by Marion Nestle

Currently browsing posts about: Advocacy

Jan 18 2023

The School Nutrition Association calls for universal school meals

Will wonders never cease.  You might think that of course the School Nutrition Association, which represents people who cook and staff school meal programs, would be in favor of universal free meals for all school kids, but I was amazed to see its 2023 Position Paper.

This asks Congress to:

  • Make permanent the reimbursement rate increases for the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Program (NSLP/SBP), provided in the bipartisan Keep Kids Fed Act (PL 117-158).
  • Expand NSLP/SBP to offer healthy school meals for all students at no charge.
  • Ensure USDA maintains current school nutrition standards rather than implement additional, unachievable rules.
  • Reduce regulatory and administrative burdens.

I’m surprised because this is the same organization that fought improvements to the rules for school meals, as I have discussed previously.

I think it’s terrific that the SNA is now at the forefront of child nutrition advocacy.

Check out the resources on its website.

See what it’s doing to advocate.

Support these calls!

********

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

Jan 12 2023

Food Tank’s latest list

Here’s another one I found out from Twitter.

Food Tank’s lists are extremely useful, this one especially.

Here is one example:

11. Black Farmer Fund, United States

A community investment fund that aggregates and redistributes the wealth of social impact investors, Black Farmers Fund provides grants and loans to Black farmers and food businesses in New York. Their goal is to build resilient Black food economies. Through this work, the Fund seeks to repair Black communities’ relationships with food. “Black Farmer Fund seeks to provide an alternative way for community-driven Black farmers and food businesses in New York to access capital that is non-extractive, culturally-relevant, and governed by other Black farmers and food business owners,” says Olivia Watkins, President of the Fund.

I’m always asked: What can I join?  Who should I support?

This is one great starting place.

********

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

Tags:
Oct 21 2022

Weekend thinking: holding food corporations accountable (or trying to)

The Access to Nutrition Initiative (ATNI) has released its latest Index report on the progress of the 11 largest U.S. food and beverage companies on their commitments to make, market and sell healthy food and drinks.

The report’s dismal conclusion:

While all companies have placed a greater focus on nutrition in their corporate strategies since the first index was released in 2018, their actual products have not become healthier, and they are not making sufficient efforts to safeguard children from the marketing of unhealthy products.

Collectively, these copanies have sales of about $170 billion annually and account for nearly 30% of all U.S. food and beverage sales.

The report’s overall findings (the Index is a composite on a scale of 10):

Specific findings:

  • Only 30% of their products meet criteria for “healthy,” 70% do not. This is only marginally better than in 2018 (see link to my post on this below).
  • Companies say they have a greater focus on nutrition and health, but are not doing much about it.
  • Only four companies are trying to improve the affordability of their healthier products.
  • Companies say they are trying to protect children from the harmful effects of marketing unhealthy products, but they are not doing much about it.

ATNI recommends that companies fix these problems and that the government “support such changes by introducing more effective and enforceable standards and legislation that prevent the marketing of unhealthy products and push companies to apply reformulation strategies on their products.

I like this recommendation, despite its being couched as “encourage,” rather than as a demand:

Companies are encouraged to actively support (and commit to not lobby against) public policy measures in the US to benefit public health and address obesity as enshrined in the National Strategy on food, hunger, nutrition, and health

Comment: Results liket these come as no surprise.  To repeat: food companies are not social service or public health agencies; they are businesses with stockholders who demand returns on investment as the first priority.

Expecting companies to change products to make them less attractive or to stop marketing to children means asking them to go against their business interests.

Until companies are rewarded for focusing on social values, public health, and environmental sustainability, ATNI’s evaluations are unlikely to have much of an impact on corporate behavior.

Documents

***********

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

 

 

Apr 22 2022

My latest article: Regulating the Food Industry

The American Journal of Public Health has just published a first look—ahead of its print in June—at my most recent article, Regulating the Food Industry: An Aspirational Agenda [if you are not a member of the American Public Health Association, this will be behind a paywall, alas].

It begins:

I end it with policy recommendations for:

  • Dietary guidelines
  • Mass media campaigns
  • Taxes
  • Warning labels
  • Marketing restrictions
  • Portion size restrictions
  • Farm subsidies

Hence, aspirational.

And, I say,

While we are thinking in aspirational terms, let us not forget root causes. We must also demand policies that link agriculture to public health, keep corporate money out of politics, reduce corporate concentration, and require Wall Street evaluate corporations on the basis of social as well as fiscal responsibility.  In comparison with those challenges, takin gon the food industry should be easy.

Let’s get to work.

Dec 23 2021

Good news: sometimes, food advocacy works

How about let’s end this year with some cheery news.

