Food Day 2011

By Shannon Mouton

Today was the first annual Food Day. It was a day to bring attention to our need for "for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way." There were any number of ways you could have participated in Food Day, what did you do?

Did you attend a Food Day event?
Did you write a blog post about it?
Did you tweet about it?
Did you like it?
Did you in any way, shape or form show the slightest bit of regard for this day and what it means?

There is nothing more important than the food you eat and water you drink because without them, you will die. This is a fact, not an exaggeration or an overstatement. You can survive without shelter, you can live without a job and you most certainly can even thrive without a car; however, without f-o-o-d, nothing else matters.

As people around the world are taking to the streets to Occupy this and that place, why not OccupyYourKitchen and demand affordable, sustainable and healthy food. If you don't, who will?

Diversity: How Are Food Deserts Really Affecting Us?

Photo caption: Map showing percentage of households throughout the nation currently living in a food desert.

Diversity: How Are Food Deserts Really Affecting Us?

By: Tamara Braunstein

If you’re following our blog, you know that this week we’re doing a series to prepare for National Food Day, which is next Monday. According to the website, the movement is designed to “push for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way.” To sponsors and supporters this includes advocating for “food labeling, better nutrition, and safer food,” which sound like great ideas anybody can get behind.

But what good does all of that do if access to those labeled, nutritious and safe foods doesn’t improve?

The dilemma of food deserts isn’t new, but with First Lady Michelle Obama shining the spotlight on gaps in communities’ access to healthy food – access meaning “the food is available and affordable” – the discussion is becoming a hot topic.

Much of the conversation surrounding food deserts involves their distribution and effect. While some organizations, like the National Association of Convenience Stores, challenge the view that food deserts significantly affect health and nutrition in a surrounding area, others, like the US Department of Agriculture, have found that 3.2 percent of all US households live between ½ and 1 mile from a supermarket without access to a vehicle. In low income urban areas, that figure jumps to 22 percent. In a city like DC, where our nation’s outrageous socio-economic gaps are starkly illustrated across racial lines, the issue transcends health and food.  

Once you set foot in a grocery store, what food you buy is ultimately your decision. You choose whether to eat natural, healthy food or sugary, processed food. But if getting to a grocery store is in and of itself a daunting endeavor, how likely are you to care whether the food you buy is labeled or produced “safely”?

Food for Thought... and Wellness

Food for Thought... and Wellness

By: Pam Taylor

More than 150 nation’s celebrated World Food Day this week—a good thing.  However, the ongoing dialogue about food, hunger and production is fraught with emotion and opinion and arguably even some good “science.”

See: (http://www.fooddialogues.com/2011/10/14/come-to-the-table-on-world-food-day-and-food-day-our-values-and-our-perspective).

Of course, I totally get it.  We are constantly bombarded with mixed messages about what foods are healthy and/or good for us.  Add to the dialogue, debate over how food is grown or prepared.  Let’s get back to basics and take a look at Natures Pharmacy, I believe the best cure for what ails us—and her foods taste great, too!

A sliced carrot looks like an eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines actually mirror the human eye; and, yes, science has documented how carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.

A tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart has four chambers and is red. All of the research shows tomatoes are loaded with lycopine and are indeed pure heart and blood food.

Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and has profound heart and blood vitalizing properties.

A walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums.  Even the wrinkles or folds look like the neo-cortex. We now know walnuts help develop more than three (3) dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.  Celery, bok choy, rhubarb resemble bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. And like bones, which are comprised of 23 percent sodium, these foods are 23 percent sodium.

Avocados, eggplant and pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female—and they look just like these organs. Today's research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight, and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this?  It takes exactly nine (9) months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit.

Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow.  Figs increase the mobility of male sperm and increase the numbers of sperm as well as to overcome male sterility.

Sweet potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.  Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries.  Oranges, grapefruits, and other citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

Onions look like the body's cells. Research shows onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells. They even produce tears, which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.

Of course, I know there will always be debate over food, including whether we are or are not what we eat.  But I think we can all agree—Mother Nature got it right!

