Fresh Ideas blog

By Andrea King Collier

Originally published on the Williams Sonoma Blog.

I cooked with my folks when I was little –cookies, breads, etc. but it wasn’t until I got out on my own that I fell in love with cooking. I got invited to a dinner with a group of women who were older than me. The food was amazing, but the conversation about cooking changed my life.  I was resistant to becoming a person who cooks. I wanted to be out changing the world, writing books and telling stories. I said as much, and well that was like throwing the gauntlet down. They talked about all their experiences in the kitchen and the joy they got from being “food artists.” They weren’t chefs. They were everyday women who saw the beauty in preparing food.

When someone dies, people cook food and bring it. It says “I love you. I care about you. We are bonded.” When someone who really knows what they are doing makes a cake, they channel love, creativity and art. When somebody is sick with a cold, you roll up your sleeves and make a chicken soup, that seems to have a healing power.  I had never looked at cooking in that way before I heard these women talk about the art of cooking, and the power of the cook.

I was so excited and rushed home to start my love affair with cooking. It didn’t take long for me to learn for myself that you can tell a whole story in a muffin. A gumbo is a history in a bowl. A hot homemade roll is a missive, a prayer.  So whenever I get so busy that I forget about the power of the pot, the magic of a sharp knife, or the spell of the last of the cream cheese frosting in the bowl, because I am off creating stories, I go back to the kitchen and fall in love again. For me, cooking, and the ability to create in that way is one of the arrows that points to my true north.

By Andrea King Collier

First published in the healthymagination Healthy Outlook Blog.

First Lady Michelle Obama recently honored the work of 1,273 schools that participated in the Healthier U.S. School Challenge at the White House.   The initiative focuses on recognizing the efforts of schools participating in the National School Lunch Program, which are using improved nutrition and more physical activity to create healthier school environments. While the Challenge has been around since 2004, Mrs. Obama breathed new energy into the initiative when she included it into the Let’s Move campaign in 2010.

One of the honorees, the Kunsberg School, in Denver, was recognized for its work in feeding the 90 chronically ill students from grades K-8, who all participate in the school lunch program there. Each student at the school receives a free nutritious breakfast and lunch that includes fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as low-fat and non-fat milk every school day.

While it can be challenging to make strides in improving the nutrition of children at a school, Kunsberg has benefited from being a part of the National Jewish Health campus and having access to its resources. According to Joe Reid, the director of education at the school, one of the staff nutritionists at National Jewish Health oversees all the planning and preparation of the meals for the students. “Health, nutrition, 40 minutes per day of physical education, and academic achievement are priorities at Kunsberg; and the school has made a conscious effort to make positive changes that carry over into each child’s lifestyle,” Reid says.

Many school districts around the country see the links between providing healthy food to children and making a dent in the childhood obesity epidemic. According to a national survey by the School Nutrition Association released in August, 98 percent of school districts now offer fresh fruits and vegetables, and 89 percent offer salad bars or pre-packaged salads. 63 percent provide vegetarian meals. Whole-grain foods are readily accessible at 97 percent of schools. The findings show considerable progress in improving the quality of meals served to nearly 32 million children on school days.

But improving nutrition is not always easy. Cheryl Danley, outreach specialist for the C.S. Mott Group for Sustainable Food Systems at Michigan State University, and an IATP Food and Community Fellow, says that school districts are being creative to address the healthy eating needs of students, while holding the line on budgets. “Costs do not need to be a barrier,” Danley says. She points to the Detroit Public Schools, which have been able to institute meatless meal days, to help offset the costs of providing fresh local foods. And while farm-to-school programs and healthy meals are in the national spotlight now, Danley says “many food service directors have been trying bring this into the school all along.“

Read the full article.

 First published in The Atlantic.

In the fall of 2008, San Francisco polished its progressive credentials by banning something. From October 1, 2008, the sale of cigarettes was prohibited in certain places. You could still buy them in convenience stores, of course, and bodegas, gas stations, and even the occasional bar. But the city thought that perhaps it was a bad idea to allow them to be sold in pharmacies. As the city attorney, Dennis Herrera, put it: "Consumers -- and especially young people -- should reasonably expect pharmacies to serve their health needs, not to enable our leading cause of preventable death."

Pharmacy and tobacco executives were apoplectic. The Walgreens pharmacy chain argued that they needed to be allowed to sell cigarettes so that they might counsel people on how to quit. The tobacco industry was upset too. From the hallowed garden of constitutional law, it argued that the ban was an infringement of its First Amendment rights to free speech. Big Smoke argued that it was being muzzled by an over-reaching government marching down the road to tyranny. The judge who heard the case took a dim view of this logic, pointing out that while advertising is a form of free speech, "selling cigarettes isn't." The ban continues.

The cigarette industry survives, as does its advertising. Cigarette companies' rights to free speech have, however, been curtailed on grounds of public health, and for the health of children above all. Joe Camel isn't familiar to children today, as he was in the 1970s, because most people agree that it's probably a bad idea to have a hip smoking cartoon character to which kids aspire, even if the company behind it swears blind it was just going after the pro-dromedary slice of the adult market.

Alcohol is similarly circumscribed, again with an eye to public health and, again, with a particular concern for young people. But if public health is a legitimate reason to curb corporations' advertising to kids, why limit bans to cigarettes and booze, and not include, say, unhealthy food?

A paper in the latest issue of Nature by Robert Lustig, Laura Schmidt, and Claire Brindis fuels the debate, pointing to the long-term similarities of sugar and alcohol consumption. The paper's authors freely admit that a little sugar is fine, but "a lot kills -- slowly." They argue that sugar meets the same four generally accepted public health criteria used to regulate alcohol: it is unavoidable, toxic, has the potential for abuse, and has a negative impact on society. Which is why they suggest restrictions on advertising of sugary processed foods, lauding another of San Francisco's bans -- the one that prevents toys being given away with unhealthy fast food meals.

Given the food industry's power, and fears of a nanny state, it's unsurprising that the paper's authors are caught in a flame war.

I side with the American Psychological Association in thinking that advertising to children is unconscionable. Rather than dwell on the First Amendment issue, which strikes me as an easy case to make, I think it's worth addressing a deeper question underlying the San Francisco cigarette-in-pharmacy ban: Why allow an industry that profits from the sale of unhealthy food at all?

Read the full article at theatlantic.com.

 One of the ways that good, healthy food gets relatively expensive is through the involvement of numerous middlemen between the farm and the consumer. Food Hubs are a new way of doing business that helps consumers access locally grown food affordably, and Common Market Philadelphia is pioneering the model under the leadership of Food and Community Fellow Haile Johnston.

Common Market Philadelphia has expanded their operation dramatically in its first few years, now handling over a million dollars in local annual sales. They also have elegant new video featuring co-founder Haile Johnston, among others, explaining how Food Hubs work and have taken root in Philadelphia.

Food hubs aren't a fringe phenomenon; The United States Department of Agriculture has also taken notice and is increasingly invested in researching and developing these new local distribution systems. They list resources and findings on their website regarding the efficacy of food hubs across the country, and even keep tabs on food hub-related headlines.

USDA states officially that food hubs "offer strong and sound infrastructure support to producers across the country which will also help build a stronger regional food system." USDA is concerned about obesity and food security in America, and food hubs may be part of the answer to both problems.