Another fun worksheet for the refrigerator

What can I say, I think these supermarket worksheets for kids are super cute. I don't have any kids yet so I'm not sure if kids would actually think these are fun. I'm sure it depends on the kid's age and general willingness to play games that are not actually all that fun but make the adult in their life happy.

I have a feeling I am going to do a lot of these kinds of activities, until I realize it's a huge hassle and the kid always wins (ie: I have to bribe them). I'll be interested in hearing what Kyla-in-5-years has to say about this.

USDA's New Food Graphic

Well, here it is.

Not as thrilling or a graphically pleasing as I had hoped for. But it gets the point across: fill half your plate with fruits and vegetables and cut back on bread and protein.

I feel like this is very understandable for small children, which I believe is the intended demographic (as well as lowest common denominator for the American public).

I like how the USDA links its graphic to lists of what kinds of foods fall into each category. Unfortunately, potatoes are still a staple in the veggie category. Being an Irish-American from the Midwest, I will never give up my love for the great potato. But it ain't no match for a leafy green.

The High Cost of Cheap Meat

New York Times editorial
June 2, 2011

The point of factory farming is cheap meat, made possible by confining large numbers of animals in small spaces. Perhaps the greatest hidden cost is its potential effect on human health.

Small doses of antibiotics — too small to kill bacteria — are fed to factory farm animals as part of their regular diet to promote growth and offset the risks of overcrowding. What factory farms are really raising is antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which means that several classes of antibiotics no longer work the way they should in humans. We pay for cheap meat by sacrificing some of the most important drugs ever developed.

Last week, the Natural Resources Defense Council, joined by other advocacy groups, sued the Food and Drug Administration to compel it to end the nontherapeutic use of penicillin and tetracycline in farm animals. Veterinarians would still be able to treat sick animals with these drugs but could not routinely add the drugs to their diets.

For years, the F.D.A. has had the scientific studies and the authority to ban these drugs. But it has always bowed to pressure from the pharmaceutical and farm lobbies, despite the well-founded objections of groups like the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization, which support an antibiotic ban.

It is time for the F.D.A. to stop corporate factory farms from squandering valuable drugs just to promote growth among animals confined in conditions that inherently create the risk of disease. According to recent estimates, 70 percent of the antibiotics sold in this country end up in farm animals. The F.D.A. can change that by honoring its own scientific conclusions and its statutory obligation to end its approval of unsafe drug uses.

The White House Kitchen Garden in 2012

The White House Kitchen Garden today looks a lot like American kitchen gardens - by design. It's filled with lettuces, tomatoes, beets, rhubarb, broccoli and other delicious, nutritious growing things. But if the White House Kitchen Garden, and American kitchen gardens across the country, reflected U.S. farm subsidies that are likely to be continued in the 2012 U.S. Farm Bill, our gardens would change dramatically. We'd be eating corn, wheat, cotton (can be a little dry in the mouth) and soybeans, with a little tobacco sprinkled in for good measure (and straight cash!).

Roger Doiron, founder and “weeder-in-chief” of Kitchen Gardeners, thinks we should take a hard look at the lack of federal funding for fruits and vegetables. He writes:

As a nation, we’re saying one thing and doing another and need to bring our words and actions in line with one another. We’re saying we should be eating 5–7 portions of fruits and vegetables a day (depending on who you ask) but we’re not supporting the food, farm, and garden infrastructure needed to deliver that diet to 307 million Americans. In fact, we’d need to grow another 13 million acres of produce in the United States if we we’re to meet the minimum daily requirements of fruits and vegetables set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Read more by Margret Aldrich in the Utne Reader.

Let's make the 2012 Farm Bill reflect our kitchen gardens, not what's been traditionally subsidized on large-scale farms.

The American Dinner Plate...

...is huge and filled with potatoes.

Do you remember the food pyramid from first grade? That rainbow-striped chart was on every classroom wall and pounded into the brains of unknowing youth for decades. But it was seriously flawed. Though it did get the point across that you should eat more of some things (starch! starch! starch!) and less of other (delicious sugar and oil!), it had us eating 6-11 servings of breads and only 5-9 of total fruits and veggies. That bagel you had for breakfast? That was your 6 bread servings. That bit of broccoli you moved around on your plate and avoided? That was 1 serving. Oops.

