Tag: nestle

Influence and the Food Pyramid

  • The USDA's food pyramid. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

The USDA food pyramid shows the amounts and kinds of foods that are healthy to eat. But the food pyramid is not simply about eating right. Money and politics play a big role in this symbol. Kyle Norris takes a look:

Transcript

The USDA food pyramid shows the amounts and kinds
of foods that are healthy to eat. But the food pyramid is
not simply about eating right. Money and politics play a
big role in this symbol. Kyle Norris takes a look:


You’ve heard of the food pyramid, right?


“I can see the picture of the food pyramid… I think it’s how much of each type of food you’re
supposed to eat.”


“The food pyramid is like non-existent
in my day-to-day reality.”


“Yeah, I didn’t really understand what the point of the food pyramid was.”


The pyramid is a visual tool that the United States
Department of Agriculture created in the 1990s to help
people know what to eat. The USDA has advised
people about nutrition for a long time.


Throughout the past century, nutritional advice was
generally a message to eat more food and a wider
variety of food, and eventually people did eat more
food… too much food. And overeating and chronic
diseases became a problem.


In the late 1960s and early 70s, the
message about nutrition changed. The government said
scale back. Eat less. And this caused an uproar, and it
still does:

“Food companies are upset about it because they don’t
want the government telling people to eat less of the
products they manufacture.”


That’s Marion Nestle. She’s a professor of Nutrition,
Food Studies, and Public Health at New York
University. She also wrote the book “Food Politics:”


“This is health conflicting with business interests
basically, and since food companies, among other
corporations, fund election campaigns, elected leaders
need to listen to them. And since elected leaders control
what goes on in federal agencies, federal agencies need
to listen to elected leaders. That’s how our political
system works.”


Here’s what happens from that trickle down effect:
Corporations influence the food pyramid. So, the
pyramid’s wording of what and how much you should
eat gets watered-down and un-specific, so as not to
offend the food companies.


Here’s Nestle again:


“We don’t have an independent voice in the government
advising the public about diet and health because
if the government were to advise the public
about diet and health, it would have to tell people to eat
less junk food. And it can’t do that… Because the companies
that produce the junk food wouldn’t stand for it.”


It’s not only junk food companies that freak out about
what the government says you should eat. The meat
industry threw a fit when the pyramid was going to be
released in 1991.


The pyramid said those awful, hurtful words about
meat: “Eat less.”


So the USDA yanked the pyramid, tweaked it ever so
slightly, and re-released it the next year. The food
industry made a lot of squawk about the pyramid. You
have to wonder what kind of pressure that had on the
USDA.


Jackie Haven is a USDA nutritionist:


“I really, there’s really nothing I have to say on that
issue. I don’t feel we had pressure from anybody and…
Can we move to something else?


Okay, so, she wouldn’t say much.


But you have to wonder if the USDA had a conflict of
interest here. Their key job is to promote agriculture in
the marketplace. And yet they tell us what we should eat.


Marion Nestle says the USDA does have a conflict of
interest:


“Its main function
is to sell more products not less. It’s the fox guarding
the chicken… certainly not the place
where you have independent advice about what to eat.


The USDA created the new “mypyramid.gov” in 2005.
They’ve dubbed it an “interactive food guidance
system.” About the only way you can get to it is online.


You punch in your age, weight, and height. You also
type in how physically active you are each day. Then it
spits out a personalized plan.


My My Pyramid plan said that every day I should eat about 7
ounces of grains, 3 cups veggies, 2 cups fruit, 3 cups of
milk, and 6 ounces of meat and beans. I don’t know
how to translate that information. I mean, I don’t really measure my
apples in cups. And three cups of milk?


The new My Pyramid’s wording is delicate. It says things like “Most meat and poultry choices
should be lean or lowfat.” “Include” this,
“Choose” that. Not very specific suggestions.


Marion Nestle says there’s no evidence that the public
understands the original pyramid. She says even fewer
people understand the new My Pyramid. The food
pyramid has always been controversial. Its stated
purpose is to help us eat healthier.


The political reality is that pressure from the food
industry makes it very difficult for the pyramid to clearly say
what is really best for our health.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Does Fair Trade Coffee Work?

Coffee beans can be pretty confusing these days.
At times it can seem like a political, even a
moral decision. You might want to buy those pricey specialty beans,
but now the supermarket also carries beans labeled Fair Trade
Certified. That might seem like the nicer thing to do for the farm
workers – and the environment. Julie Grant takes a look at those
claims:

Transcript

Coffee beans can be pretty confusing these days. At times it can seem like a political, even a
moral decision. You might want to buy those pricey specialty beans,
but now the supermarket also carries beans labeled Fair Trade
Certified. That might seem like the nicer thing to do for the farm
workers – and the environment. Julie Grant takes a look at those
claims:


Ahhh… it smells great in here. The owner of this coffee shop travels
the world in search of the best coffees. Linda Smithers has gone to
places such as South and Central America, Africa, and southern Asia to
visit farms and to taste coffee. She imports her favorites and roasts
them at her store.


