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Climate Corps America: The Urban Farms Transforming How America’s Most Vulnerable Communities Eat
Urban farms not only promote healthy eating but have the ability to transform industrial cities.
Louise Boyle
The microwave plays a significantly more important role to urban farming in Baltimore than you might first imagine.
“Our butternut squash comes from a seed which makes it little and easily microwaveable,” Gwen Kokes, food and farm programme director at Civic Works, told The Independent. “For our [customers] this is really important as it might be too expensive to turn on the gas to cook or the oven might not be working.”
The squash, along with a range of produce, is grown at Real Food Farm, one branch of Civic Works urban service corps program in Maryland’s largest city.
The farm started about a decade ago and spans eight acres in northeast Baltimore with four fields, more than 100 fruit trees, a greenhouse for seedlings, and eight “hoop houses” which, for the uninitiated, are a sort of passive greenhouse with crops planted directly in the soil but sheltered by heavy-duty plastic sheets stretched over frames.
The farm produces 5,000 pounds of fruit and vegetables each year to be sold for reduced cost at farmers’ markets in low-income neighbourhoods across Baltimore. A mobile market, operating out of a box truck, also visits all 12 senior centres in the city.
“In total, we distribute about 100,000 pounds of food every year,” says Ms Kokes. “We buy from other urban farms in a 50-mile radius, prioritising Black-owned farms. Sometimes we have donations from Hungry Harvest, a programme to reduce food waste from grocery stores, and we’ve been adding pantry and hygiene items so that it’s more of a one-stop shop.”
Civic Works is part of AmeriCorps, the federal agency for service and volunteering programmes in the US. To tackle the climate crisis, President Biden has called for “reinvigorating and repurposing” the agency into a so-called “Civilian Climate Corps” to provide jobs while ramping up clean energy and sustainability to “heal our public lands and make us less vulnerable to wildfires and floods”.
“Biden’s plan could be huge for us,” Ms Kokes said. “I think it can grow exponentially. There’s plenty of demand for these jobs.”
The non-profit also runs programmes to mentor students, fix up abandoned houses and makes homes safer for seniors by doing minor DIY like adding handrails and ramps.
AmeriCorps estimates that its existing network – 25,000 participants in about 130 programmes – could be scaled up to 500,000 young people and veterans over the next five years.
Around 19 million people in the US live in “food deserts”. The term is believed to have been coined in Scotland in the early 1990s by a public housing resident, referring to areas where healthy, fresh options are scarce and packaged and fast food has proliferated.
The term is now seen as having negative connotations, implying that “low healthy food access is a naturally occurring phenomenon, rather than the result of underlying structural inequities”, according to a 2018 study by John Hopkins. (Baltimore residents told researchers they preferred the term “Healthy Food Priority Areas”.)
Researchers also point to the systemic racism at the heart of Americans’ access to food. It’s difficult to improve diet and health, for example, if prices for nutritious food are far beyond your budget, and there’s no public transport to take you stores.
“The fact that predominantly black neighbourhoods, on average, have fewer stores and poorer quality [food] compared to their white counterparts means something,” Ashanté M. Reese, professor of sociology and anthropology at Spelman College who studies race and food inequity, told HuffPost .
Baltimore is one of America’s poorest cities. In 22 of the city’s 668 Census tracts, at least 40 per cent of residents live below the poverty line. Even before Covid, the unemployment rate in the poorest neighbourhoods hovered above 15 per cent, triple that of wealthier areas.
Lack of access to healthy food in Baltimore is one layer of racial inequality that has plagued the city since the early 20th century, when deliberate policies were put in place to separate the city’s white and Black residents.
In the city’s Greenmount East neighbourhood the average life expectancy is around 66 years while four miles away in the wealthier Roland Park, the average life expectancy is 84 years, according to Kaiser Health News.
That’s where organisations like Real Food Farm step in. Those who are unemployed or on low-incomes and using government nutrition assistance programmes get double the value for their dollar if it’s spent at the farmers’ market, for example.
Urban farms not only promote healthy eating but have the ability to transform industrial cities.
“Motor City” Detroit, once the backbone of the car industry, has suffered a well-documented decline since its mid-20th century heyday. But its industrial wastelands have been transformed by urban farming with at least 1,400 farms and gardens in the city. In Pittsburgh, Hilltop Urban Farm is set to become the largest urban farm in the country. Baltimore has around 17 urban farms and upwards of 75 community gardens that grow food, according to Baltimore magazine.
Civic Works’ role on the frontline of food insecurity meant that its teams were well-positioned to adapt during the Covid pandemic, delivering boxes of fresh produce and basic necessities to the most vulnerable at no cost. They also worked with public bodies and local charities to deliver donations.
“During lockdown, Baltimore City public school system had to get rid of those little cartons of milk really fast. We have thousands of customers so we focused on getting those out to them,” Ms Kokes said.
From March through the end of July, the programme’s teams ran a free programme delivering boxes of produce, meals and hygiene kits to about 1,000 households a week. They went on to launch a discounted local produce programme, delivering boxes with about $15-$20 of food for $5 with free delivery, mostly to seniors.
Urban farms will play a role in mitigating how climate change impacts urban areas. Cities are often several degrees hotter than rural areas due to the “urban heat island effect” caused by dark-coloured roads and buildings. Increasing vegetation cover can help curb rising temperatures.
Urban farms can also lower the risk of flooding during heavy downpours and help retain water in dry areas, according to a paper in the journal Earth’s Future.
Research in 2018 from Arizona State University and Google found that urban agriculture could save the energy equivalent of 9 million home air conditioning units and produce up to 180m tonnes of food globally. Along with supplying almost the entire recommended consumption of vegetables for city dwellers, it would cut food waste and reduce emissions from transportation of produce, the study found.
Maryland is among the states most vulnerable to climate change, facing both rising sea levels and heightened storm intensity. Government data predicts that Maryland’s sizeable farming community could suffer costly losses during extreme droughts and heat waves.
Ms Kokes says that more extreme and unpredictable weather has impacted their operations in recent years.
“With day-to-day farming, we have to get ‘swamp ready’,” she said. “2018 was the worst for Maryland farmers as the rain was astronomical. We took a huge hit. It was very humbling because we had to reckon with our limitations, and partner with others to be a reliable source of food.
“Irregular weather patterns especially in the spring make it really difficult to know when to plant. We’ve [also] had early frost in October. Our farmer Stewart is a very smart, science-oriented guy and thankfully, there’s resources that we can lean on to translate this unpredictability into clear language.”
Around 3,000 students from kindergarten to high school have visited Real Food Farm over the years to learn about agriculture. Separately, programmes like Future Harvest are preparing the farmers of the future. But it’s important that Real Food Farm’s mission stays relevant to the communities they are in, Ms Kokes said.
“Environmentalism, from our perspective and our work, has to be people-focused,” she said. “We’re not talking about weather patterns when people are hungry and just want affordable produce in their neighbourhood.”
