Video - Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food

"Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food."

Junk food taxes? An idea whose time has come.

To me there is nothing that more exemplifies the out of control consumer culture than the popularity of foods that directly negatively impact our health, even in small quantities. And there is nothing that represents that better than soft drinks. I find the word soft to be a misnomer because there is nothing soft about the effect these products have on our personal health, our out of control expenditures on health care, and the environment that is damaged in the production of such non food items. Marketed recently as "smart choices" by the food industry, a program now discredited and exposed as a sham, junk food is still subsidized in the farm bill and is therefore cheaper than real food. This is a disgrace. Let's look at just one example, bottled drinks.

Soda pop and all the other derivatives, such as fruit drinks, high energy drinks, bottled tea, vitamin drinks, athletic performance drinks, and any other concoction that is essentially a vehicle for selling sugar and or high fructose corn syrup are not food and shouldn't be treated as food.

Marketed in ever larger "single" serving sizes, 33.8 fluid ounces of a typical soda contains 28 teaspoons of sugar! A study from UCLA center for health policy research indicates that, regardless of ethnicity or income, adults who drink one or more soda a day are 27% more likely to be obese or overweight. On average, Americans drink 50 gallons of soda/person/year. Granted some of that is diet soda but there are plenty of studies indicating that most of the chemical poisons used to artificially sweeten these brews have health impacts of their own.

These products are patently unhealthy, much like alcoholic drinks (now being marketed like soft drinks) and tobacco. Look around you, how many overweight people do you see? We tax those products to help pay for the damage they cause to society, why not tax junk food? A good place to start would be soda pop.

The costs to society of obesity and diabetes brought on by excessive consumption of sugary foods is staggering! There is even evidence to suggest that obesity worsens global warming; the products that cause it are produced by industrial agriculture almost exclusively with it's huge carbon footprint, heavy people use more energy in transportation and heating and cooling costs, etc.... I'm not trying to vilify fat people here. There are those, industry hacks mostly, who say we should leave this problem up to personal choice. It is obvious that isn't working. And anyway, taxing doesn't remove the products from the market, the true limitation on personal choice, it merely ties the true costs of the product to the product itself.

Industry fights this at every turn, whether it is the "externalities" of environmental devastation, reduced ecosystem services, impacts on infrastructure, or health care costs. The corporate interests have been feeding at the public trough for too long, profiting at the expense of the commons, or as Paul Hawken says " stealing from the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP." But it is worse than that, they are stealing from the present, ruining lives and the economy, all for short term gain. Why do we continue to let those with a vested interest, getting rich off our misery, control policy?

It is high time the beverage industry pays it's fair share of the health costs it causes, a soda tax of a penny an ounce would provide upwards of $150,000,000,000 (that's billion) over the next ten years. This could be earmarked to support the health care costs of the obese and diabetic. Many health policy experts support this idea.

Check out the NPR story on this, it's where I got the figures for this post.

Soda Tax Could Shake Up Industry

Were you raised on soda, can't seem to quit? I like a sweet acidic drink now and again, here is my solution (pun intended);
4 drops of stevia, a splash of local fruit juice, a splash of raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar, some ice, and top up with filtered rain water. MMmm good!

A slim population is a more sustainable one.

A report "Population adiposity and climate change" by Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts links low levels of obesity to reduced greenhouse gas emissions. As reported by Sophie Blakemore over at Worldchanging;

"Countries with normal rates of obesity (3.5%) consume almost 20% less food and produce up to one gigatonne fewer greenhouse gases than a population with a 40% obesity rate....

One European city has already risen to the challenge. Ghent council, in Belgium, has declared every Thursday vegetarian day, to encourage its inhabitants to eat less meat and so take a step to more sustainable living.

To date, 94 restaurants have agreed to guarantee at least one vegetarian dish on Thursdays, the council claims, with some going completely meat-free. From September the main dish at all primary schools on that day will be vegetarian. Other cities, including São Paolo in Brazil and Genoa in Italy, have expressed an interest in replicating the move.

In the UK, former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and his daughters Stella and Mary have launched a ‘Meat Free Monday’ campaign, to raise awareness of vegetarianism and highlight the impact of food choices on the environment.

Researchers at the Institute for Environmental Studies in Amsterdam have come up with figures claiming that if every UK citizen took up the idea, the associated reduction in carbon emissions would be equal to taking five million cars off the road."

First Harvest with the First Lady

Edited Excerpts from the transcript of the First Lady's speech;

"...I just wanted to say a few words to make sure that we all really understand why we're here and what we've accomplished, because today is really the culmination of a lot of hard
work.... This is our reward for all that hard work, ... and I want the media here to give these kids a round of applause. Put your pens down! We're really proud of
you guys for sticking with us.

The planting of this garden was one of the first things I wanted to do as First Lady here at the White House. It was something I had talked about a long time ago. And with the help of you guys, you helped to make this dream a reality. And as you could see when we went down to
the garden, can you imagine how thriving that garden is, just how much food grew from a few little seeds and some plantings. So this was a big dream of mine for a while, and it's been so much fun working with you all.

But I also thought that this would be a fun and interesting way to talk to kids about healthy eating and nutrition. The President and Congress are going to begin to address health care reform, and these issues of nutrition and wellness and preventative care is going to be the focus of a lot of conversation coming up in the weeks and months to come. And these are issues that I care deeply about, especially when they affect America's children.

Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high-blood pressure are all diet-related health issues that cost this country more than $120 billion each year. That's a lot of money. While the dollar figure is shocking in and of itself, the effect on our children's health is even more profound. Nearly a third of the children in this country are either overweight or obese, and a third will suffer from diabetes at some point in their lifetime. In Hispanic and African American communities, those numbers climb even higher so that nearly half of the children in those communities will suffer the same fate. Those numbers are unacceptable.

And for the first time in the history of our nation, a nation that is one of the wealthiest on the planet, medical experts have warned that our younger generation may be on track to have a shorter life span than their parents as a direct result of the obesity epidemic. Again, that is just unacceptable.

So how did we get here? How did we get in this position where we have become such an unhealthy nation, and our children are at risk? And the fact is there are a lot of factors, but some of the more simple ones are that too many kids are consuming high-calorie food with low
nutritional value, and they're not getting enough exercise. It's plain and simple: They're not eating right and they're not moving their bodies at all.

The way we eat has changed substantially since I was a little girl, and as I joke, I don't think that was that long ago. Yeah. They still think I'm old. But I'm not.

But when I was growing up, fast food was a rarity. It wasn't something you did every day. It was a special treat, and we would beg to get it, and it was exciting if we drove into a fast food place and got a hamburger. We were thrilled. It was like Christmas.

Desserts were for special occasions. We didn't get dessert every night. And we didn't have dessert several times a day. Eating out was a luxury because at least in my family we couldn't afford it. If we got pizza on a Friday night, that was a treat.

And sitting around the dinner table as a family was something that we did all the time. That was the norm, just not in my household but in the households of neighborhoods .... You stopped playing and you went home and you ate dinner with your family, and then you could come back out and play.

And I have to admit that I never really thought about health and nutrition, not as a kid, really. But what made me think about nutrition was when I became a mother, because I certainly didn't think about it for myself. But as a mother, with the help of our kids' doctor, I became much more aware of the need for my kids to eat healthy. Like adults, kids have a very simple approach to food. What do you guys like about food? If it tastes good, right?

CHILDREN: Yes.

MRS. OBAMA: If it tastes good, you'll eat it, right? You don't care what it is!? How many people pulled a snap pea off the vine and ate it today? And it was pretty good, right?

CHILDREN: Yes.

MRS. OBAMA: Pretty good. Well, I've learned that if it's fresh and grown locally, it's probably going to taste better. ... And that's how I've been able to get my children to try different things, and in particular fruits and vegetables. By making this small change in our family's diet and adding more fresh produce for my family, Barack, the girls, me, we all started to notice over a
very short period of time that we felt much better and we had more energy, right? And so I wanted to share this little piece of experience that I had with the rest of the nation, a wider audience, which is what brings us here today.

This gorgeous and bountiful garden that you saw over there has given us the chance to not just have some fun, which we've had a lot of it, but to shed some light ... on the important food and nutrition issues that we're going to need to address as a nation. We have to deal with these issues.

This garden project, what we've done together, guys, has given us the opportunity not just to educate children, but to hopefully even educate a few parents and adults as we go along the way. How many of you have talked to your parents about what you've been doing? How many of you have started talking about fruits and vegetables and eating a bit more?

So we've seen some progress even among this small group of kids. The students with us today have learned about the seasons, right? We learned about when you plant what and why, where food comes from, what it takes for food to grow, the process of how food gets from the
garden to the plate, and how much more delicious fresh fruits and vegetables are when they come straight from the garden.

And by making this whole process fun -- and we've got some advantage because we have the White House, right? It's fun being here, right?

CHILDREN: Yes.

MRS. OBAMA: These students have learned a little bit. They've told us that they're not only making better choices when they're on their own, but they're also educating their families about how to eat in a healthier way, as well. And this is all great news for us, for this group of kids.

But unfortunately, for too many families, limited access to healthy fruits and vegetables is often a barrier to a healthier diet. In so many of our communities, particularly in poorer and more isolated communities, fresh, healthy food is simply out of reach. With few grocery stores in their neighborhoods, residents are forced to rely on convenience stores, fast food restaurants, liquor stores, drug stores and even gas stations for their groceries.

These food deserts leave too many families stranded and without enough choices when it comes to nourishing their loved ones. And sadly, this is the case in many large cities and rural communities all across this nation. So we need to do more to address the fact that so many of our citizens live in areas where access to healthy food, and thus a healthy future, is simply out of reach.

But I'm happy to report, as well, that many communities are kind of emulating what we've been doing. They've been leading the way, many of them, in taking matters into their own hands and tackling this lack of access on their own by growing and caring for a whole lot of community gardens, just like the one we planted.

There are more than 1 million community gardens that are flourishing all around the country, and many of them are in under-served urban communities that are providing greater access to fresh produce for their neighbors.

The benefit is not just the availability of fresh produce but also it gives the community an opportunity to come together around gardening and growing their own food and working together towards a healthier community and a better future for their kids.

But government also has a role to play in this, as well. For so many kids, subsidized breakfasts and lunches are their primary meals of the day. It's what they count on. It's where they get most of their nutrition.

And the USDA's National School Lunch Program serves approximately 30 million meals each year to low-income children. And because these meals are the main source of consistent nourishment for these kids, we need to make sure we offer them the healthiest meals possible.

So to make sure that we give all our kids a good start to their day and to their future, we need to improve the quality and nutrition of the food served in schools. We're approaching the first big opportunity to move this to the top of the agenda with the upcoming reauthorization of the child nutrition programs. In doing so, we can go a long way towards creating a healthier generation for our kids.

My hope is that this garden ... through it, we can continue to make the connection between what we eat and how we feel, and how healthy we are. "

School food and family farms

In another excellent article over at Organic Consumers Association, Diane Raymond points out that the US credit crunch and resultant necessary belt tightening have led some schools, 8700 so far, to source healthy fresh local food from from family farms. In my opinion the National School Lunch Program has become a vehicle for elimination of surplus agribusiness commodity food products and has led to a rising epidemic of obesity in school children.

"Nearly half of the children in the U.S. who attend private and public schools participate in the NSLP, a federally assisted meal program that dates back to 1946. While the NSLP does provide a low-cost (and in some cases, free) means of delivering lunch through subsidies to schools, the program has been widely criticized in recent years for contributing to America's obesity epidemic. According to the Sustainable Table, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public about the problems with our food supply, our children are not meeting the RDA of vitamins and nutrients under the current NSLP guidelines. Couple that with the skyrocketing price of food, which extends beyond the family table to the school cafeterias as well. Forced to consider lower-priced alternatives to fresh foods, many schools have no alternative but to rely on the cheaper, less healthy fare. A number of districts across the country are taking matters into their own hands and breaking the mold. Instead of doling out sodium and fat-laden chicken nuggets for lunch, they are opting to assist local farmers and provide healthier, locally grown foods to students."

Ms. Raymond also gives a list of steps to follow if you want to start a farm to school program in your community. Check it out. Organic Consumers Association