Lots of new versions have been created since the original food pyramid, and not all are pyramids. In fact, later this week the USDA will reveal its latest and greatest, based on the 'newest research.' Can't wait!!

Talk to me in numbers

Here's another sweet interactive data visualization tool:


Food Environment Atlas


Basically, this map helps show that "food environment factors"—such as store/restaurant proximity, food prices, food and nutrition assistance programs, and community characteristics—interact to influence food choices and diet quality. Maybe that's a "duh" statement, but it's a good first step in a super complex problem. The USDA qualifies that more research is needed to identify causal relationships and effective policy interventions. 


There are 13 indicators you can choose from and within each of those, another set of more detailed choices. Whatever you choose gets mapped and shown on the atlas. I love to visualize, and this is an excellent first step in visualizing what factors cause food insecurity. 


For example, you could click on one indictor and get a map that shows where the price ratio of green, leafy veggies compared to starchy veggies is high. Or you could find out the percentage of recreation and fitness facilities per 1,000 people across the country. Is spinach way more expensive than potatoes, and there aren't any gyms nearby? That's going to add up to more obesity and more health problems.


You can even get up close and personal with your map. Try clicking on your county. In my home county - Portage, Ohio - there were 1,386 households in 2006 that owned no car and would have to travel more than a mile to a grocery store (not a convenience store). In 2008, there were 79 stores where you could use food stamps, and 88 in 2009. Unfortunately, the county level is a close as you can get. Challenges and solutions tend to be most effective when viewed on the most local level possible, so I hope they get even more down and dirty in the next iteration.


I'll admit the map's a little slow. I'd love to see these folks work with Google to come up with an awesome map that's even more user-friendly (though this ain't bad). Google - do it! 

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." - Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, Brazil

From Neighborhood to Nation

Just attended the Community Food Security Coalition's (CFSC) food policy conference. I want to delve into a bunch more fascinating topics that were touched upon at the conference in other posts, but I can sum up what I learned here:


Food is not just food. 


Food is...

• ...Health
• ...Jobs
• ...Security
• ...Peace
• ...Community
• ...Education

Mind the Gap

Coolest interactive infographic ever:

Map the Meal Gap

Executive Summary from Feeding America

In order to address the problem of hunger, we must first understand it. Feeding America undertook the Map the Meal Gap project to learn more about the face of hunger at the local community level. By understanding the population in need, communities can better identify strategies for reaching the people who most need food assistance.

At Feeding America, our mission is to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger. Although we seek to meet the needs of food insecure individuals and families, it is not always easy to identify the need for food within each of our communities. Traditionally, Feeding America has used state and national level USDA food insecurity data to estimate the need (e.g. “50 million Americans are at risk of hunger”), but food banks are rooted in their local communities and need better information at the ground level in order to be responsive to their unique local conditions.

Until now, the number of people falling below the federal poverty threshold has been the indicator most typically used for identifying the need for food at the local level because it is one of the few indicators available at the county level. However, national food insecurity data reveal that about 45% of those struggling with hunger actually have incomes above the federal poverty level and 53% of poor households are food secure1. Thus, measuring need based on local poverty rates alone provides an incomplete illustration of the potential need for food assistance within our communities. More accurate assessments of need across all income levels within our service areas can assist Feeding America and our network of food banks in strategic planning for charitable food services that best support hungry Americans, as well as inform the public policy discussion so that vital federal nutrition programs can better serve those in need. Most importantly, better community-level data can serve as an important resource for engaging community leaders and partners in the journey from aspiration (ending hunger) to achievement through a quantifiable and data-driven approach.

New Face of Hunger in America

Years ago, when I used to picture someone considered to be "food-insecure" in the U.S., I thought of a guy asking for coins on the street. True, but that's a super tiny part of the real picture. Turns out I have friends who are food-insecure, and you do, too. Or you yourself are.

What does it mean to be food-insecure? The USDA says you are either uncertain of getting enough food for your household, or you use coping mechanisms to do so (like using SNAP food stamps, going to a food pantry or eating a diet with less variation and quality). 

How many people are we talking? In 2009, the USDA found that 17.4 million households were food insecure at some point during the year. Doesn't mean they didn't have enough to eat everyday, but at some point. That's a TON of people. One out of six. And guess what? Most are people of color.

It's a lot cheaper to eat unhealthy foods,
like this delicious - but not nutritious - pizza.

