Tag Archives: usda

ew. gross.

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I’m hanging out with pink slime over at the Digging Deep Campaign this week – and am thankful that I just bought 100 lbs of beef from my favorite local farmer (which was from a cow that I had met personally). 

I briefly note there that, although the uproar over pink slime is fantastic to see – it’s amazing  to me how much people don’t know about the industrial food supply, and when they do start to learn, they are disgusted enough to do something about it – you can’t just call it a day when the USDA caves a little and gives school districts the choice of not buying ground beef with pink slime (The Lunch Tray explains why). Because the main reason the USDA buys pink slime for school lunches is because it’s cheap. And if school districts (cash-strapped already, at least in this state) still have to operate under the same reimbursement standards for the school lunches, we’ll see something else cheap sneak its way into the school lunch program.

I don’t usually quote myself, but in this case, I think it’s important to reiterate what I said earlier in the week at Digging Deep:

Here’s why – reimbursement rates. How much money do schools get reimbursed per child for the food in school lunches? Not much. The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) lists the current year maximum reimbursement rates as $2.79 for free lunches, $2.39 for reduced price lunches, and $0.28 for a lunch fully paid for by the child. Can you cook on an industrial scale for less than three bucks a meal? I sure can’t. And don’t forget the much-touted change in rules to the National School Lunch Program, thanks to Michelle Obama. Don’t get me wrong, doubling the amount of fruits and vegetables children are served in school is fantastic, and way overdue. But until the Farm Bill stops overwhelmingly subsidizing grains and starts leveling the playing field for fruit and veg, they’ll be more expensive. Which means the other food in each school lunch needs to be less expensive. Enter pink slime.

Yep, it all goes back to the Farm Bill. Which, as it happens, is up for reauthorization this year (because, thankfully, the Secret Farm Bill crap didn’t work last year). So work to make your voices heard – catch up on the particulars with the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Bill Policy Plate series, and consider the Community Food Security Coalition’s talking points when you contact your elected officials. Because you know the food-industrial complex is whispering in their ears. The least you can do – especially for the kids dependent on the school lunch program for their nutritional needs – is to do the same.

not your forefather’s ketchup.

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Raise your hand if you remember Ronald Reagan trying to count ketchup as a vegetable.

(Ok, no, these guys weren’t alive back then. They’re just processed foods, only way cuter. And the two main reasons I get so angry about misguided food policy.)

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a refresher. In 1981, Congress cut $1 billion from child-nutrition funding. The USDA scrambled to figure out how to maintain some semblance of nutrition in school lunches. One idea floated was to count ketchup as “a fruit/vegetable when used as an ingredient.” Thankfully, the idea tanked.

This week, it was reincarnated, in pizza sauce form. Stuck in a joint House-Senate Department of Agriculture spending bill (which is attached to other agencies’ spending bills to make a ‘minibus’ bill, different from an ‘omnibus’ bill, of course. Though what Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Transportation, and Housing have to do with each other I don’t exactly know, other than they’re all working under continuing resolutions because the fiscal year these bills are funding started almost two months ago, but I digress) was language blocking new standards in the National School Lunch Program. Standards that were developed in conjunction with nutritionists, doctors, and plain old common sense.

In case you’re a wonk like me, here’s the language from the proposed bill itself (on page 90 of the 401 page document):

Sec. 743. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to implement an interim final or final rule regarding nutrition programs under the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (42 U.S.C. 1751 et seq.) and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (42 U.S.C. 1771 et seq.) that –

(1)    requires crediting of tomato paste and puree based on volume;

(2)    implements a sodium reduction target beyond Target I, the 2-year target, specified in Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, “Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs” (FNS-2007-0038, RIN 0584-AD59) until the Secretary certifies that the Department has reviewed and evaluated relevant scientific studies and data relevant to the relationship of sodium reductions to human health; and

(3)    establishes any whole grain requirement without defining “whole grain.”

I know, that makes absolutely no sense. Guess what? I speak bureaucrat. Here’s my translation:

Sec. 743. USDA, you can’t use any of the money Congress is giving you for your FY 2012 budget to:

(1) make us count the volume of tomato paste we’re putting on something as just the volume served. We like counting the “whole-food equivalency” of a tomato and we’re sticking to that. It doesn’t matter that tomato paste is the only thing we count like this; currently “other fruit paste and purees…are credited based on actual volume as served.” Our friends the pizza lobbyists *really* didn’t like the sentence you put in at the end of that section: “Schools would not be allowed to credit a volume of fruit or vegetables that is more than the actual serving size.” They said to tell you that you suck.

