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!!