The Mexican Tec Graduates Who Are Using Vertical Farming To Eradicate Hunger
Vertical farms use 90% less water than traditional agriculture and can meet the challenge of feeding more than 9 billion people
Vertical farms use 90% less water than traditional agriculture and can meet the challenge of feeding more than 9 billion people
Por Susan Irais
January 11, 2021
Not all fruit and vegetables can be grown using this technique, but a great variety can. (Photo: Courtesy of Verde Karma Fresh)
Every night, seven million people go to bed hungry in Mexico. It is estimated that the coronavirus pandemic will cause that figure to increase. According to the latest report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 130 million people will be affected by chronic hunger worldwide by the end of 2020.
Unfortunately for Mexico, the traditional agricultural industry uses a lot of resources and wastes a large amount of what it takes from the land.
For example, 34% of total production ends up in landfills due to inefficiencies during processing, storage, and transportation. What’s more, 40 billion liters of water are wasted annually due to poor irrigation.
“Fresh” products travel 300 to 1,000 kilometers and have already lost 45% of their nutritional value by the time they hit the shelves. But there is a complementary option for agriculture: vertical gardens.
Vertical Farming
“Vertical farming –in controlled environments– is a method of growing in vertically stacked layers, optimizing growing conditions and soil-less cultivation techniques, such as hydroponics,” says Leo Lobato Kelly, CEO of Verde Karma Fresh, a vertical farming company from Monterrey, Nuevo León.
The modern concept of vertical farming was proposed in 1999 by Dickson Despommier, Professor of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University in the United States.
Due to climate change, this method has become a real alternative for countries like Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and now, Mexico.
Karma Verde Fresh (KVF) has spent the last five years developing farming systems and growing a variety of vegetables, sprouts, and seedlings in Monterrey, Nuevo León. “This has been achieved through an association with two universities and Tec graduate agronomists, using natural substrates, in this case: tezontle (volcanic rock). This substrate can be washed without contaminating the soil. By substituting mineral products, you allow fields to regenerate themselves, which is highly beneficial to the soil,” says the CEO of Karma Verde Fresh.
Not all fruit and vegetables can be grown using this technique, but a great variety can be (Photo: courtesy of Karma Verde Fresh).
Vertical farming systems use 90% less water and 95% less space than traditional farming and are 100% herbicide and pesticide-free. “Our crops can be adapted to any space, which allows us to be closer to the consumer, reduce our carbon footprint, and promote local purchases that are fresher,” says Leo Lobato.
Vertical farms keep crops fresh for longer, so they don’t lose any nutrients, using state-of-the-art LEDs that are extremely energy efficient. Energy can also be generated from renewable sources and this creates job opportunities.
Traditional Agriculture Plus Vertical Farming
“Vertical farming is another option within the agricultural industry, though it is intended as a way of complementing rather than replacing traditional agriculture,” adds Tagino Lobato from KVF.
Not all fruit and vegetables can be grown using this technique, but a great variety can be, “enough to have a balanced diet,” according to Leo Lobato.
For example, KVF produces lettuce, microgreens (mustard), Ballerina lettuce, Alexandria lettuce, peas, beetroot, large-eared lettuce, radish, Italian lettuce, and sunflowers, as well as others such as astro arugula, rocket arugula, spinach, coriander, chard, strawberries, and tomato seedlings.
Vertical farms are very beneficial. For example, they use 90% less water than traditional agriculture and they can be built anywhere, which means many spaces could be repurposed. (Infographic: Karma Verde Fresh)
This type of initiative hopes to feed the 150 million people who will be living in Mexico by 2050, of whom approximately will be in 80% urban areas, according to FAO estimates.
Karma Verde Fresh saw a great entrepreneurial opportunity in vertical technology. “We need this in all communities because we all need to eat better without damaging the planet. Vertical farming in a controlled environment has many possibilities. We can take it to schools or food bank centers,” says the co-founder of Verde Karma Fresh.
The company wants to make this innovation in agriculture available to everyone, so they are looking to make the technology accessible. For example, “we already have one of these vertical farms in Dr. Adriana Elizondo’s house in the Linda Vista neighborhood of Guadalupe in Monterrey. She’s farming with this prototype from her bedroom,” says Leo.
Karma Verde Fresh has two versions of the growing system: one for crops (KVF-AG6) and one for seedlings (KVF-AG10). (Photo: Karma Verde Fresh)
Mexico, The Land of Opportunity
The Lobato technology has already made deals with 20 international universities to take their equipment and establish laboratories. “By involving universities, we are hoping to find Mexican ingenuity that will produce better technology and create more employment opportunities in all Spanish-speaking countries,” he says.
KVF doesn’t just want to sell the technology but also to lower the costs by using Mexican technology. Sources of financing are being set up for all of the entrepreneurs who wish to take vertical farms to different levels.
The end product from vertical farms promotes local purchases that are more nutritious (Photo: Courtesy)
Most Americans Have Roundup in Their Bodies. Researchers Say One Week of Eating Organic Can Help
Organic, pesticide-free eating is an important factor in health and is something consumers should remain conscious of when shopping.
Photo courtesy of Scott Warman, Unsplash.
One week of eating organic can dramatically reduce pesticide levels in the body, according to a recent study conducted by the Health Research Institute, Commonweal Institute, and Friends of the Earth.
The group of researchers tracked the pesticide levels of four families across the United States. They took measurements after six days on a non-organic diet and again after six days on an organic diet.
The study, and a companion study published last year, found 16 different kinds of pesticides and chemicals in every participant. But after six days of organic eating, these compounds decreased an average of 60.5 percent—and some as much as 95 percent. Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup and the most used pesticide in the world, dropped an average of 70 percent.
A study by agricultural economist Charles Benbrook finds that the use of glyphosate has spiked 15-fold globally since genetically modified, “Roundup Ready” crops were introduced in 1996. The percentage of Americans with traceable levels of glyphosate in their bodies rose from 12 percent in 1972 to 70 percent by 2014, according to researchers at the University of California San Diego.
Glyphosate exposure has been associated with a wide range of health problems. Researchers have flagged glyphosate as a probable carcinogen, and the chemical has been linked to kidney disease, reproductive issues, DNA damage, hormone and digestion disruptions, fatty liver disease, and more.
The recent study poses organic eating as a straightforward way to avoid glyphosate. But the authors also recognize that organic food isn’t always accessible.
To improve the availability of organic foods in the United States, the team calls for top-down policy changes—like stricter regulations on pesticide use, more federal research into the effects of pesticides, and aid for farmers as they transition to organic farming.
“Our federal pesticide policy system is broken, and we need people shouting about that,” Dr. Kendra Klein, a co-author of the study and Senior Staff Scientist at Friends of the Earth, tells Food Tank. “Companies like Bayer, Syngenta, and Dow are spending millions lobbying, and they’re also spending tens of millions of dollars to shape the narrative and perpetuate myths, like the myth that we need pesticides to feed the world.”
