Inspiration for the weekend

Why food waste matters, and how to prevent it in your kitchen.

Zucchini fritters recipe. Add some feta and they're so delicious!

Apparently, other countries are catching up to the U.S. when it comes to obesity and sedentary lifestyles. This tool call "Where are you on the global fat scale?" compares your BMI to people across the world. Pretty interesting.

It's finally tomato season! Here's a summer side salad recipe that I found in a random cookbook I was looking through at the store:

• 1 cups fresh pineapple chunks
• 2 cups cherry tomatoes, cut in half
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 T red wine vinegar
• 2 T fresh mint, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup scallions, finely chopped
• 1 t salt (or more if desired)
• pinch black pepper

Stir and enjoy! 

Nourish: Food curriculum for upper elementary and middle school teachers

A friend of mine showed me a new food curriculum called Nourish. It looks fantastic. It's geared towards upper elementary and middle schoolers, so I won't be able to use it this fall (I'm teaching kindergarten). But it has some really great ideas for teaching about where food comes from, eating in season, food advertising, and other important food literacy concepts. It also has a bunch of graphics called Food Tools that are perfect for teaching about food systems. Here's one graphic I love and might actually print out to put in my classroom...

The curriculum also has a half-hour video that goes with it. Seems pretty awesome!

Biking and walking in the U.S.: 2012 benchmarking report

A friend of mine just passed this fascinating document along to me. It's a report done annually on walking and biking in the U.S. I was shocked (but I guess not surprised) by some of these statistics. Click here to see the full report, or here to read quick facts from the report summary. I've always been somewhat conscious of how often I choose to drive somewhere that is within walking or biking distance. But now I'm going to try even harder to get places by my own two feet. I'm just glad I live somewhere that is reasonably bike-friendly. Some places are impossible to get around. (That's a whole other issue that we need to work out in this country.) Anyway, here are some interesting stats from the report:

• 40% of trips in the U.S. are shorter than two miles, yet we use our cars for 87% of these trips.
• 27% of trips in the U.S. are shorter than one mile, yet we use our cars for 62% of these trips.
• Only 1% of trips are by bicycle. Only 10.5% are by foot.
• Biking and walking levels fell by 66% between 1960 & 2009, while obesity levels increased by 156%. [connection??]
• The number of children who biked or walked to school fell by 75% between 1966 & 2009, while the percentage of obese children rose by 276%

This report also ranks all 50 states, as well as 51 major cities, based on how often their residents walk or bike to work. My current state (Michigan) ranks pretty low at #34, whereas Alaska surprisingly ranks #1!

So, if that isn't enough inspiration to consider walking or biking to work (or at least one place that you normally drive to), check out this infographic for some more reasons.

A culture of health in America

Amsterdam, where travel by bike is easy

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be American. Now, I don't want to get too deep into it. I don't want to talk about patriotism and freedom and democracy and all that. Basically, I'm considering how being an American relates to living a healthy life. This particular train of thought was inspired by several insightful blog posts I've read lately, as well as discussions with family and friends over the Thanksgiving holiday. We have two close friends from Spain who have lived here for the past year. In a recent conversation we asked them to tell us some stereotypes of America that they'd heard before they moved here. I should note that, after answering, they pointed out that stereotypes are often inaccurate (as an example, they informed us that everyone in Spain doesn't fight bulls and wear red).

After "don't know anything about other countries," they said another stereotype is that Americans are fat and eat unhealthy diets. How sad, I thought! Besides ignorance, we are known around the world as being the unhealthy country. Indeed, the obesity rate is pushing 33% of all Americans. One in three people are overweight or dangerously overweight. Indeed, we subsidize the growing of corn and soy instead of healthier fruits and vegetables. And indeed, we eat a lot of fast food.

But, I said to myself, I eat healthy. My friends and family eat healthy. I don't have any close friends that are particularly overweight. But I realize that this fact is largely based on where I live and my income level. Where you live and how much money you have really makes a difference in your health in this country. For example, in this insightful article from Feministing's community blog, the author describes where she lives:

As for me, I live in Washington, DC, where wealth and means converge. Exercise is trendy, as is eating healthily. Grocery stores, co-ops, and farmer’s market, all devoted to providing high quality food products are everywhere. An affluent population is willing and able to pay more for the privilege.

