Plastic Bag Use Plummets in D.C.

I had expected the use of plastic bags to decline with the new 5-cent a bag tax in Washington, D.C., but the change came exceedingly fast. In the first month the tax was enacted, plastic base use dropped 87%. According to the Washington Post:

In its first assessment of how the new law is working, the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue estimated that food and grocery establishments gave out about 3 million bags in January. Before the bag tax took effect Jan. 1, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer had said that about 22.5 million bags were being issued each month in 2009.

I actually noticed a dramatic behavioral difference when I was in Denver, which has no plastic bag tax. Grocery store clerks do not routinely ask, as they do here, "Do you want a bag?" Instead, they just pull one out. The result: people use a lot more bags.

In D.C., the money collected is being used to clean up the Anacostia, which empties into the Potomac River. This is a no-brainer incentive for positive consumer behavior, especially when the cost is so minimal and easy to avoid. Imagine if a simple act like this went national? 

- Samuel Fromartz

School Lunch: You Call This Food?

Ed Bruske has another great post over at the Slow Cook. He's incensed about the lunch served recently at his daughter's school in D.C. He also found out that his in-depth report on the cafeteria program had repurcussions -- for the personnel, not the food. The principle got reprimanded for letting Ed in for a look. Here's his picture and post.

Is anyone home at D.C. Schools Food Services? I was ready to have a perfectly civilized discussion–blog-to-blog–with Sam Fromartz over at ChewsWise on the subject of what we can do to get kids to eat better when I was stopped dead in my tracks by the lunch being served at my daughter’s elementary school here in the nation’s capital. Look at the photo above and tell me what you see. Do you see the same thing I do? French fries, a bag of Sun Chips, and an 8-ounce carton of strawberry-flavored milk.

Read the rest: You Call This Food? | The Slow Cook.

On another topic, thanks for all the great suggestions stemming from the last post about how to feed kids good food. (See the comments section). 

And if you can't relate because you just don't have kids, read Tom Philpott over at Grist on why you should care about school lunch.

Ode to Jamie Oliver or How to Feed Kids Good Food

Well, the early results of Jamie Oliver's experiment at reforming school lunch are getting some attention -- because they have been so dismal. When given  a choice, the kids in Huntington, W. Va., prefer the chicken nuggets, breakfast pizza, and fries to his Food Revolution, by a wide margin, according to a West Virginia University study (pdf). 

As a result, school meal purchases declined, as did milk, which Oliver had switched to plain skim from chocolate and strawberry. 

Having a six-year-old daughter, I have some thoughts about these results. I pity the star chef, because in a culture of snack and fried foods, it's hard to introduce anything that is remotely healthy -- and then get kids to choose it -- in a few weeks.

We have veggies and/or fruit at every meal and eat a wide range of foods, such as legumes, pasta and whole grains along with fish and meat. But given a choice, salty crackers, cured meats, olives and pickles always win the day. None of those are objectionable in moderation, but that can be a difficult concept for a six-year-old. And given a choice, my daughter will always pick my home-made baguette over a whole grain loaf, which is why I don't make baguettes so often. Sugary flavored milk is not an issue, because it's not a choice. Never has been.

And that's the key. Like Michelle Obama, who declared French fries her favorite food, nearly anyone will make the choice for fried, salty, fatty if they don't think about it. Kids in particular tend to choose what is familiar. It's not easy to get them to try new things, especially if they are brown or green.

But if you feed kids a wide range of foods, repeatedly, they will eat them, especially if they don't have a choice. Exposing kids to foods at an early age also helps. (Oliver introduced new foods to 60% of the kids at the school). Our daughter favors broccoli and salad over meat because we routinely eat those foods. She has never liked cheese (ever), which opens her to a lot of options outside the usual kid universe of pizza and mac 'n cheese.

And here's a plug for school gardens. Last year, we planted lettuce from seed with my daughter's kindergarten class. The class nurtured the plants indoors, transplanted them to the garden, watched them grow over several weeks, then harvested the full heads.

And guess what? When it came time for the kids to eat the salad they grew, they did -- even those who had an aversion to the stuff. Planting changed the story, which changed the meal.

But I commiserate with Oliver. He's trying to change ingrained habits and tastes in a few weeks. The odds clearly aren't in his favor - at least yet.

"Three to four months is not enough time to see if this program is going to be successful," says principal Patrick O'Neal, who has embraced healthier eating, dines with the children and has shed 20 pounds since October.

"I think it's a spark to start a bigger fire," O'Neal says. "I don't see it as a failure, and I don't see it as a true success yet. It's going to take some time for it to ignite nationwide."

Do you have tips on how to get kids to eat good food?

