At which restaurant would you choose to enjoy your last meal?

 

I had an amazing meal experience with my dear friend, Kate, at Founding Farmers in Washington, D.C. today.  Founding Farmers is a restaurant that honors the American farmer; sources food grown locally and sustainably; and deliciously prepares it for the guest all in a certified green building!  Their philosophy from their website reads:

 

The Founding Farmers name represents a combination of ideas: it is a celebration of the land and the American family farmer; it is a nod to the founding fathers of our country, many of whom owned and farmed land that surrounds Washington, D.C.; and it is a place where true, sustainably farmed, grown, and harvested American foods are brought to our guests—reminiscent of traditions from across the land.

The rich history of American cooking tradition is celebrated throughout the menus at Founding Farmers, with a philosophy to promote sustainable agriculture and the ways of the American family farmer at every turn. Each season, new choices reflect the best of what’s available from our farm sources.

As soon as I walked in, there was a shelf of canned jars (not aluminum cans) of corn, carrots, and peaches.  When I saw the menu (view them here), and read “sustainable seafood,” “free-range sustainable chicken,” “season mix [of vegetables],” and “from the ranch,” I knew this would be quite the experience.  After one bite, I knew all the flavors and textures had been carefully thought out.  There was just the right amount of sauce, dressing, or spice to keep/enhance the natural flavor of the food.  To say the least, Kate and I enjoyed a soul-filling, hearty and delicious meal from start to finish.  And luckily, there was plenty to take home for tomorrow.

Snapshots of the experience are below: (Note: my camera quality does not do the food justice.)

 

Menu

 

 

 

Kate overwhelmed by all the delicious menu options

 

Creamy Brie, Onion Jam, and Sliced Organic Apples Flatbread

 

Butternut Squash Ravioli: Roasted butternut squash and mascarpone hand-filled ravioli

 

Mint Limeade made fresh there

 

 

 

 

 

Personally, I find it difficult to find restaurants that share my food philosophy, but in Washington, D.C., Founding Farmers is definitely one that provides a local, sustainable, delicious meal from scratch:

When you go to the grocery store today you have a lot of choices; however, the most important food choice you can make is to buy organic, local, and when possible, family-farm–sourced food. Consumers seek out opportunities to purchase the freshest and healthiest foods from local groceries and farmers’ markets, but they often give their favorite restaurants a pass on this high standard of food. Those days are over, and Founding Farmers is here to bring you the bounty of true Farm-to-Table choices in an environment dedicated to sustainability.

Make your buck off of Swine Flu (oops H1N1)

Sorry, I did not mean to slip and use the name, Swine Flu, when we are supposed to use H1N1.

Cocoa Krispies is a registered trademark of Kellogg’s

Earlier this week, Kellogg’s decided to discontinue its immunity statements on its Rice Krispies cereals.  The San Francisco city attorney first flagged this claim and wanted more scientific evidence:

“I am concerned the prominent use of the immunity claims to advertise a sugar-laden chocolate cereal like Cocoa Krispies may mislead and deceive parents of young children,” said Dennis Herrera, the city attorney.

With the combination of recent bad press about Smart Choices Program (this has temporarily been halted), hype around H1N1, and big food’s marketing claims to drive its bottom line up, I am not surprised that Kellogg’s would tack immunity claims onto a Cocoa Krispies box.  Come on, Cocoa Krispies, a cereal that is 40-percent sugar by weight, cannot be better for a child’s immunity than eating a more wholly nutritious, diverse diet based on fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains!  I actually find the statement, “Now helps support your child’s immunity!” to be demeaning to caretakers and completely insensitive to the child’s health concerns and rising obesity rates amongst children.

Kelly Brownell, director of Yale Rudd Center, articulately captured the ridiculousness of this immunity claim in this USAToday article:

Of all claims on cereal boxes, “this one belongs in the hall of fame,” says Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. “By their logic, you can spray vitamins on a pile of leaves, and it will boost immunity.”

