www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzQLjHHzHlE

Just Say No To Junk Food

From plastic toy tie-ins to cereal commercials during Saturday morning cartoons, big food companies are busy marketing junk food to kids. As Dr. Nadine Burke warns, “this has huge health implications.” What are you doing to help your children move from junk food to good food? Join the conversation on our Facebook page.

As parents and teachers, we can teach children how to evaluate media messages and educate them to make healthier food choices. Here a few suggestions:

• Teach media literacy.  According to Common Sense Media, kids who watch more TV than their peers during middle and high school years have been shown to follow less healthy diets five years later. Similarly, children ages 7 to 11 who watched a half-hour cartoon that included food commercials ate 45 percent more snack food while watching the show than children who watched the same cartoon with non-food commercials. Download the Nourish Curriculum Guide to find the interactive activity “Analyzing Food Ads” which allows students to explore first-hand how marketing techniques influence what they eat.
• Nix the Twix.  Introduce healthy alternatives at school. Organize school functions and celebrations that are free of junk food and soda. Serve real foods such as fruit, nuts and veggies, and serve water instead of juice. For your next fundraiser, hold a healthy snack sale instead of a bake sale. Find culinary inspiration for healthy treats at DoSomething.org.
• Shop better. In this video from Nourish Short Films, food journalist Michael Pollan shows how to navigate the grocery store and fill your cart with whole, fresh foods. Hint: shop the corners of the market, avoiding the center aisles where the highly processed junk food tends to resides.
• Get cooking. Mother and “Lunch Wars” author Amy Kalafa recommends that families commit to eating at least one home-cooked, wholesome meal a week and involve the whole family in the process, from shopping to cleanup. Another suggestion? Encourage your children to make their own lunches. Kids are less apt to be swayed by the junk food options around them if they take pride in the meals they’ve prepared themselves. Discover more tips in Cooking Together.

Additional Resources

• Common Sense Media: Learn ways to mitigate junk food messaging on TV, movies, and video games
• Parents Taking Action: Read advice from Amy Kalafa on how to improve the food in your school cafeteria
• Alliance for a Healthier Generation: Get tips to empower children to make healthy lifestyle choices
• Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution: Join his national campaign to improve school food

Dr. Hesterman’s new book, Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All, describes our current food system, how it is no longer serving us, and how we can all play our part in changing it for the better.

Discover more perspectives on creating a better food system in Dr. Hesterman’s Fair Food and Anna Lappé’s Be the Difference.

How can we encourage people to think more systemically when it comes to food issues?

Oran Hesterman: With most large systems, such as education and energy, we must rely primarily if not solely on our policy makers and industry leaders to act on our behalf. We can write letters, attend meetings, and try to make our voices heard on local and national levels, but in the long run, there is little that one individual, family, or neighborhood can do to fix the broken system.

With the food system we can have more impact. We can take responsibility for fixing it both through individual decisions and through collective action. As individuals we can make different choices about what we purchase and what we eat. We can choose to support a more local and sustainable agriculture and can decide to eat in a way that keeps us healthier. We can join with other concerned individuals to demand different food at our children’s school cafeteria and at our college food service. We can plant backyard and community gardens. We can shop at farmers markets.

All of these individual actions can and will make a difference in our own lives and in the food system, but they alone will not produce the kind of change we need. We also need our policy makers and industry leaders to work toward a redesigned food system, one that provides safe, healthy, and nutritious food to all our residents in a manner that protects our natural resources for future generations. As is the case with healthcare, energy, and the environment, if we’re going to solve the food problem we need to look at bigger, systems-level solutions.

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvIcUdBzyI0

In this coming year, how do you plan to nourish yourself, your family, your school, and your community? Join the conversation on Facebook.

Get Started Today

Nothing kick starts action like a New Year’s resolution. Here are a few ways that parents, educators, and good food advocates can be a catalyst for meaningful change.

