Former White House aide Anita Dunn now shills for corporate food

How far behind the times are we?

Apparently, it was last October that food policy writer Marion Burros reported in Politico that the White House’s former communications director, Anita Dunn, is now leading the multi-million-dollar lobbying efforts of food corporations trying to put the kibash on Obama administrations attempts to curb junk food marketing to children.

Much has been written lately about how the food industry has pushed back against “voluntary” guidelines on food marketing proposed by a cluster of federal agencies. Now it appears that one of the Obamas’ very own is the chief strategist for the industry assault, having left the White House to join a D.C. lobbying group, SKDKnickerbocker.

Not being a regular Politico reader, I first caught wind of it from Marion Nestle’s blog this morning, where she reports on findings issued by the Sunlight Foundation that food interests–including Coca-Cola and General Mills–have poured some $37 million into the campaign to stop the marketing guidelines.

Burros reported in Politico that Dunn’s turning on Michelle Obama’s favorite project–childhood obesity–did turn some heads, but also did not come as a particular surprise, because she did not embrace the first Lady’s thinking on the subject. You can read that as, Please do not piss off our friends in the food industry!

This sort of revolving door is nothing new to Washington politics, but underscores how corporate forces have aligned against children’s health. Just to show you how incestuous things are in the nation’s capitol, Dunn’s husband, Bob Bauer, is a former White House legal counsel who continues to work on Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has been pushing for years for tougher child nutrition standards, said, “Anita Dunn and her firm should be ashamed of themselves for leading teh food industry’s panicky efforts to quash the Obama administration’s reasonable and voluntary nutrition guidelines proposed for food marketed to children.”

Catch Kojo's show on WAMU, 88.5 on your FM dial

The Slow Cook will be joining Kojo Nnamdi today at 1 pm for his regular Wednesday food program, this time talking about pickling. Why we’re talking about pickling less than two weeks before Christmas I’m not exactly sure. But apparently Kojo also wants me to say a few words about the recent demise of our garden, the big kitchen garden that was such a source of joy–and food–for my family on a busy corner lot here in the District of Columbia, just two miles from the White House.

At the first D.C. State Fair in 2010, my sweet pickled zucchini won first prize for “Best D.C.-Grown Food Product.” I’ve never been about making perfect pickles, really, but we were always looking for ways to keep what we grew in our garden, and so often we couldn’t eat it all when it was ready to harvest. That meant preserving it some kind of way, either fermenting with salt as in sauerkraut or deli-style dill pickles or pickling with vinegar. Along the way we’ve come across some amazing recipes, such as the many ways we like to pickle green tomatoes, or the most delicious pickled watermelon rind I’ve ever tasted, infused with the flavor of cardammom.

Often, though, pickling was an improvisation, using whatever the garden had to offer at the moment.

I’m told that I’ll be joined on the show by “master preserver” Nicole Donnelly, author of the Gin and Pickles blog and a judge at the D.C. State Fair the last two years, as well as Chef Logan Cox of Ripple restaurant here in D.C.

As always, the Kojo Nnamdi Show can be found courtesy of WAMU Radio at 88.5 on the FM dial. You can listed to it live either on the radio or on your computer. And if 1 p.m. is not convenient, it’s usually archived within a couple of hours so that you can call it up via the internet at your convenience.

What's the price of healthier school food?

The Slow Cook has learned that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will not back away from proposed guidelines for more expensive school food despite demands from Republican lawmakers that the agency eliminate any requirements that would increase the cost of the federally-subsidized school meals program.

The GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee recently attached language to a funding measure for agriculture programs directing the USDA to rewrite the proposed school meal guidelines so that they do not create any additional costs. The USDA has estimated that the proposed guidelines as currently written [PDF], calling for much larger servings of vegetables and whole grains and less salt, would require schools to cook more food from scratch and would raise the cost of a subsidized lunch by 15 cents, breakfast by more than 50 cents. The result would be some $7 billion in additional expenses over five years, to be paid mostly by state and local governments that are still reeling from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

But the USDA believes the appropriations language cannot undo the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act approved by Congress last December, which mandated new meal guidelines. The guidelines were the result of years-long study by the Institute of Medicine. USDA officials consider them to be “science based,” and do not intend to rewrite them in response to what they see as an arbitrary and perhaps politically motivated move by conservative lawmakers.

