At least 1 million bats in the past three years have been wiped out by a puzzling, widespread disease dubbed “white-nose syndrome” in what preeminent US scientists are calling the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in human history. If it isn’t slowed or stopped, they believe bats will continue disappearing from the landscape in huge numbers and that entire species could become extinct within a decade.

This would have drastic repercussions for the rest of us. As Tim King, a conservation geneticist with the US Geological Survey in West Virginia, told Chase, “We’re at the vanguard of an environmental catastrophe.”

Why? Because bats are insect-eating machines, capable of consuming nearly half their body weight in insects each night. Take them out of the equation and we’ll have an explosion of pests, including disease- carrying mosquitoes and agriculturally destructive beetles, moths, leafhoppers and other foes of the farmers, who may be forced to use more pesticides as a result.

Bat colonies in Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont have averaged a shocking 94.5 percent decline since white-nose syndrome was first detected there in 2006, plummeting from 48,626 bats to 2,695. The disease’s spread “has been terrifyingly swift,” according to the Globe, starting in the Northeast and South Atlantic states and now infiltrating “caves and mines in Kentucky and Tennessee, and possibly North Carolina and Ohio.”

But, unlike colony collapse disorder, the highly publicized disease that’s destroying our bees, white nose syndrome isn’t getting much attention. As Susi von Oettingen, a biologist who works for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, noted, “They’re not charismatic. . . . We don’t make money off of them. They are not cute and cuddly.” Let’s face it; even baby bats aren’t all that adorable.

Julia Whitney Barnes, a New York artist, did her best to glamorize these critical but creepy critters last year by hanging over 30 life-sized, gold-plated ceramic bats from a willow tree on Brooklyn’s waterfront. The installation, entitled “Gilded Phytophillic Bats,” was intended “to raise awareness of the mysterious environmental problem causing widespread death in many bat colonies,” Barnes explains on her website. By gold-plating the bats, Barnes hoped to express “the precious role bats play in our ecosystem” and counteract the perception of bats as being “dangerous or grotesque.”

Bats have long been feared and misunderstood in our culture, with their fang-filled faces and freaky flying ways. But a future without them is the real horror, and it could happen if we don’t give our scientists and agencies sufficient resources to combat white nose syndrome. Efforts to solve the mystery so far have been hampered by a lack of funding and coordination, as Chase reported.

This past June, US House subcommittees held hearings on the mysterious deaths, and $3.3 million has been allocated so far to study the disease. An additional $1.9 million for research on white nose syndrome was earmarked in a recent appropriations bill for this fiscal year.

But these amounts fall far short of what scientists and wildlife managers need to tackle the problem. In a budget request prepared for Congress, Thomas Kunz, a bat biologist from Boston University, estimated that $17.6 million is needed this fiscal year, and $38.3 million more over the next four years, to conduct essential research, surveillance, and management.

Scott Darling, a Vermont Fish and Wildlife biologist, told Chase:

This is more than just about bats dying. It’s about a key player in our ecosystem disappearing before our eyes. It may be a model for the severity of diseases that our native species are going to be confronted with.

If it’s frogs yesterday, bees two days ago, bats today, and something else in two more years, how long before this system falls apart on us?

Chuck Jolley, writing for the Cattle News Network, even questions Foer’s very identity, describing him as “supposedly a critically acclaimed author of several books of fiction.”

Jolley, a freelance writer based in Kansas City, writes Foer off as part of a “chattering cabal of rarely-been-west-of-the-Hudson River or east-of-the-Cal-Berkeley- campus pseudo-experts who travel on the same midnight train to an eco- purgatory where all food is suspect, meat and poultry is particularly deadly, and the evils of factory farming will force us into an unsustainable, doomed lifestyle that will eventually kill our planet.”

Slice through the snark and Jolley is spot on, describing the dilemmas posed by industrial agriculture in a nutty nutshell.

Meanwhile, his fellow factory farm defender Gary Truitt over at Hoosier Ag Today bemoans the fact that Foer’s book is “being hyped on CNN and quoted widely in liberal newspapers.” Truitt takes issue with Foer’s claim that industrial ag’s excessive reliance on antibiotics–an inevitable by-product of the unhealthy living conditions that are the norm in factory farm operations–is contributing to the rise of drug-resistant pathogens:

The arguments in this book are the same old tired accusations that have been made for decades: modern livestock practices are bad, farmers overmedicate their animals, and this will lead to bacteria that are resistant to drugs. These “super bugs” will then infect humans and kill us all. You would think a fiction writer could come up with something more original.

