What’s in your food?

My favorite veggie burgers have a “no genetically modified ingredients” label, where is this label on the rest of my food? Tell the FDA to ‘Just Label It’

by Slow Food USA Associate Director of National Programs, Angelines M. Alba Lamb

This weekend I sent my partner to the grocery store for the weekly shop. He ventured out in the snow, and in exchange I put the apples in their bowl and the cornbread box in the pantry. As I was putting my favorite box of veggie burgers into the freezer, I noticed a label I’d never paid attention to: “No genetically modified ingredients.”  Did all my food have this label? I took the cornbread back out, and read all 6 sides. I learned that if I ate one piece, I would ingest 3 grams of protein. I learned my favorite corn bread used corn flour, corn, and baking soda. But I didn’t learn where the corn came from. Was it genetically engineered, like 80% of all corn grown in the U.S.?

Why didn’t my cornbread have the same label as my veggie burger? Because companies don’t have to disclose genetically modified ingredients.  Some do but most corporations don’t. They didn’t disclose any ingredients until later in the 20th century. Cigarettes didn’t get warning labels until 1966, years after evidence was found of their ill health effects.  Ingredient boxes and health warnings appeared after people, just like you and I, demanded that their government do everything in their power to protect consumers. Protecting consumers means informing consumers.  If you pick up a cigarette, knowing that it can cause cancer, then that is your right. If you choose to eat genetically engineered corn despite the label, then that is your choice. But we don’t have a choice with genetically engineered food.

Just Label It – a national initiative to secure labeling for genetically engineered food- is demanding that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) require all food that is genetically engineered, or made with genetically modified ingredients, be marked like my veggie burgers.  They need you and I to add our voices and send a message to the FDA consumers want this labeling. Add your voice  by sending a comment to the FDA letting them know how important this issue is to you.

Right now the soymilk smoothie you are sipping on could have been made with genetically modified soy.  The alfalfa sprouts topping your salad could have been engineered in a lab. And you have a right to know and a right to choose if you want to put that into your body or feed it to your family.  We don’t know yet how genetically engineered food interacts with human bodies. There isn’t enough research.  But don’t you want the chance to make that decision for yourself? I sent a comment to the FDA because I want all of my food, including my corn bread, to have the same label like my veggie burgers.  Join Just Label It and me and send your own comment.

Hope Ahead Despite Hefty Ag Budget Cuts

Two developments this week indicate that massive congressional budget cuts might not spell disaster for nutrition programs and support for small farmers after all.

In this time of national financial crisis, agricultural funding has been flagged to take a big hit. Two big developments this week indicate that congress is waking up to the potential that regionally focused agriculture holds for job creation, improvements to public health, and economic development.

The first came earlier this week—on Food Day—when Congresswoman Chellie Pingree announced a bill that she plans to introduce to the House: The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act. The bill will provide new kinds of support to farmers growing healthy food; make it easier to use food stamps at farmers markets; and require USDA research to focus less narrowly on genetically modified plants. A companion bill is on its way to the Senate.

Tell your Congressmen to be a part of the Recipe for Change by supporting the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act.

More after the jump

Budget cuts could be a recipe for change or disaster

Congress is planning dramatic cuts to the American budget and anything and everything is on the chopping block. The agricultural sector is likely to take a big hit but will the special Congressional “super committee” make positive change or keep pandering to Big Ag?

Behind closed doors, lobbyists for food system giants are pressing lawmakers to continue the status quo or make cuts elsewhere. Whose belts do they think should be tightened?

