Food

More than 130 billion pounds of food ends up in landfills in the United States every year. That’s 31 percent of the country’s food supply. To curb that, the federal government recently announced its first-ever food waste reduction goals. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says the plan is to reduce food waste by 50 percent by 2030.

Some stores in Alaska are already doing what they can to reduce their waste and feed hungry Alaskans.

Stephen Longnecker, a director for a Fred Meyer store in Anchorage, knows what’s going to sell in his grocery store and what’s not.

“In our business, Back-to-School season, overnight, with the flip of a switch you may go from selling one unit of pint-sized milk to a hundred units in a day.”

Longnecker steps into the massive dairy refrigerator and slips into back office business speak. There are sales histories, metrics and data that help him order the right amount of each product for each season. But the calculations aren’t perfect. Sometimes cranberry sauce just isn’t popular that year, or they have a couple of random items that just won’t be bought before they expire. Sometimes a pallet full of bananas is still good enough to eat but not pretty enough to sell.

“That banana’s traveled a long way by the time it gets to Alaska, and at times you will find we have some product that we’re not going to be able to sell our way out of,” Longnecker says.

Instead, it’s donated to the Food Bank of Alaska. Anchorage Fred Meyer stores donated 283,000 pounds last year. Longnecker says they started donating the perishable food instead of throwing it away about five years ago. Since then, Kroger, the company that owns Fred Meyer, has reduced their costs for disposing of waste by 70% nationwide.

“That’s pretty revolutionary for all of us because it cut the costs of expenses in a big way, and it also really benefits our communities,” Locknecker says.

In 2014, Alaska’s food industry donated nearly 4.9 million pounds of food to the food bank. Almost 30 percent of that were fruits and vegetables. That’s a big change from nine years ago when the food bank couldn’t offer individual families much in the way of fresh produce. Development Director Karla Jutzi says that’s what people want to buy to stay healthy, but they can’t afford it.

“People in need tell us they know they are buying high calorie, highly processed food that’s not very good for them, but they can buy more of that for their dollar than they can of healthy fresh food,” she explains. “So that’s why having fresh produce and other fresh food available from our food industry partners makes a huge difference for folks who can’t afford it themselves.”

Jutzi says even community gardeners are bringing in fresh produce; it’s distributed through the mobile food pantries. Jutzi says they do receive some donations that are too far gone to give to people, so they try to give as much as possible to local pig farmers.

Other stores donate directly to food pantries such as St. Francis House, giving about 25 grocery carts full of food and bread every week.

Back at Fred Meyer, Longnecker says they do have to throw away some unsafe foods. A composting system is still a few years away.

Heading past the towering shelves of goods in the storage area and back into the main store, Longnecker walks over to visit food manager and former butcher Anthony Gurule. He slices into a stack of short ribs, the massive saw screeching like an angry bird.

He starts trimming the sides of the meat. Bits of the red flesh are tossed into a pile to be ground into burgers. The rubbery white fat is set aside in a box. In the Lower 48, it’s sold to companies that render it into makeup and other goods. In Anchorage, “we will sell all of this right here to a lot of hunters in hunting season,” Gurule explains. Hunters add it to ground moose and caribou to help make sausage and burgers.

“We do our best to be as streamlined as best we can and keep waste as minimal as possible. Somebody will buy something. They’ll all buy something,” he says.

With that, he lines up the ribs on a white Styrofoam tray to be packed up and put them on the sales floor. If they don’t sell, they’ll be frozen and put aside to be donated to the food bank.

We talk a lot on The Salt about the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in nuts, olive oil, fish, fruits and vegetables. Scientists believe it’s one of the world’s healthiest patterns of eating, and can protect against a lot of chronic diseases.

In the Arctic, the typical meal looks very different. There, a traditional plate would have some fatty marine animal like seal or whale and not much else – fruits and vegetables are hard to come by in the harsh climate.

And yet despite the fact that the high-fat Arctic diet may sound like a heart attack waiting to happen, these people tend to have low rates of heart disease and diabetes.

Researchers thought maybe it was the omega-3 fatty acids in the meat and blubber that might be protective. But a new study on Inuit in Greenland suggests that Arctic peoples evolved certain genetic adaptations that allow them to consume much higher amounts of fat than most other people around the world, according a team of researchers reporting Thursday in the journal Science.

Computational biologist Rasmus Nielsen at the University of California, Berkeley lead the research, and began by looking for genetic differences between a 191 Inuit in Greenland, 60 Europeans, and 44 ethnic Chinese. “When we did that, it pointed directly to one group of genes where we had an extremely strong signal,” Nielsen says. “They regulate how much of these omega-3s and omega-6s you make yourself naturally.”