The proposed guidelines recently underwent a public comment period that generated some 130,000 responses. The USDA in coming months may modify the guidelines. They could be in place as early as fall 2012.

In passing its re-authorization of the school meals program, Congress approved a six-cent hike in the federal reimbursement rate for lunch, but only for schools that comply with the new guidelines. The USDA currently provides schools with $2.72 for every student who qualifies for a free lunch. About 32 million of the nation’s children participate in the subsidized lunch program daily.

In fact, the House directive aimed at meal guidelines was not contained in the appropriations bill, but rather in the committee’s report []PDF] on the bill. The report, which serves as an explanatory text, travels with the bill through the legislative process. In some cases such committee reports contain language giving specific directions to government agencies. Agencies of the executive branch may follow Congress’ wishes. But such directives do not carry the full force of the law and in this case the USDA would choose to ignore what GOP House members have demanded.

The report states: “The Committee urges restraint and practical timeliness for implementing new national nutrition standards in the school brakfast and lunch programs. As many of the representatives in states and local school districts have cautioned, an overly aggressive implementation schedule and unrealistic demands on changes in nutrient content can lead to burdensome costs, estimated to be about $7 billion over 5 years. Therefore, the Committee directs [USDA Food and Nutrition Services] to issue a new proposed rule that would not require an increase in the cost of providing school meals.”

The language was expected to be approved by the full House when it takes up the agriculture appropriations measure, but is not likely to survive reconciliation with the Democrat-controlled Senate.

The Institute of Medicine panel that wrote the proposed guidelines cautioned that there was no guarantee children would actually eat the “healthier” foods the USDA is calling for. School food service directors have urged that the new requirements be pilot-tested on a small scale before being mandated nationwide. Some have said they may have to drop their breakfast program because of additional food costs.

The GOP House appropriation for agriculture programs has also drawn fire from the Obama administration and the advocacy community for rolling back spending on food entitlement programs such as WIC (Women, Infants and Children) and others serving seniors. It would also curtail funds for food safety inspections.

The action on school meal guidelines was probably intended more as a political message for consumption by the party’s conservative base. Cost cutting has become the GOP mantra. It also favors corporate food interests, which would just as soon see meal guidelines unchanged and schools reliant on cheap processed products, rather than the kind of whole foods the new guidelines call for.

Nevertheless, the appropriations committee directive has caused much hand-wringing among advocates of healthier school food. Media accounts thus far have failed to adequately explain the actual impact of the committee action, and the USDA has remained silent.

School food expert Barry Sackin: Banned in Denver

Giant food service companies apparently will do whatever it takes to squelch information about the impact of rebates on meals served to children in the nation’s schools.

At a recent conference hosted by the American Association of School Administrators, representatives of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) who had paid $5,000 to participate in the conference at Denver’s convention center were forced to leave after being told that the information they were handing out on industry rebating practices “slandered” at least one of the other participants, which included food service giants Aramark, Chartwells and Sodexo.

Jordan Ash, an SEIU worker from St. Paul, Minn., was manning the union’s booth in the conference’s exhibition area Feb. 17 alongside Pizza Hut and numerous other vendors when he said he was approached by one of the event’s organizers, Kay Dillon.

 AASA represents thousands of the nation’s school superintendents and principals, billing itself as “committed to creating the conditions necessary for all students to become successful, lifelong learners.” The education conference is an annual event, which this year focused on issues bearing on education reform, including ”federal funding for education, budgeting in the new economy and the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” according to the group’s website.