Unfortunately for Jolley, Truitt, and their pro-CAFO colleagues, the science is on Foer’s side (PDF). There is a very real debate about the role of factory farms in the current swine flu outbreak, as the New York Times noted on Monday. Tom Philpott of Grist has been doing some terrific reporting on the apparent link for months. Now, thanks to Foer’s mention of the topic on the Ellen Degeneres Show last week, the issue may finally get some play in the MSM.

The industrial meat industry accuses Foer of failing to do his homework. In fact, Foer sent multiple letters to Tyson Foods, “the world’s largest processor and marketer of beef, chicken, and pork,” as Foer notes, politely asking if he could pay a visit to some of their farms. Tyson never responded to any of Foer’s seven requests.

Perhaps this is simply the literary equivalent of Michael Moore showing up in the lobbies of corporate headquarters, doing his patented song and dance with the security guards, pestering them to let him go upstairs and have a friendly chat with The Powers That Be before they throw him and his camera crew out.

In any case, Foer’s approach proved to be a similar dead-end. To see for himself just what goes on inside a factory farm, Foer was obliged to seek the help of an animal welfare activist who snuck him into a massive poultry operation in the dead of night. Given the revolting conditions that Foer witnessed himself, and the accounts he provides from others with firsthand exposure to industrialized meat production, you can hardly blame Tyson for ignoring Foer’s requests.

As Foer points out, the most appalling aspect of the industrial meat industry is not the more sensational, flagrant animal abuse that’s been captured on undercover videos, but rather the chronic, systematic disregard for the fact that animals are living, breathing creatures not intended to be stacked like pallets or made to steep in their own waste on concrete.

Industrial agriculture has done its best to bend these poor creatures to its will, modifying them to better tolerate this style of farming.
In so doing, it has created genetic freaks like pigs who can’t survive outdoors and turkeys whose oversized breasts prevent natural reproduction. Can anything truly healthy come from a system where disease, deformity and environmental degradation are the default?

Foer’s intent with Eating Animals is clearly to start a conversation about whether it’s necessary, or justifiable, or ethical, to eat animals. He writes favorably of the farmers who rely on more humane and ecologically sound methods of meat production but concludes that, although these operations are infinitely preferable to their factory farm counterparts, some suffering is inevitably inflicted on the animals.

And the fact remains that this kind of pasture-based farming comprises such a tiny fraction of meat production in the U.S. that it’s not a viable alternative for most folks. As Foer writes:

We shouldn’t kid ourselves about the number of ethical eating options available to most of us. There isn’t enough nonfactory chicken produced in America to feed the population of Staten Island and not enough nonfactory pork to serve New York City, let alone the country. Ethical meat is a promissory note, not a reality. Any ethical- meat advocate who is serious is going to be eating a lot of vegetarian fare.

Eating Animals makes a compelling case for eliminating all factory farmed animal products from your diet:

We know, at least, that this decision will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve public health, and help eliminate the most systemic animal abuse in world history.

Ellen Degeneres noted that some folks will surely feel overwhelmed by the suggestion that they should abandon the cheap meat, dairy, eggs and poultry they count on to feed their families.

“How do we take one little step?” she asked Foer.

He answered:

“There is nothing more powerful than an informed conversation, so get informed..talk, talk, talk. Talk about it with your family, don’t take these things for granted, don’t let corporations lie to you, act on your values.”

I sometimes worry about being a “carnibore,” as the Ethicurean’s ever witty Bonnie Powell describes those of us who are only too happy to hector our friends on the merits of pastured meats versus factory farmed.

On the other hand, a friend had us over for lunch the other day and served a roasted chicken from a local farm. Another couple invited us for dinner and made a stew with beef and lamb from a butcher who sells only local, grass-fed meats. These are all friends who formerly bought their meats at the supermarket; their choices were a direct result of the many conversations we’ve had about this subject.

This is how a sea change starts, with a few tiny ripples.

Of course, hardly anybody ever does this; in fact, we spend an absurd amount of time agonizing over what to order, given how quickly today’s soup du jour is destined to become tomorrow’s poop du jour.

And yet, though we’re willing to engage in a lengthy debate on the respective merits of a Reuben versus a BLT, many of us won’t give equal time to choices that have reverberations for years or even decades.

Whom you choose to represent you–or what legislation you decide to support–can be a matter of life or death, literally. For example, thousands of Americans die needlessly each year from preventable food-borne illnesses because too many of the elected officials we’ve entrusted to represent our interests have opted to safeguard corporate coffers rather than protect citizens.

We all have to go, sometime, but who wants to die from eating E. coli- tainted ground beef, as two more unfortunate folks apparently have in the latest outbreak, which will likely cause more deaths before it runs its course? And how many people will be killed by the swine flu epidemic because of government policies that failed to protect us?

