By Ryan Blitstein | 12.17.2007 | 10:13 AM (UTC)

http://www.miller-mccune.com/main/article/11

It may cost incrementally more, but banishing poor food choices from school lunches can be achieved, two new studies suggest.

School cafeteria food may be hazardous to your children’s health, but a pair of University of Minnesota studies show that cooking nutritious meals, and convincing children to eat them, might be simpler and cheaper than many experts previously believed.

Public health officials have long viewed improving kids’ eating habits as one way to help nip the obesity epidemic in the bud. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, contributing to skyrocketing rates of diabetes and other diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The problem is often rooted in childhood: About one in five American kids is overweight, roughly double the ratio of 30 years ago, according to The Obesity Society. (more…)

The Way We Live Now

Our Decrepit Food Factories

By MICHAEL POLLAN

www.nytimes.com

The word “sustainability” has gotten such a workout lately that the whole concept is in danger of floating away on a sea of inoffensiveness. Everybody, it seems, is for it whatever “it” means. On a recent visit to a land-grant university’s spanking-new sustainability institute, I asked my host how many of the school’s faculty members were involved. She beamed: When letters went out asking who on campus was doing research that might fit under that rubric, virtually everyone replied in the affirmative. What a nice surprise, she suggested. But really, what soul working in agricultural science today (or for that matter in any other field of endeavor) would stand up and be counted as against sustainability? When pesticide makers and genetic engineers cloak themselves in the term, you have to wonder if we haven’t succeeded in defining sustainability down, to paraphrase the late Senator Moynihan, and if it will soon possess all the conceptual force of a word like “natural” or “green” or “nice.” (more…)

After many legislative hiccups along the way, Congress is rapidly deciding the fate of America’s food supply: what’s grown, how it’s produced and by whom, and how that food will affect our health and the planet. The roughly $288 billion Farm Bill, covering everything from urban nutrition and food stamp programs to soil conservation and farm subsidies, will dictate much about what we eat and at what price, both at the checkout line and in long-term societal costs. (more…)

By Kate Adamick & Ann Cooper

McDonalds apparently isn’t content with strategically locating its franchises near schools across
America, operating food outlets within pediatric hospitals, and hosting “McTeacher Night” fundraisers at which teachers work shifts at the counters to raise money for their classrooms. No, that’s not enough for the giant multi-national “food” service company. Now McDonald’s has purchased the right to put a Happy Meal coupon on each of the student’s report cards in a Seminole, Florida, school district for less than the price of a small bag of fries.

This is depraved. Why is it acceptable to reward our children for successful academic performance with something that will harm them? How can we, as a society, allow this kind of corporate conduct when the most recent study on Body Mass Index (BMI) states that over 19% of American children are currently overweight or obese, and that a higher BMI in children is associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease as an adult? How can we turn a blind eye to this blatant exploitation of our children when the Centers for Disease Control has stated that, of the kids born in the year 2000, one out of every three Caucasians and one out of every two African Americans and Hispanics will develop Type 2 diabetes in their lifetime, many before they graduate high school, and that this generation could be the first to die at a younger age than their parents? (more…)

Junk Food Companies Market to Kids at School

67% of Public School Children See Junk Food Ads at School

By RUSSELL GOLDMAN

Dec. 10, 2007 —

Elementary school students won’t receive gold stars but rather a taste of the Golden Arches for their good grades in Seminole County, Fla., under a corporate-sponsorship program that awards high-achieving students with Happy Meals.

The “report card incentive,” as the program is known, is explained on the front of specially produced envelopes bearing the image of Ronald McDonald and in which the report cards for every student in the county’s 37 elementary schools are sent home.

The incentives are described as “food prizes,” and a report card of all A’s and B’s or an attendance record blemished by just two absences is enough to earn a student a free Happy Meal. (more…)