Health
The Nutrition Initiative
Published May 18, 2009 @ 12:40PM PT
By: Sharon Gruber, in-house nutritionist at Bread for the City.
Every month at Bread for the City, our clients receive three days worth of groceries from our food pantry. Most of these clients are elderly, disabled, or have small children. Their average income is under $7,000 a year.
Most of these clients also receive food stamps, but if your income is low enough to qualify to receive them, food stamps often still aren’t enough to keep food on your table week to week. Our provisions help clients cover that gap.
And recently, our provisions have been doing even more. In my first guest post here on Sustainable Food, I described our still-new Nutrition Initiative:
We know that it’s not enough to help hungry people eat. We must help them eat well.
And indeed, in the past year we’ve totally overhauled our pantry's menu.
Canned goods high in sodium and sugars are out; things like transfats and red meat are also out. Instead we provide fruits canned in their own juices; canned veggies without salt added; brown rice; and even fresh produce in every bag. We also cut out sugary cereals, pastry snacks, and candies (which are donated all-too-often by people with good intentions but maybe not nutritional consciousness). When we can, we offer things like canned tuna and salmon and ground turkey.
We did all this in the midst of skyrocketing food prices. The menu overhaul was really only possible because our food pantry staff have been doing this work for so long, at such a scale, that they're able to eek out those extra bits of savings and efficiency. In general, our clients responded positively: our food pantry coordinator tells me that one woman she’s known for years saw produce in her bag and looked up to say “it’s about time!”
Pesticides Increase Genetic Risk for Parkinson's
Published May 18, 2009 @ 10:40AM PT
Yay, pesticides! Emphasis mine:
... The disease affects approximately 1 percent of all people over the age of 65. Rates of Parkinson’s disease appear higher among farmers and rural residents, leading to speculation that pesticides might play a role in development of the disease.
In laboratory mice, two pesticides that affect dopamine levels – paraquat and maneb – have been shown to cause Parkinson’s-like symptoms (Barlowa et al. 2004). The effect is strongest when animals are exposed to these two compounds in combination (Thiruchelvam et al. 2002).
Recent studies now indicate that exposure to these two pesticides may also increase risk of Parkinson’s in humans. Exposure to one compound alone does not appear to confer increased risk. It appears that the combination of the two compounds is necessary (Costello et al. 2009). ...
Genetic susceptibility does play a role, but only in people exposed to these pesticides, particularly in combination. Lovely.
Have you ever read the labels on your prescriptions where they talk about drug interactions? Or known anyone taking one of those medications that you can't take with grapefruit? Grapefruit is even a pretty healthy thing to add to your diet, but it causes people to accumulate dangerously high doses of some medications instead of excreting them at the normal rate.
It's a well known phenomenon in pharmacology that even if one drug is helpful for a given patient, and another drug is helpful for that same patient, the two in combination might make that patient unwell. And we're talking about medicines, here.
Pesticides are designed to be toxic to animals and fungi that we actually share a lot of common genetic heritage with. They are poisonous on purpose.
Yet we're supposed to trust that they won't hurt us. We're supposed to believe safety claims made on the basis of limited exposures to one chemical without due consideration of other exposures or environmental factors.
We don't put up with that sort of sloppy risk analysis of the medicines that are designed with the intent of making us well, they have to be tested in combination with other drugs they're likely to be combined with. Why should we put up with it in chemicals designed to kill insects that end up in our food and water supply?
What To Eat?
Published May 17, 2009 @ 08:26AM PT
I seem to have missed* this March web chat with Marion Nestle about her book, "What to Eat" on FireDogLake. Nestle's deconstruction of baffling nutrition labels and straightforward, common sense advice about food, are very helpful.
(Pinching pennies? Preview "What to Eat" on Google Books, perhaps search for a particular question you have to make the most of your sneak peak's page limit.)
Along those same lines, Tristero, who guests at Digby's Hullabaloo blog, recently wrote about Michael Pollan's latest suggestion, "Don’t buy any food you’ve ever seen advertised." From what I've read, I think Nestle, who's an honest-to-goodness professor of nutrition, would generally agree with that guideline. As she wrote in "What to Eat", and as quoted at FDL:
...supermarkets want to expose you to the largest possible number of items that you can stand to see, without annoying you so much that you run from the store. This strategy is based on research proving that "the rate of exposure is directly related to the rate of sale of merchandise." In other words, the more you see, the more you buy. ...