Ash said a lengthy discussion with Dillon ensued about some of the literature Ash was handing out, aided by a Denver-based SEIU cohort. The materials included a Bloomberg News report describing last year’s settlement between the New York attorney general’s office and Sodexo, in which the food service behemoth agreed to pay $20 million to resolve claims it had withheld food manufacturer rebates–or discounts–that should have been credited to its school district clients.

That settlement has reverberated through school food circles–Sodexo, Aramark and Chartwells serve meals to millions of school children nationwide every day. The deputy attorney general in New York handling the state’s investigation recently told a gathering of the School Nutrition Association, representing some 53,000 cafeteria workers, that rebates create “an inherent conflict of interest” in the choice of foods served to children, as they favor highly processed convenience foods marketed by giant manufacturers such as Tyson and Kellogg.

Ash said Dillon was vague about the precise reason he was being ejected from the conference, except that his materials were offensive. “We actually went through with her which materials were acceptable. Basically, any materials that mentioned any company by name were not acceptable,” Ash said. ”We asked if we could talk about the [New York] settlement without naming names, and she said no, because everybody knows who the company was.”

At its website, the AASA lists Aramark as a “visionary”–or top tier–corporate sponsor of the conference, along with textbook publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill Education. Chartwells is listed as a “supporter,” along with Blackboard Inc. and the SEIU group that was ejected, Campaign for Quality Services. Sodexo lists the school administrators group as one of its “strategic partners.”

Campaign for Quality Services says it aims to organize workers, parents and community leaders of various stripes to improve the quality of government services, including school food and custodial services. Sodexo and the Service Employees International Union have been at odds for years over labor practices. Sodexo recently filed suit against the SEIU alleging illegal organizing tactics. The union maintains a website called “Clean Up Sodexo,” which calls the Sodexo suit a corporate attempt to silence union voices.

Nonetheless, Ash said he reminded Dillon that the SEIU had been welcomed at prior AASA events, including the group’s conference last year in Phoenix. “She said a lot has happened in the last year.”

Dillon did not return several telephone messages and an e-mail seeking her side of the story.

In addition to tossing Ash and his SEIU coworker from the exhibition area, Dillon also cancelled a workshop that had been scheduled and paid for by the union group featuring school food consultant Barry Sackin. Sackin, who until 2005 was a chief policy advisor and Capitol Hill lobbyist for the School Nutrition Association, was scheduled to talk to school administrators about ways to better manage their food service contracts, and how to avoid traps involved in food manufacturer rebates. A video of the presentation he was planning to give, along with an account of the Denver incident, was posted online by Campaign for Quality Services.

Ash said he had paid the AASA for use of an e-mail list to notify some 1,300 school administrators about Sackin’s workshop and was expecting robust attendance. Sackin said he was five minutes from walking out of his California home to catch a plane to Denver when he got a call from Ash saying the workshop had been cancelled.

“I do a lot of presentations on a variety of topics, a lot of it in the policy arena,” said Sackin. But this was the first time any of his talks had been created such a stir.

“You have nothing to fear in presenting facts. It sort of seems contrary to our national beliefs that you should inhibit open discussion on issues of importance,” said Sackin. “The whole point of it is, here’s what the law says and here’s what’s been found through audit [in New York], and here are things you should look at as business managers and consider to get the value of what you contracted for.”

Sackin said school administrators need to learn these lessons because they are vastly overmatched by giant food service companies when it comes to negotiating contracts. Jeffrey Mills, the food services director for D.C. Public Schools, is said to be highly dissatisfied with his district’s contract with Chartwells for a variety of reasons, including rebates and certain promises to reduce the district’s deficit spending on meals that he says turned out to be fairly weak promises after all.

The Denver AASA conference is not the only venue where the mention of school food rebates has raised corporate hackles. In March, John F. Carroll, the deputy New York attorney general conducting the rebate investigation, spoke before more than 800 members of the School Nutrition Association attending the group’s legislative conference. In the audience were representatives of Sodexo, Aramark and Chartwells–all corporate sponsors of the SNA–as Carroll described at length how he believes rebates have corrupted school food where management companies are involved.

