Comment on the Nutrition Standards of the School Lunch Program

Open letter to the folks at Slow Food USA Time-for-Lunch:

Dear Time-for-Lunch,

Folks at Slow Food USA must surely be aware that the Nutrition Standards for the School Lunch Program are a recipe for obesity and diabetes, with their emphasis on grains and skim milk, and the misguided limits on saturated fat and salt.

http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/governance/legislation/dietaryspecs.pdf

I don't know how we push for healthier school lunches when the guidelines are stacked against good health. Juice, dry cereal and skim milk fit the guidelines, but are sure to lead to crashing blood sugars a couple hours later, and fat storage of all those excess carbs. By lunch kids are famished after their low fat breakfast, but the unbuttered, unsalted veggies have little appeal, and the nutrients are poorly absorbed without the good fats, vitamins, and minerals in butter and other traditional natural fats. And of course all those grains are raising blood sugars and storing fat, leading to obesity and diabetes. This is well known science - all the carbs (modern wheat is worse - http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/) cause raised blood sugar and insulin. Insulin is the fat storing hormone, which blocks fat burning.

Why do we ignore the fact that butter, eggs, and whole milk have nourished people well over the ages, but childhood obesity and diabetes have become a problem only in recent years since the guidelines mandated low fat meals, or encouraged meals that are too high in pro-inflammatory omega-6 oils.

Why do we ignore the evidence that children who drink whole milk tend to be slimmer than those who drink skim milk? http://tinyurl.com/Childrenwholemilk

Why do we continue to ignore the evidence that saturated fat does not cause disease?
http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/untold-story-of-butter/ and http://healthydietsandscience.blogspot.com/search/label/Butter%20and%20Heart%20Disease

Time for Lunch will not succeed in its goal of seeing healthier children until we convince our legislators to change the goals. More and more health professionals are seeing the light. See http://www.forahealthynation.org/. Now we just need to get the public health officials on board.

The future of our country is at stake!

Peace,
Kris Johnson, retired and reformed dietitian, Slow Food member
www.MercyViewMeadow.org

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"Tragically, a growing body of evidence suggests that the bizarre and increasingly common behavioral problems among young children and teen-agers are related to the combined effects of high sugar intakes and the virtual absence of omega-3 essential fatty acids in the American diet."
The Modern Nutritional Diseases, and How to Prevent Them -
Heart Disease, Stroke, Type-2 Diabetes, Obesity, Cancer , page 199
by Alice and Fred Ottoboni, public health professionals

I'm a schizophrenic Progressive

A January 16th column in the Toledo Blade by Charles Krauthammer on the resurgence of libertarianism, lead me to conclude that I am a schizophrenic Progressive - torn between liberalism and libertarianism. Right wingers' focus on 'rights' of the unborn and marriage are certainly not libertarian. Their emphasis on cutting taxes and government seems to reflect greed and selfishness more than any concern for the common good, in spite of their claim to be Christian. I'm afraid I see right wing ideas leading down the path to serfdom, as the rich become ever more powerful and the poor become poorer. On the other hand Democrats need to learn from libertarians that reams of regulations are not the answer to a healthier, happier, more productive society.

The current USDA goal of eliminating access to raw milk by 2020 is but one example of regulatory overkill. Never mind that good quality raw milk has nourished millions of people around the world for thousands of year, and there are currently better that 8 million raw milk drinkers in this country with no evidence that it is more dangerous than all the other things on our grocery store shelves.

The book, 'Everything I Want to Do is Illegal,' written by one of the smartest ecological farmers in this country, Joel Salatin, details a host of other ridiculous, job-killing regulations that add nothing to the safety or health of our food supply. I can see the influence of powerful corporations behind much of this over-regulation, designed to kill small businesses and cut the competition, whichever party is in power, and then the bureaucrats become control freaks. Is either party willing to cut the corporate purse strings, resist corrupt corporate influence, and do what we really need to do to make this a better world?

A few examples of adverse corporate influence:

Dairy Industry
The government war on raw milk is an attack against food freedom
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

Meat Industry
Everything I want to do is Illegal - War Stories from the Local Food Front

Ag/Food industries
The Farm Bill: Better Food Starts Here
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/farm-bill-2012

Drug Industry
Ex-Pharma Sales Reps Speaks Out - Pharma Not in Business of Health, Healing, Cures, Wellness

GMO Industry
Scientist finding many negative impacts of Roundup Ready GM crops

Trust Us, We're Experts! How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future

There are more examples on my website

Make baked goods a little healthier

Here we go again - blaming fat, especially the wrong kind of fat, rather than carbs and commercial vegetable oils. An article in today's (11/27/11) Blade claims to tell you how to make baked good healthier, but it's the usual misguided advice.