USA Today, which is generally not one of my favorite sources of info., had an article about a new breed of Americans going hungry:

Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America, the nation's largest hunger-relief charity with a network of more than 200 food bank partners, says there is a growing problem with suburban poverty, "where new clients are individuals who have never needed to rely on the charitable food system."

"Not everyone who is food insecure is literally going hungry," says Mark Nord, sociologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. "Some are able to head off hunger by reducing the quality and variety of their diets. But if food insecurity is severe or prolonged, it is likely to result in hunger."

What can you do? A lot of people qualify for Federal or state assistance and don't even know it - you can own a home and have a job and still qualify. Find out and tell a friend.

P.S. I had the pleasure of meeting Feeding America's CEO Vicki Escarra at her office in Chicago and she is a force to be reckoned with - smart, serious and passionate. More on that amazing group later...

The Match.com of food

Small Oregon farmer who grows juicy, organic strawberries seeks school cafeteria manager who wants healthy local food to put on its lunchroom trays... 

Where do these two star-crossed lovers meet? FoodHub.

Basically it's an online matching site that connects local buyers (schools, hospitals, other institutions) with local sellers (farmers and ranchers). It's where food people connect!

According to EcoTrust (the geniuses behind it):

"FoodHub is a dynamic marketplace and online directory that makes it easy and efficient for professional food buyers and sellers to research, connect, and do business."

There are all kinds of useful search parameters within the site - price, distance, quantity - to help users find exactly what they need. You can sign up now for free. Check out Oregon Public Broadcasting's story:

"Vicki Hertel runs Sun Gold Farms near Forest Grove. She’s been limited to selling her fruit, veggies, and nuts at farmer’s markets, or directly to families.

Vicki Hertel: 'But as far as reaching caterers and restaurants, schools, and other kitchens, unless we met that at the markets, it was near impossible to make connections, unless we wanted to send one of us out on the streets and knock on doors. And we’re too busy farming to be able to do that.'

Hertel was one of the first to test out the network. She says it’s not technically hard, and it’s already yielded some connections." 

This is seriously the kind of effective innovation that could be a relevant model for buyers and sellers across the country. 

Farm to Fork

A little pricey, but I am definitely getting tickets to one of these (it benefits Oregon farmers and winemakers afterall!):

Farm to Fork Dinners

"A memorable meal on Oregon's backroads."

"Each summer, we invite you to meet the farmers & winemakers, tour the farms, and experience a truly unique meal in the company of friends, neighbors, and fellow supporters of our local food and wine communities."

Table to Farm Movement?

Restaurants that compost food waste might renegotiate garbage removal fees (because they produce less garbage) and offset the cost of food waste removal... turning it into farm compost. Would restaurants take the time to separate food (for example, take out meat products)?

A simple story, but a genuine idea. Take a look at the article, Table to Farm Movement, by Mother Nature Network.

Food Stamp Folly

What happens when the food stamp swiper machine is down? If you use food stamps (SNAP), you don't get to buy food. That's what a shopper recently discovered when it happened at a Portland Safeway store.

Safeway announced over the loudspeaker that the food stamp computer was down, and they couldn't accept cards that evening.

"'It just looked discriminatory to me," said Durham, 58 [the shopper]. "They were taking all the money from customers who had money, but they were basically kicking out the people who had (food stamp cards). If they can't take the cards, they should close the store down.'  

The federal government agrees." 

Read the Oregonian's story here. Have you ever seen this happen? Talk to a store manager. When stores have problems with swipe machines that debit shoppers' food stamp accounts, the typical procedure is to fill out a form logging a customer's purchases. The store can then call the 24-hour federal hotline to check the customer's account.

Are you an elitist, socialist, commie, un-American piece of scum?

I am. 

But I'm in good company! So is Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Robby Kenner (Food, Inc.), Michael Pollan (Omnivore's Dilemma), and almost everyone I know (but I live in a liberal bubble). 

Schlosser penned an excellent op-ed in the Washington Post, Why being a 'foodie' isn't elitist, in response to the name-calling the American Farm Bureau Federation’s president, Bob Stallman, recently dished out:

"This name-calling is a form of misdirection, an attempt to evade a serious debate about U.S. agricultural policies. And it gets the elitism charge precisely backward. America’s current system of food production — overly centralized and industrialized, overly controlled by a handful of companies, overly reliant on monocultures, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, chemical additives, genetically modified organisms, factory farms, government subsidies and fossil fuels — is profoundly undemocratic." 