Good times. So do head over to read the chat.
In general, though, it really delights me that the fight against nutritionism is hitting the mainstream blogosphere like this. That's a sign to me that the rebranding of food as a political issue is definitely afoot, and that platforms like Pollan's features in the New York Times aren't being relegated to the 'lifestyle' category in people's minds.
* I had a good reason, which you don't need to be troubled with, for not noticing. But then I would say that, wouldn't I?
(Photo credit: RJL20 on Flickr.)
Wasting Food
Published May 16, 2009 @ 05:32AM PT
A conservative commentator at the National Review looked at a privately funded soup kitchen that spends its money wisely and concluded that offering gourmet meals to poor people is a waste of food.
As noted at the DailyKos discussion in Calouste's diary, most of the food was made from relatively inexpensive raw ingredients. Garlic is delicious, true, but it doesn't cost $100 an ounce. Indeed, the idea that tasty food had ought to be an expensive preserve of the wealthy is downright pernicious.
When Sharon Gruber from Bread for the City talked about the cooking and nutrition classes she holds for low income families, she made clear that many of the disease of poverty are diseases of malnutrition, even in the unhealthfully overweight. Making sure that people in need of food aid can get fresh, whole foods as ingredients, and also have a few ideas about what to do with them, does a lot to improve quality of life and lower costs of living.
And when it seems as if everyone and their brother has forgotten what food is, we could all stand some reminding, even if we don't qualify for food assistance.
Less meat, less junk, more plants. Eat food. Eat real food. - Mark Bittman
The real waste of food, I think, is the production of what's essentially poison from healthful, raw foods. Food like meat, we don't need that much of. Food like grain actually needs to have a lot done to it to make it unhealthy - with the grain that makes it into most junk food having been husked, de-branned, ground and bleached, it can seem like a wonder that people look at you funny for asking that less be done to it before eating.
So, waste. It's surely unecessary insulin and heart medication, pain medication taken for joints that are needlessly over-compressed, greenhouse gas emissions that didn't have to be and things we never needed at all, like chese puffs.
By contrast, I don't think healthy food eaten in reasonable amounts can ever be considered wasted.
Cheerios and Truth in Labeling
Published May 14, 2009 @ 08:31AM PT
So while I was looking for bridesmaids' earrings the other day, I came across these delightful and sparkly things, which were described as "classic Hollywood glam". I couldn't help but smile, really accurate labeling is a precious commodity.
When it comes to food labels, as anyone with allergies knows firsthand, that's doubly true.
Consider Vitamin Water, a product marketed to appeal to the health conscious. Its vitamin content may not be absorbed, but its dose of sugar certainly will. This almost-but-not-quite-soda drink can seem like a break from the typical sugared beverage, but it's a difference only in degree.
Industry has responded to people's concern for their health by claiming that the junk we've already been eating was healthy for us all along. As if the problem with processed food was that we didn't believe nice things about it.
I was going to let the argument pass though, today's developing cereal theme notwithstanding, until I ran across this Reuters oped outlining the fury of right wing bloggers over the decision by the FDA to class Cheerios as a drug due to its health claims. High comedy:
Helping the Hungry Eat Well
Published May 13, 2009 @ 12:07PM PT
By Sharon Gruber, Bread for the City
Here’s a sad irony that most people still don’t realize (excepting readers of this blog): one third of Americans are obese, and another third are overweight, but many of these people are also hungry. Obesity and poverty go hand in hand in America today. Most of the foods that the poor can readily access and afford are often unhealthy.
Here at Bread for the City, we provide food for tens of thousands of poor residents of our nation’s capital. Our food pantry – the largest in DC – operates as part of a comprehensive array of services, including a medical clinic that provides free primary care. The three dominant illnesses in our clinic are high blood pressure, hypertension, and diabetes – all three attributable to malnutrition.
So even in the face of food deserts, and soaring costs of living, we know that it’s not enough to help hungry people eat. We must help them eat well.
