by Marion Nestle

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Aug 4 2013

Some reflections on the mayor’s food forum: San Francisco Chronicle column

I used my August (monthly, first Sunday) column for the San Francisco Chronicle to reflect on the meaning of the Mayor’s Food Forum last month.

Q: I hear that you moderated a food forum for candidates for mayor of New York City and got them to say what they thought about hunger, nutrition and local agriculture. Did any of them say anything worth telling?

A: The forum was indeed amazing. But I’d go further.

I’d call it historic – a turning point in the food movement.

This had to be the first time that food advocacy organizations – an astonishing 88 of them – joined forces to induce candidates for city office to agree to respond to questions about issues of concern to every one of those groups.

Six candidates turned up. What they said hardly mattered (and at this point, the less said about the individual candidates, the better). What does matter is that they thought this audience important enough to come and state their positions on how food production and consumption affect public health, and how political leaders can use their authority to improve the food system.

Food issues have become prominent enough to make politicians and would-be politicians take notice.

The sold-out audience of nearly 1,000 filled the auditorium at the New School as well as two overflow rooms. Others watched the forum streamed live online. (http://new.livestream.com/TheNewSchool/nycfoodforum).

When I was invited to moderate, I could hardly believe what the organizers had accomplished. Twelve groups, each working separately for improvements in food assistance, food access, working conditions, local farming, food systems or health had formed a coalition to plan the forum and make it happen.

These groups met for a more than a year to identify the specific issues they most wanted candidates to think about. Judging from the length of the questions I was given, this cannot have been easy. The organizers must have been exceptionally patient – and persistent – to get 12 advocacy groups to agree on the key issues.

They also did a great deal of community organizing. They not only recruited 76 other food advocacy groups to support the forum, but also encouraged development of an additional forum for young people in low-income communities to get involved in the food issues most relevant to their lives.

Some of these kids were invited to ask questions of the candidates. One, from a Brooklyn teenager: “Where do you shop for food?” This may sound like a naive question, but it elicited a surprisingly thoughtful response that touched on sensitive issues of income and class.

The grown-up questions concerned issues vital to the host groups: How would the new mayor address hunger and food insecurity, inadequate access to healthy food, the low wages and inhumane treatment of restaurant and fast-food workers, the poor quality of school food, and the high rates of diet-related chronic disease among city residents.

Such problems are hardly unique to New York. Even the more city-centered questions – how to use the city’s purchasing power to support regional agriculture and the food economy, and to promote city land for urban farming – have plenty of relevance for other urban areas, including Bay Area cities.

The candidates made it clear that they had thought about the issues, and had come prepared to address them.

Here’s my inescapable conclusion: The food movement is strong enough to make candidates for office stand up, listen and take food issues seriously.

Last fall, writing about California’s Proposition 37 that sought to label genetically modified foods, Michael Pollan issued a challenge to food advocates.

The food movement, he said, needs to do more than work for agricultural reform and an increased market share for healthier food. Advocacy groups need to get together to create a real political movement – an organized force strong enough to propel food concerns onto the national agenda and force politicians to take action to improve food systems.

The forum was a first step in that direction. It proved that food coalitions can have political power.

I can’t think of a better time for food advocacy groups to join forces and work collectively toward common food system goals.

E-mail questions to: food@sfchronicle.com

Aug 2 2013

Weekend Reading: Two Books About Cooking

Tamar Adler.  An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace.  Scribner 2011.

The book comes with a foreword by Alice Waters and a blurb from Michael Pollan: “Tamar Adler has written the best book on cooking with economy and grace that I have read since MFK Fisher.”  He ought to know (see below).

Ms. Adler cooked at Chez Panisse.  She says:

Cooking is best approached from wherever you find yourself when you are hungry, and should extend long past the end of the page.  There should be serving, and also eating, and storing away what’s left; there should be looking at meals’ remainders with interest and imagining all the good things they will become.

She begins with “how to boil water” and ends with “how to end.”  Very MFK Fisher indeed.

Michael Pollan.  Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.  Penguin Press, 2013

A review of this book should seem superfluous as a mere look at Pollan’s website makes clear.   But I want to go on record as saying how much I enjoyed reading it.  He writes about the time he spends in the kitchen learning from experienced cooks how to barbecue (fire), make stews (water), breads (air), and cheese (earth).

The writing is so vivid and engaging that I had the strangest reaction to this book: I could smell what was cooking.

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Jul 29 2013

FDA’s latest round of food safety proposals: food imports

The FDA has finally released safety rules for imported foods, two years after Congress passed the food safety law.  OK.   We now have them.  At last.

Here’s what the FDA is up against:

  • 150 different countries ship foods to the U.S.
  • These account for about 15% of the food supply, but 50% of fresh fruits and 20% of fresh vegetables.
  • The agency has the capacity to inspect about 2% of imported foods.

