Building a Catholic Food System

Mass is a celebration of the Eucharist – the body of Christ, the physical manifestation of the divine presence on Earth.  Millions of Catholics go to mass every weekend and celebrate the Eucharist, and Christians of other denominations similarly celebrate the meal Jesus had with his disciples through weekly services. But what could it mean to take the celebration Eucharist even more literally, to live out the spirituality to which our faith calls us?  

“Give us this day, our daily bread,” we pray.  How can we let Christ live through us in a way that better helps to ensure the world’s hungry receive their daily bread?  This question is one that necessitates seeing ourselves as interconnected with our brothers and sisters across the world, so we can maintain the spiritual stamina needed to create a more equitable food system.

Photo credit: Gerald Wen, member of Harmony Farm CSA & St. John the Baptist/Holy Cross Justice, Peace & Integrity of Creation (JPIC) Care for Creation committee. Used by permission.

In December 2016, I helped to facilitate a food justice breakout session within a Catholics of Color Climate Justice workshop, organized by the Franciscan Action Network in partnership with Climate Reality Project. One participant asked how we might build a food system based on Catholic principles.  I started brainstorming what this might entail.  

A food system based on Catholic principles would value the five components of the Good Food Purchasing Policy of the Center for Good Food Purchasing: local economies, environmental sustainability, valued workforce, animal welfare, and nutrition.  A Catholic food system would care for the hungriest among us, both on the other side of the world as well as the other side of the street, making sure everyone not only has access to food but gets fresh, quality, nutritious food, that doesn’t degrade environmental sustainability but promotes ecological well-being instead.

Picture this: going to church and picking up a farm share with food grown on an organic and biodynamic farm owned by a religious congregation, and having surplus food that is grown be donated to the church’s food pantry or soup kitchen, thanks to the support of other parishioners who can help to subsidize the additional food.  Having quotes from Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si” sent out in your weekly emails reminding you to pick up your vegetables from the farm. Coming together with parishioners to discuss integral ecology and spirituality – how our faith informs how we live out our engagement with the earth. And having the opportunity to visit the farm, meet the people who are growing your food, and even pick some of the produce yourself.

That is exactly what is happening through Blessed Sacrament Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Blessed Sacrament has partnered with a lay Catholic community known as Benincasa (after St. Catherine Benincasa of Siena) that is supported by the Dominican Sisters of Blauvelt. Benincasa Community and the Social Action Committee at Blessed Sacrament host a “Community-Supported Agriculture” program and support the church soup kitchen in providing farm-fresh food to the community. Grown on Harmony Farm and offered alongside a discussion group and excerpts from Laudato Si in a weekly newsletter, the food provided by Harmony Farm is spiritual as well as physical nourishment.

Photo credit: Kelly Moltzen, taken at the Care for Creation retreat at Harmony Farm

2016 was the first year of the farm-to-church partnership. In 2017, Benincasa is starting to expand the program to other parishes.  The parish of Holy Cross/St. John the Baptist, run by the Capuchin Franciscans, has taken up the challenge, and parishioners have decided to donate funds for a bulk farm share that will be purchased for a new soup kitchen. The soup kitchen will be parishioner-led, too: several people have already taken the Food Protection Course and are now licensed to supervise the many volunteers who are ready to prepare food and service the soup line.

Biodynamic, organic farms such as Harmony Farm are practicing regenerative agriculture, which can trap carbon in the air into the ground, thereby helping to reduce carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. If regenerative agriculture was practiced globally, 100 percent of current, annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would be sequestered (1). This is a refreshing alternative to food from a system that is a significant contributor to climate change and environmental degradation.

Because of our industrial growing practices and cultural habits, red meat and dairy contribute nearly half of the greenhouse gas emissions of all foods.  The beauty of eating a plant-based diet with foods grown locally, organically, and even biodynamically, is that we can build a new food system while simultaneously providing climate solutions.  Creating a system that feeds the hungry with nourishing food from the earth also puts the power and responsibility back into parishes and takes it away from the food industry, a harmful system that perpetuates food insecurity as Andrew Fisher recently made clear in his book Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance Between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups.

Ideally we can work towards the full meaning of the root of the word charity (caritas), or “expressing one’s love for God through love for one’s neighbor and oneself,” a love that includes dignity of the receiver, and also keep in mind the roots of charity in the Judaic tradition, where the highest level of charity is when receivers are able to become self-reliant.

To make more sustainably, ethically grown produce available at an affordable price for all, we would need a Farm Bill that is committed to biodiversity and incentivizes produce rather than subsidizes corn and soy as staple crops.  More affordable fruits and vegetables would also support equity for communities of color that are disproportionately affected by health disparities. We also need to make sure children are being taught from a young age about healthy and plant based eating, and provide them with opportunities to learn how food connects them to the earth and others.  There is a great model for this in WANDA, or Women Advancing Nutrition, Dietetics & Agriculture.  In ensuring that young girls are educated about the healing power of food, we can build a new generation of leaders who have the capacity to sustain themselves and one another.  

By focusing on growing more fruits and vegetables and promoting a plant-based diet, we can also reduce our reliance on the resource-intensive and often unethical practices involved in raising animals for meat.  The Saint Francis Alliance is a network of Catholics who advocate for vegetarianism because they recognize the inherent value and dignity of animals, and know that an ecosystem which treats animals well will also be one that is sustainable and healthy for humans.

Equipping ourselves to build a food system that honors the dignity of all of creation promotes improved food and water security for everyone, which can also help reduce violence and conflict especially in areas where resource scarcity is a threat to human livelihood.  Yet creating this new food system is not an easy feat: in order to accomplish the task, we must recognize the challenges that come with defending creation, ethical treatment of farmworkers, and the poor’s access to land. This became a lifelong struggle for Cesar Chavez, and Oscar Romero was assassinated standing up against corruption and in the name of Christ, and for the right of the poor to have access to land.