 

Happy Halloween Obama style

The White House handed out treats to trick-or-treaters this past weekend on Halloween. Visitors were given a White House cookie and a box of dried fruit – peaches, pears, and sour cherries. How healthy! The organic shortbread cookie used honey from the White House garden. Check out the video about the treat below:

“Luke, I am your father…”

Watch this funny video about the fight for organic foods:

 

 

Name that “Food!” – Answer to Quiz #10

Boo.  The answer to this week’s Name that “Food!” quiz is:

Candy Corn!

Happy Halloween.  Hope you do not eat too much wax in this candy. :)

Your chance to get Big Ag out of the Government

ACTION ALERT

Readers, Obama promised us Change and a different food system and food policy.  Big Ag has always influenced food policy in this country through its money and lobbyists.  This has created a defunct food system that does not seek the best interest of the public’s health.  Obama has recently nominated two Big Ag names to governmental posts:

(1) Islam Siddiqui, current VP of science and regulatory affairs at CropLife (the lobbying association for the pesticide/GMO industry) to U.S. Chief Agricultural Negotiator, which will enable the propogation of chemical pesticides and biotechnology

(2) Roger Beachy, head of Monsanto’s defacto nonprofit research arm to USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture

Take Action Now! Please let Obama know we want real change.  Please sign the petition here from Food Democracy Now! Pass the word along to your friends.

——-

Letter from Food Democracy Now! below:

Dear Friends,

Speak up to stop Big Ag.

President Obama has found himself with some strange bedfellows lately.

While on the campaign trail in Iowa, Barack Obama boasted, “We’ll tell ConAgra that it’s not the Department of Agribusiness. We’re going to put the people’s interests ahead of the special interests.”¹ Despite that promise, it seems that ConAgra’s friends at Monsanto and CropLife are still finding their way into the USDA.Last month, President Obama nominated two “Big Ag” power brokers–Roger Beachy and Islam Siddiqui–to key agency positions, putting agribusiness executives in charge of our country’s agricultural research and trade policy. Please join us in telling the President that this isn’t the change we voted for. We don’t want Big Ag running the show any more.

Siddiqui’s confirmation hearing is set for next week. Please help us reach our goal of 50,000 signatures to make a real impact.

http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/65?akid=35.72641.t4vFIw&t=1

Obama’s first agribusiness selection is Roger Beachy, to be head of the USDA’s newly created National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Beachy is the founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO. It may sound innocuous, but the Danforth Center is essentially the non-profit arm of GMO seed giant Monsanto; Monsanto’s CEO sits on its board, and the company provides considerable funding for the Center’s operations.²As the head of the USDA’s new research arm, formerly known as the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CREES), Beachy is responsible for deciding how U.S. research dollars will be spent in agriculture.³ Translation: more research on biotech, less research on how to scale sustainable and organic agriculture.Unfortunately, Beachy has already started work at the USDA, but the next nominee—Islam Siddiqui—still must be confirmed by the U.S.Senate. Siddiqui, the Vice President of Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife America, was recently nominated to be the Chief Agricultural Negotiator at the Office of the US Trade Representative.⁴ Amazingly, when Michele Obama planted her “organic” garden on the White House lawn, Siddiqui’s CropLife MidAmerica sent the First Lady a letter saying that it made them “shudder”.⁵

During his career, Siddiqui spent over 3 years as a pesticide lobbyist, an Undersecretary at the USDA and a VP at CropLife. In defending Siddiqui, the White House has stated that he played a key role in helping establish the country’s first organic standards.⁶ What they neglect to mention, though, is that those original organic standards would have allowed irradiation, sewage sludge and GMOs to undermine organic integrity! The standards were so watered down that 230,000 people signed a petition for them to be changed, which they eventually were.⁷

Fortunately, the organic community stopped Siddiqui and his cronies then, and we need your help now to do it again. If Siddiqui’s nomination is allowed to go through, then agribusiness will continue to control the seeds, the science, and the distribution of global food and agriculture.