Although I don't live in DC, the same set of circumstances was true in Chicago, Madison, and various other places I've lived. It was easy for me eat healthy. I was lucky enough to be taught how to cook by my family and friends. The importance of exercise has been instilled in me, and I could walk or take the bus almost everywhere. Additionally, the city was full of people who ran, biked, and played sports. You couldn't drive through the north side of Chicago without seeing dozens of runners and several yoga studios. But that's not the case in other places. As the author goes on to say,

Are these same options present in Alabama, especially in the rural areas or the inner city? Not so much. Does a tradition and corresponding cultural expectation of these sorts of beneficial practices exist? Not really. Cities are concentrations of wealth and the highly educated. There is no financial incentive for either of them to leave and spread elsewhere. Quality food is rarely found in areas of poverty. Most often, only cheaper, lower quality food is affordable and available.

In addition to quality food, there are other aspects of health that are only accessible to the wealthy: health insurance, gym memberships, time to cook meals from scratch, reduced exposure to fast food ads, the privilege of living in a safe neighborhood.

I don't have a solution for this issue that our country faces, in which where you live and how much money you have has a disproportionate effect on your health. I wish that healthy food was cheaper and available everywhere. I wish there were bike lanes and bus routes in all areas, including surburban and rural towns. I wish we were taught in school how to cook, maintain a healthy diet, and build exercise into our schedules. I wish minimum wage was higher, so people could work less and spend more time cooking. I wish kids were given more time for recess and had greener cities.

I wish that health was an expectation our country, just part of our general culture, instead of a privilege. I don't think that individuals can be blamed for their obesity or heart disease or poor eating habits, at least not entirely. Right now, living in our country makes it harder to be a healthy person, instead of easier. I hope someday that will change. I hope, however naively, that someday when people think of Americans, they will think of healthy people.

Photo credit

How bad is it? The childhood obesity epidemic

Take a look. Some of these facts are pretty frightening. We need to do something about this.

Brought to you by MAT@USC Masters in Teaching

The frustrating fight for healthier school lunches

The headline of this article caught my eye: School Lunch Proposals Set Off a Dispute. What is there to dispute, I wondered? The first paragraph, which described the changes that the USDA wants require in school lunch menus, made perfect sense to me. Cut back on potatoes, add more fruits and vegetables, and reduce salt. Kids couldn't have more than two servings of starchy vegetables a week, so this would cut back on French fries and other forms of potatoes, and would add in new produce like spinach and peaches. I like this idea, a lot. Forty percent of children's daily calories come from the lunch they eat at school. So, we should make those lunches healthier. What's not to like about this idea?

Apparently, a lot. The USDA is facing a whole slew of people who don't want these regulations to pass. This includes senators from potato-producing states (who say we shouldn't limit the amount of starchy food kids consume), food lobbyists (who say that kids won't eat the new vegetables), and frozen food companies (who say the reduced-salt guidelines will be too costly to follow). Because these people have so much power and sway in our country, the USDA guidelines will likely not pass.

This frustrates me beyond belief.

As a substitute teacher in an urban Michigan area, I teach in a lot of schools and get to see a lot of school lunches. Not once have I seen a meal that I would be willing to eat. Friday's lunch, served to the kindergarten class where I was subbing, was no exception. The main "entree" was a gigantic piece of bread with an inch of greasy white cheese melted on top. This came with milk (plain, chocolate or strawberry -- and which option do you think most kids took?), tiny carrot sticks, a flavored yogurt tube, and a frozen fruit popsicle. While this isn't the worst meal I could think of, it's laden with sugar, and most students probably didn't eat the healthiest item they were offered - the carrots. It's understandable that the kids don't eat carrots when they can fill up on all the other sugary options.

Who eats these types of lunches? Mostly students who receive free or reduced-price lunch, which means they are from low income families. And which group of children has the highest obesity rate in the U.S.? Children from low-income families, and children of color.

