Enlightened

The best show on television right now is HBO’s Enlightened (so few people are watching it that I feel obliged to use hyperbole). Created by Mike White – a vegan whose best-known work is probably the movie School of Rock – the show centers on Amy Jellicoe, a self-destructive executive played by Laura Dern. Below, a preview:

Though the trailer is reminiscent of something Lifetime might churn out, the show itself is considerably more nuanced. Amy’s problem is that her efforts to effect change, both in her own life and in the world around her, tend to go astray; which is something White certainly seems to understand: in one interview he described himself an “erstwhile vegan.”

I challenged myself at the beginning of this blog to become vegan, but that process remains a work in progress. Still, blogging has encouraged me to continue eliminating meat byproducts from my diet.

In addition to Enlightened, White wrote and directed one of my favorite movies – the little-seen Year of the Dog. That film also begins with a breakdown: Peggy (the inimitable Molly Shannon) loses it when her dog dies from toxic poisoning. Again, a preview:

What I love about this film is how it deals with Peggy’s transition to a meatless lifestyle. Though she is in turmoil throughout much of the film, Peggy finds a bit of clarity when she learns about veganism, saying: “It's nice to have a word that can describe you. I've never had that before.”

The people in her life aren’t very accepting of her new diet, viewing it as an extension of her breakdown. Still, at the end of the film she comes to the realization that anyone’s lifestyle can be derided as ridiculous or lacking, and yet that doesn’t make her's any less worthwhile.

In an email to her friends and family she expands on her 'aha' moment:

There are so many kinds of life in this life. So many things to love. The love for a husband or a wife, a boyfriend or girlfriend. The love for children. The love for yourself. And even material things. This is my love. It is mine. And it fills me and defines me. And it compels me on.

Declaring yourself vegan can incite a surprising amount of consternation at the dinner table, but if it makes sense for you, embrace it.

Eating for the Future

People have a variety of motives for becoming vegan: in my first blog post I discussed how unsustainable food production practices drove me to give up meat; and in my interview with Hannah Pullman, she said she became vegan for moral reasons.

Also influential in this decision is the environmental impact of eating meat – an issue highlighted this week by the United Nation’s climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa. The UN has estimated that livestock farming accounts for about 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, with meat being the major contributor to that number (80 percent of agricultural emissions stem from meat production).

On its website, the magazine New Scientist reports that this problem is only getting worse:

This week, a major report concludes that food production is too close to the limits of a "safe operating space" defined by how much we need, how much we can produce, and its impact on the climate.

The article also quotes former undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Molly Jahn, who notes that as people get richer, the demand for protein gets stronger (and emissions from livestock farming increase), which begs the question, how do you achieve food security while still accounting for climate change?

According to the New Scientist, the solution is to eat less meat, instead of no meat at all:

In 2007, Colin Butler of the Australian National University in Canberra estimated that the average person consumed 100 grams of meat a day, or about one burger (a quarter-pounder is 113 g). The rich eat 10 times more than the poor – in other words, some people get 10 burgers a day while others get none.

Butler showed that if every person in the world ate 50 g of red meat and 40 g of white meat per day by 2050, greenhouse gas emissions from meat production would stabilise at 2005 levels – a target cited in national plans for agricultural emissions. That's about one burger and one small chicken breast per person every two days.

By reducing our dependency on meat, we can make a significant impact on man-made greenhouse gases, which scientists believe will lead to sea-level rise, floods, drought and famine. Indeed, changing our diet is vital considering the dismal results of the Kyoto Protocol – the treaty that bound 37 industrial nations to reduce emissions by about 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

The New York Times reports that from 1990 to 2009, global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels, rose by 38 percent (and would have been much higher had the the old Soviet bloc's economy not collapsed). Meanwhile, the U.S. – the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases – refused to ratify the Kyoto accord, and saw its greenhouse gases rise by almost 7 percent.

Still, countries like Germany and even China are investing in clean energy, and Detroit is finally producing vehicles that are more energy efficient. Not to mention, urban planners are beginning to take an interest in sustainable food systems.

On his blog, Mark Bittman – whom I’ve previously posted about – invited Nevin Cohen and Kubi Ackerman to write about the New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) proposals for environmental infrastructure initiatives. (Cohen teaches sustainable food systems, environmental policy and urban planning at the New School and Ackerman is a research coordinator at the Urban Design Lab at the Earth Institute at Columbia University.)

In their post, Cohen and Ackerman discuss how the DEP recently funded three new urban agriculture projects: a rooftop garden at a settlement house, a vegetable garden near the Gowanus Canal and a commercial rooftop farm atop a Brooklyn Navy Yard building. They write:

These projects are part of an innovative green infrastructure program to turn impervious roofs, vacant lots and streets into spaces that soak up the rain and prevent water pollution. Supporting urban farms and gardens as a means of keeping our waterways clean is an excellent idea, and should be dramatically scaled up.

New York has already spent billions on 14 wastewater treatment plants that handle the dry-weather sewage that flows from homes and businesses. Thanks to this technology, the harbor is cleaner than it has been in generations. But our sewers also collect rainwater, which mixes with raw sewage (called “combined sewer overflow,” or CSO) and is dumped into nearby rivers and creeks through hundreds of pipes to avoid inundating the treatment plants. Tens of billions of gallons of CSOs pollute our harbor each year, hindering the recovery of our estuarine ecosystem.

To control these overflows, the DEP has committed to investing $187 million in green infrastructure over the next four years, which Cohen and Ackerman note, “reduces air pollution, cools the city during hot summer months, increases property values and provides other ecological and quality of life benefits valued at between $139 and $418 million.”

The high potential return on investment in these projects highlights another motive for pursuing clean technology – it’s profitable. And these kinds of projects can be implemented at all levels, across most industries.

For example, Alexander Lee – who is part of the group that founded Fresh Nation – is currently working on a project to develop and apply sustainable agricultural techniques within the craft beer brewing industry.

Lee has started a page on the web site Kickstarter (an online fundraising platform) to get his project off the ground. Currently he has raised $1,500 toward his goal of $14,700, with 22 days left for people to back the project (Kickstarter projects are only funded if a project’s monetary goal is reached by a specified date).

Below he explains his sustainable food project, called Hydro Homebrew.