• Get in the kitchen. The best way to know what is and isn’t going into your food is to cook it yourself. You don’t have to be an expert chef to make your own healthy, nutritious meals. Find inspiration and recipes to help get cooking.
• Share a meal together. The simple act of preparing a home-cooked meal for yourself and your family produces immediate benefit. Laurie David, author of The Family Dinner, explains why family meals are essential for growth and development. Learn more about why meal time matters and ways to make cooking fun and healthy.
• Start a conversation at school. If you’re an educator, engage your students in an inquiry about food, health, and sustainability. Advocate for your school to adopt the Nourish curriculum (a free resource) to increase food literacy. Harness the power of visual storytelling by screening the Nourish films in class or for the whole school. Take inspiration from other educators by reading Nourish in Action stories.
• Create community. Community is expressed in the bonds that connect us. Consider ways to create community and be of service to your community. Organize a screening or community conversation in concert with local non-profits, a library, or your church. Volunteer at a local food bank or join a produce gleaning team. And remember to thank the people who grow, cook, and serve us nourishing food.

We want to hear what you’re doing. Share your activities, big or small, with the Nourish community and on our Facebook page.

Sam is the second-generation owner of San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Market, a neighborhood grocery store specializing in sustainable and locally produced products. He also is the co-author of Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food: A Grocer’s Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food.

Learn more in Shopping Wisely and Michael Pollan’s Supermarket Secrets.

What is good food?

Sam Mogannam: Good food first and foremost has to taste good. Food often tastes better when it’s in season, so seasonality is among the criteria for good food. Also, the less distance food has to travel, the fresher it is, so local is important. Local food also helps support local economies and helps preserve farmland and food culture.

I also consider fresh food to be better than processed foods. Good food should make us feel good, not make us sick. Two-thirds of our adult population is obese, and that is currently costing us over $125 billion annually. Most of that expense could be prevented through a better diet. We need to take back control of our food system, and we need to educate people, so we can reverse this trend. We need to spend more time at home cooking, teaching our kids how to cook, and sitting at a table together and sharing a meal.

What questions should we be asking of people who make and sell food?

Sam Mogannam: Three simple questions can get you to the root of whether food is good or not:

1. Where was it grown? It is amazing how little or generic the information available to us is. The USDA requires Country of Origin Labeling, so “USA” is all a sign needs to state (the WTO is currently trying to lobby the USDA to repeal this law, so no labeling would be required). The more precise the info, the more transparency there is about where the food came from.
2. How was it grown? Ask your grocer about chemical or synthetic inputs such as pesticides, fertilizers, hormones, and antibiotics. If their answer is “I don’t know,” don’t buy it.
3. Who grew it? Does the retailer know what farm or ranch it came from? This is less critical if you can get good answers to the first two questions, but your retailer’s answer will tell you something about their desire to know.

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What is good food?

Sam Mogannam: Good food first and foremost has to taste good. Food often tastes better when it’s in season, so seasonality is among the criteria for good food. Also, the less distance food has to travel, the fresher it is, so local is important. Local food also helps support local economies and helps preserve farmland and food culture.

I also consider fresh food to be better than processed foods. Good food should make us feel good, not make us sick. Two-thirds of our adult population is obese, and that is currently costing us over $125 billion annually. Most of that expense could be prevented through a better diet. We need to take back control of our food system, and we need to educate people, so we can reverse this trend. We need to spend more time at home cooking, teaching our kids how to cook, and sitting at a table together and sharing a meal.

What questions should we be asking of people who make and sell food?

Sam Mogannam: Three simple questions can get you to the root of whether food is good or not:

1. Where was it grown? It is amazing how little or generic the information available to us is. The USDA requires Country of Origin Labeling, so “USA” is all a sign needs to state (the WTO is currently trying to lobby the USDA to repeal this law, so no labeling would be required). The more precise the info, the more transparency there is about where the food came from.
2. How was it grown? Ask your grocer about chemical or synthetic inputs such as pesticides, fertilizers, hormones, and antibiotics. If their answer is “I don’t know,” don’t buy it.
3. Who grew it? Does the retailer know what farm or ranch it came from? This is less critical if you can get good answers to the first two questions, but your retailer’s answer will tell you something about their desire to know.

How can grocers play a part in educating eaters about good food?

Sam Mogannam: Education is a critical part of daily life at Bi-Rite Market. I know from our experience that by conducting staff tastings and professional development, creating informative signage, encouraging conversations with guests, and always sampling, experimenting with, and introducing new foods, grocers can affect change in their community.

How can neighborhood grocery stores help create community around food?