(2) limit the sodium intake of an elementary school-age child to anything less than 540 mg/breakfast and 1,230 mg/lunch; a middle school-age child to anything less than 600 mg/breakfast and 1,360 mg/lunch; and a high school-age child to 640 mg/breakfast and 1,420 mg/lunch until we think you’ve looked at all the data we think is relevant. We’re purposely ignoring the fact that it’s ridiculously easy to find such studies on the internet, including this one on the same website as the report these standards are based on, because we don’t like what it says. And you know, we’re also ignoring data from past Surgeons General, too. What does C. Everett Koop know? It’s not like he has any medical training. His assertion that “1.1 to 3.3 grams [of sodium] per day [is] found to be as safe and adequate for adults by the National Research Council” is ri-gosh-darn-diculous. Never mind that just the lunch for a kindergartener has more than the minimum ‘safe’ level of daily sodium for an adult under these standards. I’m sticking my fingers in my ears.      

(3) make anybody eat whole grains until you define whole grain to our satisfaction. Because the reference to “a minimum whole grain content of 51 percent” in your proposed rule and the definition of whole-grain in the Random House dictionary as “of or being natural or unprocessed grain containing the germ and bran” isn’t clear enough. That makes us think that at least 51% of the stuff we eat with grains in it has to have been minimally processed, keeping the germ and bran, and EVERYbody knows you can’t make ooey-gooey white bread with that crap. My friends at the American Frozen Food Institute told me so.

Holy cow. That took me several hours to untangle. And I know how to read this government-speak. You non-wonks don’t stand a chance in this field. Go back to eating your processed foods, fools.

…and that’s exactly what they want you to do. Don’t pay attention to the fact that the American Frozen Food Institute and the National Potato Council were the only food-related organizations that were happy about this language.

And if that hasn’t made your head spin enough already, here’s some language from the Senate’s deliberations on this bill on Halloween (my comments are conveniently in bold). No word if anyone dressed up as a ketchup bottle while talking about tomato paste.

From Senator Jerry Moran, R-KS (just as an example):

Furthermore, we must keep in mind the impact this rule will have on school budgets and food suppliers. Unfunded mandates such as this one will make it even harder for schools to provide healthy lunches for students. [Right, because properly funding nutritional programs in public schools so that all children have a relatively level nutritional playing field is a nasty socialist endeavor. And capitalism will keep us from falling behind China in educational achievement. Because it's worked so well so far.]

The Department of Agriculture estimates that the cost of compliance over a 5-year period will reach $6.8 billion. The Federal reimbursement already does not cover the full cost of preparing a meal in many schools across our country. This new USDA rule will further drive up the costs of providing lunches and school districts will have to make up the difference. This doesn’t seem like a reasonable approach when many school districts are already struggling to make ends meet. [Oh. My. God. That's an obscene amount of money to pull out of thin air. $6.8 billion for five years? How could you even ask for that volume of cash? Well, according to the Congressional Budget Office, that's about the amount of money that funded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for three weeks. If we can find money to fight two wars and mark our territory across a wide swath of Asia, why we can't find the cash to properly feed our kids?]

Let me give an example of what is in this rule. Once finalized, schools would be required to reduce sodium content in breakfasts by up to 27 percent and school lunches by up to 54 percent. There are a couple problems with this requirement. There is no suitable  replacement for sodium that can maintain the same functions of flavor and texture. Also, reducing sodium is not just a function of limiting raw salt content. Many ingredients have sodium in them that occurs naturally. School food suppliers have been working for years to reduce the amount of sodium in their food products. However, they need additional time to come up with a solution that balances nutritional value with taste so kids will eat the school lunch. [Two things: 1) if this guy is genuinely worried about taste, he's never actually eaten a school lunch, and 2) if the school suppliers need more time to figure out the nutrition vs. taste debate, why haven't they been working on it for the eleven months since the proposed rule was published? That's a decent amount of time for the chem labs that simulate food taste to figure something out.]

