Archive for the ‘On The Policy Front’ Category
Shareable Food and the Law
From Shareable here’s a really comprehensive and interesting article on innovative ways that people are sharing food.
The Health Department didn’t show up when I made dinner for my neighbors last night. Fortunately, our health and safety laws don’t usually dictate how we prepare food in our personal and private realms. But humans have a natural tendency, an urge to feed each other, and the shareable food movement is taking that to new levels – levels that bring up some legal curiosities.
“The Underground Food Movement” has become a thing lately. It’s a foodie’s utopia in Oakland these days, where I’ve snuck off to meals at “underground restaurants” and sampled urban homesteaders’ goat cheeses and preserves.
But this movement goes deeper than its sheer yumminess. We thrive on food. When we share in efforts to grow, process, prepare, and serve food, we greatly enhance our abilities to eat well, provide for ourselves, and build livelihoods around food. Sharing food is particularly important during hard economic times and many small food projects develop out of unemployment.
The realm of shareable food is flourishing with community meal sharing, potlucks, gift-economy restaurants, community food growing projects, food swap events, pop-up stores, stone soup gatherings, food-buying cooperatives, goat-sharing, chicken cooperatives, events like The Big Lunch, and so on. Plus, restaurants step aside! A handful of start-up companies are creating peer-to-peer platforms to help people feed each other. Check out Grubly, Munchery, Gobble, and EatWithMe which connect chefs with foodies and/or catalyze community food events. More…
USDA People’s Garden Initiative Trainings
The USDA People’s Garden Initiative promotes growing healthy food, people and communities. It encourages USDA employees and communities to plant gardens because we believe the simple act of planting a garden can make real and lasting change to improve food access and healthy lifestyles.
The USDA People’s Garden Initiative brings you this series of training sessions on a wide variety of horticultural and garden related topics. There is no charge for registration and all sessions are open to the public. To sign up for the sessions, visit: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/broadcasts/emg/.
Wednesday, October 26
Webinar: Food Stamps Grow Gardens! Leveraging SNAP to grow gardens across America with Daniel Bowman Simon, founder of SNAP Gardens http://www.SNAPgardens.org.
Did you know that you can use SNAP (formerly known as Food Stamps) benefits to help plant a garden? This session will provide ideas for how garden-minded professionals and amateurs alike can spread awareness and connect SNAP recipients to resources and information that will enable productive gardening experiences for all.
New Research Article Shows Benefits of Cooking and Gardening, Again!
J Am Diet Assoc. 2011 Aug;111(8):1224-30.LA Sprouts: a gardening, nutrition, and cooking intervention for Latino youth improves diet and reduces obesity.
Source
Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA. jaimieda@usc.edu
Abstract
Evidence demonstrates that a gardening and nutrition intervention improves dietary intake in children, although no study has evaluated the effect of this type of intervention on obesity measures. The objective of this pilot study was to develop and test the effects of a 12-week, after-school gardening, nutrition, and cooking program (called LA Sprouts) on dietary intake and obesity risk in Latino fourth- and fifth-grade students in Los Angeles, CA. One hundred four primarily Latino children (mean age 9.8±0.7 years), 52% boys and 59% overweight, completed the program (n=70 controls, n=34 LA Sprouts participants). Weight, height, body mass index, waist circumference, body fat (via bioelectrical impendence), blood pressure, and dietary intake (via food frequency screener) were obtained at baseline and postintervention. LA Sprouts participants received weekly 90-minute, culturally tailored, interactive classes for 12 consecutive weeks during spring 2010 at a nearby community garden, whereas control participants received an abbreviated delayed intervention. Compared to subjects in the control group, LA Sprouts participants had increased dietary fiber intake (+22% vs -12%; P=0.04) and decreased diastolic blood pressure (-5% vs -3%; P=0.04). For the overweight subsample, LA Sprouts participants had a significant change in dietary fiber intake (0% vs -29%; P=0.01), reduction in body mass index (-1% vs +1%; P=0.04) and less weight gain (+1% vs +4%; P=0.03) compared to those in the control group. We conclude that a gardening, nutrition, and cooking intervention is a promising approach to improve dietary intake and attenuate weight gain in Latino children, particularly in those who are overweight.
Copyright © 2011 American Dietetic Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
City Fruit September Update
Aimee in a plum tree
From our friends at City Fruit:
Hi everyone,
Indian summer is the best – especially when it’s our only summer. Italian plums and Asian pears are coming in this month, and it was an amazing fig year. So, please, enjoy the harvest and eat some fruit. And take a cooking class (see below)! Fruit tip: It’s time (or almost time) to harvest pears. Read our Blog to find out how and then read “Green Pear Tree in September” (attached) by Freya Manfred.
Save your Saturdays for our new cooking series!
