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[...] Good Food Shouldn’t Be a Mommy War–It Should be a Focus of Mommy … [...]

I totally agree with you – but I think the issue is what constitutes healthy food. I used to work in a grocery store, where I would watch the women on government subsidies complain that they were being “forced” to spend their WIC checks on cheese, eggs, et al.

Coming from a socialist, help-the-poor background, it opened my eyes to the fact that people don’t just need money to buy good food. They need an education in nutrition to make it happen. And I say this as a mom who is loathe to buy into “organic.” I make my choices instead in the produce aisle, in avoiding the center aisles of the grocery store (be it Whole Foods or Wal-Mart). But the fact is, I make choices.

Shannon, it was our SIXTH anniversary yesterday too!

100% agreed, Jeanne. I say, teach nutrition in grade school and high school health classes. That would cost just about nothing. But some schools are also doing slightly more costly (usually charity or community-funded) gardening and cooking programs where the kids grow and prepare and serve food to their classmates. It probably wouldn’t cost a fortune to implement those programs more widely, too.

Elizabeth–another matter of education, more than anything. Helping people adjust to different ways of eating. I know cutting meat in our diets by about 99% has made it possible for us to compromise less on food.

Not only are corn syrup and overly processed stuff subsidized, but the U.S. Dept of AGRICULTURE spends billions of dollars on propaganda that’s essentially advertisements. Most Americans think that the USDA is the kind of organization that the American Dietetic Association is — an organization that promotes healthy eating based on research. And I can see where people get that idea, since the USDA stuff is all over the place in schools and hospitals. But all it really is is advertisements for meat and dairy products, along with promoting the myth that cheap processed stuff is fine, because it satisfies their pyramid.

At my job we recently got brochures and training materials from WIC of all places that were absolutely horrible. The materials assumed that all people are eating too many calories and need to reduce their caloric intake. There were instructions to drink diet soda instead of juice. Seriously. And to avoid any condiments with calories or fat. No mention of how we need nutrients, just a thick colorful booklet telling us to eat chemicals instead of food so we can lose weight. What.

Two years ago, I lost a hundred and five pounds in ten months. A hundred and twenty-five pounds in a year. But I’m retired, as I was then. I had time to research the good food solutions, and to understand them well enough to make good food choices. I hope.
I know a woman who is grossly overweight; blames it on diabetes. But watching her eat is an exercise in self defeating errors. She has a master’s degree, and taught at college for several years, but doesn’t have3 the time to study and understgand the difference between protiens and carbohydrates.
I can’t tell her. We’re not close. And if I did, wouldn’t it be a little bit like rubbing it in? I did mine. Why can’t you?

I can’t provide a link for that, as I read it in a book. It’s “Healing Foods” by Michael Murray.

Great piece, Shannon and I am hoping to see Food inc soon (and many congrats on your anniversary!) I live in a quasi food desert – we don’t have grocery stores, just corner stores with overpriced junk and a Food Lion (admittedly that’s the only place I can find my Omega 3 enhanced peanut butter). We JUST got a local indep store w/in walking distance after waiting 3 years – an organic smorgasboard. Alas, I don’t cook and so often make poor personal choices (I am open to being stuffed with sauteed kale but I won’t do it myself). There are some local farmers that set up shop on street corners these days to try and provide veggies and fruits as an alternative. Still so much more work needs to be done.

Happy anniversary, Shannon.

With all due respect (and I respect you enormously, even if my comments don’t always reflect that), I still think that the whole food-quality-crisis thing is overblown. The vast majority of people in this county have no idea how lucky we are to have access to the food that we take for granted. Even going back a mere century or two, our ancestors would be flabbergasted by the variety, availability, and yes… safety of our food. We’ve gotten so caught up in nit-picking over every little thing that we’ve lost sight of the fact that compared to the vast majority of the world and the entire scope of human history, we eat very, very well. Even those of us who shop at Wal-mart rather than Whole Foods.

I don’t argue that things could be better… sure, what couldn’t? But damn. I spent a summer working in Guatemala and it changed my entire outlook. You’d never, ever hear a normal person there brag that they’d cut the cable or their clothing budget before slicing into their food money because almost everything they made went towards housing and keeping food on the table. And we’re not talking about all-organic farm-fresh etc, we’re talking about just FOOD.