This rule would also change how nutritional content is measured—rather than measure nutrition based on density, the Department of Agriculture rule proposes to measure nutritional content based on volume. For example, tomato paste is nutritionally dense, but the Department of Agriculture says it must meet the same volume as a fresh tomato. That doesn’t make much sense. Why would we take a metric to be the arbitrary volume requirement instead of just measuring the nutritional value? [I really just don't get this tomato problem. If I buy a six ounce can of tomato paste, it says six ounces on the label. Not ten tomatoes. Lots of things are nutritionally dense when you concentrate them. Why should tomatoes get special treatment?]

No wonder these guys are so easy to ridicule on late night tv.

Elsewhere on the internet, people have been quoted as saying that government shouldn’t be involved in telling kids how to eat. Free will is quintessentially American. Ok, so if that’s the case, my three year old shouldn’t be punished for raiding her brother’s Halloween stash under the dining room table before breakfast (which happened today, and being the ungodly commie pinko that I am, I stopped her). In case you haven’t noticed, kids don’t always make the smartest choices regarding food. And if they don’t have parents who know how to make smart choices about food, or have the money or the time to make good choices for them, where else can they learn how to develop smart eating habits *except* at school?

And riddle me this – if government shouldn’t be involved in telling kids how to eat, why did the American Frozen Food Institute spend $5 million to influence Congress on these rules? I would think that greasing the palms of your local elected official would get them to work for something in your favor, wouldn’t it? Sounds like those politicians who were swayed by lobbyists weren’t exactly exercising their free will, either. I know of no low-income kindergartener who could wield that kind of influence in the halls of Congress.

If this pisses you off, it should. Between processing the Penn State child sex abuse scandal so that I could talk to my son (the same age as the victims) coherently about the dangers of child predators, and hearing that people in Congress like their potatoes and sodium more than they like my kids’ unblocked arteries to stay that way, it’s been a hard week to be a parent. This further cements my position to not let my kids eat the school lunches until Jamie Oliver makes his way to every school district in the country.

Finally, consider this. The federal government created the National School Lunch Program because during the Depression, “[m]illions of school children were unable to pay for their school lunches, and with but limited family resources to provide meals at home, the danger of malnutrition among children became a national concern.” Today, one in four young adults is too overweight to join the military, which should also be a national concern. Not to mention the untold burden this public health crisis will put on future generations. But hey, those frozen pizza makers are job creators!

love thy neighbor

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I’m gearing up for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank‘s #blogmob tomorrow, and while I’m excited to be a part of this event to raise awareness about hunger in our community, my enthusiasm was tempered a bit on my drive home. NPR, my go-to in-car radio companion, had two stories on food insecurity which pointed out the following statistics:

  • 17.2 million households were food insecure in 2010 – they had trouble putting food on the table, or didn’t know where their next meal would come from.
  • Children in 386,000 households went hungry at some point in 2010.
Both stories also noted that these statistics would have been worse if not for government nutrition programs. One in seven Americans (over 45 million) are in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, an increase of over 10 million since late 2007.

In the richest country in the world, ten million MORE people needed assistance eating in the past three years. While I’m not overly religious, I do try my best to be a good person, do what I can to help others, live a life where I can look myself in the mirror every day. And yet I hear that one in seven Americans need help eating? Where is their help from their neighbor? Where is their ‘brother’s keeper’? Who’s been shirking on the ‘do unto others’ part of the golden rule so that these people – almost 400,000 *children* – don’t have enough money to eat?

Thanks, NPR, for firing me up and making me angry. Thanks, USDA (who I usually nitpick) for releasing this data during Hunger Action Month. Thanks, Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, for giving me an opportunity to learn more about the face of hunger in our community tomorrow, so I can DO something about it.

People who know me know I’m a mama bear when it comes to my family. I may have just broadened the reach of my claws.

How do you define a food desert? Probably not the way I do.

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(I’m having an ongoing conversation with my friend and fellow blogger Leah from Brazen Kitchen about food deserts. We discovered this week that we’ve both been thinking of this topic since it was in the media earlier in the summer. Keep your eye on her blog for a different angle on the issue. It’s so much more fun to be a geek when you’re not alone!)

You may have heard the phrase “food desert” repeatedly this summer, when First Lady Michelle Obama stood up with several major retail chains and announced a deal to plop down some big ole big box stores in food deserts. Which at face value is great – low-income communities, in both urban and rural areas, often have trouble attracting and maintaining grocery stores and other retailers because of a mix of low returns and high risks. Although the program does include a few independent retailers, the highest volume of stores in the initiative are national or regional chains. Commentators were perplexed – did we pretty much guarantee WalMart shareholders huge gains at taxpayer expense? Why not an emphasis on independent, locally owned businesses, or expanding farmers markets and cooking classes focusing on the foods you can buy there?