I’m not talking about the vaccine shortage. Clearly, that doesn’t help, but what’s equally unhelpful is our failure to provide paid sick days for every worker. Do you really want the guy who assembles your sandwich or the day care worker who diapers your little darling to show up for work even when they’re carrying a contagious disease?

That scenario is all too common, as Tuesday’s New York Times reports:

…workers who deal with the public, like waiters and child care employees, are jeopardizing others by reporting to work sick because they do not get paid for days they miss for illness.

Our government agencies and employers advise us to stay home when we’ve got a contagious illness. But until Congress enacts legislation to guarantee paid sick days to every worker, millions of wheezing, sniffling workers will drag themselves into the workplace despite feeling awful because the prospect of losing a day’s wages makes them feel even worse.

Legislators have addressed this problem in San Francisco and Washington, but, as the Times notes, “similar measures face obstacles in Congress.” Still, despite pressure from powerful business groups to squelch such measures, more than 100 representatives have signed on to sponsor a bill “that would require employers with 15 or more workers to provide seven paid sick days a year.” Here in New York City a similar initiative has picked up steam and looks poised to pass.

And that’s just one example of the kind of legislation that has an impact on how well equipped we are to handle potentially fatal health threats. What about taking steps to prevent contagious diseases like the H1N1 virus from occurring in the first place?

You’d think our health agencies would be hard at work attempting to determine the source of the swine flu outbreak. But as muckraker extraordinaire Tom Philpott noted over at Grist recently, our government has shown shockingly little interest in tracing the origins of the H1N1 virus, which, Philpott notes, is suspected of being linked to industrial hog operations.

Acclaimed author Jonathan Safran Foer, whose latest book, Eating Animals, is a measured but merciless indictment of industrialized meat production, makes the connection unequivocally. As Foer wrote in an op-ed for CNN last week:

Today, the factory farm-pandemic link couldn’t be more lucid. The primary ancestor of the recent H1N1 swine flu outbreak originated at a hog factory farm in America’s most hog-factory-rich state, North Carolina, and then quickly spread throughout the Americas.

It was in these factory farms that scientists saw, for the first time, viruses that combined genetic material from bird, pig and human viruses. Scientists at Columbia and Princeton Universities have actually been able to trace six of the eight genetic segments of the most feared virus in the world directly to U.S. factory farms.

Foer notes that the rampant use of antibiotics in factory farming is widely thought to be a significant factor in the creation of drug- resistant pathogens:

Study after study has shown that antimicrobial resistance follows quickly on the heels of the introduction of new drugs on factory farms….

Today, institutions as diverse as the American Medical Association; the Centers for Disease Control; the Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences; and the World Health Organization have linked nontherapeutic antibiotic use on factory farms with increased antimicrobial resistance and called for a ban.

It hasn’t happened, though, because, as Foer points out, “The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.”

Our state health departments have been doing an abysmal job when it comes to tackling food-borne illnesses, as Reuters recently reported. How can we demand better from our government officials?

On Election Day, we have the power to support the politicians and policies that are dedicated to protecting us from potentially lethal business practices. Today in Ohio, for example, voters have the opportunity to weigh in on Issue 2, a measure intended to protect the industrialized farming methods that Foer, Philpott, and a wide range of experts have cited as contributing to the disease outbreaks that are becoming all too common.

So, before you decide to blow off that trip to your local polling booth, consider the possibility that you may well be passing up a once-a-year opportunity to support legislation that actually has an impact on your life and the lives of those around you.

Think of your ballot as a list of menu options. Would you like your burger with, or without, deadly pathogens?

Those are just two of the diabolically delicious recipes I found in Ghoulish Goodies by Sharon Bowers, a clever collection of Halloween-themed concoctions. Some are sweet, others savory, but they all sound eerily tasty. I spotted this book at a friend’s house last weekend and essentially stole it after leafing through its pages and finding such ingenious Halloween snacks as Cheddar Eyeballs, Candy Corn Pizza, and Bandaged Fingers, to name just a few of the more than seventy inventive recipes featured in Ghoulish Goodies. The recipes have simple ingredients, easy-to-follow instructions and plenty of photos to inspire you.

The eyeballs, for example, are just a round, bite-sized ball of dough with a pimento-stuffed green olive plunked in the center to glare back at you. The bits of cheddar cheese baked into the dough leave little orange streaks that give the eyeballs a bloodshot quality.

Other perfect finger foods, literally, are the Bandaged Fingers, a twisted take on the eternally popular Pig in A Blanket, featuring cocktail wieners wrapped in flour tortilla strips, with just the tip of the wiener jutting out. A dollop of ketchup on the tip serves as a bloody-looking fingernail.

This hors d’oeuvre is horrifying enough without the added atrocity of factory farmed meats, of course. A vegan version with tofu dogs is one alternative. I’ve yet to find a source for cocktail wieners from pastured livestock, so I’m going to go with my favorite local grass- fed hot dogs instead of, say, Costco cocktail wieners. I’ll cut them in half, which will make for a rather long–and presumably even creepier–finger.

The recipe for Ladies’ Fingers offers a sweet variation on the finger concept, using a shortbread-style cookie dough embellished with reddened sliced almonds for fingernails–a bit of beet juice would be the ideal liquid for coloring if, like me, you find food dyes truly too scary!

My favorite savory offering in Ghoulish Goodies is the Candy Corn Pizza, which, thankfully, does not require any real candy corn. You need only four ingredients to create it: a pizza dough (ready-made is fine); tomato sauce; shredded mozzerella; and shredded cheddar. You apply the tomato sauce at the edge, then a ring of orange cheese, and then white cheese in the center. Slice it into triangles, and voila! You’ve got all of candy corn’s charm and none of its cloying sweetness.

Like every other holiday, Halloween has fallen victim to rampant commercialization in recent decades. I’m not sure what’s more appalling: the orgy of chocolate candy made from cocoa beans harvested by enslaved children; the avalanche of cheap plastic pumpkin baskets and other landfill-ready Halloween accessories; or the obnoxious and offensive costumes–the most egregious, this year, being the Illegal Alien costume which Target had the bad taste to stock before outrage compelled it to remove the offending item from its shelves.

Ghoulish Goodies gives you some great DIY ways to reclaim Halloween from all the retail horror. So skip the mass-produced monstrosities and bake your way to a less heinous–but cheerily eerie–holiday!

Once his family switched to eating only foods produced within a 250-mile radius of New York City, the farmer’s market became a regular ritual. Such American dietary staples as pizza, take-out Chinese–even peanut butter sandwiches–became off-limits, either because they contained non-local ingredients or generated trash.

The No Impact Project week’s in full swing now, and those of us who’ve signed on are taking a closer look at our carbon “foodprint” today. So I asked Colin to tell us a bit more about his year-long adventure in ecological eating:

KT: Did you know when you embarked on the No Impact experiment that our eating habits play such a crucial role when it comes to climate change?

CB: I knew that the centralized, agri-giants that produced food put good nutrition and people’s health very low down on their priority list. After all, they don’t profit from our eating healthily; they profit from our eating more. So the environmental and human degradation caused by centralized food production and distribution came as no real surprise to me.

And the problem is not just climate change. There is a 75 square mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the amount of chemical fertilizer washed off American farmland and down the Mississippi.

I like eating locally because the farmers are not anonymous corporations. I can look them in the eye and become friendly with them. I can choose to trust them to make sure that they care for our land, water and climate. And I trust them to provide food I can trust for my little girl too.

KT: You’ve emphasized in your public appearances–on Good Morning America, for example–that reducing our meat consumption is one of the most significant ways that we can curb our carbon “foodprint.” Were you a vegetarian prior to beginning the project? What inspired you to make the shift to a plant-based diet?

CB: Did you ever see the Humane Society video showing the cruelty to the cows in confined animal feeding operations (CAFO)? I’m talking about the video that sparked the largest beef recall in US history.

Becoming aware of the cruelty and the climate impact of the beef industry has done me in forever. I used to have occasional bacon and pepperoni slips, but no more.

Thinking again of the cruelty I witnessed. I can’t help but believe that somehow the energy of that cruelty and unhappiness enters the animal and that energy might get passed on to whoever eats it. I don’t want my little girl to be the recipient of that energy.

For those who choose not to give up meat though, I know many local farmers who treat their animals kindly. When cattle are raised well in pasture, their manure fertilizes the land, causing more plants to grow and more carbon to be sequestered in the land. This is a way better choice, in my view, than CAFO meat.

KT: You’re also a strong advocate of eating locally and seasonally. Critics of the locavore movement have attempted to dismiss it as a single-minded fixation on “food miles.” But your impetus for eating locally was motivated as much by your desire to stop generating all the garbage that comes with processed convenience foods and take-out. How do you pitch the ecological benefits of a predominantly local diet to skeptics who’ve been swayed by anti-locavore diatribes?

CB: Look at the funding for the research that is used to back up the anti-locavore spin and look where it has been published. Often times, [they are funded and published by] chemical giants. The ones that produce chemicals local farmers don’t use. The ones that have the most to lose if we change our agricultural system.

But the amazing thing about local food is that it is not just good for the environment. It’s better for my family too. The food, itself, is better for us. And Isabella, who sometimes doesn’t eat veggies, will absolutely eat them when she has seen where they have been grown.

Local food allows for trust and community relationships. When I pay a farmer I know for food, my money supports something I care about and people I care for. I can’t say that when I buy from the frozen food section.

KT: You understandably had a craving for various foods that were off-limits for the duration of your project. What did you miss the most? When the year was up, what formerly verboten foods gave you the greatest pleasure?

CB: Pizza and peanut butter.

KT: In your book, you write that the television used to be the center of your life. When your family gave up the big screen TV, the kitchen table took center stage; making meals became the proverbial “quality time” with Michelle and Isabella. And when your project put you in the media’s glare, you found refuge in baking bread.

Now you’re out on book tour and promoting your foundation, which presumably doesn’t leave a lot of time for treks to the farmers’ market, home cooked meals with friends and family, or bread making. As anyone who travels knows, finding fresh, healthy, sustainably grown food on the road can be a challenge (though the Eat Well Guide is working to make it easier all the time!). How are you eating these days, if you don’t mind my asking?

CB: Badly. And this points to an important point. It is not always easy to live and to eat sustainably. That is because our major cultural systems–food production, energy generation, etc.–are not sustainable. We have to find ways to live outside those systems if we want to live sustainably.

This shouldn’t be so. Our systems should be designed to be good for the people and good for the planet. You shouldn’t have to “resist” the temptation to eat from your grocery store when you want to take care of yourself and the planet. Living healthily and sustainably should be as easy as falling off a log.

And that’s why just changing our individual lifestyles is an important part of the equation but not the whole equation. Joining in with others to ask for system change via our city, state and federal governments is also important. To do this, finding community in grassroots environmental organizations is a big help.

And of course, you’re always welcome to join in at NoImpactProject.org, too!

Two cornerstones of American culture collided Monday night on CNN:
Larry King and cheap processed meat. Or should I say colluded? After all, they’ve got a lot in common: both smush together scraps of debatable value and dubious origin and extrude them as suitable fodder for our more credulous compatriots. And both have the potential to poison us, whether by tainting our food supply with pathogens or contaminating our national conversation with lackeys and lobbyists.

The topic of King’s show was the question “Does a healthy diet include meat?” It seemed strangely fitting to have the King of the MSM (mainstream media) explore the industry that gave us another MSM: mechanically separated meat, “a paste-like meat product produced by forcing beef, pork, turkey or chicken bones, with attached edible meat, under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue.”

This method enabled meat processors to minimize waste, use less expensive ingredients and thereby offer us cheaper hot dogs and other processed meat products.

MSM was declared safe for human consumption in 1982. In 2004, the USDA decided that it wasn’t, stating that “mechanically separated beef is considered inedible and is prohibited for use as human food.”

Why the change? Three words: Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, aka BSE or mad cow disease. So, no more MSM in your ballpark frank. Now, you just have to worry about E.Coli in your ground beef, as Michael Moss’s scathing New York Times exposé showed. Or do you?

King posed this question to a panel that included: Patrick Boyle, president and CEO of American Meat Institute; Bill Marler, the nation’s leading foodborne illness attorney; bacon-loving celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain; and Jonathan Safran Foer, the acclaimed novelist who advocates vegetarianism in his soon-to-be published Eating Animals. King also brought on two nutrition professors, one pro-meat, one anti, a food safety advocate who lost her son to an E. Coli-tainted burger, and a mother whose 7 year-old daughter died after visiting her E. Coli-sickened grandpa in the hospital. Who knew that you could contract E. Coli by coming into contact with someone who’s got it?

Anthony Bourdain defended meat eating on the grounds that we’re designed to be carnivores:

Bourdain: …we have eyes in the front of our head. We have fingernails. We have eye, teeth and long legs. We were designed from the get-go, we have evolved, so that we could chase down smaller, stupider creatures, kill them and eat them.

He noted, however, that we are not designed to “eat fecal choliform bacteria”:

Bourdain: I think the standard practices of outfits like Cargill and some of the larger meat processors and grinders in this country are unconscionable and border on the criminal.

Jonathan Safran Foer, who gave us a taste of his upcoming book in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, agreed with Bourdain’s indictment of industrial meat production but took issue with Bourdain’s assertion that it’s natural to eat meat:

Foer: I’m not all that interested in what humans seem designed to eat or what is quote, unquote natural, because the entirety of human progress is defying what’s natural. If we’re so concerned with what was natural, we wouldn’t be in this TV studio right now having this conversation.

The thing that’s really important that Anthony said is that there’s a certain kind of meat, which is produced on factory farms, that is in every single way unconscionable. It’s unconscionable to feed to our children because of the health. It’s unconscionable because it’s the single worst thing we can to do to the environment by a long shot. And it’s unconscionable because of what we’re doing to animals who are raised on factory farms.

What Anthony didn’t say, and I wish he had, is that upwards of 99 percent of the animals that are raised for meat in this country come from factory farms. When we’re talking about meat, when we’re talking about the meat they sell in grocery stores, when we’re talking about the meat we order in restaurants, we are effectively talking about factory farms.

Bourdain conceded that the cheap ground beef that dominates the average American diet is the issue:

Bourdain: My major area of concern is the chopped meat.
You know, supermarket quality fast food quality, pre-chopped meat.
Those practices, if you read the Times article that came out recently on this most recent E. Coli outbreak, it’s truly terrifying. The stuff they’re putting in these burgers would not be recognized by any American as meat…

Patrick Boyle, the American Meat Institute CEO, gave the obligatory industry rebuttal:

Boyle: I think some of the comments have been grossly uninformed about the industry and our products. This industry, the member companies of the American Meat Institute, of which Cargill is one, have invested tens of millions of dollars over the last ten years in research programs to make our products safer….

…And hamburger is compromised of trim from more expensive pieces of meat like tenderloins and roasts. It’s perfectly safe, perfectly wholesome. It’s produced under the continuous inspection of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture.

One other comment if I might, Larry. The whole comment about factory farming, from my perspective, that’s a negative reference to high volume, low cost, efficient meat and poultry processing facilities, that give Americans an abundant variety of safe and wholesome products at a very reasonable price. The lowest price in terms of disposable income spent in any developed country in the world.

Some nutrition professors might argue that a diet dominated by cheap beef and other animal products full of saturated fats is not such a great idea. In fact, King invited one such expert, Cornell University’s Colin Campbell, author of the China Study, to share his view that meat-eating is unnecessary and undesirable:

Dr. Campbell: …a whole foods plant-based diet really has all the nutrients that we actually need at optimum levels of intake.
And what we learned early in my career, that instead of protein, especially animal protein, being a good nutrient, so to speak, and creating good health, what we learned is that we could actually turn on cancer development by simply increasing the level of animal protein intake above the amount of protein that we really needed. We could turn it off by simply taking it away…

…the conclusion was that the closer we get to consuming a whole foods, plant-based diet the healthier we’re going to be on all accounts.

But Dr. Nancy Rodriguez, a professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Connecticut, disputed Campbell’s claims:

Dr. Rodriguez: I believe that when you’re looking at living a long, healthful life, that certainly animal proteins, which are the foundation of life and what we do, can fit in that healthful approach. And some of the recent studies, again, from my lab and others, peer reviewed science, using whole foods that include beef, dairy, eggs in the diet, have shown that there is some benefits to the muscle, without any detriment to cholesterol levels, benefits, perhaps, to Diabetes management and high blood pressure.

That’s right, eating meat, eggs and cheese doesn’t necessarily raise your cholesterol, and may in fact be a useful tool in the management of diabetes and high blood pressure. Huh. That sounded wrong to me, but what do I know? I get my nutritional advice from folks like Marion Nestle and Joan Gussow, whereas Dr. Rodriguez has done all kinds of research that’s been generously funded by such organizations as the National Dairy Council, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and the Egg Nutrition Center.

Dr. Rodriguez warned that we should think twice about reducing our consumption of animal products:

Dr. Rodriguez: …when you make a choice to eliminate those animal products from your diet, it becomes a challenge, particularly for certain vulnerable populations, such as infants and children, to get those nutrients in.

So, if you need reassurance that bacon cheeseburgers are an essential part of a heart-healthy diet, especially for kids, Dr. Rodriguez is your woman. She’s looked into it–with the help of the meat, egg and dairy industries.

Scary stuff, indeed. But the start of the school year creates another frightening dilemma for many parents; how to fill your child’s lunch box with something less horrifying than, say, a Kraft Lunchable?

There are plenty of parents who’d rather send their kids off to school with a more wholesome, less processed lunch. And though we all think of  October as the season for harvests and Halloween, it’s also Vegetarian Awareness Month, which kicks off today with World Vegetarian Day.

So now’s the perfect time to get acquainted with Jennifer McCann, the veggie-loving blogger who began documenting the delicious and delightfully inventive plant-based lunches she created for her son on his “first day of school in 2005,” as the New York Times recently reported. Thousands of parents desperate for a healthy alternative to the lamentable Lunchables began flocking to Vegan Lunch Box, McCann’s website, and trying her recipes, launching her on a new career as a cookbook author.

McCann’s cookbooks, Vegan Lunch Box and her latest, Vegan Lunch Box Around the World,  may be geared towards children, but they’re perfect for anyone–kids or no kids–who enjoys simple, eclectic dishes featuring fresh takes on familiar foods. Her stated goal is “to inspire others to eat more healthy, plant-based meals and move more.” I interviewed her recently via email to find out more about how this “bento blogger” became a publishing phenomenon.

KT: How did you first become interested in making bento boxes for your family?

JM: When my son started first grade. I had never packed lunches before, and at first I couldn’t come up with any vegan ideas beyond peanut butter and jelly. Then I asked my son what he wanted for his first day of school and he said “Sushi!” It opened up my eyes and I started thinking of all kinds of dishes I could pack. They looked so cute in his colorful lunch box, I started taking pictures and blogging and doing more things to make his lunches little works of art.

KT: Did you ever imagine when you first began blogging about your son’s lunches that your website would find such a wide audience?

JM: Not at all! I thought there would be some other vegan moms looking for ideas for their kid’s lunch boxes, but I never imagined that it would grow so big so fast, with thousands of people checking in each day to see what my son had for lunch!

KT: Your cookbooks offer a culinary whirlwind world tour, with recipes inspired by just about every cuisine under the sun. I know you’re partial to Japan, the birthplace of bento, but what other countries’ cuisines are among your personal favorites (if you can answer that question without precipitating an international diplomatic crisis?)

JM: Oh, so many! I’m very partial the cooking of Mexico and Africa, especially West African and Ethiopian cuisine.

KT: You’ve made a name for yourself with your creative, plant-based variations on classic comfort foods like chicken pot pies and corn dogs, as well as more wholesome versions of Twinkies and goldfish crackers. What was your toughest challenge in this category, and which adaptation’s been your greatest success?

JM: The toughest was definitely tuna. My son sat next to a boy who ate tuna fish sandwiches every week and he really wanted to have one. We tried store bought fake tuna but he didn’t like it. I finally came up with a good recipe for Chickpea Salad with vegan mayonnaise that makes a great sandwich filling and made him happy, but it’s not tuna.

The greatest success would have to be Twinkies. They’re so much fun and everyone loves them!

KT: You are a fearless promoter of such under-appreciated veggies as kohlrabi and kale. Is there any vegetable that you couldn’t persuade your son to eat regardless of how entertainingly you presented it?

JM: Absolutely, all kids have their own tastes. Some veggies, like onions and peppers, my son won’t try in any form. Others, like salad or kale, he’ll only eat occasionally or if I make it a certain way.

KT: Your profile on your website suggests that you’re an avid gardener. How much food gardening do you do?  Was there anything you planted that wasn’t worth the trouble, in retrospect? What’s grown especially well for you?

JM: I do like to garden! I have a large vegetable garden in my backyard. Tomatoes grow wonderfully here; I usually can enough tomatoes to last us the rest of the year. I also have great success with zucchini, melons, winter squash, okra, raspberries and strawberries. Brussels sprouts and broccoli have been a disaster — they get buggy.

KT: Have you ever contemplated working that McCann magic with breakfast or dinner?

JM: Well, we often eat something for dinner and then feature it in a lunch the next day — leftovers make great lunches! But breakfast almost never changes — it’s always a smoothie made exactly the same way. I guess none of us are ready for an adventure first thing in the morning!

I’m always amazed by the number of folks who think that most of Central Park is some kind of natural habitat of indigenous plants, a pristine terrain onto which we plunked our bike paths, boathouses and pretzel vendors.

In reality, nearly every square inch of Central Park was painstakingly landscaped back in the mid-nineteenth century to the specifications of Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux. A massive public works project, it required some 20,000 workers to subvert existing swamps and blow up bluffs to create a soothing pastoral landscape in the English romantic tradition.

Oh, and there was the little matter of evicting the Irish pig farmers and German gardeners who’d built shantytowns on the land. And destroying Seneca Village, the “first significant community of African American property owners on Manhattan.” The five acre settlement, which included three churches and a school, was seized through eminent domain and demolished.

All this, so that cooped-up city dwellers could get their fix of “nature.” Our civilized way of life is so removed from the natural world that Central Park’s manicured, manipulated acres are as close to a bit of wilderness as we can hope to get within the borough of Manhattan.

