

Since that first ELC in 2007, the market for local grains seems to have expanded; now we can buy organic whole wheat flour from Illinois at our local Co-op, we can find rolled oats at our farmers market’s year round, and one of our farmer friends shared a pound of wheat berries he grew in his nearby fields last year. The ability to find one of our region's indigenous foods, wild rice, has expanded as well. A few years back, it seemed you had to know someone, travel “up north” where wild rice grows, or special order it from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota--where the tribe protects and maintains the sacred wild rice, known as Manoomin in Ojibwe. Now, we can purchase real wild rice from Wisconisn at a local “Trading Post” or the White Earth Wild Rice is now easily from the Outpost Co-op.

Another Great Lakes food tradition is the White Corn tended by the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. Originally from the New York area, tribal members brought Iroquois White Corn with them when they migrated to Wisconsin as their land was taken by colonists. White Corn is eaten primarily as a grain in its dried form (when fresh it’s known as “green corn.”) It is enjoyed in White Corn Soup or as a wheelshaped delicious cornmeal bread, studded with kidney beans, known as Kanastohale. Each year at the Oneida organic farm Tsyunhehkw^, elders, youth and adults come together for the Community Harvest and Husking Bee—a tradition that has been carried on for generations.

Growing your own grain is also a possibility. While wheat, rye, or barley may be a challenge if you do not have much land or a thresher, it’s pretty simple to grow a row of grain corn in your backyard. This past year, partner grew Pennsylvania Dutch Heirloom Corn for popcorn and Hopi Blue Corn for flour. We now have a few quarts of beautiful grey-blue cornmeal, ground on a friend’s borrowed mill attached to their food processor.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:

Eat whole grains for your own health. Choose organically and locally grown grains for the health of the planet and of future generations. There is a continuum of food choices within any food group: at one end of the Grains continuum, you may find heavily processed foods like snack cakes and white bread and on the other end you may find locally grown, organic oats, homegrown corn, and real wild rice. Though the reasons to choose well are plenty, change does not easily happen overnight; take small steps in the direction you'd like to go. Wherever you are on the continuum, there is room to grow. If you currently eat white bread regularly, consider switching to whole grain bread. If you currently eat whole grain bread, but don’t cook, try making wild rice, brown rice, quinoa, or barley for dinner two or three times this week. If you eat and cook whole grains regularly, it might be time to seek out local sources at your farmers market or on localharvest.org.

Science and Public Health Take a Good Look at the Food System

February has been ripe with discourse about the transforming the food system to one that can feed the world equitably and healthfully while mitigating the effects of climate change and environmental degradation.

On Feb 12, a special edition of the journal Science devoted to the question of feeding a growing population with finite resources was made available online for free.  I’ve just begun getting through pieces like Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People, What It Takes to Make That Meal, Measuring Food Insecurity, and Sustainability and Global Seafood, but I can wholeheartedly recommend it as an important resource for those interested in taking a serious look at our global public health and environmental crises and considering the solutions. The introductory article Feeding the Future starts off dramatically:

Feeding the 9 billion people expected to inhabit our planet by 2050 will be an unprecedented challenge. This special issue examines the obstacles to achieving global food security and some promising solutions…. We have little time to waste. Godfray et al. (p. 812) note that we have perhaps 40 years to radically transform agriculture, work out how to grow more food without exacerbating environmental problems, and simultaneously cope with climate change. Although estimates of food insecurity vary (Barrett et al., p. 825), the number of undernourished people already exceeds 1 billion; feeding this many people requires more than incremental changes (Federoff et al., p. 833).

Then last week, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement sponsored a web program in their WIHI series, titled  “ Tipping the Scales: Fresh Ideas to Combat Obesity.”   The program focused on our food environment and it’s impact on our food intake.   In it, I was impressed to hear Dr David Kessler former FDA Commissioner and author of The End of Overeating say, “Unless we dramatically change our relationship with food, including the environment..” ...the epidemic of obesity will go unresolved.  Then Charles J. Homer, MD, MPH, said, “overweight is not a matter of personal choice…we live in a toxic environment and we need to change it.”   And Rachelle Mirkin of the National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality talked about how a big, systemic change will be needed to make a difference in the epidemic of obesity.   She said, that for “real change” to happen, “we’re going to need to change the environment.” 