Klein points out that just 1 percent of U.S. federal agricultural research dollars go towards ecological farming, and pesticide regulations are few and far between. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has loosened some pesticide restrictions in recent years. Between 1993 and 2008, the EPA raised the threshold for glyphosate residues on oats from 0.1 ppm to 30 ppm.
Larry Bohlen, Chief Operating Officer at HRI Labs and another co-author of the study, also emphasizes a lack of resources for farmers who want to transition to organic farming. He explains that universities and government training programs have taught farmers how to use pesticides for decades. “If they placed models of successful organic farming side-by-side with the synthetic chemical models, farmers would have choices instead of just one option,” Bohlen tells Food Tank.
Stringent pesticide regulations might seem like a lofty goal in the U.S., says Klein, but change is already underway abroad. Earlier this year, the European Union announced plans to halve the use of “high risk” pesticides by 2030 and make at least 25 percent of farmland organic.
To spur change in the U.S., Bohlen urges consumers to vote with their wallets, if they’re able. “Each person’s purchase is a small vote that, when considered collectively, sends a signal back to the grocer and the farmer about what type of food is desired. It’s your purchase that has one of the biggest effects on land, farmer, and consumer health.”
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Start-Up Launches London’s First Delivery Service For Vertically-Farmed Eco-Friendly Greens
A London-based company is offering vertically-farmed, ultra fresh produce delivered straight to Londoners doors.
Crate To Plate Says All Its Greens Are Picked
Within 24-hours of Being Delivered To Your Door
Crate To Plate grow greens both vertically and horizontally, without soil, inside giant crates on the Isle of Dogs / Crate To Plate
A start-up is offering to deliver vertically-farmed vegetables to Londoners homes within 24 hours of harvesting in a first for the capital.
Crate to Plate, founded by former banker and scion of the supermarket dynasty, Sebastien Sainsbury, currently grows all its leafy greens inside three giant shipping containers on the Isle of Dogs.
The type of indoor farming the start-up uses has been tipped as the future of food production, and investors have spotted the trend.
The company, launched in London earlier this year, grows salad and herbs using hydroponics - which means seeds are grown year-round on vertical and horizontal racks without any soil or pesticides. The amount of water, light and “specially mixed” nutrients each kale or basil plant receives is carefully controlled.
(Crate To Plate staff include agriculture MA students / Crate To Plate)
The process uses around 95% less water than traditional farming, in a tiny space. In recent film A Life on Our Planet, David Attenborough recently warned of the critical importance of moving away from exhaustive farming practices to innovative solutions.
At the height of the November lockdown the team - which includes agriculture MA students - branched out into high-end “leafy veg box” deliveries spanning Zones 1-3. Each delivery is made on electric vehicle.
A £15 variety “farm to table” box will buy you 3 lettuce varieties, 3 bags of other leafy greens and 4 herbs - all harvested within 24-hours of arriving at your door.
Crate To Plate is now planning to expand around the capital. A second site is opening in Elephant & Castle in the new year, and the firms aims to have up to 15 “farms” by 2021. Each will produce up to six tonnes of fresh food per year.
Sainsbury, who previously founded the Hush Restaurant and organic baby food company Goodness Gracious, told the Standard he began exploring the business idea in 2015, after visiting a hydroponic farmer in Canada.
“I’m all about food wattage. One of the reasons I set up this business is for the environmental sustainability element of it. “Now technology has enabled us to move from growing on one row [as on the Canadian farm ] to growing both vertically and horizontally,” he said. Of the veg boxes, he said: “I did a bit of research and Londoners’ searches for ‘where does my food come from?’ increased by 40% in the pandemic.
“The pandemic was an opportunity to focus on home delivery. We’ve been sold out every week.”
“Everyone is talking about 15 minute cities now. Effectively that was what I was talking about - I want everyone to be able to get fresh leafy greens no more than a mile away from where they live.”
Critics of vertical farming have said it is just too expensive a method to realistically become the future of UK farming. But Sainsbury said the team is already working with farmers around the country to get them on board, with the aim of eventually expanding UK-wide.
Published by Dani Kliegerman for iGrow.News
Interview With Eddy Badrina, CEO of Eden Green Technology
One company that is looking to take on the commercial agricultural industry is Eden Green Technology, a company based out of Texas that focuses on sustainability in the food industry
Josiah Motley · April 27, 2020 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/5018
A look at the vertical farming platform that uses tech to grow a variety of healthy foods
When we talk about technology, it's easy to focus on things like computers, smartphones, apps, and the growing number of smart gadgets found in our homes.
But technology is far-reaching and can influence and change traditional sectors quickly. One sector that may seem immune to the growing use of technology is the farming industry, but a quick look at what farm equipment is becoming can prove that wrong quickly (even if the transition is proving difficult for some).
One company that is looking to take on the commercial agricultural industry is Eden Green Technology, a company based out of Texas that focuses on sustainability in the food industry.
I had the chance to interview Eddy Badrina, CEO of the company, to learn a bit more about what they are doing, how they use technology, and how they envision the future of the agricultural industry.
Check it out below.
Care to introduce yourself and your role with Eden Green?
Sure. I'm Eddy Badrina, and I’m the CEO of Eden Green Technology.
In just a few sentences, what is Eden Green?
Eden Green Technology is a vertical farming platform that grows large quantities of local produce safely, sustainably, and efficiently. We use less land, energy, and water than both traditional farming and other indoor solutions.
Our greenhouses are constructed on small footprints, in urban or suburban areas, to provide stable jobs and produce non-GMO, pesticide-free produce, which goes from farm to table in as little as 48 hours, compared to the 14 days it usually takes under the traditional model.
What inspired the creation of the company?
The founders of Eden Green are brothers Jacques and Eugene van Buuren. They witnessed firsthand the effects of hunger in their native South Africa and thereafter dedicated themselves to helping feed the world.
They came to the US to secure investment, source talent, and experiment with their technological solutions in our diverse climates. They started in Texas, with its own extreme range of environmental considerations, agricultural know-how, and business opportunities, and built from there.
What types of produce can your vertical farms grow?
Our greenhouses can grow 50+ varieties of produce, including herbs, leafy greens like spinach, kale, and arugula, and a sizable array of vegetables, plus other non-produce plants like hemp and research crops.
You call yourself a tech company, can you go into more detail on that?
Absolutely. So, our technical secret sauce consists of a few ingredients, including our patented vertical “vines,” where our produce grows, and the way we create microclimates for each individual plant with temperature-controlled air and nutrient-enriched water.
We also designed and built a proprietary mechanical, electrical, and plumbing solution specifically to automate and remotely monitor all our greenhouses. Because of that hardware and software combination, we like to think of ourselves as a technology company that happens to grow produce.
Eden Green seems extremely relevant right now with coronavirus, are you doing anything to help people and businesses affected by the virus?
We directed our R&D facility to start a unique partnership with a local business that had to pivot from supplying high-end restaurants to starting home deliveries of high-quality poultry, eggs, beef, and produce.
