The Red, White, and Green

Dinner in suburbia. Photo via Flickr: Makelessnoise

There was a brilliant op-ed by Mark Bittman in yesterday’s New York Times, debunking the claim that junk food is cheaper than real food. That excuse as to why US obesity is epidemic is one I hear all the time in response to my own work, like when I wrote this column about whether one could eat organic on a food stamp budget (you can, as I later show here). One commenter wrote:

It is a sad reality that if you’re poor you can’t afford to eat healthy. Sometimes its [sic] the 1 dollar menu vs a 2.50 a lb head of broccoli (forgive me if my price is off). But its just the sad truth.

But as Bittman points out, the real problem isn’t that most Americans aren’t eating organic. The real problem is that most Americans aren’t eating real food:

…But food choices are not black and white; the alternative to fast food is not necessarily organic food, any more than the alternative to soda is Bordeaux. The alternative to soda is water, and the alternative to junk food is not grass-fed beef and greens from a trendy farmers’ market, but anything other than junk food: rice, grains, pasta, beans, fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, bread, peanut butter, a thousand other things cooked at home — in almost every case a far superior alternative.

He’s so right. The fight for organic of course is important (especially with regard to GMOs), but I think we in the environmental community lose a lot of our audience if we make the conversation just about organic. Organic alone isn’t going to save us; there is an intermediary step, and it’s about getting Americans to return to the way we used to cook and eat, before fast food companies convinced us we didn’t have enough time or energy or money to feed our families a wholesome, decent meal.

There’s pride in preparing real food for yourself, for your family, and we Americans certainly have pride in abundance. Let’s tap into that.

–Jennifer Grayson

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Photo via Brandeating.com

Just as I was starting to feel hopeful about our fast food nation moving toward a good food nation, I get slapped with this unfortunate news: Looks like the new Heinz “Dip and Squeeze” ketchup packets are coming to market. What’s the problem with more convenient packaging, you ask?

It’s not the package itself I’m upset about. It’s what the package says about the type of country we’ve become; that is to say, lazy and really fat, as this Wall Street Journal article shows (my bold):

Some people rip off the corner of the packet with their teeth. Others, while driving, squirt the ketchup directly into their mouth, then add fries. Some forgo fries at the drive-through all together to keep from creating a mess in the car.

After observing these and other “compensating behaviors,” H. J. Heinz Co. says it spent three years developing a better ketchup packet.

Million-dollar solution: The “Dip and Squeeze” packet, which lets frustrated French fry eaters squeeze ketchup out of one end, or pull back the lid for easy dippin’. Want to hear more about the R&D process? Read on.

To develop the new packet, Heinz staffers sat behind one-way, mirrored glass, watching consumers in 20 fake minivan interiors putting ketchup on fries, burgers, and chicken nuggets.

To try new prototypes himself, Mike Okoroafor, Heinz vice president of global packaging innovation and execution, bought a used minivan, taking it to local McDonald’s and Wendy’s drive-throughs to order fries and apply ketchup in the confined space.

“I wasn’t going to use my car — too messy,” he says.

Reading this makes me realize: We have a long, long way to go. Maybe I should just be happy that there will be less wasted ketchup packets headed to the landfill?

–Jennifer Grayson

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Photo via Facebook: Good Food Festival & Conference

This past weekend, I stopped by the Good Food Festival & Conference. The 5-day event featured locally and sustainably produced food, of course, and included cooking demos by some of the Golden State’s top chefs (love you, Suzanne Goin). There were also a number of stimulating speaker panels; RWG favorite Erik Knutzen spoke about backyard chickens and shared other fun urban homesteading tips.

I was going to post photos, but my toddler seems to have absconded with my camera cable, so let me instead share something a bit more profound. It’s a statistic that Food Inc. director and producer Robert Kenner threw out during the ‘Food and Its Environmental Impact’ panel, and it blew my mind:

In the 1950s, we Americans spent, on average, about 20 percent of our income on food. Today, we spend about 10 percent.

That statistic may sound like a good thing in these tough economic times, but as Kenner went on to say, we pay the price for it down the line, both in rising healthcare and environmental costs — it takes a lot of pesticides, artificial fertilizer and genetic modification to grow all that cheap food, after all.

Good food takes time, both to raise and prepare. It costs money, as well it should; cost, after all, is a representation of what we choose to value, of the effort that went into creating something. I’d rather never again buy another handbag or iPod if it meant turning to a package of Velveeta.

The old adage is true: You are what you eat. Why would you want to eat cheap food?

–Jennifer Grayson

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Photo via Flickr: rolands.lakis

It’s been two years since I bought a new pair of running shoes (I switched to walking when I was pregnant), and I finally picked up a new pair yesterday. There’s the issue now of what to do with my old shoes, of course, so I decided to check back with Nike’s free Reuse-a-Shoe program, which I wrote about way back when.

The program has been super successful, collecting more than 24 million pairs worldwide since 1990 and turning them into raw materials for athletic surfaces like running tracks and basketball courts. But the program does not donate surfaces in exchange for collecting shoes, stating on the FAQ portion of its website that “our vision is that those who collect shoes for recycling are doing so to help reduce the number of shoes that end up in landfills and to help support this important environmental program.”