Five teachers with deep roots in Seattle’s culinary community expand the ways we think about fruit in our new cooking series, Beyond the Canning Jar. Amy Pennington will tackle quince and Laurie Pfalzer will roast, braise and poach fruit – plus much more. Enrollment is limited. Register at Brown Paper Tickets or send a check to City Fruit, PO Box 28577, Seattle WA 98118. Classes are $30 members, $35 non members, $120 ($140) for the five-class series. Special thanks to Dish It Up! and The Pantry at Delancey for partnering with us on these classes and to Morgan Larsen for setting them up.
Oct 1 – Fruit Pies and Pastries – Marcee Clark of Seattle Culinary Academy
Oct 8 - Demystifying Quince – Amy Pennington, author of Urban Pantry
Oct 15 – Shrubs (Drinking Vinegars) – Patricia Eddy of Cooklocal.com (featured on KUOW)
Oct 22 – Fall Fruit from Start to Finish – Roxanne Viera of PCC Cooks
Oct 29 – Simple Fruit: Poaching, Roasting and Braising – Laurie Pfalzer of Pastry Craft
City Fruit News
Harvest: In mid-August the figs finally kicked in and now Italian plums are on the horizon. Although we have harvested at many sites, in general we’re getting about half as much fruit per tree as we did in 2010 – probably due to the spring weather. We deliver to ‘small’ sites (shelters, meals programs, schools) and to ‘large’ sites, e.g., food banks. Several loyal — and local–partners buy a portion of City Fruit fruit: Bar del Corso (Beacon Ave), Dahlia Workshop (Belltown), De Luxe Foods (Wallingford), Le Gourmand Restaurant (Ballard) and Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream (Capitol Hill). Support them, and when you do, tell them you’re also a City Fruit supporter.
Grant: The Horizons Foundation awarded us a general support grant to help with our core projects–the fruit harvests, educational programs, and movement toward becoming a self-sustaining organization. We thank them for this, and also thank Katherine Ransel, an excellent proposal writer.
Media blitz: Check out “City Fruit helps feed the hungry from our backyards” at the Seattle P-I online and then go out–this week–and buy the September issue of Edible Seattle, with Abra Bennett’s four-page color spread on City Fruit, “Closing the Urban Fruit Loop.”
Harvest Festivals
Sept 10 Seattle Tilth’s Harvest Fair, Meridian Park. 10 am – 4 pm. Workshops, music, farmer’s market, local food.
Sept 11 Jubilee County Fair in the Holy Cross Lutheran Church orchard, 4315 -129th Pl SE, Bellevue (across from Newport High School.) Food, games, cider, and music. Noon to 5 pm.
Sept 24 Festival of Fruit at Piper’s Orchard in Carkeek Park, 9:30 am – 3 pm. Celebrate the 120th anniversary of Piper’s Orchard and hear speakers on historic orchards and fruit foraging. Also, pie competition, cider pressing, apple identification and lectures in the orchard. Oct 2 Salt Spring Island Apple Festival, Salt Spring Island, BC. Orchard tour of heritage and organic apples, pie contest, apple identification. Contact Seattle Tree Fruit Society for group outing info: lorineb@mindspring.com . Don’t be left out — join us! As you must know by now, City Fruit has no fat. Your memberhip directly supports our fruit harvesting and donations, our educational work, and our lobbying for the importance of urban fruit with whoever will listen. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and read the Blog. Take care, and have a great month. Gail
Hi everyone,
Save your Saturdays for our new cooking series!
Five teachers with deep roots in Seattle’s culinary community expand the ways we think about fruit in our new cooking series, Beyond the Canning Jar. Amy Pennington will tackle quince and Laurie Pfalzer will roast, braise and poach fruit – plus much more. Enrollment is limited. Register at Brown Paper Tickets or send a check to City Fruit, PO Box 28577, Seattle WA 98118. Classes are $30 members, $35 non members, $120 ($140) for the five-class series. Special thanks to Dish It Up! and The Pantry at Delancey for partnering with us on these classes and to Morgan Larsen for setting them up.
Oct 1 – Fruit Pies and Pastries – Marcee Clark of Seattle Culinary Academy
Oct 15 – Shrubs (Drinking Vinegars) – Patricia Eddy of Cooklocal.com (featured on KUOW)
Oct 22 – Fall Fruit from Start to Finish – Roxanne Viera of PCC Cooks
Oct 29 – Simple Fruit: Poaching, Roasting and Braising – Laurie Pfalzer of Pastry Craft
City Fruit News
Harvest: In mid-August the figs finally kicked in and now Italian plums are on the horizon. Although we have harvested at many sites, in general we’re getting about half as much fruit per tree as we did in 2010 – probably due to the spring weather. We deliver to ‘small’ sites (shelters, meals programs, schools) and to ‘large’ sites, e.g., food banks. Several loyal — and local–partners buy a portion of City Fruit fruit: Bar del Corso (Beacon Ave), Dahlia Workshop (Belltown), De Luxe Foods (Wallingford), Le Gourmand Restaurant (Ballard) and Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream (Capitol Hill). Support them, and when you do, tell them you’re also a City Fruit supporter.