• Replacing part of the butter with pureed fruit will just make the item higher in carbs, contributing to undesirable blood sugar gyrations.
• Using oil rather than butter is likely to contribute to the insulin resistance that leads to diabetes.
• Replacing whole eggs with egg whites or egg substitutes, just means you miss all the wonderful nutrients in the egg yolk, including choline and vitamin A. Choline deficiency induces metabolic syndrome (indicated by insulin resistance and elevated serum triglycerides and cholesterol) and obesity. And the cholesterol in egg yolks is actually beneficial.
• Using low fat cream cheese or low fat milk just means you are losing the benefits of butterfat - more vitamin A, stable saturated fats that make for a satisfying meal and protect your cells from the undesirable trans fats and excessive highly reactive omega-6 oils.

The easiest way to make baked goods healthier is to use all your good natural fats, but eat a smaller portion. But one caution, smaller portions may signal your body "Oops! Starvation!" and your metabolism slows down - not what you had in mind. A satisfying meal of real food in modest portions, with plenty of good fats, is more likely to keep your body happily perking along in fat-burning mode. So make that rich dessert with quality ingredients, just don't eat as much! And you can probably cut the sugar - with superior ingredients it doesn't need to be super sweet.

Where are the Innovators?

In response to the Editorial on page 37 of the October 10-16, 2011 large print weekly of the NYTimes, titled "Where to Find the Innovators?"(They are always changing the name!) I wrote this response - but was too late to send it.

What do you mean 'Where are the innovators?' There are plenty of innovators but they are being systematically squashed!

There are innovative eco-farmers who are producing super nutritious, tasty and highly productive farm products, using innovative, sophisticated, ecologically friendly, sustainable techniques, but they have been ignored or belittled by conventional agricultural experts.

There are small eco-farmers and their customers who are producing wonderfully nutritious and innovative value added products, but they are crushed by burdensome, irrational, often arbitrarily applied regulations which have little to do with real food safety, but are true job killers. Read famed, truly innovative eco-farmer Joel Salatin's book, Everything I Want To Do is Illegal, to see what innovation killers those regulations can be. (Summary article)

There are unconventional health professionals who are not only curing cancer, but also guiding their patients into how to prevent it and a host of other chronic diseases in the first place, yet they are regularly disparaged as quacks and frauds by establishment medicine and often threatened with loss of their license to practice.

The public has been led to believe that the latest drug is truly innovative, when in fact the really innovative, effective, and relatively low cost non-drug approaches being used by knowledgeable nutritionists face all kinds of regulatory barriers, while the practitioners are attacked by the dietetic police for not having the "proper credentials," or not following proper protocols.

Wall Street's insistence on short term profits is behind much of this - so hurrah for 'Occupy Wall Street'! An end to the collusion between big corporations and government!

Your everlovin' reformed and retired dietitian,
Kris

Phosphorus fertilizer buildup - a solution

A headline on the business page in yesterday's Blade:
Algae food found in 30% of Ohio farmland - Phosphorus linked to outbreaks on lake
"Ohio's six state agency directors learned Wednesday that nearly a third of all Buckeye State farmland is believed to contain too much phosphorus, one of many possible reasons for large annual algae outbreaks in western Lake Erie since 1995."

This is another reason to switch to intelligent organic/ecological farming techniques. Phosphorus from commercial chemical fertilizers is rather quickly bound up into in insoluble form that is unavailable to the plants - hence its accumulation in the soil. To release that bound-up phosphorus requires the biological action of soil microorganisms, especially fungi. Chemical farming tends to kill off the soil life, making the soil more vulnerable to erosion and requiring yet more chemical fertilizers, but sophisticated ecological farming methods encourage and support the soil life, making the bound up phosphorus and other minerals, as well as nitrogen from the air, available for plant utilization.

It's time we face the reality of what our commercial farming methods are doing to the environment. Ecological farming that is well done can be just as productive as conventional methods, while producing higher quality, more profitable crops.

How to Save a Trillion Dollars

From The New York Times Opinion Pages
How to Save a Trillion Dollars
By MARK BITTMAN

Interesting article! Too bad he picks on Ornish as an example of healthy eating. He's headed in the right direction except for his misplaced fat phobia. People are forever misunderstanding the value of natural saturated fats to avoid excess carbs and excess polyunsaturated fats, and spare the essential fatty acids.

I should add that the biggest barrier to sensible healthy eating government policy is the adverse affect it would have on the ag, food, pharm, & medical industries, which have far too much influence on our politicians and bureaucrats. Otherwise why would they continue to promote a low saturated fat ,high carb diet in spite of all the evidence that saturated fat is not bad and limiting carbs can be very helpful.