A food system based on Catholic principles is one based on the premise of integral ecology – recognizing our profound interdependence with the earth and one another.  It’s based on Catholic Social Teaching, including honoring the dignity of all, rights of workers, a for the poor and vulnerable, and the care of creation.  And it’s one that allows us to fully live out the three dimensions of eco-conversion: the spiritual dimension, lifestyle dimension, and advocacy dimension. It’s one based on grace, where the incarnate is not desecrated, but its sacredness is instead honored as we share meals through community.

(also posted at christianfoodmovement.org)  

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(1)  Rodale Institute (2014). Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change: A Down-to-Earth Solution to Global Warming. This compelling statistic is backed up by Rodale’s Farming Systems Trial (FST), the longest-running test comparing organic and conventional cropping systems.

Confessions of a Food Justice Advocate

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written regularly on here. But I want to get back into it. Like the phoenix is reborn to new life, I am hoping the lessons I’ve learned and insight I’ve gained over the past few years will allow me to add life to this blog. 

We often hear that the perfect is the enemy of the good.  A trap I fell into, wanting to make this blog more than it needed to be and therefore not finding the time to write on it at all.  I didn’t have a strong enough conviction that none of us is perfect and we must share what we can, in humility, in order to grow.

We will be most alive, successful and happy when we are most ourselves. But we can’t fully become our true selves until we face our own insecurities.

I’ve been challenged a lot recently and have felt compelled to take a “SNAP (food stamp) challenge” – or in other words learn what it’s like for low-income people to try to eat healthy on a very restricted budget.  It’s something I’ve known for a while I should do.  How can I best communicate to low-income folks about eating healthy if I haven’t lived through and experienced doing it myself? 

I was very fortunate growing up to have had a mother who cooked great family meals every night.  It wasn’t processed, packaged foods – she made real, wholesome meals, practically every night of the week. I didn’t comprehend how important this skill of cooking and knowing how to prepare food really was, and took advantage of it, not learning the skills myself so that I would be able to use them later on in life.  This was all before I decided to study nutrition in college, of course. I had no idea my career was going to take me down a path that would bring me back to the importance of food and knowing how to prepare it. I never really understood how lucky I was to have those family meals until I was out own my own. In college, I was fortunate to have had great dining halls, but it left me with a nagging feeling that post-college I would not have the skills to prepare meals myself on a regular basis. I could go shopping and follow a recipe, but is not something I was committed to doing on a regular basis because I was so committed to so many other extra-curriculars.  I continued on this path in grad school and afterwards, working for an organization that has taught me about health disparities which fostered in me a real passion for food justice.  I’ve focused so much of my time over the past several years on seeking food justice because it bothers me that so many people don’t have the ability to afford healthy foods and don’t have access to things like fresh fruits and vegetables and the like.   But in retrospect some of this passion may have really just been a way of hiding from the challenge of figuring out how to eat healthy on a budget so I could share this wisdom with others. 

I didn’t see a point in figuring out great meal plans for myself if the population I was working with wouldn’t be able to relate to it. So I didn’t do it.  I live in a house where we care about building community and have weekly dinner nights where we share a meal with our housemates and neighbors/friends. So once a week I have my meals taken care of (once a month usually I commit to preparing the meal).  Many of the other nights of the week I have typically been out at meetings/events (where sometimes a meal is provided) or I’ve worked too late at night to come home and want to cook  (especially in a kitchen that’s over-crowded with food and dirty dishes your other housemates have left lying around).  I’ve also not been very structured about using the time I do have (usually on weekends) to plan out my meals for the week.  I’ve tended to stick with very simple dinners for myself that probably wouldn’t satisfy anyone but me.  A very basic kale salad for dinner?  Ok.  Or an egg or two with salt and pepper - maybe with some bread lying around.  A roasted acorn squash with maple syrup.  A potato or sweet potato.  In the summer, sautéed eggplant and squash from the farmer’s market.  Only when making meals that involve other people have I been more diligent about trying to prepare a balanced meal with carbs, protein and vegetables.   And for lunch, I must confess a typical day consists of a trip out of the office to Pret a Manger for a basic (usually vegetarian) sandwich, which wastes so much more packaging than if I had packed my lunch myself.

Another challenge for me is when shopping at a grocery store, trying to find foods that were packaged in as little an amount of plastic & material as possible, because unnecessarily filling up landfills, clogging oceans and killing animals with our trash just doesn’t sit right with me. Which has led me to often shop at a farmer’s market (where I can use a reusable bag for the vegetables) or participate in a community supported agriculture / farm share program to get fresh, local vegetables, straight from the farm, without all the middle-men steps and relying on the broken industrialized food system.

But there are still many lessons we can learn from each other in trying to eat healthy for ourselves and our families. And I’m committed to seeing how we can all learn from each other – I think it will lead to a more fulfilling life if we can provide wholesome, nutritious homecooked meals for ourselves and our families more often.  Last week I made a Lentil & Mushroom Shepherd’s Pie which tasted delicious and I’ve been able to get several servings of leftovers out of it too. (Other recipes I’ve made in the past you can view on my Pinterest Recipe page).

Some geniuses recently came out with the “Plant Based on a Budget” website with recipes and meal plans for eating tasty, wholesome meals without spending too much money.  Also, a few members of the Hunger & Environmental Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group have committed to taking the SNAP challenge and some of their experiences are being posted to the HEN Facebook page.  HEN member Karen Ehrens, who inspired others to begin this project a few months ago when she took the SNAP challenge, collected her experience in an article you can read here. In addition, Registered Dietitian & Secular Franciscan Stacey Antine was recently challenged by the Bergen Record (the major daily paper in Bergen County, NJ) to shop healthy on a SNAP budget of $146 for a family of 4 – and was able to do it, documenting here experiences here.

While I haven’t yet figured out a meal plan for myself to eat healthy on a SNAP budget, I would like to make a goal of learning to do this better over the next several months – and trying to keep this up as best I can afterwards too. If anyone would like to join me, below are the guidelines offered by HEN member Garnel Bruell:

SNAP Challenge Guidelines

How much money will you be limited to? Please see the attached chart that shows the maximum benefits / family members. And note that since November 1st, this amount has been reduced to the pre-2009 Recovery Act levels.

