When I wrote recently about the next generation of genetically engineered seeds, I was in truth referring to the next next generation. The fact is that the next actual generation of seeds is already out of the lab and poised for approval by the USDA.

And I’m not talking about Monsanto’s recently approved “drought-tolerant” seeds, which the USDA itself has observed are no more drought-tolerant than existing conventional hybrids.

No, the “exciting” new seeds are simply resistant to more than one kind of pesticide. Rather than resisting Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup alone, they will now also be resistant to Dow AgroScience’s pesticide 2,4-D.

“A new pesticide,“ you say. “How exciting!” Except 2,4-D, despite its catchy name, has been around since World War II. Not only is it one of the most commonly used pesticides in the world, but it came to further prominence in certain circles when it was incorporated as a main ingredient in Agent Orange.

Indeed, as with research into new antibiotics, research into new—potentially safer—pesticides has come to a virtual standstill. Like the drug pipeline, the pesticide pipeline has run dry. Instead, biotech companies are going back to the older, more toxic chemicals, like 2,4-D, for inspiration.

And while you’d expect opposition to these new products from the likes of Tom Philpott of Mother Jones or Doug Gurian-Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, one place you might not expect to see it is the pages of the influential, peer-reviewed journal BioScience.

And yet there it is! Led by David Mortensen, a team of scientists from Penn State, Montana State, and the University of New Hampshire published a paper that describes the effects on agriculture from an over-reliance on glyphosate and an overuse of Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds. It also discusses at length the risks of using new seeds that “stack” resistance to various pesticides into one genetically engineered package.

In short, they say that you can’t believe Monsanto and Dow when they hype gyphosate resistance plus 2,4-D resistance as two great tastes that taste great together. The two companies are promising to eliminate the growing superweed menace—the one that has caused farmers to abandon thousands of acres of prime farmland and to return to older, more toxic pesticides to protect their crops.

What these scientists conclude is that with so many weeds resistant to glyphosate already, it won’t take long for them to develop resistance to 2,4-D as well.  According to the study’s authors, almost half of the nearly 40 species of weeds that are already resistant to two pesticides have arisen since 2005 (i.e. since the Roundup Ready era began). In short, the crisis Monsanto and Dow are promising to head off is already here.

There are other problems with 2,4-D, such as a strong link to cancer and a much greater tendency to drift on the wind (and thus contaminate nearby fields and waterways)—problems that the development of the less toxic, less volatile glyphosate was supposed to have “solved.” Yet now, thanks to Big Ag’s over-reliance on these genetically engineered one-hit wonders, which encouraged farmers to use too much glyphosate too often, we’re back to square one—or rather to square toxic.

There is, however, an alternative—and one that doesn’t require a total transition to organic agriculture (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). Mortensen and his team describe in detail a practice called Integrated Weed Management (IWM). Like its sibling, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), IWM does involve the use of chemical pesticides. But it’s a judicious use that can act as a last resort rather than a first line of defense. As the paper states:

IWM integrates tactics, such as crop rotation, cover crops, competitive crop cultivars, the judicious use of tillage, and targeted herbicide application, to reduce weed populations and selection pressures that drive the evolution of resistant weeds.

It’s designed for production agriculture and would most likely increase farmer profits, since farmers would get the benefit of reduced seed and pesticide costs and no real loss of productivity. But, as with the climate-friendly agriculture I discussed the other day, you’re unlikely to see IWM embraced by Big Ag any time soon.

The USDA, along with the entire large-scale agriculture economy, is built around the profits of pesticide and biotech companies. You need only watch the USDA approve new genetically engineered products—which the agency admits represents a threat to other forms of agriculture—to see how deep in the tank to these companies our government is.

Tom Philpott observed that with this latest development, agriculture is at “a crossroads.” I disagree. I would say that if the USDA approves this new multiple pesticide-resistant GMO seed as it’s expected to, large-scale agriculture in the country will have reached a true dead end.

Photo: Minnemom

As a federally funded school food program evolved from its inception in the first half of the 20th century to become a permanent fixture in the educational landscape across the country, the NYC school food program became a leading influence in the country’s experiments, failures, and successes in school food service. School and city officials sorted through the wrong ingredients for school lunches and exposed the detrimental effects of decreased funding for school lunch programs. Eventually, engaging students in understanding the nutritious value of the food they consumed righted the relationship between children and their food and connected students to the source of their meals through school gardens and food education programming.

The National School Lunch Act was enacted in 1946 with the “basic purpose…to safeguard the health and well-being of the nation’s children by encourage them to eat more nutritious foods.” Yet by 1972, the New York Times deemed Americans “nutritional illiterates” and the cost of malnutrition had an estimated $30 billion annual price tag. Lack of nutritional awareness paired with the problems caused by the country’s dire economic situation. At this time doctors in NYC suggested nutrition education in schools as a method for improving health and nutritional awareness. However, more fundamental concerns for school security, the basic lack of food for residents across the City, and a lack of funding for such nutritional education programs meant that these suggestions were not made manifest.

