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President Trump’s $2 Trillion relief package is the “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020.’’

This 880-page (!) bill addresses food systems in several ways, most of them in “Title I Agricultural Programs” which starts on page 609 like this:.

For an additional amount for the ‘‘Office of the Secretary’’, $9,500,000,000, to remain available until expended, to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus by providing support for agricultural producers impacted by coronavirus, including producers of specialty crops, producers that supply local food systems, including farmers markets, restaurants, and schools, and livestock producers, including dairy producers: Provided, That such amount is designated by the Congress as being for an emergency requirement pursuant to section 22 251(b)(2)(A)(i) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency 23 Deficit Control Act of 1985.

This sounds good (in Ag-speak, specialty crops are fruits and vegetables), but what this means in practice, according to the New York Times, is

• About $23.5 billion in assistance to farmers ($9.5 in subsidies, $14 in borrowing authority)

But this will go mainly to soy and corn producers, key Trump constituents in an election year.  This amount follows nearly $26 billion in aid already provided to offset losses from the China trade war.  This new funds exceed USDA’s entire discretionary budget request for next year.  The USDA Secretary may allocate the funds as he wishes, with no oversight.

So much for welfare for the rich.

As for the poor, the bill provides

• About $25 billion for food assistance (domestic food programs $8.8 billion, SNAP $15.8 billion).

This too sounds like a lot but all it does is account for the expected increase in demand from people newly out of work.  It does not in any way increase the amount that individuals and families receive.

How did this happen?  Chalk it up to effective lobbying by agribusiness.

The gains for agribusiness were accomplished, says the Times, by “A small army of groups mounted the fast-moving campaign for aid, including the politically powerful American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Joining them were other smaller players representing producers of goods like turkey, pork and potatoes or sunflowers, sorghum, peanuts and eggs.”

Earlier, Politico reported that nearly 50 organizations representing farmers, equipment manufacturers and agricultural lenders sent a letter stating their needs as a result of declining demand from school and restaurant shutdowns and direct-to-consumer sales.

The bill does little to help the folks who most need help.  Anti-hunger groups tried, but failed.

Poor people need to vote.  And organize.

The USDA has produced four infographics on its purchasing practices for school meals.

• USDA Foods in Schools – This infographic summarizes nationwide USDA Foods purchases including the average cost per pound by food group and the breakdown of total spending and pounds received by food group.
• USDA Foods in Schools: Summary by Program – This infographic shows a summary of purchases from all three programs: USDA Foods Bulk for Processing, USDA Foods Direct Delivery, and USDA DoD Fresh. It is important to note that the USDA Foods Bulk for Processing section only includes items classified as a bulk product on the USDA Foods Available List.
• USDA Foods in Schools: State Overview– This infographic shows the average number of products ordered by States and the top five products by dollar value and volume. This infographic also displays the value of food orders by State.
• USDA DoD Fresh in Schools – This infographic provides an overview of USDA DoD Fresh purchases including a summary of the top five fruit and vegetables received and the total pounds purchased. It is important to note that the items available through USDA DoD Fresh may vary by State.

I took a look at the first one and got stopped cold by this:

Protein?  What’s that?  The answer:  meat, poultry, fish, eggs, peanut butter, and sunflower seed butter.

I also wondered what DoD Fresh was about.  It is an agreement between USDA and the Department of Defense to supply fresh fruits and vegetables to schools.

For school food aficionados, there is much information here in a readily accessible format.  Enjoy!

Aaron S. Gross, Jody Myers, and Jordan D. Rosenblum.  Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food.  New York University Press, 2020. 

This book comes with heavy-duty endorsements: a Foreword by Hasia Diner, and an Afterword by Jonathan Safran Foer.

I was interested to read it and did a blurb for it.

Feasting and Fasting is a fascinating account of the history of Jewish food, within and outside of dietary laws.   The authors engage in Talmudic debates about how specific foods and diets as a whole do or do not define Jewish identity.  Crisco is for Jews?  Peanut oil caused such debates?  Who knew.  This book is a great read.

What to quote?  So many choices.  Here’s a snippet from Jordan Rosenblum’s chapter on Jews and garlic:

After the Exodus from Egypt, when the Israelites wandered in the desert, they grew tired of eating only manna.  Comparing the varied diet that they ate as slaves in Egypt to the unvaried diet that they now enjoyed as free women and men, a few troublemakers complained: “The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, “If only we had meat to eat!  We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.”

This, as it turns out, is the only mention of garlic in the Hebrew Bible.  In this chapter,

we shall briefly explore the historical association between Jews and garlic that develops over the next three millennia.  In doing so, we shall see how garlic eventually functions both internally (by Jews) and externally (by non-Jews) as a symbol that represents Self and Other—or, in the terminology favored in anthropology and food studies, how garlic operates as a metanym for Jews.