The SNA posted a video of Carroll’s speech on YouTube. But it didn’t last long. Some weeks later it was removed from the YouTube site. I was able to obtain a copy, and restored the video to my blog post here, and at the Better D.C. School Food blog.

SNA spokeswoman Diane Pratt-Heavner said in an e-mail: “The video was taken down after several LAC [Legislative Action Conference] attendees expressed concerns about the speech.” When asked to elaborate, Pratt-Heavner replied: “ We don’t have a list of the individuals or their specific concerns.”

She later added: “John Carroll spoke at School Nutrition Association’s Legislative Action Conference for 45 minutes at the Association’s invitation.  As you know, SNA made the video available on YouTube for several weeks, allowing reporters and writers like yourself to access the speech, and that coverage of his speech is still available online.  That said, SNA is a membership organization, and when our members contact us with concerns about our resources and materials, we respond accordingly.”

Addendum: Also today, reporter Lucy Komsar, who has spent some time reporting on the rebate issue, published a story about the Denver incident involving the American Association of School Administrators at her website, The Komisar Scoop.com. Her account offers further details about the specific materials the union activists were handing out at the AASA conference, as well as AASA finances. She also quotes a spokeswoman for the AASA, Kitty Porterfield, as declining to disclose what if any financial ties might exist between the AASA and food service management companies such as Sodexo, Aramark and Chartwells.

“Such information is private to us and these businesses, and it would be inappropriate to disclose their prices, contracts, and business relationships with us or any other party.”

Science writer Gary Taubes

We may look back on this week as the moment when public opinion finally turned against the idea that fat is what makes us ill and embraced the emerging science implicating sugar as the nation’s number one threat to good health.

In Sunday’s New York Time’s Magazine, science writer Gary Taubes makes the case that sugar–not fat–is the agent behind our most pressing health problems, including obesity and the various degenerative ailments associated with “metabolic syndrome,” including diabetes, hypertension and coronary artery disease. If true, this would overturn more than 30 years of ill-conceived nutrition and health policy in this country, recognizing what a growing number of medical researchers have already concluded: fat is not the problem, carbs are. The reason for America’s shocking level of obesity and related health issues lies with our addiction to processed, carbohydrate-rich foods, starches, and especially sugar.

The implications for those of us primarily concerned with children’s health are clear: kids should not be drinking sodas or sugary flavored milks. They need to stop indulging in all kinds of snack foods and desserts that now play such a prominent role in children’s eating habits. School menus should be sugar-free–and that goes for chocolate milk, too.

The most vocal of medical authorities now blaming sugar is Robert Lustig, a specialist in childhood obesity and pediatric hormone disorders at the University of California, Berkeley. We’ve written about Lustig and quoted him here before. Taubes describes his 2009 lecuture called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” which at last count had been viewed 973,123 times at YouTube and has been increasing viewership at a rate of some 50,000 per month.

In his 90-minute talk, Lustig outlines in some detail how the fructose contained in either sugar or high-fructose corn syrup is treated by the body as a toxin; how, unlike glucose, the sugar derived from other carbohydrates such as bread and potatoes, fructose is converted into fat in the liver, triggering not just “metabolic syndrome,” but, in Taubes’ view, many common cancers as well. Lustig blames sugar for a worldwide epidemic of fatty liver disease in children.

Most importantly, Lustig insists that the obesity epidemic we are so concerned about is not just about too many calories, but eating the wrong kinds of calories–specifically, too much sugar. Sugar represents not just empty calories. “It’s not about the calories,” Lustig says. “It has nothing to do with the calories. It’s a poison by itself.” Lustig says the reason Americans are consuming more calories is because their appetite suppression mechanisms are disrupted by eating too much sugar, especially from soda and other sweetened beverages.

“In animals, or at least in laboratory rats and mice, it’s clear that if the fructose hits the liver in sufficient quantity and with sufficient speed, the liver will convert much of it to fat,” Taubes writes. “This apparently induces a condition known as insulin resistance, which is now considered the fundamental problem in obesity, and the underlying defect in heart disease and in the type of diabetes, type 2, that is common to obese and overweight individuals. It might also be the underlying defect in many cancers.”

