UW Experts Weigh In on Food Issues

If you've ever thought to yourself, "Michael Pollan makes some interesting and potentially valid points, but who is he to tell us how to eat (or shop, or farm, etc.)?", you are certainly not alone. The most recent issue of Grow, a magazine distributed by UW's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, features twelve ideas for changing the food/farming industry by actual experts. Read mini-articles on topics from food processing and safety, cooking and food production, to farming and crop reform. Check it out here, if you haven't already.

Fast food, frighteningly slow decay: Mother keeps McDonald's Happy Meal for a whole year... and it STILL hasn't gone off

Here's an example of deduction: Real food will decay when left out on a shelf for a year. A McDonald's Happy Meal does not decay when left on a shelf for a year. Thus, a McDonald's Happy Meal is not real food.

From Daily Mail UK

Glancing at the two McDonald's Happy Meals pictured here, you may feel they look pretty much identical.

Astonishingly, however, this is the same meal, photographed 12 months apart.

Where any other food might be a mouldy, decomposing mess after a year, the McDonald's meal shows few signs of going off apart from the beef patty shrivelling and the stale burger bun cracking.

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Why Making Healthful Foods Cheaper Isn't Enough

Here is an interesting article featured on NPR about healthier food choices. Encouraging healthier eating is proving to be a complex issue; NPR takes a look at the economic side of the issue:

Bucks for broccoli or cash for carrots? Financial incentives aimed at encouraging healthier choices are catching on from New Zealand to the Philippines. Workplaces in the United States have been offering incentives for weight loss. In a London-based study, dieters got paid when they dropped pounds. Now researchers are interested in understanding how food price manipulations may influence what ends up in mothers' grocery carts. Does increasing the cost of sugary items mean fewer people buy them? Would more people buy veggies if they were more affordable?

To create successful incentives, says Yale behavioral economist Dean Karlan, a policy needs to specifically target the people whose behavior its trying to change. "So in the case of broccoli you'd want to find out who's not eating broccoli and then pay them to eat it," he says. You don't want to necessarily make broccoli cheaper for those who are already buying plenty of it, you want to target those who don't buy enough fruits or vegetables. It could be very tricky to structure such an incentive.

Click here to read the rest of the article

Food activist on a mission in Madison

Last month, Wisconsin farmer Will Allen shared a podium in Washington, D.C., with Michelle Obama as she launched her plan to fight childhood obesity.

On Tuesday, Allen will be in the buffet line at Madison’s First Unitarian Society at a community potluck, which will be followed by his presentation on the groundbreaking national effort to bring high quality food to everyone, regardless of their income, through innovative urban agriculture.

Despite Allen’s growing national prominence — he’s a recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant” — it’s likely that he’ll continue to spend a good amount time in the Madison area.

Allen’s Milwaukee-based Growing Power Inc. is a key partner in the proposed Madison “agro-urban” charter school which would be built on Madison’s South Side, at the corner of Rimrock and Badger roads. Although funding and planning are still in flux, the 4.5-acre property for the Badger Rock Middle School was purchased from Dane County for the school in January for $500,000, and agricultural work there will begin this spring — a first step in creating the vegetable gardens and orchards that will surround the school.

Click here read the article by Chris Martell

Go Big Read is on facebook, just like you

Go Big Read is on facebook, and today they're discussing the First Family's kitchen garden. Hey, if the most powerful family in the world can do it...then anybody...yeah.

Kidding. First Lady Michelle Obama's program that teaches urban kids about food is actually very inspiring, and not all that different from what a variety of programs all over the country are doing.

Become poke buddies with Go Big Read now!

Health claims? Questionable celebrity involvement? Orange Juice?

If you've spent any time in front of the television over the past few months, you may have heard a vaguely familiar voice expounding upon the benefits of healthy, pure, and simple Florida orange juice. Did you know that one 8 oz. glass contains 25% of your recommended daily value of fruits and vegetables? Did you know that all of those "scientists" have not been able to replicate this quality using their "chemistry sets?" Did you know that the voice of Florida orange juice is Tom Selleck?


