As this is being written, the 14 acre South Central Farm on 41st 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.
Continue reading "The South Central Farm: What Next?"
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.
Continue reading "The Future of Food in Suburban Sprawl"
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.)
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.
Continue reading "Wal-Mart: Friend to the Hungry?"
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.
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.
Continue reading "Krafty Kraft"
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.
Continue reading "Ties your stomach in a knot"
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.
Continue reading "Healthy Vending Starts Making the Rounds"
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.
Continue reading "School food down under"
“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.