It looks like it’s grounded in the USDA’s definition of a food desert: “a low-income census tract where a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store.” Low-income* communities are defined as a census tract having “either: 1) a poverty rate of 20 percent or higher, OR 2) a median family income at or below 80 percent of the area’s median family income;” and a low-access community qualifies if “at least 500 people and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract’s population … reside more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles).” So access to a supermarket or large grocery store is the only way to get good quality food, and you have to be within a mile (or ten). And it’s the entire census tract that is or isn’t a food desert, regardless of how densely populated it is (population density determines the census tract size). And the definition of grocery store or supermarket is one that has at least $2 million in sales, which rules out smaller, usually locally owned stores.

This isn’t the only definition of a food desert – the CDC says that a food desert is an area that lacks “access to affordable fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk, and other foods that make up the full range of a healthy diet.” They also say (the best sentence I’ve found so far on a government website) that “[i]dentifying food deserts is not an exact science….” The 2008 Farm Bill defined a food desert as an “area in the United States with limited access to affordable and nutritious food, particularly such an area composed of predominantly lower income neighborhoods and communities.” Wikipedia, my source for all things not otherwise easily defined, has a two-paragraph definition section on its food desert page.  And Fooddeserts.org has a slew of definitions and uses on its page in many countries. So while the definitions are similar, they’re not exactly interchangeable. The recent USDA definition certainly seems to be the most specific.

I know how I shop – and especially in the summer when local fruits and vegetables are flying fast and furious, I do what I can to avoid major supermarkets (especially the Whole Foods parking lot – this parody is spot on). I don’t feel as if I live in a food desert (which I don’t, according to the USDA) but even so, I can avoid most major grocery stores and still get my basics sorted out. So I started to think about tweaking the definition of a food desert using my neighborhood, because it’s easier to do this in theory than it is to mess with data on a national scale in practice. But I’m just trying to prove a point here.

My neighborhood is an urban one of moderate density. In the past ten years, its access to stores that sell food has vastly increased. In addition to two long-time grocery stores within a mile or two (one which has been greatly expanded), my end of town now has three more big box stores plopped nearby. I’m within spitting distance (relatively speaking) of two Giant Eagles** (one a Market District), a Whole Foods, a Trader Joe’s, and a brand-spanking-new urban Target – with expanded produce section! This region of Pittsburgh (Shadyside/East Liberty/Larimer) is fast returning to its historical roots as a regional shopping district after spending many years languishing in misguided urban planner hell. Oh, plus there’s another Giant Eagle across the river. And my favorite grocery store, the East End Food Co-op, is a little further away.

So, not likely to be a food desert anywhere close to this place. Except that there are three census tracts that are still pink on the food locator’s website nearby.

Exhibit A (general lay of the land):

And closer to the core area I’m referencing:Here’s the grocery stores (that I know of – this is not meant to be exhaustive) added in:

Let’s ignore for a moment that one of the census tracts noted as a food desert actually *has* a grocery store in it, which brings up the question of grocery store data sources (and having good data in general). I’m curious about the one-mile rule, and if a significant chunk of these tracts are actually within a mile of a grocery store. That little tract – 1203 – seems a little suspect:

So at least 500 people and/or 33% of the people in this tract, have to be more than a mile away from a grocery store to be considered low access. This data set says that absolutely everyone fits into that category. This tract also has 57.8% of its population that is both low income and has low access – 1291 people.***

But it looks *so* close to the grocery stores plotted above, doesn’t it? Let’s pull out every planner’s friend, the scale bar, and draw a one-mile radius around Target, Trader Joe’s, the co-op, and the Waterworks GE, since those are the closest grocery stores to that tract (instead of calling the entire tract a desert because of its center point).

A little different when you use a one-mile radius, I’d say. At least half of census tract 1203 (the more populated half, judging by the street grid on the map) is covered by Target or Trader Joe’s. And if you can get to Trader Joe’s, you can get to the Giant Eagle across the street.