What else can you cook with? Although this is a call all your own, I would say don’t feel the need to buy additional cooking oils or spices. You could deliberately limit your spice use to things like salt/pepper and homegrown spices, but ultimately this is your decision. 

Especially in this time of Thanksgiving when so many people will be reminded of their constant struggle to put food on the table for their families, may we be grateful for the food that we do have and strive to eat simple, wholesome meals so that others may do the same. 

Food justice in 2012

It's been an busy, exciting past couple of months in the world of nutrition, food justice, and food system advocacy. The Hunger & Environmental Nutrition (HEN) Dietetic Practice Group of the newly re-named Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association) finalized a new set of Corporate Sponsorship Guidelines to guide the sponsorship activities not only of HEN, but also to serve as an example of what many Academy members, Registered Dietitians, and other nutritionists would like to see as the guidelines adopted by the Academy at large.

The Environmental Working Group launched the "Good Food on a Tight Budget" shopping guide, and HEN held a webinar to give an overview.  (Info from this webinar, as well as other HEN webinars on GMOs and "Healthy Institutions: Strategies for Farm to Tray," are on the HEN website).

The HEN delegation at the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics 2012 FNCE conference held in Philadelphia, organized several exciting events, including a Spotlight session entitled "Systems Approach to Ending Hunger: Exposing the Origin, Uncovering Solutions," which included a talk by Dr. Hans Herren, co-chair of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) study, the world's premiere study of agriculture in relation to hunger, poverty, nutrition, human health, and environmental and social sustainability (here's a similar talk to the one he gave at FNCE).

In honor of CSPI's second annual Food Day, Anna Lappe launched "Food Mythbusters" ("Do we really need industrial agriculture to feed the world?"):

Oxfam continued spreading awareness about its GROW Food Justice Campaign "to build a better food system: one that sustainably feeds a growing population (estimated to reach nine billion by 2050) and empowers poor people to earn a living, feed their families, and thrive." To do this, they launched this video (also embedded below), launched the Future of Agriculture video and had an online discussion, and spearheaded the consumer-friendly "GROW Method" of eating in such a way that promotes environmental sustainability, supports small-scale farmers, reduces hunger and food waste, and promotes health. They even launched a Facebook app and have tons of GROW Method-friendly recipes on Pinterest.  Here's a nice infographic from Oxfam about what's wrong with our food system.

Another great video, along the same lines of describing the global food crisis & how to fix it, is "Feeding Nine Billion":

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy shared their Draft Principles of Food Justice, created after the Food + Justice = Democracy conference in September.

Ellen Gustafson and Danielle Nierenberg are launching "Food Tank: The Food Think Tank" in early 2013, which with their combined experience in navigating the food system should be an exciting initiative. Here's an article by Danielle in the Huffington Post, "13 Resolutions to Change the Food System in 2013."

Christina Schiavoni, food sovereignty advocate and moderator of Oxfam Action Corps NYC's International Women's Day event in March, moved on from her position at WHY Hunger to focus more intensively on food sovereignty from abroad, but not before imparting the wisdom about the film "Growing Change" about food sovereignty in Venezuela, which I am hoping we can organize a screening of in the coming year.

When Hurricane Sandy hit, Occupy Faith NYC made the connections between those hardest hit in Rockaway and Cuba:  climate change inevitably has a greater impact on the poor.

Locally:  The NYC Nutrition Education Network held a "Sustainability in the Food System" event in March (here's a resource list from the event).  Bronx Health REACH held a Bronx School Health & Wellness Conference in May, and published a newsletter documenting this and much of our other nutrition and fitness work.  The "Just in the Bronx: Our Voice, Our Choice" Summit was in September, where Professor Mark Naison from Fordham University gave the keynote address (which you can read on the Bronx Health REACH blog).  At the Summit, there was a Call to Action for both community members and elected officials, in regards to how we can improve the health of the Bronx.  Bronx Health REACH also became the borough-lead for the Community Transformation Grant in NYC - focused on improving healthy eating, active living, and reducing alcohol and tobacco - which is being overseen by the Partnership for a Healthier NYC.

I learned about the Ironwill Foundation, a great organization that does nutrition education classes for parents at the Mercy Center in the Bronx, and numerous middle schools throughout NYC and Newark, NJ with the Ironwill Kids PowerUp! curriculum. (video!).  I also got to see the premiere of the film "Soul Food Junkies" at Lincoln Center, which will be broadcast nationally on PBS on January 14, 2013 at 10pm.

Since seeing the film Forks Over Knives over a year ago (which does a good job promoting a plant-based diet), I heard some critiques about its subjectivity and even had doubts about a few things myself. Then I read some of this critique of The China Study, which delves deep into the scientific literature and should keep any scientist, doctor, or dietitian busy for a while.  Suffice it to say, I still believe the Oxfam GROW Method is the ideal way to eat to support health and environmental sustainability.

If you learn nothing else from reading this post, you should know that the food system is broken.  There are many contributing factors to this, but a considerable portion can be traced back to the actions of a few multinational food conglomerates and governments which support these corporations.  This happened with NAFTA, which favors the US in trade agreements and basically dumps overly subsidized grain products onto other countries, driving the price of these commodities down so low that many farmers in the developing countries receiving the grains can't make a living farming anymore, thereby becoming economic refugees, fleeing to the US (how ironic) as immigrants, trying to make a new life for themselves. This is what The Other Side of Immigration looks like and is the irony of the Harvest of Empire.  The impact of corporations and their ability to undermine communities (and even governments) has the potential to become exponentially worse if we don't pay attention to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a new free trade agreement that has been questioned — if not outright opposed — by environmental, consumer, indigenous, family  farm, labor and other social justice groups on four continents.  We must plead that governments don't blindly sign on to this, especially without the text being made public.