Schlosser continues:

"While small farmers and their families have been forced to take second jobs just to stay on their land, wealthy farmers have received substantial help from the federal government. Between 1995 and 2009, about $250 billion in federal subsidies was given directly to American farmers — and about three-quarters of that money was given to the wealthiest 10 percent. Those are the farmers whom the Farm Bureau represents, the ones attacking “big government” and calling the sustainability movement elitist." 

To me, "big government" means monopolistic companies that the government supports. So what's up, Bob? It looks like you don't actually represent farmers, just SOME farmers. Are you even a real Republican?

In the beginning... Part V

At Jasculca/Terman and Associates (JT), a public affairs firm in Chicago, I had the great pleasure of working with some of the most brilliant people I have ever met. These are the kind of people you want on your team - they walk into a room jovial and warm, truly listen and hear a client's issues, immediately have a dozen creative and highly relevant ideas to throw on the table, and can actually implement all of them. And I don't even work there anymore, so I don't have to brown nose.

There, I worked with the "Creative and Strategic Development" team. We handled a portfolio of about a dozen or so clients, mostly nonprofit and public sector, as well as responded to new business opportunities on behalf of the firm (proposal writing 101).

What did I learn? I learned how to work accurately and I learned how to work very, very fast. I learned how to "paint a picture, tell a story."

I learned that despite gang violence in the neighborhood and poverty at home, every single student of the inaugural senior class at Urban Prep high school, all African-American and all male, could be accepted to four-year colleges. 100 PERCENT!

Volunteers speed-date to find the
perfect nonprofit match. 

I learned that "speed-dating" could take on a whole new meaning when hundreds of talented women in Chicago meet nonprofits in a fast-paced game designed to help kickstart skills-based volunteering (and it's really fun to be the person on stage who rings the bell when time's up!).

I learned that almost 20,000 people wanted to witness the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center's grand opening, and that logistics for this kind of an event (or series of events), are mind-boggling.

But I also learned that Chicago is not the city for me, despite my family's deep roots there, and that straight PR is not the perfect path for me at this moment in time.

So after some travel and quality family time (and a whole lot of volunteering), I upped and moved to Portland, Oregon, with my fiance and dog for an adventure... filled with green gardens, lots of rain (and sun - seriously, there is sun here), mountains and waterfalls and the ocean, a slightly slower pace of life.

Like I said, I've been passionate about poverty-reduction through food security for many years, but I've never actually grown any food myself. And that is what I am here to learn. (Along with a dose of food policy, food justice, food economics and just plain delicious food.) Here we go...

In the beginning... Part IV

Tajik refugee in Kyrgyzstan market.
(Photo by K. Springer)

After college, I worked at an international humanitarian aid and development nonprofit in Washington, D.C. I actually first heard about the organization through a Craig's List posting for an apartment I ultimately didn't take. But the author's email signature included a line about being a "food security program assistant." What, may I ask, was that? Instead of meeting to see the apartment, she met me and answered all my questions about her job. Eventually, they were hiring in the communications department. It wasn't food security, but my parents were journalists, so I had ink in the blood, and I loved to write and design. That was enough, right?

Trial by fire! At first, my role was to update the website, create donor newsletters and assist the CEO. But as my understanding grew of the organization's work, beneficiaries and partners, my role greatly expanded, and I fell in love. I felt I had found my calling - I didn't want to be a nutritionist or a monitoring and evaluation specialist. I wanted to COMMUNICATE. i wanted to share with the world the great things this organization was doing, the people they were serving and working with, and how people in the U.S. could help. I loved it.

I was fortunate to be asked to travel to the organization's civil society and humanitarian aid programs in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazahkstan. There, I photographed local nonprofit leaders filling gaps the government left behind when the Soviet Union collapsed, talked with media groups that were not owned by the state (just harassed by it), and met nurses at clinics that also served as community meeting houses and libraries. 

Small boy sits with his mother at a food
distribution point. (Photo by K. Springer)

And in Senegal I visited food security programs, interviewing and photographing gardeners, mothers receiving vaccinations and supplemental food donations, kids learning about nutrition at school, and HIV/AIDS patients receiving hot meals fortified with vitamins. 