What about seasonality? If you put farmers’ markets or farm stands into the mix, how does that change the landscape? Here’s the seasonal markets, a year-round farmers’ market, a farm stand, and several community gardens:

And their coverage in a one-mile radius: ****

At least one of the larger markets takes food stamps (SNAP? WIC? I can’t keep up with what they’re called anymore), which makes purchasing even easier. Not all of the community gardens sell to the public, but some do. So, best case scenario, several months out of the year, more people have access to (fresh, local) food. And two out of the three food desert tracts are now covered by the existing options. In theory, anyway. Note that I didn’t take a look at the transit routes, for example, because I’ve bored you enough already.

So what’s my point to this exercise? Well, I have several:

  • Recognize the limitations of a national definition in a local area. I probably understand the area around these census tracts better than someone crunching numbers in Washington does. And this is a far from comprehensive assessment of the issue at hand. If I’m worried about food access in these areas, I know there’s a lot more to take into consideration than just what I see on the Food Desert Locator.
  • Make sure you have the most up to date data. Self-explanatory, that one.
  • Determine if a definition is the best one for the job. Do we need another huge big box? Or would something else work better instead – maybe a smaller grocer to stabilize a neighborhood business district and augment the existing large supermarkets?
  • Use this as a tool, not as gospel. I direct this one to the USDA and Mrs. Obama – please, please, PLEASE do not develop a new funding stream for food deserts based solely on this tool. It’s a great tool, but it’s just a tool. Build the flexibility in at the local level so people on the ground who understand the context can do good things in their neighborhoods, not just watch as another big box retailer tromps on in.
You may see me hit on this topic again – the issue of food access is so much more complex than the ‘easy’ solution of throwing a WalMart Express in a poor neighborhood makes it out to be.

* Don’t get me started on the fact that the federal government doesn’t define a low-income area consistently. There is a difference between median household and median family income, for example.

**Giant Eagle is the dominant regional grocery store chain.

*** Just so you know, the population data in this tool is from 2000. For this census tract, the 2010 population is down to 1,650. Here’s another question about data – it’s out of date (probably because Census 2010 income-level data has not been released). Will this be updated? Was it possible to use the American Community Survey data to get more recent (and therefore relevant) data on this issue, at least in urban areas?

**** assuming that both a farm stand and a big market would draw from a mile away, that is.

I hate to keep bashing

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…the USDA, but man, they’re making it easy.

Marion Nestle, as usual, has an excellent point:

“But the big national outbreaks we’ve been experiencing lately are from foods that are already contaminated by the time they get to you.  Following food safety procedures makes good sense, but that’s not where the problem lies…. To stop food safety problems at their source, we need a functional food safety system.  This means rules that require all producers to follow food safety procedures and a government with the authority and resources to make sure they do.”

So USDA will spend $2 million to tell us to make our food safer, that it’s our responsibility, yet we have no control over how safe our food is until it gets to us…. unless we know our farmer or grow it ourselves.

It’s deja vu all over again.

a tale of two demonstration gardens

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I love visiting big cities. Though I live in a small-to-medium size city and love having its amenities without the traffic and expenses of big city life, there is something about checking out a town with a real functioning transportation system, a Central Business District that’s more than six blocks long, and many, many places to visit.

Thankfully, I live a short drive away from many big cities. This past weekend, my family headed to Washington, DC for a screaming trip to visit a family member in town for a conference (who lives much, much further away). Since it was the first time the kids had been there to sightsee, we crammed in several standard touristy things before we left.

And of course, since I can’t get away from food-related things, even on vacation, we drove along the National Mall and spotted the People’s Garden on the USDA‘s lawn. Beautifully manicured, the garden had a variety of crops growing, both those that people usually have growing in their backyards and those that are generally just commercially grown (I know no one who grows wheat in their backyard).

Later on, we visited the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) (which, by the way, is quite possibly the best museum I have visited in ages). It too has a demonstration garden, highlighting crops that are traditionally used in Native cooking – and used in the fantastic museum cafe.

But once I saw the two gardens, the gears started turning in my head. The comparison of the two, and their underlying reasons for development, irks me. The Smithsonian‘s vision is “shaping the future by preserving our heritage, discovering new knowledge, and sharing our resources with the world,” and the NMAI’s mission is to advance “knowledge and understanding of the Native cultures of the Western Hemisphere, past, present, and future, through partnership through Native people and others.” USDA’s mission involves providing “leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, and related issues based on sound public policy, the best available science, and efficient management.” Further down the page, its strategic plan highlights key activities of the Department. Which further irks me, because “enhancing food safety” and “improving nutrition and health” only come after “expanding markets for agricultural products,” “support[ing] international economic development, ” and “further developing alternative markets for agricultural products and activities.”