For every pound of our produce they deliver, we are giving one pound away to local food banks, homeless shelters, and other nonprofits. The creative problem-solving of combining how to sell our produce, help another small business grow, and feed the local underserved population all at the same time, was a really valuable experience.
More generally, the coronavirus crisis brings into focus the kinds of problems with traditional farming methods that we help directly address - easy access to local food sources, sustainability, and resiliency.
A more-widespread application of greenhouses like ours would also help defray the market effects of workforce shortages due to sickness, the personal effects of crowded, unsanitary, and otherwise-unsafe work environments, and the problems that come with relying on low-paid seasonal work.
What locations are you currently available in and do you plan on expanding?
We currently have our R&D facility in Texas and are prepping for facilities to be built in two other countries and a number of states.
Through our Texas facility alone, we’ve partnered with local food banks and nonprofit organizations, run pilot tests with two grocery companies, and a research university, with a lot more expansion planned in the coming years.
Do you believe this is the future of farming?
We absolutely believe that this is the future of farming. Not only does our solution make market sense - because global demand for year-round access to a variety of produce is growing, and costs to meet that demand are rising, having a locally-sourced, year-round solution solves for that - it’s also a sort of good on its own.
To be clear, we believe we are reshaping farming, not replacing farmers. We have always believed this will innovate the entire industry and will support farmers in the field to improve their processes and best practices.
The way we grow is more sustainable, environmentally friendly, and efficient (in terms of land, water, energy costs, and chemicals) than traditional farming. It saves time, money, and waste in the transportation of the produce, and it reduces food waste and the decrease in nutritional value incurred by transit as well.
If we can offer an opportunity to develop farms into a more efficient operation that improves not just food security in underserved areas, but also food safety, then we grow our business and help farmers as well.
Anything you'd like to close with?
Without getting too much on my soapbox, I’d just like to say that we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reassess what’s really important in each of our local communities, to refocus our efforts to care for those around us, and to rethink how businesses can thrive while doing that.
I’m excited to be part of Eden Green at a moment when we can be an example of the potential of the technology itself, and the philosophy underlying it: that we can treat our food, our people, and our environment - locally and globally -with the respect they deserve, and that we can all succeed together.
I'd like to thank Eddy for taking the time to answer some of my questions.
"Healthy Food Is A Basic Human Right"
These Local Initiatives Are Combatting America's Food Desert Issue
By Alex Aronson
Apr 30, 2019
Access to fresh food is not just an issue in third-world countries. It's a problem right here on American soil, and it's affecting millions.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines food deserts as "areas that lack access to affordable fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk, and other foods that make up a full and healthy diet." This issue is also compounded by factors like lack of financial resources and an excess of convenience stores rather than large retail markets that stock healthy foods. Due to this problem, many communities in the U.S. struggle with a deficiency of proper nutrition, leading to a significant increase in child and adult obesity.
But not all hope is lost. There are some incredible organizations and individuals who dedicate their time to combatting this widespread issue.
Click here to learn how 11 amazing groups are doing their part to put an end to food deserts.
BARCROFT MEDIA GETTY IMAGES
Why Food Dominated 2017?
In 2017, we care, and we care a lot.
The world of food is changing in front of our eyes. Just 10 years ago, companies had total freedom from consumer oversight to create whatever would sell. Ingredients mattered only as a cost item. For many companies, cheaper meant better.
The results have been disastrous. More than 70 percent of Americans are overweight or obese. Especially among our poor. Companies put artificial ingredients and preservatives in their products almost without any basis. No one cared.
Now that is no longer the case. In 2017, we care, and we care a lot.
Many people — especially our most underserved communities — are at the mercy of industrial food. The industrial food system ships in high-calorie, low-nutrient processed food from thousands of miles away. It leaves us disconnected from our food and the people who grow it. The results are awful, from obesity and diabetes to a total loss of community in our food system. And it tastes terrible! No wonder people are turning against this system en masse.
Food is a gift we give each other three times a day. Millions of Americans are starting to realize the need for real food. That also comes with the need for more real-food farmers. One is not possible without the other.
In 2017, we saw massive investments in food. Amazon’s $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market. Agtech investing literally tripled in 2017 over 2016. A $17 million investment round helped propel Memphis Meats, a clean-meat company that develops animal proteins that are delicious, harm no animals, and use no antibiotics or growth hormones. (I invested in this round.)
In 2017, our restaurant company, the Kitchen, purchased $7.4 million worth of real food from American farmers and served more than 1 million guests. Our affordable, urban casual concept, Next Door, opened locations in Colorado and Memphis, meeting the demand for real food. We kicked off season two of Square Roots, and, yes again, we received more than 500 applications from young entrepreneurs interested in becoming real-food farmers; we had just 10 spots to fill. Our learning gardens grew to 450 schools across America’s heartland, reaching 250,000 kids every school day.
Here are a few 2018 food predictions for fun:
Land prices farming corn for ethanol will take a nosedive. Ethanol from corn was never a good technology, but with electric cars coming online, we simply don’t need it anymore. Ethanol from sugar is eight times more efficient to produce and will replace any need in the short term for ethanol in cars.
Restaurants and food companies will move toward total transparency.(I like to think we are leading the way with our Next Door concept joining the Good Food 100). In today’s world, hiding what you do from consumers is a losing strategy. Trust is the currency of our generation. In the age of the internet, everything you do will eventually be public. Transparency from the beginning is the only path forward to building a great food company.
Thousands of millennials will quit their jobs in other sectors for jobs in food. Thousands more will become real-food farmers. The demand for farming among our youth is bright. As the real-food industry grows, the farms they’ll take on will be urban as well as soil based. No more corn and soybeans!
There will be an avalanche of supply of farmland in the heartland.More than 25 million acres of land is set aside for corn to produce ethanol. It takes a gallon of oil to produce a gallon of corn ethanol. Every acre loses money for the farmer. You couldn’t invent a worse technology or business if you tried. This combined with the age of the typical corn farmer will open up millions of acres to our youth across the heartland.
Restaurants will join the connected world. Automation in the back end connecting to chefs in the home office, digital front ends that connect a guest directly to the chef, and on-demand delivery of any food to your family within 20 minutes will change the way we think about restaurants today.
Large U.S. companies will focus their philanthropic support on getting real food to underserved Americans. Obesity and diabetes are the epidemics of our day. Companies will have an amazing and powerful impact on their communities by focusing their philanthropy on creating healthy, thriving communities through food.
Sales of processed, low-nutrient food will continue to crater. The business of real food—food you trust to nourish your body, your farmer, and the planet—will thrive in 2018.
Why Sick Dairy Cows May Be The Culprit In Last Week’s Historic Salmonella Beef Recall
Late last week, JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, recalled 6.9 million pounds of ground beef that it said may have been tainted with Salmonella Newport.
Why Sick Dairy Cows May Be The Culprit In Last Week’s Historic Salmonella Beef Recall
Since the mid-1980s, scientists have identified dairy cows as the primary reservoir of Salmonella Newport. A closer look at established facts points to an ongoing food safety crisis hidden in plain sight.
