Today, the man who encourages us all to eat food, mostly plants, and not too much will bring his prescription for a healthier population and planet to a group that, surprisingly, he hasn’t spoken to before: Doctors and other healthcare professionals.

The man, of course, is Michael Pollan—who talks about the importance of eating and growing sustainable food to folks as diverse as urban ag advocates and Oprah fans. The best-selling food book author will address physicians, dieticians, hospital food service staff, and others at the Food for Health Forum in San Francisco sponsored by HMO giant Kaiser Permanente.

Rather than rehash the sorry state of hospital food in many parts of the country, Pollan sees this as an opportunity to rally a new audience.  In an email prior to the event, he writes that he wants to encourage doctors to help drive change in this country’s food system by talking about food with patients, pressuring hospitals to serve better meals to both employees and the sick, and supporting national reform by getting involved in farm bill politics.

Whether docs heed his Rx remains to be seen. Of course, this being the dollar-driven healthcare world we’re talking about, there’s always the bottomline to make those in the business of medicine sit up and pay attention. In the past, Pollan has noted that “the less we spend on food, the more we spend on healthcare.” He cites statistics which reveal that in 1960 the U.S. spent 18 percent of its income on food and 5 percent on healthcare nationally, while now it spends 9 percent of its income on food and 17 percent on healthcare.

Hosting a food health forum in San Francisco makes sense. As reported here previously, the Bay Area is a hot bed for hospital food reform. And the driving force behind today’s event is a high-profile player in the movement, Dr. Preston Maring, associate physician-in-chief at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland.

Maring, 65, who is relatively new to food advocacy, has worked for Kaiser for almost four decades. During his tenure he’s delivered babies as an obstetrician, worked in hospital administration, and spearheaded the creation of its new pediatric neurosurgery unit.

Since then, 35 markets have sprung up in Kaiser facilities in five states, serving employees, members, and the greater community.

He has worked to get more fresh, local food into Kaiser hospitals and forged ties with local, sustainable farmers, including the nonprofit Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), where he is on the board.

Improving food at Kaiser, which runs the largest nonprofit health care system in the country, has the potential to impact a lot of eaters. The provider and insurer has about 8 million members, 15,000 doctors, and 165,000 employees, mostly in the western states.

In his hospital rounds Maring urges docs to vote with their forks and choose organic, sustainable food for their families. He wants employees and patients alike to eat more fruits and veggies. To help them do that, this enthusiastic cook shares recipes on his blog, offers kitchen wisdom in short Web videos, and conducts a culinary show on the road, teaching new hospital employees basic cooking skills.  “A couple of cutting boards and a sharp knife are the best public health tools we have,” says Maring. “My mantra is: If a guy like me can do it, you can do it.”  (Maring and his medical student-chef son were the subject of a recent New York Times profile by Civil Eats co-founder Katrina Heron.)

Pollan and Maring will be joined on stage by acclaimed cookbook author Mollie Katzen, who is used to talking with physicians, through her work as a member of the Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Roundtable and at events Harvard sponsors aimed at hospital food personnel at the Culinary Institute of America.

Mostly, though, she plans to give healthcare professionals a gentle nudge to head into the kitchen and cook something simple, for themselves, to eat. “I want to give people a little pep talk—not wag my finger at them and talk about how we’re all getting sicker and fatter,” says Katzen, who will demo cooking techniques (think dicing, mincing, and macerating) as she talks. “My mission is modest: I want to help people reclaim the lost art of cooking by learning to make one or two dishes.”

Rounding out the line up is Brenda Eskenazi, a UC Berkeley researcher who will discuss the effects of pesticides on farm workers and their children, organic farmer and CAFF member Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm, and several hospital food folks, who will chime in with reports from the inside.

Attendee Alison Negrin, executive chef of John Muir Health, which operates hospitals in the East Bay, says she hopes panelists will recognize the work that has been done to improve hospital food.

Negrin thinks doctors are beginning to understand the key role food plays in health. As an example, she recounts an exchange she had with a physician at her hospital who, while heartened by healthy choices in the cafeteria, questioned why fried foods and sodas were still on the menu. (These items now come with signage about calorie and fat content.)