I put my stories and photos into the donor newsletters and annual reports I created, I posted them on the website, and I framed them as auction items at fundraisers. I'm not a photographer. I felt awkward posting them all over, but since some turned out not half-bad and it was my job, after all, I went ahead with vigor. Having revitalized the latent communications division at the organization and linked with the new fundraising division, donations to the organization increased significantly that year. It felt good.

I decided that what I brought to the table was a knack for sharing others' stories. But I needed to learn more to be able to share those stories well. So I packed up and moved to Chicago to work as a senior account executive at a public relations firm. 

In the Beginning... Part III

My passion for food security grew and I studied international development in college. During a year abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I spent mornings in class and afternoons at a soup kitchen.

"Soup Kitchen, Open Doors"

But the people at this soup kitchen in the city were very different from the people I had met in rural Honduras and (even more rural) Ecuador. These folks had been part of the burgeoning middle class in Buenos Aires, the "Paris of the South," but had lost everything during the economic collapse there in 2001. Many used to stand in lines to go to the movies, and now stood in lines waiting for a hot bowl of whatever was cooking that day. I wonder how an urban farming trend might have impacted this city in those years.

And at the same time, there was a barrio just a few blocks away where families lived in tin-roof shacks they had built from scraps, with fantastic views of the gleaming financial sector high rises that had caused the collapse and deepened their chronic poverty. Location, location, location. Thanks, IMF!

"With political prisoners, there is no democracy"

In the Beginning... Part II

In high school, I spent less time at Grandma and Grandpa's farm over summer breaks. I traveled to Latin America after my sophomore year and lived with poor, rural families learning about what it's truly like to live on a few dollars a day, growing everything your family eats, and sharing all you have with friends and guests, despite maybe not having enough yourself. In Ecuador, the families I lived with ate boiled tuber potatoes for almost every meal - not mashed with butter, or sprinkled with salt or as a side with chicken. Poverty doesn't give you these options.

The delicacy in the Andes is guinea pig, which families don't eat themselves because it's one of the sole providers of cash income when sold at the market, three hours away by treacherous dirt roads on crazy, colorful buses decorated with fringe and religious icons, and filled with flapping chickens and enough people to comfortably fill four buses in the U.S. While I wrote home to my family during those eight weeks about how much I wanted a hamburger and pizza as soon as I got off the airplane at the end of the summer, my host family threw a despedida party for my departure, complete with three roasted guinea pigs in my honor. Though I hesitated, and felt guilty about the hamburger letter-writing, I ate all of what I was given because I knew it was all (or more) that my host family could afford. Despite me being a perfect stranger and not speaking Quechua (and barely any Spanish), they'd become my friends and cared for me in an amazingly beautiful, intimate way.

I sometimes think about how my host family is likely still eating plain boiled potatoes 10 years later, and it's a complicated feeling. I have the means to visit them. I have the means to donate directly to the family. I have the means to start a nonprofit there that benefits the whole community. But instead of continuing to feel guilty, I try to think about the time I spent with them, and appreciate what it taught me. I think about how it made me better understand the world outside Kent, Ohio. I think about how it led me to want to study international development in college, which led me to Washington, D.C. And I try to focus on appreciating the moments we spent with each other, and how I can help people now, people whose paths cross mine today.

In the Beginning... Part I

I've been passionate about poverty-reduction through food security for many years, but I've never actually grown any food myself. It's time to change that. Here's my story. 

John Casper Kline, my grandfather

In the beginning, there was a Midwestern girl curious about her Grandpa's 300-acre Illinois prairie corn and bean farm. Grandpa wasn't much for small talk, but he'd tell you his opinion with a few well-chosen colorful adjectives if he felt strongly. The door to his secret room in the basement of the farm house was speckled with "Do not enter" and "Stay out" warnings, along with his framed NRA lifetime membership plaque. Though I never glimpsed the secret room until after he had passed, all us cousins knew growing up that that's where Grandpa kept his extensive gun collection, prized deer hunting photos and perhaps even more prized pin-up gal calendars. We were pretty damn curious (and learned that word from Grandpa).

Though Grandpa was gruff, he had a soft spot for the grandkids (if you asked very sweetly, he'd always give you a little spending money for the dollar store). But I was happy chatting and making cherry pies with Grandma and playing with the feral kittens in the barn, wishing so hard my parents would let me keep one. Still I wondered, what was Grandpa doing all day out in the dirt on his John Deere tractor? And why didn't we eat the corn or beans he grew?