UEPI News and Commentary

Fresh & Easy's Environmental and Food Access Commitments

For Release November 6, 2007

Contact:
Amanda Shaffer 323-259-2759; cell: 626-818-2348; shaffer@oxy.edu
Robert Gottlieb 323-259-2712; cell: 310-617-0657; gottlieb@oxy.edu

Report Update evaluates Tesco'€™s progress in locating in food desert areas, and the company'€™s commitment to green building.

LOS ANGELES €“- On November 8, 2007, Tesco, the world'€™s third largest food retail corporation, will open its first six Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets in Southern California.  Tesco's entry into the U.S. market raises key food access, health and environmental issues that apply to the supermarket industry as a whole. These sets of issues were evaluated in the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute's August 2007 report, Shopping for a Market: Evaluating Tesco's Entry into Los Angeles and the United States, which can be accessed online at www.uepi.oxy.edu.

Today, UEPI releases an update to Shopping for a Market that addresses two of those issues: the location of stores in food deserts and Tesco'€™s environmental profile regarding the company'€™s plans for green building certification. 

FARM TO SCHOOL PORTAL ON THE MENU FOR NATIONAL SCHOOL LUNCH WEEK

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE       
October 15, 2007                     

Contact: Debra Eschmeyer
Tel: 419.753.3412; Cell: 202.557.6942l deschmeyer[at]oxy.edu

New tool provides innovative approaches to tackle childhood obesity
and loss of family farms 

LOS ANGELES — As a means to support community-based food systems, strengthen family farms, and improve student health by reducing childhood obesity, the National Farm to School Network launched its new and improved website, www.farmtoschool.org. This timely release coincides with National School Lunch Week, October 15-19, 2007.

LAUSD cafeteria implementation

From UEPI Staff Member Elizabeth Medrano:

Beginning on September 4th, 2007, all Elementary Schools in LAUSD are offering not one, not two, but THREE menu items to their students, including a vegetarian option.    Middle Schools and High Schools offer SEVEN lunch menu options, including a vegetarian option as well.  Menus are planned in a 2 week cycle rotating  lunch items to address the issue of variety of foods offered that Healthy School Food Coalition (HSFC) students, parents and teachers members have worked to improve.

Watered down organic food labeling being pushed through with little public input

From Common Dreams:

Another Sneak Attack on Organic Standards: USDA to Allow More Conventional Ingredients in Organics

WASHINGTON - MAY 17 -The USDA has announced a controversial proposal, with absolutely no input from consumers, to allow 38 new non-organic ingredients in products bearing the "USDA Organic" seal. Most of the ingredients are food colorings derived from plants that are supposedly not "commercially available" in organic form. But at least three of the proposed ingredients, apparently backed by beer companies, including Anheuser-Busch, and pork and food processors, represent a serious threat to organic standards, and have raised the concerns of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), as well as a number of smaller organic companies and organic certifiers.

Keep reading....

After the jump are the comments from UEPI's Center for Food & Justice that we are submitting today.

Warehouses vs. Urban Gardens: L.A.’s Own Urban Heat Island Effect

It’s hot out there, and one of the reasons it might get even hotter in the years to come in LA, is the continuing push to pave even more of the little green space we have. When Judge Helen Bendix ruled against the South Central Farmers, and developer Ralph Horowitz once again indicated his preference for warehouses over green space, it was also a victory for the urban heat island effect. In 1967, an article in Scientific American first raised the concern that certain characteristics of urban development caused temperatures to rise in urban areas. In the summer, researchers have pointed out that we might be as much as five degrees hotter in Los Angeles due to our hot roofs and pavements, and the lack of vegetation, green space, and trees. More freeways and more black top, more diesel trucks and more warehouses have all kinds of environmental consequences, including forcing us to bake even more in the sun. More gardens, more trees, different strategies for development could begin to cool us down. Too bad the tendency always seems to go in the direction of more, not less heat.

The South Central Farm: What Next?

As this is being written, the 14 acre South Central Farm on 41^st street and Alameda is being bulldozed, the fences that separated the magnificent plots torn down, and an urban landscape that was in many ways truly magical will no longer be present at that site.

The Future of Food in Suburban Sprawl

Through CFJ's Farm to School work in Riverside County over the past 2 years we have been supporting small family farmers whose land is being continually threatened by development. Riverside County is one of the fastest growing counties in the country and has also historically been one of the leading agricultural counties in California. Unfortunately as the demand for affordable housing rises and the population increases, agricultural lands are being swallowed up by suburbs. Desert communities in Riverside County expect enormous population growth of 50% or more in just 5 years, and will add tens of thousands of new homes each year to meet housing needs. Faced with these grim statistics, it is hard to see a future for farm to school in a rapidly growing and agriculture-stifling county such as Riverside.

Golden arches & magic kingdoms

The Los Angeles Times reported monday that Disney and McDonalds would not be renewing a 10 year exclusive deal that cross promoted  disney movies & McDonald's happy meals. The word from movie industry insiders was that Disney was concerned with being linked to McDonalds food given the increasing concerns over childhood obesity. Company spokespersons denied that the obesity angle had anything to do with the end of the deal, but often these denials only serve to reinforce the original story. The damage is done. The obvious implication is that an all-american brand like the happy meal is becoming tarnished by health concerns. Whether kids movies and theme parks are paragons of physical health is another topic. (Don't get me wrong, there are some ggod disney films & disneyland/world have their own creepy fascination as long as you don't visit too often.)

Wal-Mart: Friend to the Hungry?

