Three children sit on the swings on a school playground. According to national statistics one of these three children already is or will be obese. Its a sobering thing to think about but fortunately for us our very own First Lady seems to have taken this is
sue under her wing.
A personal article written by Obama herself for Newsweek detailed how she has started a plan to combat bad eating habits, exercise habits and over all health issues with children today. Her program, called Lets Move, aims to do just that. Get kids moving. And adults too. Get them moving in the right direction to make better choices for our children and lead by example when it comes to eating habits and physical activity.
One interesting point of her campaign is her stress on the importance of simply cooking meals at home. We live in a world where more there are more college students who watch cooking shows than who actually know how to cook. And these are our future parents. This is a generation of people who have grown up eating fast or frozen or both nearly every night. How are they ever going to learn how to cook good, healthy food for their future families if they themselves have grown up eating convenience food?
The problem in America goes beyond obesity. It is about a certain knowledge base that is simply non existent. We have students about to graduate college for whom culinary knowledge expands no further than boiling pasta or preheating an oven for a frozen pizza.
These people do not know how to feed themselves. For years they have relied on the services of cafeterias, fast food restaurants, and occasionally parents. But here is a news flash, fast food is not your friend, its a business looking to provide food that tastes good and costs the least. Not exactly a recipe for a healthy option. And while cafeterias may seem to mean well they are still ultimately trying to provide cheap and tasty food, except they have the added complication of trying to meet a set decades old nutritional guidelines enforced by the United States Department of Agriculture.
As part of her Lets Move program the First Lady intends to set aside more money for the school lunch program and have the USDA re-evaluate their nutritional guidelines for school lunches. Whether or not these actions will be enough remains to be seen. There is also the possibility that this is too little too late for our fourth, fifth and sixth graders today. We know bad habits start young, but how can these bad habits be reversed when the parents don’t even know what they should be doing? Our country is in need of one extreme makeover, both physically and mentally.
Most consumers are not even aware of a product until it becomes a problem. Case and point; I was not even aware that Whole Foods stores sold raw milk as close by as Connecticut until I read that the company has decided to pull all raw milk off its shelves until further notice.
Whole Foods stores in Washington State, California, Pennsylvania and Connecticut are permitted to sell raw milk by state law, however on March 12 Whole Foods removed all raw milk from the shelves, according to an article published by Food Safety News.
Whole Foods said the reason for this retraction was a need to review the state policies. Because individual states have their own regulations when it comes to raw milk it is difficult to keep the monitoring of the product consistent. The article by Food Safety News also stated that Whole Foods intends to take this time to work with their raw milk producers to establish more extensive and consistent requirements of their own to ensure a safe product.
This is not a new problem for raw milk as controversy around its safe
ty has existed for years. But why? The singling out of raw milk in itself implies that all milk should be pasteurized. That is the primary difference between the rows after rows of milk we see in every grocery store versus the scattered bottles you have to actively search for.
A common fear when it comes to raw milk is that because raw milk is not pasteurized it is more to such food borne illnesses such as E. coli and Salmonella. Some research indicates that the lactic acid naturally occurring in milk might actually be able to kill off some of these bacteria.
That fact aside however, as U.S. faces outbreak after outbreak we are only reminded that no food is actually safe from food borne illnesses. This is why I am suspicious of Whole Foods recent actions. Maybe its just my nose for trouble, but I can not help but wonder if this is the result of a recent outbreak discovery which surfaced before the product actually made it to the shelves.
If this is the case then more power to them. I think it is a positive step forward if an individual company is taking it upon themselves to up the regulations of a food, especially when it is a product that most other companies are too afraid to even keep on their shelves.
A dollar a day, keeps the nutrition away. Not the actual intent of the government I hope (although I wouldn’t put it past them) but what can they expect when the federal government allots $2.85 per student per meal? With labor and other costs taken out, that means each student is left with a dollar worth of food.
Many schools have the “tell” part of show n’ tell down. They tell students every day that it is important to eat three healthy meals a day because food gives your brain the energy to be smart in class, or something like that. Where schools are falling down on their presentation though, is the showing part. Students hear these valuable words and yet then the go to lunch and are given a choice between pizza and salad, guess which one the second grader’s stomach is going to choose. Don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming the schools here (at least not entirely.) The simple solution really is to not give them a choice, but that does nothing about trying to fix bad habits, many of which are cultivated at home.
Here is why I am cautiously excited. Jamie Oliver, a celebrity 
chef, has partnered with ABC and traveled to Huntington, West Virginia, recently named the unhealthiest city in America. These statistics are based not only on obesity but other health issues such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The trailer for the 6- part reality show series featuring Oliver, shows him in a first grade classroom where the students are unable to identify even the simplest of fruits and vegetables. This appears to be the least of his troubles as he encounters great resistance from a community where nearly half of the adult population is obese and the children are not far behind.
Oliver’s food policy is simple. Cook real food using real ingredients and while you’re at it keep it local to support the community (another problem in Huntington as the economy has taken quite a downturn.) While I am looking forward to seeing how this all plays out on television I think it is sad that it takes a celebrity from another country to come in and do a television show for the country to actually stand up and take notice of this problem that is plaguing the U.S.
The series is called a “food revolution,” I would settle for baby steps, as long as they are heading in the right direction. The show has wrapped in Huntington and at least for now, changes are being made, whether they adhere remains to be seen. I’m crossing my fingers, toes and celery sticks that this works.
Take a bite that nice leafy green spinach salad, enjoy it. Now quickly spit it back out before you catch whatever food-borne illness is lurking in those leaves today. According to a recent report published by the Produce Safety Project food-borne illnesses cost the United States approximately $152 billion every year. According to an article published by MSNBC the US Department of Agriculture reported that this number was a mere $35 billion in 1997. The same article from MSNBC also stated that approximately 76 million people are made ill by food related issues. WebMD wrote that of the 76 million people 325 thousand are hospitalized and in the end a total 5,000 people die of complications due to food-borne illness in the United States every year.
These may seem like just a bunch of numbers until you think of them as actual people. People who sit down to have a nice dinner with their family, or stops to have an all-American hotdog at a local stand, and then a few hours later finds themselves in the hospital, hooked up like a strange science experiment. We the last thing we generally expect to kill us is our food and yet, 5,000 people later, we can clearly see that it does. What is wrong with this picture?
Recent food recalls span from the most benign of foods to some that most people have never even knew they were eating. The most recent of the food recalls was for something called HVP, standing for hydrolyzed vegetable protein. A component used for flavor enhancements in everything from hot dogs to dips. The company is now recalling products made with the salmonella tainted HVP from back in September of 2009. For six months this food has been sitting on shelves in our stores and being bought and consumed by everyday Americans.
Follow-up media coverage included articles about what exactly HVP. So not only are we being poisoned by the food that we commonly eat, we don’t even know what the tainted substance is in the first place. HVP has been used in foods for years and yet no one ever really bothered to ask what it was until it started making people sick.
Other recent food recalls have been for far less mysterious precuts and include Kroger’s onion soup mixes and raw cookie dough from Nestle. Salami from Daniele Inc. meat company also recently issued a food recall due to salmonella tainted black peppercorns used to coat the salami.
As frightening as it is there is not much that can be done to tell if a food has been contaminated, at least from a consumer standpoint. The best method of prevention is simply to wash all produce thoroughly and cook meats to a safe temperature. The best form of prevention though remains simply to stay informed.