FDA Sizing Up Serving Sizes

With obesity on the rise, the FDA Is thinking up ways to scare people away from unhealthy foods.

The first idea? Encourage manufacturers to post the food's calorie information on the front of the box or bag, as the FDA is doing, according to the New York Times. That will make reaching for a handful of chips a more alarming experience.

The problem with that, however, is that most serving sizes marked on packaging don't correspond to people's actual eating habits. And the calorie count listed on the packaging is determined by the serving size, so the FDA is considering changing that too.

When a two-cup can of soup marks a serving size as one cup or a single muffin actually contains two servings, people are often eating many times the number of calories and other elements than they think they are. It takes more than a quick glance at the label to discern the difference, and it is far from intuitive to think that the muffin's label is only accounting for half of the whole.

What we need, nutrition professor Barry Popkin told the Times, is "meaningful portion sizes." Not only do serving sizes determine calories, but all other items listed on the nutrition label, some of which, like sodium and saturated fat, people should be keeping an eye on.

While these changes are apt to help the situation, I'd say the next step in this process of getting people eating more healthfully is to make the muffin and the can of soup smaller in the first place.

But for goodness sakes, don't make the smaller things cost way more, as Coke has done with it's new 7.5 ounce cans, which Marion Nestle reports are priced to make the soda cost an astonishing $8.50 per gallon, several times the price of gasoline.

When she asked some retail execs why the smaller containers cost so much, she got an answer that explains in a few amazing words why we have an obesity problem in this country: “If customers want smaller portions they ought to be willing to pay for them.”

Photo: juliaeatssweaters via Flickr

LoraxAg Prompts a Look at Coal-based Fertilizer

After I wrote last week about a company called LoraxAg using waste coal to make farm fertilizer, commenters rightly pointed out that we should understand the technicalities of coal-based fertilizers before we condemn the stuff.

Of course that is a good policy, so I am now offering a deeper look into what this is all about. Coal as fertilizer? What the heck?

LoraxAg will use a process called coal gassification to convert the carbon dioxide and hydrogen in the coal to produce urea and ammonia for fertilizer. In this process, coal is fed into a chemical reactor, where extreme heat and pressure break the chemical bonds in the coal to create a synthetic gas known as a syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The hydrogen portion of this gas is then combined with nitrogen to create anhydrous ammonia, which can be put directly on a field or reformulated to create other types of fertilizers.

Anhydrous ammonia fertilizer is popular among farmers because it contains a higher percentage of  nitrogen — 82 percent — than other nitrogen fertilizers. It is, however, "one of the more dangerous chemicals handled on the farm," University of Minnesota Extension Service tells us. And when used in excess is toxic to nearby waterways and their aquatic wildlife.

Ammonia fertilizer must be applied as a low-temperature liquid sprayed at high pressure, which creates a severe danger to workers. "In contact with your eyes, skin, or mucous membranes, ammonia will cause rapid dehydration and severe burns as it combines with the moisture of the body," according to University of Minnesota.

Ammonia in large quantities also majorly contributes to the acidification of the environment. Considering that ammonia is present in livestock manure, this is particularly true in areas where concentrated animal feeding operations are present. But sprayfields, where large dosages of ammonia are used, often in excess of what the field requires, also pose increased risk of ecological damage, particularly when they are near waterways and floodplains.

The chemical not only disturbs the gills of fish and thus kills them, but also directly contributes to the development of dead zones where oxygen is choked off and the life of a waterway decimated in places like the Gulf of Mexico, where the dead zone is the size of New Jersey.

So while I am no Luddite who says we should all just go back to sourcing all of the fertilizer for a massive food chain directly from a collection of doe-eye cows in the back paddock, I do think we can object to a company that produces anhydrous ammonia fertilizers to be used in great quantities on industrial monoculture farms taking on the name of a most famous environmental hero, the Lorax.