To deal with this disconnect, the FDA proposes to hold importers accountable for the safety of what they ship to us.

The proposed rules allow two ways to do this: Importers can do their own onsite safety audit, or they can verify that their suppliers did so.

Both methods involve verification by certified verifiers that suppliers used “prevention-oriented food safety practices” (HACCP in other words), and achieved the same level of food safety as domestic growers and processors.

Neither requires inspection by FDA, although importers may use inspection.

The proposed rule and the third-party accreditation proposed rule are available for public comment for the next 120 days.

The previous proposed rules, for produce safety and food production facilities (see below), have been given another 60 days for public comment.  Comments on all proposals will now be due at the same time.  The FDA expect to issue the rules 12 to 18 months after the comments come in and then it will take another 18 months for rules to go into effect.

What does all this mean?

The FDA hardly has the resources to manage U.S. inspections so expecting it to do foreign inspections is unrealistic.  This plan shifts the regulatory burden to producers and shippers (why does this sound like foxes guarding henhouses?).

The FDA also intends to certify third-party auditors.  These invariably involve conflicts of interest, although that system  seems to have worked fairly reasonably well for organic foods.  But we are talking about the safety of imported foods here, and lives are at stake.

This is undoubtedly the best the FDA can do given its limited resources and its problems with Congress.  This Congress is hardly likely to view food safety as a national priority and give the FDA what it needs.

Recall: FDA appropriations go through agricultural appropriations committees, not health appropriations.  And this Congress cannot even pass a decent farm bill.

Congratulations to the FDA for making the best of a bad situation.  And fingers crossed that the proposals survive, get implemented by 2015, and nothing bad happens in the interim.

The document collection:

For a detailed discussion of the pros, cons, and questions, see the account in Food Safety News

Jul 24 2013

Michele Obama to La Raza: Hold companies responsible for what they make and market to kids

It’s been more than three years since Michele Obama’s speech to the Grocery Manufacturers Association about the unhealthy effects of their food marketing on kids.

But she’s back, this time talking to an audience representing specific targets of food industry marketing—Hispanics.

In a speech to the National Council of La Raza, she said:

While we still have a long way to go, the good news is that right now, we have everything we need to reclaim our children’s health — that is, if we’re willing to step up and continue to do our part in our own families and communities.

And that starts by using our power as consumers to hold companies responsible for the food they make and how they market it to our kids.

In 2008 alone, companies spent well over half a billion dollars on food, beverage and restaurant ads in Latino media markets — many of them for unhealthy products.

And those of us with kids who have seen our kids begging and pleading for something they saw on TV, we know just how persuasive these ads can be.

So we all know that the food industry has some serious work to do when it comes to how they market food to our kids.

But here’s the thing — ultimately, we all have the power to decide whether or not to actually buy those foods…Goya can produce low-sodium products, but if we don’t buy them, they will stop selling them….

In the end, we create the demand for these products and it’s up to us to demand quality, affordable food that is good for our kids.  But it’s on us.  (Applause)

OK, so she’s not exactly calling for boycotts or talking about legislation that might put some limits on food industry marketing.  But reading between the lines, it comes pretty close.

(Applause) indeed!

Jul 22 2013

The Farm Bill: A Very Brief History

I am an avid reader of Jerry Hagstrom’s Hagstrom Report, which I subscribe to and consider well worth the price.  He not only tracks farm and agriculture policy, but explains it in ways that I can actually understand.

Sometimes, his articles go to the National Journal and other places with open access.  This one gives a lucid history of the farm bill along with the politics of the current congressional impasse.

The history matters because the farm bill is otherwise inexplicable.

Here’s how we got to this point:

  • 1933       Congress passes the Agricultural Adjustment Act to deal with commodity surpluses that nobody has any money to buy during the Great Depression.  The bill included production.
  • 1936       Supreme Court rules production controls unconstitutional. Congress passes the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act to deal with this decision and the consequences of the Dust Bowl.
  • 1938       Congress passes new Agricultural Adjustment Act (this includes sections of the 1933 law that were unaffected by the Court ruling, the 1936 conservation law, and new commodity legislation that meets the Court’s standards).
  • 1949       Congress passes law giving high, fixed-support prices that trigger subsidy payments when market prices fall below certain levels.

Since then whenever Congress passes new farm bills, it suspends the 1938 and 1949 commodity titles  for specific periods of time (the alternative would be to amend those laws, or pass new laws that will be permanent and difficult to change).

Where does SNAP fit in?

  • 1964       Congress passes Food Stamp Act
  • 1977       SNAP incorporated into farm bill.

Hagstrom points out that SNAP does not have permanent authorization; it expires with the farm bill.  But it is an entitlement, meaning that anyone who qualifies gets funded.    This, however, requires congressional appropriations.