Sam Mogannam: Grocery stores are anchors. Supermarkets are generally the first tenant secured in shopping centers because other businesses rely on the foot traffic they generate. When we took over Bi-Rite in 1997, there were about 40 jobs on our block. Now there are over 400. We also support over 500 vendors and countless nonprofits and schools in our community.

I love how close our staff gets to our guests. We have conversations and share stories. We share food with them all day long. If this isn’t creating community in a meaningful way, I don’t know what is.

What role do grocery stores play in creating a more sustainable, equitable food system?

Sam Mogannam: Grocers need to play a more active role in educating consumers, not enticing them to buy more than they need. Fresh foods need to take center stage, and we need to provide consumers with the information to prepare a decent meal. Grocers should look at food as a means of feeding a population, not just as some product they buy, mark up, and sell for a profit.

I believe that the role of a grocer is to be a good feeder. As a grocer, you need to be conscious of the food you are selling to your community. You can stock more and better quality fresh food from small local producers. That way, instead of our current system in which major chains compete over the price of the same mass-produced products, we could create a new system in which each market has a product line reflective of its location. As a result, the prices would reflect the true cost of food, and the supply of food would correlate with the demand of a particular market.

What does the food movement mean to you?

Sam Mogannam: The food movement is about taking back control of where our food comes from and celebrating the power to feed ourselves and our community good food. A handful of companies are responsible for most of the food we eat. It should not be this way. We should control the food we eat. Over 300 farmers are leaving their land every week because they aren’t making ends meet. Our environment is screwed up, and industrial food production is a major cause. We are too distant to understand where our food comes from, how it is grown, and how to cook it.

Food is a basic human need. In order to function and thrive, we need to eat well and feed each other well. We can’t do it unless we recognize and understand what good food is.

About Sam Mogannam

Sam Mogannam is the second-generation owner of Bi-Rite Market, San Francisco’s neighborhood grocery store specializing in sustainable and locally produced products. After working in the restaurant industry for a number of years, Sam decided to return to his family’s business, reopening Bi-Rite in the space his father and uncle had operated since 1964. He is also the founder of 18 Reasons, a nonprofit event and education space. He is the co-author of Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food: A Grocer’s Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food.

Curt Ellis is executive director of FoodCorps and founder of the Brooklyn-based documentary and advocacy company Wicked Delicate. He co-created the documentaries King Corn and Big River, and and served as a Food and Community Fellow with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Discover more perspectives on engaging youth in Bryant Terry’s Youth Leading Change and Alice Waters’ Edible Education.

What is FoodCorps?

Curt Ellis: FoodCorps is a nonprofit organization I started less than a year ago with six collaborators from across the food movement. What we’re trying to do is match a problem––the awful epidemic of childhood obesity––with a powerful solution: the wave of young leaders who are eager to get their hands dirty in careers in food and agriculture.

The centerpiece of our work is an AmeriCorps public service program––essentially a Teach for America for school food. Our first class of 50 twenty-somethings is in the field now, spending a year of paid public service in high-obesity, limited-resource schools. They’re teaching kids about healthy food and where it comes from, giving them hands-on opportunities to grow and cook and taste fresh vegetables through school gardens, and helping school cafeterias shift their supply chains to local farmers. They’re an incredibly inspiring group of people, and they’re making schools something they haven’t been in a long time: places where healthy food is celebrated and served.

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The potential to improve our current food policy is currently being challenged by a select group of Senate and House agriculture committees who propose $23 billion in cuts to federal spending on some of the most important programs related to nutrition and the future of small-scale, local, and organic farming. The 2012 Farm Bill could be rewritten as early as November 23. It’s vital that these issues be debated in a public forum, not behind closed doors.

Take Action Today

There is still time to participate in the fight for reform that supports new farmers, provides infrastructure for regional and local food development, and protects our health and precious land.