Please join Food Democracy Now! and a broad coalition of other groups, in calling on President Obama to keep his campaign promise of closing the revolving door between agribusiness and his administration.

Please click here to add your voice.

http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/65?akid=35.72641.t4vFIw&t=1

Thanks for standing with us and our coalition partners from across the country, including: The Pesticide Action Network (PAN), National Family Farm Coalition, Food & Water Watch, Farmworker’s Association of Florida, Institute of Agriculture & Trade Policy, Greenpeace and the Center for Food Safety in calling for President Obama to live up to his promises to put people’s interests ahead of special interests

Sustainably Yours,

Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Now! Team.

If you’d like to see Food Democracy Now!’s grassroots work continue, please consider donating. Your donation of $5 or more will help us continue our work. We appreciate your support! http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/25?akid=35.72641.t4vFIw&t=1

Sources:

1. Obama slams corporate agriculture, two Illinois firms, The Chicago Tribune, November 10, 2007
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/58?akid=35.72641.t4vFIw&t=1

2. Another Monsanto man in a key USDA post?, Grist, September 24, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/59?akid=35.72641.t4vFIw&t=1

3. A New Direction on Research at the USDA? The Experts Weigh In, The Huffington Post, October 15, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/60?akid=35.72641.t4vFIw&t=1

4. Obama’s attempt to tap an agrichemical-industry flack runs into trouble, Grist, October 10, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/61?akid=35.72641.t4vFIw&t=1

5. Michelle’s green garden upsets pesticide makers, The First Post, April 23, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/62?akid=35.72641.t4vFIw&t=1

6. Agriculture nomination steams greens, Politico, October 10, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/63?akid=35.72641.t4vFIw&t=1

7. USDA Enters Debate on Organic Label Law, The New York Times, February 23, 2003 http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/72?akid=35.72641.t4vFIw&t=1

They want their steaks! Even though the kids are getting healthier…

Meatless Monday, a campaign I proudly support and partner with, has gotten some press lately due to Food Service Director, Tony Geraci’s decision to take all Baltimore City Schools meatless on Mondays.  Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs voiced their concern while Charles Gibson talked to students and showed the positive effects of going meatless on Mondays.

Glenn Beck:

Lou Dobbs does not think positively about the initiative either.  Watch here.

Charles Gibson featured Baltimore City Schools in this piece.

I wonder if Beck spoke to Baltimore City’s students and parents.  Dobbs wants parents to choose the foods their kids will eat (this should definitely be the case), but “parents [CNN] spoke to didn’t have a problem with the new menu.”  The mother shown in the segment said she thought “it was a great choice for kids.  I mean, they can learn…that there are other ways to eat food without having meat.”  Bingo.  Beck and Dobbs misrepresent the meatless monday initiative, which in no way is asking people to give up meat entirely.  It is simply challenging people to consider their health and broaden their dietary diversity because in America, we consume far more animal protein than necessary and most perceive that it is not a meal without meat.

I wonder if Beck and Dobbs have thought about whether or not these kids can even access fresh, nutritious foods regularly?  These school meals may be one of the few times they are able to get fresh meals.  School official, Matt Hornbeck, Principal of Hampstead Hills Academy, notes that they are not trying to be the food police.  They are also not judging choices made at home, but want to provide more options at schools and expose children to healthier options and “flavors” (says Geraci; see below).  As Charles Gibson’s piece showed, it did help one student go home and make salads and smoothies.  Now, I am no school lunch expert, but don’t you think serving healthier plant-based foods is an improvement to serving meat from sick cows that should not be consumed and this?