LoraxAg claims that it will produce its fertilizer without any emissions, which may be true, and which does get them a little green street cred, but I still think if we're talking about "speaking for the trees," we should avoid lauding a company that makes a business of creating a skin-burning, waterway-decimating chemical that will keep us addicted to an unsustainable way of food production as we move into a new century.

By the way, LoraxAg got slapped with a cease and desist order from Dr. Suess's people.

Photo: Katherine Gustafson

How Michelle Obama's Fight Against Obesity is Taking Shape

Congressman George Miller is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Congressman Miller is chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

This year we will reauthorize the laws governing the federal school meal and afterschool meal programs, the Special Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and community-based programs such as the summer meals program and the child and adult care food program. As Chairman of the Committee with jurisdiction of these programs, I take this very seriously. Nothing is more important than our children’s health, but for too many families, healthy meals fall to the wayside as they struggle to make ends meet. Our nation’s school meal and child nutrition programs provide millions of children with nutritious meals and help them develop healthy life habits – and will be critically important in the fight against childhood obesity. As we work to rewrite our child nutrition laws this year, we must focus on eliminating any barriers to these programs, so that all eligible children have access to healthier foods and nutrition education whether in school, child care, or at home.

Because of our work on these laws, First Lady Michelle Obama invited me, along with Cabinet members and other congressional leaders to the White House to discuss ending childhood obesity last week. It was very a exciting meeting the First Lady. During that discussion, it was obvious that improving child nutrition and tackling childhood obesity will be a challenge, but no one is better equipped to take it on than our First Lady. She has already done wonders to raise public awareness of the benefits of gardening and healthy eating and I applaud her for choosing this as her first key policy initiative. I look forward to working with the First Lady on this initiative and am committed to working with my colleagues in Congress on a bipartisan, comprehensive reauthorization of our child nutrition laws.

When I got back to my office, I filmed a quick video about my time with Mrs. Obama and the work ahead of us.

Photo credit: The White House

Students Compete To Cook Up Change

Who better to design a delicious and healthy school lunch than the people who have to eat it? High school and college students are invited to enter the Cooking up Change 2010 National Healthy Cooking Contest, hosted by the Healthy Schools Campaign and the National Farm to School Network.

Their challenge? To create a healthy lunch using only ingredients that are available to the workers in school food service. That sounds challenging enough, but add to that the requirements that the meal must use at least one locally grown food, meet stringent nutritional guidelines and taste good. Tall order!

Interested students should form three-person teams and submit recipes by 5 p.m. EST on March 26. Based on those entries, three teams from the high school division and three teams from the college division will be tapped to travel to Detroit this May to attend Taking Root, the National Farm to Cafeteria conference, to compete in the Cooking up Change finals. The final round will include an in-kitchen battle, where the teams compete to prepare their meals and serve them to a panel of judges.

It will be like Iron Chef: Healthy Lunch edition! Allez cuisine!

Photo: Academia IF via Flickr

Talking About Weight vs. Talking About Health

Michelle Obama recently announced that she will be kicking off a national campaign against childhood obesity tomorrow.

In her announcement at a YMCA outside Washington, D.C. on January 28, Mrs. Obama made the issue personal by discussing her own family's process of ensuring healthy, balanced eating.

That sounds like an uncontroversial approach to the topic, and the fact that she referenced her daughters' weight in her comments has set off somewhat of a controversy.

Mrs. Obama reported that the girls' pediatrician pointed out a change in their body mass and suggested that the weight gain should be addressed. The Obamas made a collection of minor changes to their children's eating and activities. ("We did things like limit TV time," Mrs. Obama said. She also "slipped grapes in at breakfast to make a more colorful palate, and threw in an apple at lunch.")

Some may laud her openness and point out that we need to be able to talk openly to pick apart the tricky issues involved in weight and health. Others, however, object to Mrs. Obama speaking publicly about her daughters' weight, pointing out that their health is really what the doctor was putting under the microscope, not their appearance.

