Growers and Grocers

I am also somewhat discouraged by the continuing string of bad news. It’s a good thing the U.S. Congress isn’t in session—I can only wonder what they have on the agenda (assaults on the organic regulations? banning of all food labeling?)

The SF Chronicle had an article last week with some good news. It’s a profile of four local people who are trying to improve kids’ health and school meals:

But for four people in the Bay Area, changing the way kids eat has become their life’s mission.

– Miguel Villarreal started working in the fields as a boy. At the time, bountiful crops meant backbreaking work. Now they mean food for hundreds of schoolchildren in Marin County.

– Maria Mosquera was a medical resident when she began teaching Latino families in East Palo Alto how to cook their native dishes with healthful ingredients.

– Nora Cody read everything she could get her hands on about trans fats and obesity. Now she calls students up to the front of their Oakland classrooms to measure — one by one — how many teaspoons of sugar are in a can of Coca-Cola.

– Dana Woldow was a concerned mother first and is now bringing nutritious breakfasts to San Francisco, one school at a time.

Link: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/28/MNGHDKQHJV1.DTL&hw=school+lunch&sn=003&sc=679
or http://tinyurl.com/ps58p

Did you know that the FDA has issued advisories as to which commonly-sold fish are found to be highest in mercury and should be avoided? It’s targeted at women of child-bearing age and kids, and advises no consumption of swordfish, tilefish, shark and king mackerel, and also advises those same target groups to limit consumption of albacore tuna and tuna steaks to 6 oz. per week or less. The problem is that this information is hard to find and not available where you most need it: at your local grocery store. Oceana, a conservation group focused on mercury contamination, has been working with major grocery companies to get them to post these government warnings at their seafood counters. Recently, due in large part to their work, Whole Foods, Wild Oats and Safeway volunteered to post these FDA advisories and have gotten positive responses from customers and no drop in seafood sales. But other chains like Shaw’s, CostCo and WalMart have refused to do so. Oceana has a list of which companies care about their customer’s health enough to post this advice, and which don’t. The Green list and Red List can be found at www.oceana.org/mercury. They even have an interactive map there to assist in finding a grocery store near you that is posting the information you need as well as actions you can take to help get the signs posted in a store near you. While there will still be some confusion, at least this would be a start in helping us eat what’s good for us without taking our chances with mercury.