• NUTRITION: nutrition programs that provide critical access to food in this time of economic crisis. These programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly called “food stamps”), the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, and affordable school lunch. When nearly 50 million people in the U.S. live in constant threat of hunger, cutting the budget for these programs is an outrage.
• JOB CREATION: programs that support family farms, create jobs, and keep money in rural communities. In a recent letter to the co-chairs of the “super committee,” House Agricultural Committee Chair, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D, ME) wrote “While efforts to reduce the federal deficit remain paramount, we must place an equal if not greater emphasis on policy changes that will put Americans to work and boost economic growth. Local food systems can yield significant benefits to the economy and create thousands of jobs. According to a recent study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a modest amount of funding or 100-500 farmers markets could create as many as 13,500 jobs over a five-year period.”
• SUPPORT FOR FARMERS AND FARMLAND: a hodgepodge of programs to address environmental quality and to provide essential support to vegetable farmers, beginning farmers, and socially-disadvantaged farmers. One of the most puzzling parts of the Food and Farm bill is that the majority of the foods that we eat (things like vegetables, fruits, and beef) are referred to as “specialty crops.” Cutting the already meager portion of Food and Farm Bill funding that goes to producers that make real food- not corn for ethanol and animal feed- is egregious. As the average age of US farmers steadily reaches retirement age (the majority of farmers today are in their 60s) it’s critical to the future of our food and agricultural economy that we continue to support the next generation of farmers, especially those from diverse communities. Related to that is ensuring that developed farmland continues to be used to grow food instead of being developed and thus saying goodbye to the investments that generations of farmers have made to the soil and surrounding terrain. And yet programs for supporting new farmers and farmland conservation are instead treated like an ATM for subsidies for Big Ag. Under a Senate Ag committee proposal, these programs could lose up to $4 billion. That’s nearly 20% of their current budget.
• FOOD SAFETY: FDA funding which goes towards (already underfunded) farm inspectors who we need more of to keep us safe from outbreaks of food-borne illness. Unless the “super committee” comes up with a better plan, FDA funding could be reduced by nearly $200 million from the 2011 level. This would lead to fewer FDA staff, including those who inspect our domestic and imported foods. Large food facilities are already sorely under-inspected- just look to recent deadly food-borne illnesses in eggs, cantaloupe, and spinach.

That’s no way to balance a budget: that’s a recipe for disaster.

Click here to tell the super committee to follow our recipe for change.

More after the jump

This World Food Day, host a $5 Challenge Meal

October 16th is World Food Day. How about hosting a $5 challenge meal?

It sure is the harvest season!

You’ve heard of Food Day—to be held on October 24th.  But did you also know that on October 16th it’s WORLD food day? That’s one more chance to host a $5 challenge meal, this time as part of our partner Oxfam America’s Sunday Suppers/World Food Day campaign.

As Oxfam describes it:

This World Food Day, Oxfam America is teaming up with a host of allies across the US and around the globe. We have a simple yet compelling idea—to host a Sunday Dinner October 16th that fosters a conversation about where your food comes from, who cultivates it, and how we can make the food system more just and sustainable.

You can order materials to help you host your dinner and register your event by clicking here.

And of course you can read a ton of wonderful tips and tricks collected as part of our $5 Challenge initiative by going to our tumblr (click here).

The $5 Challenge Reaches the White House!

Guess who’s getting in on the $5 Challenge?

Just two weeks after 30,000 of you came together and took the $5 Challenge, the Partnership for a Healthier America—the foundation created for Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign—has announced they’re up to the challenge, too.

On November 29th, White House Chef Sam Kass will be hosting two cooking events designed to highlight that healthy food can be affordable and quick to prepare. In the first event, chefs will prepare a family meal on just $10 (typical SNAP budget for a family dinner); in the second, they will have chefs preparing healthy, three-course “gourmet” meals on a typical American dinner budget—$4.50 per person.

We are extremely excited that the White House is interested in pushing forward the dialogue on how cooking from scratch can be the most affordable and healthy option. And, lucky dogs, they’ve got a treasure trove of tips and tricks—compiled by you, the Slow Food community—available to them on our tumblr page.

