Green Options » Carla Wise

School Lunches 3: An Inspiration and a Goodbye.

Carla Wise — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:31:00 +0000

Seems like all the good food stories I find start with an amazingly dedicated person. Someone who decides to work on making things better, often as a volunteer. Someone with unusual passion and skill. The story I want to leave you with today probably started that way too, but I don’t know that for certain. What I do know is that three years into it, Grow Montana’s Food Corps has helped schools and colleges in Montana buy more local and Montana-grown food. They are helping revitalize the Montana food economy. And they provide an inspiration for what can be done at the state level.

The FoodCorps, staffed with 5 AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers, works with Montana farmers,

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Good, Clean, Fair Food on the Web

Carla Wise — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:13:29 +0000

For someone who loves information, the internet can be both a wonderful temptation and and a hopeless disappointment. The good, the bad, the well-researched and the total garbage all sit side-by-side out there in cyberspace. Information on food and farming is plentiful, but not all of it is accurate, informative, or useful. One site that I have found is really worth keeping an eye on is the Organic Consumer’s Association.

If you are interested in things like organic standards, genetically engineered foods, food safety, worker rights, fair trade, hunger, supporting small farms or nearly any other current food/farming issue, take a look at this web site. The Organic Consumer’s Association was started in 1998

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Thinking About Food Miles and Carbon Footprints with Common Sense.

Carla Wise — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:22:54 +0000

I know this might sound pompous (my daughter’s favorite word these days), but I have some free advice about eating. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to eat in a more healthful, environmentally friendly, sustainable way. You don’t have to be an amazing cook, or use a carbon calculator for every meal. All you have to do is think about what you are eating.

I am irritated by the debate, by well-meaning food folks, about whether eating local food is really a good way to reduce the impact of your food choices on carbon emissions. This debate suggests a phony choice - if food miles matter, then nothing else does. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“Food miles” are a measure of the distance food travels from farm to plate. As far as I know, this concept caught fire after a 2003 study came out from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture comparing food miles traveled by local produce in Iowa and conventional produce within the U.S. The study found that the non-local produce had traveled an average of 1500 miles,

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School Lunches 2: The Promise of Feeding Kids Well and Saving the World.

Carla Wise — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:07:18 +0000

In my last post, I suggested that school lunches are a reflection of our society’s crazy relationship to food. And there is no doubt that evidence for what Michael Pollan has called our “national eating disorder” can be found in many school cafeterias. I stopped by my daughter’s school yesterday at lunch time to see what they were serving, and I felt discouraged. The noodle turkey bowl and cheese pizza options both looked creepy. At least they have a salad bar, and milk.

But just as awareness is growing about food issues in general, people all over the country are trying to change school food into something we actually WANT our children to eat. So far, these efforts are local, occurring mostly by school or district. But they show that change is possible, and provide some great inspiration to parents and others who want to make things better.

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School Lunches 1: Shedding Some Light on “Hot Lunch.”

Carla Wise — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:03:22 +0000

I have to admit that my 3rd grader doesn’t eat school lunches. She has tried what the kids call “hot lunch” exactly 3 times in her entire public school career. She doesn’t like them. At all. Every morning, I fix her lunch, and although I sometimes grumble a little, I am glad to get to choose what she can eat for her midday meal.

But lately, I have been thinking a lot about those hot lunches. For one thing, they feed a lot of children. Many of my daughter’s friends eat them frequently or always. In 2006, more than 30 million children in the U.S. each day ate school lunches. And the school lunch program has been all over the news lately. From downer cows that end up in our kids’ lunches to efforts in districts across the country to combat obesity and bad eating habits in school cafeterias, school lunches seem to be a metaphor for all the bigger issues about food in America today.

Depending on who you talk to, school lunches might be described as anything from a program that nourishes our kids

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Better Banana Smoothies help with Spring Fever

Carla Wise — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:15:35 +0000

I’m here to promote better eating. Not perfect eating, just better eating. I try to buy as much locally-grown organic food as possible, but winter season is humbling. Months of cold gray skies and fewer and fewer local fruits and vegetables make those imported bananas look awfully good. While bananas will never be locally grown in Oregon, they are nutritious, affordable, great kid food, and a huge boon to smoothies, a winter staple in our house.

And I am not alone in my banana affection. Our natural foods co-op sells more organic bananas on a yearly basis than any other fruit, in spite of all their efforts to promote local produce. But I have some news that makes me feel better about all my winter banana purchases. The carbon-neutral banana is on its way, courtesy of Dole.