Geraci’s decision is not political.  It is not about denying American children the steak America loves.  His decisions are motivated by our children’s health, which is a bipartisan issue.  As Center for a Livable Future reported, even Trent Loos, a rancher and radio show host, seems to be convinced of Geraci’s decision:

Many critics believe kids will not get enough protein, but read Center for a Livable Future’s excellent post, “Protein 101: Dispelling the Myth Surrounding Meatless Meals.”

Name that “Food!” – Quiz #10

The trivia is back!  Here is this week’s Name that “Food!”:

INGREDIENTS: SUGAR, CORN SYRUP, CONFECTIONER’S GLAZE, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, SALT, ARTIFICIAL COLORS (FDC YELLOW 6 LAKE, RED #40, RED 40 LAKE, YELLOW#5, YELLOW #6, BLUE 1 LAKE, BLUE #1, YELLOW 5 LAKE), EGG WHITES, HONEY GLYCERIN, MINERAL OIL, CARNAUBA WAX

Food Beware!

There is a new French documentary, “Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution,” out!  The original title translates as “Our Children Will Accuse Us.”  Jean-Paul Jaud’s film chronicles the French town, Barjac, that went completely organic “and thrived.” First, the mayor and city council decided that all children would be served locally grown, organic foods in their meals.  They also go to school gardens, and learn about where their food grows.  Even meals-on-wheels programs go local and organic!

From the NPR Review here:

From the first burst of statistics about pesticides (superimposed over shots of kids playing hopscotch in the schoolyard), you might expect Food Beware to be a conventionally hectoring activist documentary. And it certainly lays out its pro-organic arguments forcefully: When someone argues at a town meeting that the council’s concern about chemicals in food seems alarmist — aren’t life spans longer than ever? — the speaker notes that life-expectancy studies are based on people born in the 1920s and ’30s, and that those folks spent their first two decades eating additive-free foods.

Watch more clips here, and here.

Read the NYTimes Review here.

Today is World Food Day

I long ago decided that the first human right for which people fight is the right to eat. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

The world has enough for man’s need, but not enough for man’s greed. ~Mahatma Gandhi

[At one point, a delegate said,] “I heard in America people say there was no such thing as freedom – it was simply freedom to starve.”  We learned that lesson here during the depression and we know now that a democratic government has a responsibility to see that its people have freedom from fear.  This should be one of the aims that we have before us in the coming year –to show that our conception of freedom and the rights of men includes the responsibility of their government to see that no man, woman or child starves and that, as far as we are able, we extend that guarantee to the nations of the world because of the greatness and generosity of our spirit. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

I got the quotes above from World Food Day USA’s site.  The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released its State of Food Insecurity in the World Report 2009, and it finds that hunger is still rising.  It has been rising since 1995-1997.

What is food security anyway? The accepted definition from the World Food Summit in 1996  is that food security exists “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.”  Food security is dependent on:

• availability: food is available consistently
• access: people have enough resources to acquire foods for a healthy diet.
• utilization: people are able to be nourished by healthful foods as well as adequate water and sanitation.

Today, food insecurity is less an issue of availability.  There is enough food resources, as Ghandi aptly stated in the quote above, to feed everyone in the world.  Today, it is more an issue of access.  People do not have the income or resources to purchase good food that is available near them.  The recent economic crisis, distorted prices on the global food market, and dependence on imported food can be to blame.

Can we solve this growing problem? With changes in our global food aid policy, more investment into local/rural agriculture, and more emphasis on care-taking practices to increase children nutrition, positive changes can be reached.  Also, I do believe our US food system and support of corn lobbyists/big ag corporations affects the global food system.  You and I may not be able to feed every hungry child, but we can make conscious decisions about the foods we eat everyday to tell corporations that we demand to see a different food system.  We are voicing our opinions every time we purchase food.  More directly though, organizations are working on the ground daily to help the hungry.See my post below for a glimpse into what Save the Children is doing to tackle childhood malnutrition.

Watch FAO’s feature on World Food Day below: