Loco Local Friday - In NYC, No More Homemade Baked Goods, EVER!

  The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our homemade brownies, But in ourselves, that we are couch potatoes.

For some time now, I've been holding off on criticizing the NYC ban on homemade baked goods sold at public school fundraisers. (Click here for the NY Times story) This may not seem an earth shaking controversy, but it is indicative of how often government, even the best-intentioned, seems to suffer myopia when it comes to big picture problem-solving. 

Last week, looking through some old family photographs, I saw pictures of my brother and me, cousins, neighborhood kids and classmates. It is the late 1950s and we are between 7 and maybe 13 years old. Thus open the flood gates of memory and desire.

The remarkable thing about the photos is that no one is obese, and hardly anyone even looks chubby. In fact, we most look rather scrawny, and when in bathing suits we look pretty well muscled, even the kids who I knew not to be "athletic." 

To describe our diets as anything but rich would be a lie. We devoured milk, ice cream, butter, and red meat until we practically mooed; desserts for lunch and dinner; no such thing as diet soda; nickel candy bars; the constant temptations of soda fountains; and serving sizes that would choke triathlon competitors. 

Yet, there we were looking as lean as Spartans.

We spent enormous amounts of time walking, running, playing, jumping, hanging by our feet, chasing, tagging, pushing, shoving, building, destroying, hiding, seeking, batting, shooting, passing, and generally a rollin' and a tumblin'. 

By age 10 I was walking, running or biking about 3/4 of a mile each way to school. I had a full 45 minutes of recess. (It had to be pouring rain or below 15 degrees before recess was canceled.) I had an hour's worth of gym 3 days a week. At 3 o'clock when I was dismissed, I ran or furiously pedaled home on my heavy, clunky bike (passed on to me by an older cousin through my older brother) that was more suited for U-boat ramming than land transportation.

From roughly 3:30 until it was either dark or suppertime, dozens of kids would play outdoors like "wild Indians," as the expression went or, even more exotically, "like wild Armenians." Indoors, we were "wild banshees." 

We would then tumble to the kitchen table cornucopia and gorge until sated. An hour, maybe an hour and a half, of homework ensued and we were done. Bathed. An hour of TV, maybe, but I think less - that was saved for Saturday and Sunday. Exhausted, almost comatose. Full. Happy. And, as it turns out, pretty learned. (In 5th grade I remember a geography test asking us to give the twenty principal rivers of the United States!)

Long story short, it's not the diet or desserts that have really changed. It's the exercise, stupid. (Not that I am recommending the animal fat and sugar rich diet of the 50s.)

Kids in New York City schools currently receive 24 minutes per day on average of phys ed. They average 15 minutes of recess. Many, especially as they move up the grades, have no recess at all. 

Because conditions have changed, kids don't walk, if ever, very far to school. Biking is not in the equation generally. Homework has grown to outlandish proportions. In middle school, they can have 2 to 3 hours of homework if they're working mach schnell. By high school, it's up to 3 to 4 hours and even more at crunch time.

No wonder they're craving sugar. I'd be craving a month in the Caribbean on a sugar cane plantation.

Toss in a couple of hours of media time and a midnight bedtime and you have all the keys to the obesity epidemic you need.

Insisting that parents stop baking goodies is weird, mean, and counterproductive. Asking PTAs to buy wholesale lots of chemical-laden Doritos or Pop-Tarts to resell at retail prices adds absurdity on top of impracticality. It further demolishes a fragile sense of community. New microscope for the bio lab? We didn't do it - Doritos did!

What to actually do? 

One strong possibility is to lengthen the school day and work both phys ed and the fine arts back into the curriculum. Mind, Body, Soul. However, given that the academic requirements of preparing for the modern world are more strenuous than in yesteryear, perhaps it is even a better idea to add a full year between 7th and 12th grade, making the primary/secondary schedule 13 years as opposed to the traditional 12.

