Meatless Monday: It’s Food Day Today!

Happy Food Day! Yes, today, October 24th, is a very special Meatless Monday. The goal of this first annual Food Day, sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, is “to bring together Americans from all walks of life to push for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way.” Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) are the Honorary Co-Chairs for Food Day 2011. There are events large and small scheduled to take place around the country. Click here to find an event near you.  

In my city of New Haven, CT there will be lots of things happening over the course of the day. Here are some highlights:

• In a morning event, second graders from New Haven’s Columbus School will walk to the Chabaso Bakery Farm for a teach-in with New Haven Public Schools Food Director “Food Dude” Tim Cipriano and his colleague, dietitian Sarah Bourque. The students will be the first to taste Chabaso Bakery’s new “Ollie Bread,” made with all natural ingredients and whole grains such as wheat, honey, raisins, millet, flax, and rye. The bread will be served in New Haven public schools.

• At 5 pm on the Yale campus, Chef René Redzepi, owner of Noma restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark, named the “world’s best restaurant” in both 2010 and 2011, will present a talk co-sponsored by the Yale Sustainable Food Project and the Yale Agrarian Studies Department. Redzepi goes beyond the usual farm to table route to source everything locally: he is a forager. The story goes that on one particular day during a very harsh winter, the only hyper-local ingredients he and his team could procure were some dark blue carrots which had wintered over in an icy field. Redzepi is reported to have turned the leathery carrots into a delicious dish after braising them for hours in goat’s butter and serving them with fresh chamomile tips and sorrel.  For more, check out Dishes from Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine. 

• At 6 pm the public is invited to the City’s Barnard Environmental School for some healthy snacks and a screening of What’s On Your Plate?,  “a witty and provocative documentary produced and directed by award-winning Catherine Gund about kids and food politics.” Admission is free. There will be door prizes! City Seed’s New Haven Cooks will be available for purchase.

Even if there are no scheduled events in your area, you can still observe Food Day. Here is a link to send a message to Congress asking for support of Food Day's goals. Here is another to special Food Day recipes. 

Wherever you are, whatever you do today, be well and eat well. Happy Food Day. Have a great week.

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal  health and the health of our planet.”

PS Please don’t forget about the frozen beans from China. The petition count is still rising, but at a slower rate than it has been, still going for 500. If you are interested in signing on, you will find my widget one post back. Thanks.

Meatless Monday: Food Deserts

Do you know what one is? Do you live in one?

The term “food desert” has been in use since it was coined by researchers in the UK in the 1990s (according to Wikipedia). In brief, a food desert is a low-income census tract, either urban or rural, where a substantial number or percentage of residents lack ready access to healthy and affordable food.

Food deserts have been much in the news of late. As part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative, the proposed Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) will expand the availability of nutritious food to food deserts by developing and equipping grocery stores, small retailers, corner stores, and farmers markets with fresh and healthy food.The HFFI is a partnership between the Treasury Department, Health and Human Services, and the Agriculture Department (USDA). An Interagency Working Group from the three departments, along with staff from the Economic Research Service (ERS/USDA), developed a definition of food deserts to be used with other data to determine eligibility for Federal funds.

In a 2009 report to Congress, supermarkets and large grocery stores were used as proxies for sources of healthy and affordable foods. Based upon these data sources and measures, the report described characteristics of people and households residing in areas with limited access to healthy and affordable food such as the number of poor people, the number of children or older persons, and the number of households without vehicles.

A tool known as the Food Desert Locator was devised with these objectives:

• to present a spatial overview of where food-desert census tracts are located;
• to provide selected population characteristics of food-desert census tracts; and
• to offer data on food-desert census tracts that can be downloaded for community planning or research purposes.

For the purposes of this tool, to qualify as a “low-income community,” a census tract must have either: a poverty rate of 20 percent or higher, OR a median family income at or below 80 percent of the area's median family income. To qualify as a “low-access community,” at least 500 people and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract's population must reside more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles).

The USDA released the online Food Desert Locator in May of this year. Simply click "find address" and then enter an address or zip code and click “find” to determine if your location of interest is in a food desert.