Check out the official Florida Juice website, read the health claims, and decide for yourself. Don't forget to turn up your speakers in order to hear the soothing sounds of the 'stache.







("Florida what? Whatever, tell them I'll do it." Photo courtesy of Google images)

Taste the World

From WKOWTV.com

A Madison non-profit organization is working with local middle schools to help students expand their eating horizons. Thier weekly program, Taste the World, gives students the opportunity prepare and tastes cusines from a wide array of cultures. The program has been a big hit with the students and is becoming more popular in the Madison community.

Colleges accommodate more students with food allergies

Photo source: bookofjoe

A growing number of U.S. colleges and universities are trying to meet the health needs of students with food allergies by providing modified menu choices and/or allergy-free dining facilities.

From USA Today

By Jennifer Epstein, Inside Higher Ed

College students take risks. They pull all-nighters ahead of early-morning presentations. They skip more classes than they attend. They eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chocolate bars and pizza.

That last one doesn't sound so risky — and isn't, for most people. But it can be dangerous, even fatal, for the growing ranks of traditional-age undergraduates with food allergies. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of Americans under the age of 18 with food allergies rose to 3 million, which is 4% of the age group, in 2007, up from 2.3 million, or 3.3% of the under-18 population, in 1997. As those kids grow up, some lose their allergies, but many others don't.

In greater numbers than ever before, they're arriving on college campuses with concerns that dining halls don't know how to handle.

The allergic student of even a few years ago might have had to take chances, pester cooks about ingredients or just skip eating anything made in a public kitchen altogether. But as allergies seem to have become more common — and as allergy sufferers and advocates have become more aggressive in lobbying for accommodations – dining services officials are beginning to act. Many college and university dining halls have adopted signs that point out common allergens, while others offer frozen meals and special items like gluten-free bread so students with allergies can have the social experience of eating with their friends.

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Nutritious, but nice: Macrobiotic food gets a gourmet makeover

Macrobiotic food has such a joyless image that not even Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow have managed to make it sexy. Now it's had a makeover – putting even chocolate mousse back on the menu.

By Lucy Gillmore

Thursday, 11 February 2010

How delicious does this sound? A creamy avocado dip with crunchy crudités to start, then Nobu-style tempura with a rich, salty sauce, followed by wild mushroom risotto served with roasted fennel and spinach. For dessert: dark chocolate mousse with a sprinkling of chopped hazelnuts. Are you licking your lips yet? Mouth-watering it may be, but I'd bet two raw carrots it didn't cross your mind that it was "macrobiotic".

Macrobiotic food has an image problem. If, like me, the first thing that pops into your head is Gwyneth Paltrow munching her way through a bean salad in the nude (apparently to stop herself from eating too much) you'll understand why. Even a beautiful, blonde – naked – Hollywood actress can't make rice and lentils sexy.

Admittedly she isn't the most exciting beautiful, blonde Hollywood actress around. She and the equally wholesome Chris Martin have, occasionally, been tagged "boring" themselves. But now even Gwynnie, it seems, is bored with macrobiotics. On her (yawn) lifestyle website goop.com she admits (are you sitting down?) that she's been dabbling with dairy. It turns out she has a weakness for cheese. Bring on the Brie!

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Michael Pollan talks about food, healthcare, and his new book Food Rules - An Eater's Manual.

The author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan, discusses the link between healthcare and diet, the dangers of processed foods, the impacts of industrial agriculture, and his sixty-four rules for eating.

“The markets are full of what I call edible food-like substances that you have to avoid,” says Pollan. The radio/TV show Democracy Now! recently aired an excerpt of the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc. and then spent the rest of the show talking with author/activist Michael Pollan.

