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Many barriers keep fresh, organic food out of school lunches
Jennifer Langston, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
At Seattle Public Schools’ central kitchen, 72 gallons of taco meat simmer in a steel kettle the size of a small hot tub.
Pumped into bags that resemble backpacking bladders, entrées join shrink-wrapped servings of lettuce, jicama and applesauce in a cavernous cooler.
The ingredients in this single school lunch of nachos served in September traveled more than 7,500 highway miles before reaching a cafeteria tray in Seattle.
The beef came from California ranches by way of a federal program that provides commodity items to schools at no cost. Tomatoes ripened in the San Joaquin Valley. Beans likely traveled from Minnesota or North Dakota.
Those items could have been bought from farms in our backyard, but weren’t.
In the Puget Sound region, consumers increasingly want local food — for the fresh taste, to curb carbon emissions or because of concerns about the safety of food grown overseas.
While schools are offering healthier menu choices, what seems like a no-brainer — feeding local kids locally grown food — is surprisingly hard to do.
“It’s an altogether feel-good idea on every front. Philosophically, it’s go, go, go,” said Andrew Stout, owner of the organic Full Circle Farm in Carnation.
Practically, it’s challenging to align local, seasonal values with a “broken food system that cafeterias have co-opted for delivering a certain amount of calories for very little money,” he said.
(16 October 2007)
In-depth article. -BA
Alice in the Heartland
Amanda Gold, San Francisco Chronicle
The Bay Area is well acquainted with the culinary philosophy of the Chez Panisse founder, but how does it play outside California?
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Many of us who live here – or travel in food-conscious or politically active circles elsewhere – think of Alice Waters as a revolutionary, a woman who has fought fervently since Chez Panisse opened in 1971 to change the way Americans think about food and where it comes from. She’s credited with popularizing California cuisine, and her mantra of sourcing seasonal ingredients that are local, sustainable and organic has become a virtual cliche in restaurants all over the country.
But clearly, she’s not a household name in Middle America.
I sent the e-mail in advance of a trip, where I would shadow Waters as she swept through Chicago to promote her new cookbook, “The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution.” Three long days of book signings, a trip to the Green City Market, speaking engagements and a Slow Food dinner demonstrated that while many Midwestern chefs revere her as the doyenne of responsible eating and cooking, most of their customers have no idea who she is.
Yet, despite this, her message and philosophy have gotten through. Even those who confuse her with the name of a college dorm have begun to think about healthier eating habits and whole foods – they just don’t know that Waters might have been the driving force behind those thoughts.
But, according to her, “the changes are simply not taking place fast enough.”
(17 October 2007)
Do food miles make a difference to global warming?
Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters
The U.S. local food movement — which used to be elite, expensive and mostly coastal — has gone mainstream, with a boost from environmentalists who reckon that eating what grows nearby cuts down on global warming.
But do food miles — the distance edibles travel from farm to plate — give an accurate gauge of environmental impact, especially where greenhouse gas emissions are concerned?
“Food-miles are a great metaphor for looking at the localness of food, the contrast between local and global food, a way people can get an idea of where their food is coming from,” said Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University.
“They are not a reliable indicator of environmental impact,” Pirog said in a telephone interview. “What one would want to do is look at your carbon footprint across a whole food supply chain.”
The problem with food-miles is that they don’t take into account the mode of transport, methods of production or the way things are packaged, and all of these have their own distinct impact on emissions of carbon dioxide, a climate-warming gas.
(17 October 2007)