I had grown accustomed to Wal-Mart ads. When I first saw their ads on television I was so repulsed by the slick commercials that cover up their corporate abuses: union busting, low wages, unaffordable/unavailable health insurance, discriminatory hiring practices, and more. But over time I have mellowed in my response to these attempts to improve Wal-Mart’s tainted public image. However, this morning I was disturbed from slumber to the sounds of National Public Radio and a sponsorship message about Wal-Mart’s partnership with America’s Second Harvest.

McDonalds & Nintendo Together at Last

I was so disheartened to hear today that McDonalds and that Nintendo are teaming up to offer free Wi-Fi in nearly 6,000 McDonalds restaurants so that Nintendo owners can play networked games online for free. As if it is not bad enough that American children are already spending unprecedented hours in front of televisions, computers, and gaming machines, but now many kids will surely be spending some of these sedentary hours in a McDonalds restaurant surrounded by 99¢ value meals and other low cost junk food. At least luring kids into McDonalds to play in their in-house playgrounds is somewhat forgivable in that it offers kids a safe place to play and be active, but this new partnership sounds like a prime example of all that is wrong with marketing, branding, and advertising to young people. By inviting young people to come to the restaurant and stay to play video games it is clear that McDonalds is aggressively recruiting younger and more impressionable customers. Despite all McDonalds’ hype around salads and apple slices, health and wellness are clearly good PR points for McDonalds but don’t have any real bearing on actions and decisions made by the fast food giant. 

At the Fair

Another Southern California summer shades imperceptively into autumn. Pomona,  Roman goddess of fruits and vines, emerges from her slumber, drawn to the Fairplex grounds by the scent of deep-fried avacados, where she mingles with the other ghosts of L.A.'s lost farms for three weeks before returning to her subdivided grave. It's time for that ritual of bygone harvests; that spectacle of mass walking, shopping, gawking, and eating: the Los Angeles County Fair.

American Apparel: Apparently Exploitative Afterall

I have at least 2 dozen t-shirts, skirts, etc., made by American Apparel, hanging in my closet.   I like the way they fit.  I love it that the workers receive a living wage.  Plus, they are a progressive company, right?  They make a sustainable cotton tee, they don't use sweatshop labor...  I have to admit, I was a little disappointed to learn the company was anti-union, but I figured, you can't win 'em all, right?

Then I got this e-mail from a friend:

From: Moira Beery
Sent: Mon 7/11/2005 4:25 PM
To: Andrea Misako Azuma; Amanda Leigh Shaffer
Subject: Fwd: NYTimes.com: His Way Meets a Highway Called Court

Here is an article about American Apparel CEO being sued for harassment. Surprise surprise.
-Moira

Krafty Kraft

In January, Kraft announced that it would be reducing its advertising of junk food products to children by not advertising to children under age 6 and by not advertising unhealthy products like Oreos during TV programs aimed at children ages 6-11.  Kraft was celebrated for taking seriously the childhood obesity epidemic and self-regulating the advertising of its unhealthy products to children. 

Ties your stomach in a knot

Warning: this post (the topic, not the style) contains more than 45 grams of irony.

Starting this fall, PepsiCo will be providing nearly all of the drinks mandated under the Los Angeles Unified School District’s groundbreaking 2002 Healthy Beverages Motion. I’m not sure how exactly to react or respond. Complexities and contradictions abound. The world’s second largest soda company will be operationally responsible for enforcing a ban on sodas in the nation’s second largest school district, and marketing to a captive audience of students without access to their largest brand.

Healthy Vending Starts Making the Rounds

Following the LA Unified School District’s ban of sodas sales in school vending machines in 2002 and their junk food ban in 2003, hundreds, if not thousands of schools nationwide have followed suit. Seen as a way to help curb that rapid expansion of youngsters’ waistlines, parents, school boards, and teachers alike have taken their soda-free agenda as far as state supreme courts.  Now, other institutions are following suit.

School food down under

I recently visited Australia, staying in and near Brisbane and Sydney. We had fun; it's an interesting place, similar enough to the U.S. (and So Cal in particular) that the differences in culture, landscape, population, wildlife, and history knock you for just enough of a loop to make you think.  It was a personal trip, but I had the chance to talk to some public health officials there about the school food campaigns we are doing in L.A. I was surprised to learn that there is no equivalent of the U.S. national lunch and breakfast programs in Australian public (state) schools.

Can there be a planning vision for Los Angeles?

Shortly after the June 17^th mayoral election, Antonio Villaraigosa appeared as a keynote speaker at the Congress for New Urbanism convention in Pasadena and proclaimed that he would appoint a new Planning Director (the previous Director, Con Howe, had announced he was stepping down six months ago) who would be 100% in accord with the smart growth and livability positions of the New Urbanists. No word yet on how such a decision is going to be made, nor what planning issues the mayor sees as crucial, and perhaps most importantly whether the Planning Department or for that matter Planning itself will have any special role in the Villaraigosa Administration.

The possibilities are there to take Los Angeles down a very different road from the past when planning at best was an afterthought, the Department was understaffed, and its priorities skewered towards the latest big development. For Los Angeles has no pedestrian plan, no bike plan, no transit-oriented development plan, no broader commitment to a livability agenda at either the regional or the neighborhood scale. Social and environmental justice advocates, filling out the smart growth agenda with a commitment to equity and sustainable community economic development, have laid out the road map for a planning vision and a vision for planning for Los Angeles. Mayor Villaraigosa, please take note!

School food: a fighting matter

“An army marches on its stomach” - Napoleon

Except for the occasional military recruiting poster, public school cafeterias may seem far removed from the carnage-strewn streets of Iraq. But all those school lunch lines, subsidized meals, and little milk cartons are calibrated in an unexpected way to the body weight of the American G.I.