In 1977, just two months after the report from the federal General Accounting Office revealed poor nutritional quality in large urban school districts across the country, NYC’s schools adopted the Energy Factor program. Rather than integrate nutritional education programs or involve students in the processes of bringing the food from the field to the lunch table, schools responded to the flash and glamour of the fast food industry that captured the attention of the whole country. Since hamburgers, hot dogs, and fried chicken were attractive to student consumers, they were served as options in the Energy Factor and considered healthy alternatives to “junk food, Twinkies, cupcakes, and the like.” Yet at the same time the NYC School Board implemented fast-food lunches in the three pilot schools, it also contemplated introducing salad bars into school food options. Two seemingly opposite food futures faced NYC students. They could choose hamburgers, which had risen to the status of a nutritionally superior lunch item – at least in comparison to what had been served on lunch trays or brought in brown paper bags from students’ homes previously. Or, on the other hand, there was a glimmer of an idea to provide them with fresh greens on a salad bar. Given heavy marketing efforts for the Energy Factor and continued lack of infrastructure to support healthy food education and school gardening, the future of salads as the preferred lunch choice was bleak.

While the Energy Factor was adopted with the support of school officials and promoted by the head school food administrator, Elizabeth Cagan, by 1980 the “nutritional message” of the program had become questionable. Cagan realized that student retention and and increased participation in the lunch program was not a sufficient goal if it meant a compromise on the healthfulness of the food . Cagan fought hard for the removal of all frozen food pack lunches (the equivalent of a TV dinner) and reduced the number of schools serving such meals from 400 to 100. Nutritional experts like Ann Cook, who promoted school lunch as “where the good food is now,” tried to combat the poverty and junk food stigmas formerly associated with the school lunch program.

In the early years of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, rearranging the priorities and tactics of serving school meals in New York City came to a head. By 2010 a collaboration of the Mayor’s Fund, GrowNYC and other government agencies established the Citywide School Gardens Initiative, promoting garden and food education through funding, garden maintenance assistance, and coordinated educational tools and programs like the Garden-to-Café harvest events. A grant from the Fund for Public Health in New York City propelled the healthy food options in schools to include a salad bar at each lunchtime period, finally bringing the efforts of school food reformers in the 1980s to fruition.

The purpose of the Garden-to-Café program, which is administrated the New York City Department of Education’s Office of SchoolFood, is to help children connect the origin of their food with its related nutritional quality and fresh taste. During the 2011 spring harvest season, the program facilitated events at 19 schools throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Throughout the 2010-2011 school year, the program partnered with 55 NYC public, charter, elementary, middle and high schools, in effect exposing more than 35,000 students throughout the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn to the efforts of the Garden-to-Café program.

The School Gardens Initiative and the Garden-to-Café program are the result of NYC’s commitment to bringing healthy food and nutritional education opportunities to its students. Wrestling with the disconnects between students and their food source; a lack of government funding and a need to feed schoolchildren; and fast food culture and a focus on health, the NYC school food program has ultimately provided substantial opportunities for healthy and local food education and continues to improve the quality of its meals for all students.

The best part of the new school lunch regulations is that for the first time, there is a maximum limit set on calories; previously there was only a minimum number of calories required, with no maximum. As a result, many schools in the past served foods high in sugar, such as canned fruit packed in heavy syrup rather than its own juice, or extra packages of crackers kids didn’t need, just to reach the required minimum number of calories. Now the old minimum has become the new maximum, so there is no longer any need for calorie inflation in school lunches. Other positive changes are requirements for larger servings and more varied kinds of vegetables, including dark orange and leafy greens, more fruit and whole grains.

On the downside, the six cents per lunch additional funding being offered is not enough to offset the increased cost, which has been estimated by the USDA as about 11 cents per meal. To compensate, there are regulations requiring schools to raise the price of paid lunches if they fall below the government reimbursement for a free lunch, as well as new regulations designed to drive more revenue from food sold a la carte in competition with the National School Lunch Program. There are also some changes to the way students are qualified for free meals, which could increase the number of kids eating school lunch.

For some districts, these changes will drive extra revenue, but for school districts like San Francisco, where the paid lunch price is already higher than the free lunch reimbursement, where most a la carte has already been eliminated in an attempt to dispel the stigma of eating school meals, and where most of the new methods for identifying students as qualified for free lunch are already in use, there is little additional revenue projected. Trying to charge students who pay for their lunch a substantially higher price than what the government pays for a free lunch is not going to balance the budget. Our schools will just have to absorb the shortfall, as they always have, driving the deficit for our Student Nutrition department even higher.

That nutrition department deficit, which in 2010-11 topped $3 million, has for years been covered by money from the school district’s general fund, leaving less money for teachers, textbooks, and other classroom needs. While meals served in SFUSD cafeterias already meet or exceed most of the new nutrition regulations, the higher cost of serving this more nutritious food has helped drive the deficit, along with the higher cost of labor in this high cost of living city. In the past, the Board of Education and district administration generously agreed to fund the higher cost, but it was their choice to do so, and there was always the possibility that the whole grains, fresh fruit, and salad bars might have to be scaled back to save money, as happened midway through the 2009-10 school year. Now, when the new regulations go into effect next school year, those improvements will be requirements, not forward-thinking extras subject to the budget knife. In other words, not only will the Student Nutrition deficit continue, or even grow, as a result of the new regulations, but the school district administration will have fewer options for fighting that deficit; most reductions in the quality of the food will be off-limits.