And today  an exciting webinar on Bridging Food Systems and Public Health was aired. The hosts promised it would be available online tomorrow.  For now you can access the special issues of the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition  that the webinar explored: Food Systems and Public Health: Linkages to Achieve Healthier Diets and Healthier Communities.  David Wallinga, MD, MPA, of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Michael Hamm, PhD, of Michigan State University, and Angie Tagtow, MS, RD, LD, HEN/ADA Managing Editor were the featured speakers.  I can’t say enough about this webinar.  Not only did the speakers address opportunities for positive changes in local and federal policy and ways for health professionals to “dig in”, they shared visions of what a healthy and sustainable food system might actually look like.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:  Our environmental and public health crises intersect in the food system.  And there is a lot of work to be done to tackle these crises.  I loved when Michael Hamm of the JHEN webinar defined our food system challenges as a “wicked problem”--a problem that is "difficult or impossible to fix…. because of complex interdependencies.”  But in acknowledging the scope of the problem we should not give up.   Each and every one of us has opportunities to make positive changes on the individual, local, nationwide and global level.  If we find ways to act quickly and act together to support good policies that can help us to change our collective and individual foodways, we just might be able to create an equitable, healthy, and sustainable food system.

America's Move to Raise a Healthier Generation

This week Michelle Obama helped launch a national campaign to fight childhood obesity—Let’s  Move: America’s Move to Raise a Healthier Generation of Kids. 

What's refreshing about this high profile initiative is that it not only includes a focus on Healthier Choices and Physical Activity but also Healthier Food in Schools and Healthy Food Access.  This moves the issue of healthy food access (or food insecurity) from what some might call the fringe to the spotlight.  Though healthy food insecurity has long been recognized as a problem in public health and community activist circles, this increased attention, funding, and acknowledgment that obesity is tied to lack of healthy food access may have positive results.  With Will Allen of Milwaukee’s very own Growing Power and many other high profile Americans including the president of the American Acadamy of Pediatrics at her side, the first lady outlined the program priorities.

From the Let’s Move Website: 

Accessing Healthy, Affordable Food
More than 23 million Americans, including 6.5 million children, live in low-income urban and rural neighborhoods that are more than a mile from a supermarket. These communities, where access to affordable, quality, and nutritious foods is limited, are known as food deserts.  Lack of access is one reason why many children are not eating recommended levels of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. And food insecurity and hunger among children is widespread.  A recent USDA report showed that in 2008, an estimated 49.1 million people, including 16.7 million children, lived in households that experienced hunger multiple times throughout the year. The Administration, through new federal investments and the creation of public private partnerships, will: 

• Eliminate Food Deserts:  As part of the President’s proposed FY 2011 budget, the Administration announced the new Healthy Food Financing Initiative – a partnership between the U.S. Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health and Human Services that will invest $400 million a year to help bring grocery stores to underserved areas and help places such as convenience stores and bodegas carry healthier food options.  Through these initiatives and private sector engagement, the Administration will work to eliminate food deserts across the country within seven years. 
• Increase Farmers Markets: The President’s 2011 Budget proposes an additional $5 million investment in the Farmers Market Promotion Program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture which provides grants to establish, and improve access to, farmers markets.

The initiative goals also include Healthier Food in Schools.  Again, from the Let’s Move website:

Serving Healthier Food in Schools 
Many children consume as many as half of their daily calories at school.  As families work to ensure that kids eat right and have active play at home, we also need to ensure our kids have access to healthy meals in their schools.  With more than 31 million children participating in the National School Lunch Program and more than 11 million participating in the National School Breakfast Program, good nutrition at school is more important than ever.  Together with the private sector and the non-profit community, we will take the following steps to get healthier food in our nation’s schools:   

• Reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act: The Administration is requesting an historic investment of an additional $10 billion over ten years starting in 2011 to improve the quality of the National School Lunch and Breakfast program, increase the number of kids participating, and ensure schools have the resources they need to make program changes, including training for school food service workers, upgraded kitchen equipment, and additional funding for meal reimbursements.  With this investment, additional fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products will be served in our school cafeterias and an additional one million students will be served in the next five years.   