- Samuel Fromartz

School Lunch Revolution: A Battle on the Front Lines

It's one thing when Jamie Oliver arrives at a West Virginia town and attempts to reform its school lunch policy. It's quite another thing when a teacher without a television crew tries to do the same thing on her own. As Ed Bruske details at The Slow Cook, this teacher in Colorado was told to cease and desist. Wonder if she'll end up on national TV, too.

Mendy Heaps, a stellar English teacher for years, had never given much thought to the food her seventh-graders were eating. Then her husband, after years of eating junk food, was diagnosed with cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure and suddenly the french fries, pizza and ice cream being served in the cafeteria at rural Elizabeth Middle School outside Denver, Col., took on a whole new meaning.

Heaps was roused to action. She started teaching nutrition in her language arts classes. She bombarded colleagues, administrators and the local school board with e-mails and news clippings urging them to overhaul the school menu. She even took up selling fresh fruits and healthy snacks to the students on her own, wheeling alternative foods from classroom to classroom on a makeshift “fruit cart,” doling out apples for a quarter.

Finally, the school’s principal, Robert McMullen, could abide Heaps’ food crusade no longer. Under threat of being fired, Heaps says she was forced to sign a personnel memorandum agreeing to cease and desist. She was ordered to undergo a kind of cafeteria re-education program, wherein she was told to meet with the school’s food services director, spend part of each day on lunch duty recording what foods the students ate, and compile data showing the potential economic impact of removing from the menu the “grab and go” foods Heaps found so objectionable.

Read the rest here: A Teacher Crusades for Better School Food and Gets Stomped | The Slow Cook.

A View from Up North - The Town That Food Saved

Barry Estabrook over at Politics of the Plate has a post on a new book -- one I'm eager to read. 

The words “local, seasonal, sustainable” have been repeated so often and with so little thought that they have become soothing background noise, feel-good mood-music for any socially conscious eater worth his or her naturally obtained organic sea salt. So it’s refreshing to encounter a book that treats the subject intelligently.

Was it Holden Caulfield who said that the measure of a good book was one that makes you want to call up the author on the phone?Reading Ben Hewitt’s The Town That Food Saved impelled me to pay a visit to the author at his home, a raggedy farmstead at the end of a rutted, muddy, unmarked lane tucked among the folds and hollows of north-central Vermont.

The School Food Revolution Will Be Televised

In an interview with Brit chef and self-styled food revolutionary Jamie Oliver, John Hockenberry over at the Takeaway says "I can't decide if you're the Kung Fu Zen master or The Beatles invading our shores."

What Hockenberry's referring to of course is Oliver's "The Food Revolution," which began airing last Friday on ABC and has its second episode tomorrow. The conceit: Oliver visits Huntington, West Virginia, a town of 50,000 that ranks highest in obesity in America, and tries to change its eating habits through the entry point of the school cafeteria.

The reception Oliver receives is neither one a Zen master or The Beatles would expect. Instead of quiet disciples or cheering teen-age girls, the chilly school lunchroom staff wonder just what the hell he's up to. I sympathized with them, after all, the idea that Oliver is launching a food revolution in the U.S. is, well, a tad overplayed, ya think? Regardless, he has a point to make, one which needs to be made given the sad state of our diet.

By the looks of it, Huntington is eating a lot of junk, through really no more than the rest of country. What sort of "food"? Pizza for breakfast at school, chocolate and strawberry flavored milk (which The Slow Cook pointed out was nearly indistinguishable from Mountain Dew), chicken tenders, followed by chicken tenders, followed by chicken tenders. The only real food on the school menu is the fresh-baked bread the school kitchen makes but most of which sadly ends up in the rubbish bin, as the Brits call it. Mashed potatoes form when water is added to a pearly substance. When Oliver makes roast chicken -- gosh! real chicken, not frozen stuff - the staff is nearly in shock but the kids don't bite. They go for the pizza, again.

When Oliver pitches his plan to local radio host DJ Rod, he's nearly spit-roasted. "We don't want to sit around and eat lettuce all day," Rod says. "Who made you the King?" What Rod doesn't seem to get is that his neighbors are dying more quickly because of what they eat. But maybe he can't get past the messenger.

Oliver clearly has his work cut out for him. In one home, he cooks up the mom's usual daily fare -- pizza, chicken tenders, corn dogs, donuts, etc., etc., without a fresh vegetable in sight. The family ends the scene by burying the fat fryer in the backyard.

Oliver's not alone here. In fact, the series coincides with the rather rich debate going on over school lunch and childhood obesity. You have Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign, the passage by a Senate panel of a modest increase in the school lunch budget, the enormous and significant work of Renegade Lunch Lady Chef Ann Cooper, and on and on. For another take, check out Fed Up with School Lunch, which features daily offerings at a Chicago school cafeteria by an anonymous teacher who's actually eating the stuff, every day! Clearly a revolution is underway, but it's only just getting going.