Nearly all of the Inuit in Nielsen’s study had variances in these genes that researchers think slow down the body’s natural production of omega-3 and omega-6 fats. “We saw that the Inuit have such a high diet of omega-3s, so they produce much less of it themselves,” Nielsen says. And the genes seem to play a role in lowering levels of LDL cholesterol, the bad kind that’s linked to heart disease. Only about 3 percent of Europeans and 15 percent of Chinese had the same genetic markers, the team writes.

Nielsen thinks these genes helped Inuit ancestors survive in the brutal cold near the North Pole and stay healthy on a diet of almost exclusively fat and protein. And he thinks the genes are mostly unique to humans living in this environment.

But there’s a lot of uncertainty about the genes. “The regulation of fats in your body is a really complex network. You turn one knob, and it just changes everything everywhere else,” Nielsen says. So, he notes, the full implication of having these mutations still isn’t well understood.

That’s part of the reason why some researchers aren’t completely blown away by the study. Whether or not these genes have helped Inuit stay slim on a high-fat diet is still unclear, says Joel Hirschhorn, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School. “They’re taking a leap of faith,” he says.

The genes in question seem to influence so many different processes in the body that pinpointing their effect is difficult, he says. “It’s harder to go beyond the known biology of these genes and make connections to weight.”

On top of that, Hirschhorn thinks there could be reasons other than diet for why Inuit have these mutations. “There are lots of things about the lifestyle in Greenland that are different and could lead to these adaptations,” he says.

Even so, Hirschhorn says he’s excited about the paper because “it’s a clear example of human evolution.” Like the genes that have allowed groups that practice dairying to tolerate lactose in milk, it’s another example of human adaptations to different environments or diets, says Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania.

Nowadays, very few Greenlanders still eat a completely traditional diet. And the move away from the high-fat, high-protein diet may be leading to the rising rate of diabetes. “If they switch to a modern diet that’s high in carbohydrates, particularly simple ones like glucose and sugar, then they tend to be quite unhealthy,” Nielsen says.

That suggests that understanding these adaptations could eventually lead to specialized diets for each person. “We know now that the Inuit adapted to a very specific diet. That may be true for other populations as well,” he says.

In other words: The answer to how harmful a high-fat diet is for you could depend on your genomics.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Word that Americans throw away about one third of our available food has been getting around.

Now there’s an official goal aimed at reducing that waste.

Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency — along with many private-sector and food bank partners — announced the first ever national target for food waste.

“[We’re] basically challenging the country to reduce food waste by 50 percent by the year 2030,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tells The Salt.

Currently, Vilsack says an estimated 133 billion pounds of food is wasted each year. And if that’s hard to fathom, picture this: “It’s enough to fill the Sears Tower [technically now called the Willis Tower] 44 times,” Vilsack says.

As for who’s responsible? Well, pretty much everyone who eats.

We consumers let a lot of food wilt or go sour in our refrigerators. And we may toss out items when they pass their sell-by dates — even though the food is still safe to consume.

On farms, there’s a lot of waste generated — as we documented in this story about lettuce grown in California — when food not quite up to cosmetic standards isn’t harvested. Often times, food also ends up in landfills because it won’t stay fresh long enough to be shipped across the country.

Restaurants and grocery stores generate a lot of waste, too.

There are a lot of initiatives already underway to address food waste. For instance, the Food Recovery Challenge at the EPA is helping food manufacturers and grocers donate more food.

And, increasingly, as we showed in this video, grocery stores are buying and selling imperfect, or ugly, produce. In addition, restaurants are turning to new technology to help them track and identify opportunities to cut waste.

Vilsack says food waste isn’t just an economic issue — it also is a big contributor of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that fuels climate change. Think about where most of it tossed: “Basically, it ends up in landfills,” Vilsack says. And it’s the single greatest contributor to municipal landfills, according to USDA.

Here’s another way to understand the significance of food waste: Tossing out food wastes fossil fuels used to grow and ship food.

“When you look at the oil that’s used in producing food that’s wasted, it’s 70 times the amount of oil that we lost in the Deepwater Horizon disaster,” Vilsack says.

For now, the national 50 percent waste reduction goal will be voluntary. But to meet it, Vilsack says, many of the initiatives already underway can be scaled up. “Rather than pitch [food], let’s figure out how to redirect it,” and salvage it, says Vilsack.

For instance, Americans need more education on how to shop and cook in ways that reduce the losses in our own refrigerators. (We’ll have more tips on this tomorrow.)

And schools, institutions and local governments can do a lot more to cut back on, recover and recycle food waste. In some states and cities, they’re already required to. As we’ve reported, Seattle now fines homeowners for not sorting their garbage. And Massachusetts has implemented a food waste ban for certain institutions, with a handful of other states following suit.