Confessions of a Foodie: We Are Not What We Eat

Confessions of a Foodie:
We Are Not What We Eat

By: Gwen McKinney

When Team McKinney decided we’d dive into National Food Day by raising our voices in the blogosphere, I immediately proclaimed, “I’m in!”

As an evangelical member of the Weight Watchers (WW) Lifetime circle, I have forged a relationship with food that is a lifeline to good health, a relatively streamlined body and joy. Food, like weight management, is a journey. It requires a commitment first and foremost to self. You must honestly zero in on why you eat, how you eat and what you eat. The journey need not be punctuated with denial “diets” and punitive food plans that ebb and flow as the scales tilt north. You can eat well, eat often and eat deliciously even as you drop pounds.

The multisensory passion of good eating gives me something to look forward to from one meal to the next. The Wednesday Food Section of the Washington Post is among my “must reads.” New recipes are cherished treasures. I collect them like jewels. And as a frequent flyer on Epicurious.com, there are always more ways to prepare my favorite foods than I have time to create or eat. The extravaganza of planning, shopping and preparing for a dinner party is almost as fun as the guests. Food is my friend, my salvation and an adventure with each gastronomic foray!

But back to Weight Watchers. It works with unparallel success. This is not an ad for WW. National Poster Child Jennifer Hudson is doing that just fine without me. In fact, she recently opened a weight loss center in Chicago that is primarily targeted to African American women. That makes the point about our community’s need to reassess its relationship with food.

Since Weight Watchers rolled out its phenomenally successful ad campaign featuring the sleek, sexy and seventy-pounds-lighter Hudson, new legions of wannabe smaller Black women have been stepping up to WW scales. My weekly WW meetings have been transformed from sparsely attended motivational lectures into standing room only Amen sessions. Sadly, if the stats prove true, the vast majority of those new recruits will fall off the wagon, trading sustainability for the old and easy way out. Weight management is not just about the scales. The centerpiece is behavioral change. And that is a bitch.

Role model or marketing scheme?

Hudson’s phenomenal reach to African American women surfaces a swelling epidemic. African American women of all ages and economic groups suffer the highest rate of obesity compared to any other demographic. Four out of five of us are considered overweight or obese. With that distinction comes all the evil ills: heart disease, diabetes, cancer and premature death.

Overweight women raise overweight children. The challenge of childhood obesity has become a national state of emergency. Our client, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, embracing the issue as a health equity initiative, has targeted 2015 to reverse the epidemic.

The notion of being “big boned” or voluptuously healthy in line with our African roots have long served as a rationalization for the status quo. Culture, genetics and glandular conditions are not the culprits. Admittedly, as a forthright foodie who shed four dress sizes over a 14-month period, I will always struggle with weight management. Food and caloric intake are almost incidental to the challenge. At the core of a slender body is affirmation of me. I am not what I eat. I am what I am determined to be.

I end here with the verb to be. We are our own best solution if we affirm we can BE. Counsel for good health care? More appropriately, it is a clarion call for Self-Care. Drawing from a campaign that McKinney & Associates launched for the California Department of Public Health, I ask every African American woman to embrace food as a key to life. But command your body as your temple to BE Well.

BEcause we’re worth it.

Food Day Series: What’s in a Name? Get Educated About Food

What’s in a Name? Get Educated About Food

By: Nicole Hayes

What’s in a bag? What’s in a box? It’s a surprise, but not a gift. Most bagged, boxed, canned and pre-packaged foods contain “surprises”—called additives.  They are names you can’t pronounce and whose affects can harm our bodies. For example, you’re watching your sugar intake but overlook an ingredient known as maltodextrin,(malto who??) a sugar derivative, a sweetner—and a carb alternative. Maltodextrin is found in most processed foods (and for those who work out), the additive is in many meal replacement and exercise performance products. Yikes! You’re trying to avoid one enemy (sugar) but unknowingly invite another (maltodextrin). To make matters worse, “refined sugar” hides under 30 or more names ending in “malt, “syrup” or “-ose.” Studies have shown that high a intake of sugar contributes to high blood sugar levels in the body, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other issues. Sodium is another culprit whose levels in canned, frozen and processed foods exceed ten times or more of our body’s daily requirements. Monosodium glutamate (MSG), goes by many other names and is typically used as a flavor enhancer—but also considered an excitotoxin, upsetting and disturbing the nervous system.

