Bella mention

Here is a story from the Tri-Valley Herald gives a focused perspective on how Bay Area food banks are increasingly using fruits and vegetables in their outreach to the hungry. Our friend Rick Bella of America's Second Harvest is quoted in the feature.
From the story:

"We try to put produce in each bag," said Larry Sly, who has led the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano for more than 30 years. Weve kind of built an expectation that there will be produce. What Bateson and Sly are doing mirrors a national trend, said Rick Bella, director of produce operations for Americas Second Harvest, which works with some 350 food banks across the country. But Bella said the Bay Area has some of the nations strongest produce programs.
The Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, for example, runs a monthly Produce Mobile to deliver fruits and vegetables to people in poor neighborhoods who otherwise might not have access to them.

.....

In some ways, the move toward produce was born of necessity, food bank directors said. The volume of packaged food products donated to food banks has dropped as more dollar stores and other secondary sales outlets have sprung up to sell them, they said. And the amount of food being provided by the government also dipped, they said.
Food bank operators like Bateson suddenly found themselves scrambling for ways to maintain a steady supply of food for the tens of thousands of needy people they serve —
40,000 a week, in Batesons case.
What we looked at was, what is there in abundance in California? And its produce, she said.
So Bateson and many other food banks made the shift. For the past several years, some 11 food banks from as far south as Fresno and Tulare counties to the Oregon border have participated in a program to distribute excess produce among themselves, Bateson and others said.
They started by distributing cull oranges — those that aren't of the uniform shape and size typically stacked in neat pyramids in the grocery store. But they have since moved on to a variety of other foods, including prepackaged organic lettuce that producers can more easily can donate than dump.
The food banks expanding produce supply has also meant healthier meals for their clients, who often cant afford to buy produce or simply don't have access to it.
If youre a low-income person, you have five dollars and you go to the store, youre not going to go to the produce aisle, San Franciscos Ash said.
Americas Second Harvest has produce from all over the country and overseas, allowing it to provide a steady stream of it to member food banks, Bella said. They are only limited by their ability to pay to ship the food and to get it out to the churches and nonprofits they work with, he said.

TK: This great good work continues only with the hands and hearts of many contributing to the help in the fight. See the Web site for America's Second Harvest under "Industry Links" on the right side of this blog.

50, the new 30

Is 50 the new 30?I have three years to find out. If I do everything this article says, I'll have a fighting chance:
From the St. Louis Post Dispatch piece:

Skin
Problem -- Skin thins with years. This bag that keeps everything together needs more care and feeding over time.Remedy -- Use moisturizers, eat more fruits and vegetables and drink a lot of water, up to more than a gallon a day.

Digestion
Problem -- If you try to eat as much as when you were younger, you'll get fat. Scientists disagree as to why. Some say the metabolism slows. Others say that the older you get, the less movement you employ so you burn fewer calories. On the flip side, some people lose interest in food and become anorexic.Remedy -- The character of your eating should change as you age. Again, eat better food -- fruits, vegetables, grains -- and keep the servings of meat to about the size of your palm. Aging anorexia happens most often when the taste buds dull. Use spices to pump up the flavors.

TK: One good sign for me: no sign yet of "aging anorexia." Here is a story that looks at how new gizmos are measuring antioxidant levels and whether people should care.
From the LA Times story:

When a fender oxidizes, it's called "rust." In your body, oxidation plays a key role in aging and disease. Antioxidants such as vitamin E, vitamin C and beta carotene can offer protection, but you may wonder if you have enough to keep the rust away. If you're concerned — or just curious — you can always try a high-tech palm reading.Just stick your hand in a BioPhotonic Scanner, a laser device that will scan your skin for carotenoids, antioxidant pigments found in colorful fruits and vegetables. The tally is then translated into a "Body Defense Score." Doctors, chiropractors, nutritionists, personal trainers and a few doctors across the country offer carotenoid scans as part of their services, often at little or no cost to customers. According to Kara Schneck, spokeswoman for Pharmanex, the company that manufactures the scanner, more than 5 million people worldwide have already been scanned.

Pharmanex markets an antioxidant supplement to help people boost their scores. Schneck says the scanner "helps people make well-informed choices about nutrition."Antioxidant test kits claim to promote "optimal wellness and optimum nutrition." And they offer the chance to avoid disaster: "If your antioxidant status is low and is allowed to go undetected, it could seriously affect your health and performance," one site warns.Bottom line: It may sound farfetched, but a laser scan of your palm really can detect antioxidants, says Ronald Prior, a nutritionist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Little Rock, Ark. The antioxidant carotenoids that add color to many fruits and vegetables will also add color to your skin, and the laser can measure the subtle hues. (Or not so subtle: Eat a pound of carrots every day for a week and your skin will turn orange.)The carotenoids in your skin reflect the carotenoids in your diet, Prior says. "If that number is low, your consumption of fruits and vegetables is not what it should be," he says.

But although the scan can provide a wake-up call for people who skimp on their greens (and yellows and oranges), it doesn't say much about their overall antioxidant levels, Prior adds. Carotenoids are just one part of the antioxidant arsenal. It takes sophisticated — and pricey — blood tests to get a full picture.
Handelman adds that most Americans already get plenty of antioxidants. The real problem is that we're falling short on fruits and vegetables. The world of broccoli and bananas, he says, offers benefits that go far beyond antioxidants or anything else that can be captured in a pill.


TK: Thank you Mr. Handelman. "The real problem is that we're falling short on fruits and vegetables." My mom says I should ask Fresh Talk readers whether they (honestly, now) eat 5 a day. Look for it soon.

Senate Ag Committee business

An important meeting of the Senate Agriculture Committee is scheduled for Tuesday. The committee is scheduled to hold hearings examining child nutrition in the school setting on March 6. Hopefully we will hear Ag Committee chair Tom Harkin express his strong support for the fruit and vegetable snack program.
Among the speakers at the hearing: Teresa Nece, director of food and nutrition for the Des Moines Public Schools; Susan Neely, president and CEO of the American Beverage Association; and Kelly Brownell, founder and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

Guess who may be on the hot seat among that panel? Neely of the American Beverage Association will get some tough questions from Harkin, who has favored more regulation of junk food at schools. But the power of Coke, Pepsi and company is not to be underestimated. At the Ag Outlook Forum, one naive questioner at the end of a session on FDA labeling of foods asked why the agency can't say "Drink less pop" instead of trying to subtly convince people to consume less sugar. The chuckles from the audience revealed that such an approach, though apparently common sense personified, will never be seriously considered. I'm sure Neely will somehow come ready to show how the beverage industry is a full participant in the fitness and wellness movement on school campuses, notwithstanding the millions of cans of carbonated empty calories they peddle.

Speaking of the beverage industry, Did you see the headline in "TK's Hot Picks" from England about the misconceptions about the 5 a day diet?
From the Evening Times:

ALMOST one in 10 parents in Britain believe chips, crisps and fizzy fruit drinks count as part of the recommended five-a-day' health campaign.
A total of 9% of parents think such unhealthy foods are amongst the list of fruit or vegetables we should take each day.


TK: Potato chips and orange pop are not part of the 5 a day diet. It's a good thing the More Matters campaign is not being rolled out in the U.K., or 9% of Brits would drink even more fizzy pop and chips to get the extra health benefit.