The slogan of the Milan Food Expo, May 1-October 31, is “Feeding The Planet, Energy for Life.”
The U.S. has a gorgeous pavilion framed by an undulating wall of vertical vegetables.
A video featuring President Obama greets guests. Check out what he says:
Even more, he adds:
Good, safe, healthy food for all!
Creating sustainable food systems!
Yes!
More to come…
Darra Goldstein, editor. The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets. Oxford University Press, 2015.
Full disclosure: I have two entries in this book, one with Daniel Bowman Simon.
With that out of the way, I can only think that the editors of this book, Darra Goldstein and Michael Krondl, must have had the best time pulling this together.
The encyclopedia starts with an elegant introduction by Sidney Mintz, author of Sweetness and Power, the one book that tops everyone’s list of must reads in food studies.
The remaining 800 pages or so are devoted to entries by 265 authors on matters as diverse or arcane as dulce de leche, nanbangashi (“southern barbarian sweets”), syllabub, and whoopie pie (look them up). I especially like the Appendixes: lists of films featuring sugar and chocolate, songs about sugar and candy (often as a metaphor), and museums.
The illustrations are lavish, especially the two sets of gorgeous color inserts. Subtlety: The Marvelous Sugar Baby, alas, is gone from the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn, but it lives on here. For that alone….
You still have time to file comments on the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee report.
I’ve just been sent the comments from
Yours don’t have to be lengthy, formal, or cover everything.
You just need to identify the issue, state your opinion, and indicate what you want the guidelines to do or say.
Your opinion counts. Do it now!
Brian Lehrer asked me a question this morning that is well worth pondering.
The gist: Are the recent actions taken by food companies an indication that consumers are having an effect at the expense of science—and at the expense of focusing on more important food issues such as too much sugar, obesity, and diabetes?
He cited these recent events:
To all of them, I say it’s about time.
None of these is necessary in the food supply.
There are plenty of scientific questions about all of them, although some—antibiotics, for example—are more troubling than others.
If voting with your fork can achieve these results, they pave the way for taking on the much more difficult issues.
These are big steps forward. They matter.
They should inspire other companies to do the same.
Chipotle’s announcement that it will only be sourcing GMO-free ingredients is eliciting much press (see the article in the New York Times, for example).
Here’s what I’m telling reporters:
No, this is not a safety issue. GMO corn ingredients were not making Chipotle customers sick.
Yes, this is a matter of trust. Chipotle customers are offended that GMO foods are not labeled and that they have no choice about whether to eat them.
The GM industry has fought labeling since 1994 when the FDA first approved GM foods for production. Even then, there was plenty of evidence that the public wanted these foods labeled. But the industry is still pouring million of dollars into fighting labeling initiatives.
This—and the rise in sales of organic foods—are a direct result of the industry’s own actions.
As part of its series on obesity, the Lancet has produced this chart to illustrate why it is so important to create a food environment that makes healthy choices easy. Nice!
PoliticoPro Morning Agriculture reports on USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack’s speech to the Consumer Federation of America’s National Food Policy Conference in Washington, DC.
About changing the rules so that SNAP benefits could not be used to buy unhealthy foods, Vilsack said:
[recipients] may buy a little bit more soda, but they might buy less salty snacks than we do. They might purchase a little more of this than we do, than non-SNAP families, but we purchase a lot more sugary stuff than they do in other categories, so it’s kind of a wash…It’s also extremely difficult to set up a system that distinguishes between various items. You set that system up, what’s going to happen is that people won’t be able to buy apple juice, they won’t be able to buy orange juice… Our thinking is that a better way to approach this is to educate people so they make the right choice, they make the healthy choice [my emphasis].
Ah yes. Education. As an educator, I’m all for it, but let’s get real.
For this analysis, I am indebted to Daniel Bowman Simon, who does the math:
Thought for today: How much nutrition education does $8.66 buy?
This is why regulation of the SNAP package is a better approach—once we get past congressional attempts to cut the program out of existance (an exaggeration, but you know what I mean).
Vermont has issued GMO labeling rules. They seem straightforward. Here are the ones that I think matter:
1. Unpackaged GMO foods must post labels
2. Packaged GMO foods must be labeled by the manufacturer
3. If the food is GMO, it cannot be labeled “natural”
4. The font can’t be any smaller that of Serving Size in the Nutrition Facts label
It’s hard for me to imagine why the biotechnology industry, Grocery Manufacturers Association, and so many food companies think that saying “may be produced with genetic engineering” means the end of civilization as we know it, so much so that they pour millions of dollars into fighting it.
Now they are taking Vermont to court to try to block implementation of these rules.
Otherwise, the rules go into effect July 1, 2016.
That will be fun to see!