By entering my zip code I learned that while I do NOT live in a food desert, many in the outlying areas of New Haven do. 

The tool has a number of critics including Mayor Bloomberg. The locator has 26,000 New Yorkers living in neighborhoods without fresh food. The mayor claims the number is closer to 3 million and fears that supermarkets using USDA data will not come to Manhattan. Federal officials counter that the tool is a work-in-progress and will be updated next year.

For a concise look at just where in the country food deserts are, and who in the US lives in them, check out this post on the website of Patchwork Nation, a reporting project of the Jefferson Institute that aims to explore what is happening in the United States by examining different kinds of communities over time. FYI the Patchwork Nation community type for New Haven is “Industrial Metropolis.”

I know this is a denser than usual post, but with Food Day coming up on October 24, I thought I’d share a little background on this important issue. 

Have a good week, and come again soon.

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal  health and the health of our planet.”

PS Please don’t forget about the frozen beans from China. The petition count is still rising, but at a slower rate than it has been, still going for 500. Thanks.

On My Radar 10.14.11

Passings. News. Happenings. Fall Clean-up Tips…Here are some of the items on my radar.

FAREWELLS:

Steve Jobs died on Wednesday, October 5, at the age of 56. The news spread instantly on devices of Steve’s design, and the world paid him homage in ways that would have been impossible without his vision. We mourn his passing and wonder what more would have been in store if Steve’s life had not been so short. On the day after his death it was reported that former Yale SOM Dean Joel Polodny had been recruited by Apple and Steve Jobs to plan a training program in which company executives will be taught to think like Jobs, “in a forum to impart that DNA to future generations.”

Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai died on September 25. In an era where women in Kenya were not educated and had little power, she was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, and in 1977 founded the Green Belt Movement which has planted an estimated 45 million trees around Kenya. Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, reminds us to honor Wangari’s life by remembering what one person can achieve.

NEWS from ALL OVER:

On October 8, Denmark’s new “fat tax” went into effect. The nation imposed a tax on fatty foods, including butter, believed to be the first such action in the world, as an additional step to raising life expectancy of Danes. Denmark, as well as some other European countries, already has higher fees on sugar, chocolates, and soft drinks. 

Faster than the speed of light? A new discovery, if proven true, may upend our understanding of the universe and our concept of time. Researchers working underground in Italy in one of the world’s largest physics laboratories recorded neutrinos traveling at a fraction of a second faster than the speed of light, an event that is impossible in Einstein’s theory of special relativity.

NEWS from NEW HAVEN:

While New Haven is still no shopping mecca, it is no longer a shopping desert.

New Haven’s Apple Store opened on September 24 to jubilant High-5s from all the new employees. The first 1000 visitors received a commemorative black t-shirt.

New employees of the Elm City Market have begun stocking the store's shelves........ A soft opening is promised for members (currently at 688) later this month as soon as all the permits are in order. The Market still has job openings and is in particular need of a meat cutter. Members, there is a $50 gift certificate in it for you if you recommend the person who is hired. 

Common Ground High School raised $2,551 at the Community Day at Whole Foods in Milford last month. All of those funds will be invested in their core programs. That figure represents 5% of the net sales at that one store on September 21. That’s a whole lot of shopping!

New Haven’s Wild, Wild West. A query about wildlife sitings in Westville and Beaver Hills  (for those who don’t know, just a couple of miles from downtown) yielded a remarkable number of results including: plenty of woodchucks, the occasional deer, 4 wild turkeys trotting down the sidewalk, turtles, an opossum who ate all the baby robins from a nest right outside a window, and a red-tail hawk who swooped down and caught a squirrel at a busy corner. The woodchuck I reported earlier in the summer on the east side of town has not been seen since shortly before Hurricane Irene (at least by me).

On September 24, people around the world by participated in Moving Planet. In New Haven there were a number of events, including the planting of 44 fruit trees in Edgewood Park,  awarded to Friends of Edgewood Park as a prize for winning a national Communities Take Root contest sponsored by Edy’s Fruit Bars and the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation. A large part of the day’s theme was the celebration of alternative forms of transportation, and hundreds rode their bikes (and people-powered vehicles) through downtown streets, beginning and ending on the historic New Haven Green.