As food justice advocates, we can spread the messages about the food system and those working to change it for the better (documented here and on the Food for Thought and Action Facebook page!).  We can choose food that's healthier and better for the environment, abiding by Oxfam's GROW Method. We can teach kids about nutrition, growing food, and environmental sustainability - which Leave It Better does quite well. We can demand that companies uphold the principles of promoting health and sustainability, as outlined in HEN's Guidelines. We can also organize together with faith communities, such as the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies Jeremiah Leadership Council / NY Faith & Justice's Food Justice Working Group in NYC, to make changes personally and organizationally, and advocate for changes to the food system at large.  (twitter: @foodfaithhealth)

It would not be possible to make this post completely comprehensive of all the great work of food justice advocates or even all of the initiatives I've learned about this year, but hopefully this provides you with some good food for thought and action :)  And just for kicks, here's some more good info not mentioned above.  Happy 2013!

• Melinda Hemmelgarn's Food Sleuth Radio podcasts 
• Fracking: 
• "What You Need to Know about Natural Gas Production" video by Theo Colburn, PhD 
• Fracking and the Food System (Food & Water Watch)  
• New Yorkers Against Fracking 
• Trans-Pacific Partnership
• http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/trade-policies/tpp-potential-trade-policy-problems/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiIaPhvHa-w 
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/leak-cracks-open-transpac_b_1594675.html
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/trans-pacific-partnership-agreement_b_1871710.html
• 350.org - "Do the Math"

Diet for a Small Planet: Lessons for the Long Haul

Last September, I attended the 40th anniversary celebration of Frances Moore Lappé's book "Diet for a Small Planet" in New York City, entitled "Feeding Hope, Living Democracy."  At this event I heard Frances say that "hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food, but a scarcity of democracy" - a quote which truly intrigued me.  (How ironic that the event was held only five days after the start of Occupy Wall Street!)  
While my reading list is always umpteen books long, I figured Diet for a Small Planet should be pretty high on my priority list.  I'd already read her daughter Anna's book, "Diet for a Hot Planet", and have a lot of respect for them both as women in the food movement who also support Oxfam America and HEN.  Today I finished reading Book 1 of "Diet for a Small Planet," and I will say it definitely lived up to its reputation. What I could not believe is how everything Frances wrote about 20, 40 years ago (1971 edition updated in 1991) is still just as relevant today as ever.  We still have the same issues with our food system, but the stories of struggles and successes in overcoming food injustices all over the world are just as inspiring as ever.
Working to change the food system is a daunting task, because the roots of the issue are so multifaceted and cannot be solved with one solution.  It's easy to get overwhelmed and not know what to do first, as happens over and over again in my life in NYC.  But Frances gives some words of encouragement, from the lives of some people whose names still ring a bell 30 years later.  From the life of Harry Chapin, co-founder of World Hunger Year (now WhyHunger) and namesake of the Harry Chapin Media Awards which were created to encourage the media to "tell the story of hunger and poverty," Frances tells us to use what we have.  Well, I have the experiences of life and the books I've read and films I've seen, and this blog, so can write about what I know.  Meanwhile, Oxfam America has relationships with many famous music groups across the country who can continue in the vein of Harry Chapin and encourage musicians to speak out against hunger and poverty.
Frances next talks about how Joan Gussow - the matriarch of the "eat-locally-think-globally food movement," source of inspiration for Michael Pollan, and professor emerita at Teachers College, Columbia University - believes that her decision to study nutrition was probably the "first real decision in her whole life."  She struggled past the dull image of nutrition to learn the science of how food works in the body, and as a result has earned the respect of people interested in bridging the gap between studying food from a scientific perspective and learning about where food comes from... the ground.  I picked up a copy of her book "Growing, Older" when at the NY Botanical Gardens last year and look forward to reading it someday.
Frances tells the story of Michael Jacobson from Center for Science in the Public Interest, a highly respectable organization which has gained a lot of publicity within the last year since CSPI re-launched the annual Food Day initiative on October 24, 2011. Mike Jacobson started off studying biochemistry, and wanted to do something to touch more immediate social problems than could be solved in a chemistry laboratory, so he started looking into the hazards of food additives as an intern with Ralph Nader.  (Fortunately for us, the research into food additives that Mr. Jacobson started in the 1970's has evolved into a food additive safety database available online and on phone apps, called Chemical Cuisine.)
It was also interesting to read about a Nestlé infant-formula boycott at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, and to think about how the ICCR could become more engaged around food justice issues in the future (perhaps through the food justice work that NY Faith & Justice has started? hmm....).
Frances Moore Lappé gives us some other tips in the chapter "Lessons for the Long Haul" that are of note.  These include:

• working with others - finding a core group who can push you further than when trying to work on the issue alone
• using the direct experience of oppression - whether placed in a situation involuntarily or voluntarily
• remaining critical of oneself and one's organization - such as Larry Simon's experience with working with Oxfam America, when "he concluded that Oxfam should not work in certain countries where government repression is so strong that it precludes the existence of any organization working for redistribution of power, the only kind of organization which Oxfam wants to support" 
• hard work and balance - hard work and self-discipline are important, and balance important so as to prevent burnout; but some of us have recognized that working for social change is incredibly rewarding, makes life interesting, and gives us the opportunity to work with people who are equally inspiring and passionate about social change and food justice. 

There is still so much more to learn and so much more to share.  (I did not even touch upon the books' themes of citizen democracy, meat's impact on the world, or protein complementarity in this post!)  But when you surround yourself with incredible people, read books by inspiring visionaries, and stand on the shoulders of the giants who have paved the way before us - anything is possible.

Oxfam's Sow the Seed Campaign

Now more than ever is the time to get keyed in to the good work Oxfam is doing. For the past few years (up until Congress dropped climate change legislation from the radar), Oxfam America's main focus was getting Congress to finance international adaptation to climate change. The next mini-campaign, up until the UN Millennium Development Goals summit, was around calling on President Obama to develop a US Global Development Strategy (victory!). Now Oxfam is expanding the conversation to include food, and as far as I know will continue to do so up until the 2012 Farm Bill is voted on.

Oxfam's current campaign, "Sow the Seed," is asking world leaders to support the world’s poorest food producers as they fight climate change. This campaign officially begins on World Food Day, which leads up to the climate summit in Cancun November 29.

Our two "asks" in the US are for our members of Congress to:

1. Pass the Global Food Security Act. Strengthen it to support communities in their efforts to build resistance to climate change - and combat the adverse effects of climate change on their crops.

