FoodBackwards: The DooF Glob (blog)

The New York Times today posted an article on foodborne.

The main idea: be careful

Apparently, it doesn’t seem to matter whether the food you eat came from a long chained manufacturing process or was locally grown, there’s always a danger of it containing foodborne pathogens.

Some of the incidents mentioned are pretty scary.

In the end, I guess the point is there’s always a risk of foodborne illnesses. As consumers, we need to be aware of and practice proper food handling once the products come into our possession.

Check out the article

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There’s a great write-up on the various composting programs run by Bay Area waste management companies in today’s Chronicle/SFGate.

While we here at DooF have focused mainly on what good food is and where they come from, composting is one natural end of unused food: food wastes and scraps such as leftover uneaten food, food gone bad, food trimmings from meal preparation, etc. (not to also mention yard and garden trimmings, leaves, clippings, etc.)

By making a concerted effort, such food scraps and biomatter are put into their natural decomposition process at a sped up rate, resulting in large quantities of high quality humus that is used to enrich the soils of local growers.

One little tidbit that I did not know is that good, rich soil (enriched by humus) retains carbon dioxide, the global warming gas.

Anyhow, you can see how a circle is formed: local farms provide good, nutritious organic fruits and produce, and the resulting scraps go back into making compost that wind up in local farms.

So, if you’re in the Bay Area, do your part, and make the (small) effort to put your food scraps in the provided compost bins. If you don’t live in an area with a community-wide composting program, consider home composting. Check with your local waste management service for more information. Below are some resources for your area:

• www.sfrecycling.com - San Francisco
• www.stopwaste.org - Alameda County
• www.reducewaste.org - Santa Clara County
• www.recycleworks.org - San Mateo County
• www.recyclenow.org - Sonoma County
• www.wastediversion.org - Contra Costa County
• www.naparecycling.com - Napa County

Sounds like a great topic for an episode of DooF, don’t you think?

Check out the article here.

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UC Berkeley Study

Late last week, an article came out discussing a UC Berkeley study that links fast food proximity to obesity: how restaurants like McDonald’s being close to high schools contribute to obesity levels of ninth graders (high school freshman).

Interestingly, the major point seems to be that such fast food joints need to be one-tenth of a mile to the school, meaning — at least here in San Francisco — within one block. If the restaurants are a quarter to one-half mile away from the school, there doesn’t seem to be any correlation.

Further, the study points out that

…while just 7 percent of California’s high schools have a fast food restaurant within a tenth of a mile, 65 percent have one within half a mile. Schools within a tenth of a mile of a fast food restaurant have more Hispanic students, slightly more students eligible for free lunches, lower test scores, tend to be in poorer and urban neighborhoods - and have a higher than average incidence of obesity among their students

What does it mean?

From the article, we can infer that socio-economic class plays a role in determining whether a child will grow up to be obese.

The study seems to suggest that city planners, if they want to help combat obesity, should consider zoning requirements in the areas immediately surrounding schools.

Treating a Symptom

Of course, zoning requirements for fast food restaurants is just a small piece in the overall strategy to combat obesity.

A lot of low-income households have parents who need to work all day, and so children, both young and old, are left unsupervised, exposed to TV’s multitude of advertising on junk and fast foods, and thus most likely uneducated about healthy choices.

Thus, it’s really no surprise to hear that having a fast-food restaurant one block away from school will be a magnet for kids to get a quick “snack” after school, whether it be fries or a full-on “happy” meal. The meals are certainly not healthy, but they are fast, convenient, and cheap.

To really fight obesity, we’re really going to have to attack the issue on many fronts.

In future articles, we’ll take a look at other strategies.

In the meantime, if you wish to see the original article, click here.

There is also a pdf of the UCB study here.

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DooF is not the only outfit with the mission to help kids grow up healthy.

Here’s a really clever take on what may be our most popular cultural icon in cinema:

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I want to express my gratitude for your generous support at our second annual DooF-a-Palooza event at Google. I had wanted to post this much sooner. It’s nearly four weeks since the event and we’ve been absolutely overwhelmed in our preparations for our public television launch next year. We also took some time to put together a digest of the event in photos, quotes and basic stats.

I am especially appreciative of the time, money, effort and materials contributed by our sponsors and Sourcerers in order to participate. Their passion and enthusiasm made the event the success it was, and it was clear that the kids and families who attended the event got a chance to experience something very wonderful and unique.

The event exceeded our wildest expectations, allowing kids and their families an intimate understanding of food through the fabulous range of hands-on activities that were the fruit of our collaborations. Looking out over the crowd, it was clear that they were completely immersed in what they were doing, and stayed that way the entire day.

From the Google side, the event was considered to be a great success! The Google Culinary team contributed over 150 volunteers to the event and very much enjoyed getting to work with all of you. We were especially appreciative of the “model sourcerers” who contributed both their time and their products to the event. A special shout out goes to:

• Barefoot Coffee Roasters
• Bassian Farms
• Charles Chocolates
• Clean Fish
• Earl’s Organic Produce
• Greenleaf Produce
• Interactive Parenting Media
• Kaiser Permanente
• King of Mushrooms
• Monterey Bay Aquarium
• Monterey Fish
• Nick Sciabica & Sons
• Obentec
• Planet Organics
• Second Harvest Food Bank
• 4H Youth Development
• Straus Family Creamery
• Sunset Scavenger

We’d also like to thank ALL of you for contributing the time and effort that it took to make our dream-event a reality. Here at Google, the culinary team is used to feeding large crowds for all sorts of reasons - from everyday lunch to large-scale celebrations and fundraisers.

This event was different, though.

At DooF-a-Palooza, the chefs were not simply the help, but the main attraction, along with all of you!

That made the work all that more enjoyable and the end result was tangibly magical.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!

We hope to see you all again at the next DooF-a-Palooza.

Mike, Mirit and the entire DooF-a-Palooza Team

(Download the DooF-a-Palooza 2008 Digest)

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