That’s the conundrum. We want healthy food served at school–including the larger servings of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains mandated by the new regulations–but should we have to pay for them with our children’s classroom funds? With school funding in California plummeting even under the best case state budget scenario, it’s hard to feel good about cementing healthy food upgrades at the expense of other educational priorities.

We are at a crossroads in this country–we must decide whether it is worth it to spend a little more money now to adequately fund school nutrition programs, so that children can learn to make healthy eating habits a way of life, or whether we want to kick that can down the road, scrimp on school meal funding now, but instead pay the much higher cost of healthcare and loss of productivity when those children grow up to be unhealthy adults dealing with type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and other weight-related disorders. It is an enormous disappointment that our Congress has chosen the “kick the can” solution.

Wouldn’t it be great if eight-year-olds immediately thought of a banana, instead of a bag of chips, when they wanted a snack? In the decade that I have been involved with school food here in San Francisco, we have added salad bars in all our middle and high schools, replaced juice with fresh fruit at breakfast, and added fresh fruit daily at lunch.

But it is still a hard sell to get some kids to take and eat the fresh produce, because it just isn’t in the mindset of many inner city kids, who may rarely if ever see a fresh vegetable or piece of fruit at home, or in the corner store. Meanwhile they see thousands of commercials a year for junk food, which is available everywhere.

A few months ago, my son Max Schreiber humored me and my obsession with healthy food for kids; we made a video, entered it in the USDA MyPlate Fresh Fruit & Veggies Video Challenge, and won first prize. We were excited to win and had high hopes that our little video might be used in some way to help encourage kids to eat more fruits and vegetables. That, after all, was the purported goal of the competition–to show how people could add more fresh produce to their diets in an affordable way.

But when I contacted the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotions to ask if the videos would ever be shown anywhere apart from the Choose MyPlate website, I was told that while the videos would likely be used by other USDA departments, budget constraints prevented any further marketing efforts.

I mentioned this to a few of my fellow “eat better” advocates, including Chef Ann Cooper, currently nutrition services director for Boulder (CO) schools. She said, “Our children see over 10,000 commercials a year for junk food. Big Food spends $10-15 billion a year marketing junk food to kids. With that in mind, I strongly believe that the videos made for the MyPlate challenge should be as widely viewed as possible and used as positive food marketing for our children.”

Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at NYU, and author of the seminal work Food Politics, said “I am eagerly waiting to see how USDA uses the winning videos to promote MyPlate. There are loads of things USDA could be doing with them, and should.”

The proponents of healthy eating are vastly outmatched by Big Food’s spending. The above mentioned USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotions had a total budget of $6.5 million in 2010, and the National Cancer Foundation had less than $10 million to promote the 5 A Day campaign. That does not stack up well compared to the billions Chef Ann cites in the junk food marketers’ war chest.

Still, it seems like a no-brainer that when 142 lovingly crafted video entries encouraging people to eat more fruits and vegetables fell into the USDA’s lap, they would aggressively seek opportunities to promote those messages to the public as widely as possible.

It doesn’t have to be a budget buster, either. The National Association of Broadcasters says their member stations donate $7 billion a year in broadcasting time to public service announcements (PSAs), including promoting the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign in 2010-11.

Isn’t a public service announcement campaign a perfect fit for the USDA fresh fruit and veggie videos? The kids who really need to be carpet-bombed with the “eat healthier” message are not coming to the MyPlate website, but, as Chef Ann points out, they sure are watching TV commercials. Other outlets for PSAs include cable TV, movie theaters, in-flight entertainment, and in-store networks.

Although the issue of restrictions on the ability of government to advertise is murky, it’s not like using PSAs would be unprecedented. In spring 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Federal Reserve was placing public service announcements in movie theaters in 14 states hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis, to warn consumers about foreclosure rescue scams and show them how to get help free. The weeklong campaign cost just $9,000 to produce the PSAs and place them in theaters.

While foreclosure scams and fast food marketing may sound worlds apart, in fact the similarities are eerie. The WSJ described the foreclosure situation this way:

As the U.S. government pours hundreds of billions of dollars into housing rescues, state and federal agencies have struggled to stop predators from targeting homeowners….The Fed’s ads come against a flurry of infomercials, billboards and door-to-door marketing from firms trying to attract customers who are confused by their options. “They’re everywhere–prime time, late night, radio, English, Spanish,” said Patricia Garcia Duarte, president of the nonprofit Neighborhood Housing Services of Phoenix. “They’re very slick and they really know how to market to vulnerable people.”

“We don’t have the resources in the nonprofit sector to do the same level of advertising,” she said.

