The politics of school food, organics and what babies eat
At the recent Natural Products Expo in Anaheim, many hundreds of companies were trying to get their products noticed and tasted and into stores. But just yards from all the cookies, pastas, dried fruit, power bars and other items, three of the major voices in the politics of food were talking about what matters to them.
The speakers: Ann Cooper, chef, author and the “renegade lunch lady” who runs the school meals program in Boulder, Colo.; Gary Hirshberg, chairman and president of Stonyfield Farm, which makes yogurt and other dairy products; and Alan Greene, an author, physician and professor at Stanford’s medical school.
“I’m really [angry], and I need you to be really [angry],” Cooper said at a panel discussion held during the expo. “We are killing our kids with food, and we have to do it differently.”
One of the arguments about school food centers on mimicking what students buy in fast-food outlets. The argument is that students won’t eat healthful food, that they’ll eat only what they know.
“Who says kids get to decide?” Cooper asked, listing other behaviors –- drugs, skipping school -- that adults wouldn’t tolerate. “We make all kinds of decisions for children.”
Parents, she said, have given up in the face of billions of dollars in marketing non-nutritious foods to children.
Our food supply carries not only health implications but also economic ones, Hirshberg said. With obesity and its attendant health problems estimated to cost $148 billion a year, “we have to hold ourselves accountable.”
“Cheap food is not. We are paying for it as a civilization. Our children are paying for it,” said Hirshberg, whose company since 1983 has grown to more than $350 million a year in sales.
In Boulder, Cooper said she “can’t get the kids to eat the [nutritious] food on a regular basis, and the parents say, ‘What’s wrong with chicken nuggets?’ ”
Cooper also took to task the organic food industry, criticizing organic candy, corn dogs and Twinkie imitators –- noting that some of the food at the expo, held earlier this month at the Anaheim Convention Center, was hardly exemplary nutritious fare.
“This is not healthy food. It might be organic, but it’s not healthy,” she said. “If that’s all we’re doing, that’s so not helping.”
Greene said he’s focusing on the food children eat long before they enter school –- in the first year of life. The author of “Feeding Baby Green,” he said “there’s something tragically wrong with the way our kids are eating.”
Signs of obesity are showing up in children as young as 9 months –- long before anyone can blame the children for making bad choices or for failing to exercise, he said. And kids’ taste preferences can be set very early. Most U.S. children are given rice cereal as their first food –- cereal that’s processed, he said. “Babies metabolize it in very much the same way they metabolize sugar,” Greene said later.
So, he has a campaign called “White Out” to get parents to change what they feed babies; for example, to mashed up bananas, whole grains or sweet potatoes.
Hirshberg also talked about genetically engineered food, specifically the federal approval earlier this year for planting genetically modified alfalfa, which is one of the nation’s largest crops.
Hirshberg said he wants to see such crops labeled.
“If we just focus on fat and sugar, we are missing a pernicious problem,” he said after the panel discussion.
Tom Vilsack, U.S. secretary of Agriculture, has said his agency believes biotech crops are safe. Most corn and soybeans grown in this country are genetically modified. Organic farms’ products are not genetically engineered.
Organic food isn’t a new idea –- all food was organic until less than a century ago, Hirshberg noted. Today, it accounts for about 4% of U.S. foods.
And while biotech political action committees have donated millions to candidates, the organic industry “has not done a good job at organizing” support for its positions, he said.
[Updated at 2:17 p.m.] An earlier version of this post incorrectly quoted Greene as saying that white rice cereal, which is typically fed to babies, contains too much sugar. Greene said that white rice cereal is made of highly processed white rice flour that babies metabolize in very much the same way as they metabolize sugar. “This is important because I am not saying the makers of white rice cereal are adding sugar. Unfortunately, the result is very similar for baby, however,” Greene said in a comment to Daily Dish.
RELATED:
-- Mary MacVean
Photos: At top, school lunch at Hollywood High by Brian Vander Brug/ Los Angeles Times. At bottom, choosing products at Whole Foods by Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times.
I don't give a rat's you-know-what whether Vilsack thinks it's safe or not; he does not have the credentials to judge. I am an adult and capable of making my own decisions. Put GMO on the label and let me decide whether or not to buy it. Or is he really trying to cover up the fact the due to contamination, it's not possible to tell GMO from not?
Posted by: ckaren | March 25, 2011 at 09:33 AM
I cannot agree more that parents need to be more assertive in making food decisions for their children. I like to use the color and food pyramid test with my kids. They must have at least 3 natural colors and one milk,vegetable, fruit, carb, and protein on their plate with each meal. It is hard to send a nutritious lunch to school when they don't refrigerate. Its almost like schools promote "fake" food that doesn't need to be refrigerated.
I also share the following with my children which they love. We are alive and therefore need to eat food that grows. Anything that states it expires more than 1 week from the date of purchase can't be alive and therefore should be eaten sparingly in our home.
Erika Burton, Ph.D.
Stepping Stones Together, Founder
Empowering parental involvement in early literacy programs
http://www.steppingstonestogether.com
Posted by: Erika Burton | March 24, 2011 at 08:41 PM
in regards to school food...Until, schools get more money, or shift money from one thing to another, heathy food in schools is unrealistic. The cost of food is getting higher...and the 12 to 18 cents LAUSD pays per child for food, a day, isnt enough to get good food in the schools
Posted by: sal | March 23, 2011 at 07:33 AM
Thank you for this excellent article. I appreciate you covering this important topic. I would like to point out one misquote -- I did not say, "Most U.S. children are given rice cereal as their first food –- cereal that’s processed and contains too much sugar, he said." I can understand how Ms. MacVean may have gathered that from what I did say, "White rice cereal is highly processed white rice flour. Babies metabolize it in very much the same way they metabolize sugar." This is important because I am not saying the makers of white rice cereal are adding sugar. Unfortunately, the result is very similar for baby, however.
Alan Greene, MD, FAAP
Posted by: Alan Greene | March 22, 2011 at 01:12 PM
Want to know what babies eat? I am videoing my neighbors 10 month old's (Lola) first bites - nutritious, cute & funny: http://is.gd/lR8DqQ
Posted by: The 99 Cent Chef | March 22, 2011 at 01:08 PM