In the past year, Bread for the City has overhauled our food pantry’s menu so that we distribute only healthful foods. Canned goods high in sodium and sugars are out; things like transfats and red meat are also out. Instead we provide fruits canned in their own juices; canned veggies without salt added; brown rice; and even fresh produce in every bag.
Our medical clinic also offers one-on-one nutrition counseling, and I conduct a regular cooking class. Our cooking classes were recently featured in a UPI video news segment about poverty and obesity:
The link between hunger and obesity is actually quite complex, and hard to capture in a few minutes of video. (Frankly, I think you can hear my hesitation to sum it up in a soundbite!)
But I do think this clip gives a good sense of the atmosphere of our cooking class, which is collegial and supportive. I’ve formed strong relationships with many of the people who attend the classes. Mr. Billingsley, the man featured in the clip, is a regular. He’s made great progress. When he first started the class, he warned me that he was something of a picky eater, but he really enjoyed things like avocado, hummus, and miso soup – and now even incorporates a white bean salad into his weekly diet.
One thing I would elaborate upon—and one of the formative principles behind the work that I do at Bread for the City—is that the effect of community modeling on eating habits is pretty substantial.
A person in a community of resources is likely to be in contact with someone who is making healthy food choices and thinking about nutrition (maybe even reading food-related blogs). These social interactions are enriching, validating, and inspiring.
But in lower-income communities, where fresh and nutritious foods are scarce and often too costly, those social interactions are less common. As a result, even though it is possible (though still too difficult) to have a balanced diet on a low budget, many people are discouraged from making the effort.
We designed our cooking classes with this function of community modeling in mind. As such, we’re able to create a peer support network that, hopefully, not only helps individuals eat well but will then percolate outward into their own communities.
Achieving true food security in low-income communities will take a lot more thank cooking classes, of course. Stay tuned for more posts about promising steps forward.
Sharon Gruber is the in-house nutritionist at Bread for the City. She blogs about nutrition and community health at Beyond Bread, Bread for the City's blog.
Update: Links added.
H1N1 Swine Flu Update - Yes, It's In The Meat
Published May 12, 2009 @ 09:08PM PT
First, contrary to initial pronouncements by Smithfield and government authorities, you can get swine flu from the meat of sick animals, and the claims that the US herd is free of the flu is based on an abscence of evidence.
No one is independently checking the US hog herd for H1N1. If you think these meat packers would self-report to the public any swine flu they did find, you weren't paying attention to the peanut contamination scandal.
Really doing something about the disease factories known as industrial farms would involve going up against an incredibly powerful lobby, one that's pushing a National Animal ID System that will make small scale animal production methods too expensive to compete.
It's actually an insult to chicken sh*t to properly describe the cowardice of most of Congress when it comes to standing up to people who throw a lot of money around.
So nothing is likely to be done to prevent future outbreaks, though if we are unlucky, this one could still turn into a pandemic:
... What should we be watching for this summer? Influenza is a seasonal disease. Summer in the Earth's northern Hemisphere is winter in its southern hemisphere and vice versa. In the United States, we are moving into summer. But below the equator, they are moving into winter. I would keep a very careful watch on the southern hemisphere. Its the making of the perfect storm: new Swine flu in circulation and winter conditions promoting its circulation. ...
Health experts worry that this flu could hit a third of the population as we move into the southern hemisphere flu season, with its full effects not likely to be apparent until it's flu season in the northern hemisphere this fall and winter. Quarantine at this point is a pipe dream, just as it always was, especially as the first case has been confirmed in China. Sealing our southern border or avoiding travel to Mexico is of no practical use, as I've written before, unless satisfying xenophobia appeals to you.
So there's nothing for this but trying to take care of your personal health, avoiding contact with sick people, and encouraging sick people to stay home from work or school.
At present, the best means of avoiding a number of diseases, including the flu, remains scrubbing your hands with soap in warm water for at least 15 seconds after touching public surfaces, shaking hands, handling waste, using the restroom, and always before eating - so say the health experts quoted in the Wall Street Journal. Which, as I just told Chris, totally vindicates my OCD tendencies.
If that's an alien mindset to you, maybe try watching a few episodes of Monk ;) You don't have to develop a fear of elevators or anything, but a little extra germophobia will go a long way towards protecting everyone's health from industrial agriculture's little Frankenstein flu.