Am I dreaming to think that someday we could see this in the WSJ:

As the U.S. government pours hundreds of billions of dollars into healthcare, state and federal agencies have struggled to stop junk food advertisers from targeting children….The USDA’s ads come against a flurry of fast food commercials, billboards and movie tie-ins from food companies trying to attract children. “They’re everywhere–prime time, late night, radio, English, Spanish,” said school food advocate Dana Woldow, founder of PEACHSF. “They’re very slick and they really know how to market to kids.”

“We don’t have the resources in the nonprofit sector to do the same level of advertising,” she said.

I did mention the idea of public service announcements to the person I spoke with at the USDA and was happy to hear that it would be discussed at an upcoming staff meeting. Many of the videos from the competition feature engaging children, including one of my favorites. No superhero-loving kid could possibly resist this compelling message, but first they would have to see it.

As Bettina Elias Siegel, whose The Lunch Tray blog is one of the most widely read platforms about kids and food, put it, “Studies show that most children aren’t getting nearly enough servings of fruits and vegetables each day, and they’re bombarded with billions of dollars of advertising from the makers of fast food, sugary cereals, and sodas. So anything we can do to level that playing field is critical. It would be a shame to let some compelling health messages–already vetted and approved by experts–go unseen if we could otherwise get them in front of kids.”

Originally published on BeyondChron
 

This growing season there’s a new GMO in town: Monsanto’s GE sweet corn. This Roundup Ready product is the first GE corn for direct human consumption, and it has not been tested by the USDA and will not be labeled. If you’re unhappy about this, you’re not alone. The majority of consumers don’t want to eat genetically modified foods, and 95 percent feel strongly that they should be labeled.  Many retailers, including Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and General Mills, have already agreed to not use GE Sweet Corn in any of their products—but Walmart, the country’s largest grocer and self-proclaimed sustainability adherent, has yet to make such a promise.

In a campaign reminiscent of the  Starbucks rBGH campaign, (which ultimately culminated not only in a pledge by the java giant not to sell dairy from cows treated with rBGH, but also created a domino effect, causing most large retailers to make the same agreement) , Food and Water Watch has initiated a national campaign to pressure Walmart to do the right thing and to live up to their sustainability claims. Just last week, Walmart launched a brand new website called The Green Room to exhibit their green credentials. Over the past couple of years they’ve run public relations campaigns touting their support of local farming, healthier eating, and providing oases in food deserts.

Walmart sells $129 billion worth of food (taking a whopping 25 percent of grocery sales throughout the US, and much more in some areas) each year, making it the most powerful food retailer in the world. If Walmart agreed to not stock GE sweet corn, it is highly likely that other retailers would follow their lead. It would also relieve farmers of the economic pressure to plant the biotech seeds.

If you’re in the know about GMOs, you know there’s a lot we don’t know—and a lot to be wary of.  We don’t know the long term effects of GMOs on humans and  a new study suggests there is reason to worry. The potential environmental risks are many, including the rise of superweeds and resistant pests, the threat to biodiversity and the inevitability of crop contamination.  There are also the ethical and economic concerns associated with patenting of living organisms and the ownership of our food supply by corporations like Monsanto.

Since last fall, Food and Water Watch and their partners at the Center for Environmental Health, Center for Food Safety, CREDO Action, and Food Democracy Now! have been asking consumers to sign a petition saying that they would refuse to buy GE sweet corn and are asking retailers and food processors not to sell it. As of now, that petition has over a quarter million signatures.  Walmart is powerful, but consumers hold the ultimate power: all great social change starts from the bottom. Join the movement today.

Photo: Jamie Leo

Originally published on Ecocentric

FoodCorps is growing—expanding the number of states we’ll be working in next year and expanding the number of service members who are creating community and creating change. We created FoodCorps with two goals in mind: Addressing a public health crisis and providing a training opportunity for all of growing interest in careers in food and agriculture. Becoming a FoodCorps service member is a way to launch your career in food and farming while helping kids get healthy.

Rachel is one of 50 future food systems leaders who started their terms of service this past August as the first ever class of FoodCorps service members. So far this year, these service members have reached over 20,000 children in 10 states. They are addressing the nation’s painful and costly childhood obesity epidemic using our three recipe ingredient for change: Hands-on nutrition education, growing and tending school gardens, and getting healthy local food onto school cafeteria trays.

Here is what Rachel had to say about her experience this year:

Being the new “garden lady” at a school in small town is cause enough for conversation. Add in the University of Georgia logos that emblazen the coffee thermos I take to school with me every day, and I stick out even more in the sea of Arkansas Razorback gear that comes standard for most of the students and teachers at my school. Serving for FoodCorps has brought me to the town of Marshall, Arkansas, where I spend my days gardening with students from Marshall middle and elementary schools.  The school is a part of the Delta Garden Study, a childhood obesity prevention research project based out of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute.