Last summer, Dole announced plans to carbon-neutralize its entire banana supply chain. They intend to lower emissions through altering agricultural practices and transportation methods. They will also work with Costa Rica’s forestry financing fund to cancel out emissions through funding reforestation projects with Costa Rican farmers. Dole, the world’s largest producer and distributor of fruits and vegetables, says that in part they are responding to consumer concerns. And Costa Rica is aiming to be a climate-neutral nation!

So if you, too, live in a place where the first spring fruit is still a ways off, try this smoothie recipe, and consider using Dole organic bananas from Costa Rica.

1 or 2 ripe bananas

6-8 frozen strawberries (from last summer’s U-pick stock)

a handful of ice

about 1/2 cup of apple juice, depending on thickness you like

a glob of vanilla yogurt (I like brown cow)

Put it all together in a blender and blend till smooth. Adjust for desired taste and thickness. Enjoy!

If Things Fall Apart, What Will You Eat?

Carla Wise — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:56:02 +0000

Maybe we really have reached our limits. David Korten, author, lecturer, and founder of Yes magazine, believes we have. He believes that climate change, peak oil, and the meltdown of the U.S. dollar are all symptoms of the impending fall of our modern, globalized way of life. And he has a point. The stock market is crashing, gas and food prices are skyrocketing, and our economy is faltering. Of course, if you are an optimist, you might say, well, we will survive, as we have before. Except for one thing: what will we eat?

When I take stock, I realize I can do without most of the things I buy. Yesterday I bought gas, printer cartridges, and mad libs for my daughter. Food was the only necessity I spent money on. But if David Korten is onto something, access to most of that food is in danger.

Consider: by most estimates, 98% of the food consumed by Americans comes from the industrial food system.

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Food Facts: Milk Labels, Choices, and rBGH

Carla Wise — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:41:57 +0000

Milk is big in our house. We eat ice cream, butter, cheese, and yogurt. I love my morning coffee with just enough half-and-half to turn it a lovely shade of caramel. My daughter drinks milk with lunch and dinner. When you factor in the pizza with mozzarella and the breakfast cereal, hardly a meal goes by that is dairy-free.

Haunting all this milk, filled with calcium, protein, and fat, has been a single question: what is the real story behind recombinant bovine growth hormone?

If you read about food in general, or genetically engineered organisms specifically, it can’t have escaped your notice that there is a battle raging in this country about the use of rBGH in dairy cows. It’s a battle being fought in grocery stores, state legislatures, the corporate offices of Monsanto Corporation and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

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A Minnesota Farmer Takes on Farm Subsidies, and Creates a Stir

Carla Wise — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:07:46 +0000

Jack Hedin is a Minnesota organic farmer who grows food for local markets. He wants to expand his operation to help meet the growing demand for his produce. The way he sees it, the federal government is standing directly in his way, and he’s upset about it. So he sent an Op-Ed to the New York Times, which they published last week. I imagine he was hoping to get people talking about our farm subsidy program and its impact on American food and farming. Judging from my email inbox, he succeeded in spades.

Here’s a summary of Jack Hedin’s story. He farms 100 acres in southern Minnesota, and has found that demand for his organic produce is so strong that he can’t meet it on his land. So last year, he rented 25 acres from two nearby corn farmers, and planted fruits and vegetables on the extra land. It wasn’t long before his landlords ran into trouble with the commodity farm program. This program subsidizes commodity crops, paying farmers who grow corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, cotton, and several others.

While the program was set up to guarantee farmers who grow commodity crops a certain income, it turns out that it also penalizes farmers who then switch to growing fruits and vegetables on “commodity base” acres. This is what happened to the farmers who had rented him the 25 acres. They found themselves out of compliance with the commodity farm program, and would be penalized not only for the subsidy that year for that acreage, but also for the market value of the “illicit” crops.

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Why Eating Locally Really IS a Silver Bullet.

Carla Wise — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:25:38 +0000

I admit that I am not the most rational person in the world. When faced with big choices, weighing the pros and cons is not how I behave.

My decisions - whether to have a baby, where to live, who to marry - are not based solely on logic. They are also based on my heart, or some intuitive notion. Perhaps because I’m a scientist, I sometimes feel this is a weakness. But every now and then, logic and emotion converge. The heart and the head agree, and this is a blessed thing.

That’s how it is, for me, with joining the local foods movement. I have read books, attended meetings, visited farms, and analyzed endless facts about the astounding benefits of re-building vibrant local and regional food systems. I have discovered many reasons to buy food grown nearby, and to support the local food economy however I can.

These reasons include protecting farms, promoting sustainable agriculture, getting in touch with the seasons, reducing carbon emissions, supporting your local economy, knowing where your food comes from, eating food that tastes better and is more nutritious, and improving the safety and security of your food.

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