We’d also like to see Kass, guest chefs Colicchio and others, as well as the Obamas, really dig deep into what’s really possible on that $4.50. What we heard from all of you was that:

...Whether you had a personal garden
Whether you are a farmer
Whether your friends and neighbors are farmers
Whether you belong to a CSA
Whether you live near a farmers market or good grocery

...all made a huge difference in terms of succeeding at the $5 Challenge. And not everyone has a CSA nearby or the space and time to start their own garden.

We hope the White House’s Great American Family Dinner Challenge acknowledges this “challenge” side of the issue, too. When federal policy is subsidizing the foods that are worst for us, and it’s easier in many communities to buy Froot Loops than it is to buy real fruit, it’s no wonder that cooking affordable meals is more challenging than it should be. Addressing those challenges is going to take all of us working together with the White House to fix the policies that stand in the way of making food truly good, clean, and fair for all.

$5 Challenge, McMuffins, and the Cost of Food

Author Anna Lappe makes a homemade organic egg/muffin sandwich and tries to answer the question: Is fast food really cheaper, no matter how you slice it? And if so, what does that even mean for the nation’s poor?

by Anna Lappé


I hear it all the time: I can’t eat healthy; organic food is so expensive! Over the weekend, Slow Food USA brought together more than 30,000 people around the country to tackle this lament with the “$5 Challenge,” showing how we can eat well on five bucks. Sure, if you go to a Whole Foods in Manhattan you can be set back $20 bucks before you know it, and with little to show for it. But, as Team SFUSA helped reveal, there are ways to stretch your dollar and eat well.


Still, all this got me wondering: Is fast food really cheaper, no matter how you slice it?


At a McDonald’s in Greenpoint, a friend pointed out to me, Egg McMuffins were going for $2.99. Seems cheap, right? (Of course, if you know much about our modern industrial food system and its costs, you’d know that this price tag doesn’t account for how much you and I are really paying: the billions in health care costs because of preventable diet-related illnesses; the billions more in pollution clean-up costs, largely from the factory farms producing the meat, including that McMuffin bacon. You get the idea.)


But let’s stick with the actual price: $2.99. And compare that with what it would cost to make an organic, homemade Egg Mc-ish-muffin.


I priced out the ingredients from a Brooklyn supermarket (not a Whole Foods, mind you) and calculated the specific price per ingredient based on a comparable portion size. The grand total for the organic, homemade one? $2.59. Yup, that’s forty cents less than the fast food “cheap” meal.

More after the jump

Over 5,570 meals shared

Yesterday, as part of the $5 Challenge, over 5,570 meals took place all over the country. Hundreds of people submitted photos as well as sharing what parts of the challenge were difficult and what made it difficult.

Yesterday, as part of the $5 Challenge, over 5,570 meals took place!

Click here to see photos from Hawai’i to Illinois to New York to Texas….from potlucks to family dinners to community suppers to food truck rallies,

No matter where they were or how they came together, they were all trying to answer the question: is it possible to make a healthy, local, and delicious meal for under $5 per person?

People got creative and brought their own flair to it—like Bear Braumoeller of Slow Food Columbus, who decided to take the $5 Challenge one step further. He attempted (and, SPOILER ALERT, succeeded) to create a sustainable $5 meal in 15 minutes—to show that sustainable cooking can be quick as well as affordable. Also he live tweeted it.

Bear wasn’t the only one tweeting his progress. Joe Yonan, food editor of the Washington Post, asked his 6,000+ followers questions like “My #5challenge dilemma: Cut which of these to make budget: 3 of 8 apples 4 tart? Squash (ergo soup)? Sausage 4 stuffed peppers (more rice)?”