“People like myself and others on the Bay Area Hospital Leadership Team have been talking about these issues and working hard to improve hospital food for some time,” notes Negrin, speaking of a group coordinated by the SF Bay Area Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), while conceding that change can move at a glacial pace in such institutional settings. “But I think many of us hope to come away from this forum reinvigorated with new ways to fix hospital food and fresh ideas we can incorporate into our own settings.”

Others who have toiled on the hospital food reform beat for some time are particularly interested to hear what Craig Watson, who works for the SYSCO Corporation, has to say. SYSCO is a major hospital food distributor.

“Hospital farmers’ markets are fabulous, but we all know that improving the quality of food served to employees and patients is a slow process,” says Lena Brook, senior program associate for PSR. “Preston Maring would be the first to acknowledge that Kaiser is a bulky facility to move in terms of improving food. I hope this forum gets people thinking big and helps us all find ways to make change faster.”

Photos: Michael Pollan, Preston Maring, Mollie Katzen

Originally published on Lettuce Eat Kale

Hospitals around the country have taken a crucial first step toward building a sustainable meat production system by joining the Balanced Menus Challenge. Launched in late September, the Balanced Menus Challenge is a voluntary commitment by healthcare institutions to reduce their meat and poultry offerings in patient meals and hospital cafeterias by 20 percent in 12 months. Balanced Menus is a climate change reduction strategy that also protects the effectiveness of antibiotics and promotes good nutrition. Fourteen hospitals are already participating in the national challenge, which was developed and piloted by the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility and nationally launched in partnership with Health Care Without Harm’s Healthy Food in Healthcare Initiative.

Americans eat an average of eight ounces of meat daily, roughly twice the global average. Hospital food service operations often mirror this trend, offering sizable servings of meat several meals per day. High consumption of conventionally produced meat and processed meat contributes to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, dementia, and some kinds of cancer. Overconsumption of meat contributes to the overwhelmingly high cost of the U.S. healthcare system (estimated to be $147B as a result of obesity management alone) as well as environmental damage such as climate change, water and air pollution.

Hospitals buy vast amounts of meat, typically through large distributors who source from the U.S. commodity beef, pork, and poultry markets. U.S. food production relies heavily on fossil fuels, and red meat production is particularly energy intensive as it requires significant inputs of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to grow crops for feed. The food system accounts for over 10 percent of overall energy use in the United States. Globally, livestock for meat and dairy production accounts for 18 percent of greenhouse gases, more than all of Earth’s cars, trains, and planes combined.

While food choice is distinctly personal, the healthcare community should be at the forefront in modeling a healthy food agenda for the nation. Encouraging a reduced and sustainable meat diet is part of a primary prevention agenda to reduce the nation’s chronic diet-related illnesses, but also contributes substantially to climate mitigation, clean air and water, and protection antibiotic toolkit.

Most U.S. meat is produced under a system that relies on the routine feeding of antibiotics to make animals grow faster and consume less feed grain. Arsenic compounds and hormones are given to animals for similar reasons. These additives further contaminate animal manure, which then moves off the crowded facilities, polluting land, air and water. Sustainably-raised meat and poultry precludes the use of antibiotics for non-therapeutic purposes. Approximately 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the U.S. are given to healthy animals to promote growth and compensate for crowded conditions and poor husbandry practices in conventional animal production.

As institutions with considerable buying power, hospitals can demonstrate leadership to the marketplace by reducing the overall quantity of meat and poultry served and through purchasing of sustainably-produced meat. The healthcare sector is increasingly aware of its responsibility to model healthy behavior for the community. Reducing their meat purchasing will help reduce the overall cost of medical care in this country, with benefits ranging from savings in actual food service costs to reduction in pollution, but most importantly, to contribute to healthy lifestyles that will improve the health of Americans.

“It was amazingly simple to make an impact on our carbon footprint by starting with small changes in our cafeteria and working our way up to the more complex patient menu,” said Linda Hansen, CDM, CFPP, Director of Nutrition Services at St. Joseph Health System in Sonoma County, CA. “By implementing Balanced Menus for the last six months, we are able to remain cost neutral, or even achieve savings for the hospital, not to mention the savings to our healthcare system that result from providing patients, staff and visitors healthier foods.”