The idea behind his project, Lee says, is that for most agricultural companies, waste is viewed as a costly burden; but with Hydro Homebrew, every byproduct becomes a resource that can be used to reduce the environmental impact of small brewing companies.

If you’d like to donate to this project, visit the Hydro Homebrew Kickstarter page and send a couple bucks their way. Depending on how much you donate, you’ll be rewarded with anything from a Hydro Homebrew tote bag to three months worth of freshly harvested organic herbs; not to mention, the satisfaction of contributing to an environmentally friendly cause.

A Fresh Nation Follow-Up

As promised, here is my follow-up to my interview last week with Hannah Pullman about Fresh Nation Farmers Markets. On its website, Fresh Nation describes its mission as being "to foster strong and enduring relationships between farmers, food artisans, and consumers to bring local, healthy eating into the mainstream of American life."

The company's market inside the Danbury Fair mall accomplishes just that, bringing fresh food to the mall's holiday shoppers. During my interview with Hannah , I snapped a few photos:

If you're looking for the market, it's located on the lower level of the Lord & Taylor wing. It will be held every Saturday from 10am to 5pm and every Sunday from 11am to 5pm until April 29, 2012, so don't miss it!

As you can see, the indoor market has been designed so customers have plenty of space to talk directly with local farmers and food producers.

The market offers plenty of high-quality seasonal produce, while also providing shoppers with a number of gift options, from jams and sauces to baked goods (and you can always pass off one of the homemade pies as your own).

While the market features many returning vendors from Fresh Nation's summer market, it has also added several new vendors. Some of the best food stuffs on sale, in my opinion, are the homemade pickles, and the pasta and sauces.

So if you have some time this weekend and you're in the area, make sure you check out the farmer's market at the Danbury mall!

Food For Thought

Today is Thanksgiving, and before we start giving thanks for our deep-fried turkeys and $200 flat-screens, we should all take a moment to consider the issue of food insecurity in this country. In a previous post I discussed how U.S households that are "food insecure" -- meaning their access to food is limited or uncertain -- are on the rise: 14.6 percent of U.S. households fell into the food-insecure category at some point in 2008.

While this number is alarming, there are people who are trying to do something about it. This past weekend, while visiting a friend in Boston, I had a chance to meet someone who is working to provide food to those who need it: Nancy Jamison, the executive director of Fair Foods, a non-profit organization based in Dorchester that collects surplus food and distributes it to nearly 10,000 families in the eastern Massachusetts area. On Saturday I spoke with Jamison about Fair Foods and the organization’s trademark program, “Two Dollars-a-Bag.”

“Two Dollars-a-Bag” provides families with 15 pounds of groceries for a donation of $2. Operated by about 200 volunteers, the program trucks food to more than 50 distribution sites, located in churches, schools and senior housing complexes. Though donations are voluntary, Jamison finds that most people choose to contribute the money. “We do this program to give people their dignity,” she says, “People don’t like a handout.”

Rarely does Jamison sit down. With her matted grey hair, wool sweater and overalls, she looks much older than her 56 years; but she has an inexhaustible supply of energy. “Her day starts between four and five in the morning, and she usually doesn’t leave until around nine,” says Larry Lawson. Lawson is lanky with dreads that rain down his back. He is the main manger of Fair Foods, and Jamison calls him her “right-hand man.” He joined Fair Foods 15 years ago, having heard of the organization through its “Two Dollars-a-Bag” program.

While Jamison barks orders at a group of Harvard kids who are volunteering that day, Lawson stands quietly by a waiting truck at the opening of the warehouse. You’d easily mistake the warehouse for a junkyard if it weren’t for the stacks of food organized in the center of the room. Panes of glass and scrap wood overflow from every corner, and a broken-down car lingers to the side of the asparagus.

Jamison first became concerned about hunger relief during the 1984 famine in Darfur, western Sudan. “You had all these people, like Bob Dylan and Michael Jackson, singing ‘We are the World’, but what we needed wasn’t a song; we needed a food program.” But at that time, she was stuck raising her sister’s seven kids because of her sister’s drug addiction.

In 1988, she was working for Habitat for Humanity at Dorchester’s Pilgrim Church. Driving home one day, she saw surplus food being dumped at a Stop & Shop distribution center. She got a truck and brought the food back to the church. Jamison then recruited some friends, got more trucks, and soon they were delivering 45,000 pounds of food a week to local food banks.

Today, Fair Foods delivers 150,000 pounds of food a week, though Jamison says this number is far from adequate. “Nearly 300,000 pounds of food still gets dumped weekly,” she says, “as Fair Foods grows I want to address that problem.”

Lately, Jamison has been finding it difficult to continue delivering 150,000 pounds of food a week. Fair Foods’ current warehouse is smaller and holds less food than their previous location, which had two stories and was also located in Dorchester. They were forced to relocate because of issues with their landlord. “Our last landlord was racist,” Jamison says, “He’d start fights with all the black guys who worked for me. Once he even stuffed a can down our drain pipe!”

Even at their new location, they are having trouble with their landlord: “We were busy painting the ugly walls of this place and [the landlord] comes in here with these two dogs peeing everywhere, and starts yelling at us for painting.” Jamison is now looking to buy a larger warehouse in Chelsea, Mass., and hopes to move there by the spring.

Funding for the move has come mostly from money that Jamison says she made through real estate deals a couple years back. She has also received over $200,000 in grants, but says she dislikes taking them because she feels that she is endorsing what she’s termed the “non-profit industrial complex.”

As Jamison discuses the Greater Boston Food Bank, a similar organization that distributes food to hunger relief agencies in the city, she digs her hands into her pockets and sways backwards with a critical look in her eye. “They pay their executives $200,000 a year to just go to meetings; they need to get their asses in gear.” Jamison says she makes $40 a week through Fair Foods. “I give myself the same amount that I give the people working for me because one of my goals is to integrate the haves and the have-nots.”

Jamison’s employees are a mixed bunch. She has about 300 people working for her, with five managers. Some come from jails or half-way houses, others are from nursing homes. Most are people volunteering or fulfilling a community service requirement; Jamison has few steady workers. Part of her full-time staff is Jason Bennett, a carpenter and recent alumnus of Boston University. Jamison often puts him in charge when she is picking up or distributing food. Jason is quietly self-assured, giving orders to the Harvard kids, who show up late for volunteering, in an easy going, non-confrontational manner.