“We’ve confused health and weight in a way that’s very confusing for children and very confusing for parents,” eating disorder activist Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh, executive director of Families Empowered and Supporting Treatment of Disorder, told ABCNews. "There is simply no reason to be pushing children into weight reduction diets and that's the message parents out there get."

How do we navigate these dangerous waters where a change in weight can indicate a change in health but where focusing too strictly on weight pushes children, especially girls, toward disordered eating and low self-esteem?

Did Michelle Obama go too far in discussing her children's weight, or is this a topic we need to be less sensitive about? If talking about weight isn't ideal, what other tools do we have in the discussion of childhood obesity?

Sustainable Winter Eats: Carrots, Onions, and the Secret to Soup

With the exception of you lucky readers in California, many sustainable eaters face real winter challenges. Farmer's markets are closed and most grocery store produce costs more and tastes worse.

What to do? Here's the first of a few tips I'll be posting to help you eat through the winter without compromising your values or denying your taste buds.

Soups are my absolute favorite in the cold weather, and the base for any soup can be made with just a few simple ingredients. Carrots and onions are a responsible winter vegetable choice. Both vegetables are cool weather, late-season harvests, and are particularly well-suited to long term storage under proper conditions.

It is important to buy organic, however: Onions are extremely poor competitors to weeds, and as a result, when grown conventionally, can require a large amount of chemical applications. Fortunately, there has been a movement recently among onion producers to promote more sustainable practices by lengthening the crop rotation cycle and using more responsible water management techniques. But on to the soup.

• Start by chopping your onion and carrot into a uniform dice.

• The next step is the most important, and is the key difference between a good soup and a great soup: you want to sweat the vegetables. That means cooking them in a small amount of oil and salt on low heat to avoid any browning. When you brown, or carmelize, the vegetables, they taste great eaten on their own, but the flavor becomes sealed inside. When you sweat the vegetables, you allow the full flavor to be released and infuse itself into the liquid of the soup. I usually start by sweating the onions for 5 minutes alone, then add the carrots for another 5-7 minutes. If you notice any browning, just lower the heat and stir more frequently.

• Add liquid to the pot and you're on the way to a soup. You can simply use water, or you may choose to use a prepared stock, wine, canned tomatoes, or any combination. Whatever you decide, allow it all to cook for at least 20-30 minutes to really develop the flavor.

Potatoes, cabbage, and beans are all great additions for hearty winter soups. Regardless of what you choose, just remember the basic principle of sweating the base, and you will consistently have a delicious and sustainable winter meal.

To get you started, here's a simple Carrot and Parsley Soup.

• Sweat 1 onion, diced, and 3-4 carrots, peeled and diced, as described above.

• When sufficiently tender, add 1 clove minced garlic and stir for a minute or so.

• Add enough vegetable stock to cover everything by an inch, add a bay leaf and/or a pinch of thyme.

• Cover and simmer over low heat for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

• Remove the bay leaf, salt to taste, and puree the soup in a blender along with a cup or so of coarsely chopped fresh parsley leaves.

• Use some reserved stock (or water) to adjust the consistency of the soup. You should have a slightly thick puree of bright orange flecked with green. A beautiful, delicious, and sustainable winter option!

Photo: Muffet

Choosing a Chocolate of Change

Consumers in the United States buy more chocolate candy during the week of Valentine's Day than any other time of year.

But — however happy your Valentine's Day might otherwise be — unfair wages, child labor and ravaged ecosystems often accompany cocoa production. Fortunately, a small cadre of advocates picked up on the momentum of coffee consumers and introduced fair trade chocolate a few years ago.

This year, Global Exchange, 20-year veteran of the "people not profit" globalization movement, is sponsoring a Day of Action, complete with a curriculum for school teachers who want to teach students where their "kisses" are coming from.

