Health, Taken Seriously

The new USDA food guidelines no longer consist of a pyramid–now it is a simple, clean plate with fairly equal portions of grains, vegetables, fruits, protein, and smaller portion of dairy.  However, this article points out that while the USDA is telling Americans to eat this way, less than 1% of U.S. agricultural subsidies go to fruits and veggies, while 63% go to meat and dairy.  Another 20% goes to grain, most of which is used to feed meat and dairy producing animals.

If you’d like to see the government stop subsidizing the same foods that are making us unhealthy and overweight, consider signing this petition.  This petition was prefaced with this text:  ”The epidemic of childhood obesity now affects one in three school-age kids.  Yet government subsidies have driven down the cost of sugar-laden, high-fat foods, while prices for fruits and vegetables have increased nearly 40 percent in the past 25 years.  Curbing the taxpayer subsidies to agribusiness that have made a box of Twinkies cheaper than a bag of carrots is an important step toward curbing childhood obesity.”

I recently posted about a bill in three states (Florida, Minnesota, and Iowa) that would make it illegal to photograph farms.  SlowFoodUSA.com collected almost 33,000 signatures on their petition against these bills and for transparency on farms.  The bill has failed in Florida and hopefully will do the same in the other two states.

Even better, over 400 farms uploaded their photos to Slow Food USA’s Facebook page.  Many shots of the pigs are absolutely adorable.  If those photos don’t make you want to support small, local farms, I don’t know what will.

Consider signing a Slow Food USA petition against legislation in three states that would make it illegal to photograph farms.  Consumers have a right to see how their food is produced and to know how farms treat their animals.

We have always made time for home-cooked meals, but lately with 3 boys, I find it nearly impossible to cook in the evenings of weeknights.  Rather than resort to frozen pizzas all the time, we’ve tried some of these tricks to make it work:

• We double every meal we make and eat the leftovers the next night.  That way we only have to cook every other night.
• The late afternoons and evenings are too hectic in our house, so I sometimes try to cook mid-day while the kids are at school.
• When possible, we make even more than double and freeze it.  This is especially true this time of year with all the extra produce we have from our garden and CSA.
• We make many dinners that don’t really require recipes–enchiladas, lasagna, pastas.  I can make them with quite a variety of ingredients and it saves me time since I don’t have to look up recipes, write down ingredients, and look for specifics in the store.  Rather, I just buy several “Italian” or “Mexican” themed veggies and ingredients and make up a dish as I go.

On August 13, 228 million salmonella-tainted eggs were recalled.  That recall has been expanded to now include more than half a billion eggs produced by two Iowa companies.  This is the biggest recall in U.S. history and it certainly makes me glad that I get my eggs from a farm 2 hours from my house.

My eggs come from organically fed, pasture raised hens that truly do get access to the outdoors.  The farm has converted old school buses into chicken coops that travel around the farm, giving the hens fresh pecking grounds and spreading their waste as fertilizer all over the farm.  And my farm isn’t afraid to send me images of how they care for their hens.

Where do your eggs come from?  How are the hens treated?  Have you bothered to find out more about the kind of producer you are supporting?  Try looking into supporting a local farm.  It’s quite easy for us to do this as the eggs come to a delivery location in our neighborhood.  And they cost about what we’d pay for organic eggs at the grocery store.