When Jamison arrives later with Lawson, the Harvard kids, taking a break from bagging squash, have formed a circle and are singing a cappella. Jamison sets them to work immediately, saying later that she took an immediate dislike to them. “The Harvard attitude messes a kid up, it makes them feel entitled.”

Of Jamison’s employees, Lawson is among those who have been with Fair Foods the longest. He also seems to be the most understanding of Jamison’s mischievous sense of humor. She does not hesitate to interrupt him when he is quietly chatting with a man who has stopped by to pick up some food, bursting into his office and chiding him for eating pig skins -- an acquired taste.

Whether Fair Foods will continue in Jamison’s absence remains to be seen. “Fair Foods is not a normal non-profit organization, it’s more like a family," my friend who volunteers there says, "and one of its biggest flaws is that so much of it relies on Nancy’s energy; I’m not sure who’s going to run it when she retires."

With the last truck pulling away, the Harvard kids gone, and her employees making their way home, Jamison slumps in a chair in her office. Lawson leans against the desk beside her. They talk about the Harvard kids, and how useless they were; they voice their shared frustrations with the current warehouse. Then Jamison tosses her glasses on the desk and Lawson absentmindedly picks them up, turning them over in his hands.

“You coming around for dinner tonight, Larry?” she asks. “You’ve been eating at my house all week; you keep coming around and your wife is going to divorce you.”

He laughs: a loud, unrestrained burst of sound that echoes. “Yeah, I guess I’ll stop by.”

Breaking News: Pizza Is a Vegetable

Actually this isn't breaking news, though you may find it surprising. Current rules for the nation's school lunch program dictate that about a quarter-cup of tomato paste on a slice of pizza can count as a vegetable serving. Congress merely affirmed its "pizza is a vegetable' rule this past week when it blocked rules proposed by the Agriculture Department that would have overhauled the nation's school lunch program.

I've actually discussed this overhaul in a previous blog post: at the beginning of October I wrote about the The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which President Obama signed into law towards the end of 2010. One aspect of the law was that it gave the Department of Agriculture the authority to set nutritional standards for all foods sold in schools during the school day, including vending machines.

Last January, the Department of Agriculture proposed its new rules, which would have cut the amount of potatoes served and would have changed the way schools received credit for serving vegetables by continuing to count tomato paste on a slice of pizza only if more than a quarter-cup of it was used. The rules would have also halved the amount of sodium in school meals over the next 10 years.

Turns out what I wrote about the law's changes was fairly prescient:

All of this sounds very progressive, but you're probably wondering how much it costs - according to the White House, in addition to reauthorizing child nutrition programs for five years, the bill will provide $4.5 billion in new funding to these programs over 10 years. Figures like those make me miss the heady days of late 2010, when child nutrition legislation could get passed with a unanimous vote by the Senate and a vote of 264-157 in the House.

Of course, now we're in 2011, and economists are no longer making rosy projections about unemployment decreasing and consumer confidence bouncing back. Instead we have debt crises and double-dip recessions. So it's not surprising that public schools are worried about the rising costs of serving lunch.

And not only are public schools worried about these rising costs, but, more importantly, food companies are worried about losing out on their lucrative contracts. The NY Times reports:

Food companies including ConAgra, Coca-Cola, Del Monte Foods and makers of frozen pizza like Schwan argued that the proposed rules would raise the cost of meals and require food that many children would throw away.

The companies called the Congressional response reasonable, adding that the Agriculture Department went too far in trying to improve nutrition in school lunches.

“This is an important step for the school districts, parents and taxpayers who would shoulder the burden of U.S.D.A.’s proposed $6.8 billion school meal regulation that will not increase the delivery of key nutrients,” said John Keeling, executive vice president and chief executive of the National Potato Council.

The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, said that the change would have simply brought tomato paste in line with the way other fruit pastes and purees were credited in school meals.

I could talk about how shameful it is that Congress would rather protect industry than children's health, especially at time when childhood obesity is a national health concern. But when the GOP's argument for shooting down the changes is that serving our kids healthy food constitutes an attack on their personal freedoms (you know, from broccoli and other yucky vegetables), I think they've just about made my argument for me.

It's no wonder then that the approval rating for Congress is at an all-time low of 9 percent - when lobbyists are deciding our nutritional standards, I think it's fair to say our government is broken. As Jon Stewart said on his show Wednesday night: "It's not democracy it's Digiorno."

A Meatless Interview With A Real Life Vegan

This week I had the opportunity to interview Hannah Pullman (center in the picture below) who is part of the team behind Fresh Nation Farmers Market.

Fresh Nation's strategy is to partner with shopping centers in order to bring local food to the masses. So far, the company has one location in Connecticut's Danbury Fair Mall -- you can learn more about the company on its website.

Below, Hannah and I discuss Fresh Nation and her choice to become vegan.

When did you become vegan?

I was 18, so five or six years ago.

What were your reasons?

Definitely moral reasons -- I could no longer ignore the horrible living conditions that meat and dairy animals endure and the torturous slaughter methods used by the meat industry. Why support suffering, mass cruelty and murder when I don't have to?

What influences shaped those reasons?

I was always uncomfortable with eating meat, but it wasn't until I went to sleepaway camp at age 10 that I discovered the existence of vegetarian options. I never knew there was such a thing as meatless dinner options, and I loved it! Over the next few years I cut out different animals from my diet until I was vegan. I had a few vegetarian friends along the way whose choices influenced me. Then I joined a vegan club as a freshman in college and that was it -- I just had to become vegan. Also there is a great documentary "Earthlings" that influenced my final decision to become vegan. Such a compelling movie!

How did family/friends react at the time? Has anybody ever challenged you about it?

My dad hated it. People challenged me all the time. Every time I walked into a room of people I knew I felt attacked for my choice of diet. It sucked. Also I was so passionate about being vegan that I welcomed all conversation about it and tried to convince everyone I knew to stop eating animal products. There are also a lot of ignorant assholes who used to come up to me (and sometimes still do) and say "Bacon is awesome... I loved tortured animal meat" or something like that. I'm now a lot better at recognizing those people and I avoid having the vegan conversation with them.

What is your vegan "pitch? How do you sell it to someone who is interested?

Vegan pitch...For me it is "Why should I take part in such cruelty when I can live a perfectly happy and healthy life without doing so." Animals obviously understand pain, suffering, and pleasure (think of a pet dog or cat) -- why abuse them when we don't have to. If the person really doesn't care about animal feelings, then I would appeal to the environmental aspect of veganism.

