TresSugar

The Simple Food: Can Obama Change the Way We Eat?

CitizenSugar — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:00:26 -0800

Everyone wants food reform. Parents want better school lunches. Consumer groups call to improve food-safety regulations. The Humane Society wants kinder policies towards animals. And a high-profile White House chef who cooks "delicious, local food" would be great! (Thanks Gourmet editor.)

But one person's reform is another person's tax dollar, and there aren't enough dollars to go around. As if there ever were. Even once decided, improved food policies could take years to implement.

If policy changes take years and tax dollars are tight, Ruth Reichl, the Gourmet editor, could be onto something. After all in like 2004, I read about the back-to-basics cocktail trend in Gourmet, and look where we are now! To see how Obama's personal changes could affect the way we eat, read more.

A garden in front of the White House - like a Maine-based campaign is already promoting - would be a visible commitment to eating locally. And even if a White House chef who cooked with garden ingredients only created buzz among foodies initially, it would accelerate the know-where-it-came-from movement further into the mainstream.

"It's like the hat manufacturers being furious because JFK didn't wear a hat, and suddenly everyone in America stopped wearing hats," Reichl said. "It's that simple."

Maybe it's not that simple, but could it be a simple start?

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Should Obama Make Dept. of Agriculture the Dept. of Food?

LibertySugar — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 07:40:22 -0800

In this week's New York Times, columnist Nicholas D. Kristof argued that changing the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Food would be appropriate since only two percent of Americans farm, while all of them eat. But more importantly a name change would send a powerful message of reform.

Kristof quotes Michael Pollan, the author of the Omnivore's Dilemma, who says:

“We’re subsidizing the least healthy calories in the supermarket - high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soy oil, and we’re doing very little for farmers trying to grow real food.”

Kristof goes on to explain that Democrat and Republican presidents hand the department over to lobbyists for industrial farming. He calls on Barack Obama to end the trend and make the powerful agency about improving the standards of American food and spending taxpayer dollars more efficiently.

Would you like to see the Agriculture Department work on a healthy children’s school lunch program, promoting local food sources and sustainable organic farming, instead of subsidizing industrial farmers? Or do you think that will just make everything more expensive for the consumer?

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Agency Asleep at Tractor Wheel? Rich Collect Farm Subsidies

CitizenSugar — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 09:30:30 -0800

Between 2003 and 2006 thousands of ineligible multi-millionaires cultivated farm subsidies from the US Agriculture Department. A congressional report shows that a financial firm executive, a professional sports team owner, a former executive of a technology company, and residents of Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom received thousands of dollars of taxpayer money via farm subsidies.

Officials at the Agriculture Department say they're innocent, since the congressional investigators could access IRS records off limits to them. Instead the Agriculture Department relies on a one-time self certification by those collecting that they don't make more than $2.5 million. The Agriculture Department also noted a relatively small margin of error, considering investigators found only that 2,702 (out of a total of 1.8 million) wrongly received payments during the period.

While government waste doesn't shock me, I'm curious how non-farming millionaires justified taking farm subsidies. Wait a second, considering CEOs flew to Washington in private jets to beg for taxpayer money last week, I guess none of this surprises me.

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Food Crisis? Not According to What's on a US Plate

CitizenSugar — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:45:25 -0700

There has been a lot of finger pointing about what's to blame for the global food shortage. Some claim global warming, or gobbling up certain foods for ethanol means less for eating, or just harvests coming up short. All of this may be true, but add to that the newest figures from the United States Agriculture Department from 2007 and Americans can point a fat finger at themselves too.

Ready for this? It's gut-check time: the Agriculture Department states that while one Indian eats roughly 392 lbs of grain in a year, a US citizen eats 2,306 lbs. - over five times greater. Yup. And it's not just Indians - US citizens also eat twice the amount of an EU citizen and three times the amount of someone living in China. To see the specifics, read more.

In terms of meat consumption, the US leads the world per capita by a beefy mouthful. In America it is 94 lbs per person compared to 3.5 lbs in India and 13 lbs in China. True a significant portion of Indians are vegetarian, but even in liquid milk consumption Americans use 172 lbs per year for each person while India has 79.3 lbs and China 24.2 lbs.

As for African grain and milk consumption, both are as low as one might expect given the political and economic woes that continually plague the continent. In 2007, foodgrain consumption was 357 lbs per year for each person and as for meat or milk products, the figures were too insignificant to count.

What factors are behind the discrepancies in these numbers? Do US eaters have an obligation to cut down on their chowing down? Should the US government step in to help equalize what's on the global menu?

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Study to Examine If Climate Change Makes Fall Foliage, Leaf

CitizenSugar — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 03:00:59 -0700

Now that it's officially Fall, the announcement of this new study seems prudent, timely, and worth a trip to New England. Scientists at the University of Vermont have a three-year, $45,000 grant from the Department of Agriculture to study the effects of climate change on the famous Fall foliage. It's not just a tree-hugging (or leaf-loving) move. Fall leaves, especially in the peak season of late-September to early-October, bring $364 million in tourism dollars to the state. Money, it seems, does grow on trees.

One researcher says, "It is getting warmer, and people want to know how that's going to affect this big process that's so important to us." Because decreasing day length causes chlorophyll to break down making the red shine through, scientists want to see the true effect of cold nights and warm days on the leaves - especially if the overall temperature of both rises.

As for the leaves now? "It's always great. . . it can peak in different places at the same time so you just drive around and you hit all these different pockets of the landscape, so it's always fabulous."

View 5 Photos ›

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