Here are some ways you can get involved in influencing the 2012 Farm Bill:

• Call. Take 30 seconds to call leaders of the House and Senate ag committees and say NO to the “Secret Farm Bill.” Over 27,000 people have done so already using the Food Democracy Now call script. You can also support the development of local and regional farms, farmers, and retail markets by asking your two senators and your representative to co-sponsor the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act.
• Meet. To date, there are over 7,000 farmers markets nationwide. Get to know your local farmers. Listen to their stories. Ask them questions about the Farm Bill. The more you understand about the challenges that small-scale farmers face, the larger your role can be in supporting their farms and marketplaces.
• Explore. Find out about programs intended for inclusion in the 2012 Farm Bill. Learn about the new Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act, which supports novice farmers by creating jobs, affordable farmland, and farmer training programs. Or read about the pre-existing Wetlands Reserve Program, which has improved watershed health and secured protection and restoration for 11,000 private landowners on 2.3 million acres of land over the past 20 years.
• Review. Learn a brief history of the Farm Bill to understand key programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which currently represents more than two-thirds of the Farm Bill funding and faces multibillion-dollar cuts.

The Farm Bill sets the rules for how food is produced and consumed in America. Food journalist Michael Pollan explains why everyone should care about this important legislation. Read more here.

Kate Adamick, JD, is a nationally recognized expert in food systems who combines her skills as a both a lawyer and a professional chef to integrate operational changes, school-based programming, and public-private partnerships to implement, reinforce and support the healthful transformation of school meals programs to scratch-cooked meals.

Learn more in Michael Pollan’s School Lunch, Ann Cooper’s Healthy School Food, and Amy Kalafa’s Parents Taking Action.

What’s the relationship between the cafeteria and the classroom?

Kate Adamick: Sadly, the relationship between the cafeteria and the classroom is often nonexistent. All too frequently, school administrators appear to have forgotten that students don’t stop learning just because it’s lunchtime. At Cook for America, we deliberately call the school food service workers Lunch Teachers as a reminder to everyone that what students are fed at school teaches them how to think about food, what to think of as food, and how to behave while consuming it—all lessons that they will carry with them for the remainder of their lives.

What challenges do food service workers face in providing healthy, from-scratch meals?

Kate Adamick: Lunch Teachers, like the rest of us, are victims of a widespread, corporate-sponsored misinformation campaign designed to convince us that school food reform is too expensive, that kids won’t eat real food, and that preparing meals using raw meat products is dangerous. In reality, none of these perceived challenges turn out to be actual obstacles for most school districts.

One of the genuine challenges, however, is that Lunch Teachers have become easy and obvious scapegoats for the high rates of childhood obesity. When the people who are responsible for feeding our children feel blamed rather than empowered, the path to school food reform can be a long one. The national obesity crisis and the poor quality of the average school meal are merely symptoms of America’s broken food system, the myriad causes of which include campaign finance laws, farm subsidies favoring corporate agriculture, and ubiquitous marketing campaigns targeting children. Simply blaming Lunch Teachers for those greater societal maladies will not improve the quality of school food or the health of our children.

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We’re proud to support educators in opening conversations about good food and catalyzing meaningful change. How are you celebrating Food Day? Share your activities with the Nourish community.

Here are a few ways that communities and schools are using Nourish to enrich their Food Day activities:

• In Natchitoches, Louisiana, NSU Middle Lab School students will watch Nourish Short Films and engage in food-related activities. Northwestern State University Education, Health & Human Performance, and Nutrition majors will support teachers in educating students about better food choices. Cane River Green Market is providing fresh produce samples, and students will take home health information to share with their families.
• In Klickitat County, Washington, the Healthy People Alliance is organizing series of Food Day Harvest Exchanges. Each event will include a Nourish screening, information tables, guest speakers, and local food producers.
• At Clemson University, South Carolina, Healthy Campus, Slow Food, and Students for Environmental Action are offering games, complimentary food from local farmers, educational booths, and a Nourish screening.
• In Tallahassee, Florida, the Brogan Museum is celebrating Food Day with a free screening of Nourish Short Films, educational activities, and food giveaways.
• In San Diego, California, Healthy Works hosted a farmers market, health and nutrition information tables, and a free outdoor screening of Nourish, followed by a panel discussion on local food and nutrition.
• In Dallas, Texas, Net Impact DFW, SlowMoney DFW, and CitySquare held a Nourish screening at the KERA Community Room. Afterward, they held a discussion featuring leaders from Dallas’s growing local food community. KERA Public Media is airing Nourish as part of their Food Day programming.

Honoring good food is a year-round effort that doesn’t end with Food Day. Plan an event or activity in your community, school, or home.

Discover more ideas for taking action in Be the Difference.