When teaching outside, it is important for me to begin by getting a grasp on what the day will hold. My morning starts with a garden walk-through and a meeting with my garden program specialist to plan what garden work we will tackle with our classes for the day. Rolling with the punches does not even start to describe the level of flexibility you need as a FoodCorps Service Member. Your greenhouse will flood, grasshoppers will eat your newly planted kale seedlings, and snow might cover your leaf lettuces in less than an hour. Overcoming these and other challenges have proven to be learning experiences for me and my students over the course of my service term.

If a tasting is on the agenda, I collect my cooking supplies and ingredients before the start of classes for the day. The sight of students gathered around a folding table helping to prepare braised greens, salad, pesto, or even corn and squash fritters is a common one in our classes. Hands-on nutrition education is just as important as the act of gardening.

After talking with my supervisor about the activities of the day, we head to our first class. When my school became a part of the Delta Garden Study, they agreed to adopt a garden-based science curriculum for their middle school science courses. Between sixth, seventh, and eight grades, I work with eleven classes of students. My supervisor and I work with our science teachers to strike the balance between in class science instruction and the outside garden and nutrition connections.

As the “garden lady,” I try to help my students think about learning in a different way, and I get to see firsthand the need to devote more time in our school day to discussing topics like healthy eating. Thanks to FoodCorps I have the opportunity to be a part of that dialogue on a daily basis. My service has given me the privilege of being a part of my students’ lives. Every time we work together in the garden, whether it is to plant, harvest, cook, or even winterize our greenhouse, we illustrate to students that food–where it comes from and how you cook it–is central to health.

Sitting in my organic chemistry class during undergrad, I never envisioned that I would soon become an expert in hosing off kids’ boots at the end of muddy garden work session, explaining the nutritional benefits of pesto over the din of my food processor, or reinforcing the concept of density by making balsamic vinaigrette. But at the end of every day, I am astounded at how lucky I am to experience alongside my students the wonderment that comes with growing and cooking food.

Recruitment for next year’s class begins this week. You can read more at our Web site: www.foodcorps.org or watch our video (produced by Ian Cheney, co-creator of King Corn) on YouTube here.

Every now and then, a story appears in the media gushing about a “school food miracle worker” apparently serving healthier, higher quality food than usually found in school lunch programs, and costing no more than what a typical school district spends on a less healthy meal. The reader is left wondering why all schools don’t just do what the “miracle worker” does.

It will come as a surprise to no one to learn that things are not always as they appear in the media. The “miracle worker” who seems to do more with less is usually doing more with more. Additional funding, student demographics, labor issues, and facilities are just some of the factors that can make or break a pilot innovation, and which get short shrift in media gushfests.

How can you tell if your school can do what the “miracle” school does? You need to determine whether an innovation is replicable (can it be easily reproduced in any community?), scalable (does it work just as well for 30,000 students as it does for 300?) and sustainable (is it financially self-supporting?), because if it is not all three, it may be something that can only succeed in that one place. Everything doesn’t work everywhere.

How to know if a pilot program is replicable, scalable and sustainable? Ask these questions:

Outside resources

Does the “miracle” school or district receive extra funding not available to all schools? This could be a state reimbursement for meals in addition to the Federal payment; for example, California provides an extra .219 for every meal served to a low income child. Additional state money may be paid to only some schools; California’s Meals for Needy Pupils revenue stream, despite its name, does not apply to all meals served to needy pupils, but only to those served in the approximately one-third of California school districts which had a particular type of property tax override on the books in a certain year in the 1970′s. “Miracle” programs receiving additional funding streams may not be replicable in locations lacking that extra funding.

Does the “miracle” school have a foundation or other organized fund raising operation benefiting the meal program? If so, how much money is generated annually? Some schools are candid about their reliance on outside funds to support better quality food; however, outside fundraising may not be replicable in poorer communities, or sustainable even in wealthier communities.

Paid lunch

Another important factor is what percentage of the cafeteria meals are purchased by “paid” students (those not qualified for free/reduced meals); note that the percentage of paid students eating in the cafeteria is not the same thing as the number of students who are classified as paid. In San Francisco, 39 percent of students are classified as paid in 2011-12, but only about 15 percent of students eating school food are paid.

A “miracle” district with a substantial number of “paid” students may generate much of their revenue from the paid price for meals, especially if the paid price is $4 or higher. Compared to a district charging just $1.50 for lunch, the district with the higher paid price, and many paying students, can generate far more revenue. A relatively well-to-do community is better able to support a paid meal price of $4 or more, to help cover the cost of scratch cooking and better quality food; this probably is not replicable in a district with 60 percent-70 percent low income students.

Charges and collections

Not every student on “paid” status actually does pay–some school districts allow “paid” students who have no lunch money to “charge” the cost of the meal; later they try to collect these unpaid charges from the family, usually with mixed success.

Does the “miracle” program allow charges, and how do they collect those charges? If students are allowed to charge only three times and then are turned away, or offered only a “meal of shame,” such as cold cereal, or cheese sandwich, is your school district prepared to do that?

If school officials at the “miracle” school send a bill to parents owing money for charged meals, and follow up with phone calls, or promises to withhold report cards or prohibit student attendance at extra-curricular events, until charges are paid, is that kind of follow up scalable to a district with hundreds or even thousands of delinquent accounts?