It is an important environmental program, but I’m guessing that Nike isn’t doing this entirely out of the goodness of its heart, either; I’m sure it profits from the sale of those ground-up shoes. So with our nation’s school districts struggling to keep teachers employed — let alone overhaul their crumbling infrastructure — I have a great idea for Nike: Why not ask schools to organize sneaker drives in exchange for new athletic/play surfaces?

If corporations are going to get out of paying taxes, then they’re going to have to fill in the gaps where government can’t.

–Jennifer Grayson

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[Watch video on YouTube]

Happy Meatless Monday! I haven’t been regularly writing Meatless Monday posts, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about it; I just think that like me, most of you have not only gotten the hang of it by now, but even moved beyond it. (In the past year, I’ve moved to mostly meatless all the time.)

Just in case you’ve fallen off the wagon or are new to the movement, check out this quick (90-second) video, above. If hearing that Americans now eat twice the meat that they did in 1960 doesn’t make you think we all need to get back on track, I don’t know what will.

–Jennifer Grayson

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I’ve been keeping an eye on all the coverage leading up to the 10th anniversary of this day, September 11. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read or watch any of it.

I grew up in a New York suburb. My father worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange; I remember visiting the World Trade Center often as a child. Shortly after college, my now-husband and I moved in together on East 51st Street. That was August 2001.

There is nothing I could say here to describe what it was like to be in New York on that fateful morning. There are no words.

What I will say is this: After the attacks, we had the sympathy of the whole world. The president had the attention of every American. We were gathered together, waiting to be directed, ready to do whatever was asked of us. We had a golden opportunity, to declare ourselves free from foreign oil, to shut our ports and our gas caps right then and there. It wasn’t worth it. We would have found another way.

A decade and two presidents later, we are still fighting a war in one country and occupying another. We are reliant as we ever were on Mideast oil. Our country is more divided than at any time since the Civil War.

The 2,977 who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, most likely know none of this now, of course. But they deserve better.

–Jennifer Grayson

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We’ve had an unbearable heat wave here in Los Angeles the past few days, but it’s not nearly as scorching as it is in Central Texas, where catastrophic wildfires have claimed 2 lives, hundreds of homes and thousands of acres. It’s been the worst wildfire season in Texas history, fueled largely by all the tinder created by the state’s worst drought year on record.

That makes for one hell of a fast-moving fire. Watch:

[Watch video on The Weather Channel]

Scientists say climate change is already leading to more severe and frequent wildfires in the West. If this year is any indication, the Southwest may be experiencing the same. Good thing Gov. Rick Perry doesn’t believe in climate change. Maybe that’s why he felt fine about cutting state funding for volunteer firefighters earlier this year?

–Jennifer Grayson

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Photo via Flickr: Tarsandsaction. Credit: Shadia Fayne Wood

If there’s one environmental issue you should be following — make that fighting for — it’s the effort to stop the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would leave a 1,700 mile scar across America’s Heartland to transport crude from Canadian tar sand fields to Gulf Coast refineries. A rupture in the pipeline could be devastating — we’re talking a BP-scale oil spill over the source of drinking water for 20 million Americans.

Needless to say, people are pretty pissed. As in, not-just-sign-a-petition-online-but-go-sit-in-at-the-White-House pissed. Here, a glimpse at the protests that took place over the past two weeks. 1,252 people in total were arrested.

Photo via Flickr: Tarsandsaction. Credit: Josh Lopez

Photo via Flickr: Tarsandsaction. Credit: Ben Powless

Actress Daryl Hannah. Photo via Flickr: Tarsandsaction. Credit: Ben Powless

Photo via Flickr: Tarsandsaction. Credit: Ben Powless

Photo via Flickr: Tarsandsaction. Credit: Shadia Fayne Wood

The White House sit-in, which was led by Tar Sands Action, officially ended on Saturday, but Phase 2 will be starting soon. Circle October 7 on your calendar, then click here to find out more.

–Jennifer Grayson

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A wise tree hugger once told me: Ecology and economy — you cannot separate the two. Nowhere is this clearer than in this year’s Inc. 500, the much-anticipated annual list of America’s fastest growing private companies from Inc. magazine. Green businesses, apparently, are raking it in. Take a look:

#2: Solazyme. Transforms low-cost plant sugars into renewable oils for use in food, fuel, skincare products, and manufacturing chemicals.

#15: Greenspring Energy. Installs residential and commercial solar energy systems and provides energy efficiency services for the Mid-Atlantic region.

#24: re2G. Another solar provider, this one serving the Philadelphia area.

#38: SunDurance Energy. Solar.

#42: OnForce Solar. More solar. (Do we think solar is growing?)

#46: FLS Energy. And more solar!

#68: HappyBaby. Makes organic baby- and kid-friendly snacks and food.

#326: MyGreenBuildings. Provides green construction for the Gulf Coast area.

#457: The Natural Baby Company. Creates natural and eco-friendly parenting and children’s products, including GroVia hybrid/cloth diapers. (Which I’m proud to say my daughter wears.)

Of course, there were far more green companies that made the cut than I had time to list here — this is just a sampling. But this alone should be a wake-up call to those who think that investing in green can’t jump-start our anemic economy.

–Jennifer Grayson

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