Combined with the discussion several weeks ago about the disconnect between the USDA’s nutrition guidelines and its agricultural subsidy, the USDA’s demonstration garden seemed like lipstick on a pig (or, as my husband proudly said, ‘making chicken salad out of chicken shit.’ And yes, I still married him). It’s glossy, pretty, right on the Mall to advertise to tourists, and doesn’t actually reflect what the USDA does inside the Whitten Building.

In contrast, the NMAI demonstration garden is in perfect alignment with the museum’s, and the Smithsonian Institution’s, mission and vision. So although the garden is a little less glossy, and doesn’t have the broad range of crops available in the USDA garden, it does its job honestly.

Advocating for a government agency to reflect the needs of the citizens it serves is a constant struggle between competing interests. And I laud the USDA for trying to raise awareness with the People’s Garden program. But until it puts its money where its mouth is in its budget, it can do much, much better than some raised beds in a corner.

#myplate – beef (protein?) #2

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As I mentioned earlier, two things bothered me about the USDA’s food pyramid transformation into a plate. Other people have had valid complaints about dairy by itself, protein not actually being a food, and other issues. The biggest one that struck me, however, is the disconnect between what the federal government is telling people to eat, and what the federal government is subsidizing farmers (I use this term loosely, Monsanto) to grow.
There are two striking visuals to this effect. First, one developed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine comparing #myplate to agricultural subsidiesfor crops grown that people in the United States eat (it excludes the support of exported and non-food crops). If you don’t feel like clicking, here you go:

Fruits and veggies take up half #myplate, but they only get less than 1% of agricultural subsidies. Protein is a quarter of the plate, with dairy a modest-looking glass on the side. Even if you assume that the protein quarter is only meat (which isn’t actually the case, because beans, tofu, and other vegetarian options also provide protein), there’s no reason that it needs 63% of the agricultural subsidy. At least, not if supporting your own recommendations is important.

Second, Utne Reader highlights Kitchen Gardeners’ dueling maps of Michelle Obama’s organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn – what is actually planted there, and what would be planted there if her garden reflected federal subsidies. Obviously, meat and dairy aren’t represented here, but you get the general idea:

So unless you eat corn, corn, and more corn, with some soybeans and tobacco thrown in for variety, you aren’t eating what the government supports with taxpayer dollars. At least, not directly (keep in mind that corn and soybeans are also used for animal feed, so unless you eat grass-fed everything in your meat diet, you probably are eating corn, corn, and more corn in some fashion). Here, fruit, vegetables, nuts, and ‘other specialty crops’ are less than 1% of the total subsidy, again. Does #myplate really make fruits and vegetables look like specialty crops? I certainly wouldn’t consider half of every meal a specialty.

What does this mean for the consumer? Even without considering increasing gas prices (and therefore, increased transportation costs for the food you’re eating), if you eat what USDA suggests you eat, your food bill is likely to go up, because half of your food is hardly subsidized by the government at all. How is that serving the American public?

And that’s just within USDA itself. How about the conflict between subsidizing foods that cause health problems (like obesity, diabetes, and other non-hereditary diseases)? Or having the Farm Bill be at odds with the First Lady’s attempts to combat these issues in kids? That’s HHS, the CDC, and the White House up against USDA. That certainly doesn’t seem like an efficient way to run government.

In fact, the President and Congress agree with me. The Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010 aims to avoid overlapping government programs to increase efficiency and effectiveness for the American people. In addition, agencies in the Obama administration are collaborating in a way that is unprecedented at the federal level. HUD, DOT, and EPA are jointly funding grants designed to further sustainablilty in housing, transportation, and the environment. Six agencies are collaborating across agency boundaries to combat domestic and sexual abuse. And nine agencies are collaborating (for better or for worse, depending on your opinion of this topic) about building transmission lines on federal lands. Trust me when I say that federal agencies talking to each other regularly, let alone really collaborating, is nothing short of miraculous.

So…. <insert crickets chirping here> why exactly aren’t we subsidizing the foods the government is telling us we should eat to be healthy? Is USDA exempt from that whole collaboration idea?