Open campus/closed campus, lunch periods and enrollment

Some high schools allow students to leave campus at lunchtime; many schools have cafeterias which are not large enough to serve the entire student population. Schools with closed campus generally see higher numbers of students choosing to eat in the cafeteria, rather than bringing lunch from home.

Does the “miracle” school have a closed campus? How long is the lunch period at the “miracle” school, and how long is the lunch period at your school? How many students are enrolled at their school, and how many at yours? If the “miracle” school is on the larger size, do they have more than one lunch period? It may not be possible to scale up what a 300-student “miracle” school is doing if your school has 2,000 students, a cafeteria seating 400, and only one lunch period.

Facilities

Does the “miracle” school have a full working kitchen, well equipped with ovens and refrigerators and cook tops and sinks, as well as all the smaller cooking equipment such as pots and pans, and proper knives, necessary to do scratch cooking? When government funding for school kitchen equipment dried up in the 1980′s, many cash-strapped schools were forced to let their kitchens deteriorate. A scratch cooking program is only replicable in schools which have usable cooking facilities.

Labor

Labor costs often amount to as much as half of the school nutrition department budget, but cafeteria worker salaries vary greatly, with some districts paying minimum wage for entry level workers, while others pay $15 or more per hour even for those workers still at first step.

What are labor costs at the “miracle” school or district, as compared to yours, and how much labor does their money buy? If both your district and their district spend 45 percent of the budget on labor, how many person/hours does that 45 percent buy? A district paying workers $10 per hour gets 50 percent more work hours than a district paying $15 per hour. This is key in moving to scratch cooking, which is much more labor intensive than reheating frozen food.

Low poverty/private schools, and volunteers

At the far end of the economic spectrum, some schools with few low-income students opt out of the Federal meal programs, and design their own program.

Although still required to provide a free lunch to low-income students, public school districts like the one in the article above (which in 2009-10 had only 1.1 percent low income children) can easily afford to feed such tiny numbers of students for free even without the government reimbursement.

Orinda Intermediate School, profiled in this article, had just seven low-income students in 2009-10, out of a population of over 800. By charging $5.25 per meal and requiring payment in advance, this school generates enough money to pay for their high end offerings, and the use of “school-mom volunteers” to run the cafeteria saves on labor costs. Clearly not a replicable model in a low-income community.

Similarly, some private schools require a certain number of parent volunteer hours, and use this free labor in their cafeteria. Such schools may serve a meal from a higher priced, healthy food vendor like Revolution Foods, which charges the full amount of government reimbursement to cover the cost of its food (meal costs from Revolution Foods start at about $3 and go upward, while in 2011-12 the reimbursement for a free lunch is $2.77.)

With nothing left from the reimbursement to cover labor and overhead, a school with Revolution Foods as their meal supplier may use parent volunteers in the cafeteria, or a non-union charter school may require teachers to help out at lunchtime, keeping costs to a minimum. “Miracle” lunch programs relying on free labor are not replicable in regular unionized public schools.

Direct/indirect costs

Federal law allows school districts to charge their nutrition department for direct costs (which are exclusively attributable to operation of the federal nutrition programs) and also for a portion of indirect costs (for operations like payroll or personnel which serve both nutrition and also other departments.) Some school districts help underwrite their meal program by not charging their nutrition department for direct/indirect costs, saving the department about five percent of their budget.

How much does the nutrition program of the “miracle” school pay in direct/indirect costs? A school district’s decision not to charge direct/indirect may not be sustainable in an era of budget cuts, when every general fund dollar is needed for classrooms, and may not be replicable in a financially distressed district.

District support

Some school districts, like San Francisco and Boulder, Colorado, believe that better school food is important enough that they will support a deficit in the nutrition department by transferring in general fund money to keep the department afloat. While admirable, this option may not be replicable in school districts in more dire financial straits, or sustainable even where currently used.

Is it really necessary for school food improvements to be replicable, scalable, and sustainable? Isn’t it enough that the students in the “miracle” schools are getting better food, even if the reasons why fall short of “miraculous”?

School food improvements which are only possible with additional funding, volunteer labor, community fundraising, or other support can result in a two-tier system of school meals, where students in parts of the country with generous outside resources or primarily wealthy students enjoy higher-cost healthier food, while students in poverty-stricken areas, with high unemployment and more community needs than charitable resources, are left with the lower quality meals which are all the government reimbursement alone can provide. Unfortunately, the miracle-loving media rarely bother to investigate these factors when they highlight the success of a program which does offer a better quality meal than most, leaving the public with the mistaken idea that all it takes is the will to do better.

It does take the will–a lot of very strong will–but it also takes money, and many other factors need to be considered too. The media need to learn to ask the right questions, because true miracles are few and far between.

Original version published on PeachSF.org

If you feel that way, I have two words of advice: get political.

I don’t mean to ignore the very real successes: increases in farmers markets, innovative and inspiring programs such as Food Corps, and an increasingly diverse food justice movement, just to name a few. But lately, at least when it comes to kids and junk food, we’ve been getting our butts kicked.