The first episode of The Food Revolution is on Hulu if you missed it. When you get finished watching Oliver's trials, check out this talk Chef Ann gave three years ago at TED.

- Samuel Fromartz

Best Baguette in Paris 2010: An Inside Look

Each year, Paris holds Le Grand Prix de la Baguette de Tradition Française de la Ville de Paris, a blind tasting for the best baguette in the City. This is quite an affair and important for the winning baker since sales typically shoot up as does the baker's renown. (I got a taste of its importance at the boulangerie I worked at last year, which had previously won the honor). 

In a rare inside look the contest, an American living in Paris applied for one of the random seats and was chosen to serve on the judging panel. (I wish she gave her name but hasn't on her blog She later revealed herself as Phyllis Flick. The result: she spent four hours tasting 163 baguettes, a record number of entries. "It was an absolutely incredible experience and for now I can’t imagine looking at another baguette," she writes. 

She has an good summary recounting the experience on her blog Paris Notebook, including the caveat that not all French bread is great.

It may seem hard to believe, but a lot of mediocre bread can be found in France.  Walk into your average corner bakery and if you don’t know what to look for, or to ask for, you risk walking away with a very average, and at times inedible, baguette.

Here's a list of the winning boulangeries, something you'll want to clip if you happen to be heading to Paris.

1) Djibril Bodian (Le Grenier à Pain Abbesses), 38 rue des Abbesses, 75018

2) Daniel Pouphary, (La Parisienne) 28 rue Monge, 75005

**3) Dominique Saibron, 77 Avenue du Général Leclerc, 75014

4) Yves Desgranges, 6 Rue de Passy, 75016,

**5) Philippe Gosselin, 258 Boulevard Saint-Germain,75007

6) Xavier Doué, 163 avenue de versaillais, 75016

7) Boulangerie Lohézic (Sébastien and Sylvie Lohézic) 31, rue Guersant, 75017

8) Boulangerie d’Isa (Michel Chorin, Retrodore) 127 Rue de Charenton 75012

9) Mohamed Zerzour, 50 rue de l’Amiral Roussin 75015

10) SARL Zerzour II, 324, rue Lecourbe, 75014 (SARL can be roughly translated as incorporated)

** Both are renowned bakers

- Samuel Fromartz

Closing the Gap Between TV Food and Real Food

Food is highly entertaining, no doubt about that, and television is perhaps the best medium to really show how to cook something, outside of joining a class. But as many others have pointed out, as food has soared as entertainment, viewers' cooking skills have continued to decline.

In a highly recommended post over at Civil Eats, Mollie Katzen (author of the seminal Moosewood Cookbook) discusses this dichotomy. She says:

The gap between celebrity and real food being cooked is huge. People are watching TV, but there’s so few people cooking good, honest food. That is the stuff of daily life. If you know how to cook you’ve got a skill. Long after the TV’s off, you’re still going to need to eat.

This statement made me think of a proposal Marc R. has over at Ethicurean, challenging Top Chef to take up the ultimate challenge: school lunch.

With school lunch being debated on Capitol Hill, "Top Chef" should get in on the action and focus some kitchen challenges on school meals. One challenge could have each contestant try to cook a collection of delicious and healthy meals (breakfast and lunch) that spend less than $1 on food per meal. Another might be to cook in a real school, perhaps H.D. Cooke Elementary School, the setting of The Slow Cook’s excellent multi-part series on school meals, or use the actual school kitchen staff as assistants, though this one might be getting a bit close to the upcoming Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on ABC. The contestants could also integrate ingredients from local farms with USDA-provided material.

Washington and the school lunch community also offers plenty of interesting possibilities for guest judges: First Lady Michele Obama, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Chef Ann Cooper (the "renegade lunch lady"), or a room full of cute and opinionated schoolchildren.

What a terrific idea! It would be one small step in making television food real for the ultimate judges: kids. But here's a thought on the ground rules: no pizza, fries, hot dogs or cupcakes. If you're wondering, What's left for kids to eat? That, my friends, is the heart of the problem.

- Samuel Fromartz

Where Animals Become Local Meat: A Virginian Slaughterhouse

Joe Cloud of T&E Meats

I wrote a story on local slaughterhouses that ran today in WaPo -- my first story for the food section and one I wondered whether they would take. I mean, how do you write about a slaughterhouses in the food section? These sections generally focus on food, maybe the farms, but slaughterhouses don't usually figure in the mix. So I give editor Joe Yonan credit for seeing the story.