This is particularly frustrating when I compare it to the food offered where I taught last year, at a private school in upstate New York. This school had a daily salad bar with multiple greens, grains, and vegetables offered. The entrees included lentil meatloaf, vegetable stir fry, and curry beef stew. The meat was locally sourced and usually organic, and dessert was only served on Thursdays.

Who eats these types of lunches? Students from middle- and upper-income families.

I know that it's not realistic for all public schools to serve organic beef and an elaborate array of freshly chopped vegetables. They have a tight budget and limited kitchen staff. But no one is asking for that kind of a menu. The USDA is asking for meals that are just slightly healthier. A few less potatoes, a little less salt, and a bit more vegetables. In a country that claims to care about its children's health, this shouldn't be too much to ask.

Photo credit

Eating unhealthy not necessarily cheaper

There's a myth going around that eating healthy is expensive. People use it as an explanation for why obesity is such a huge problem in this country. This idea, wherever it came from, is a pretty dangerous one. I've worked with both children and parents who think eating healthy is not worth it because it's beyond their financial means. As a result, they don't make the effort to pick out meals that are good for them.

While I agree that organic produce is pricey and your average person can't afford to shop at Whole Foods, that narrow subset of food choices is not the only type of food that fits the definition of "healthy." Healthy foods are simple, unprocessed foods, can be found at any supermarket, and provide a multitude of nutrients that keep you full longer. And, as Mark Bittman explains using the graphic below, healthy foods are often cheaper. By a lot.

Once you realize that choosing healthy foods won't wreak havoc on your budget, the next step is to learn to cook them.

Health claims on unhealthy foods need to go

There's currently a debate raging right now over whether food companies should be allowed to advertise  unhealthy foods to kids. One side of the debate believes that, to fight the childhood obesity epidemic, we need to put limits on which foods can be marketed to kids (aka no commercials for foods that have high amounts of saturated fat, sugar, etc). The other side believes that food companies themselves should be responsible for deciding what they can advertise.

I've found that when I bring up this issue with others, I often get the "why should the government be involved" response. After all, they explain, childhood obesity is largely due to parents' irresponsibility. It's the parents' job to choose which foods children buy and eat. If a child has an unhealthy diet, it's the parents' fault.

I have a pretty big problem with this response (as you might have guessed). Parents are faced with dozens of decisions to make for their kids each day. Ideally, choosing healthy foods for their children should be one of the easier decisions. But instead, parents are swimming in a sea of confusing food products when they enter the grocery store, and many unhealthy foods make health claims that are pretty convincing. And now, a new study shows that these health claims (like "Cocoa Krispies supports your child's immunity") indeed do mislead parents and increase the likelihood that they'll buy these unhealthy foods for their children.

See, in my opinion, almost all parents are trying to do the best they can, and that certainly includes feeding healthy food to their children. But there is a whole mess of things that make this harder for them -- ridiculous health claims on foods that are really not good for you, lack of education and knowledge about how to purchase and prepare healthy food, terrible lunches served at school, and, in some areas, a complete lack of affordable and fresh food nearby. So, for all these reasons, parents are not the only ones at fault when it comes to childhood obesity and malnutrition. And I believe food companies need to be held responsible.

Meatless Monday: an easy, gradual step towards a healthier diet

I want to preface this post by telling you that I am not a vegetarian. At a work party earlier this week, everyone was shocked when I helped myself to a hot dog. All year long, I taught healthy eating classes to 4th and 5th graders, and everyone at the school (including the kitchen staff) assumed I was a vegetarian. Health-conscious eaters are often assumed to be vegetarians, but it's not true that a healthy diet can't include meat. Various kinds of meat can be a rich source of protein, omega-3 fatty acids, and delicious flavor.

That said, Americans often make and order meals that are centered around meat, resulting in consumption of large amounts of beef, pork or chicken (larger than the recommended deck-of-card-sized portion) in almost every meal. This type of meat-heavy diet has a large carbon footprint. Large farms, where most grocery store and restaurant meat is produced, have hugely negative impacts on the environment. Higher consumption of red meat is also associated with diabetes and obesity.