Even with the recent expansion of the City’s ambitious tree planting campaign and the new fruit trees in Edgewood Park, we are in the red this year. New Haven lost 1,250 trees during Hurricane Irene, and several were felled recently on Trumbull Street in preparation for the new storm sewer, one a very old London planetree. We watched with sadness as each limb was crudely sawed off… 

The new Connecticut chapter of Slow Food USA, Slow Food Shoreline, held its first event, a happy hour at Zinc, on Tuesday, October 11. You can follow them on Facebook  or Twitter. Now is a good time to join Slow Food USA. Through October 15, membership is give-what-you can, and the gift will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the generosity of a Slow Food USA board member. 

RECYCLING OPPORTUNITIES:

E-Cycling for New Haven Residents

City residents can bring old electronics (any item can be plugged in, with the exceptions of light bulbs, batteries, and equipment containing refrigerants) to the Transfer Station (260 Middletown Avenue) Monday through Saturday from 9:00 am - 12:00 noon. All electronics collected during the month of October count toward New Haven's total tonnage in a statewide competition that rewards the community recycling the most electronics per capita during the month of October. The first prize is a $3000 scholarship for New Haven schoolchildren.

Community Shredding

If you live in CT, you can go online to locate shredding events in your area. 

Helping Hands Community Thrift Store & Furniture Bank is in particular need of beds and offers free pick-up in New Haven. Click here for a list of what they do and do not accept as donations. 

October 29

National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day

Last year nearly 4,000 state and local law enforcement agencies throughout the nation participated in drug take-back  events, collecting more than 309 tons of pills. You can enter your zip code here to find a collection site near you. 

October 29

Last Fall collection day at HazWaste Central (Collections will resume mid-May, 2012) Free to residents of Bethany, Branford, Cheshire, East Haven, Fairfield, Guilford, Hamden, Madison, Milford, New Haven, North Branford, North Haven, Orange, Wallingford, West Haven and Woodbridge, CT. For details click this link.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

October 15

1:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Common Ground - 358 Springside Avenue in New Haven

Tour-Ganic: The Voodoo Fix Rocks for CitySeed & Common Ground! 

Common Ground - 358 Springside Avenue in New Haven

The Voodoo Fix, an LA-based genre-bending rock band with roots in blues, soul, and funk, is bringing their national Tour-Ganic to Common Ground. All proceeds from the concert will help CitySeed and Common Ground get good, local, affordable food to our neighbors who need it most. $10 suggested donation.

October 16

11 am - 2 pm

Cabot Creamery Cooperative Open Farm Sunday

If you live in NE or NY, check this link to locate a farm near you

October 19

5:30 pm -7:30 pm

New Haven Green Drinks

The Red Lentil, 25 Temple Street, New Haven

Theresa Labriola, Senior Associate, Northeast Fisheries Program will speak at 6:30 on the topic of the program’s campaign to implement new, more conservative, catch limits on menhaden, which have dropped to less than 10% of their original population.

October 24

First Annual Food Day 

“Food Day seeks to bring together Americans from all walks of life to push for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way. We will work with people around the country to create thousands of events in homes, schools, churches, farmers markets, city halls, and state capitals.” Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) are the Honorary Co-Chairs for Food Day 2011 which is sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Click here to find an event near you.

October 28

Critical Mass Halloween Ride

Gather at the flagpole on the New Haven Green at 5:30

There will be costumes. Wear a helmet. Have a working light.

October 29

CT NOFA’s 2011 Annual Meeting

Noon - 4 pm, Common Ground High School

Farm Tour and Potluck

Special Guest Rep. Richard Roy will speak about his efforts to label GMO food in CT

BLOG NEWS:

I have had several visits from readers from Mississippi. I now have all 50 states, and every continent except Antarctica. Thanks.

Over 135 people have signed my petition requesting that Stop & Shop use American grown green beans in their Nature’s Promise line. I am trying to get to 500. Please click if you have not done so already.

TGIF. Have a great weekend. Come back soon.