And she has high expectations. Smithers wants to make sure that if
you’re paying a few dollars for a specialty coffee, it’s a satisfying
personal experience:


“And coffee should be able to do that for you. It should bring you
closer to you, and closer to the farmer. You should feel like you know
the farmer. And you feel passion and an intimacy with that farmer.”


I should probably have mentioned, Smithers really loves coffee.
She says the best coffees are grown on farms that are good to the
coffee trees, the local water, and the workers:


“Happy workers, safe workers, produce better coffee. They just do. I
see it every time I go to a farm. I see it when a worker enjoys what
they’re doing and feel they’re getting a fair price. They’re just like us. You
would not enjoy working and at the end of the day being given 20 cents.
You wouldn’t be happy with that. You wouldn’t work in a pleasant
way. And you wouldn’t pay attention to picking the ripe beans rather than the unripened beans.”


The Fair Trade label claims it’s found one way to help keep coffee
farmers happy and safe. The Fair Trade certification is supposed to be
a guarantee that farm co-operatives will get at least $1.21 for a pound
of beans. When coffee prices are low, that can be twice what other
farmers are paid. Fair Trade also promises farm workers have safe
conditions and are paid a living wage.


Michigan State University Professor Dan Jaffee wanted to know if the
Fair Trade system was doing what it set out to do:


“The Fair Trade movement claimed to be able to help bring them out of
poverty, improve their farming practices, make them more sustainable
and just generally improve conditions a lot, and I was interested in
finding out whether that was the case.”


Jaffee spent a few years in Oaxaca, Mexico studying two farming
communities. Some coffee farmers were part of Fair Trade
cooperatives, some decided against it. He’s just published a book called
Brewing Justice to report his findings. Jaffee says families
that joined Fair Trade were more food secure when the market price of
coffee fell:


“That is, they have food shortages much less of the time. They have
significantly greater access to animal protein, foods like milk and
meat and cheese in their diet. And they’re essentially able to feed
their children much more of the time than their neighbors, who were
really, at the time the coffee prices were at their low point at the
time I was doing my research in 2001, 2002, 2003, who were definitely
showing signs of malnutrition and there was a significant problem with malnutrition
in these communities.”


Fair Trade is still only a small fraction of the coffee market, but
its share of customers is growing, and the big players are taking
notice. Nestle is marketing Fair Trade products in the UK, and you can
find the Fair Trade seal at your neighborhood Starbucks. Only 3.7%
of Starbucks coffee is Fair Trade certified, but Jaffee says
that small percentage still makes Starbucks the single largest buyer of
Fair Trade coffee in the US.


Smaller coffee shop owners, such as Linda Smithers, also
buys some Fair Trade coffee. But Smithers doesn’t think guaranteeing a
specific price is the best way to encourage farms to grow the best
coffee:


“You’re given a price regardless of the quality. I have a problem
with that. I do not think that’s a sustainable agricultural model.
Remember, I’m a coffee person. I’m not a cause person, I’m
a coffee person. And to me, sustainable is: the product must be
outstanding and have good sociological and ecological practices, then
get a fair price.”


Smithers believes farms that treat workers and the environment well
naturally have the best tasting coffee and will always get a fair
price in the specialty coffee market.


Some conservative economists agree with her. They say the Fair Trade movement
will only continue to grow if looks beyond the socially-conscious crowd and continues
to improve the taste and consistency. That’s what people eyeing those gourmet coffee beans
want.


Smithers says Fair Trade has already been a success in that it’s put
issues of working conditions and the environment on the table…
and she could sit and drink a cup and talk about that for hours.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Bottled Water Diversion Debate

  • Some bottling companies, such as Besco, sell water, but keep it in the Great Lakes basin. Some others bottle it and ship it out of the region in great quantities. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Experts say one of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is water withdrawal. Water is taken from the Great Lakes for agriculture, industry, and public drinking supplies. Lester Graham reports there are many ways that water is used and shipped out of the Great Lakes basin, but few are more controversial than bottled water:

Transcript

Experts say one of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is water
withdrawal. Water is taken from the Great Lakes for agriculture,
industry, and public drinking supplies. Lester Graham reports there are
many ways that water is used and shipped out of the Great Lakes basin,
but few are more controversial than bottled water:


(Sound of bottling plant)


I’m watching big clear-blue water bottles, the kind you see on water coolers, are
bouncing along on a conveyer to be washed and then filled with water.
Chuck Swartzle is the President of Besco Water Treatment…


“Uh, we treat it – it’s well water – we treat it, purify it with reverse
osmosis, sanitize it, filter it and bottle it.”