While no one should expect Americans to eliminate meat from their diet entirely, a new idea called "Meatless Mondays" is catching on across the country. The NY Times recently profiled the city of Aspen, which is encouraging the idea in its restaurants and schools. Oprah's studio, Toyota's U.S. branch, and the U.S. Department of the Interior have all gone meatless one day a week. More interestingly to me, many universities and school districts, including UC Davis and Baltimore Public Schools, have eliminated meat from their menus on Mondays.

There are also lots of individuals who have taken on this challenge. Why do this? First of all, it's an easy and gradual step to reducing your meat consumption. There's no need to stop eating meat if you enjoy it. But avoiding it one day a week means you'll be more likely to fill up on vegetables, fruits, and grains. It means you'll save the water and fossil fuel energy that goes into producing your meat. And it means that, on the days you do eat meat, you'll enjoy it that much more. And who doesn't want to savor their food?

Not sure what to cook on your meat-free day? Here's a huge list of recipes from one of my current favorite magazines, Eating Well: Meatless Monday

Thanks to MeatlessMonday.com for many of these resources.

Photo credit: Run with Kate

Why we need to ban Happy Meals

So, there is a debate raging in the public health world about Happy Meals. Health advocates are trying to  ban McDonald's and other fast food restaurants from handing out toys with kids' meals, since the meals are completely unhealthy and the toy prize just makes kids want them even more. The fast food industry, on the other hand, says that the government shouldn't decide what kids eat, their parents should. (Conservatives, I should add, also strongly agree with this statement. It fits in so well with their fear of a "nanny government," and any attempts at regulating the crap that children are encouraged to eat. For a golden example of this, recall when Sarah Palin handed out cookies to school children in order to mock Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign.)

Honestly, at first I wasn't sure where I stood on this issue. I understand that parents are leery of elected officials deciding what their kids eat. There is something sacred and private about the meals we eat at home. But after a long time thinking about it, I now whole-heartedly agree with the public health advocates who are pushing to ban Happy Meals. Happy Meals are not something we eat in the privacy of our family kitchens. They are high-calorie, unhealthy meals that are marketed deliberately towards children on TV, billboards, stores, and other public places.

Let's take a closer look at what's offered in the Happy Meals at McDonald's. The choices for a Happy Meal are a hamburger, a cheeseburger, or chicken nuggets. They come with a soda and fries. Well, McDonald's also offers other choices for drinks (milk or apple juice) and a side (apple slices). But the default Happy Meal comes with the soda and fries, which automatically means fewer families will order the healthier option. (See this article on why it's important to make healthy meals the default at restaurants.)

Let's pretend the kid chooses the chicken nuggets meal option, with fries and chocolate milk. This means she is eating a meal that gives her 580 calories, 26 grams of fat, 710 milligrams of sodium, and 25 grams of sugar. To put this in perspective, this one small meal provides 41% of recommended daily calories, 65% of daily fat, 60% of daily sodium, and 200% of recommended daily sugar intake. In other words, way too much.

Now, I don't have an issue with children eating these meals every now and then. But for many families, especially those in food deserts that have many fast food restaurants and few healthier options, these meals are a regular part of the diet. They're cheap, they're fast, and kids love them. Happy Meals come with a toy. Seriously, what kid turns down a meal that comes with a free toy and box with a huge smile on it? As a matter of fact, what kid wouldn't beg for that meal?

There aren't two ways to look at this issue. We don't market cigarettes to kids anymore, because cigarettes are terrible for kids. Happy Meals are terrible for kids. They shouldn't be marketed towards them.

Either fast food restaurants need to step up and offer healthier meals with their free toys, or we need to ban Happy Meals altogether.

Sources: McDonald's, Los Angeles Times, Mayo Clinic 
Photo Source: Gunaxin

Why isn't obesity an election issue?