Perhaps it's no coincidence, then, that organic chocolatiers Green & Black chose February to announce their intent to move to all fair-trade chocolate. (The move, and its timing, is especially interesting given that Green & Black was sold to Cadbury in 2005, and U.S.-based Kraft Foods is scheduled to take over Cadbury by month's end.) While Green & Black will source its cocoa from the Dominican Republic, farmers in Peru are also jumping on the opportunity to sell fair trade chocolate. As the Christian Science Monitor reports, Peruvian farmers are replacing coca with cocoa. As the demand for organic chocolate grows, farmers who used make a dangerous living as suppliers of cocaine have found sweet relief in the chocolate trade.

With the supply of fair trade and organic chocolate on the rise, consumers have more sustainable choices than ever. Sustainable Table has a great list of chocolate vendors along with some fun chocolate facts, and Global Exchange even lists the types of chocolate products available from their collection of vendors. Plenty of options, whether your sweetheart wants extra dark art bars or kosher hot cocoa – just remember to wrap it in red and don't spill the (cocoa) beans.

Photo via 123Network.

iPhone-Inspired Technology Coming to Vending Machines

We all know that bad economic times mean fewer jobs for workers. And that of course means less snack eating. Yep, if you've never thought about how Wall Street's ups and downs affect the snack industry, that may be because you don't work for the National Automated Merchandising Association, which is the trade group for vending machine companies.

Apparently snack sales are hurting these days and according to the Washington Post, it's a huge business. About 100 million Americans use 7 million vending machines every day making for a $30 billion a year industry — that's 10 times as big as the organic foods market. Snack food is also a market that hasn't changed very much over the years when it comes to basic technology.

Compared to the Atari of my youth, today's video games are virtually unrecognizable. But when I think back to vending machines of yesteryear, they seem, well, just about completely the same. Being able to put dollar bills in, instead of just coins, may be the greatest technological advance.

(Actually, it seems that vending machines haven't changed all that much since they were invented in 215 B.C., according to the WaPo, as coin-operated devices that dispensed holy water -- a much nobler pursuit it seems that just getting Cheetos.)

But soon, the vending machine world will never be the same again. And that may not be a good thing for public health.

I don't have anything against the thousands of people who are likely employed by the vending machine industry, but I can't recall one machine that's filled with anything that people should really be eating -- from crappy chips, to sugar-loaded candy, to bottled water, to corn-syrup laden soda (although I've heard of vending machines that sell books, I've yet to see it). If vending machines went the way of Atari, that might not be a bad thing.

But now there's the Diji-Touch, which is modeled after the iPhone.

Here's how it works: There are digital images on the screen of the machine and if you tap on one then it enlarges and spins it around so you can see the nutritional content. Perhaps this is the best feature of the machine. How many people are actually going to want buy the bag of sour cream cheese potato chips after seeing the nutritional info? Perhaps I'm just being overly optimistic.

The slick design is targeted at making a vending machine experience fun and exciting, which sounds like the perfect cover for targeting kids. How will this affect the amount of junk kids eat and public health in general? It's vaguely reminiscent of the Army using video games in malls to recruit teenagers. Why oh why, can't we use our technological powers for good?! Well, the iPhone app for finding fruit trees gives me some hope.

Photo credit: russelljsmith via flickr

Reinventing Honeybees

The dramatic loss of a quarter of the United States' honeybee population has spurred an educational effort on the species. I admit, before colony collapse disorder, I didn't realize how many basic agricultural crops must be pollinated by bees.

The next phase in that campaign is likely to focus on urban beekeeping. After all, with more and more urban gardeners, the need for urban bees is growing. And some are looking to urban hives to ameliorate the effects of colony collapse.

But many cities — including New York — prohibit beekeeping in their health codes. Some of the archaic language in these code is almost Biblical in its judgment of the "venomous insects," as New York's calls them. An effort to legalize beekeeping in the Big Apple has resulted in a bill and, this week, a public hearing.