Besco also bottles water in smaller containers, the kind you might buy at
the convenience store.


All of Besco’s customers are within the Great Lakes basin, so the water
will eventually make its way back to the lakes, but some bottlers
distribute water far outside the basin.


One of Pepsico’s Aquafina bottled water plants gets its water from the
Detroit River, which connects the upper Great Lakes to the lower lakes.
Aquafina’s bottled water is distributed inside and outside the basin. That
means Great Lakes water is being trucked away. It’s a net loss of water to the
basin.


That’s not anything new. Water from the Great Lakes basin in the form
of beer from Milwaukee or milk from Minnesota or any of the other
products you can think of that are mostly water are shipped far and wide
and have been for a long time, but some environmentalists say trucking bottled water
away is different. They argue it’s a lot like a recent attempt to take tanker ships
of Lake Superior water to Asia. It’s not like a value-added product that’s made
from water, it’s just water.


Bill Lobenherz is a lobbyist for the Michigan Soft Drink Association.
He says bottled water is a value-added product, just like the many others.


“Indeed, there’s a lot more water in lumber, for example, Christmas
trees, and sometimes a lot less value added to it too. You don’t have to
do that much to cut it and ship it. Cherries, baby food and other non-
consumable products like paint. What about the water we have to put in
the automobile radiators? I really don’t know that there is a distinction
there. It seems to be more of a misplaced perception than it is any kind
of environmental reality.”


“I guess I’m having a hard time getting my head around the difference
shipping water out in a truck-load of bottles and shipping it out by
tanker. What’s the real difference there?”


“I think the difference is that there’s the fear that if it’s by tanker in those
quantities, that it could be abused. If it’s in bottles, it’s really quite
controllable, because there’s so much more value added to put it in small
bottles.”


Not everyone is buying that argument.


Dave Dempsey is the Great Lakes advisor for the environmental group Clean Water Action.
He says the most recent debates about water withdrawals started when that shipping company
planned to take about 156-million gallons a year to Asia. Dempsey says a single new bottled
water plant trucks away even more than that.


“The Nestle’ project, a single project in Michigan that has been sited and
is operating takes 168-million gallons per year. So, the volumes can be
greater in bottles than in tankers.”


But that’s still not that much water compared to other uses.


According to figures in a report by the Great Lakes Commission, the
cities and industries around the Great Lakes withdraw more than 43
billion gallons a day. Much of it is used and returned to the lakes, but
nearly two billion gallons a day is lost. It’s not returned to the lakes
because it evaporates or it’s incorporated into products. Two billion
gallons a day makes the Nestle’ bottled water plant’s 168-million gallons
a year seem minor.


But Dave Dempsey argues there’s a more sinister concern. He believes
if water is treated like any other commodity, large corporations that can
profit from it will begin to horde it, and control it.


“You will hear bottled water companies say that they’re just another user
like a farmer or a manufacturer or even a city water supply, but they’re
not because they’re asserting private ownership of a public resource and
if we essentially allow that by not putting controls on the water-for-sale
industry now, I’m afraid the Great Lakes may become the world’s largest
privately owned reservoir.”


A recent agreement between the states and provinces around the Great
Lakes allows bottled water to be shipped out in bottles as large as five-
gallons, but some environmentalists say that’s a slippery slope. They say
corporations will soon be asking why just five gallons? Why not 55-
gallon barrels? And then, tankers.


The bottling industry says the environmentalists are making a big deal
out of nothing, and would do better spending their time teaching
everyone to conserve water better instead of complaining about someone
in another state quenching their thirst with a bottle of water from the
Great Lakes.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Bottling Restrictions Lifted for Katrina Victims

Officials are suspending a fight with water bottlers over diversions from
the Great Lakes basin – as long as the water is used for hurricane relief.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta has more:

Transcript

Officials are suspending a fight with water bottlers over diversions from the Great Lakes basin – as long as the water is used for hurricaine relief. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta has more:


Michigan’s in a legal fight with Nestle Waters over the company’s right to tap into springs, bottle the water, and then sell it outside the Great Lakes basin.


Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm says that amounts to a diversion of water from the Great Lakes, and it should be regulated, but she’s signed a directive saying that limits on water bottlers will be lifted to support hurricane relief.


“It’s going to allow for the relaxation of rules during the time of a national emergency to allow water to be pumped and distributed to areas of great need.”


The governor says her directive will expire once the immediate crisis is past, but the court fight is still pending over the right of Michigan – and other states in the Great Lakes region – to place limits on how water can be withdrawn from the basin and sold somewhere else.


For the GLRC, I’m Rick Pluta.

Related Links