Why do you think farmer markets are important?

Support local businesses! Small-scale farms are suffering today. And large-scale farms are mostly mono-crop farms. This mono-crop style of farming is destroying the land and forces farmers to increase the use of toxic pesticides that pollute the air and our bodies. Plus, vegetables from grocery stores take a week or more to ship to the store and then sit on the shelf. By that time they lose most of their nutritional value. Local produce from a farmer's market is fresher, tastier and more nutrient dense.

How is your market different to ones like it?

We are located within super regional malls so a larger demographic and population can access the market. We also provide a more formal and aesthetic aspect to the market that other farmer's markets do not offer.

Do your vendors just sell their own goods, or do some have contracts with companies?

Each farmer's market is different. Market operators usually enforce certain standards for their vendors. Fresh Nation Farmers Markets enforces a 95 percent policy -- 95 percent of all products sold by vendors must be grown, made or produced by the vendor.

What's your vision for this farmer's market? Where would you like to see it in 10 years?

I would like to see farmer's markets in malls across the country.

And what's the one vegan dish that everyone should try?

Seitan!

Check back next week to read about my visit to the Fresh Nation farmer's market in Danbury.

McAmerica

A map of every McDonald's in the United States has been making its way around the blogosphere after it was posted on Reddit and then picked up by the aggregators at HuffPo. For your review:

While the image is getting some attention now, it was actually created in 2009 by artist and scientist Stephen Von Worley, whose blog Data Pointed offers a wealth of data visualization research (be warned, it's quite the time waster).

In his post about McDonald's, Worley pinpoints areas where the company is ubiquitous, which turn out to be everywhere but the desert:

As expected, McDonald’s cluster at the population centers and hug the highway grid. East of the Mississippi, there’s wall-to-wall coverage, except for a handful of meager gaps centered on the Adirondacks, inland Maine, the Everglades, and outlying West Virginia.

For maximum McSparseness, we look westward, towards the deepest, darkest holes in our map: the barren deserts of central Nevada, the arid hills of southeastern Oregon, the rugged wilderness of Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, and the conspicuous well of blackness on the high plains of northwestern South Dakota.

Worley has even located "The McFarthest Spot" - the place in the Lower 48 states that's furthest from the nearest McDonald's. Currently that location is in the high desert of northwestern Nevada, and he's even made a trip there to mark the spot with McDonald french fries (which, despite what employees at your local chain might tell you, aren't vegan: they're coated in beef extract).

Looking at this data map, it should come as no surprise that McDonald's Corporation's 2010 revenues totaled $24.1 billion. Still, while the company's sales rose in the latest quarter, they fell short of expectations; the company also had to raise prices recently due to a spike in commodity costs.

But clearly McDonald's isn't going anywhere, and now that the company is opening stores in China (it hopes to have 2,000 locations there by the end of 2013), it's only a matter of time before the whole world is lit up by the golden arches.

A Recipe for the Winter

One of the most difficult parts of transitioning to a meatless diet is that you have to learn how to cook all over again. For example, during college I would cook a jambalaya every week, and I had to work at perfecting the recipe once I began substituting tofu for meat.

Jambalaya is a Louisiana Creole dish made by cooking meat and vegetables and then adding stock and rice. I like it because it's healthy, cheap and easy-to-prepare. Also, one pot will last you half the week (so basically the perfect dish for college).

When I became a vegetarian, I thought that substituting tofu for chicken would be an easy change; however, for some reason the most finicky aspect of the recipe - cooking the rice - got thrown off and the dish would end up with rice that was either soggy or brittle.

But I worked at it and the dish has become one of my favorites, especially as the weather gets colder. Here are the ingredients you'll need to make this meatless jambalaya:

1 package (14 oz) firm tofu packed in water, drained

1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil

1 large dark-orange sweet potato, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (2 cups)

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 can (14 oz) vegetable broth

3/4 cup uncooked regular long-grain rice

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper (cayenne)

1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained, rinsed

12 medium green onions, sliced (3/4 cup)

Before you start making the jambalaya, you have to drain the tofu and cut it into 3/4-inch cubes. This step can take a bit of practice: I've found that the best way to drain the tofu is to place several layers of paper towels on a cookie sheet, and then add the block of tofu to the towels. On top of the tofu place several more layers of paper towels and firmly press the tofu to blot the excess water.

Once you've pressed out all of the water you can start cutting up the tofu; don't worry if you're having trouble cutting cubes though, the block of tofu can be a bit crumbly after you've gotten rid of the water.

Next, heat oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium heat and cook the tofu in oil for six to eight minutes until it's a light golden brown. Then remove the tofu from the skillet and set it aside.

Add sweet potato and garlic to your skillet and cook for two to three minutes, until the sweet potato begins to brown. Stir in broth, rice, Worcestershire sauce and red pepper. Then heat to boiling. After your skillet has reached boiling, reduce the heat, cover the dish and simmer for 10 minutes.

Next, add your beans; then cover the skillet and cook for eight to ten minutes, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender and the liquid is absorbed.

Finally, stir in your tofu and green onions. After that, you just have to make sure that the dish is thoroughly heated and then it's ready to serve.

This jambalaya is low in fat and high in protein, and adding sweet potatoes helps to make it highly nutritious. But, above all, I think you'll find that this dish is delicious. Enjoy!

Trader Joe's Dirties Its Image

I've been a fan of Trader Joe's since I discovered the grocery chain while living in Boston. Now that I live in the suburbs, it's a bit of a drive to find one, but I still shop there when I can. Still the company's response to a coalition working to address labor abuses in tomato fields, might change that.

Last week in The Atlantic, Barry Estabrook reported that when about 400 workers' rights advocates from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) showed up at Trader Joe's headquarters to present a letter asking the chain to sign a Fair Food Agreement, no one would open the door. Estabrook writes:

For the last several months, the coalition has been trying to persuade Trader Joe's, a 360-plus store chain that brands itself as a worker- and customer-friendly bastion of all things sustainable, organic, and fair-trade, to sign a Fair Food agreement. Companies who sign the agreement promise to pay one penny more per pound for tomatoes harvested by the workers (the difference between $50 and $80 a day for a worker) and insist that growers who sell to them abide by a code of conduct that mandates no slavery or sexual harassment in the fields, accurate time keeping, a grievance procedure, first-aid training for workers, and tents to provide a bit of shade. Complying with the agreement would cost the billion-dollar company about $30,000 a year.