And in the educational video below, created by Just Food, featuring such basic reassurances as: "Bees like to eat nectar and pollen; not people."

Laws governing beekeeping vary from city to city, and it's possible that if New York legalizes the practice, others will follow. On the other hand, maybe New York is the laggard: Beekeeping is already legal in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Atlanta and Minneapolis.

Hidden Hives Tour from Just Food on Vimeo.

Photo credit: Wolfang Hagele

Kids Find School Lunch Guilty

The Internet seems to have lent the "school lunches are gross" movement some real momentum: A picture is worth a thousand words!

One teacher in Illinois writing under the name Mrs. Q is eating the school-provided lunch and blogging about it.

Now, the kids are getting in on the act. A group of sixth graders and one teacher at The Young Women’s Leadership School in Astoria, Queens, have started their own lunch-exposé blog, "School Lunch Found Guilty," as part of their "Play With Your Food" class. (Ed. note: Okay, a "Play With Your Food Class" may be going a bit far.)

The 27 writers  all agree that they are "grossed out" by the food at their New York City public school. Their descriptions are as quirky and charming as you'd expect from a group of 11- and 12-year-olds. In the post "Ravioli and Veggies, Egh," students Geetika and Nabila say "Okay, first of all, I felt like throwing a piano at this 'food.'"

A piano? An unusual choice of weapon, but we get the idea. Of the cheeseburger and fries, Carmela and Alyssa say that "This lunch was slimey and potatoes were so hard and greasy, I could of [sic] sworn this lunch came from another planet."

As Ed Bruske recently observed in his visits to a DC public school, the kitchen is not used for cooking as much as for heating frozen foods. The girls at The Young Women’s Leadership School make a similar observation in the blog's "(Wo)manifesto," where they write "The school is making a kitchen in the lunchroom, but why? We ask ourselves, why is there a kitchen and no cooking?"

Photo credit: stock.xchng

Sustainable Snacking, Super Bowl Style

More likely than not, you'll find yourself attending or hosting a Super Bowl party this coming Sunday. And regardless of whether you know a down from an end zone, you'll almost certainly be surrounded by food.

Super Bowl Sunday represents the essence of unhealthy overconsumption — second only to Thanksgiving. The National Chicken Council estimates that more than a billion wings, or 90 million pounds, are consumed over the weekend! Add to that 15 million tons of potato chips and we're talking some serious eating during the big game.

No one's perfect, but here are a few ideas for swapping out the traditional snacks with healthier and more sustainable alternatives:

Make your own potato chips — and make sure they're organic. The Environmental Working Group found that conventional potatoes rank highest for pesticide residue. Almost 80 percent of the potatoes tested contained pesticides, even after being washed and peeled. So grab a bag of organic potatoes (better yet, organic sweet potatoes), peel and slice them thinly, brush with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and bake in a 400 degree oven until crispy. Or try this great recipe for Herb-Roasted Sweet Potato Skins.

Ditch the meat, but savor the chili. Most of us are aware that industrial animal production is one of the most destructive and unsustainable practices around (or "the devil's spawn" as Katherine Gustafson has put it). Any attempt at eating more sustainably means eating less meat. It's an oft-repeated point, but a hard one to overstate. So in that spirit, heat up the crock pot and make some bean chili. There are plenty of good recipes online for easy vegetarian chili, but two of my favorites are Black Bean Chili with Dark Ale and this seasonally-appropriate Black Bean Chili with Butternut Squash and Swiss Chard.

And finally, wash it all down with an organic brew. They're a little more expensive than your typical six-pack, but when you choose an organic beer, you're ensuring that the barley, hops, and other ingredients were produced sustainably and without the application of harmful pesticides and other chemicals. There's a growing selection of organic beers available, and big distributers are getting the message that people enjoy them. Check out one of the brews listed in this directory of organic beers.

Eat well — and enjoy the game!

