Down with Healthy School Lunches, Says House GOP

By Tom Laskawy

Having already moved to gut USDA programs promoting agricultural conservation and renewable energy and strip the USDA of its authority to enact the first meaningful reform of the irredeemably monopolistic livestock industry, House Republicans have now turned their attention to that other great threat to American freedom: USDA nutrition guidelines.

According to the Associated Press, Republican appropriators in the House of Representatives (the lawmakers who control the government's purse) are on the verge of defunding significant parts of school-lunch reform and elements of Michelle Obama's Let's Move! program, as well as the recently announced voluntary Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines that would restrict junk-food advertising aimed at young children.

As a spokesperson for House Appropriations Committee Chair Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) put it, the new FTC rule in particular is "classic nanny-state overreach":

 "Our concern is those voluntary guidelines are back-door regulation," he said, deploring the fact that kids can watch shows that depict sex and drugs on MTV, but "you cannot see an advertisement for Tony the Tiger during the commercial break."

Ah, the House GOP -- making the world safe for Tony the Tiger. But the fury of the Cuddly Corporate Marketing Character Lobby pales in comparison to that of the Potato Lobby. Big Spud is furious -- furious, I tell you -- that the new USDA guidelines for school lunches would restrict starchy vegetables such as the potato to a one-cup-a-week appearance on the plates of schoolchildren nationwide. In place of the mighty potato would come additional servings of whole grains, orange and green veggies, and low-fat milk. It's enough to drive you around the bend!

Never mind that the potato is by far the most-consumed vegetable in America and that restricting it at school would still allow parents to stuff their children with French-fried, mashed, and chipped potatoes outside of school hours. Attention must be paid! So the Potato Lobby and representatives from potato-growing regions are fighting back hard.

And how about the new calorie-labeling requirement that was included in health-reform legislation? The House GOP is going after that, too.

Healthy business

Major food producers 'can influence diet' Continue reading the main story Scrubbing Up Stigmatising Charlie Sheen 'Too many hospitals' Bring in 20mph limit 'urgently' Genital warts action call The government's decision to involve major food producers of goods ranging from fruit juice and cereal to crisps and chocolate, in public health planning has come under fire from health campaigners.

But in this week's Scrubbing Up column, Richard Evans, head of PepsiCo in the UK argues it's better for them to be "at the table".

Getting the food industry involved in improving public health has attracted criticism.

But it's important for companies like ours to be part of the solution instead of being written off as the cause of the problem.

At face value, it might look counter-intuitive to ask food companies to help devise solutions for obesity but at the end of the day we have resources and expertise that can make a profound difference.

Our industry has the know-how to help improve people's diets; improving the formulation of products will change the salt, fat, sugar and fibre intakes of hundreds of thousands of people. And that is what we are doing.

Like government, non-governmental organisations, the public and our industry peers, we are acutely aware of current public health issues.

We believe there is shared responsibility to take positive action that will instigate change and that this is not only the right thing to do but also the commercially savvy thing to do.

Nudging

Healthier products and better nutritional information are in demand.

The appetite of consumers is changing, so we've reorganised our priorities to move with them.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteOur industry has the know-how to help improve people's diets ”

End QuoteRichard Evans We've already stepped up to lead the way on making existing products healthier as well as introducing new healthier ones.

Whilst there's still much to be done, we've gone much further than we've been 'required' to for a number of years.

We're not alone in making change happen. I regularly meet industry peers who are doing the same.

Of course, it would be naive not to recognise how difficult it is to change consumer behaviour.

Whilst we cannot force consumers to buy products they don't like, we can help provide the expertise to help "nudge" consumers to make healthier choices.

It is precisely the leading brands like PepsiCo that have the reach, resources and marketing capabilities to influence the diets of hundreds of thousands of people in the UK.

The government has chosen to recognise this and harness industry knowledge by introducing the responsibility deal.

Pariahs?

So what's the alternative?

Food companies could be made pariahs and kept outside despite the fact we collectively feed millions of British consumers every day.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteWe don't have to be there. It is voluntary. ”

End QuoteRichard Evans How about we are brought inside so that our influence over people's diets can be used positively to promote healthier eating?