Grant: The Horizons Foundation awarded us a general support grant to help with our core projects–the fruit harvests, educational programs, and movement toward becoming a self-sustaining organization. We thank them for this, and also thank Katherine Ransel, an excellent proposal writer.
Media blitz: Check out “City Fruit helps feed the hungry from our backyards” at the Seattle P-I online and then go out–this week–and buy the September issue of Edible Seattle, with Abra Bennett’s four-page color spread on City Fruit, “Closing the Urban Fruit Loop.”
Harvest Festivals
Sept 10 Seattle Tilth’s Harvest Fair, Meridian Park. 10 am – 4 pm. Workshops, music, farmer’s market, local food.
Sept 11 Jubilee County Fair in the Holy Cross Lutheran Church orchard, 4315 -129th Pl SE, Bellevue (across from Newport High School.) Food, games, cider, and music. Noon to 5 pm.
Life and Death and Urban Ag
Increasing numbers of the world’s poor now live in urban areas. How can urban ag feed this population and what are the risks to farming in the urban environment? Richard Stren from the Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto, seeks to answer this question in his publication: Healthy city harvests: Generating evidence to guide policy on urban agriculture
The subject of this book has been an important one to many of us researchers and policy-makers – for many years now. It has been important since so many urban residents, both in developed, and developing countries, have been raising animals and cultivating fruits and vegetables to enhance their incomes and to improve their families’ food security. These activities, invisible to many, have at best been defined as “illegal” or a “concern”, even though they are widely practiced. But in very recent months, just preceding the completion of the book, the issue of urban food supply has become a matter of extreme apprehension and even alarm. Why? Note the following, typical headlines over the last six months: “Forget oil, the new global crisis is food”, “Soaring food prices threaten stability” “Fear of rice riots as surge in demand hits nations across the Far East”, and “World in grip of food crisis”. Clearly, what was already a tight situation for millions of the urban poor in cities across the world – but particularly in the poorest developing countries – has become even more widespread and desperate. Urban food supplies are not only an important and central policy issue, but in some countries they are the central policy issue.
Increasing Local Foods in School Lunches
Check out this report to see what a difference seven cents can make in increasing local foods in school meals.
What if schools had an additional $.07 per meal to spend on buying local foods for the lunch line?
During the 2008-2009 school year, researchers at Ecotrust set out to answer this question, placing particular emphasis on evaluating the economic effects of increased procurement of local foods. Based on financial data provided by the Oregon Department of Education, schools in Oregon spent about $1.31 per meal on food costs during the 2008-2009 school year after paying for labor, overhead, and other non-food related expenditures.
In 2009, as the Oregon Legislature debated whether to allocate state funding to increase schools’ purchasing power for foods grown, processed and manufactured in Oregon, the question at hand was whether an additional investment of just pennies per meal could provide significant economic benefit to the state. Beyond economic effects, researchers also explored the potential public health benefits of bringing more local products into the lunch room. See full report here.
City Fruit August Update
Aimee in a plum tree
By Gail Savina
Pierce County Gleaning
From the Lakewood Patch here’s news on gleaning in Pierce County. For more info on gleaning in King County check out Solid Ground and City Fruit.
It is a little bit of work with a lot of impact and they call it the Pierce County Gleaning Project.
The project combines the Emergency Food Network and St. Leo’s Food Connection. The goal is to fight hunger by recruiting volunteers to harvest local produce that would otherwise go to waste and donate it to local food banks and hot-meal sites.
The effort was borne of St. Leo’s and EFN wanting to get more fresh produce into food banks – and seeing too much being wasted on all levels, from grocery stores to residential neighborhoods. More…
Landmark Labeling for GM Food
Regulators from more than 100 countries agreed on long overdue guidance on the labeling of genetically modified (GM) food on July 5, 2011. This is a landmark decision for the food we eat.
The Codex Alimentarius Commission, made up of the world’s food safety regulatory agencies, has been laboring for two decades to come up with consensus guidance on this topic.
In a striking reversal of their previous position, on Tuesday, during the annual Codex summit in Geneva, the US delegation dropped its opposition to the GM labeling guidance document, allowing it to move forward and become an official Codex text.
Read more from Consumers Union, one of the parties to the decision.
New Community Garden in Des Moines
Coming soon!
From the Waterland blog here is information and lots of lovely pictures of a new garden that just opened in Des Moines.
In 1996 the City of Des Moines received a 9.3 acre plot of land adjacent to Parkside Elementary School. The land came courtesy of Daisy Sonju and her family.
15 years and a lot of planning and manual labor later, the Daisy Sonju Community Garden & Pea Patch is now a reality.
The journey to today’s ribbon cutting involved 142 volunteers and over 700 hours of work to remove invasive species, identify salvageable trees in the orchard and create the garden space.
The space includes a pea patch, demonstration beds for local elementary school groups, a herb garden, seating areas and planting space for the Des Moines Area Food Bank and Senior Services. More…
Categories
Copyright Urban Farm Hub 2010 | Designed by Woonerfs