Photo credit: (nutmeg)

Foodies Bake Up Powerful Generosity

Food is essential to survival; food is delicious; food is business and art and passion. As such, food is incredibly powerful, perhaps one of the most powerful forces in our lives. How appropriate, then, that food was the central piece of a remarkable fundraising event recently organized in Oakland, California, to help the victims of Haiti's earthquake.

It was a bakesale. An amazing, sumptuous, beautiful, community-oriented bakesale that, in one day, raised ... wait for it ... $22,500. Excuse me, did I hear that correctly? Yes, at $22,500, it was possibly the highest-grossing bake sale ever. The funds were donated to Partners in Health, an NGO that has been working to improve health care in Haiti for a long time.

Oakland-based cook and writer Samit Nosrat described the experience of throwing together this event in an article in The Atlantic. It started out as a small idea — a single table on a sidewalk — but expanded as generous people rallied around and volunteered their time and services.

Bakers donated such delicacies as chocolate chip meringues, saffron-cardamom truffles and triple-ginger cookies. Others offered everything from paper goods, graphic design services and matching donations. On January 23, the Bakesale for Haiti occurred at three different locations.

"Bake sales might seem silly in times of great distress, but food is a natural community-builder," Nosrat writes. "Time spent in the kitchen can be as cathartic as that at the table, where everyone comes together. It's where people share their joy and pain, their best moments and their worst."

This was one of their best, for sure.

Photo: stock.xchng

California: The Land of Organic Milk and Honey

The USDA's first — yes, first — large-scale study of organic food reveals just how good Californians have it when it comes to eating well: In 2008, almost 20 percent of all organic producers in the nation were in California, and the state accounted for 36 percent of all sales of organic foods.

A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that organic producers had higher profit margins than their conventional counterparts.

44 percent of organic sales took place within 100 miles from the farm. But, the lion's share of those sales were to wholesalers. Just over 10 percent of sales went to retailers, including supermarkets, and a mere 7 percent of sales were direct farmer-consumer transactions.

Photo credit: hajhouse

Obama's Healthy Food Initiative

It's easy to forget in all of our talk about healthier food choices that some people aren't really making choices at all: Imagine that you're poor and live in a bad part of town. Liquor stores dot every block, but how far do you have to go before you can find a full-service grocery store — you know, one that carries produce and other fresh foods?

If you don't have a car or a good mass transit network — which you probably don't if you live in this particular part of town — it may simply be too hard for you to get fresh food. Ever.

Fortunately, this is a problem that can be solved by giving small businesses and even chain groceries incentives to establish or expand their operations in the parts of town economic opportunity forgot.

A Pennsylvania program provided $30 million in government seed money and got $165 million in private investments along with 78 new or improved grocery stores serving 400,000 people. The program also created almost 5,000 jobs.

And President Obama's recently released 2011 budget proposal includes funding for a national version of this program, called the Healthy Food Financing Initiative.

If fully funded, the program would result 2,000 healthy food retail outlets serving more than 15 million Americans and the creation of nearly 200,000 new jobs. 

Ultimately, it might even save money by improving health outcomes. It will be a slam dunk for the basketballer-in-chief, if only he can get by an tenacious GOP defense.

Photo credit: Diego Cupolo

'Food Inc.' and 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' Bag Oscar Nods

It's Oscar time again, and the buzz is already starting up. The foodie world is keeping its eye on the fortunes of this year's fabulous food-industry exposé, Food Inc., which has been tapped as a nominee in the “best documentary” category. I'd say its chances are decidedly good.

Another food-related film, the charming Fantastic Mr. Fox, has gotten nods in the "best animated feature film” and "best score" categories.