You'd think that "no slavery" would be a superfluous request, but apparently not: as Estabrook reports, "In the past 15 years, seven cases of slavery involving more than 1,200 workers in Florida agriculture, including tomato workers, have been successfully prosecuted."

But when the group, which was accompanied by about 20 religious leaders, showed up at Trader Joe's headquarters, they were met by a security guard who said that no one at the company would accept the letters. Then police arrived, and ordered the group to disperse, which they did.

Trader Joe's image is one of a socially conscious company - in fact, that's often the reason people attest to shopping there. So its strange that the company would respond to the CIW in this way.

Estabrook had a chance to interview Matt Sloane, Trader Joe's vice-president of marketing, who decided to disparage the CIW rather than talk about the issue:

The reason that no one from Trader Joe's accepted the letters, he said, was that "the group was behaving more for effect -- street theater -- not an invitation for serious discussion."

It would nice if Trader Joe's could fill everybody in on how they'd like the issue of labor abuses to be brought to their attention. Until then, I'll be shopping elsewhere.

A Wholesaler's Campaign for Better Ingredients

One of my favorite food writers is Mark Bittman, a columnist for The New York Times Opinion section and Times magazine. Every Tuesday, Bittman offers his take on current food issues and their impact on our health and the environment. His commentary also extends to the Times website, where he writes a blog called On Food.

On Food is less in depth than his Times column - Bittman (see photo on the right) mostly uses his blog to link to interesting stories or follow up on a point he made in one his opinion articles. Still, last week he posted a letter from a New York meat wholesaler to a well-known chef, which caught my eye.

The letter was sent by George Faison - a co-owner of Debragga and Spitler, which has been selling meat to the city's restaurants since the early 1920s. In the letter, Faison explains why he believes restaurants should be pursuing clean agricultural ingredients as standard practice.

While Bittman points out before printing the letter in its entirety that Faison sells industrially-produced meats in addition to naturally-raised stuff, the letter is interesting because meat wholesalers are a part of the food supply chain that I haven't given much thought to. Not to mention, Faison makes a pretty convincing argument for using better ingredients:

Our food supply system is broken. Badly. 80 percent of the U.S. beef production is controlled by four industrially producing companies. Three of these companies also process 60 percent of the nation’s pork. Too much chemical fertilizer and pesticides are used to produce our crops. The variety of crops produced around the world has diminished dramatically in the last 60 years. There are now nearly 5,000,000 fewer American farmers since the 1930s.

Yes, this industrial structure has significantly lowered the monetary cost of the food we consume. But this is misleading. While the amount of money we spend on food has declined, the quality and nutrition supplied by this food has deteriorated. As a country, about one third of all adults are obese, and since 1980, the incidence of obesity has tripled among children ages 2-19.

Faison's point is that "People have gotten used to eating cheap food and it is killing them." He therefore wants to promote naturally-raised meats that are antibiotic free and hormone free. Of course, he admits that cost can be an issue for restaurants:

Yes, naturally and humanely raised meats cost more. Maybe you can counter the higher monetary cost by offering smaller portions. Or expect chefs to charge more money for it.

I do not think the solution to our food supply problem is to use poorer quality ingredients because they cost less money. In the long run, the true cost of these meats is so much higher.

Promoting naturally-raised meat is commendable, but it's clearly also profitable. Indeed, in the comments section for the post, David Dadekian from Oneco, CT notes:

Chefs can educate by charging more. There's a small family-owned college bar & grill near the farm that has an "industrial" burger on their menu for $8 and a Blackbird Farm burger on the menu for $12. They tell us the $12 burger is a consistent seller.

Obviously charging more for higher-quality meat wouldn't work everywhere - this is New York City we're talking about, after all. But in such a competitive market, it seems like common sense to offer better food, even at higher prices.

It's also common sense that a meat wholesaler would be urging chefs to spend more on their ingredients, but it's an aspect of the food supply chain that I haven't given much thought to. Instead, I've generally thought that restaurants would improve their ingredients when prompted by consumers or a report in the The Boston Globe. Thanks to Bittman's On Food blog, I now know otherwise.

A Fishy Situation in Massachusetts

This month, The Boston Globe published the findings of a five-month investigation into the mislabeling of fish in Massachusetts. The study showed that consumers routinely overpay for less desirable species of seafood. In many cases, fish advertised as "local" were actually shipped in from thousands of miles away. The Globe reports.

The Globe collected fish from 134 restaurants, grocery stores, and seafood markets from Leominster to Provincetown, and hired a laboratory in Canada to conduct DNA testing on the samples. Analyses by the DNA lab and other scientists showed that 87 of 183 were sold with the wrong species name - 48 percent.

The results underscore the dramatic lack of oversight in the seafood business compared with other food industries such as meat and poultry.

Nationally, mislabeled fish is estimated to cost diners and the industry up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to the National Fisheries Institute, a trade group.

Following the publication of these findings, State officials vowed to improve oversight of seafood sales in Massachusetts. But the problem of seafood mislabeling is a national one.

A separate investigation by Consumer Reports found that 22 percent of fish in restaurants and stores were mislabeled and often replaced with a cheaper species. Even worse, tainted seafood is probably finding its way into America. MSNBC reports:

The U.S. imported more than 17.6 million tons of seafood in the last decade, according to a News21 analysis of import data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Only about 2 percent of imported seafood is inspected, and only 0.1 percent is tested for banned drug residues, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress. That's especially alarming because 80 percent of the seafood in America is imported, according to the agency.

The FDA says it can't say for sure how many of the samples pass or fail.

But a News21 analysis of FDA import-refusal data reveals an unappetizing portrait. In more than half of cases when seafood is rejected, the fish has been deemed filthy, meaning it was spoiled or contained physical abnormalities, or it was contaminated with a food borne pathogen. About 20 percent of those cases involved salmonella.

The fact that only 2 percent of seafood is inspected is pretty stunning. But with the FDA generally considered to be underfunded, it seems unlikely that anything can be done to improve that statistic.

Still, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of problems with seafood, and companies are taking note.

