I’m just back from judging Google’s first Science Fair for kids 13 to 18 at its corporate headquarters in California (yes, those are tomatoes growing in the foreground).

Google’s famous food program: Why famous?  It is:

• Available 24/7
• Totally free
• Varied and delicious
• Designed to promote health as well as environmental values (local, organic, sustainable)

On this last point, the recycling program is comprehensive and the campus is planted with organic vegetables, free for the picking:

But what about the “freshman 15”?

If free food is available 24/7, isn’t Google creating a classic “obesogenic” environment?  Do new Google employees gain weight?

Indeed, they do, and this creates a dilemma for the food team.  I met with Joe Marcus, Google’s food program manager, and executive chef Scott Giambastiani.  Free and very good food, they explain, is an important recruiting perk for Google.   Employees learn to manage it.  And those who are eating healthy food for the first time in their lives find that they actually lose weight.

Google’s food labeling program

Google labels its snacks, drinks, and the foods prepared in its 25 or so cafeterias with traffic lights: green (eat anytime), yellow (once in a while), or red (not often, please).  It bases the decisions about which food goes where on the Harvard School of Public Health’s healthy eating pyramid.   It labels foods at the top of the Harvard pyramid red, the ones in the middle yellow, and those at the bottom green.

In theory this makes sense as a starting point.  In practice, it tends to seem a bit like nutritionism—reducing the value of the foods to a few key nutrients.

The difficulties are most evident in the snack foods, freely available from kiosks all over the campus.   Products are displayed on shelves labeled red, yellow, or green.  For example:

GREEN: Sun chips, 1.5 oz, 210 kcal, 10 g fat, 180 mg sodium, 3 g sugar, 4 g fiber

YELLOW: Lentil chips, 1 oz, 110 kcal, 3 g fat, 170 mg sodium, 1 g sugar, 3 g fiber

YELLOW: Walnuts, 0.8 oz, 150 kcal, 15 g fat, 0 g sodium, 1 g sugar, 2 g fiber

RED:  Luau BBQ chips, 1.5 oz, 210 kcal,  14 g fat, 158 mg sodium, 2 g sugar, 1 g fiber

Note: the weights of the packages are not the same, so the amounts are not really comparable, but the ranking scheme seems to give most credit for fiber.

As for these and the foods cooked in cafeterias, Google uses other strategies to promote healthier choices.  It:

• Puts the healthiest products at eye level
• Uses small plates
• Tries to include vegetables in everything
• Makes healthier options available at all times
• Uses the smallest sizes of snack foods (packages of 2 Oreos, rather than 6)
• Makes it easy to be physically active (Google bicycles!)

The only place on the campus where employees pay for food is from a vending machine.  The pricing strategy is based on nutrient content, again according to the Harvard pyramid plan.  For the vended products, you pay:

• one cent per gram of sugar
• two cents per gram of fat
• four cents per gram of saturated fat
• one dollar per gram of trans fat

On this basis, Quaker Chewy Bars are 15 cents each, Famous Amos cookies re 55 cents, and an enormous Ghirardelli chocolate bar is $4.25.  Weights don’t count and neither do calories.  The machine is not run by Google.  Whoever does it has a sense of humor.

Impressive, all this.  Not every company can feed its nearly 30,000 employees like this but every company can adopt some of these strategies.  It might save them some health care costs, if nothing else.

Every now and then, Kerry Trueman (“KAT”) poses a question, usually about something challenging.  Her challenge today:

Let’s Ask Marion: Is it Possible to Have an Unhealthy Obsession With Healthy Eating?

A few more for summer reading pleasure and enlightenment (for others see previous post):

Poisoned, Jeff Benedict, Mariner 2011: I blurbed this one: “In telling the entwined stories of childhood victims of food poisoning and the lawyers [Bill Marler et al!] wrangling over just compensation, Poisoned is a fast-paced thriller, a riveting illustration of how the political—in this case, the inadequate food safety system—becomes personal.”