As for what Congress might be able to help with, Vilsack says it’s mulling legislation that would increase tax deductions for farmers and other big wasters who donate food to the needy.

Vilsack says the public awareness needed around food waste reminds him of another problem our nation tackled back in the 1960s and 1970s: litter.

There was a time when people rolled down their windows and tossed trash on to highways. “It was quite common when I was a kid,” Vilsack says.

But now, this is not culturally acceptable. That’s because there was a massive public education campaign. School kids were told to tell their parents to stop littering. And, Vilsack says, it was successful.

Now, he says, the goal is to “create a generation of Americans that are sensitive to food waste.”

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The Silverbow Bakery in downtown Juneau is closing. For 18 years, the eatery has been a popular gathering spot for locals and visitors. It’s known for its cookies, soups and sandwiches and, of course, its bagels.

Nicky Love, 30, is a longtime Silverbow Bakery customer. She’s been coming here for most of her life.

“Silverbow is definitely something I think of when I’ve been away and think about home,” Love said.

You can find Love at Silverbow two to three times a week. On this day, she’s seated at a corner table, typing on a tablet. Several others in the dining area are doing the same.

“I’ve been a fan of the breakfast bagel with sausage and egg and cheese and it’s huge and messy and filling. I think I’ve had that almost every time I come here,” Love said.

Love has memories of getting lunch here as a high schooler. As an adult, “I can come here with my kids now and they have somewhere fun to play. It’s kid-friendly environment.”

Love considers Silverbow an integral part of Juneau’s fabric. She’s in shock that it’s closing.

“It’s taken a minute to sink in. I’m going to be really sad to see it go,” Love said.

Silverbow owner and operator Jill Ramiel says she’s heard similar sentiments from other customers.

“It has been fantastic how many people have come out and been emotionally distraught about it. And I was like, ‘Wow, I had no idea that bagels had such an impact on people.’ Or people say, ‘My kids grew up here,’ and then I say, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s been way too long. I’ve been doing this too long,'” Ramiel said.

Ramiel is originally from New York and went to school in Seattle to study architecture. She worked in Juneau the summer of 1996. She says Juneau was missing a place to grab a quick lunch.

“And a bagel place was what I grew up with. You eat bagels every day after school. It seemed like the most normal thing to me. I didn’t realize it wasn’t the most normal thing for everyone in Juneau at that time,” Ramiel said.

Ramiel bought a historic building on Second Street and renovated it. The bakery opened in June 1997.

Over the years, the Silverbow has hosted art exhibits, Alaska Folk Fest singers, movie showings and World Cup events. Ramiel and her husband Ken Alper also operate the attached Silverbow Inn.

“We still own this building and we still live above it and we’re still raising three kids in this community and we still run an 11-room hotel, so we have no plans to leave,” Ramiel said.

Ramiel is putting her energy into another business venture, Juneau Legacy Properties. She and her business partners want to transform a historic Juneau building, like she did.

“When I look back, that’s really what I liked the most was taking something that maybe is dilapidated or maybe it’s underutilized and making it fresher and newer and having new energy put into it,” Ramiel said. “And so we’ve been looking for a building to buy and I would love to add more hotel rooms, or apartments and residences. There’s a lot of options.”

Ramiel is going to miss being a part of people’s everyday lives. But she won’t miss the long, endless hours.

“Because our operation functions 24 hours a day, my bakers work all night long and things go wrong all the time. So I’m looking forward to one solid night of sleep,” Ramiel said.

While the Silverbow Bakery is closing, what it’s most known for isn’t going away. The business taking over promises to carry on the bagel tradition.

There’s a lot of evidence that the meals school cafeterias are serving have gotten healthier since new federal nutrition standards were rolled out.

For instance, a new analysis from the CDC finds that, since the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, there’s been a significant increase in the number of schools serving two or more vegetables and whole grain-rich foods each day. And another study shows kids are tossing less food away.

But some school districts say there’s an unintended consequence of the reform: fewer students are buying lunch.

The dip in participation in the National School Lunch Program has been “driven primarily by a decline of 1.6 million students eating school lunch who pay full price for meals,” a GAO report concluded last year.

At the same time, there’s been an increase in the number of “students eating school lunch who receive free meals,” the GAO found.

In other words, healthier school lunches are reaching more needy kids — but more kids who could afford to pay full price seem to be brown-bagging it instead.

Now, it isn’t always the case — as this published study shows — that the lunches parents pack are as healthy as what’s served at school. But packed lunches may be more appealing to some kids compared with what’s being served at school.

As school cafeterias have cut back on salt, limited their selections of a la carte snacks, and mandated more fruits and vegetables, some school food administrators say it’s tougher to keep paying students in the lunch line.