The Global Health Advocacy Indicator (“Changing Policies to Save Lives”) has produced a series of international case studies of successful advocacy for a healthier food environment.

  • How Advocates Protected Heart Health in Brazil: Brazil approved strict limits on trans fat in food following strategic advocacy led by local civil society organizations supported by the Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI). Our new case study describes the process and lessons learned. Read the case study
  • A Victory for Healthy Food Policy in Argentina: Argentina passed a Front of Package Labels bill with some of the strongest standards in the region in October, thanks to incredible advocacy by civil society organizations FIC Argentina, Fundeps, SANAR and Consumidores Argentinos.  Read more
  • How Advocacy Communications Supported Healthy Food Policy in Colombia: Colombia adopted a new Front of Package Labels law in August. We asked our civil partners how they how they used communications to advance advocacy and mobilize public support. Read the responses from Red PaPaz, Colectivo de Abogados, Dejusticia and FIAN Colombia. Read the responses
  • Trans Fat Policy Win in Bangladesh: In November, Bangladesh set new trans fat limits in line with international best practices. “The approval of trans fat regulations in Bangladesh illustrates the power of civil society advocates to impact public health policy,” said Muhammad Ruhul Quddus, GHAI’s coordinator of cardiovascular health work in Bangladesh. Read more
  • Case Study: Trans Fat Elimination in the Philippines: Read our new case study about the advocacy that led the Philippines to mandate the elimination of industrially produced trans fat from its food supply in July.  Read the case study
  • Resource: Legal Issues in the Design and Implementation of Public Health Measures: Our new resource, Legal Issues in the Design and Implementation of Public Health Measures, describes how our legal experts evaluate public health policies and legislation. Download the Guide
  • Report: Behind the Labels: Big Food’s War on Healthy Food Policies:  Our new report describes how the ultra-processed food and beverage product industry is attempting to derail effective front-of-package warning label policies, and shares key activities public health advocates are using in response. View the report
  • New Case Study: Protecting Heart Health in India: Our new case studies describes how Indian advocates supported new national limits on trans fat, a particularly harmful food component.  

Advocacy can succeed when it is done well.  It’s working in all these countries.  We could do that too!

Tags:
Jul 14 2021

The UN Summit on Food Systems 2: The Critique

Yesterday, I posted information about the forthcoming UN Summit on Food Systems (UNFSS) and its Pre-Summit.  The Summit has been heavily criticized on the grounds that it:

  • Sets agenda themes determined by corporate entities such as The World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation.
  • Favors corporate technological solutions to food system problems.
  • Ignores agroecology, organic farming, and indigenous knowledge.
  • Excludes meaningful representation from people most affected by food system transformation.
  • Promotes corporate control of food systems.
  • Ignores the conflicted interests of its organizers.
  • Is fundamentally undemocratic.

These criticisms are so severe that The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism for Relations with the UN (CSM) is organizing counter events July 25 to July 27.

Much has been written to document such concerns.

Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism, North America: UN Food System Summit “Dialogue” events spark renewed concerns of corporate capture in North American food system and rural economies globally

In March 2020, 550 civil society organizations sent an open letter to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General condemning the involvement of the World Economic Forum in the UNFSS, the appointment of Ms. Agnes Kalibata as UNFSS Special Envoy due to her links to corporate agribusiness, the failure of the UNFSS to elevate the primacy and indivisibility of human rights frameworks as foundational to the governance of food systems, and the necessity of civil society organizations to have an autonomous, self-organized, and equal ‘seat at the table.’ These concerns have not been addressed despite numerous CSM interactions with UNFSS organizers.

The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES): An IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] for Food?”  How the UN Food Systems Summit is being used to advance a problematic new science-policy agenda.

Behind what sounds like a technocratic question is in fact a high-stakes battle over different visions of what constitutes legitimate science and relevant knowledge for food systems. This, in turn, is part of a broader battle over what food systems should look like and who should govern them.

Matthew CanfieldMolly D. Anderson and Philip McMichael.  UN Food Systems Summit 2021: Dismantling Democracy and Resetting Corporate Control of Food Systems.  Front. Sustain. Food Syst., 13 April 2021. [Note: this paper has an especially useful historical account of attempts to establish global food system governance]

Although few people will dispute that global food systems need transformation, it has become clear that the Summit is instead an effort by a powerful alliance of multinational corporations, philanthropies, and export-oriented countries to subvert multilateral institutions of food governance and capture the global narrative of “food systems transformation”…It elaborates how the current structure and forms of participant recruitment and public engagement lack basic transparency and accountability, fail to address significant conflicts of interest, and ignore human rights.

Independent scientists:  Open letter to policy makers: No new science-policy interface for food systems.