#myplate – could even be a platter.

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The USDA unveiled their new and improved way of encouraging Americans to eat healthily last week – you know, because we have no way of knowing what’s actually healthy to eat while being bombarded by millions of dollars in marketing campaigns designed to take our $1.99 to the closest value menu of choice. Some big name food policy ‘celebrities’ (such as they are) have weighed in – Marion Nestle is optimistic, while Michael Pollan points out a huge disconnect. Look how pretty it is – amazing what $2 mil will get you these days:
MyPlateWhile admirable to keep trying to get people to eat healthier, two things* popped out at me the first time I looked at the www.choosemyplate.gov site. First off, there is NO mention (that I have found as of yet) of what size the plate should be, hence dictating portion size. At ALL. I don’t know about you, but I have several sizes of plates living in my cupboards, and even the smaller salad plates would be pretty darn full of food if I loaded it up the way the USDA shows me. While confusing (like a third of a bagel equalling one serving of grains), those of us who can do basic math in our heads can still figure out the old pyramid. Furthering the confusion, where does one see a ‘normal’ portion size anymore? Certainly not at restaurants. Let’s look into that issue a little further.

This past year, as a working mom of two with a husband in graduate school, I grabbed takeout more often than I should have. Thankfully, I live fairly close to a Chipotle restaurant, probably the only fast food place I will walk into anymore (though I will cop to a hankering for a Whopper Jr. every once in a while, I drive through and eat guiltily in the parking lot while wondering if I’m eating a downer cow. But damn, that char-broiled fake food taste still gets me every time.). It’s fresh, I can see it made, I can load up on veggies and know that the organization supports my commie pinko leftist food choices with their naturally raised locally sourced foods. Sounds fantastic, right? Load that burrito on up!

Hang on a sec. How many calories am I supposed to be eating a day? According to the USDA (and buried on page 12 of a dietary guideline document, and yet further buried in greater detail in appendix 6 of that doc), I should officially be taking in somewhere between 1,800 and 2,000 calories a day. Just checking.

Back to that gorgeous burrito. That guacamole is calling my name. Who cares how many calories? Well, my 20 pound weight gain last year cares. My kids who have a mom who can’t run very well right now care. And I care, because I’d like to not have to buy a new wardrobe, keep the light on in bed with my husband without obsessing about my stretch marks, or worry about dropping dead of a heart attack at age 68 less than three hours after calling my daughter to tell her I wasn’t feeling well (as my mother did). How many calories is that burrito, exactly?

According to Chipotle’s own nutritional information, a whackload. My personal combination of tortilla, rice, black beans, fajita veggies, chicken, mild and medium salsas, cheese, sour cream, and guacamole adds up to 1155 calories. For ONE meal. That’s not counting the chips and extra guac I sometimes bought. That left me with 645-845 calories for the rest of the day. I can tell you that my caffeine habit was supported by chai lattes at that time, which land at 300 calories. I’m not sure what else I ate on those days but I can tell you it was probably more than 545 calories. And you wonder why people in this country are obese? Enormous portions in restaurants are the norm. If you put it in front of someone, they’ll eat it. Don’t even get me started on places like the Cheesecake Factory, where some single-serve entrees are reported to be over 2000 calories.
So common sense needs to come into play. But people are busy, and frazzled, or poor, and unable to access the food they need to be healthy. What happens if no one taught you was a normal portion size was, or told you to aim for 2000 calories a day, or that restaurants are required to provide nutrition information, but mostly hide it or throw it up on the internet where no one looks before they buy a burrito, or a hamburger, or a sandwich where the bread is actually fried chicken? Come on, USDA. Think a little more about substantive recommendations like the SIZE of the plate instead of “avoid oversized portions” when normal isn’t normal anymore.

As for me, when my fat jeans didn’t even fit, I reassessed. I eat out of the fridge more and grab stuff out of the takeout line less. And when I do visit Chipotle these days (because their food is fantastic, regardless of size), I go for this combo: a salad with romaine lettuce, black beans, fajita veggies, chicken, mild and medium salsas, sour cream, and guacamole. That huge pile of food is only 645 calories. And I’m mindful of the vinaigrette, which can add another 260 calories, but I never use the whole thing.

As for you, #myplate, I have more to say about you. But that’s for another day.*

*I’m too wordy to address both things that bug me about this in one post.