“We’ve had a financial loss each of the last three years in the St. Paul school district” in Minnesota, says Jean Ronnei, who oversees nutrition services for the district and is currently serving as the president of the national School Nutrition Association.

“When we lose participation and the food costs and labor costs rise, at some point, the financial picture is gloomy,” says Ronnei. And in some cases, when schools lose money in their cafeteria programs, “they have to dip into general funds, [which] is what supports classrooms,” Ronnei adds.

Ronnei says her district is not alone. A recent survey by the School Nutrition Association found that 58 percent of the responding school districts reported a decline in participation in their lunch programs. And more than 90 percent of the respondents say “decreased student acceptance of meals” is a factor in the dip.

In an effort to boost participation and attract more kids back to the cafeteria line, the School Nutrition Association is lobbying Congress to relax some of the nutrition standards. And some lawmakers are supportive.

“We’d love to see changes with sodium and whole grain [rules],” says Ronnei.

Congress is set to begin the process of reauthorizing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 later this month. The SNA is also asking lawmakers to drop the mandate that requires students to take a fruit or vegetable as part of a meal.

“The requirement that students must take 1/2 cup [of fruit or vegetable] with every single breakfast and lunch has increased waste and costs, leaving schools with less funding to invest in more expensive, appealing choices,” the SNA position paper states.

And another issue: Some schools say they’re losing revenue due to changes in the rules that limit sales of snacks and a la carte items.

“There are a number of items that we can no longer sell a la carte,” Siri Perlman of the San Dieguito Union High School District in Encinitas, Calif., tells The Salt.

“For instance, the hummus pack [we used to offer] doesn’t qualify as an a la carte item, because the percentage of fat is too high,” Perlman says. And she says some of her students’ favorite items are no longer compliant with the regulations.

“We also had a really, popular panini option that the kids liked,” Perlman says. It was served on sourdough bread and toasted fresh for them. But now it’s served on a smaller whole-grain bread to meet the standards.

“They don’t really like [it] and they don’t perceive it as having the same value because it’s smaller,” Perlman says. As a result? Some kids don’t buy.

She says since the standards took effect, “we’ve experienced a 10 percent drop in revenue, so we’ve been operating at a loss.”

And some high school cafeterias do have outside competition, she says: “In the demographic that we have, the students have money and [some] also have cars to get off campus.”

She says she sees kids come back from lunch with Starbucks cups and snacks from 7-Eleven and other fast-food joints. Some “students walk down the street to ice cream shops or a neighboring In-N-Out Burger,” Perlman says.

An estimated 25 percent of high schools allow students to leave campus at lunchtime. On the other side of the country from Perlman, for example, at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Md., students often walk to a nearby Chipotle and pizza shop. (This trend started before the nutrition rules went into effect.)

Despite the drop in participation, supporters of the school nutrition standards say it would be a mistake to relax the rules.

“It would be easy to get higher participation by serving up junkier foods – but that would undercut the goal of this nutrition program,” says Margo Wootan of the CSPI.

The Obama administration has fought back against the idea that the stricter standards are the cause of the dip in participation. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack — who oversees the school lunch and breakfast programs — says the decline started before the new rules took effect.

“This is not the time to take a step back, this is a time to double down,” Vilsack told us.

Vilsack says the USDA has provided millions of dollars in resources to help states and schools implement the school nutrition standards. And this week, he announced $8 million in grants to help school nutrition professionals better prepare healthy meals.

“I think there are solutions to this” drop in participation, says American Academy of Pediatrics President Sandra Hassink. She points to a mentoring program that matches school food administrators who are struggling with administrators who have been successful in adapting to the new standards.

“So the first line [for school districts looking for help] is to access this technical support,” Hassink says.

Though participation rates are down by 3 or 4 percent in the school lunch program, there are still millions of children eating the healthy meals served at school.

Vilsack says that given the evidence from experts that links too much salt to high blood pressure, and too many calories to obesity, the stricter standards need to stay in place.

“This is what we need to do for the benefit of our children,” Vilsack says.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Read Original Article – Published SEPTEMBER 08, 2015 5:15 AM ET

Class Divide: Are More Affluent Kids Opting Out Of School Lunch?

There have been 10 confirmed cases of salmonella infection from Limited Edition brand pole cucumbers, the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services reported Friday.

Fresh Produce, a company based in San Diego initiated a voluntary recall. The cucumbers, packed by Rancho Don Juanito in Mexico, may still be for sale throughout the state.

Symptoms from salmonella poisoning can include diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps. Health care providers should call the Alaska Section of Epidemiology at 907-269-8000 or 800-478-0084 after hours to report suspected cases.