Recently, Target announced that it will sell only sustainable and traceable seafood in its stores by 2015. Other stores, such as Wal-Mart, Safeway and Whole Foods, are also working to change their seafood policies to address concerns about overfishing.

Overfishing has had a devastating impact on marine ecosystems, illustrating the vulnerability of fish populations. And this issue will need to be addressed within our lifetimes: In 2006, a study of catch data published in the journal Science predicted that if fishing rates continue apace, all the world's fisheries will have collapsed by 2048.

It's scary to contemplate that statistic. It's even more frightening that ecological issues aren't receiving the national attention that they clearly deserve.

Do Animals Have Rights?

The way someone answers the question posed in the title of this blog post is a good indicator of how open that person is to becoming vegan.

For instance, people who say, "Heck no," probably aren't going to be converting to veganism anytime soon. But those who believe that animals do have rights -- such as the right to live -- might be more open to the idea.

During the past two weeks, the question of whether animals have rights was an underlying theme in a couple prominent news stories.

If you live in or near New York City, you probably heard about the carriage horse that keeled over and died in Midtown last Sunday. The horse was trotting toward Central Park to begin its morning shift when it just collapsed. Since healthy horses normally don't just die in the street, the city is asking for an autopsy, though Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a press conference on Wednesday that there was no evidence of abuse.

During that press conference, Mr. Bloomberg also dismissed calls for a ban on the carriage industry, citing its place in New York's history. The New York Times reports:

"I have no idea what goes through their minds," the mayor said of opponents of horse-drawn carriages.

"The horses here are supervised by the health department, the A.S.P.C.A.," he said. "They're well taken care of. And most of them wouldn't be alive if they didn't have a job."

While the quality of the horses' treatment is debatable (after all, horses aren't meant to live in urban environments) Mr. Bloomberg is right to say that many wouldn't be alive if they didn't have the carriage job.

Though the country's last meat processing plant that slaughtered horses for human consumption was closed five years ago, just as many American horses are still ending up on a dinner plates: according to a recent government study, horse slaughter is now taking place across the border in Mexico and Canada.

Though in recent weeks lawmakers have pushed Congress to take action, The Times reports that a resolution does not appear imminent:

"It's just a hot political issue," said Dr. Whitney Miller, a lobbyist for the American Veterinary Medical Association, which supports allowing horse slaughter. "It's hard to see something definitive happening."

The problem is that many people still view horses as livestock animals, similar to a cow, sheep or goat. Not to mention, in some places horse meat is prized as a delicacy. Still, the argument of "they're being killed anyway so we might as well be the ones doing it (and profiting off of it)" is pretty cynical.

But horses weren't the only animals getting slaughtered in the news this week. In Ohio, lions, tigers and bears were being killed in the double digits.

Last Tuesday Muskingum County Animal Farm owner Terry Thompson turned loose 56 animals and then shot himself to death. Sheriff's deputies in Zanesville, Ohio were issued shoot-to-kill orders, managing to kill 48 animals and capture six (a wolf was later found dead and a monkey is still on the loose).

The animals killed included 18 rare Bengal tigers (there are only 1,400 of the endangered cats left in the world) and 17 lions.

It's a tragedy that this happened, and though it's pretty galling that tranquilizers weren't used at all, I can understand that the police department was worried about the town's safety.

What I don't understand is why they allowed Mr. Thompson to run a farm in the first place. Time reports:

Thompson, 62, had had repeated run-ins with the law and his neighbors. Lutz said that the sheriff's office had received numerous complaints since 2004 about animals escaping onto neightbors' property. The sheriff's office also said that Thompson had been charged over the years with animal cruelty, animal neglect and allowing animals to roam.

He had gotten out of federal prison just last month after serving a year for possessing unregistered guns.

John Ellenberger, a neighbor, speculated that Thompson freed the animals to get back at neighbors and the police. "Nobody much cared for him," Ellenberger said.

How does someone who has just gotten out of federal prison assemble a zoo of more than 50 animals in a month? And more importantly, why is someone who has just gotten out of federal prison being allowed to build a private zoo that includes a cross section of some of the most dangerous animals in the world?

For starters, Ohio has some of the nation's weakest restrictions on exotic pets and among the highest number of injuries and deaths caused by them. Governor John Kasich also allowed a statewide ban on the buying and selling of exotic pets to expire in April.

Above all, it's the complete disregard for animal rights that allowed this killing spree to happen. And that disregard isn't exclusive to Ohio, but rather endemic of a number of other state's in this country as well.

PETA is taking advantage of this animal media frenzy by filling a lawsuit against SeaWorld over the company's treatment of its killer whales. The 20-page complaint asks the U.S. District Court in Southern California to declare that the five whales are being held in slavery or involuntary servitude in violation of the 13th Amendment.

The lawsuit is unprecedented and will certainly fail; instead, PETA is using the legal action to stoke the debate about animal rights. And while most commentators have scoffed at this lawsuit, Stephen Colbert made a pretty good point about the idea that animals can't be equated to humans:

If corporations can be afforded the same rights as people, why can't animals? After all, they're quite the job creators: while the economy for us humans has imploded, the pet economy has continued to grow.

Eating for Two

Those trying to curb their food intake may want to reconsider their choices in dining partners.

A new study published this month by the Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that men eat more around women than they do around other men. Women, meanwhile, ate less around men than they did in the company of other women.

The study sampled 127 college student for a one-week period, mainly during the hours of lunch and dinner. Its findings suggest that unconscious scripts about how to eat are at work when people sit down to a meal with someone of either sex.

For example, when women ate with other women, they ordered on average 833 calories; but when they ate with men, they purchased only 721 calories.

Though these findings are in line with cultural expectations, the results for the study's male students are considerably more surprising. Researchers Molly Allen-O'Donnell and Marci Cottingham found that when men sat with other men, they ordered on average only 952 calories, but when they sat with women they ordered 1162 calories.

Allen-O'Donnell and Cottingham conjecture that this unexpected finding could mean that men purchase more calories in the company of women as a way to assert their masculinity. In fact, prior research supports this theory, concluding that smaller meals convey feminine impressions while larger meals communicate masculinity.

In the discussion section of their study, Allen-O'Donnell and Cottingham note that these finding have important implications when it comes to addressing eating disorders among young people, as well as the increase in obesity among both children and adults in the United States. They write:

Those who are trying to address these concerns should consider the importance of the role of gender and social context in developing solutions and meeting needs. Providing strictly nutritional information is not sufficient in helping individuals, families, schools, and society address these issues.

