Nothing but heart to back me up!

This is one of those posts that's been brewing for months. Realized that in the rantings to come I have nothing but heart to back me up and a few little tidbits from the news and articles along the way but that's not going to stop the rant.

So we hear about this growing issue of obesity in America. Fat is killing us at younger and younger ages every year. And it seems to be a hot topic in the news from time to time kind of like "going green" is the new in thing. But I recently (like today) read a brief article in the AU Alumni magazine about a program that students from the College of Arts and Sciences started at a local middle school. In the first paragraph, I quote...

"...the sixth graders at Kelly Miller Middle School in Washington, DC's Ward 7 told a story familiar to those who study children living in poverty: poor breakfasts, locked-down schools with recess reduced to an indoor break, grocery stores that are 'always empty, with no strawberries or bananas."

The article goes on to say that when they started the Community Voices for Health: Kids Take Action project, most of the kids at the schools didn't know anything was wrong. The article features letters from the kids to President Obama and Nancy Pelosi, pleading for help.

One child says, "I am writing you to persuade you to help us out with our nutrition problems we have at Kelly Miller MS. We have pizzas, cheeseburgers, hamburgers and chicken patties like every day. We have kids suffering from obesity. We would be more than honored to have grown food from a garden at our school. Would you help us?"

That young girl is 11 or 12! One of the foundational beliefs of the late great Martin Luther King, Jr. was that problems we face in our country are not always racist at the core but rather economical. Poverty is the core of this issue - I guess it just so happens in most areas that minorities seem to be the majority living in poverty. Here's a true story that completely pissed me off. As many of you know, money has been an issue for us as of late. We're trying to rebuild our cash/savings, the only thing that will set you free according to my dad. In an effort to start saving money on our food bills, I decided to shop at Shopper's Food Warehouse, a chain notorious for lower prices than some of my favorite grocery stores.

Shopper's is also frequented by families of lower income. I saw something I've never seen before. They actually cleared out an entire cooler in the produce section and filled it with paper goods, candy and other sugary items! I struggled to find the produce that was on my list and surely didn't find the organic items I typically buy like peppers, tomatoes, etc.

Next I went to the meat section. There I was about to pick up some ground turkey - a staple in our household. I actually saw meat on the shelf that was turning GREEN! Many of the other items I looked at like fish and chicken breasts were either previously frozen or frozen - not fresh. It just got worse from there. Many items that I buy low or no fat versions of didn't exist. Organic brown eggs - nope not there. Low fat shredded cheese was 2/3 higher in cost than the regular shredded cheese. Sugar free pudding cups - not there. Generally I would have been personally put out like how inconvenient for me because now I have to go to another store to get the items on my list but not this time....

I was PISSED. I was angry that families of lower incomes didn't even have the option to make healthier choices. That's why this is an issue of economics. Let's go to the extreme. Let's go to the mecca of healthy food - Whole Foods. Let's get real - there is a reason its nickname is Whole Paycheck! If you fill up a cart there you are literally signing over an average paycheck of someone working and making an honest living here in this country. I spend a lot of time in West Baltimore, a relatively low income area of the city. The grocery stores there are experts in frozen foods, quick pick-up meals, pre-packaged snacks, sodas, cakes and cookies. But I will say this, you can still talk to a real butcher in Baltimore. Items that are super foods and just happen to be common items on a soul food menu, like collard greens, kale and sweet potatoes are plentiful. You can also go to a real fish market and drive by many street vendors pushing their fresh from the farm wares. So why is obesity a growing problem in these areas. Education perhaps? And my friends, education is tied to what? Economics.