Mr. Fox offers an inventive, entertaining and eye-opening look at the politics of industrial farming — and especially chickens — from the perspective of a group of wild animals, but I can't say I agree with Grist's Tom Philpott, who is "bitter that it got stiffed on 'best picture,'" or The Nation's Stuart Klawans, who called it the "best American film of 2009." It's a wonderful film, but for all-around emotional power, clarity of story and exploration of character, in my humble opinion it doesn't hold a candle to the likes of Up In the Air or Crazy Heart (speaking of stiffed).

I expect Fantastic Mr. Fox will blow the animated competition out of the water, however, and I recommend that all food-focused viewers take a peek at both Mr. Fox and Food Inc. as soon as they get the chance.

Photo: cliff1066™ via Flickr

California's Disappearing Water in Photos

California's Central Valley is an agricultural powerhouse, producing a remarkably large portion — at least 8 percent in 2007 — of the total value of the United States' agricultural output. But, reports Lisa M. Hamilton in the Atlantic, the vast supply of water that it takes to turn this arid landscape into a verdant breadbasket is rapidly disappearing.

Farmers obtain water from aquifers and rivers, seeking these sources farther and father away as time goes by. As we launch into this new century, water is often pumped for hundreds of miles to reach the fields of California's Central Valley. It's clear they can't keep it up forever. "Indeed, due to circumstances including climate change, population growth, and environmental degradation, recently the water has begun to run out," writes Hamilton.

She has been exploring this issue as both a photographer and a journalist. Having written a feature article (available here) on the topic for the latest issue of McSweeney's, she now offers a poignant and beautiful photo essay in the Atlantic. In these photos, the water in canals and aqueducts and the great sky over Fresno and Merced Counties are a bell-ringing blue, but beside them the bone-dry land crackles with thirst and the community bakes in the unflinching sun.

Photo: stevendamron via Flickr

A Greener Acai Berry?

Many people who eat sustainably — particularly in California — are also likely to participate in food fads such as cleanses, kombucha tea and açaí berry everything.

But these so-called miracle foods' markets expand incredibly fast, and the issue of sustainability is often lost in the shuffle.

Açaí is a good case in point. After all, it grows in the Brazilian Amazon. Were trees being cut down in the name of this yippie favorite?

The answer is unclear, largely due to the unanswered question of whether it's better to support limited farming in the Amazon, in hopes that farm income will alleviate peasants' need to cut down trees for cash, or to take a purist stand against any human activity in the rainforest.

Of course, the very existence of the healthful açaí berry makes the case for preserving the Amazon's rich biodiversity.

But then there's the trouble of food miles.

Well, here's a bit of good news: The good-old American chokeberry has nutritional properties that compete with the açaí's, and it is being grown sustainably in Missouri Valley, Iowa, by a retired Kraft Foods employee and his family. (Of course, to appeal to the yippie market, the berry is now being referred to by the more exotic-sounding name of aronia.)

Sawmill Hollow Organic Farm sits amid rolling hillsides planted with industrial soy and corn, but it has started a small resurgence of chokeberry crops, according to this engaging little profile.

If you're looking for a new superfood in your life and you want one that grows a little closer to home, check out the farm's products page. (Sadly, unlike the açaí, these berries aren't tasty enough to eat without preparing them first.)

Photo credit: Sawmill Valley Organic Farm

Why Your Packaged Salad May Be Disgustingly Filthy

I think Treehugger summed it up pretty well with the headline: Is There Sh!t in Your Salad?

And the answer is: 39 percent of pre-packaged salad greens have high levels of fecal matter. (I'm thinking that any level is too high, but according to some experts "the unacceptable level of total coliforms or Enterococcus is 10,000 or more colony forming units per gram (CFU/g)," according to a new study by Consumer Reports.) I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I think ewww is nevertheless the appropriate response.

Consumer Reports tested 208 bags of greens from 16 different brands sold in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. They tested for what's know as "indicator organisms" including coliforms and Enterococcus, which flag poor sanitation and fecal contamination.