We call on governments and policymakers to…Support participatory processes that actively and meaningfully include plural perspectives and voices in food system governance. Farmers and other citizens need inclusive, participatory, and safe spaces within the CFS-HLPE process to co-create the knowledge necessary to govern food systems at global, national and local levels.

Maywa Montenegro, Matthew Canfield, and Alastair IlesWeaponizing Science in Global Food Policy.

Nobody disputes the need for urgent action to transform the food system. But the UNFSS has been criticized by human rights experts for its top-down and non-transparent organization. Indigenous peoples, peasants, and civil society groups around the world know their hard-won rights are under attack. Many are protesting the summit’s legitimacy and organizing counter-mobilizations.

Scientists are also contesting a summit because of its selective embrace of science, as seen in a boycott letter signed by nearly 300 academics, from Brazil to Italy to Japan.

Through the Summit, “science” has been weaponized by powerful actors not only to promote a technology-driven approach to food systems, but also to fragment global food security governance and create institutions more amenable to the demands of agribusiness.

ScientistsAn open letter from scientists calling for a boycott of the 2021 Food Systems Summit.

Some critics of the UNFSS have suggested ways that the process could become less problematic: (1) it could incorporate a human rights framing into all of its “action tracks”; (2) it could create an action track led by the CSM on the corporate capture of food systems; and (3) it could designate the UN Committee on World Food Security as the institutional home to implement recommendations coming out of the summit.

Nisbett N, et al.  Equity and expertise in the UN Food Systems Summit.  BMJ Global Health. 2021;6:e006569.

…time is not late to take action in rebalancing powers and enabling a greater diversity of knowledge, not simply among a multiplicity of voices in multiple public forums, but explicitly engaged at the summit’s top table of expertise and summit leadership. It is also not late to adopt mechanisms that limit the engagement of those actors whose primary interests have driven our food systems to
become unhealthy, unsustainable and inequitable, so the voices of the people can be clearly heard..

An alternative: The Global People’s Summit on Food Systems

The People’s Summit is composed primarily of movements of landless peasants, agricultural workers, fisherfolk, indigenous people, rural women, and youth—or small food producers who produce 70% of the world’s food, yet remain among the world’s poorest and food insecure.  “The issue of landlessness and land grabbing is not on the agenda of the UNFSS.  Nowhere in its so-called Action Tracks do discussions highlight critical trends such as on land concentration and reconcentration in the hands of big agribusiness firms and their network of local landlords and compradors, nor on the massive displacement of rural communities to give way to big private investments and large development projects,” said Chennaiah Poguri, chairperson of the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC).

Additions

 

May 28 2021

Weekend reading (and thinking): “framing” food messages

The Rockefeller Foundation has produced what I view as an incredibly important guide to describing—“framing”—food system issues in ways that will encourage support for transforming the U.S. food system.

For effective advocacy, issues have to be “framed” in a way that the public can understand and respond to.

“Framing” is a concept made famous by George Lakoff.  It refers to the way political messages are designed to resonate with voters.  But it also refers to how public health messages can be designed to be more effective in encouraging people to act in the interests of their own health (wear masks, for example).

For food system change, the Rockefeller Foundation issued an action guide:  Reset the Table: Messaging Guide,

One of the consistent needs expressed by those seeking to transform the food system is a shared narrative to motivate and sustain the needed changes in the system. This narrative and messaging guide focuses on the long-term food system transformation while responding to the evolving circumstances presented by the pandemic, economic downturn, and racial justice reckoning being experienced in the United States.

Its guide is part of a longer report giving the research basis behind the messages: Reset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the U.S. Food System.

Here is an example of how this kind of research-based framing works:

And here is an example of the messaging in action:

These are great suggestions for ways to talk about food issues.

Required reading!

Apr 9 2021

Weekend advocacy: The People vs. Big Soda

I’ve just received a copy of Larry Tramutola’s The People VS Big Soda: Strategies for Winning Soda Tax Elections.

Larry was involved in the successful Berkeley soda tax initiative, and this is his account of how they won an election wtih an astonishing plurality of 76%.  I consider this initiative to be a model of how to do food advocacy, and it’s great to have this practical guide to the details of starting a campaign like this or, for that matter, any other food campaign.

He covers such matters as:

  • Coalition building
  • Dealing with industry arguments
  • Framing the issue
  • Recruiting volunteers
  • Winning despite limited financial resources
  • Building power, step by step
  • Staying with it no matter what happens

These are important lessons for anyone involved in food advocacy.

I can’t find anything about this booklet online, which means that if you want one, you must contact him at:

Larry Tramutola
191 Ridgeway Avenue
Oakland, California 94611
PHONE510-658-7003