Replacing Saturated Fat With Walnuts or Vegetable Oils Improves Central Blood Pressure and Serum Lipids in Adults at Risk for Cardiovascular Disease: A Randomized Controlled‐Feeding Trial.  Alyssa M. Tindall, et al. Journal of the American Heart Association. 2019;8:May 7, 2019.

Conclusions: “Replacing saturated fatty acids (FAs) with 57 to 99 g/d of walnuts for 6 weeks reduced central diastolic blood pressure compared with a diet similarly low in saturated FAs but with lower α‐linolenic acid content…This study represents a feasible food‐based approach for replacing saturated FAs with unsaturated FAs (including α‐linolenic acid) from walnuts and vegetable oils, demonstrating that relatively small dietary changes can reduce cardiovascular risk.

Funding: This study was funded by the California Walnut Commission…The California Walnut Commission provided funds for the research conducted. The commission’s staff was not involved with any aspects of conducting the study, analyzing the data, or interpreting the results reported in this article.

Comment: Walnuts, like pretty much all other nuts and seeds, contain healthy fats and other nutrients.  When substituted for unhealthier foods, they would be expected to demonstrate improvements.  This study contributes no new information and there is only one reason to do it: marketing (as I discuss in Unsavory Truth).  The California Walnut Commission wants you to eat more walnuts.  Trade associations or producers of pecans, macadamia nuts. pistachios, almonds, peanuts, hazelnuts, and any other nut you can think of have the same goal.  Do they all have to do this kind of research?  Apparently so.

Mixed nuts, anyone?

BakeryAndSnacks.com’s Special Edition: Snackex 2019 introduces the concept of “Snackification,” which as far as I can tell is the conversion of three square meals a day to all-day snacking.  Alas, snacks have calories; the more snacks the more calories consumed.  And most are ultra-processed, the term used to describe foods that are best consumed in small amounts.   The more snacks consumed, the happier the snack-food industry will be.  Hence: the push.

• BakeryandSnack Chat Podcast: Everything you need to capitalize on the rise of snackification:  Sebastian Emig, director general of the European Snacks Association, outlines the upcoming Snackex – held every second year – that congregates the entire value savory snacks chain in one place… Listen now     
• How to capitalize on tomorrow’s snackification opportunities:  If you play in the snacking arena, you are urged to register for Snackex 2019 to fully understand the dramatically changing snacking landscape… Read
• Bell’s snack seasoning portfolio addresses consumer cravings for experimentation:  For the upcoming edition of Snackex – being held in Barcelona, Spain, on June 27 and 28 – Bell Flavors & Fragrances EMEA will be showcasing snack seasonings focused on the arising foodie culture, which addresses the current consumer crave for experimentation… Read
• Debut appearance for Brazilian peanut exporters at Snackex 2019:  Under the auspices of the Brazilian Chocolates, Peanuts and Candies Manufacturers Association (ABICAB), four Brazilian peanut producers will be showcasing their products at Snackex in Barcelona, Spain, on June 27 and 28… Read  
• Chilli & lime: Griffith Foods’ low sodium snack solutions pack a punch:  The Griffith approach – ‘To blend care and creativity to nourish the world’ – has over the past century distilled into a solid track record of innovation, new products and bespoke solutions… Read  
• The future of snacking revealed:  GoodMills Innovation has invested extensively in cereal ingredients that provide snacks with additional health benefits to enable producers to keep ahead of the rapidly changing snacking scenario… Read  
• Eggs and India: Visitors invited on a unique taste journey with ManeMane – a leading manufacturers of flavors, ingredients and fragrances – is bringing a touch of India to Snackex 2019… Read

Nico Slate.  Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating with the World in Mind.  University of Washington Press, 2019.  

Let’s start with my blurb:

Nico Slate’s fascinating account reveals Gandhi as an evidence-based, self-experimenting nutrition guru who tried one diet after another—vegan, raw, calorie restriction–in his quest for physical and spiritual health.  Above all, Slate explains Gandhi’s use of fasting as a political means to inspire India to achieve independence.

Gandhi, it seems, was a food faddist well ahead of his time.  The author says:

As his commitment to vegetarianism deepened, Gandhi grappled with whether he should also forgo eggs and milk.  Ultimately, he became convinced that he should become vegan, and renounced all animal products.  Living without eggs was relatively easy.  Doing without milk, by contrast, proved to be one of the greatest challenges of his life.  He experimented with almond milk, peanut milk, and other vegan alternatives.  In 1914, he vowed to abstain from all dairy products.  But after contracting a serious illness, he decided that his pledge did not include goat’s milk. [p. 47]

The book explains how Gandhi’s dietary choices were tightly linked to his politics.