“As we debate healthcare reform in the U.S., it is important to recognize that eating less conventionally produced meat will reduce drivers of many of the major chronic diseases that threaten the sustainability of our health care system stated Ted Schettler, MD, MPH, of the Science and Environmental Health Network. It is good for people and good for the planet.”
Click here for more information about the Balanced Menus Challenge.

This show of muscle in the Democratic party could be bad for Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, who has previously spoken against the public option and has been viewed as a threat to health care reform so much so that she has even had advertisements like this one run against her in her state, where 17.5% of inhabitants don’t have health insurance.

So if Democrats in fact adapt this strategy, we challenge you to go ahead, Senator Lincoln, and go rogue against your party. We’d be happy to accept Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) as the new chairwoman, considering that you have been so receptive to agribusiness interests over those of 300 million eaters in this country.

Perhaps we should. Because the children of today represent the economy of tomorrow. Today’s parents and grandparents are raising the “think tanks” that are going to be the solutions to tomorrow’s problems . Today’s children will reinvent energy technology, redefine reform and regulations and enhance agricultural productivity in ways that we can not even begin to imagine. But only if we give them the tools with which to do it.

Obama insisting on school and education, with the support of Laura Bush, is a start. But more fundamentally, what about health? Today, 1 in 3 American children now has autism, allergies, ADHD or asthma. 90% of the worlds ADHD medications are prescribed to the American kids, while the US only represent 5% of the world’s population. According to MSNBC, sales of EpiPens are up, while test scores are down. And according to the Centers for Disease Control, 1 in 2 African American kids and 1 in 3 Caucasian kids born in the year 2000 (that is this year’s 4th Graders) will be insulin dependent by the time they reach adulthood.

And while Kraft, Coca Cola and Wal-Mart formulate their products differently for children overseas (with reduced fat, salt and synthetic ingredient content), our National School Lunch Program continues to be a dumping ground for the remnants of the agrichemical corporations who are unable to dispose of their technology laced corn and soy in grocery stores, restaurants or to the livestock industry. And while we allocate $600 billion to the Pentagon in 2009, we only allocated $9 billion to the National School Lunch Program and a meager $2.4 billion to the FDA.

And we wonder why our children have earned the title “Generation Rx” or why our economy is heaving under the burden of health care costs.

According to the World Health Organization, the US ranks 37th out of 40 countries (on par with Slovenia) in terms of “health care”. According to the American Cancer Society, the US has the highest rate of cancer of any country in the world, with migration studies showing that if you are to move here from somewhere like Japan, your likelihood of developing cancer increases four-fold.

We’ve done a lousy job of preventing illness in our country. And while that’s been good for Big Pharma, the costs being born by the majority of American citizens now far outweigh the benefits being reaped by a few corporate ones.

As we watch family members suffer from diabetes, cancers and asthma, it begs the question: Why? Why are these conditions often referred to as “American epidemics” in international publications like The Economist? Why does health care spending consume over 16% of our economy here in the US, while its associated economic burden in France is closer to 8%? Why does Starbucks spend more on health care than it does on coffee?

The reasons? There are many. But perhaps the most differentiating is that in our country, sickness sells. With Money Driven Medicine, there is little incentive to prevent illness. Sickness is good for business. Disease enhances earnings. So if the processed food we buy in Aisle 9 contains ingredients linked to hyperactivity in children, then rather than ban the use of that synthetic ingredient and insist on the use of a more natural alternative, as countries around the world have done, we simply have to walk a few aisles over in the grocery store to pick up our ADHD medicines from Aisle 2.

And our economy hums along. Or does it?

In 1946, Harry Truman said, “A nation is only as healthy as its children”. And 50 years ago, we paid close heed, reaping the rewards of today’s Bill Gates and Meg Whitmans. Thirty years ago, we were still paying attention, as evidenced by today’s Mark Zuckerbergs and Sergey Brins.

But what about tomorrow? Given that our future productivity, economic viability and financial stability are contingent on the health of today’s children, perhaps we should pause and consider the seeds that we are sowing with “Generation Rx.”

And if you are inclined, you can Do Something about it and be part of the solution.

As an ecologically-minded horticulturist, I like to think about everything with an ecological framework. Ecology, simply, is the study of organisms in relation to other organisms and the environment. Many things could be said to be wrong with the state of our nation’s political life, but if there is one to emphasize, it is the lack of a political ecology.  We tend to compartmentalize political issues, along the lines of our individual political identities (sometimes referred to as issues “silos”), and this often negates efforts to connect the dots between diverse issues.