More after the jump

One Woman’s Budget-Conscious Approach to Slow Food Value Meals

Out of work and prospects dim for the foreseeable future, Amy knew that her household food budget had to take a hit. She also knew that she didn’t want to lose enthusiasm for cooking, for sharing meals with her family, and her friends. This is her story.

by Slow Food Rhode Island chapter leader Amy McCoy

There’s much to love about Slow Food – the story of its inception, Carlo Petrini and his band of hungry activists, doling out pasta at Rome’s Spanish Steps in protest of fast food (can’t you just see yourself, walking down the street, men and women with pots of pasta and pasta forks approaching you, asking if you’d care for a bowl with nonna’s sauce? How could you say no?), its evolution into an advocacy group, a group that cares about where our food comes from, that the people who grow and make our food earn a fair wage, and that good, clean, fair food be accessible to all.

Along with all of the other Slow Food devotees out there, I am passionate about these issues. How can you not be once you learn a little, and then a little more, about where your food comes from?

But if I’m being totally honest, the thing that initially lured me in – that got me hooked on Slow Food and its ideals – is that this is an organization dedicated to the love of food and the joy that sharing a good meal, made with care and high-quality ingredients, with friends and family could bring. You know that joy, too. The laughter and conversation, the smiling faces of your loved ones basking in the glow of a good meal. That’s as much a part of the enjoyment of food as is the flavor. And sharing that love – of food, family, and friends – was the biggest motivation for my food blog when I started it in 2008.

Out of work and prospects dim for the foreseeable future, I knew that our household food budget had to take a hit. A sizable hit at that. Yet, I also knew that I didn’t want to lose enthusiasm for cooking, for sharing meals with my husband, our extended family, and our friends. I also didn’t want to start shopping where the store’s values were different than my own just because the prices were lower on items like meat. I didn’t want to skip the farm stand or farmers market, and I still wanted to visit my friends at my favorite Italian market, even if Parmigiano-Reggiano and prosciutto had to be relegated to special occasions only.

So a few adjustments were required. First, I set my weekly food budget. Then I did some research about sales. I became very familiar with the prices at the farm stand. I bought copious amounts of slightly blemished butternut squash from my farmer neighbors (and other fall vegetables, too, but, boy, did we eat a lot of butternut squash that first fall. Good thing we’re winter squash obsessed.). I made a meal plan for the week. The shopping list followed the meal plan. And I slapped myself silly – figuratively, of course, that would be over-the-top weird to whack myself in the store - every time I so much as looked at an item not on the list. “Stick to the list, only the list,” I chided myself.

More after the jump

It’s Easy! It’s Hard! Slow food for the price of fast food

“In one moment I am buying something and can’t believe how much I get for so little money; the next item I pick up gives me sticker shock. How can both of these things be true?” the author asks.

Earlier this summer, as I was hauling a bag of farmers market produce home 15 blocks and up four flights of stairs, sweating bullets, cursing my choice to buy a melon (they’re heavy!), I stopped mid-step.

“Does it really have to be this hard?” I asked myself.

My story is particular to me, of course, but all over the country there are people trying to put food on the table and asking themselves “does it really have to be this hard?”

I was living, at the time, in a neighborhood with few supermarkets. The ones within a long walking distance were either very expensive or lacking the seasonal produce I craved. So on weekends I would hike over to the big farmers market. But at the farmers market I always find myself of two minds. In one moment I am buying something and can’t believe how much I get for so little money; the next item I pick up gives me sticker shock. How can both of these things be true?

When people ask me: “Doesn’t the food you eat (some mix of local, sustainable, organic, etc.) cost so much more than “regular” food?” I protest and agree at the same time. When they say “Doesn’t cooking from scratch take a lot of time?” I remember the awesome pasta I cooked the other night that took 7.5 minutes. But also the weekend of foraging I did going from one store to the next.

I live in New York City; I make a living wage; I am not trying to feed a family; I work on these issues for a living. If I find it hard/tiring/expensive sometimes, what must other people feel?

In the spirit of this conundrum, Slow Food USA launched the $5 Challenge last week.

More after the jump

Today we launch our campaign to take back the value meal

Today, Slow Food USA launches the $5 Challenge, our campaign to take back the value meal.

Today, Slow Food USA launches the $5 Challenge. See the official release below or download it here...

More after the jump