The social potential of a raw diet led Gandhi to explore the cheapest source of sustenance for the poor: wild food…The greatest ethical challenge stemmed from the limitations of wild food as a remedy for poverty.  If the goal was to end hunger, changes in diet would be insufficient if they were not linked to changes in land ownership and the distribution of wealth—change that seemed as impossible as eating ginger nonviolently. [ p. 97]

And one more:

In a world marred by inequality, charity could only do so much.  Ultimately, Gandhi did not want to help the poor; he wanted to end poverty.  Over time, he developed a deeper understanding of the link between famine and imperialism.  “India suffers from starvation because there is dearth not of grain,” he explained, “but of purchasing power.”  The absence of purchasing power was, in turn, a direct result of the economic structures of British rule…Recognizing famine as a result of empire inspired Gandhi to demand India’s freedom. [p.127]

I was struck last week by an article in the Wall Street Journal with this intriguing title: “Food Banks Reap Unexpected Bounty From Trade Disputes.”

I thought this was an especially poignant example of food politics from a food systems perspective—looking at the big picture context of what we eat, from production to consumption to waste.

Our current trade war with China is having a series of effects:

• China has retaliated by putting import tariffs on US food products, reducing their sales in that country.
• Because we greatly overproduce food, and depend on exports to sell it, we now have a glut of products that can’t be sold—soybeans mainly, but also pork, apples, cheese, figs, peanut butter, orange juice, and others.
• The Trump Administration says it will help farmers hurt by the trade dispute by buying their products to the tune of $1.2 billion so far.
• Food banks have no idea how they can handle all of what will be dumped on them—950 million pounds on top of the 700 million pounds they usually get—because they do not have the money to process and store the donations (one organization says this costs 23 cents per pound of food).
• The food bank trade association, Feeding America, is calling for $200 to $300 million to pay for distributing the excess burden of food donations.

None of this makes sense to me.

Wouldn’t it be a whole lot better to

• Prevent or end this trade dispute?
• Ensure that food banks are unnecessary?

Last week I discussed my skepticism about the Trump Administration’s plan to replace some SNAP benefits with boxes of 100% American-grown commodities.

NPR’s The Salt is skeptical for a different reason: the experience of Native Americans with the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR).

Since 1977, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has bought nonperishable foods to distribute on Indian reservations and nearby rural areas as part of the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations. The program was designed as an alternative to SNAP for low-income Native Americans living in remote areas without easy access to grocery stores. The food boxes delivered were filled with canned, shelf-stable foods like peanut butter, canned meats and vegetables, powdered eggs and milk.

It’s consequences?  A high prevalence of overweight and type-2 diabetes on Indian researvations.  As The Salt quotes:

“There’s even a name for it – it’s called ‘commod bod.’ That’s what we call it because it makes you look a certain way when you eat these foods.”

As it happens, I was in Albuquerque last week speaking at the Native American Healthy Beverage Summit sponsored by the Notah Begay III Foundation (I got to meet Notah Begay III when he introduced my talk).

I asked everyone I could about experiences with FDPIR.  Those who grew up in households participating in the program cited several issues:

• Culturally inappropriate
• Poor quality
• Induced dependency
• Undermined traditional diets
• Part of barter/trade economy (unwanted items were bartered, traded, sold, or fed to pets)

Justin Huenemann, the CEO of the Foundation, took me to an FDPIR distribution center on a reservation near Bernalillo.

This was a big surprise.  It was clean, well stocked with fresh produce, frozen meats and fish (bison, salmon), and canned and packaged foods, all of them reasonably healthy.  Ordered items are delivered by truck to people who cannot come into the center.

The USDA has worked hard to improve the program (see fact sheets and evaluations).  Participants can choose from a long list of eligible foods.

But: the program serves only about 90,000 participants at a cost of $151 million in 2017.  Scaling it up to 40 million SNAP participants—and nearly $70 billion in benefits, seems unlikely.  Even scaling it up to the 16.7 million households promised by USDA seems iffy.

In any case FDPIR is NOT the prototype for the Harvest Box.

The prototype is the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) for low-income elderly.  This program, serving 600,000 seniors with a $236 million budget in 2017, offers a more limited selection of food options, none fresh.  It distributes the boxes through food banks and other nonprofits who then do the actual deliveries.  CSFP raises many if not all of the issues mentioned by my informants.

I still think this is a smokescreen to distract attention from budget cuts to SNAP but I was grateful for the opportunity to see the FDPIR in action.  The quality of the foods looked pretty good to me—an oasis in a area where healthy foods are not readily available.