How much sugar do you have to eat before it becomes toxic? That’s the $64,000 question. The last time the federal government looked at this, in a 1986 Food and Drug Administration report, it was estimated sugar did not pose a danger at what was then the current level of consumption: 40 pounds of sugar per person per year of “added sugar,” meaning in addition to what the normal person would get from eating fruits and vegetables. That’s 200 calories per day of sugar, Taubes says, or less than the amount in a can and a half of Coca-Colar or two cups of apple juice.

“But 40 pounds per year happened to be 35 pounds less than what Department of Agriculture analysts said we were consuming at the time–75 pounds per person per year–and the USDA estimates are typically considered to be the most reliable,” Taubes writes. “By the early 2000s, according to the USDA, we had increased our consumption to more than 90 pounds per person per year.”

Obesity rates in this country correlate neatly with increasing consumption of sugar, and especially high-fructose corn syrup, which contains more fructose than table sugar as is not only sweeter but cheaper than cane sugar. Now researchers are finding that many forms of virulent cancer thrive on the insulin the body produces in response to sugar. Obesity and diabetes go hand in hand. Likewise, people who are obese or diabetic are more likely to develop some form of cancer.

That has some medical researchers swearing off sugar in their personal diets. “I have eliminated refined sugar from my diet and eat as little as I possbly can,” says researcher Craig Thompson, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, “because I believe ultimately it’s something I can do to decrease my risk of cancer.”

Lewis Cantley, director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center at Harvard Medical School says, simply: “Sugar scares me.”

Unfortunately, little funding on the dangers of sugar has been forthcoming from the federal government. The National Institutes of Health is funding a few small studies. Taubes suggests these need to be bigger and of longer duration. But even though the current science is not as conclusive as Robert Lustig believes it to be, Taubes says he’s convinced.

“Officially I’m not supposed to worry because the evidence isn’t conclusive, but I do.”

That’s good enough for me.

Silver Spring farmer Charlie Koiner in "Corner Plot"

The D.C. Environmental Film Festival always presents a mind-boggling area of great documentaries. Here’s a schedule of up-coming screenings directly related to food and agriculture.

March 17

7:00 p.m.

Maret School

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Wine

Welcome by Kathy Sweeney-Hammond, Academic Affairs Director, Maret School. Introduced by Andrea Meditch, Chair of Development Committee, Maret School.

Portrait of a WineMaker: John WIlliams of Frog’s Leap (USA, 2010, 15 min.) Washington, D.C. Premiere John Williams opens his farm in Rutherford, California, where winemaking is intimately linked to soil. The deep connection between healthy soils, healthy plants, a wide variety of nutrients and the intensity of flavor is explored in this intimate portrait film, along with the different methods used in organic and more traditional winemaking. Written, produced and directed by Deborah Koons Garcia.

Corner Plot (USA, 2010, 10 min.) Amid the tangle of commuter traffic, shopping malls and office buildings that define life inside the Capital Beltway rests a one-acre piece of farmland under the care of 89-year-old Charlie Koiner. With the help of his only daughter, Charlie continues to work his land, share his produce and enjoy the farm life he’s always known. Corner Plot explores one man’s steadfast authenticity in a changing world. Directed by Ian Cook and Andre Dahlman.

Out to pasture: The Future of Farming? (USA, 2010, 35 min.) Washington, D.C. Premiere Almost all of the animals we eat in this country are raised in so-called “confinement” operations – indoor facilities that house thousands of chickens, cows or hogs. Considering that humans have raised domesticated animals for thousands of years, this style of production is a new experiment. There are rising concerns about the impact of industrial farming on our health, the environment, local communities and the welfare of the animals. This is the story of farmers who raise animals outdoors, in diversified operations. Some would call them backward, but these farmers believe they are on the cutting edge of animal agriculture. The film focuses on industrial animal food operations and several alternative animal-farming systems, looking at chicken farms in the Eastern Shore of Maryland, dairy farms in northern Pennsylvania and hog farms in central North Carolina. Directed by Allen Moore. Produced by the Center for a Livable Future and the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Discussion with filmmaker Allen Moore and his student film crew follows screening.