The unemployed could be put back to work at satisfying and rewarding work raising the high quality food needed on well managed ecological farms, preparing that food for sale, and doing all the 'green' jobs that need doing to rescue our environment from the edge of disaster. And if we didn't have the worry and expense of rampant disease, we could support the arts, education, and other worthy enterprises that get short shrift these days.

Some have commented that ill health is mostly hereditary - this is only slightly true. Unfortunately unhealthy parents pass on their unhealthy habits to their kids. Actually the holistic doctors and naturopaths would be kept busy helping everyone fine tune their health, helping them recover from the ravages of our present junky food and toxic environment. It is the experience of many people who have changed to a healthier diet and lifestyle to overcome one health problem, that other problems are also resolved - health problems are often linked in ways we don't understand. A truly health body resists cancer, supports a healthy heart, healthy blood sugar, healthy blood pressure, healthy digestion, and has a happy disposition.

Don't tell me you can't afford to buy healthy food - you can't afford not to! You can even start to raise some of that food yourself. The higher the quality the less you'll need or want to eat!

There are links to a variety of healthy eating guides on my website. Just remember, people vary - some do better eating more vegetable, others do better eating more meat (with the fat). Refined carbs and omega-6 polyunsaturated fats need to be limited. And the best news is that high quality healthy food is wonderfully tasty!

Happy Eating!

Kris

A Letter to The Nation on Food and Health Freedom

To The Nation

As a Progressive who for the first time became politically active in 2008, working for the Obama campaign, I’ll have to say I am disappointed not only because Pres. Obama has fallen under the influence of big business interests, but because the Progressive movement seems to have been so silent on some issues which are dear to the hearts of many of us, issues that might be called common sense progressive libertarianism – "get the government off my back".

Example – the Raw Milk Movement, whose only champion in Congress at this point seems to be Ron Paul, while misguided public health authorities do everything in the power to shut down the movement, to the detriment of our health and our freedom. It is outrageous that at this time when there is so much concern about lack of jobs, we have a government agency, the FDA, that is throwing their weight around trying to shut down legitimate farm businesses based on completely unfounded food safety concerns - over and over again.* As a dietitian I am appalled at their arrogance! We can go to the store and buy all kinds of junk foods that are leading us down the path to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer and more and we can't have raw milk cheese (or raw milk for that matter) because we might get sick??? Give me a break! I hear so many stories from raw milk consumers of healing from whole natural foods, but the public health authorities refuse to acknowledge that the benefits might outweigh the risks. Does this reflect the influence of the commercial dairy industry that doesn’t like the competition???

Another, but related, example – there is a comprehensive food safety bill in Congress, fortunately stalled by one Republican senator, which could have the effect of putting many small farms producing excellent artisanal food products out of business, with rules that are only appropriate for big commercial farm/food operations, who are the predominant sources of food poisoning crises. Without the passage of the Tester-Hagan amendment this bill would be a disaster for many farms and food processors that produce some of the healthiest food in this country. Are we looking at the oppressive influence of the giant commercial farm and food industries trying to shut down the competition???

Another example – The USDA Dietary Guidelines, which guide the food planning at millions of institutions about the country, and are currently being updated, are based on politics more than solid science! Luise Light, MS, EdD, in her book, What To Eat, tells the story of how her committee of nutrition experts developed the original Food Guide Pyramid based on their understanding of the science, only to have the guidelines changed by the top guns at USDA for political reasons – and this is happening again in 2010! The result has been the steady deterioration of health in this country and persistent rise in health care costs, as our grocery stores are filled with unhealthy but profitable processed foods. Is this again the aggressive influence of big moneyed interests in the food industry???

These, and many others,** are issues of great concern to many of my friends, who are often progressive in their thinking – supporting real health care reform, immigration reform, financial industry reform, etc., but we feel these concerns are not being addressed, and in fact receive little media coverage and would be nearly invisible except for the Internet. There are very personal issues that affect our health and well-being. The article on page 11 of the Nov. 8 issue of The Nation speaks of the lack of a persuasive long-term vision for how to create good jobs, yet a growing source of good, green, sustainable jobs and professions, producing high quality real foods and genuine healing, are being ignored by the media, and in fact undermined at every turn.*** Many of us would love to be part of a powerful progressive movement for change, but our concerns need to be part of that long-term vision! Let’s recruit these advocates for food and health freedom to a powerful progressive movement for change that recognizes that wise government promotes justice, not oppression and profits for big corporations.

* lots more at http://www.ftcldf.org/

** Other instances of inappropriate government control or action:
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s),
Health Freedom issues,
The undue influence of the drug industry

*** EVERYTHING I WANT TO DO IS ILLEGAL: War Stories from the Local Food Front, by Joel Salatin