The Sorcerer’s Apprentices, Lisa Abend, Free Press, 2011. What is a book about the celebated Spanish restaurant El Bulli doing on a food politics list?  Abend is a terrific reporter who spent a year observing how the place runs: almost entirely on the labor of dozens of food professionals who gave up their real jobs to work for six months at a time as unpaid volunteers.   The cooks are essentially piece workers.  They never see or taste the final dishes served in the restaurant.

State of the World, 2011, Worldwatch Institute. The 2011 annual report focuses on “Innovations that nourish the planet”—anti-hunger and farming projects throughout the world that are successfully improving the health of people and the planet.  Read and be inspired!

Tomatoland, Barry Estabrook, Andrews McMeel, 2011. This book is a welcome expansion of Estabrook’s stunning, prize-winning article in Gourmet.   Estabrook writes a compelling account of the injustices and social costs of industrial tomato farming to farm workers and to the environment.  We could and should do better, and Estabrook explains how.  Tomatoland scored a rave review in the New York Times, most deservedly.

…And for the under 2 set:

Rah, Rah, Radishes: A Vegetable Chant, April Pulley Sayre, Beach Lane, 2011:  It comes with gorgeous photographs of vegetables and could be fun to read to little kids:

Oh boy,

Bok choy!

Brussels sprout.

Broccoli, cauliflower.

Shout it out!

I haven’t been reviewing books on this site, mainly because so many of them flood into my office that I cannot keep up with them.  But the public relations reps for a couple of recent books have been pushing hard for mentions.  The books are good, important contributors to the food movement, and deserve readers.

I’m listing them in alphabetical order by title in two batches, now and tomorrow.  Some of them I’ve blurbed, some not, but all have plenty of useful and interesting to say.  Enjoy!

Butcher’s Guide to Well-Raised Meat, Joshua and Jessica Applestone and Alexandra Zissu, Clarkson Potter, 2011. The owners of Fleisher’s butcher shop in Kingston, New York, tell the story of how a couple of vegetarians came to open butcher shops that specialize in grass-fed and organic meats, done right.  I know lots of vegetarians who would eat meat from animals raised sustainably and humanely, and this book is a how-to guide to finding the right butcher or doing it yourself.

Cultivating an Ecological Conscience, Fred Kirschenmann, Kentucky, 2010: Kirschenmann describes himself as a farmer-philosopher and so he is as he ruminates on his vision for sustainable agriculture as practiced on his own farm.  My blurb points out that he’s “right up there with the other agronomic philosophers–Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson…It should inspire everyone to start planting and to think deeply about the food we eat.”

Fair Food, Oran Hesterman, Public Affairs, 2011: Hesterman is an agronomist who used to work with the Kellogg Foundation and now heads the Fair Food Network to work for sustainable food systems in Michigan.  The book advocates for public policies that promote sustainability and food justice and explains how to work toward that goal.  You want to change the system but don’t know how?  Start here.

Farm Together Now, Amy Franceschini and Daniel Tucker, Chronicle Books, 2010: The authors interviewed and photographed 20 farmers throughout the country who are producing food in ways that advocate for food justice, sustainable agriculture, and local food movements.  The book should inspire anyone to get out and farm.

Milk, Deborah Valenze, Yale, 2011: I blurbed this one: “Milk is the place to go to begin understanding how we got from dairy maids to industrial milk production and the current debates about the value of raw.”  This is a serious work of history with great illustrations.

More to come….

At TPMDC, Brian Beutler explains why the U.S. does not have enough money to pay for food assistance programs, safety regulation, better school food, or support for sustainable agriculture.

 

My San Francisco Chronicle column on food advocacy includes a severely edited list of organizations working on food issues, particularly school food and the farm bill.   I thought the entire list might be useful.

Note that information about how to contact government officials appears at the end.

I consider this list preliminary.  Please use the Comments to add to it.  And pass it along, use, and enjoy!