October 9, 2018
by Joe Fassler
Late last week, JBS, the world’s largest meat packer, recalled 6.9 million pounds of ground beef that it said may have been tainted with Salmonella Newport. Here’s what we know four days into the recall: the strain is responsible for sickening 57 people in 16 states. All of the meat came from the same JBS plant in Tolleson, Arizona. And in less than a week, the incident has already reached historic proportions. It’s the largest recall of beef since the notorious Rancho Feeding Inc. recall of 2014. Former USDA food safety specialist Carl Custer has said it’s largest-ever recall of ground beef related to Salmonella.
Still, major questions remain. The United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) may again broaden the scope of the recall, as it already did on Thursday. More stores may be added to the list of affected retailers published over the weekend. And, of course, more Americans may continue to fall ill. But while basic facts—how much meat, from which stores, causing how many illnesses—remain unclear, a larger uncertainty looms. Namely: How does nearly 7 million pounds of beef get exposed to Salmonella in the first place, then get shipped out to the public? What, exactly, went wrong at Tolleson?
Facts point to a massive, ongoing food safety crisis hidden in plain sight.
When I asked FSIS for additional insight, I was told I’d have to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to learn more. JBS did not respond to multiple requests for comment. So far as the official channels are concerned, we’re still largely in the dark.
And yet, the few details voluntarily released are very revealing if you read between the lines, helping to explain why the meat of an estimated 13,000 animals, a small city of cattle, is now headed for the landfill.
The people I spoke to for this story suggest this outbreak had a clear origin point: a dairy farm in the Southwest. That’s important, because dairy cows processed for meat turn out to be a kind of food safety blind spot. For reasons I’ll explain, dairy cows sickened by Salmonella are more likely than healthy ones to be sent to meat plants for slaughter. Once there, they’re likely to be ground up and used as filler in thousands of pounds of beef, dramatically increasing their risk potential. Perhaps most surprisingly, there’s no system in place to track or disarm this risk. In fact, thanks to a quirk in food safety law, meatpackers aren’t required to test for Salmonella. And even when it is present, the government can’t really do anything about it—not even if millions of pounds of tainted product are at stake.
While we may never know the exact details of this outbreak, we can look to previous recalls for clues—and established facts point to a massive, ongoing food safety crisis hidden in plain sight.
Tolleson, Arizona, situated just west of the Phoenix metropolitan area, is surrounded by cows.
Arizona is the 13th highest milk-producing state by volume. Neighboring New Mexico, with 323,000 cows producing more than 8 billion pounds of milk in 2017, ranks in the top ten. But in the realm of livestock transport, where farmers routinely have to drive their animals hundreds of miles to be slaughtered, Tolleson is less than a day’s drive from the country’s most productive dairy region: central and Southern California.
Dairy cows on a farm in California, the country’s most productive dairy state
California is by far the largest milk-producing state in the nation. In San Bernardino County alone, 40,000 dairy cows produced almost a billion pounds of milk in 2017. Heading north from there into lusher, more temperate central California, production only increases. The state’s top five milk-producing counties—Tulare, Merced, Kings, Stanislaus, and Kern—are home to well over a million dairy cows, who churned out about 27 billion pounds of milk in 2017.
The dairy industry’s proximity is a corroborating detail in last week’s recall. But location isn’t the only factor that makes dairy cows the likely culprit. The smoking gun here is epidemiological: Salmonella entericaserotype Newport, the unusual strain of Salmonella implicated in this recall, has been highly linked to dairy cows in the past. In fact, since the mid-1980s, scientists have identified dairy cows as the primary reservoir of Salmonella Newport.
In 1985, Californians in Los Angeles County started getting sick. Further research found that Salmonella Newport was to blame—a specific, multi-drug-resistant strain that came from California dairy farms. Scientists found that same unique strain in ground beef products on the shelf, at the slaughterhouse where those products were processed, at the dairies who’d sent cows for slaughter on the days tainted product was pushed through, and in the bodies of sick cows at those dairies. In the years that followed, the research community began to take note.
Dairy cow meat makes up 20 percent of the U.S. ground beef market.
“Dairy cows have been incriminated as the source of Salmonella Newport-contaminated hamburgers causing foodborne illness,” wrote the authors of a 1997 paper published by the World Organization for Animal Health, an intergovernmental organization that works to control animal disease worldwide. By 2002, after several smaller outbreaks, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) acknowledged that “strains of Salmonella enterica serotype Newport are becoming increasingly common in dairy cattle and are causing a growing share of infections in humans.”
Last year, Megin Nichols, a CDC veterinarian, was part of a team of scientists tasked with investigating a recall that had close similarities to JBS’s: Between October 2016 and July 2017, 106 people across 21 states were sickened by Salmonella Newport after eating ground beef. Nichols’s team traced this lesser-known strain of salmonella back to a herd of New Mexico dairy cows.
Based on the strain detected, dairy cows are the likely source of this year’s outbreak, too, she says.
In other words, experts seem to agree that whenever Salmonella Newport turns up in ground beef—the exact scenario that lead to last week’s recall—dairy cows tend to be the culprit. I was not able to find reference to a Salmonella Newport outbreak linked to ground beef that didn’t originate with dairy cows. And so it seems reasonable to conclude, even though JBS and FSIS have not offered more official information, that this outbreak is no different, especially given the plant’s proximity to dairy country.
iStock / AHPhotoswpg
Between October 2016 and July 2017, 106 people were sickened by Salmonella Newport after eating ground beef linked to dairy cows
But how does Salmonella Newport get into dairy cows in the first place, and why is that strain so likely to end up in our hamburgers? This part of the story that has to do with biology, economics, and regulation—and it’s where things start to get very interesting.
At large-scale, intensive dairies like the ones that proliferate in California, productivity is all-important. Cows are hooked up by their udders to pneumatic sucking devices and placed on “rotary milking parlours,” originally called Rotolactors—a slowly turning wheel of automated milking stalls, kind of like a cow Gravitron. To best earn a living, dairy farmers need to make sure every cow on that wheel is as productive as physically possible. So when a cow’s output significantly drops for any reason, the farmer must make the difficult decision about whether or not to “cull” the cow: to sell it for meat, and find a better-producing replacement to take its place.
Culling is an unfortunate reality of dairy production. Virtually all dairy cows are sold for meat at some point, but farmers never want to sell a cow they’ve invested time, money, and effort in until they really have to. The difficult question farmers continually face is whether it would be cheaper and more efficient to treat a cow’s ailment, losing productivity all the while, or just sell it for meat and replace it.
A sick dairy cow is more likely than a healthy one to make its way into our food.
Routinely, culling makes the most sense. A 2007 USDA report found that roughly a quarter of cows are removed from dairies each year for one reason or another, and that the vast majority of culled cows are sold for meat. That makes for a lot of burgers. Since dairy cows are bred for milking, not for well-marbled steaks, they’re typically ground, not processed into primal cuts. All that dairy cow meat makes up a significant proportion of the U.S. ground beef market—about 20 percent, according to the Cattlemen’s Beef Board.