And it’s not just because corporations have more money to lobby, of course they do. It’s that too often, we’re not even in the game. Or, we tend to give up too easily. While I know many food justice advocates who understand this is a political fight over control of the food system, sadly I cannot say the same thing about some of my public health colleagues. Too many nonprofits, foundations, and professionals are playing it safe, afraid to take on the harder fights.

A politician from Maine I interviewed for my book was complaining to me about how food industry lobbyists were in his state capital every single day, while public health sent the occasional volunteer. His sage advice to us advocates: “You may be out-gunned, but you have to bring a gun.”

Moreover, many groups have shown that you don’t always even need a bigger gun. The small but impressive organization, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood proved that this summer when it won an important victory against Scholastic regarding its corporate-sponsored materials. How did they do it? A combination of smart campaigning and effective media. Not by playing nice.

Many public health folks I know are more comfortable with research and data than politics and lobbying. But if we are to make real progress, that has to change. Back in May, after a series of defeats, my colleague Nancy Huehnergarth wrote a great call-to-action. She noted how public health advocates and its funders are “very genteel” and that when industry lobbying beats us back, advocates just want more science, believing that the new data “will finally convince policymakers and the public to take action.” But it doesn’t work that way, as she explains:

The reality is that when going up against deep-pocketed, no-holds barred opponents like Big Food, Big Beverage and Big Agriculture, public health’s focus on science and evidence is easily trumped by money and messaging. If public health advocates don’t start rolling up their sleeves and using some of the same tactics used by industry, progress in this fight to create a safe, healthy, sustainable food system is going to move very slowly.

OK, now for some good news. We are already seeing positive signs that indeed, the food movement is getting more political. Recent defeats are helping to mobilize people even more, as folks realize the food industry is not playing nice, so we can’t either. Here then, are just a few signs of hope for 2012:

1) The growing political movement opposing genetically-engineered foods, which includes a huge Just Label It campaign with an impressive list of supporters. Stay tuned also for the 2012 ballot initiative in California to label GMOs.

2) Powerful nonprofit organizations (who don’t shy away from politics) getting involved for the first time in nutrition policy. For example, the Environmental Working Group’s recent report on sugary cereals called out the utter failure of Big Food’s voluntary nutrition guidelines on marketing to children. Given EWG’s one million-plus supporters, I can’t wait to see where they go with this issue in 2012.

3) Increasing coverage in mainstream media that food industry marketing (and not just personal responsibility) bears much of the blame for the nation’s public health crisis. Examples include a front page story in a recent Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle and Mark Bittman’s weekly Opinionator column in the New York Times, which is consistently smart and hard-hitting.

4) Speaking of media, as traditional investigative journalism outlets have become more scarce, a new breed of reporters may be born from an innovative project just launched in November: Food and Environmental Reporting Network. Its mission is to “produce investigative journalism on the subjects of food, agriculture, and environmental health in partnership with local and national media outlets.” Judging from its first in-depth report on dairy CAFOs in New Mexico, I am looking forward to more in 2012.

5) Finally, the Occupy movement, while still very young, has already inspired a number of food politics offshoots. As I wrote after Food Day, several others have penned calls to action showing the deep connections between corporate control of the food supply and economic injustice. (If you read just one, Tom Philpott’s Foodies, Get Thee to Occupy Wall Street should convince you.) Also, the amazing grassroots organization Food Democracy Now (based in Iowa) recently organized an “Occupy Wall Street Farmers’ March” to bring the message that family farmers are also the 99 percent. (Read organizer Dave Murphy’s moving account of the successful event and watch the videos of the passionate speakers–I promise you will be inspired.)

There are many other amazing groups, farmers, and eaters organizing all over the country (and the world) to take back our food supply from corporate profiteers. We’ve got plenty of challenges ahead, with the farm bill up for renewal and more school food nutrition standards to fight for, just for starters. I am hopeful that next year we will see the food movement get even more political. I just hope I can also say, by the end of 2012, that it was the year more of my public health colleagues joined in.

A version of this post was originally published on Appetite for Profit

Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission, along with three other Federal agencies (FDA, CDC and USDA),  released a set of proposed voluntary guidelines for marketing food to children to reduce sugars, fats and salts and increase fruits, whole grains and vegetables in the diets of American youth. In 2008, led by Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Tom Harkin (D-IA), Congress asked for the recommendations to address the nations’ growing obesity crisis among our nation’s youth.

Studies show that one third of all children aged 10 to 17 are overweight or obese. In the past three decades rates have more than doubled among kids aged 2 to 5 and more than tripled among those ages 6 through 11. The incidence of “adult onset” diabetes in children and youth has more than doubled in the past decade.

A coalition of major manufacturers of processed foods, fast-food chains, and the media industry that depends on their advertising dollars are spending millions to derail the proposed guidelines. The FTC has already started to trim the proposal in response to the lobbying blitzkrieg but industry wants to go ever further. They want to use an industry designed scheme that would declare Chocolate Lucky Charms, Marshmallow Pebbles and Cookie Crisp cereals as healthy.