FREE. No reservations required.

Maret School, 3000 Cathedral Ave., NW (Metro: Woodley Park-Zoo/ Adams Morgan, Connecticut Ave. exit. Red line) (Metrobuses: 96, X3, L1, L2, L4)

March 24

6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

Carnegie Institution for Science

Food Choices and Sources

6:30 p.m.

Truck Farm (USA, 2010, 47 min.) Washington, D.C. Premiere Filmmakers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis brilliantly devised a mobile garden they call a truck farm and, since their initial planting, the movable Brooklyn farm has been very busy. The film uses the story of this mobile farm to expand to a much larger story about urban agriculture, determined young farmers and the challenge of growing food when there is no land available. Written by Ian Cheney and Simon Beins. Directed by Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis.

Discussion with filmmaker Simon Beins follows screening.

7:30 p.m.

PlanEat (United Kingdom, 2010, 74 min.) Washington, D.C. Premiere Tells the story of the scientists, farmers and chefs tackling one of the greatest problems of our age, the West’s love affair with meat and dairy. Through an extraordinary personal and mouthwatering culinary journey, we discover why it’s bad for our health, the environment, and our planet’s future. The film features the ground-breaking work of Cornell Professor Emeritus T. Colin Campbell in China exploring the link between diet and disease, Caldwell Esselstyn Jr.’s use of diet to treat heart disease patients and Professor Gidon Eshel’s investigations into how to feed an ever-burgeoning population in the midst of global warming. With the help of some innovative chefs and farmers, we are shown how the problems we face today can be solved, without simply resorting to a diet of lentils and lettuce leaves. Directed by Shelley Lee Davies and Or Shlomi. Produced by Christopher Hird.

Discussion with filmmaker Shelley Lee Davies and Colin Campbell, author of “The China Study” and Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry, Cornell University, follows screening.

FREE. No reservations required.

Carnegie Institution for Science, Elihu Root Auditorium, 1530 P St., NW (Metro: Dupont Circle, 19^th St. exit. Red line) (Metrobuses: S1, S2, S4, S9, G2)

March 17

12:00 noon

National Portrait Gallery

HENRY A. WALLACE: AN UNCOMMON MAN (USA, 2011, 57 min.) World Premiere A brilliant farmer, scientist, writer and public servant whose views on race, poverty and peace put him far ahead of his time is profiled in this portrait film. Born into a family of prominent Iowa farmers, Henry Wallace founded the world’s first hybrid seed company, Pioneer, that catalyzed the 20th-century’s “Green Revolution” in agriculture. Wallace also served as Agriculture Secretary and Vice President under President Franklin D. Roosevelt during some of the most difficult times in American history: the Great Depression and World War II. Few people know that Wallace was the overwhelming choice of delegates to the 1944 Democratic National Convention to once again be FDR’s Vice President. But party bosses, encouraged by Southern conservatives, made sure that didn’t happen. Directed by Joan D. Murray. Produced by Sandy Cannon-Brown.

Introduced by David C. Ward, Historian, National Portrait Gallery.

FREE. No reservations required.

National Portrait Gallery, Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium, Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, Eighth & F Sts., NW
(Metro: Gallery Place/ Chinatown, 9th & G Sts. exit. Yellow, Green and Red lines)
(Metrobuses: 42, Circulator)

March 24

6:30 p.m.

Goethe-Institut

Presented by the Japan Information and Culture Center

School days with a pig (Japan, 2008, 106 min.) Washington, D.C. Premiere A new elementary school teacher who wants his students to learn “the real connection between life and food” has a proposal for his sixth-grade class: they will adopt a piglet and care for it over the course of a year, but at the end of the year, the pig will be eaten. The students eagerly accept the challenge. After all, the end of the year is a long way away and the wriggling piglet is right there in the classroom. They name it “P-Chan,” build a special enclosure on the playground and take turns with the chores of brushing and feeding it. But the more attached they grow to P-Chan, the more difficult the question of the pig’s fate becomes. Based on a true story that became a subject of national controversy in Japan, School Days With a Pig is a thoughtful and warmhearted engagement with the adult issues of consumption, quality of life and personal responsibility as seen through the eyes of children. (—Seattle International Film Festival) In Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Tetsu Maeda. Produced by Toshihiro Isomi.

Introduced by the Director, Japan Information and Culture Center, Embassy of Japan.

FREE. No reservations required.

Goethe-Institut Washington, 812 Seventh St., NW (Metro: Gallery Place/ Chinatown, 7^th & H Sts. exit. Yellow, Orange and Green lines) (Metrobuses: 80, P6, X2, 42, G8, Circulator, 70)

Behold: Perhaps the fattiest pork chop ever

To celebrate the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans [PDF] issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture yesterday, we cooked the fattiest pork chops we could find. Actually, they were just barely streaked with meat. I found them at the Dupont Circle farmers market on Sunday at the Ecofriendly tent. That’s the Virginia outfit run by Bev Eggleston, who you might recognize as the purveyor celebrated by Michael Pollan in Omnivore’s Dilemma. Bev at one time was working with renegade farmer Joel Salatin and is a primary supplier to restaurants here on the East Coast focused on local, sustainable meats.

I usually check out the Ecofriendly offerings on Sunday because the meat is superb and we prize their thick pork chops above all others (although the Niman Ranch pork at Whole Foods comes in a close second). Ecofriendly doesn’t always have the chops available at the farmers market. On this particular occasion, I noticed these super-fatty chops: I’d never seen anything like them before and I was anxious to try them.

Our daughter loves fat ever more than we do.

I seasoned the chops very simply with salt and pepper, then seared them hard in an iron skillet and finished them in a 350-degree oven until the internal temperature started to close in on 140 degrees F.

Needless to say, there were no leftovers.

The new dietary guidelines are being hailed by some because they call for Americans to eat less of everything and more fruits and vegetables. But they discourage fat and specifically suggest drinking low-fat milk. My wife and I, who subscribe to whole cream-top milk and heavy cream from our local dairy, wondered where people are supposed to get their calories.

Americans have gotten absolutely wiggy about the food they eat. Nowhere do the guidelines say to stop swilling soda and stop buying potato chips. Instead, they continue to harp on fat, well past the time when we learned that fat is not the problem. We know very well what’s making Americans fat and sick: it’s all the sugar and carbs they’re eating. The guidelines would be much simpler if they just said, Stop eating processed foods entirely, and stick with natural foods like whole milk and fatty pork chops. And by all means, load up on broccoli and salad.

People who give up carbs invariably see their risk for heart disease and other health problems decine. We are also convinced that livestock–hence, meat–is a vital component of sustainable agriculture. Just read the lovely piece on the subject posted at the Ethicurean blog.

Don’t listen to the federal government. They’re more interested in propping up their industrial agriculture pals. Put your worries away and have a sustainably-raised pork chop.

The true dietary villain revealed: It's not fat

Are the mainstream media finally coming around to the idea that our national obsession with fat was a bad idea?

In a ground-breaking article, the Los Angeles Times this week embraces the growing scientific view that the chief cause of our nation’s obesity and other dietary ills isn’t fat, as we’ve been told for the last 30 years, but in fact too many carbohydrates, just as the vilified Dr. Robert Atkins maintained.

“The country’s big low-fat message backfired,” says Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. “The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today.”

The U.S. has been on a low-fat kick for decades yet has only gotten fatter and sicker. The Times does a good job of explaining how over-reliance on carbs in the diet leads to insulin resistance and a host of problems, including obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Fat–even saturated fat–has been absolved, even when it comes to the popular myth that too much animal fat clogs your arteries.

“Fat is not the problem,” says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. “If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases.”