Slow Food USA has been addressing the poor quality of US school lunches with it’s Time for Lunch Campaign since early last year—you may remember a blog post about labor day “Eat Ins” to call attention to the issue.   In a press release on Feb 9^th, Slow Food USA’s president pointed out that while this additional $10 billion is progress, it is not nearly enough in the grand scheme of things:

“President Obama’s proposal to add $1 billion per year to the Child Nutrition Act is an important step forward,” stated Josh Viertel, president, Slow Food USA. “But, it’s not enough to give America’s kids a healthy future, especially when nearly one third of our children are overweight or obese and when Congress spends at least $13 billion per year subsidizing the production of unhealthy processed foods. The public needs to speak up and tell Congress to make real improvements to school lunch.”

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:   The burden of obesity does not lie solely, or even mostly, with personal choice.  A large body of research points to the powerful role the environment plays in our personal habits.  The socio-ecomonic model of health places the individual and their own modifiable layers of influence (things they have control over) within a sea of influences:  living and working conditions, agriculture and food supplies, education, access to good and services like healthcare and water and sanitation, and the overall economic, cultural and environmental influences. With this model, we can see that the burden of obesity lies within our society.  The changes in our way of life over the last few generations has re-shaped us, literally.

My practice affords me the opportunity to talk with parents and kids struggling with childhood obesity (and diabetes, hypercholesterolemia and hypertension.)   What I see in my conversations with these families are the same problems, over and over, stemming from a food system in disarray.  The barriers people have to overcome to resist or reduce obesity are overwhelming—which is why we have such a problem in the first place.  Yes, guardians should ensure their kids have daily active play, wholesome snacks, plenty of water, and the chance to sit down at the table together often for meals, but if we do not make drastic changes to the way we nourish ourselves en masse, the epidemic of obesity will only get worse until we run our of land, food, or resources.   The more resources, programs, initiatives, and so on we can use to provide sustainable real food to real kids, the better chances our kids will have at living long, healthy lives to face the challenges ahead.  So this initiative, Let’s Move, seems to provide a ray of hope in a worrisome time…

WIll Real Food Experience the Oprah Effect?

Yesterday, Michael Pollan gave Oprah fans a clear explanation of the common western diet when he defined it as, "lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything...except fruits, vegetables, and whole grains."   He went on to say, "before the Western diet...around the turn of the last century...populations did not have high levels of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity..."  

The western diet, the only diet known to cause chronic disease, is full of empty calories (lots of calories with little or no nutrition.)  And it's brought to us by corporations using unsustainable means. 

So how do we remedy this?  Pollan explains that it's simple in his new book "Food Rules."  "It's all about whole foods," he said on the show (whole foods meaning minimally processed foods, not the store) and he's right. 

While the nutrition industry has rightly been accussed of confusing eaters with nutritionism which can praise or vilify a nutrient from one year to the next, many dietitains have been espousing this same sort of simple advice for decades.  "Eat a well balanced diet by choosing a wide variety of foods from each food group," is standard dietitian speak.  However, it hasn't been so easy to translate.  Michael Pollan, Mr "Eat Food.  Mostly Plants. Not too Much,"  translates this message better than just about anyone else.  And now he's done it on Oprah.

NY Times Article: Pink Slime Beef

Back in December, the New York Times published it's article on beef processing, Safety of Beef Processing Method Is Questioned, and people have been rethinking their consumption of ground beef ever since. In a shortsighted industry solution to an industry problem of E. coli and salmonella, a major meat processor has been using ammonia (a substance classified by EU as "irritant", "corrosive", or danger to the environment" dependent on it's concentration) in an effort to kill pathogens without actually reducing levels of contamination in beef. This processed beef-like substance, referred to as "pink slime," has made it's way into the majority of fast food burgers and into school lunches. Grist.org food editor Tom Philpott wrote a predictably smart and angry piece in response. From his Lessons on the food system from the ammonia hamburger fiasco:

To make a long story short: Beef Products buys the cheapest, least desirable beef on offer—fatty sweepings from the slaughterhouse floor, which are notoriously rife with pathogens like E. coli 0157 and antibiotic-resistant salmonella. It sends the scraps through a series of machines, grinds them into a paste, separates out the fat, and laces the substance with ammonia to kill pathogens.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line: Pink slime, of course, is not healthy for us or the planet. Factory farmed beef is the largest environmental polluter in the food system (see previous posts Changing Climate Change or Meat's Deep Eco Footprint ) and the end product is high in saturated fat and goodness knows what else. A better choice for dinner would be grass fed beef or bison—higher in healthy fats like omega 3 and conjugated linoleic acid. Or choose beans—inexpensive, high in protein, fiber, and antioxidants, and low in fat and impact.

Resolutions for the New Year

Wintery Kale

For the past two years, this blog has explored issues of food, health, politics, and the environment. I've had many readers tell me they enjoy reading the posts because it makes them think about food in a new way. This post is all about how to turn those thoughts into action. Whether you are already "eating green" or new to the idea that our food choices play a role in climate change and ecological degradation, if you want to reduce your footprint, setting a resolution can help you focus your energy.

The new year is a busy time for dietitians, as people's motivation to make changes they've been considering for a while seems to peak, they seek out the help of professionals they trust. While the most common resolution is to lose weight, I thought I'd share some sustainable nutrition resolution ideas (these are actually tips recycled from an Earth Day post a couple years back--how appropriate.)

Research shows people tend to be more successful when their goals are "SMART", Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. For example, if you want to increase your consumption of locally grown foods, your goal could be, "I will visit the winter farmer's market at least four times this winter," or, "I will have at least one local food at each meal," or, "I will purchase a CSA share in a local farm..." you get the picture, right? When you are accountable to a goal (and to yourself) you can check in, see how you are doing, and revise to suit your life as needed. So the following goals are just to get you started. Research also shows that making your resolution public can increase your chances of success, so If you set a goal, leave a comment and let me know your progress.

My personal resolution is to write a monthly blog post highlighting the issues surrounding individual food groups; grains, vegetables, beans, fruit, meat, dairy, fish, water, and so on. I will, of course, include additional posts on timely food related articles, issues, and updates, but each month readers can expect a blog post focusing on one food group with tips on how to choose foods for personal, community, and planetary health.

Ten Resolution Ideas for A More Sustainable Diet:

1. Eat More Locally. Support your community by buying locally. Local foods are high in flavor and nutrition as well as "low carb"-- low in carbon emissions.
   
2. Buy Organic. Not just for the birds and the bees; our entire ecosystem (ourselves included) benefits from responsible agriculture.
3. Grow your own food. In your garden you can plant heirloom seeds, grow them organically, and eat them quite locally in your own backyard.
   
4. Eat less meat. Feed lot meat is carbon-intensive. Go grass fed or vegetarian.
   
5. Cook more often. Make more time to be in the kitchen. Highly processed and packaged foods take a lot of energy to make and transport.
   
6. Compost. Take your food scraps out of the landfill and turn them into "black gold" for your garden.
   
7. Bag it yourself. Instant karma. Bring bags with you when you shop.
   
8. Pay more, eat less. Consider paying a higher percentage of your income on food. Food insecurity is a real issue in many households in this country and the world beyond. However, we spend less time working to get food on our plates than ever before in history. (Is that cable t.v more important than the organic milk?)
9. Plan ahead. From packing a lunch to preserving apples, planning ahead can help you avoid buying energy intensive convenience foods that you don't really want.
   
10. Educate. Share meals and ideas. Request local, organic, and sustainable foods at your favorite restaurants and grocery stores and encourage others to join you.
    

Changing Climate Change

Leaders from 192 nations are gathered in Copenhagen for what has been called "the largest and most important UN climate change conference in history." Certainly the stakes are high. And the science is telling us dramatic action must be taken to prevent the worst effects of a warming globe. The worst, because the climate change ball is already in motion...