And keep in mind, many of these salads are the kind that already say "prewashed" on them. So, if you think those are cleaner, you might want to reconsider. Same for organic -- apparently it didn't make a difference.

If you're having flashbacks to the great E. coli spinach outbreak of 2006, this isn't it. According to Consumer Reports, you'd need a larger sample size to find the really dangerous stuff like E. coli and salmonella. They report that the Department of Agriculture finds salmonella in 2 out of every 4,000 packages tested.

But even bacteria can be bad. As Naomi Starkman writes for Civil Eats, while there are no standards of how much bacteria can be in salad greens, there are unacceptable limits for milk, beef and drinking water.

Maybe someday salad eaters will have the same rights to clean, safe food.

Photo credit: Goodrob13 via flickr

Will Sustainable Ag Survive the Budget Wars?

To turn a phrase, President Obama's recently unveiled budget might just put our money where our mouths are — at least in relation to sustainable farming.

After decades of swollen subsidies to large-scale farming operations, the proposed 2011 budget would decrease the subsidies a farming operation could receive from $40,000 to $30,000. It would also make farms that gross over $500,000 ineligible for subsidies. Conversely, the Obama budget would increase funding for organic inspection, ensuring that farmers who take the time to become organic certified aren't competing against greenwashers who label products "all-natural" or "toxin-free."

The budget also calls for a 56 percent increase in funding for the Sustainable Agriculture and Research Education competitive grants program, the biggest increase in the program's 22 years. SARE grants fund research, education and professional development for environmentally responsible and economically viable sustainable farming projects. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition calls the proposed increase "a sure sign of investment in the future of sustainable agriculture systems."

Sadly, not every budget allotment moved in favor of farming. The administration cut $55 million from the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program over the next two years, which could make it harder for struggling farmers to hold onto their land. And a $70 million cut to the Conservation Stewardship Program means that farmers won't have as much incentive to protect surrounding soil, groundwater and ecosystems.

Still, for the most part, Obama's budget stresses a commitment to the reform he spoke of in his State of the Union address. But presidential budgets get vetted through both houses before they see the light of day, and this one faces a long, dark tunnel of looming Big Ag interests and their friends in Congress. Several representatives and senators have already come out against the subsidy cuts, claiming the issue was already dealt with in the 2008 Farm Bill (which some critics refer to as "spineless legislation"). House Agricultural Committee chairman Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat, said, "No one is interested in making cuts to the Farm Bill after the battle we just fought to pass it a year and a half ago." Other legislators worry that the cuts would unfairly burden rural Americans.

One thing is for sure - sustainable farming advocates shouldn't depend on representatives to speak up for them. According to EWG, a full 40 percent of the farm subsidies doled out in 2007 went to districts with representatives on the House Agriculture Committee. While it's definitely more fun to play in the dirt, some of us will have to get our hands dirty if we want a 2011 budget that benefits sustainability.

Vertical Gardens Grow Up

If you thought the small-scale vertical gardens I wrote about recently were cool, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Those are neat, yeah, but they don't cover an entire side of a building. They don't form 200-foot structures that the New York Times calls "vegetated fins," which is the unlikely innovation in the plans for $133-million renovation of the federal General Services Administration (GSA) building in Portland, Oregon.

Can you conceive of how big and how vertical this garden will be? It will rise up the western facade of the 18-story building, shading that side completely with vegetation during warmer months.

“They will bloom in the spring and summer when you want the shade, and then they will go away in the winter when you want to let the light in,” Bob Peck, commissioner of public buildings for the GSA, told the Times. “Don’t ask me how you get them irrigated.”

While this garden won't grow food, as do the vertical gardens by Urban Farming that I discussed with Taja Sevelle, it is a step down a path that could lead anywhere. We already have great models for vertical, urban farms to produce food inside buildings. Soon maybe one day it'll grow outside, and office workers will be able to simply lean out the window to gather their healthy victuals at lunchtime.

Photo: laurenatclemson via Flickr