If there is one political identity that should be able to look past these divides and see the importance of ecological connections between movements and struggles, it is that of the environmentalist. The environmentalist’s worldview is steeped in the interdependent view of life; the understanding that one action can cause reactions beyond the expected.  And the most visible (and seemingly the most active) environmentalists, these days, are the food sustainability activists.  Yet even food activists themselves have their silos: urban food access, farmland preservation, nutrition education, and so on. I hope this article will help us see our commonality outside of our silos, and see how to use that to better work towards change.

How are food activists taking the political climate and working it for change? I’d say they’re doing pretty well, in general.  Just a casual reading of this blog can show you the diverse projects, attitudes, and self-criticisms of this set.  However, I feel that there still lacks an inclination or willingness to question certain political behaviors. Namely, the three problems I see are:

1) Attachment to conventional political “truths” and strategies given a dearth of evidence supporting them as leading to the change we seek;

2) Ready acceptance of token political gestures and mainstream media coverage of our issues as tantamount to political change;

and

3) A lack of ecological awareness of how other modern political issues shape, structure, and limit our “food movement”, and a coincident lack of rhetorical cohesion or expression of the grander change we seek while we work towards change in our individual silos.

Let’s take these problems from last to first.

What do we want, as a “movement”? Well, clearly, we are into a food system that provides food for all that is “good, clean, and fair.” But is that all? Are our values also in favor of health care for all that is “good, clean and fair”? What about the right to housing? What about a governmental system that is accountable to the people it governs? What about having a country where education is funded more than war? What about the right to walk down a street and not be harassed by police for being dark-skinned?

Yes, these are all different issues, and perhaps not everyone in our silo feels the same way about them all, but we can’t deny that what brings us to our food movement are values that are held in common with the movements working on these other issues. It is not up to me to define these values, but it seems clear that there is a vision informing our movement that it is at least partly shared with these others. And whatever they are, these values have not been elucidated on the national stage for a long time.  As pointed out by cognitive scientist George Lakoff, the past 30 years have seen the conservative right dominating national politics with their framing of the issues and advancement of their policies, with the Democratic party ineffectually going along for the ride.

Granted, the U.S. political system is not simple, nor would it be solvable through one book, blog, or piece of well-written legislation. But there are patterns in the structural dismantling and dysfunction of government that have become frighteningly damaging within the past 30-50 years. These patterns, such as the privatization of government, the deregulation of the marketplace, the corporatization of public space and the commons, the globalization of capital, and the increased involvement of moneyed interests in government, are not just some natural development of the United States experiment in democracy.  They are a result of efforts by the moneyed class and their functionaries, at each step of the way, to bring them about, and (sadly) a failure of those opposed to stop it. For one example, look to the World Trade Organization, a supra-national corporate organization with the power to force the policies of “free trade” on any country in the world, regardless of what the voting populace thinks or wants. “Free trade” isn’t; more appropriately it would be called corporately-managed trade.

What does this have to do with us, the food people, you might ask? Well, on to problem two.

How do we confront these issues, as community gardeners, or farmers, or anti-hunger activists? Well, we start by framing our stories, our struggles, in the language of the values we hold for a better world overall — including issues not in our silos. Then we refuse to accept as victories changes that don’t actually challenge this current political structure, insisting instead on holding to solutions which represent our values.

An example of this is the White House organic garden. From the original New York Times article about the garden:

Dan Barber, an owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, an organic restaurant in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., that grows many of its own ingredients, said: “The power of Michelle Obama and the garden can create a very powerful message about eating healthy and more delicious food. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it could translate into real change.”

Symbol of renewed interest in healthy, fresh food? Sure. Indicator of social or political change? I don’t see it. Cultural values surely change as the ideas that frame our lives evolve. Healthy, local eating may become more important to some people due to this White House garden. But the reality remains that whatever a person’s values are, healthy local eating will remain more expensive than the cheap processed foods Mrs. Obama decries (and therefore be less common), as long as the political and economic structures remain the same.