The implications are huge. Wondering why we have an epidemic of childhood obesity? Start looking at all the sodas, chips and cookies kids eat, or the way schools insert fruit juice, chocolate milk and other cheap sugary products into the cafeteria menu to meet USDA calorie requirements. The recently revised Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which rely on carbs in the form of grains and legumes as the foundation of a “healthful” diet, now look utterly flawed. And what about the movement that would have all of us largely replace meat with plant foods on our dinner plate? In fact, humans only require two macro-nutrients for survival–protein and fat. Carbs are a bonus. As the Times correctly notes, it’s only very recently in human evolution that we’ve eaten grains and refined sugar at all.

Of course, carbs may not be a problem for everyone. My body, which doesn’t react at all well to carbohydrates, may be very different from yours. But according to the Times, one-fourth of all Americans display at least three of the major symptoms of “metabolic syndrome.”

In other words, put down that glass of orange juice. Better to eat a hamburger instead–without the bun, of course.

Salad bar at Columbine ES, Boulder, Co

The White House is set to announce on Monday a major new initiative that would place up to 5,000 salad bars in public schools nationwide despite uncertainties over how those salad bars might be treated by local health inspectors and U.S. Department of Agriculture rules that could prove a major impediment.

Officials in the White House led by chef Sam Kass, as well as at the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention, have been working to build a coalition representing the produce industry and Ann Cooper,  director of nutrition services in Boulder, Co., schools, who recently teamed with Whole Foods to raise $1.4 million from customers to establish a grant program that would place salad bars in qualifying schools.

Under the initiative expected to be announced on Monday in Florida, where first lady Michelle Obama has taken her “Let’s Move” campaign to fight childhood obesity, Cooper would manage applications for salad bars from the schools along with distribution of funds to purchase necessary equipment.

One potential obstacle to the program is the refusal of many school districts to install salad bars for sanitation reasons and because of cumbersome USDA rules governing the federally-subsidized school lunch program that feeds some 31 million U.S. school children every day.

Cooper named three school districts she knows of–Philadelphia, Austin, Tex., and Montgomery County, Md.,–that already have indicated they will not support salad bars. Concerns have been raised that elementary school children especially might be prone to spread disease at salad bars because they are too short for the standard “sneeze guard” installed on most salad bars, or because they might use their hands instead of the serving utensils provided.

Cooper, who would not comment on the pending White House announcement, has  dismissed those concerns, saying, ““As far as I’ve found out, there are no documented disease outbreaks from school salad bars. By and large, this is not a high risk area.”

But schools also are deterred by USDA regulations that require students to pass by a cash register or “point of sale” station after they have been to the salad bar to ensure that they have served themselves the correct portions of fruits and vegetables required under the federal lunch program. In October, the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Services division, which oversees the subsidized meal program, circulated a memo saying that while it encourages the use of salad bars in schools, school menu planners must tell students the minimum amounts they must take from salad bars, cashiers “must be trained to judge accurately the quantities of self-service items,” and point of sale registers ”must be stationed after the salad bar.”

Cooper has previously said USDA rules too often “don’t work on the ground” and that forcing students to double back and pass a checkpoint after they’ve gone through the food line and served themselves at the salad bar “slows everything down.”

Also, the Centers for Disease Control was trying to determine how local health inspectors might pass judgment on salad bars scattered across the country and what federal health requirements they might apply.

Participating in the White House initiative along with Cooper are said to be United Fresh Produce Association, the National Fruit and Vegetable Alliance and Whole Foods. The recent Whole Foods campaigns raised enough money to pay for salad bars in 564 schools. Around 570 schools applied for salad bar grants. Until now, the produce industry has been pushing its own campaign to donate salad bars to schools.

Michelle Obama has embraced more fruit and vegetable consumption as a major plank in her efforts to improve American diets and combat weight-related illnesses, especially among children. Kass, who directs the first lady’s nutrition efforts, was seen as central to bringing the various salad bar interests together and developing a unified effort under the White House banner.