Food Fights and Political Philosophy

Misinformation followed us like a plague.

   - Paul Simon, Peace Like a River

Two seemingly distinct issues about the food we eat demonstrate how the radical, minimalist approach to government espoused by the dangerous rightists adrift in the land cause direct harm to us, the eating public.The radical right would like even less government involvement in food safety and purity just at a time when we need more. Much, much more.

The first issue concerns the soft drink sugar tax working its way through New York State's Legislature. The second is a report from Pew Charitable Research that totals up the economic impact of food-borne diseases, a shocking $152 billion per year.

I came across this article in Advertising Age on Wednesday (March3). It clearly stakes out the positions of the Alliance For A Healthier New York (pro) and the American Beverage Association (con, surprise).

"Sugar-sweetened beverages play a significant role in New York's obesity epidemic," Lisa Altshuler said in a statement from the alliance. "This campaign is about sending a message that by adding a small excise tax on soda and other sugary drinks, we can reduce consumption of these empty calories and make real progress towards making all New Yorkers healthier."

The penny-per-ounce tax will be put against threatened health care cuts on the table due to the recession. Makes sense.

"New Yorkers aren't buying at all that this tax has anything to do with public health, nor that a penny of it will go to health programs," said Kevin Keane, senior VP-public affairs at the American Beverage Association. He goes on to contend that "People view it as an overreach when government uses the tax code to tell them what to eat or drink."

But what Mr. Keane is really arguing for is the rights of the industry he represents to continue to slowly and sadistically poison our children with sugar. No one needs reminding that the childhood obesity rate in the country is of epidemic proportions. The general rate for kids is about 15% and for poor children an astronomical 40%. The beverage industry then is victimizing the least informed among us, and those who most need healthier foods in their diets.

If the beverage industry came out with self-governing rules mandating warnings broadcast in the media, or voluntarily placed warning labels on bottles, he might have a very small case. But they don't and he doesn't.

The fact is that the government - which means all of us - has a vested interest in better health.

The FDA is responsible for monitoring food safety. Its budget for 2010 is around $3 billion. Yet society incurs $152 billion yearly in costs related to tainted foods. (See US News Report on the Pew findings by clicking here.)

One would think that until the efficacy of the FDA increases enough to come close to eradicating tainted food, that its budget should increase. However, our old friends, the lobbyists, funded by agribusiness, supermarket chains, mass meat producers and fast food chains, lean hard on politicians, from the federal government on down to the most local level.

(Keep in mind that the FDA also monitors drug and supplement safety. So, we can factor in another enormous set of costs being passed onto society through egregiously poor oversight. There are fewer than 8,000 FDA inspectors on the job.)

Every year 76 million Americans are sickened by impurities in food. Thousands die. Hundreds of thousands miss work. Billions are spent on medical treatment.

During the past 35 years, the decrease in funding for inspection of our food supply has forced FDA to impose a 78 percent reduction in food inspections, at a time when the food industry has been rapidly expanding and food importation has exponentially increased. FDA estimates that, at most, it inspects food manufacturers once every 10 years.
      - 2007 Food and Drug Administration subcommittee report

This has been due to a radical ideological shift right from the 1970s when the FDA was one of the MOST trusted government departments (81%) to today when it is one of the least trusted (at 36%).

The most persistent line of attack was concisely expressed by Newt Gingrich, who dubbed the FDA the "number-one job killer in America." This is misinformation of the most despicable kind.

Let us say for a moment that the $152 billion in economic impact could somehow be translated directly into jobs. $152 billion would represent 2.5 million jobs per year at the above-average pay of $60,000 per year. I'm not enough of an economist to project what $152 billion dollars over ten years (a total of $1.5 trillion) would do if it were invested in infrastructure, research, green energy, or education, but I am sure the multiplier effect would be spectacular. 

There are some real consequences of right wing radicalism. But people keep voting for these most monstrous of human beings.