No Feast for Food Marketers
The latest government report blasting the industry’s ad tactics — especially those aimed at kids — is going to be mighty hard to ignore

Kraft (KFT ), Coca Cola (KO ), and PepsiCo (PEP ), watch out. “Current food and beverage marketing practices put kids’ long-term health at risk,” the National Institute of Medicine (IOM) charged on Dec. 6.

In the most damning government assessment yet from the National Academy of Sciences, health-science and nutritional-policy experts sharply criticized the marketing practices of food and beverage companies and called for a congressional crackdown if the industry fails to mend its ways. At issue: the need to shift advertising away from high-calorie, low-nutrient products and instead promote healthier fare. (more…)

My Maine Foods Wish List

Dear Santa,

As I can tell from your sturdy physique, you are a person who clearly enjoys good food. I can just imagine some of the delicious North Pole fare you and the Missus are tucking into these days: pickled herring in mustard sauce, lingonberry and cloudberry jams, and, of course, that traditional arctic specialty, reindeer sausage. Well, come to think of it, that last one probably isn’t a favorite in the Claus household.

I, too, love good food which explains why a grown man like me is writing to you with a Maine food wish list. To be clear, this is not a list of Maine food items I want to receive myself. That will be sent to you under separate cover. Rather, this list represents my wishes for all of Maine’s food sector. Since you seem to have connections in high places, perhaps you can help one or more of these wishes to come true in the coming year.

For the record, I think you’ll find that my name reappears on your “good” list this year. Sorry, again, about all those parking tickets in 2004!

So, here’s the list: (more…)

December 7, 2005
Lines Drawn for Big Suit Over Sodas
By MELANIE WARNER

It is lunchtime at Grover Cleveland High School in Portland, Ore. A steady stream of thirsty teenagers poke dollars into the three Coca-Cola machines in the hallway. By the end of lunch period, the Coke With Lime, Cherry Coke and Vanilla Coke are sold out.

Elsa Peterson, a senior at Grover Cleveland and the student body president, said she knew she could bring healthier juices from home. “But it’s easy to walk up with a dollar and just get a pop.”

That, says Stephen Gardner, staff lawyer for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, is exactly the problem. In an age of soaring obesity rates among children, he argues that soda and other sugary beverages are harmful to students’ health and that selling those drinks in schools sends a message that their regular consumption is perfectly fine. (more…)

Eating Meat, Mindfully
By Matthew L. Miller, AlterNet

Living in the Rocky Mountain West, I am used to breathtaking views. None takes my breath away as much as a 150,000-cow feedlot in southern Idaho. Even before I see it from the road, its stench overpowers me. Then I crest the hill and cattle in bleak pens sprawl to the horizon.

It is a depressing sight, and I feel horrified at a food system that can allow animals — living beings — to be raised in such a manner.

I see the products of this food system every time I visit the supermarket: rows of fatty, hormone-injected, often colorless meat — straight from a factory, not a farm. I’ll pass.

But I do eat meat. (more…)

KIRSCHENMANN

By Wayne Roberts

The trick of profound change is that it usually comes where and when it’s least expected. The people most in favor of profound change are often the last to know exactly how and why it will go down.

If Fred Kirschenmann is right – and he has the creds, both as the owner of a Dakota organic farm that’s one of the world’s largest, and as longtime leader of a respected agricultural think tank, the Iowa-based Leopold Center — the North American food system may be in for just such a surprise.

He’s the first to predict that the mega shifts that will drive the transformation to local and sustainable agriculture won’t be coming from the usual suspects, or from any visionary wish list. The food source will likely be less picturesque than an organic market garden, less romantic than a mom and pop deli or chef, less stirring than a sharp rupture from the past, but capable of consistent delivery of varied, high-quality, good-looking product at a price that mainstream customers will pay. Nor will the first signs of change pop up in the logical first place, the supermarket. Instead, two unromantic and anonymous forces will be working the backrooms, where what happens to food on its tedious journey from farm to fart mostly happens. (more…)