Food Information: Having it and Using it.

This post is somewhat inspired by Jamie Oliver's TED Prize talk (by the way - if you don't check them out on a regular basis - you really should, tons of smart people talking for 10-15 minutes about a subject they know a ton about).

What Oliver's point is in the talk, and what really is the point of a lot of the media that I consume related to food is that you can't separate food from health. Oliver has been on a kick over the past few years to improve school lunches in the UK, and this past year he brought that mission to the states and to a school in West Virginia. Basically, families in that area eat a TON of processed food and sugar. And I'm really not that far off on it being a Ton, literally. He brought out a wheelbarrow of sugar for what an average kid consumes in a year. What Oliver has been trying to do is what our schools, our school boards and our communities should have done years ago - provide students with a healthy food option when they're at school. And not only do we have a responsibility to offer healthy lunch menus at the schools, kids need to be educated about what type of food a healthy life style relies upon, and what the health repercussions are to eating mass amounts of processed food and drinking copious amounts of soda.

As if by some not so simple twist of fate, minutes before I actually began writing this post, I came across and Open Left blog post featuring none other than Michael Pollan, and with two great maps showing a striking overlap between incidence of Type II Diabetes and per capita soda consumption.

There have been some nice moves recently to cut off soda companies' ready access to the youth by getting rid of soda vending machines in schools. Although, I must admit, that when I was in high school, my early morning Mountain Dew and Skittles sugar rush really helped getting through first period. But these moves to remove unhealthy food options can't be the end of it; we need to offer healthy options and educate, educate, educate. There was an astonishing clip that Oliver showed in his talk of him talking with British grade schoolers. They couldn't a whole host of common vegetables. How are they ever going to choose to eat something if they don't know what it is?

It is true that having schools offer healthy lunches and breakfast will be more expensive than it currently is (I'm tempted to start in here on the whole government subsidies of the corn industrial complex - but I won't that's a whole 'nother post). And its not as if school funding is in really great shape these days - but this is the health and welfare of our children that we're talking about. A modest increase in the price of preparing school meals shouldn't dissuade us from taking care of the kids.

Perhaps part of the reason healthy eating in schools, and at home, hasn't been properly adressed is that people aren't used to thinking about the health care costs associated with unhealthy eating. Obesity now accounts for a greater amount of our health care expenditures than smoking does. And let me remind you again of those maps showing soda consumption (and its not just soda, its all the processed food that goes along with it) and Type II Diabetes overlap. Diabetes ain't a cheap disease to treat - and I imagine it ain't no treat to have. We need people to start thinking with every soda they give to their kids that its akin to giving them a cigarette to puff on (hmm, someday I'll have to try and quantify the relative health impacts of soda drinking and smoking).

These changes will take time, but there's no reason that part of the school curriculum can't focus on healthy eating and preparing food at home (where you know what went into it). This effort won't just help the kids when they grow up, but they'll go home and talk to their parents about it, and influence them to start eating a healthier diet, and yeah, living longer, fuller lives. It all starts in the schools, both in the classrooms and in the lunch rooms.

But this brings us to a whole other issue - access to and the affordability of food - which I'll address in my next post, sometime soon....