I think the government, by including food companies in its responsibility deal, has made the right choice.

There is certainly no free-hand to write policy as has been claimed - that was never the intention.

We've simply been recognised as a key group of stakeholders with the ability to help change consumer behaviour for good which now means we sit at the table and pursue a common objective - better public health.

We don't have to be there. It is voluntary.

But it does bring with it an obligation to make what are often difficult changes that can have profound commercial consequences.

We want to be there, not to subvert public health goals, but to strengthen efforts to achieve them as we all struggle to balance the 'energy in, energy out' challenge of modern life.

Scientists say it's healthy to be nutty about walnuts

Eating raw walnuts gives the full benefits of antioxidants Walnuts are the healthiest of all the nuts and should be eaten more as part of a healthy diet, US scientists say.

Scientists from Pennsylvania told the American Chemical Society that walnuts contain the highest level of antioxidants compared to other nuts.

Antioxidants are known to help protect the body against disease.

The scientists said that all nuts have good nutritional qualities but walnuts are healthier than peanuts, almonds, pecans and pistachios.

Dr Joe Vinson, from the University of Scranton, analysed the antioxidant levels of nine different types of nuts and discovered that a handful of walnuts contained twice as many antioxidants as a handful of any other commonly eaten nut.

He found that these antioxidants were higher in quality and potency than in any other nut.

Antioxidants are good because they stop the chain reactions that damage cells in the body when oxidation occurs.

Roasted nuts

The antioxidants found in walnuts were also two to 15 times as powerful as vitamin E, which is known to protect the body against damaging natural chemicals involved in causing disease, the study says.

Nuts are known to be healthy and nutritious, containing high-quality protein, lots of vitamins and minerals as well as dietary fibre. They are also dairy and gluten-free.

Previous research has shown that regular consumption of small amounts of nuts can reduce the risk of heart disease, some types of cancer, type two diabetes and other health problems.

Dr Vinson said there was another advantage in choosing walnuts as a source of antioxidants: "The heat from roasting nuts generally reduces the quality of the antioxidants.

"People usually eat walnuts raw or unroasted, and get the full effectiveness of those antioxidants."

Maude Barlow: A Healthy Environment Should Be a Human Right

Maude Barlow is a member of OCA's Policy Board. Yes! Magazine is a great publication that you should subscribe to if at all possible by clicking here.

In most legal systems, you have a right to freedom of speech or religion, but you don't have a right to breathe clean air or drink safe water.

Maude Barlow-author, activist, and former senior advisor on water to the United Nations-believes that those rights should be recognized. This past summer, she helped engineer a landmark victory: The U.N. formally adopted a resolution recognizing the human right to water (though the United States abstained).

Now, Barlow is part of an international movement-of governments, scientists, and activists-working to bring a focus on environmental rights to the ongoing United Nations climate negotiations. This week, she is attending the United Nations climate meeting in Cancún, Mexico.

The negotiations are thus far getting scant press attention, but thousands of people from all over the world are turning out in Cancún to voice their political views and hold alternative meetings and demonstrations outside the U.N. conference. Early this week, the international grassroots organization La Via Campesina led Barlow and hundreds of other grassroots leaders on a tour across the Mexican countryside to witness how climate change is already affecting rural communities. The tours converged in Mexico City where a few thousand people held a march to the Zócalo, the city's central plaza.

Activists in Cancún and Mexico City are rallying behind the idea of environmental rights. Many support a document called the "People's Agreement on Climate Change," which includes a "Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth." It's an idealistic name for a proposal that would sound either visionary or improbable, or both-if not for the fact that the declaration represents the work of representatives from 56 countries and of tens of thousands of people who attended a climate conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia, last April. The document declares that everybody has rights to basics like clean water and clean air, but it also says something even more extraordinary: that the planet's ecosystems themselves have rights.

It's unlikely that the Cochabamba proposals will end up in any formal agreements to emerge from Cancún. But the idea of environmental rights is taking hold. In September 2008, Ecuador formally recognized the rights of nature in its new constitution. In the United States, a handful of local governments have passed resolutions recognizing that nature has rights, including, recently, the city of Pittsburgh.