So everything is up to Congress, and none of the reasonable options look possible.

Sad.  Infuriating, actually.

Jul 19 2013

Weekend reading: Food revolution, California style

The California food movement took off after the 1980s.  If you want to know how this particular social movement developed, here are two books explaining how and why.

Joyce Goldstein with Dore Brown.  Inside the California Food Revolution: Thirty Years that Changed Our Culinary Consciousness.  University of California Press, 20

Full disclosure.  Joyce Goldstein is an old friend from the days when she ran Square One, very much a part-of-the revolution restaurant in San Francisco, and Dore Brown has been a pleasure to work with on several of my books with UC Press.

With that said, this book addresses this question: Was Alice Water’s Chez Panisse really the start of the good food movement in California?  The short answer is yes.  Everyone discussed in this book seems to have been inspired by Chez Panisse, worked there, or supplied its foods and wines.  Joyce interviewed just about everybody involved in doing interesting things with food and got them to reflect on why they did it and how what they did fit into the larger picture.    She writes from the perspective of a participant passionately devoted to good cooking with excellent ingredients.

Reading the book reminded me of one I mentioned in a previous post:

Sally Fairfax, et al.,  California Cuisine and Just Food.  MIT Press, 2012.

I remembered it because I had written its foreword.  It’s about the development of the food movement in the San Francisco Bay Area, rather than all of California, but it starts earlier and looks at what happened from the perspective of food systems.  Sally Fairfax (also an old friend from my own Bay Area days), and her co-authors examine the roles and accomplishments of everyone along the food chain who produces, transports, sells, prepares, serves, and consumes food.  They describe how the Bay Area food scene (“district,” as they like to call it) evolved to become today’s vibrant community of highly diverse groups working in highly diverse ways to produce better quality food and promote a more just, healthful, and sustainable food system.

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Jul 18 2013

The Mayors’ Forum: History in the Making

Last night’s forum with six candidates for Mayor of New York surely marks the first time that political candidates have had to grapple publicly with food issues—those of greatest concern to members of the 12 co-host organizations and 76 supporting organizations involved in planning this event.

The issues:

  • Ending hunger and food insecurity
  • Improving the wages and conditions of food industry workers
  • Getting city food agencies to be more responsive to public concerns
  • Improving access to healthy foods among low-income residents
  • Expanding participation in school meal programs and improving the quality of school food
  • Taking action to reduce the health consequences of obesity among city residents
  • Using the city’s vast purchasing power to support regional agriculture and the food economy
  • Integrating the Hunts Point Produce Market into the regional food economy
  • Promoting use of city land for urban farming

The candidates made it clear that they had thought about these questions and had come prepared to answer them.

The take home lesson: New York City’s food movement is strong enough to make city candidates sit up, listen and take food issues seriously.

The agenda is clear: maintain the momentum and hold the next mayor accountable.

For a recap:

The candidates who appeared:

  • Sal Albanese – @SalAlbanese2013
  • Bill de Blasio – @deBlasioNYC
  • John Catsimatidis – @JCats2013
  • John Liu – @JohnLiu2013
  • Christine Quinn – @Quinn4NY
  • Anthony Weiner – @AnthonyWeiner

 

New Picture (7)

One of the co-host organizations, the Food Systems Network of NYC, puts the agenda in a slightly different way, in its “Recipe for the Future of Food“:

  1. A New Public Partnership for Food (a City of New York Department of Food and an Independent New York City Food Systems Council)
  2. Better Health and an End to Hunger
  3. A Strong Food Economy with Good Jobs
  4. Support for Regional Agriculture through Smart Procurement and Protection of Working Land and Water Resources
  5. New Farm-to-Plate Distribution Infrastructure
  6. Better Food Waste Reduction and Nutrient Recovery

There’s plenty to do.  Do it!

Addition:  The account in the Wall Street Journal.

Jul 16 2013

Vilsack on the farm bill: “There ought to be outrage.”

Our dysfunctional Congress continues to dither over the farm bill.  Will the House send its SNAP-less, corporate-welfare bill to the Senate?  Will it do terrible things to SNAP first?  Or will it do nothing?

While waiting to find out, I want to mention a speech given by USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to the National Rural Assembly.   From the beginning, Secretary Vilsack said that his agenda for USDA was to revitalize rural America—a laudable goal.

Here he is last month calling for outrage over congressional failure to pass legislation in support of this goal.

What do we see from rural advocates? Utter disappointment. Are you kidding me? There ought to be outrage… “It is going to be important for groups like this to express more than extreme disappointment,.. Demand that they pass legislation that is supportive and not destructive. Demand appreciation for those in rural America.

How about that.  A call to action from the USDA!