But despite industry claims these guidelines are not mandatory regulations; they are voluntary guidelines developed by an independent committee of nutrition experts about how we can improve children’s health.

That hasn’t stopped industry predictions of economic disaster. According to comments filed by General Mills’ to Interagency Working Group “the economic consequences [of the guidelines] for American consumers and American agriculture would be devastating.”  They also predict “severe” economic consequences for the media industry and their employees.

They argue that the voluntary guidelines would cause consumers to eat more fruits and vegetables produced in other countries and therefore fewer grains grown in America. According to research funded by the Grocery Manufacturers of America “demand for fruits and vegetables would increase by 1009 percent and 226 percent respectively” resulting in almost $500 billion more spent on imported food and $30 billion less on domestically grown grain.

Even if the voluntary guidelines were that effective and their study was accurate, it’s audacious marketing spin to turn an overwhelmingly positive victory for public health into a big government, job killing attack on freedom.

Another industry-funded study claimed that the voluntary guidelines would result in the loss of 74,000 jobs. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, found the study riddled with “implausible” assumptions, historical inconsistencies and incomplete analyses of potential impacts to both the industry and economy as a whole.   For example, the industry study assumes, without justification, a 20 percent decline in advertising and completely ignores the likely scenario in which companies shift advertising to other products or audiences. It also ignores the fact that there has been no negative economic impact since industry adopted its own guidelines in 2006. In fact, EPI concludes that the guidelines could have no impact on jobs or could even lead to job growth in other parts of the economy.

Finally, General Mills adds that the food companies’ $1.6 billion in advertising expenditures “would go up in smoke.” “$1.6 billion in economic activity cannot disappear without an impact on people’s jobs and livelihoods,” they wrote.

While it’s impossible to believe that food conglomerates wouldn’t redirect their advertising dollars, it’s even harder to think that media companies wouldn’t find other buyers. In fact, they’ve done it before. When Congress banned tobacco ads on T.V. and radio in 1970 media companies stood to lose $220 million in annual cigarette advertising. Like their counterparts today, the networks, and broadcasters associations lobbied hard alongside big tobacco against the ban.

The media industry did fine. Total T.V. and radio advertising sales has increased every year before the ban and after. According to media analysts, in 1969 ad expenditures on T.V. and radio were $4.85 billion. In 1972, they were $5.7 billion.

For decades, industries have opposed laws, rules and even basic consumer information that have made us all healthier. At every step they predict disaster but, in fact, they respond with new ideas and innovations and we all benefit.  These voluntary guidelines merely suggest a path that industry should embrace and applaud.

According to the allegations in the Penn State scandal, a pedophile was allowed to brutally assault/molest numerous young boys because no one dared to upset the very lucrative apple cart that is college sports.

And now comes word that Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee have torpedoed the USDA’s attempts to reduce the amount of pizza, french fries, and salt that our kids consume at school. Why? Because the frozen pizza companies, the salt industry, and potato growers asked them to. Really. It’s that simple.

The USDA wasn’t looking to ban any of these foods, but rather to increase the ratio of non-starchy vegetables and whole grains. This would be a step in the right direction, instead of using our resources to make our kids sicker and fatter. But such a shift would also make a dent in some very lucrative government contracts. So, no go.

There’s more going on here than simple greed, though. Because the politicians who do the food industry’s bidding are showing as much contempt for the expert opinion of nutritionists as they do towards the science of climate change. As Tom Philpott notes over at Mother Jones, the evidence that we need to feed our kids less of this stuff is solid: “Eat Your Greens, or Your Gut Gets It.”

But who needs experts, anyway? Not the GOP. Their ideal nominee should evidently be a blowhard ignoramus with a moral compass that’s shiftier than the San Andreas fault line, and at least as deeply cracked.

Take Herman Cain. When the pizza mogul/motivational speaker/alleged serial groper was asked if he could define a man by the kind of pizza he prefers, he declared that “A manly man don’t want it piled high with vegetables! He would call that a sissy pizza.”

And so goes the ongoing conservative war against vegetables, served up with a side of machismo. We can’t let the First Lady instill a love of broccoli in our kids! And isn’t Obamacare just a sneaky plot to open the door for legislation that would crucify Americans who reject cruciferous vegetables?

I guess those retired war generals over at Mission Readiness didn’t get the memo about the sissifying powers of vegetables. Why are these military experts up in arms over the USDA’s caving in to Big Food? Maybe because “Obesity is the leading medical disqualifier for military service, and children get up to 40 percent of their daily calories during the school day?”

As Amy Dawson Taggart, Mission Readiness’s director, noted “This new effort to undermine school nutrition regulations raises national security concerns.”

It should also raise questions about what kind of culture turns a blind eye to kids being brutalized and turns our children into vessels for commodity crop crap because it protects the revenues of some high powered institutions and politicians. What warped brand of capitalism have we created that permits our kids to be treated as collateral damage?