So what if we do all switch to a SOLE national diet, all organic and local and to hell with the subsidies? Well, this country is largely responsible for feeding our vastly over-populated world. If our food output were to drop in favor of SOLE standards, we couldn’t feed the developing world along with our own population. We’d be looking at mass starvation and suffering on a scale unimaginable to most of us who spend our days in air-conditioned homes and have the luxury of picking between Wal-Mart and Whole Foods for our shopping.

I’m not arguing with anything that you said, Shannon. I just want to point out that we’re talking from a place of enormous privilege and that our food-production industry is both complex and fragile. If it falls apart (for any reason), billions of innocents will suffer.

I’ll have to watch the film once it comes out on DVD. I’m sure that’s true about the corporate food industry; you’ll never hear me championing them, but it’s also important to remember just how *fragile* the entire food production system is and who will suffer the most if it’s disrupted.

First, I’d like to say that I find this conversation extremely interesting. Admittedly, food quality and safety is not my expertise, and I always wonder if buying organic is a good thing, or is it just another label used by agri-business to get us to buy more expensive stuff.

I do wonder about Shana’s comment, looking forward to the day that Americans can have access to safe food. But don’t we have access to that now? I do agree that people in poor neighborhoods often do not have access to even a conventional supermarket, and that is a huge problem. However, I never thought of our food as being particularly unsafe.

I have been in the medical business, and I have found that, as things get safer due to more regulation, people get the idea that things are less safe. For example, we have more rules and more post-market surveillance required than before, so we can catch problems where we would not have in the past. Because of this, we are more aware of the problems and therefore believe the problems are getting worse. (This is why you often hear people say that herbal supplements are safer than OTC or prescription drugs – there is little regulation on herbal supplements, so it is hard to know if there is a problem.) I often wonder if this is the case with our food supply – we hear more about contamination, so we think it is getting worse, but is it really?

Laura, what I meant by safe food is the fact that many regulations have been ignored or repealed over the years because of large corporations just as Shannon pointed out. I am the last person that would take herbal supplements. I am up to date with all my vaccinations (except tetanus) and I am twenty eight. Things are certainly better than they were say eighty years ago, but not thirty years ago. And as someone that has personally experienced grocery shopping in a low income community, I can comfortably say that I can see why many families bypass the “fresh” fruits and vegetables and stick with the packaged stuff. Hell half the chicken in that grocery had obviously expired (something that was a problem in my current neighborhood until just a few years ago). And a lot of the contamination is a result of one of two companies having a monopoly on the processing of specific things. Look at the whole thing with peanuts recently. All of that was caused by one company. On top of all of that there have been the diminishing conditions farm workers have been under that are getting worse and worse despite so-called regulations. Hell, look at China. That country has wonderful regultions as far as how people should be treated and how food should be handled. But it is all worth nothing since it is barely ever enforced and we are heading in that direction.

eeka – how apalling. My sister in law recently gave birth and is on WIC and they seem to be a little more sane around these parts. One of the farmer’s markets in my neighborhood accepts WIC stamps, and the entire market started a program to accept food stamps so that is a nice turn of events, although 5 dollar pints of strawberries are tougher to swallow.

Happy Anniversary Shannon!
I really enjoy reading your posts and discussion when I have the time. This one especially is appreciated as it’s a constant struggle to eat right, and I’m sure that with children it will be even more challenging. I do not have anything intelligent to add, but just wanted to voice my appreciation for the issues you frequently bring up in your posts.

Jessica, WIC does have a nationwide program for shopping at farmer’s markets. But they also do a lot of backwards stuff nationwide; that “nutrition” curriculum is federal, and people from the various WIC offices are doing outreach to teach faculty at Early Intervention and Head Start about their backwards nutrition practices. Oh, and they also have some weird guidelines for the actual program like allowing processed American cheese food, but not any natural antibiotic-free cheeses and no soy cheese. All the info I can find suggests that the program has caved in in response to conservatives complaining that the government better not be paying for any of them fancy foods for low-income people, hence not allowing many natural foods even when the prices are similar.

organic farms will be the trend of the future coz we don’t like artificial stuffs inside our body:”*