What does this have to do with nutrition? A whole heck of a lot it turns out.

Agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The livestock sector alone accounts for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions- more than transportation- according to the FAO.

Climate change is also a public health issue. "The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people's health and must be regulated."

And as the effects of climate change become more drastic, we won't have a choice in rethinking the way we feed ourselves- plant hardiness zone changes, drought patterns, flood impacts, and more are already shifting the way we are able to grow food.

National Public Radio's Marketplace has been airing a series recently called the Climate Race with a companion web portal in which you can listen to the series and explore an interactive US Climate Change map (compiled by the US Global Research Program.) Open the map on the region you live and you'll find effects of climate change that are already occurring and what we can expect by the end of the century if the pattern continues. The Midwest region has already seen two record breaking floods in the past 15 years (many of our local farmers were impacted.) If that isn't scary enough the forecast shows, "Great Lakes water levels to fall 1 to 2 feet by century's end, depending on emission levels." The Great Lakes-- our greatest supply of fresh water. The fresh water situation in other parts of the country looks even more grim.

These are just some of the reasons that so much is at stake in Copenhagen right now. Rising sea levels, already affecting countries like Maldives, will also dramatically change the way we live. Sweeping change is only possible if leaders around the world agree to reduce our collective impact. (And unfortunately, the popular cap and trade solution seems to only switch the pieces on the chess board.) But as individuals, I believe we have some power to create change as well.

Choosing a "low-carbon" diet is one way to reduce your personal carbon footprint. Locally grown foods tend to be lower impact- both in transportation cost, but also, importantly, in processing and packaging costs. Fortunately, the side effects of increased consumption of local foods could turn out to be stronger communities and healthier people. Check out the Center for Food Safety's Cool Food Campaign for more tips on stopping global warming with the food we eat.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line: Our food choices impact the world around us. Less meat, more local, less processed, more home made.... you get the drift. While global politicians continue their politicking, we can choose to reduce our own impact while building the resilience of our communities. Maybe, just maybe, our choices will help our voices trickle up to our leaders.

The Thanksgiving Story

This year, as we sat around the table with family and friends, enjoying the American Bronze Heritage Turkey, Sibley Squash, home grown potatoes, just picked brussel sprouts, and the many more delights that graced our table, I gave thanks for the health and wellness of our group and reflected on the origins of the very first Thanksgiving.

Certainly, humans of all cultures have been giving thanks for a bountiful harvest throughout the millennia, but the holiday we Americans celebrate each November commemorates a real occurrence- the survival of Plymouth colonists due to the generosity of the native Wampanoag people, who shared their knowledge, skills and food with the starving settlers. This is where our bucolic image of the “first Thanksgiving” usually ends- a large 3 day feast of venison, wild game, pompion, and brotherly love between the Pilgrims and Indians. This story is, of course, incomplete. The “survivalist training” provided by the Wampanoag was rewarded with massacre only a generation later. The first Thanksgiving was actually a scene in a horror story.

Even so, showing gratitude at the end of a harvest season remains ever appropriate. But the story we tell ourselves about our celebrational food is often much like the fairy-tale version of Thanksgiving. On the surface (or on the package) our food appears bucolic, yet underneath it’s a bit more sinister with corresponding environmental, health, and ethical horrors. This is especially so of the industrial holiday turkeys that grace most American’s plates.

Barbara Kingsolver, in her book detailing a year of local eating, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, famously penned her quest to establish a breeding flock of heritage turkeys. In describing why, she writes about the state of the turkey industry.

“Of the 400 million turkeys Americans consume each year, more than 99 percent of them are a single breed: the Broad-Breasted White, a quick-fattening monster bred specifically for the industrial scale setting. These are the big lugs so famously dumb, they can drown by looking up at rain. (Friends of mine swear they have seen this happen.) If a Broad-Breasted white should escape slaughter, it likely wouldn’t live to be a year old: they get so heavy, their legs collapse. In mature form they’re incapable of flying, foraging, or mating. That’s right, reproduction. Genes that make turkey behave like animals are useless to a creature packed wing to wing with thousands of others, and might cause it to get uppity or suicidal, so those genes have been bred out of the pool. Docile lethargy works better, and helps them pack on the pounds. To some extent, this trend holds for all animals bred for confinement. For turkeys, this scheme that gave them an extremely breast-heavy body and ultra-rapid growth has also left them with a combination of deformity and idiocy that renders them unable to have turkey sex. Poor turkeys.”