That’s where Salmonella comes in. Because when cows get Salmonella—and Salmonella Newport in particular—their milk output starts to drop. This helps explains a contorted fact that’s hard to believe: A sick dairy cow is more likely than a healthy one to make its way into our food.
Salmonella bacteria can get into a dairy herd in a variety of ways. It can be introduced by new replacement cattle carrying it, or brought in by the rodents or wild birds attracted to grain-heavy dairy cow feed. Because of the stress of modern dairies, cows tend to be quite susceptible to these germs, especially as they age.
“If you can imagine dairy cow environments, there’s a lot of cows, often moving around in a contained space,” says CDC’s Megan Nichols. “One of the things that might really predispose [dairy cows] to infections are some of the environmental factors and just being mixed with hundreds of other cows. I think anytime you bring a large group together, whether it’s a group of people or a herd of cattle, you’re potentially introducing new diseases.”
Dairy farmers care a lot about Salmonella, in part because it’s a productivity issue that affects their bottom line.
As a result, dairy cattle do frequently harbor Salmonella—though estimates vary widely on how often. A 1994 survey in Washington state found Salmonella in only 4.6 percent of culled dairy cattle. More recently, a 2012 studyof dairies on the Texas High Plains found Salmonella in nearly a third—32.6 percent—of culled dairy cows from nine different operations. Research at dairies in New York state foundthat individual farms ranged dramatically: In some dairy herds, zero percent of cows tested positive for Salmonella, while others tested positive at rates as high as 53 percent. USDA data tell us that over 50 percent of dairies with more than 500 cows are Salmonella-positive, more than half of them clustered in the West and Southwest.
Why isn’t it a bigger deal that Salmonella is so prevalent at large diaries? The dairy industry would argue that Salmonella isn’t really a public health issue, thanks to the miracles of modern milk processing. Since proper pasteurization will kill a range of bacteria including Salmonella, you could argue that it doesn’t really matter if a cow is carrying it or not. Dairy farmers care a lot about Salmonella, but that’s in part because it’s a productivity issue that affects their bottom line.
In fact, dairy farmers may not ever know their cows have Salmonella. Though acute cases can result in a range of noticeable symptoms in cows, including fever, diarrhea, and death, most cases of dairy cow Salmonella are subclinical—they betray no obvious signs. “Subclinical Salmonella may be lurking in your herd, and you’d never know it,” warns a promotional pamphlet published by Zoetis, the world’s largest producer of animal medications. According to Zoetis’s guide, the main thing farmers are likely to notice is a drop in milk production—about 2.5 pounds of milk per infected animal per day, which adds up to more than a ton of milk per week at a heavily infected 500-cow dairy.
Zoetis
A pamphlet by Zoetis, the world’s largest producer of animal medications, warns of the dangers of “hidden” salmonella in a dairy cow herd
Salmonella Newport can also cause what veterinarians call an “abortion storm”—a rash of cows in a herd suffering spontaneous abortion. Cows who suffer an abortion can’t produce milk for the season—enough incentive for farmers, hard-pressed to feed and house and animals that can’t produce, to send them to slaughter. But even cows that see a mild to moderate drop in production are likely to be pulled from the herd. In this way, a strange kind of logic plays out across the industry: The sicker an animal is, the more likely it is to enter the food supply. Because when cows stop producing milk for any reason—whether it’s due to age, stress, or disease—we usually end up eating them.
When infected dairy cows leave the herd, they take their Salmonella with them. Animals processed at the large plants like the one in Tolleson often travel hundreds of miles to get there, a stressful, crowded journey that makes them more likely to both contract and spread illness. Finally, at the slaughterhouse, the Salmonella that isn’t really a health risk on dairy farms suddenly becomes one. Because meat isn’t pasteurized like milk, after all. Plenty of Americans like their burgers medium-rare.
If dairy cows are more likely than beef cattle to harbor Salmonella, the way they’re processed at slaughterhouses makes them even more likely to spread it. While beef cattle are typically processed in “lots”—cattle of specific types, whether conventional, organic, or 100-percent grass fed are kept separate by attribute and price—dairy cows are blended into a wide spectrum of products. You won’t eat a burger that is all dairy cow; those animals aren’t really raised for meat. Culled dairy cows are frequently used as a kind of padding ingredient that’s mixed in with standard beef.
Meat from dairy cows is spread out across a vast number of patties—millions and millions of them.
“Lean beef trimmings from cull cows are often blended with high-fat content beef trimmings harvested from animals finished in feedlots to facilitate a consistent supply of ground beef that meets certain purchase specifications,” according to a 2012 study published in the journal Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. (The study’s lead author is Guy Loneragan, a Texas Tech University food scientist who tells me he also has a paid role on JBS’s Food Safety and Quality Team.) “As a consequence, beef from culled dairy cows may be broadly incorporated into ground beef products across the United States.”
In other words, meat from dairy cows is spread out across a vast number of patties—millions and millions of them. That’s not a bad thing when the meat doesn’t harbor Salmonella. But when it does, the results can be dramatic. The JBS recall ordered by FSIS affected 49 different JBS product lines, from its Cedar River Farms “natural” beef, to its Grass Run Farms line of grass-fed beef, to its conventional beef sold under Walmart’s “Showcase” label. One reason why FSIS recalled so many different products, and so much meat overall, could be that each of these individual offerings was blended with potentially tainted dairy cow meat.
For more conventional offerings, blending with dairy cow trim is standard and would be unsurprising. But in the case of specialty beef marketed with claims like “100 percent grass-fed,” that’s really not supposed to happen. Was that what went on at Tolleson? Hard to say, because there’s another possibility, too: that only some of JBS’s products were blended with the unsafe beef, but pathogens remained inside processing equipment due to a sanitation issue. In other words, dirty equipment may also have contributed to the problem.
“When you have a six-week window where you have many, many different types of products implicated, it appears to be a sanitation issue,” says Angela Anandappa, founding director at the Alliance for Advanced Sanitation, and a research assistant professor with the Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. She points out a full cleaning must take place every 24 hours for slaughter and ground beef operations. “If equipment wasn’t adequately cleaned, Salmonella could haven taken up residence. That’s very possible here.”
The federal government is effectively powerless to stop companies from sending Salmonella-tainted meat out into the public.
FSIS confirmed to me that “processing equipment must be broken down, cleaned and sanitized in between production days,” according to federal regulations. It’s possible that didn’t happen here. But you’d also think that JBS would be testing constantly for signs of virulent pathogens like Salmonella Newport—and if the company had taken the time to look, they would have been able to stop the outbreak in its tracks. After all, we’re talking about millions of pounds of meat that moved through the plant over the course of six weeks. Who would want to risk a recall on that scale? Isn’t constant, stringent safety testing in place to prevent this very thing from happening?