2. Urge President Barack Obama to establish a fair, accessible and accountable global climate fund at the climate summit in Cancun later this year that will sow the seed for a binding global climate agreement by 2012.

People can get involved in advocating for these causes with Oxfam by

a) joining an Oxfam Action Corps if you live in one of the following cities:
Albuquerque, NM
Austin, TX
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Columbus, OH
Indianapolis, IN
Minneapolis, MN
New York, NY
Philadelphia, PA
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA

Several of my fellow Oxfam Action Corps NYC volunteers have been in Iowa this week for the Norman Borlaug Dialogue / World Food Prize event, learning more about ending world hunger. You can find out more about OAC NYC at http://www.oxfamactioncorpsnyc.org/ (the other OAC pages are linked from here as well). Or alternatively, visit http://www.oxfamactioncorps.org

b) Tomorrow (World Food Day), Oxfam Action Corps in these various cities will be holding events to get petition signatures and have people plant seeds through creative activities. If you do not live in one of these cities, you can still support the Sow the Seed campaign by growing a "virtual plant" by taking the actions listed on the website, sowtheseed.net - growing plants, uploading photos of plants grown at home for the "photo petition," and sharing and promoting the actions through your own social networks. The number of actions taken around the world will be shown as a rolling number on this virtual plant.

c) Get advocacy updates from Oxfam America by signing up at http://oxfamamerica.org/

Re-evaluating Obesity

I saw an open heart surgery a few weeks ago. And I never want to see another one in my life.

What the food industry has done to us is very disturbing. It's messed with people's minds and mouths. It's made our country and much of the world obese. And we can't stand for it any more.

CBS gets this message: they aired Where Americans Stand on Obesity yesterday and pointed out that the American Dietetic Association is sponsored by companies such as Coca Cola, PepsiCo, and Mars.

But luckily, the Hunger & Environmental Nutrition (HEN) Dietetic Practice Group of the American Dietetic Association also gets this message. We have an ADA Corporate Relations Sponsors Review Task Force and are developing a survey that will go out to HEN members (and other registered dietitians eventually) to obtain data we can present to ADA so that this organization can start to change its practices.

This is one of the things that has to happen if we are ever to solve the obesity crisis in this country. Another thing we have to do is reexamine our practices, see if they're aligned with our morals, and most importantly rethink the questions we're asking so that we can learn from our mistakes (as Jim Wallis argues in his new book Rediscovering Values on Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street: A Moral Compass for the New Economy). And don't ever forget, everything's related: the rise in obesity and chronic disease is related to the economy - it has drastically increased the amount of money being spent in our sickcare system...billions of dollars are being spent treating chronic diseases. What did centenarians do centuries ago?? Not spend billions of dollars on a sickcare system, that's for sure.

Let's start with a few new questions, then. First off: What guidelines should we be using to determine the food we put into our bodies? In Michael Pollan's new book Food Rules, he lays out 64 simply put guidelines for what foods to eat, such as "don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food," "avoid foods you see advertised on television," and "don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk." For the reader who wants a bit more detail, check out Marion Nestle's book What to Eat.

Here's another question: What's the root cause of the obesity epidemic? My answer: agricultural policy. Corn and soy subsidies and a Farm Bill limitation on growing fruits and vegetables, supported by no other than the specialty crop growers who don't want the prices of fruits and vegetables to go down because then they will lose money. That's why I wrote an independent study paper for Marion Nestle last semester on the corn and soy subsidies. (Which, by the way, I'm going to revise and revise until it's good enough to be taken seriously by people with power. So if you want to contribute to the conversation, by all means share your thoughts with me.)

Let's do this. Growing our own food is so much better than open heart surgeries.

NYC Food and Climate Summit

In case you haven't heard yet, next Saturday, Dec. 12, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Just Food, and NYU will be hosting the NYC Food and Climate Summit. We are even lucky enough to be having HEN as a co-sponsor of the event, since HEN agreed to be a main contributor to making video messages possible from Vandana Shiva and Wangari Mathaai which will be shown at the plenary session and uploaded to websites afterward. The Food and Climate Summit will be happening smack in the middle of the Copenhagen (or "Hopenhagen") climate talks. It will even be held the day after 350 holds candlelit "Vigils for Survival" all across the world (these are on Dec. 11 - find one near you). In NYC, there will be one in Washington Square Park from 5-6 pm and one at Chelsea Piers from 6-8pm.

The Summit's registration was full within 36 hours of opening, which shows that it is guaranteed to be a successful event. Fortunately, as much information as possible from the conference will be posted to the conference website.

It is so important that NYC is making the connection between food and climate change, because food and climate change are so inextricably connected and it is not receiving enough attention on the global or even national scales in terms of climate change talk. Yes, Oxfam, tcktcktck, and 350, among other organizations, have been doing a great job of promoting the urgency of demanding action from our world leaders (such as limiting CO2 emissions to 350 ppm) - but as far as I can see there is not much talk here about agriculture. There are several main reasons to connect food and climate change. First of all, climate change is devastating developing countries' ability to produce crops on their own, leading to there being over a billion hungry people in the world. Climate change hits developing countries far greater than it impacts countries like the US (see some of my previous posts on Oxfam).

Second of all, producing "food" is a big contributor to climate change. If you've read Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, seen Food, Inc., FRESH, King Corn, or know anything else about the sustainable, local, organic, and/or slow food movements - then you might have an idea about the gravity of unsustainable agriculture and how it is contributing to health problems, economic problems, climate change, etc. The fact that it takes 1,500 gallons of water to make one pound of beef...that is not good for the environment or our health. Monocultures are sprayed with pesticides and chemicals that make it really easy for resistant strains of bacteria to develop. Subsidies for corn and soy given to farmers are used to feed cattle and pigs with ground meat and corn. ...These are the things that contribute to the artificially low cost of unhealthy food (artificially because we do pay - later on, that is, in the form of healthcare costs).

All that stuff is unsustainable. As Michael Pollan & Joel Salatin put it, we are taking a solution - grass-fed cattle - and turning it into 2 problems: 1) unsustainable CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations, where animals standing in their own manure only leads to bacterial infections and other diseases), and 2) nutrient-deprived farmland that needs to be sprayed with chemicals and harmful fertilizers (because it doesn't have the beneficial nutrients from manure).

Sign the NYC Food Pledge & Charter

Below are the session topics for the Summit next week. Visit here for more details. (And don't forget to check out the wonderful Partnering Organizations!) Be sure to help spread the word using facebook and twitter (@nycfoodclimate) Please use the hashtags #nycfoodclimate, #cop15, and #tcktcktck on twitter. Thanks!

Informational
Session 1: Introduction to Food and Climate Issues

Skills Building
Session 2: Faith-Rooted Climate and Food Justice Organizing
Session 3: Best Practices in Institutional Purchasing
Session 4: Tackle Hunger, Health and Environment in Your Community
Session 5: Grow Food in the Big Apple
Session 6: Cool Food on a Budget: Good Diet for People, Pocketbooks and Planet.
Session 7: Cool Food Demonstration: Preservation Without Refrigeration
Session 8: Composting Your Food Waste
Session 9: What’s at Steak: Tips for Talking about Animal Food and Climate Change Connections
Session 10: How to Mobilize around Food and Climate Change Issues

Public Policy
Session 11: Urban Agriculture: Community Gardens, Urban Farms, and More
Session 12: The Food Shed: Promoting Sustainable Local Agriculture
Session 13: Greening Food Infrastructure
Session 14: Setting an Agenda for Child Nutrition, School Food and Food Education
Session 15: From Farm to Landfill: Reducing Food Waste in New York City

Informational
Session 16: Understanding Your Foodprint

Skills Builder

Session 17: Cooking Up Climate-Friendly Change: Youth Lead the Good Food Movement
Session 18: Tackle Hunger, Health and Environment in Your Community
Session 19: Grow Food in the Big Apple
Session 20: Cool Food on a Budget: Good Diet for People, Pocketbooks and Planet
Session 21: Cool Food Demonstration: Preservation Without Refrigeration
Session 22: Composting Your Food Waste
Session 23: What’s at Steak: Tips for Talking about Animal Food and Climate Change Connections
Session 24: How to Mobilize around Food and Climate Change Issues

Public Policy
Session 25: Urban Agriculture: Roofs, Walls, and Other Under-Utilized Spaces
Session 26: The Food Shed: Harnessing New Yorkers’ Buying Power
Session 27: Institutional Procurement: Buy Local and Sustainable
Session 28: The Food-Collar Economy
Session 29: Structural Discrimination Related to Food and Climate Change

Hello, world

Apologies for not posting in quite a while, this semester hasn't allowed much time for blogging due to the time constraints of a dietetic internship and classes at NYU. I have, however, continued to post interesting links and events on my twitter page, twitter.com/kellymoltzen.

Aside from everyday clinical dietetics, other activities I am currently undertaking:
-Working on a green foodservice project for the national VA - we are surveying foodservice directors and providing resources for them to green their foodservice production systems
-Learning about the awesome cultural transformation program of the VA
-Attempting to write a paper on the commodity system as an independent study with Marion Nestle (corn and soy subsidies lead to increased production of unhealthy foods by the food industry which leads to obesity)
-Taking an International Nutrition course
-Taking a course on Assessing Community Health Needs. Our group is looking at the issue of tobacco smoking within the Mexican immigrant community of Jackson Heights, Queens
-Trying to stay updated on all the other sustainability and food happenings of NYC (including with Oxfam Action Corps NYC, the NYC Foodprint Alliance, etc)
-Planning the beginnings of a student group of the DIFM DPG (Dietitians in Integrative and Functional Medicine Dietetic Practice Group of the American Dietetic Association) (twitter: @adadifm) (facebook: ADA Dietitians in Integrative and Functional Medicine (DIFM))
-Trying to keep up with emails including the HEN DPG list-serve
-Co-chairing a task force on the issue of ADA sponsorship with the HEN DPG (should've seen that one coming)
-Attempting to plan an event with charity:water at NYU for the spring through the NYU Steinhardt Public Health Student Group

So, sorry I have not had time to post more often. Just wanted to update this blog during the month of October :)

No more of this sick-care system; we need a public option plan

The healthcare debates have gotten more intense since my last post. It seems as though most of the politicians want to pass a healthcare bill that doesn't have a public option; but as I've heard multiple times, if it doesn't include a public option, it's not healthcare reform.

Why do we need a public option in healthcare reform? Well, there are many issues with our healthcare system as it now stands. We spend more on healthcare than any other country yet don't rank nearly as high in terms of life expectancy and overall quality of life as some other countries which have more of a public option plan in their healthcare system. Maggie Mahar, author of the book Money-Driven Medicine that got made into a documentary, explains that three decades of research at Dartmouth University show that this is due to the fact that there is a great amount of waste in the system - nearly one third of the more than $2 trillion spent on healthcare is spent on "ineffective, often unproven procedures, overpriced drugs and devices, that are no better than the drugs and devices they are replacing... unnecessary hospitalizations, unnecessary tests." There is no limit on spending for healthcare in the US, and it has gotten out of control. Another point made in the documentary is that our system is based on physicians "doing" things (tests, procedures, appointments) instead of being focused on improving the health of the patient. We don't have a patient-centered model anymore, even though medical students take the Hippocratic Oath to put the patients first. Why is this? Because medicine and healthcare have become intertwined with the free market economy of the US. Hospitals took a corporate model when they began to hire MBA professionals as CEOs of hospitals instead of MDs. Doctors are influenced by the pharmaceutical industry and product makers who are trying to sell items to them, and the patient-centered model takes the back burner because doctors are getting paid based on the most expensive tests they can conduct, not on the most efficient way they can instill positive healthy change in their patients. This corporate model has its foundations in being legally bound to put its shareholders first (i.e. in front of the patients). Maggie Mahar says that in healthcare, this is akin to the Swahili saying that "'when the elephants fight, the grass is trampled'; - the patients are essentially the grass."