Companies who prepare these foods will continue producing such items to satisfy consumer demand. Our busy lives and a desire to eat inexpensively drives the need for such foods. But our bodies are getting weary and worn ahead of their time, battered by a misunderstanding of how to preserve our health. Our bodies were highly designed to perform well and beyond what we’re witnessing today. Fortunately, many people are making the switch by cooking meals from scratch, eating what nature grows and not what science manufactures. Our access to knowledge is a keystroke away if we choose to accept accountability and responsibility for what we consume. Either the food you’re eating is real or it isn’t. Get educated.

Food Day: All Myths are not Created Equal

All Myths are not Created Equal

By Llenda Jackson-Leslie

Lately, there’s been a contrarian movement afoot arguing that the government shouldn’t be encouraging people to eat better and live healthier lives… seems that some believe government support for better nutrition leads straight to socialism. Others argue that those suffering from poor nutrition have only themselves to blame. Five Myths about Healthy Eating by Katherine Mangu-Ward printed in Sunday’s Washington Post falls in the last category, the author insists that food deserts aren’t all that barren. She claims that 93 % of the people living in a food desert have access to a car. Read the article here . I can’t refute her claims about access to a car, so I guess the many seniors I  regularly saw walking, catching the bus or a cab, and traveling by wheelchair to the Brookland Giant must have misplaced their keys.

Now I have lived in a couple of food deserts, most recently in northeast Washington, D.C.  While there was not one sit down restaurant within miles—actually within the whole ward, you couldn’t leave the house without stumbling over a Popeye’s Chicken franchise. They were as ubiquitous as Starbucks in other neighborhoods. Is Mangu-Ward seriously suggesting that if every corner had a fruit stand instead of a Popeye’s Chicken that people in that neighborhood would still be eating fast food at the same rate.

She goes on to add that people are hard-wired to like fat, sugar and salt so that the processed food companies who advertise so heavily can’t be blamed for our predilection for unhealthy food.

Now I’m the last person to suggest that we’re all robots simply doing what television advertising tells us to do—but to suggest that people are impervious to the powerful influences of our 24/7 television internet culture seems more far-fetched than the notion of food deserts. While people are ultimately responsible for the choices we make. Sometimes the choices we’re presented with aren’t so great. And people who are raising children, caring for aging parents and working overtime may find driving 2-5 miles to a grocery store to cook from scratch too be overwhelming. Taking a daily walk or run in an unsafe neighborhood just may not be a good health choice. The point in trying to eliminate food deserts and increase opportunities for exercise isn’t that people will always make better choices, but to make better choices easier to make. It took several generations for us to become an obese nation and it may take several more to reverse the trend.

As for debunking food myths, here are some that Mangu-Ward could tackle. Why not take on the myths about drinking eight glasses of milk, ingesting massive doses of vitamins, drinking something from a can that will magically turn us slim or into a super-athlete or the idea that bottled water is better for us than tap water.

Some online resources for getting fit are here and resources for healthy eating are here.

Smoke and mirrors... Or is Wal-Mart serious about a new corporate image?

Smoke and mirrors...  Or is Wal-Mart serious about a new corporate image?

One can only hope that first lady Michelle Obama’s praise of Wal-Mart’s healthy foods campaign, announced yesterday at a Washington, DC-based community center, is not misconstrued nor lets the retail giant off the hook for past transgressions.  The Arkansas-based corporation’s history of opposing workers’ right to unionize, paying low wages and not offering benefits are still major concerns, and little has been done or said by the corporation to suggest a significant shift in these practices.  No one denies that the chain’s push to provide healthy and affordable foods in underserved communities is a step in the right direction.  But we still need evidence that Wal-Mart is cleaning up its anti-worker business practices along with its growing expansion into inner-city neighborhoods.

Highlighted Clip for Friday, January 20, 2011:

White House support of Wal-Mart food initiative shows new tone toward retailer

Perry Bacon Jr. and Nia-Malika Henderson

Four years ago, leading Democrats were virtually at war with Wal-Mart.