Organization	Advocacy resources
General
Edible Communities	~60 Edible magazines throughout U.S.  Useful for identifying local food resources
Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI)	Advocacy and lobbying for a broad range of food and nutrition issues, school food among them.
Slow Food USA	Promotes policies favoring slow, as opposed to fast, food
Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments	Promotes policies to improve corporate and government practices that affect food and activity environments in California
Community Food Security Coalition	More than 300 organizations working to build sustainable, self-reliant, local and regional food systems, and promote a healthier farm bill.
School Food
Background legislation	The Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act of 2010  Proposed nutrition standards for school meals
USDA programs	Team Nutrition: supports child nutrition programs through training  Chefs Move to Schools: partners chefs with schools
Public Health Advocacy Institute	Promotes use of the legal system to improve school food
National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity (NANA)	Lobbies for federal policies and programs to improve school food and activity environments (a project of CSPI)
Public Health Law & Policy	Offers a policy package with goals and actions for school wellness policies, and a fact sheet on the schools section of its website
National Farm to School Network	Promotes connecting farm produce to schools
California ProjectLEAN (Leaders Encouraging Activity and Nutrition)	Helps develop school wellness policies and healthier food and activity environments (a joint project of the California Department of Public Health and the Public Health Institute)
CANFIT (Communities, Adolescents, Nutrition, Fitness)	Community-based initiatives to improve diet and fitness among low-income, minority adolescents
Center For Ecoliteracy	Rethinking School Lunch Guide shows how to incorporate ecological understanding into school meals
School Food Focus	Focus: Food Options for Children in Urban Areas
One Tray	More direct connection between local farms and school meal programs
Better School Food	Community-based connection of school food to health
Cook For America	Culinary training to support healthy school lunches cooked from scratch
The Lunch Box	Online toolkit with information about healthy lunch options
Let’s Move Salad Bars to School	Supports salad bars in schools
Project Lunch	Improves Marin County school lunch program
Nourish Life	Food and sustainability in schools and communities
PEACHSF	How-to guides and resources
Farm Bill
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy	Public policies for food and farming
Food and Water Watch	Bring agricultural policy in line with health and environmental policy
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition	Promotes healthier and more sustainable systems for small- and medium-size farms, farming opportunities, fair competition
Organic Trade Association (OTA)	Supports organic food production, large and small
Food Research and Action Center (FRAC)	Protect and expand food assistance programs
Environmental Working Group	Exposes inequities in food subsidies; provides data on who gets what
PolicyLink	Working to get Healthy Food Financing Initiative into the Farm Bill

 

How to contact federal and state government officials

The White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Members of Congress http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt

• Communicate with members: http://www.congress.org/communicate
• Meet with members: http://www.congress.org/visiting
• Meet with staff: http://www.congress.org/congressional_staff

State officials: http://www.congress.org/legislative_protocol

Local media: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/media/

 

My monthly (first Sunday) Food Matters column in the San Francisco Chronicle is about how you as an individual can influence food policy:

Q: I know you say “vote with your fork,” and I do, as often as possible, but it seems so small a gesture. In what other ways can we, as consumers, speak out or act to change our food system?

A: Vote with your fork and vote with your vote. Today’s food movement gives you plenty of opportunity to do both.

Voting with your fork means buying and eating according to what you believe is right, at least to the extent you can.

When you vote this way, you support farmers, processors, retailers and restaurant chefs who are working to create a food system that is healthier all around – for the public, farmworkers, farm animals and the planet.

You set an example. You help make it socially acceptable to care about food issues. You make it easier for others to shop at farmers’ markets, join CSAs, grow food at home, stop buying junk food and teach kids to cook.

Part of taking personal responsibility for food choices also means taking social responsibility. When you act, you make it easier for everyone else to do what you do. And yes, one person makes a difference.

My favorite current example is the work of an NYU graduate student, Daniel Bowman Simon, who researches – and advocates for – public policies to promote growing vegetables.