Concerned citizens and patients are not the only ones who have an issue with our sick-care system (as that's what it really is). Many physicians have expressed frustration with not having enough time to spend with patients, and feeling that they are being told what to do although that may not necessarily be the right thing to do. They fear that the quality of care they are providing for their patients is diminishing. There's not just one blameworthy party here - the failing system is a product of the clash between the free market economy and the need to provide healthcare. It's a shame we let it get this far, with nutrition-related healthcare issues spiraling out of control and doctors not even being taught sufficiently about nutrition during medical school. I often wonder why med students take the Hippocratic Oath to help their patients, and yet don't follow Hippocrates' mantra "let food by thy medicine and let thy medicine be thy food." At least physicians are starting to band together for Physicians for a National Health Program and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Given the incredible debt most medical students find themselves in due to med school tuition and malpractice insurance costs, in addition to an institutional emphasis on "more, more, more" tests and procedures, many med students are taking the more lucrative path of specialties, instead of the much more needed, much less respected and underpaid primary care physicians - but not all of them. One medical student at SUNY Downstate Medical College who has not yet been discouraged from primary care has started a blog and Primary Healthcare Discussion Group. He understands that doctors need to focus more on preventive strategies such as nutritional interventions. In regards to our healthcare system, he says we must hope that "US health care gets some form of huge overhaul for the better in the next year(s), otherwise Healthcare itself may become the cause of morbidity and mortality not only on the growing uninsured, but also on all other sectors of American society." According to the Money-Driven Medicine documentary, the corporate healthcare model cannot be sustained because eventually, only the extremely well-to-do patients will have access to it.

We also need a more patient-centered model - and I believe we should use the model that Dr. Neil Calman, the President of the Institute for Family Health, has been using since 2002. He uses EPIC, a Health Information Technology (HIT) system that involves the patient in every step of treatment, from the physician going over charts with a patient and determining a present state of illness, to deciding what the plan of treatment will be and ensuring the information is easily understandable and accessible for the patient to take home after the appointment is over. Dr. Calman explains that the HIT he is such a proponent of (he's on President Obama's HIT advisory board) is that of a "myChart" system where the patient records are available to the patient, and the patient is able to access their medical records online from home as well as send secure emais to their provider. HIT does not refer to a network of information to be shared in between different healthcare institutions for the case of patients who move from one hospital to another - that he refers to as Health Information Exchange (HIE).

I had the opportunity to attend the healthcare rally in Times Square on Saturday Aug. 29, where three thousand people showed up to express their desire for a public option in healthcare reform. There's a lot of confusion as to what a single-payer healthcare system or public option would entail, and if it would cut benefits etc etc. But as discussed in my last post, there's no need to worry about what would happen if (God willing) we can pass a public option plan. There are several really good resources you can check out for more information - "Reality Check" put out by the White House, Tim Foley's change.org healthcare blog, and the House Committee on Education and Labor's website on America's Affordable Health Choices Act.

It doesn't end here, though. Corporations such as the pharmaceutical industry and medical product makers aren't the only ones influencing the healthcare industry. Corporate sponsorship is a huge issue for many organizations, and one I have struggled with as a member of the American Dietetic Association. ADA corporate sponsorship has led to many dubious nutrition recommendations and there are many people who do not respect dietitians and the ADA because of this influence. The ADA supports the use of the USDA's food guide pyramid recommendations, which is influenced to a large extent by lobbying from the dairy and beef industries, according to Marion Nestle's book Food Politics. This understandably has led to a lot of confusion among the general public as to what should be regarded as a healthy diet, which logically is a partial contributor to the upsurge of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease epidemics. (There are other issues, of course - such as corporate advertising of unhealthy food, as well as unsanitary and dangerous chemical treatment of foods - but you can read about these elsewhere on this blog.)

Fortunately, there is a progressive group of dietitians that belong to a subgroup called the Hunger and Environmental Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group, which has some pretty strong advocates who are on the verge of making a taskforce to take on the corporate sponsorship issue within the ADA. The importance of changing to sponsors who are more concerned about public health should not be underestimated. It's embarrassing that I have a bag from an ADA conference that has a logo proudly announcing its sponsorship by PepsiCo.

The Home Project

This is by far the most clear, comprehensive, and easily accessible video on the state of our world and the impact that human beings are having on it. It's an hour and a half long; please watch it, and share it with everyone you know - not for my sake, but for your sake, everyone else's that lives on Planet Earth, and future generations. Oh yeah, and the sake of our Planet.

The Home Project

P.S. It's on YouTube, so it's free!

Safe water bottles

Here are some non-BPA refillable water bottles - a good alternative to buying plastic water bottles. Positives: they are safe, you don't have to pay for each time, and you don't have to think about if your recyclables are actually being recycled or are going to fill up landfills...

Klean Kanteen
Sigg (though get the BPA-free kind)
GuyotDesigns
Platypus
As an alternative to the options listed above you can purchase a Thermos and help support charity:water build wells in Africa.

Wait, why shouldn't you use plastic water bottles again?? Here's why. And here's a short video on plastic in the Pacific (including inside the stomachs of birds and fish) by Captain Charles Moore who discovered it.

Thanks to the HEN list-serve for these (and for this article from Enviroblog).

In Honor of National Registered Dietitian Day

On this second annual National Registered Dietitian Day, March 11, 2009, RD's on the blogosphere everywhere have come together for a "blogfest" to get the word out about the great work that RD's do. While I am not yet a Registered Dietitian, I plan to be within the next few years and definitely know and respect their work. I am a member of the American Dietetic Association's Hunger & Environmental Nutrition (HEN) Dietetic Practice Group and want to especially thank my HEN colleagues for always sharing their incredible, endless wealth of knowledge with others. The HEN-listserve has been and will continue to be a great window into the world of just, wholesome, sustainable food systems that I can only attempt to relay to the rest of blogging world. If you are a HEN member, thank you for all you do. If you are an RD or "RD2B," I encourage you to join HEN. It is a decision you will not regret. If you fit neither of these categories, please at least check out Ashley Colpaart's post on the US Food Policy blog: Dietitians Working in Food Policy, the New Frontier. She's not only described many of the great ways RD's are working to bring food back to its roots, but has also listed many other RD's blogs as part of the blogfest.

