Flat world, fat world: Report from the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives Symposium, part 1

On September 21, 2009 in Minneapolis, a crowd of 300 people representing more than 30 disciplines gathered for a symposium hosted by the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives Institute to discuss critical issues in research and policy related to food and health.

hfhl-2They also ate very, very well. Most conferences feature food, why make a big deal of this one? Because those who produced the ham-and-cheese sandwiches with fig chutney, the quinoa salad, and the lemon-ginger cookies, are local to the Twin Cities, farm without using raw manure (you’ll learn more about this in part III), practice ethical animal husbandry, steward the land, and feed their local communities, creating economic and health benefits. In other words, these healthy foods nourish healthy lives. Catered by Birchwood Café, follow them on Twitter, producers included: Hoch Orchards, Whole Grain Milling, Dragsmith Farms, Wild Acres Farms, Fischer Farms, Featherstone Farm, Hope Butter, Riverbend Farm, Peace Coffee, Birchwood Herb Garden (Facebook page), Garden Farme, and Common Roots Café.

Three themes emerged at the conference:

• As our world shrinks, our waists grow
• The nutritional debate over processed food
• What’s in the meat you eat and the water you drink

E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection

By MICHAEL MOSS

Published: October 3, 2009

Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes.

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Ben Garvin for The New York Times

Stephanie Smith, 22, was paralyzed after being stricken by E. coli in 2007. Officials traced the E. coli to hamburger her family had eaten.

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Stephanie Smith was in a coma for nine weeks after being infected with E. coli.

Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.

Ms. Smith, 22, was found to have a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to the hamburger that her mother had grilled for their Sunday dinner in early fall 2007.

The Mess Hall - School Lunches and Privatization

A recent article in the Washington Post by Jane Black brought up several issues pertaining to school lunches (quality vs. affordability, for one). A blogger, Tom Philpott, over at the ever eco-conscious site Grist posted a rather ill-informed response. This in turn brought a flurry of critiques from readers and other bloggers.

The online dialogue created here is a good example of how one piece of journalism can inspire debate and conversation among concerned readers.

Dining Out : More than just eating

By: Jennifer Fischer

THE INSTITUTION OF DINING OUT IS ALMOST AS OLD AS CIVILIZATION ITSELF. HISTORY BOOKS PAINT A PICTURE OF FOOD SERVICE DATING BACK TO ANCIENT TIMES. IN EARLY ROME, THE STREETS HUMMED WITH THE CALLS AND SONGS OF COLORFUL STREET VENDORS AND PUBLIC COOKS SELLING THEIR FARE. STREET KITCHENS FILLED THE MARKETPLACE WITH TANTALIZING AROMAS. THE RUINS OF POMPEII CONTAIN THE REMNANTS OF A TAVERN THAT PROVIDED FOOD AND WINE TO PASSERSBY.

Where's the Superfood?

by Bob grant

 

Scientists have genetically engineered several biofortified food plants to tackle a scourge of developing countries—micronutrient malnutrition. The crops have yet to be planted on a wide scale, but that may be about to change. 

 

Right now, one billion people are starving. That’s one in every six people on this planet. The number of these hungry people is roughly equivalent to the populations of the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, and Bangladesh combined.

Artificial success

The popularity of “natural” food spawns an unnatural response

AlamyIt’s practically spinach

OVER the past decade, the biggest trend in food marketing has been the shift towards organic, “natural” and even “whole” foods. Consumers in wealthier markets worldwide have demanded foods with minimal processing, in a state as close as possible to their natural one, in the fervent (and often mistaken) belief that such food is healthier for their bodies and for the planet. Ironically, this success is now prompting multinational food giants to accelerate investments in “functional” foods that are intentionally modified to make them healthier or more nutritious.

Brian Butch's Blog: Jump Around

Those of you who have been following the Badgers for years may recall the UW career of Brian Butch, a.k.a. "The Polar Bear." Your LSC 100 TAs remember his career as our fellow graduate student in the Department of Life Sciences Communication (Butch received his master's degree through LSC). Thus, we're very excited to announce his new blog, Jump Around, on the Big Ten Network's website. Click on the title of this post to go to the blog, which is described below:

Since graduating from Wisconsin in 2008 Brian Butch has pursued a professional basketball career in the U.S. and overseas. In his blog Butch will not only update his fans on his adventures on and off the court.

New Sugar Guidelines: Not-So-Sweet News for Your Heart

In a shocking surprise to most of us dietitians, the American Heart Association (AHA) stood up to the food industry earlier this month and essentially made eating and drinking a lot of items in the supermarket off-limits.

Why? Because sugar has just earned a spot on the AHA’s black list, joining saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium as negative nutrients that need to be limited for your heart’s sake.
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Note the use of the "nutrient" language in the above excerpt, which Pollan describes in the chapter on nutritionism.