By chance, a food stamp (SNAP) recipient told him that she used the funds to buy plants and seeds to grow her own food. Could this be possible?

Simon found the 1973 food stamp legislation and read the fine print. There it was. He joined others and formed a group to publicize this benefit (see www.snapgardens.org).

Today, SNAP recipients throughout the country are encouraged to grow food – not bad for what one person can do.

I particularly like school food as a starter issue for advocacy. Improving school food is nothing less than grassroots democracy in action.

Schools matter because kids are in them all day long and they set a lifetime example. If you have children in school, take a look at what they are eating. Could the food use an upgrade? Start organizing.

All schools are supposed to have wellness policies. Find out what they are and talk to the principal, teachers and parents about how to improve access to healthier food and more physical activity.

Another well-kept secret: The U.S. Department of Agriculture offers technical assistance to help schools meet nutritional standards. The USDA encourages advocacy. It says its work is easier when parents push the schools to do better.

Many groups are devoted to school food issues. Some have published guides to getting started or developing strong wellness policies. They range in focus from hands-on local to national policy.

Other groups are gearing up to advocate for changes in one or another provision of the Farm Bill, now up for renewal in 2012. This legislation governs everything having to do with agricultural policy in the United States – farm subsidies, food assistance programs, conservation, water rights and organic production, among others.

In this era of budget cutting, every stakeholder in this legislation – and this also means everyone interested in creating a healthier food system – will be lobbying fiercely to defend existing benefits and to obtain a larger share of what’s available. Let legislators hear your voice.

And now is an excellent time to identify candidates for office who share your views and are willing to fight hard for them.

The ability for individuals, acting singly and together, to exercise democratic rights as citizens holds much hope for achieving a more equitable balance of power in matters pertaining to food and health.

Join the food movement. Use the system to work for what you think is right. Act alone or join others. You will make a difference.

Resources

The following are among the many groups advocating for healthier school food or farm policies [I submitted a much longer list but it got edited out.  I will post the rest of it in the next day or two].

Center for Science in the Public Interest

Community Food Security Coalition

Environmental Working Group

Food and Water Watch

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

E-mail Marion Nestle at food@sfchronicle.com.

E-mail questions to food@sfchronicle.com, with “Marion Nestle” in the subject line.

This article appeared on page H – 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle

 

The saddest thing I’ve read in ages is the FTC’s rebuttal to industry charges that it is trying to regulate food marketing to kids.  Not so, says FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection head David Vladeck:

The preliminary voluntary principles proposed in April by the Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children have got people talking about kids, advertising, and nutrition…Here’s my take on some of the myths that have been percolating about the proposed principles.

MYTH #1:  The FTC plans to sue companies that don’t adopt the Working Group’s proposed nutrition principles.

Not so.  The Working Group’s job is to submit a report to Congress.  That’s all.  That’s what Congress told the group to do.  A report to Congress by an interagency working group provides no basis for law enforcement action by the FTC or by any of the other agencies participating in the Group.

MYTH #2:  The Working Group’s proposal is regulation by the back door.

Second verse, same as the first.  This is a report to Congress, not a rulemaking proceeding, so there’s no proposed government regulation….the FTC couldn’t issue a rule on this subject if it wanted to, which it doesn’t.  Simply put, a report like this can’t be a rule — whether it’s delivered to Congress by the front door, the back door, or the kitchen door.

And so it goes through ten more of the same.

Alas, food companies are not going to self-regulate themselves out of marketing to kids because they will lose sales if they do.

That’s why some government regulation would be helpful.  Isn’t government supposed to promote public health and rein in industry excesses when necessary?

Additional point: You still have time to submit comments.  Send them to the FTC by July 14 through this link.  Organizations that wish to sign on to the Food Marketing Workgroup’s letter should email Bethany Hanna Pokress bpokress@cspinet.org by Monday, July 11.