The Organic Green Revolution

Christopher Bedford from the Center for Economic Security has given one of the best descriptions of our current state of affairs that I've seen in recent times. The Rodale Institute's "Organic Green Revolution" document, seems like a great resource. Here's his message:


Comfoodies and HENs,

What do next? Hank suggests that the change we seek has to rise up from thousands of local food system (let 10,000 flowers bloom) developments that inform, push, demand action from elected officials. I agree with that prescription for change with these substantive additions.

Those of you who have heard me speak know that I am enamored with the Bill McDonough lines, “If you want to go to Canada, but are driving towards Mexico at 100 miles an hour. Slowing down to 30 won’t help. You are still going the wrong direction.”

Many of the suggestions made in these last commentary strings around the appointment of Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture are the good intentioned equivalent of “slowing down to 30”.

Sure, it is important to have Obama appoint Under Secretaries of several federal departments who understand our concerns, who share parts or all of our agenda. But absent real change in corporate dominated agriculture and food power relationships in Washington politics, these “friendly appointments” may help us secure some grants for our institutions or some other helpful, marginal actions…but little more. (Not marginal if it is your institution, I know)

The change we are facing is real, profound, and potentially overwhelming because of…

…climate change and its impact on food production,

…the emerging ecological and economic limitations of the global industrial paradigm in agriculture and food production, (want a little melamine with that milk?)

…the growing health crisis produced by poor nutritional policies, (let them eat cheap food so we continue to increase the cost of health care)

…the economic and food security consequences of the rapid decline in petroleum availability for the US food system, (Peak Oil)

…a growing planet population with unequal access to food, energy, capital and information resources, (why would someone become a terrorist, anyway?)

…our continued reliance on new technological practices like GMOs and cloning to solve problems caused our lack of harmony with nature’s systems, (if brute force isn’t working, you aren’t using enough of it!)

…the relentless logic of greed by many in power when faced with future defined by new ecological limitations and scarcity, (the corporate patenting of genes, seeds and, indeed, now whole animals like pigs.)

…the growing use of corporate funded disinformation campaigns to slow the coalescence of voters and consumers around the need for fundamental change in our food and farming systems, (the Corn Processors’ HFCS campaign is just the latest example of a strategy that was first developed by the tobacco industry to slow the regulation of cigarettes.)

…the use of governmental actions and regulations to slow and stop the development of “local food systems and regenerative agriculture in every food shed in the United States” that kind Hank referred to in his earlier emails. (The Monsanto seed laws)

Does anyone on these lists seriously think I have exaggerated the scope and depth of the challenges that I have listed above? If, not, then we have to ask ourselves the question
”what do we really need to do to affect the change we seek?”

If you answer, “lobby Tom Vilsack”, then you should stop reading here. Tom Vilsack is a decent person. His wife, a more aware person, understands the importance of good food to our future. But Tom Vilsack won’t and can’t save us.

We must actually imagine what it means for us to “turn around and go in a new direction.”

Hank suggests that the “ten thousand flowers” of the local food revolution will create this change. I totally agree with him as far as he goes. Urgency is the question on my mind.

We don’t have time to fight a guerrilla war against the global industrial food system. Nature’s and history’s clock is ticking. Although, the local food revolution ultimately will be successful in replacing the global corporate industrial systems now in place, it could be a Pyrrhic victory if we have passed one or more of Nature’s tipping points (when decline is unstoppable) in the process.

I believe we need to demand fundamental change – the change presented in the Rodale Institute document “The Organic Green Revolution”. www.rodaleinstitute.org/files/GreenRevUP.pdf

In this new organic Green Revolution, industrial, petroleum based agriculture will become the niche (like arsenic sniffers of the 19th Century, a doomed and dying niche) and ecologically intelligent food and farming systems based on organic and permaculture growing principles will be the way we farm.

Now, anyone who speaks regularly to conventional farmers knows that such a suggestion is tantamount to treason. If you want to really make conventional farmers really angry just raise the issues surrounding “organic farming”.

But why such anger? If organic food production is just a niche, why does it arouse such powerful emotions?

The answer is, most farmers know deep in their hearts, that industrial agriculture is dying as an operational, viable paradigm. “Anger” is just one of the five Kubler-Ross stages in acceptance of this death. It is followed by “bargaining” (perhaps IPM and GMOs can be seen in this light) and “depression” (something working farmers are all too familiar with).

The final stage is acceptance, in this case, of a new way to farm, one that has the power to regenerate not just the health of the earth, but farmers’ economic, physical, and emotional health as well.

We must help conventional farmers through this transition and not let their “grieving” dictate the food policy for an entire nation.

Luckily, we have an example, a role model, for what we need to do. The WE Campaign, a project of the Alliance for Climate Protection, seeks “repower America with 100% of its electricity from clean energy sources within 10 years.”

That means no more carbon-based energy to produce electricity within a decade. A remarkable goal. A fundamental change of the same scale we seek.

The WE Campaign makes effective use of media to allow us to visualize this change. Their latest TV commercial depicts a working class guy recharging his pickup truck’s batteries from a wind-powered plug-in station. This is a brilliant commercial at many political levels.

The French anthropologist, Clause Levi-Strauss, says, in most cultures men must dream their children before they can conceive them. I believe this is true of the local food revolution as well.

Michael Pollan’s NY Times “Letter to the Farmer-in-Chief” is an example of creating a clear frame for our dream of regenerative, healthy food future. Every time a local TV station does a story about a chef using local food or a farm operating a CSA, our collective dream, necessary to imagine this change, is enriched.

But I believe we need to do more. We need to use the arguments and principles presented in “The Organic Green Revolution” to develop an effective national media effort to promote the ecologically intelligent values and community-based processes of the local food revolution that Hank wrote about.

In effect, we need our own “We” campaign to change the debate in the public square. In doing so, we will empower those ten thousand flowers of transformation, regeneration, and hope.

Does anyone want to join together to make this happen?

Peace and good food and Merry Christmas,

Chris Bedford