Rather excitingly, Barbara’s Red Bourbon turkeys do end up mating naturally by the end of her story, but the lineage of the Broad Breasted Whites continue to be left up to human “sperm wranglers.” It is for this and many other frightful reasons that I gave up eating turkey even at Thanksgiving for more than decade in favor of what I presumed was the only sane alternative: vegetarianism. For much of my life I avoided factory farming and it’s moral, environmental, and health atrocities by avoiding all meat. It wasn’t until I moved to a community in Vermont, teeming with small scale farms, that I realized there existed a viable alternative to factory farming aside from altogether abstaining from meat: pasturing animals in the brilliant out of doors. In the case of birds, pastured poultry can result in a healthier animal, food, community and ecosystem.

The American Bronze heritage turkey we enjoyed (after a quick brine and simple oven roast) came from JenEhr, a local family farm whose turkeys are raised on pasture have an opportunity to do what turkeys do best: walk around in the fresh air and eat grass and bugs. In the process, their meat develops a rich flavor and healthier nutrient profile than grain fed industrial birds. Pastured poultry has increased beneficial omega 3 fatty acids, conjugated linoleic acid, and beta carotene from the diverse diet they’ve had access to as well as less fat overall. Our Bronze turkey yielded a remarkably tiny amount of fat in the pan as it roasted, but what drippings it did yield were very rich in flavor and made a delectable gravy.

Heritage breeds are making a comeback due to dedicated conservationists- chefs, farmers, and eaters. Groups like the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy and Slow Food are working to maintain biodiversity and prevent further food extinction in our food system. Our local chapter of the national organization, Slow Food Wisconsin Southeast, pairs local eaters with local growers of heritage breeds like the Standard Bronze, Red Bourbon, and Narragansett, with the Heritage Turkey Project- a basic list of heritage turkey growers. Heritage Turkeys in other parts of the country can be located on the ALBC and Local Harvest websites.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:
It costs more to buy a heritage breed- they take more time and skill to raise. And takes more time to purchase than simply picking out a cheap bird from a pile in the freezer section of mega-mart. But it is a mistake to believe that a cheap price is a bargain. All down the food chain, the cost of cheap meat is felt- in the waters polluted by factory farm waste, in the unsafe conditions and poor wages paid the to industry workers, in the effects of chronic diseases on the eaters whose options are often limited to industrialized, processed foods. My recommendation is to buy better meat less often or just altogether skip it- and all the problems associated with cheap meat can be avoided. I choose quality over quantity and reserve my meat eating to those rare occasions when I’m comfortable it was raised in a way I can stomach. And when we do eat heritage meat, it is something we can truly be thankful for...

Native Alaskan Wellness

Beluga Point, Cook Inlet, Alaska

While in Anchorage for an Indian Health Services conference, I had the chance to meet many extraordinary Alaska Native people working to preserve their traditional food ways and lifestyles.

One such man, a tribal councilman from the Sitka tribe, generously shared with me his herring roe. Collected by laying hemlock branches deep under water during spawning season for the herring to lay eggs on and then gathered and frozen for safe keeping, he told me the Clupea pallasii is considered the first “big food” of spring; before the green shoots and leaves begin to show. The roe tasted like droplets of ocean breeze.

One beautiful woman artist and jewelry maker gave me a tiny fish made out of fossilized ivory to wear around my neck.

Another man, a cultural artist and teacher, shared with me a story about two elders he once met in a remote village. They were a traditional married couple who didn't appear to be nearly as old as their stated age of 90 years of age. He asked them what the secret was to their apparent youth and they replied, "food and love." He then shared with me how his aches and pains of “old age” (he’s 50) were cured one day when his brother gave him a jar of salmon roe. The salmon roe was so delicious, he ate half the jar in one evening- the next morning he awoke without pain. Now he makes a point to enjoy fish more regularly and he takes fish oil daily- he does not need aspirin any longer to be pain free. But the same brother who gave him the roes had to close up his salmon fishing operation earlier this year- a lifelong fisherman, he apparently had never experienced a salmon population so low.