At the very least, a symbolic victory should contain a kernel of the truth about the change we seek, even if it is merely vocally expressed but not acted on.  If we are to be happy about a politician grandstanding on our issue of good food, or another New York Times article “discovering” the latest good food project or personality, we should be ready to see through it critically; to ask ourselves whether it promotes the larger vision of the world we seek, and not just a piecemeal feel-good band-aid of activist relief.

The last issue is perhaps the one that will garner me the least fans. I propose that we stop looking to the Obama administration, or any federally-elected Democratic officials, as boosters for our movement. I could list endless things the Democrats have done that upset my values (from voting repeatedly for the occupation of Iraq to defending torture), but here I’ll stick to ones that relate more directly to the sustainable food issue.

First, think of those Mexican ejido farmers, struggling to grow and sell their heirloom varieties of Maize in a market newly-flooded with cheap U.S. Agribusiness corn. Who made this possible? NAFTA was passed by Clinton, our last Democratic “savior.” Barack Obama campaigned on a strong promise to reform free trade agreements like NAFTA and now, post-election, has rescinded that promise.

Second, think of climate change, a major player in the future of agriculture. James Hansen, the foremost NASA climate change scientist, has written up a letter to President Obama, as reported in the Guardian UK:

Hansen wrote that there is a “profound disconnect” between public policy on climate change and the magnitude of the problem as described by the science. He praised Obama’s campaign rhetoric about “a planet in peril”, but said that how the new president responds in office will be crucial. Hansen lambasts the current international approach of setting targets to be met through “cap and trade” schemes as not up to the task. “This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat. It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity,” [Hansen] wrote.

President Obama’s solution to climate change has been, surprise surprise, cap and trade.  At least, some argue, he promised during his campaign to sell off 100% of cap-and-trade “allowances”, the permits for every ton of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. This would mean money from polluters for permits, slated to fund the largest investment in renewable energy in history. Now the president has backed away from that commitment, and through the recent Waxman/Markey Bill, 85% of these permits will be given away to industries that pollute.

Lastly, health care reform — or as it is disguised now, health “insurance” reform. As a farmer who does not have health insurance (not an uncommon occurrence) and like everyone else, no assurance of health, this is a big deal. President Obama pledged to fight for a public health insurance option (not even universal health care, the reality in many other more sane countries), in fact, he has said that it must be a part of any health care reform plan. We, “the people” elected him, partly on this promise. And now, with control of both legislative houses, and the support of the electorate, there is talk of removing the public option. We in the food movement believe in a right to healthy food, as a very common sense preventative measure to future health problems. But for me, it can’t stop there, because I believe that risks exist beyond diet-related disease, and that those risks can effect anyone. And NO ONE should be denied the right to take care of those problems due to lack of wealth. So instead of talking in the conservative frame of insurance, maybe we should talk about the right to CARE. But I digress — my point is merely that, even in the most conducive political circumstances, our saviors the Dems can’t even get it together to pass the most basic and non-threatening kinds of reform. This is our democracy in action.

So companies can continue to pollute (CO2, not to mention other noxious chemicals), jobs can move to wherever the environmental regulations are most lax, and we’ll keep voting for incremental change that doesn’t reflect what we actually want: a healthy environment, meaningful employment, social and economic equality, universal access to health care, good and affordable education, and a democracy that means something.

The usual counter-argument I field when I discuss the need to move past the Democratic Party to promote progressive politics is that I ask too much. Many insist that change doesn’t happen that fast; that there are many factors that keep Obama et al from acting the way we want them too; that we don’t understand these factors and that we should have patience.

Well, if we truly believe that change is needed (to avoid the worst effects of peak oil, to mitigate climate change, to revive our democracy, to leave a sane, healthy world to our children), and we have the values and ideas that can lead us there, why did we vote for Obama under the banner of change and those values, if we expected him to not actually do anything? Is this democracy?

One last comparison, to maybe frame this issue in terms that the food silo understands. We have (luckily) moved past the notion that changes in buying patterns alone can change the food system, but we still believe (rightfully) that when we “vote with our fork” we can affect on our food system. All I ask is that we move that concept to the political system, and stop voting for candidates, a party, and a political structure that doesn’t reflect the values we hold. Whether the answer is to form a third political party (as the abolitionists and suffragettes did) or directly confront the Democrats more forcefully, I don’t propose to know. I’m just sayin’: our food system won’t heal without a healthy political system, and what we got right now just ain’t working.