Ever since my Shopper's experience I've been resourceful in finding the healthy products I need at affordable prices and let me tell you my frontrunners:

Trader Joe's
See no where else in the DC Metro Area can I fill up my cart with most of the items on my produce list, wild caught smoked Alaskan salmon, some of my favorite Trader Joe treats like honey sesame sticks and their all natural breaded chicken fingers (my son's fave) and 8 bottles of wine (ok the wine is probably a blog topic all of its own but anyway) for under $80! Check out a location near you! http://www.traderjoes.com/stores/index.asp

Wal-Mart
Yes believe it or not Wal-Mart is excellent for my shopping list! There's a lot of junk in those food aisles don't get me wrong. But when you spend some time and search, there are a lot of great items that are $1 to $4 less than they are at the Safeway's and even Giant's of the world. For instance, last week I filled up my cart with three boxes of different kinds of Cheerios, a couple of boxes of my favorite 100 Calorie Packs, two boxes of Fiber One granola bars, two packs of Atkins Shakes, three boxes of Atkins bars, cheese slices, strawberry perserves, whole wheat bread, brown rice lasagna and macaroni pasta and two DVDs for my son for just over $100. AND guess what else? My hats off to Wal-Mart because for the first time ever I noticed they set up a FRESH PRODUCE SECTION that was nearly empty on a Saturday afternoon. I also found an entire gluten free section. I'm so proud of Wal-Mart because it has the corporate muscle and is truly setting a great example for discount stores everywhere to be more responsible in terms of the healthy options available to its target demographic: lower income families. It truly is living by its marketing mantra: LIVE BETTER FOR LESS!

Giant
Simply because Giant has a great produce selection. It's organic brand, Nature's Promise, can be trusted for fantastic organic options at affordable prices. They have an informative and easy to use Living Well section on their web site http://www.giantfood.com/living_well/index.htm and they take anyone's coupons including Safeway and have several double coupon days. The service couldn't be any better and many of them have Starbuck's because isn't grocery shopping so much more enjoyable with a Light Mocha Frappacino!?!

Those are my top three but I have to give shout outs to Harris Teeter for a truly enjoyable shopping experience for me and the kids (balloons, lots of samples, great "car" carts) and then they do this whole really cool thing in the produce section - interested in decreasing your environmental foot print? Harris Teeter clearly labels items from local growers. I frequently choose items from local growers and have been happy every time. HT also has great healthy options and a wide variety of fantastic HT branded items. Their fish section is the best next to Whole Paycheck I mean Whole Foods!

And I must give a HUGE SHOUT OUT to Montgomery County, MD! Did you know that MoCo now requires all restaurants (of a certain national size - mostly chains) to outwardly POST calorie counts for items on the menu. OMG this is the best thing since sliced bread really!!!! I've been counting calories for quite a while now so I'm kind of like a calorie count dictionary of all the food joints around my office in MoCo but man its truly funny to go into Starbucks and see Apple Fritters still there by the end of the day while in VA they're all gone by 9am!!! AND to go into Potbelly and see that they have now paired down their monstrous 500+ calorie dream oatmeal, chocolate chunk cookies to a two-pack of mini cookies because the sticker on that pack says "UNDER 200 CALORIES!" Someone in MoCo figured out that fat is killing us. CAN NOT WAIT for this to spread. I've literally witnessed people change their minds in line when they compare calories - see it's hard for smart people to justify an entire day's worth of calories in the Cookie Ice Cream sandwich at PotBelly - no seriously it's over 1300 calories!!! When for a person who is not obese is generally on a 1200 calorie a day recommended diet!!! Yeah - pick the TKY, baked chips, a diet coke and MAYBE the mini cookies to split with someone! LOL

Funny story - one of my work BFFs is someone who is tall and in my opinion has a body that defines body envy - she signed onto Lance Armstrong's new LIVE STRONG program - found out that she has a calorie budget of 1278 per day - the first day she realized her breakfast took up 2/3 the daily budget. I think she's still grumpy about it!!! LOL

So some people don't know. Some people don't care. Some people might care if they know. Some people think they can't afford to live a healthy lifestyle. Some people, like little people, like the kids at that local middle school, aren't given the tools they need whether that's education, gardens at their schools and at their homes, more farmer's markets, just a damn banana in their local store's produce section... so what are we going to do? Hats off to the AU program! I think I will make it a point to focus my volunteer hours on helping kids and families learn about healthy living and show them how to find the resources. You know like teach them how to fish not just lead them to the water or give them the fish.

Where there is passion and where there is heart there is a way! Food for thought on a Saturday.

Love,
Nik