I'm not sure what these solutions would consist of (fewer dinner dates for men? more dinner dates for women?), but it's interesting to consider the influence of gender on our eating habits. And any information that helps us to be more deliberate in our eating decisions is certainly welcome.

Occupy Factory Farms

It has been difficult this week to focus on food-related issues when Occupy Wall Street is generating such incendiary news coverage, not to mention truly shocking "man on the street" video.

Indeed, if you want to see a scary video this weekend that's shot on a handheld camera, skip Paranormal Activity 3 and dive into this:

While this isn't the most vicious instance of police brutality at the protest - a quick search on YouTube will bring up plenty of those - it's particularly shocking because the man who was handcuffed and thrown to the ground was seemingly unaffiliated with the protest, and clearly did nothing to warrant such a violent arrest.

But it's videos like this one that have propelled Occupy Wall Street from a fringe movement to a substantial voice in the national conversation about our country's future.

And though Bill O'Riley and his ilk want to frame the protest in partisan terms, sympathizers of Occupy Wall Street are not limited to hippie socialist Nazis. So like it or not, Republican politicians will have to accept that many of the people involved in this protest speak for their constituents.

After all, there's plenty to be outraged about when the Securities and Exchange Commission is only making a company like Citigroup pay $285 million to settle a civil complaint, after the company stuffed its portfolios with risky mortgage-related investments, sold them to unsuspecting customers and then bet against them (to put that number into perspective: in its third quarter alone Citigroup earned profits of $3.8 billion).

Last time I checked Citigroup's actions are the definition of fraud, and I'm pretty sure if I did something similar I would be in jail right now.

So while some may want to dismiss Occupy Wall Street as unfocused or irrelevant, there's clearly a need for a national discussion on financial reform. But it's interesting that the protest didn't gain traction until videos of police brutality began to emerge. And I can't help but wonder how far along the movement would be if those videos hadn't been made.

For animal advocacy groups, the use of video to expose instances of animal welfare violations has been an important tool in the animal rights movement. After all, it's easy for supermarket shoppers to buy hamburgers, eggs or milk and never wonder about how that food was produced. And the agriculture industry would like to keep it that way.

In at least three states - Iowa, Florida and Minnesota - legislation is moving ahead that would make undercover investigations in factory farms, especially filming and photography, a crime. The purpose of this legislation is to hide factory-farming conditions from a public that is beginning to think seriously about animal rights and the way food is produced.

The bill proposed in Florida would make it a first-degree felony to film a farm without written permission from the owner (the maximum prison time for a first-degree felony in Florida is 30 years). Kansas and Montana, meanwhile, have already passed anti-whistleblower laws, though they aren't specifically aimed at secret filming in factory farms.

So under this legislation, videos such as the one below - produced by the animal advocacy group Mercy for Animals (MFA) - would become a thing of the past. Please note, the video is quite graphic:

This undercover investigation by the MFA revealed the shocking practices of one of the nation's largest pork producers - Iowa Select Farms in Kamrar, Iowa. Between April and June 2011 an MFA investigator documented the brutal abuse and confinement of mother sows and their piglets, which can be seen in the video.

ABC News followed up on the video, interviewing the executive director of the MFA to figure out how the organization gained access to Iowa's largest pig farm:

Gaining access as employees, "our investigators go in as eyes and ears for the public," said Nathan Runkle, executive director of Chicago-based Mercy for Animals. "They give their real names and real social security numbers and they shoot the video with a small undercover camera. Part of our message is there is not a single federal law that provides protection to factory animals. What we need are stricter, stronger laws."

Iowa Select Farms responded to the video by posting a statement from the company veterinarian, Dr. Howard Hill, on its website. Hill writes, "Iowa Select has a long-standing commitment to animal welfare." He goes on to say that the company has initiated an investigation, and then bizarrely condemns anyone who would "video tape what they believe is animal abuse if they had a chance to stop it."

Apparently this is all the MFA's fault for not stopping the abuse. Good thing Hill cleared that up for me.

The idea that someone could get 30 years of jail time for simply filming animal cruelty while the company committing the abuses suffers no repercussions is contemptible. Occupy Factory Farms, anyone?

'Sesame Street' Hit Hard - Debuts Starving Muppet

This week "Sesame Street" unveiled a new Muppet character named Lily, a 7-year-old girl representing one of the 17 million American children that the Department of Agriculture estimates are "food insecure," meaning their access to food is limited or uncertain. Here's a clip from this "very special episode":

In the show, "Growing Hope Against Hunger," the Muppets explore ways to help Lily, her family and the millions of children that Lily represents. In addition, Elmo and the rest of the Muppet gang learn about the importance of community gardens and food drives.

The special featured several mini-documentaries about children who have experienced hunger, and country singer Brad Paisley stopped by to help tackle this important issue.

I've volunteered at food hunger organizations before, and it's admirable that "Sesame Street" is bringing attention to this issue, even if the show is targeted at the preschool set. Food insecurity is on the rise in this country - 14.6 percent of U.S. households fell into the food-insecure category at some point in 2008. But thankfully the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act, which I discussed last week, is helping to bolster child nutrition programs.

In reading about show's new Muppet I was surprised to learn that this is not the first time that "Sesame Street" has taken on social issues - previously it has dealt with issues of economic insecurity and children with parents in the military. Perhaps our politicians should be tuning into Sesame Street for a reality check...

Chicken Bares All in The New York Times: A Recipe For Controversy?

Two weeks ago I picked up the Dining section of The Times and thought, "Well that's a bit much."

Here's why:

This picture ran below the headline, "Chicken's Attraction Is Truly Skin Deep." Now, I usually don't read the Dining section (the articles tend to be about food I can't eat and restaurants I can't afford to eat at), but something about this story drew me in.

The article itself is actually pretty disgusting - writer Sarah DiGregorio profiles a couple of chefs who incorporate chicken skin into their dishes. She also discusses the problem of shrinkage ("When you render the fat from a piece of skin, it shrivels to about half its size") and conjectures that the chicken skin mania is all a product of our collective obsession with over-the-top foods (for evidence see the KFC Double Down sandwich).

While I might not be one for chicken skin tacos, I didn't find the article or its photograph to be all that offensive. If anything, it got a laugh out of me at eight in the morning, which is no small feat.

But PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - was less amused. In an interview with The Atlantic Wire the organization's founder and president Ingrid Newkirk called the photograph offensive, saying: "It's necrophilia. It's not amusing. It's just ghastly and sickly. It's not fitting for The New York Times."

The Gray Lady didn't offer The Atlantic Wire a response to Newkirk, but it did post a follow-up article about the photograph on its Lens blog.

Apparently Tiina Loite, a photo editor in the Dining section, and Fred Norgaard, an art director, came up with the idea for the shoot. Photographer Tony Cenicola then spent a day and a half trying to figure out how to make the chicken look alluring. Eventually he propped the chicken into its seductive pose using weights, chopsticks and wire; added some ambient lighting; and voilà - a chicken with attitude.

While the photograph wasn't the most enjoyable thing to look at over my morning cereal, PETA's overblown response is pretty ridiculous, if not very surprising. After all, PETA is almost as attention-crazed as Sarah Palin, evident in every advertisement in the organization's history (not to mention its forthcoming porn site, which will feature racy content alongside pictures of animals being abused).

That's not to say running the "Sexy Chicken" photograph was a good decision - it wasn't exactly The NY Times at its classiest. But at least it got me to read the Dining section. And when was the last time that part of the newspaper created a stir among anyone other than foodies?

The Media Takes a Bite Out of Chris Christie

If you search Google News for "Chris Christie Overweight," you get 169 results. Some articles ask "Is New Jersey Governor Too Overweight to Become President?" while others proclaim "Christie's weight is irrelevant."

Though it's ludicrous to say that that Mr. Christie's weight problem makes him ineligible for the presidency, it's pretty clear from the avalanche of editorials on the subject that it's not wholly irrelevant. Indeed, if he does decide to run in 2016 or 2020, I'm sure there will be even more articles on the subject, and no end of jokes about him storming the White House vegetable garden.

Many columnists have said that Mr. Christie's weight proves that he is undisciplined and therefore unfit to run the country. This is ridiculous. After all, President Obama only just quit smoking this summer, and there was never an outpouring of editorials about how his need for nicotine constituted a lack of discipline.

Some people (especially those who spend a lot of time watching the Fox News channel) would say that the disparity in how the media has treated Mr. Christie's weight and Mr. Obama's smoking is due to its liberal bias. More likely, it's the rarity of seeing a politician who is overweight that set columnists off. Indeed, there hasn't been an overweight president since Howard William Taft took office 100 years ago weighing in at over 300 pounds.

But while it is ridiculous to say that Mr. Christie's weight impinges on his character, it is worth discussing his heaviness in the same context as a candidate's age.

During the 2008 presidential race, John McCain's age - 72 at the time - received some attention because it meant that he was more likely to become incapacitated in office. The same holds true for Mr. Christie, as his current weight endangers his health and potentially exacerbates other ailments (he was hospitalized in July after an asthma attack).

Voters would therefore be prudent to consider whether a Christie presidency might be shortened by illness. But any other discussion of his weight makes for worthless commentary, and Letterman can certainly do better than the jokes he made about Mr. Christie's weight in his "Top 10" list last Tuesday.

Are the Kids All Right?

In previous posts I've discussed the alarming statistic that nearly 20 percent of children ages 6-11 years in the U.S. are obese. Fortunately, this statistic has also had an impact on the current administration - Michelle Obama announced a nationwide campaign called "Let's Move" in early 2010 to battle childhood obesity and towards the end of that year President Obama signed The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 into law.

The "Let's Move" campaign is comprised of four strategies to lower childhood obesity rates:

1. Get parents more informed about nutrition and exercise.
2. Improve the quality of food in schools.
3. Make healthy foods more affordable and accessible for families.
4. Focus more on physical education.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act targets the second and third objectives of the "Let's Move" campaign. Specifically, the bill authorizes funding for federal school meal and child nutrition programs and increases access to healthy food for low-income children. Some of the changes that the bill has made include:

• Gives the U.S. Department of Agriculture the authority to set nutritional standards for all foods sold in schools during the school day, including vending machines.
• Provides additional funding to schools that meet updated nutritional standards of federally subsidized lunches.
• Sets basic standards for school wellness policies including goals for nutrition promotion and education and physical activity.

All of this sounds very progressive, but you're probably wondering how much it costs - according to the White House, in addition to reauthorizing child nutrition programs for five years, the bill will provide $4.5 billion in new funding to these programs over 10 years. Figures like those make me miss the heady days of late 2010, when child nutrition legislation could get passed with a unanimous vote by the Senate and a vote of 264-157 in the House.

Of course, now we're in 2011, and economists are no longer making rosy projections about unemployment decreasing and consumer confidence bouncing back. Instead we have debt crises and double-dip recessions. So it's not surprising that public schools are worried about the rising costs of serving lunch. Reports The New York Times:

Under a little-noticed provision of the child nutrition bill signed by President Obama in December, which brought more fresh produce and less whole milk to cafeterias nationwide, school districts are required to start bringing their prices in line with what it costs to prepare the meals, eventually charging an average of $2.46 for the lunches they serve.

Right now, many schools charge less than the cost to prepare meals because the federal government provides financial help per meal for schools participating in the National School Lunch Program. This provision has therefore contributed to price increases in a number of school districts this fall, and the worry is that more parents will be compelled to pack their children's lunches or skip on paying cafeteria lunch fees altogether.

But in California, that already seems to be happening, and not because of pricing. The NY Times reports that snack food trucks have begun popping up outside of schools, offering the sort of sweet and salty treats that are no longer available on cafeteria menus. It seems that teenagers will go out of their way - and spend more - to procure the unhealthy snacks that the child nutrition bill expelled from schools' lunch menus last December.

So when schools can't cover the cost of producing more nutritious lunches, and children avoid those meals anyway, how do we solve the problem of childhood obesity? In California they've added chocolate chip cookies to the menu in an attempt to lure students back from the food trucks, but somehow that doesn't seem like the solution.

In America, one in three children is overweight or obese, indicating that an unhealthy diet is considered culturally acceptable. Indeed, people often refer to veganism as a "radical diet," yet diets consisting of food high in calories, fat, saturated fat and sugar are never spoken of as extreme. It therefore seems like we won't see any real change in obesity statistics until nutrition education becomes more widespread.