An Interview with Michael Pollan

In preparation for a cover story in this week's Isthmus newspaper, news editor Bill Lueders conducted a telephone interview with author Michael Pollan.

Lueders shares an edited version of the interview here. This may give readers of the book In Defense of Food insight into Pollan's journalistic motivations and some of the delimma's he faced in writing this book and others.

Growing the ‘Good Food’ movement - A Conversation with Will Allen

Blogger and grassroots coordinator Erik Hoffner recently caught up with Will Allen who was keynote speaker at the Northeast Organic Farming Association’s Annual Conference in Amherst, MA. Allen is founder and CEO of Growing Power, the country’s premier grassroots urban gardening program. He is also a MacArthur Genius Award Winner and former pro-basketball player.

Growing Power demonstrates growing methods through on-site workshops and hands-on demonstrations, and has farms in Milwaukee and Merton, Wisconsin, and Chicago, Illinois, where they grow vegetables, fish, bees, livestock, worms, and more. They have also established satellite training sites in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Mississippi.

Public trust in US media eroding: Pew study

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Public trust in the US media is eroding and increasing numbers of Americans believe news coverage is inaccurate and biased, according to a study released on Monday.
Just 29 percent of the 1,506 adults surveyed by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press between July 22-26 said news organizations generally get the facts straight.
Sixty-three percent said news stories are often inaccurate, up from 34 percent in a 1985 study, Pew said.
Sixty percent of those polled said the press is biased, up from 45 percent in 1985. Just 26 percent in the latest survey said that news organizations are careful their reporting is not politically biased.
Seventy-four percent said news organizations tend to favor one side in dealing with political and social issues. Eighteen percent said they deal fairly with all sides.

Wendell Berry - The Agrarian Standard

Wendell Berry's book The Unsettling of America was published over thirty years ago; it is still in print and is still being read. As its author, Berry says he is tempted to be glad of this, and yet, if what is said in the book is to be believed - and many do believe it - then we perhaps should be anything but glad.

The book, says Mr. Berry, would have had "a far happier fate if it could have been disproved or made obsolete years ago." This essay is a reflection by Mr. Berry written for Orion Magazine in 2002.

Internship Opportunity!

LSC 100 students:

Please take a minute to read the following note from JR Ross, Editor of Madison's own Wispolitics blog (you may recall that JR will be speaking to our class later in the semester, While the internship is entirely outside the scope of the class (i.e no course credit or extra credit), it may be a great opportunity for:

1. those of you who are interested in blogging, web-based journalism, or local politics and current events
2. those of you who need to find a very flexible, part-time internship (e.g. for another class), or
   
3. those of you who would like to pad your resume while watching sports and cable news (one of which is always on at the Wispolitics office)
   

I personally interned for Wispolitics, and enjoyed my time there. Let me know if you have any questions.

WisPolitics, the state’s premier political news service, is looking for fall interns to help maintain the Web site and assist in reporting for daily products sent to subscribers. WisPolitics focuses primarily on state politics as well as the work of the state’s congressional delegation and some local politics. Interns start out helping to maintain the Web site and graduate to more complex tasks as they prove their proficiency and opportunities develop. The internships are unpaid, and the hours are flexible. The time commitment can range from one morning or afternoon a week to a daily commitment. Those interested should contact WisPolitics Editor JR Ross via e-mail at ross@wispolitics.com or at 441-8418.

For Your Health, Froot Loops

Michael Pollan: I'll Still Shop at Whole Foods

by Michael Pollan


John Mackey’s views on health care, much as I disagree with them, will not prevent me from shopping at Whole Foods. I can understand why people would want to boycott, but it’s important to play out the hypothetical consequences of a successful boycott. Whole Foods is not perfect, however if they were to disappear, the cause of improving Americans’ health by building an alternative food system, based on more fresh food, pastured and humanely raised meats and sustainable agriculture, would suffer. 

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food

By Brian Walsh

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon — circa 2009.

Controversial book focus of UW-Madison project

by Jim Massey

Wisconsin agriculture groups say they're concerned about a new UW-Madison program that encourages students to read a book critical of mainstream agriculture and the U.S. food system.

The program, known as "Go Big Read," invites students, faculty, staff, alumni and the community to read a selected book and participate in campus discussions and community events. New chancellor Carolyn "Biddy" Martin initiated the program.

The university is providing the book free to students and faculty members. A UW-Madison Web site says professors in 48 different courses will be incorporating discussion about the book in their curriculum. The program is targeted at freshmen, but other students also will participate.

The book is Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto." In the book, Pollan examines the modern American food landscape, where he says the deceptively simple question of what to eat has been muddled by the numerous and often conflicting claims of food producers, marketers and nutrition experts.