No, actually—and that’s where things get really hard to stomach. According to USDA rules, Salmonella doesn’t even qualify as an “adulterant” in meat. That means processors aren’t required to test for it. And if it does show up, it doesn’t mean they’re doing anything wrong—technically or legally.
“Presence of Salmonella in meat products does not render them ‘injurious to health,’ and thus ‘adulterated’ per se within meaning of the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA), as normal cooking practices destroy Salmonella organism,” writes the legal research firm Westlaw. In practice, that means that the federal government is effectively powerless to stop companies from sending Salmonella-tainted meat out into the public.
Case in point: In 2011, FSIS pulled its inspectors and halted production at Supreme Beef, Inc., a Texas processor who was selling Salmonella-tainted ground beef to the state’s public school system. Supreme sued, arguing that the presence of Salmonella was not cause for the government to intervene. Ultimately, the United States Court of Appeals agreed, writing that “cross-contamination of Salmonella alone cannot form the basis of a determination that a plant’s products are adulterated, because Salmonella itself does not render a product ‘injurious to health.’”
Workers at a Texas slaughterhouse, where FSIS inspectors are on hand to ensure meat meets USDA food safety standards. But FSIS can do little to regulate the presence of Salmonella in meat
The presence of Salmonella in meat, then, poses no public safety hazard—at least by any legal definition. Even if Salmonella-tainted product actually starts making people sick, the government has no legal recourse to force a company to recall it, or to punish a company for distributing it in the first place. JBS’s recall of 7 million pounds of beef was entirely voluntary, after all—issued not because the government forced its hand, but because the company thought it was a good idea.
“Technically, JBS could have said to FSIS, ‘Forget it, I’m not recalling the product,’” says Bill Marler, food safety lawyer and publisher of the website Food Safety News. “Now, that would not have been a smart move on their part because I can still sue them under state law and collect damages. Or if some little kid gets sick or dies, that would not be a good thing from their perspective.” But companies don’t really have to issue meat recalls for Salmonella, —even though they do for E. coli.
According to Marler, E. coli and Salmonella have had radically divergent public health histories. After the 1993 Jack in the Box outbreak that sickened hundreds and killed four (at least three of them children), FSIS moved to make E. Coli an adulterant under FMIA, making it illegal in commerce. As a result, meat processors must test for E. coli, and if it’s found to be present in meat, they can’t sell it. In the wake of that decision, poisonings from E. coli 0157:H7—the most dangerous strain—have fallen by 40 percent since 1994.
When cows stop producing milk for any reason—whether it’s due to age, stress, or disease—we usually end up eating them.
But Salmonella has taken a different path: Its noxious impact has continued unabated. According to CDC, Salmonella is still responsible for 1. 2 million illnesses and 450 deaths every year—and the rate of confirmed cases has held steady.
The government’s lack of regulatory power over Salmonella shrouds the recent JBS recall in secrecy. Because it cannot be said that the company did anything wrong, USDA can’t insist on providing transparency to the public. Legally, JBS is only recalling potentially tainted beef because it wants to. As such, we may never know what really happened.
But that’s why the case I’ve laid out here, though speculative, is important. By reporting on each recall as a one-off, a crisis that’s here one day and gone the next, we fail to connect the larger dots in an increasingly clear picture. There are things we do know, after all. We know that Salmonella Newport has almost always been linked to dairy cows in the past. We know that those sick cows are more likely to be sold to meat plants than their healthy comrades. We know that dairy cow meat is typically treated like filler at the slaughterhouse, processed in a way that dramatically increases its already significant risks. And we know that, if there is a Salmonella-related food safety issue, the government can’t really do anything about it until it is too late.
There’s only one question that remains, really: why, knowing what we know, we don’t do more about it.
Additional reporting contributed by Sam Bloch.
FARM, HEALTH, HOME FEATURE, POLICY, SYSTEMS BEEF FSIS JBS RECALL SALMONELLA USDA
Joe Fassler is The New Food Economy's features editor. His food safety and public health reporting has been a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award in Journalism. Follow him @joefassler. Reach him by email at: joe.fassler@newfoodeconomy.org
National Nonprofit Aims To Put Gardens In 100 Detroit Schools
BIg Green
Kimbal Musk, co-founder and CEO, Big Green, stands in a learning garden in Indianapolis.
National Nonprofit Aims To Put Gardens In 100 Detroit Schools
Big Green, run by brother of Elon Musk, promotes science education, healthy eating
January 17, 2018, By SHERRI WELCH
- Big Green to bring 100 learning garden classrooms to metro Detroit as part of $5 million commitment
- Kimbal Musk, who with brother Elon sold company that later became PayPal, is champion behind the gardens
- $2 million raised so far for project
A national nonprofit run by the brother of serial entrepreneur Elon Musk aims to bring food education and outdoor "learning garden" classrooms to more than 100 metro Detroit schools as part of a $5 million plan to connect the city's youth to real food.
The gardens created by Boulder, Colo.-based Big Green are intended to support science lessons taught through the growing of food. The idea is to help kids increase their preference for nutritious foods, develop healthier responses to stress and improve their academic performance, said co-founder and CEO Kimbal Musk, who with his brother Elon developed and sold for $300 million the company that is now PayPal Holdings Inc.
Kimbal Musk went on to open Kitchen restaurant in Boulder, a farm-to-table restaurant, in 2004, and for the next dozen years helped local farmers scale their businesses to meet the growing demand of his restaurant group, The Kitchen Cafe LLC.
He also founded the Kitchen Community — now known as Big Green — after seeing how school gardens can help kids.
Since 2011, it has created learning garden classrooms, with raised beds planted with fruits and vegetables and student seating areas, in Denver, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Chicago, serving about 250,000 students.
The metro Detroit project, which happened with encouragement from the Pathways Foundation, Musk said, has raised $2 million to date from Pathways; Grand Rapids-based Gordon Food Service; Carol Ilitch, a mediator at Oakland Mediation and the daughter of Little Caesars founders Mike and Marian Ilitch; and others.
The effort will target Detroit, elsewhere in Wayne County and nearby low-income, underserved schools, Kimbal Musk said.
"We have stopped educating our kids about real food for a couple of decades now, and the results have been disastrous, rampant diabetes ... and in some neighborhoods, over 40 percent of kindergarteners go into kindergarten obese," he said.
"It's not something they did to themselves. It's what we did to them, and we now need to fix it."
Big Green has named Ken Elkins, who served as COO of Winning Futures since 2013, as regional director for Detroit. He will be charged with hiring three teachers who will serve as garden educators and assist teachers with lesson planning, and three local landscapers to build and maintain the gardens.
Elkins also will be charged with raising the remaining $2.5 million to $3 million for the project.
The $5 million will fund the construction and planting of the first 100 learning gardens. The Detroit branch will then need to raise about $1 million a year afterward to maintain the teacher training and gardens, Musk said.
Big Green will work initially with the Grand Valley State University charter school network, given the interest it has shown in the learning gardens, Musk said.
The university charters 41 schools throughout metro Detroit, according to its website.
"We expect at some point to work with Detroit Public Schools Community District, as well," Musk said.