Healthy Cooking 101: A lesson for student-athletes

There is a current paradigm shift in collegiate sports in which athletic programs are becoming increasingly focused on training their athletes holistically. The UW athletic program is following suit by initiating a healthy cooking class for Badger athletes, which teaches them how to shop, cook, and eat in a way that compliments their unique lifestyles.

By Camille Rogers

It’s a Friday afternoon in November, and the members of the University of Wisconsin varsity women’s crew team have come together to practice their skills.

However, they are not practicing with boats and oars, nor are they anywhere near open water.

Today, they have met in the School of Human Ecology building to work on techniques that involve measuring cups, mixing bowls, and stoves.

The team is about to participate in a two-hour healthy cooking program, a pilot initiative that is sponsored by the athletic department, and it is specifically designed for student-athletes.

The goal of the program is to equip student athletes with a basic knowledge of how to plan and prepare healthy meals that respect their limited time, living space, and financial resources.

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Rules Worth Following?

Here is a recent review of Michael Pollan's newest book "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual". Although he isn't a nutritionist or a scientist, Pollan offers a set of guidelines to follow based on his two previous books, '"The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food". --AH

In the more than four decades that I have been reading and writing about the findings of nutritional science, I have come across nothing more intelligent, sensible and simple to follow than the 64 principles outlined in a slender, easy-to-digest new book called “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual,” by Michael Pollan.

Mr. Pollan is not a biochemist or a nutritionist but rather a professor of science journalism at the University of California-Berkeley. You may recognize his name as the author of two highly praised books on food and nutrition, “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” (All three books are from Penguin.)

If you don’t have the time and inclination to read the first two, you can do yourself and your family no better service than to invest $11 and one hour to whip through the 139 pages of “Food Rules” and adapt its guidance to your shopping and eating habits.

Chances are you’ve heard any number of the rules before. I, for one, have been writing and speaking about them for decades. And chances are you’ve yet to put most of them into practice. But I suspect that this little book, which is based on research but not annotated, can do more than the most authoritative text to get you motivated to make some important, lasting, health-promoting and planet-saving changes in what and how you eat.

Click here to read the article...

Underground Food Collective opening restaurant in Cafe Montmarte space

By Kyle Nablicy


On Tuesday, Jan. 19, Governor Jim Doyle announced a pretty sweet gesture in support of the Wisconsin local food movement. Thanks to the state's "Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin" grant program, nine entities across the state are receiving over $220,000 to foster community-oriented agriculture. Among those nine, four are based in Madison, including the Dane County Institutional Food Market Coalition, the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition, the UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, and the Underground Food Collective.

The press release states that Underground Catering, LLC, will receive "$25,000 to develop artisan meats that will help fill Wisconsin’s need for more pork products." Yes, that's what it actually stated, and I'm not going to argue. My first thought was, ‘ooh, I wonder what kind of bacon-y wonderment will result from that little windfall.’

"We are going to start a meat processing business," explains Jonny Hunter, one of four full-time members of the collective, along with his brother Ben, Kris Noren, and Jon Atwell. Jonny says that the group will continue operating out of its existing near-east side kitchen. But that is only the half of it.

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Michelle Obama vows to ‘move the ball’ on kids’ diets

Michelle Obama is moving forward with initiatives to combat childhood obesity, most notably by promoting organic farming and eating.--CR

By Tom Philpott

Her husband got dealt a difficult set of cards in taking over the post-Bush II presidency—and has arguably played them quite badly. He now finds himself in a tight political corner: caught between an emboldened Right, an angry Left, and a shrivelled middle.

But Michelle Obama abides, as fabulous and beloved by the electorate as ever. She has built up a tidy store of political capital. She plans to spend it “by spearheading an initiative to reduce childhood obesity that, she hopes, will create a legacy by which she can be remembered,” reports Sheryl Gay Stolberg in The New York Times.

Time Magazine: Getting real about the high price of cheap food

By Brian Walsh

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon — circa 2009.

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