In this land of ocean and lakes and rivers and streams, foods of the water are central to the cultural identity and health of the people as well as the ecology of the region. Along with berries, greens, roots and mushrooms and wild meat, fish, seaweed, and marine mammals make up a significant part of the many Alaskan’s traditional diets. We know that omega 3 fatty acids found in fish are cardio protective. We know that antioxidants in berries protect against cellular damage. When colonization forced changes in diet and lifestyle, these, and other protective effects of the traditional diet began to wane. There are many different tribes in Alaska, but one thing in common is their rates of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer are increasing, along with alarming rates of suicide.

The reasons for these changes are many and complex, and so must be addressed on many levels. One group working to address these problems from a wholistic health perspective is the Southcentral Foundation, an Alaska Native owned healthcare organization. Southcentral Foundation's vision is a Native community that enjoys physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellness; its mission is to work together with the Native community to achieve wellness through health and related services. One visit to the site showed happy staff and clients in an environment celebrating native heritage and values in the art and architecture, traditional healing services, and models of care.

I found another group working to address the wellness issues of people and places of the region at the Alaska Federation of Native’s trade show: the Nunamta Aulukestai.

Nunamta Aulukestai means Caretakers of the Land in Yup'ik. The group is made up of eight village corporations that have come together with this common goal of carefully managing the future of Bristol Bay. We are the people who live here year round. Our people have lived here for thousands of years. At the forefront of caring for our land is stopping the development of an open pit mine, Pebble Mine. This mine would sit precariously at the headwaters of the Kvichak and Nushagak Rivers. These rivers are the largest sockeye salmon producing rivers in the world. Millions of fish come back every year to spawn. Native people have been subsisting off of these fish for thousands of years. To put this resource at risk for an unsustainable resource such as gold is not only foolish but it endangers the livelihoods of the residents, animals and plants that live here.

The Nunamta Aulukestai shared literature that included the technical background of the proposed pebble mine, salmon ecology 101, DNR reports showing declines in the majority of Bristol Bay salmon species, and a flyer titled “Protecting Subsistence in the Age of Mega-Development.” The flyer captured my eye with a photo of a painted, pink, protest sign stating, “YOUR LAND LOVES YOU. LOVE IT BACK.” Across the room was a coalition of mining proponents.

I thought about the work of the Nunamta against the proposed mine on a trip north of Anchorage to the Eagle River. There my traveling companions and I witnessed a rare sight- a grizzly bear catching and eating a spawning salmon. Bears are the largest of the many species that directly or indirectly benefit from salmon runs. As our brown grizzly feasted away on his prize, I wondered how his relatives in the Bristol Bay watershed would fare if the mine went through.

Salmon aren’t the only marine species in trouble. Along with such stars as the endangered leatherback sea turtles and stellar sea lions, there is downward trend in several whale populations. The Oct 15, 2009 Turnagain Times headlined, “Cook Inlet beluga population declining; Scientists alarmed by recent count of endangered whales.” Loss of habitat and pollution (from development and mining) are cited as two key reasons for population declines.

Protecting endangered and threatened species is an issue of food sovereignty and environmental justice. Sustainable nutrition is not just about choosing sustainable foods, but also about choosing to raise our voices against unsustainable resource development and buying less “stuff” made from these processes (mining in Alaska yields copper, gold, molybdenum- all used in many industrial processes such as refining petroleum, making plastics, stainless steels, flame retardants, light bulbs and agricultural chemicals.)

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom line:

We do not live alone on this fair planet of ours. Personal and environmental health depend on each of us understanding how our choices affect the people and places of the world. For info on choosing sustainable seafood, see prior post form April '08; Finding Sustainable Seafood. For a great video on how our seemingly harmless little purchases impact the globe, see the award-winning online video, the Story of Stuff.