The nonprofit plans to build its first learning garden in April and to have 100 in place within 2 1/2 years, Musk said. "Will be moving very fast."
Big Green looks to build on the urban agriculture, community garden and school garden projects sprouting around Detroit.
School gardens have shown to be a powerful tool to improve test scores, Musk said.
"If you teach the exact same science lesson in fifth grade in the classroom and then move it out to the garden, you'll get a 15-point increase in test scores for those who had the outdoor lesson. It's so much more powerful than learning in the classroom."
As for the produce that's grown, many schools choose to do a farmers market, selling it to parents. Others incorporate it into the cafeteria menu so students can eat the food they've grown, he said.
Given that the gardens go in schools in low-income communities, "we also encourage people to eat food right out of the garden," Musk said.
Junk Food Could Be Taxed Like Cigarettes Or Alcohol, Researchers Find
Researchers found that a tax on junk food is both legally and administratively feasible at the federal level in the United States. Proponents of such a tax claim it will help curb obesity in the country which is now peaking at alarming levels, essentially becoming a public health hazard.
Junk Food Could Be Taxed Like Cigarettes Or Alcohol, Researchers Find
JANUARY 24TH, 2018 | BY TIBI PUIU
Researchers found that a tax on junk food is both legally and administratively feasible at the federal level in the United States. Proponents of such a tax claim it will help curb obesity in the country which is now peaking at alarming levels, essentially becoming a public health hazard.
“Economic and social environments can influence food choice in beneficial and harmful directions. Our finding that a federal manufacturer excise junk food tax — defined through product category or combined category-nutrient approaches — appears to be legally and administratively feasible and has strong implications for nutrition policy,” said Jennifer L. Pomeranz, who is an assistant professor of public health policy and management at NYU College of Global Public Health.
According to the CDC, 36.5 percent of American adults and roughly 20 percent of children ages 6 to 19 are obese. What’s more, over 70 percent of all men and 60 percent of all women from the US are overweight. This makes a huge fraction of the country’s population at risk of developing cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and chronic kidney disease. And to be fair, this is no longer an American problem. A third of the world’s population — over two billion people — is now either overweight or obese.
Given the public health risks, many experts believe we ought to enact policies that improve American diets. One course of action would be to regulate the price of food and beverage to incite consumers to make healthier choices, either through taxing unhealthy foods or offering subsidies for healthier foods.
A legally feasible tax
Researchers at New York University and the Friedman School at Tufts University investigated the feasibility of implementing a national soda or junk food tax. A federal-level tax, rather than state-by-state, is preferred because the effects are broader and you avoid seeing things like consumers traveling from state to state to fill groceries and dine at restaurants where they can escape the tax. On the other hand, the United States is not heterogeneous in its citizens’ attitude towards junk food or healthy eating, which will make a nation-wide tax challenging to implement.
The team examined the present scientific literature to identify which products should be targeted for junk food taxes but also looked elsewhere where similar legislation was passed. There are eight countries in the world who have implemented some kind of food and beverage taxation specifically aimed at curbing obesity.
Kerala, a state on India’s tropical Malabar Coast, imposed a 14.5 percent tax on the consumption of fast food. In 2014, France introduced a tax on sugary drinks that made a noticeable dent in the sales. And in the United States, some municipalities have taken matters into their hands. The city of Berkeley, for instance, introduced a one penny-per-ounce tax on all sugar-sweetened beverages sold in the city. Five months after its implementation, lower-income residents had reduced their consumption of these items by 21 percent compared to pre-tax levels.
Researchers identified four ways of classifying foods:
- by product category (such as soda or candy),
- broad nutrient criteria,
- specific nutrients or calories,
- or a combination.
The most frequently targeted categories were sugar-sweetened beverages, candy, processed meat products, and sweet and salty snacks, and the most frequently targeted foods were sugar, calories, and salt.
Next, the researchers looked at the various federal taxing mechanisms that would be the most administratively feasible. For instance, there are two main types of tax: sales or excise. Excise taxes are charged on the manufacture, distribution, or sale of commodities, and it’s up to the taxed entity to determine the extent to which it will pass on the tax to consumers. Sales taxes are paid directly by consumers and collected by sellers.
Other countries where there’s a junk food tax overwhelmingly use an excise tax mechanism, similar to the kind you see for alcohol and tobacco.
“One advantage of a manufacturer excise tax is that food companies may be incentivized to reformulate their products if nutrition criteria are incorporated into the tax,” Pomeranz said.
Ultimately, from a legal and administrative perspective, the team concluded that a federal junk food tax is feasible. Existing bills and laws support defining junk food through product-specific categories, and add a graduated taxation strategy where the tax increases as the nutritional quality of the food decreases. From an administrative perspective, current taxing mechanisms support the viability of a junk food excise tax paid by manufacturers, the researchers reported in the American Journal of Public Health. So, the ball is now in the court of policymakers who have the, admittedly, challenging and unpopular job of taxing junk food and soda.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
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New Research: Mediterranean-Style Diet Leads to Healthier Outcomes in Children
New Research: Mediterranean-Style Diet Leads to Healthier Outcomes in Children
Researchers at the University of Pharma, Italy, recently published a study in Nutrients identifying a link between a Mediterranean-style diet and key health outcomes in children. Children who more closely follow a Mediterranean-style diet are more likely to exhibit other healthy behaviors and outcomes such as increased physical activity, higher academic achievement, and better quality and quantity of sleep, the research reveals. The study analyzed the behaviors of approximately 700 school-aged children enrolled in the Giocampus educational program, created by Barilla and the University of Parma to improve the wellbeing of future generations through healthy eating education and promotion of physical activity.
The study adds to a growing body of research showing a positive association between a Mediterranean-style diet, healthy weight status, and sleep quantity and quality in children and adolescents. That is, better adherence to a Mediterranean-style diet may be associated with healthier weight status as well as more sleep and better-quality sleep.
“The Mediterranean Diet and the adoption of a healthy lifestyle do not mean just eating well and exercising, but also sleeping well. In fact, the word ‘diet’ in ancient Latin and Greek actually implied a lifestyle, rather than exclusively a dietary regimen,” says Kristen Wilk, MS, RDN, Senior Account Executive at Edelman, Food & Nutrition.
A Mediterranean-style diet incorporates the traditional healthy living habits of people from countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, including Italy, France, Greece, and Spain. While Mediterranean cuisine varies by region, a Mediterranean-style diet is largely based on a high intake of vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans, cereal grains, olive oil, and fish, and small portions of meat and dairy. Pasta tossed with other healthy ingredients such as vegetables, beans, lean proteins, olive oil, and herbs is an easy, balanced Mediterranean-style meal. The Passion for Pasta Advisory Council, a project of Barilla bringing together scientists, nutritionists, and researchers to encourage sustainable consumption of pasta, provides a range of Mediterranean diet-friendly recipes on their website.
Other studies have revealed that following a Mediterranean-style diet can reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke and help fight against depression.