I decided to tackle the subject head on, literally, and lead with the slaughter of the animals. After all, that's what I had come to see. It wasn't only important for the article but for me as a meat eater. I felt I should at least be able to at least see the process if I was going to eat the stuff (others go further and actually participate).

People have asked how I felt seeing animals slaughtered. I thought I would be slightly sickened by the experience, but I wasn't. The men doing the work were serious and careful. They weren't rushed and the animals met their end quickly. (As Tim Amlaw, director of American Humane Certified, a farm animal welfare program, told me: "It needs to be instantaneous -- that's the most humane.") I found the work fascinating. It isn't easy to turn an animal into meat and there is a true craft to butcher work -- a dying craft actually in this age of automation.

The slaughterhouse I focused on, True and Essential Meats, is part-owned by Joel Salatin, the farmer who figures in Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. But what I found interesting was the way Salatin roped in former landscape architect Joe Cloud to reinvent his career and buy the facility with him. Cloud was an easy target: this guy loves food and lives on a beautiful farm out in the Shenandoah Valley. Here's the lead of the story:

HARRISONBURG, VA. -- Huddled in a small pen in the slaughterhouse, the four sheep and two goats were quiet and still. A few men nearby in thick rubber aprons cut away at still-warm carcasses hanging on hooks.

"They don't seem to know what's going on," a visitor remarked.

"Oh, they know," one of the butchers replied. "They know."

Maybe it was that awareness that led the men to work quietly and efficiently, dispatching each animal with a bolt shot to the head, until the last sheep, perhaps realizing that the flock was gone, began to bleat. Then she too fell silent. 

Read the rest of the item on the WaPo site. 

Here's a list of local meat sellers in the DC region and Shenandoah Valley.

- Samuel Fromartz

Will GM Alfalfa Mean the End of Organic Milk?

That's what many fear about genetically engineered alfalfa. Organic farmers grow alfalfa as a forage crop for livestock, but genetically engineered crops can pollinate organic crops, making them non-organic. No organic forage, no organic livestock. No organic livestock, no organic milk. 

That scenario has already played out in corn and canola, at least in some regions. A seed scientist at an organic seed company told me it's virtually impossible to find corn seed from the midwest that has avoided GM contamination. As a result, this company buys its organic corn seeds from a remote region of the Southeast. The same is true of rapeseed (canola) in Western Canada.

To avoid this fate with Round-Up Ready Alfalfa, 200,000 people have submitted comments to the USDA criticizing a draft environmental impact statement on the GM crop by the agency, which had recommended approval of the crop.

This battle has been brewing for sometime. In 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued the USDA for failing to conduct an environmental impact statement, as required by law, before deregulating the crop. The federal courts sided with CFS and banned GE alfalfa plantings until USDA analyzed the impacts of GE alfalfa on the environment, farmers and the public.

Strangely, that environmental impact statement concluded, "There is no evidence that consumers care about GE contamination of organic alfalfa" -- even though it would no longer qualify as organic if it were contaminated. Stranger still, considering that organic milk is the leading organic product sought by consumers.

Regardless of what you think about genetically modified crops, the question is whether a crop should be approved that could threaten the organic status of another crop. In this case, it's not just a crop, but the animals that depend on the crop for forages and the consumers who want the products produced by those animals. None will be organic if the feedstock is contaminated.

Today is the last day to submit a comment on the issue. Center for Food Safety has more information here. 

Hope for Blue Fin Tuna, U.S. Backs Ban

Big news for a prized but endangered fish. Hopefully, this will lead to movement to ban trade in a species that is headed for extinction. The Washington Post reports:

The U.S. government announced Wednesday that it supports prohibiting international trade of Atlantic bluefin tuna, a move that could lead to the most sweeping trade restrictions ever imposed on the highly prized fish.

Sushi aficionados in Japan and elsewhere have consumed bluefin for decades, causing the fish's population to plummet. In less than two weeks, representatives from 175 countries will convene in Doha, Qatar, to determine whether to restrict the trade of bluefin tuna -- valued for its rich, buttery taste -- and an array of other imperiled species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Organic Milk? You Need Grass For That

A decade after such regulations were proposed, the USDA has passed new requirements for organic dairy farmers. New rules specify that cows must be allowed to graze on open pastures for at least 120 days of the year and get a minimum of 30 percent of their nutrition from fresh grass for their product to qualify as organic.

The decision marks a victory for organic food advocates, who have vigorously lobbied for the United States to revamp organic milk requirements.

via www.nhpr.org

I appeared on New Hampshire Public radio today explaining the Organic Pasture rule from the USDA. Here's the link if you want the quick takeaway.

http://www.nhpr.org/node/30150