As I've mentioned multiple times before, obesity is a huge issue affecting millions of people. Fully one third of Americans are obese or overweight, and one in five elementary school children. This is a shocking statistic that should have us all running around like crazy trying to find a solution, no matter the cost. But our politicians, with the valiant exception of Michelle Obama, are basically ignoring the situation. One of my favorite bloggers, Yoni Freedhoff of Weighty Matters, wrote this excellent article that I just had to share. While he writes from a Canadian perspective, the situation in the U.S. is almost identical. Thanks to Mr. Freedhoff for his permission to reprint it. I haven't changed any words except when inserting "Americans" for "Canadians."

So here we are in [America] in the midst of an election. Promises are being made, platforms are being unveiled, and politicians are prowling the land.

So let's pretend for a moment there was this problem in [America]. A public health problem, and it was a biggie.

Let's say there was a virus out there, and for arguments sake, let's say it was killing 25,000 [Americans] a year while afflicting millions. And if that's not bad enough, lets say that this virus was a particularly nasty one, in that if it didn't kill you, it markedly increased your risk of getting a whole slew of other medical conditions. Worse yet, this virus wasn't silent. Infection with this virus was visible to the naked eye, and consequently sufferers became regular targets of societal bias. Infection also lead many to suffer with marked fatigue, and also made completing activities of daily living more challenging, with difficulty rising with degree of infection.

Let's say too that while there was no vaccine or treatment that worked for everyone, there were both public health and medical interventions that might make a difference, if even just to combat the rising negative bias in society, as sufferers were ridiculed regularly, and even had their visible affliction leading them to lower salaries and fewer promotions. Let's also say that amazingly and shockingly, medical schools and other health care professions weren't being taught how to deal with this virus, and that the media had a bad habit of blaming those with it as being personally responsible for contracting it.

And let's say that one quarter of all [Americans] were infected.

I'm guessing that virus would be one hell of an election issue.

And yet the leaders and parties are virtually silent on obesity, a chronic relapsing disease that kills, sickens, stigmatizes, and challenges millions of [Americans]. Our medical schools don't teach our young doctors how to deal with it, and our government spends comparatively nothing on it. 

... Someone's got to stir things up! 

We need politicians to see this as a priority, and we shouldn't elect those that don't.

Friday Feature: Interesting reading on the obesity epidemic

It's been a while since I posted! I'm currently working on a schedule for posts that is more predictable and organized. More on that later. For now, here is this week's Friday Feature. I'm not sure if you'll find that reading about the obesity epidemic sweeping across the country is exactly inspirational, but I find it quite intriguing. In fact, shocking statistics about the obesity levels in American children is part of what keeps me dedicated to teaching children (and reminding myself) about the importance of healthy eating and exercise.

One in five children ages 6-11 is obese, and the numbers are even worse for adults (one in three). But what makes me saddest of all is that one in ten preschool children is obese, and the number is even higher for low-income preschool children. This is the first generation that has a shorter life expectancy than their parents. These facts make me frustrated and furious. Thus, when I see them, I become newly motivated to teach children how to eat healthy and get moving. I'll be posting some ways that teachers can help kids learn about these concepts in later posts.

For now, here are some of the blogs, articles, and reports on obesity that I find particularly interesting.

1. NY Times writer and cookbook author Mark Bittman has become one of my new personal heroes, and he has a great blog that gives information on current political events related to food, obesity, and public health in general. 
2. Weighty Matters is a blog written by a Canadian doctor who specializes in obesity medicine. His posts often touch on Canadian politics, but obesity levels in that country are on par with American levels and his posts are often very relevant.
3. Feedback Solutions for Obesity is written by a PhD student at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, who I was lucky enough to meet on a recent visit to the city. The author is researching the complexities of obesity and instant feedback (like apps that monitor your weight), and often posts about new research on various concepts related to health and weight.
4. The CDC of course has endless information on obesity in America. If you have time to look at only one thing, check out these graphs that illustrate the spread of obesity across the country from 1970 to today. It's shocking.
5. And, just for fun, here's a website that shows some of the RIDICULOUS fast food entrees that are available for under $4 in the U.S. Like, for example, the Krispy Kreme burger. That's right, a hamburger (plus cheese and all the fixings) in between two donuts. It doesn't get much worse (or better?) than this...