But you can catch a glimpse of what Manhattan was really like before we invaded it and tamed it by watching the fascinating video that architect/educator Fritz Haeg’s created in collaboration with the Mannahatta Project. The video documents Haeg’s Lenape Edible Estate installation, which was designed to “provide a view back to the lives of the native Lenape people, how they lived off the land 400 years ago” on the island that was then called Mannahatta.

The Lenape project was installed back in June when Haeg and a team of volunteers descended with shovels and soil on a triangle of uncultivated land in front of a Chelsea housing project to plant the beans, corn, squash, berries, and other edibles that the Lenape tribe lived on centuries ago.

The project offers a “meditation both on the historical facts and the future possibilities for our occupation of the island,” as Haeg notes. He hopes that it “may also serve as a model for modest small scale urban edible landscapes and as a possible prototype for future green spaces on similar housing sites across the city.”

I’m delighted to see Haeg bring his verve and vision to an American urban setting. His U.S. plantings have been primarily in the ‘burbs, as documented in his book Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn (which also includes an installation at a London housing project). Edible Estates, written in 2007 and published in the winter of 2008, anticipated–and surely helped inspire–the recent kitchen garden renaissance. Haeg’s book sold so well that it’s now out of print.

Happily, a new edition will be released next spring. The new Edible Estates will include more stories of lawn-to-lettuce conversions and an expanded preface from Haeg on how the edible landscape scene has changed since the first edition. Urban ag genius Will Allen’s contributing a piece, and there will be a nod to the White House kitchen garden, whose role in helping to inspire millions of new gardeners this year is indisputable.

As Haeg noted in an op-ed this past spring in The Guardian, the First Family’s 1,100 square foot patch of veggies is “not just a pretty garden, or an empty symbol, but a place for a family to grow the food that they like to eat, on the land that is around them” (that’s why there’s plenty of cilantro and tomatillos, for salsa, but no beets– Obama doesn’t like ‘em). Haeg adds:

Many American children today do not see evidence that food comes out of the ground or experience the pleasure of eating food fresh from plants. Instead their diet is causing epidemic childhood illness. The introduction of a food-producing garden into their early lives is our best hope for changing the situation in a meaningful way.

But there’s another compelling reason to start growing some of your own food, whether it’s in your yard, on a rooftop, or in a window box: it’s one way to help curb your carbon footprint, or, rather, foodprint. No one is seriously suggesting that city dwellers can produce all our own food in our yards, community gardens, or urban farms, but it’s just one of the many steps that we can take to lower our impact.

During World War II, planting a kitchen garden was pitched as our patriotic duty. Isn’t it time we made growing your own food a civic virtue once again? Only this time, the fight is against the fossil- fueled American life that’s given us an increasingly unhealthy populace and an overheated planet.

And we’re in imminent danger of losing that battle. “Current emissions trajectories” are hurtling us towards the point of no return, i.e. “the worst-case scenarios” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to the New York Times.

At a daylong conference on climate change held Tuesday at the United Nations, Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, told the world’s leaders that “Science leaves us no space for inaction now.”

This bleak pronouncement comes on the heels of a headline blaring “We’re Screwed” on the front page of Monday’s New York Post–or, rather, a remarkably New York Post-like publication that was passed out to unsuspecting commuters by activists. The hoax was orchestrated by the Yes Men, that pair of pranksters who’ve so masterfully manipulated the mainstream media, as documented in their upcoming film, The Yes Men Fix the World.

It looked an awful lot like the real thing and fooled a lot of folks. But on close inspection, you could tell that it was a fake because, unlike Rupert Murdoch’s publication, “the faux Post is filled with factual information on the threats posed by climate change,” as USA Today observed.

You’d never see an article in the real Post touting the potential of rooftop farming to help curb New York City’s carbon foodprint, or a shout-out to an upcoming presentation hosted by NYU on Food and Climate Change: The Meat of the Matter, that explores the significant contribution that meat and dairy production make to rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, Monday’s edition of The Daily News ran an article about the 18,000 pounds of fresh produce that inmates on Rikers Island have grown this year to supply the city’s soup kitchens and food pantries–further proof of the tangible, quantifiable benefits of urban agriculture.

Monday’s Financial Times also echoed the Yes Men’s “We’re Screwed” headline with an article entitled “Scientific Consensus Over Dire Consequences,” which noted that:

The gap between the glacial pace of negotiations and the rapid progress of global warming is now endangering the safety of the planet, scientists are warning. Martin Parry, of Imperial College, London, says: “That is what is at stake. I don’t think people have realised [sic]. We are nowhere near tackling this.”

Can we muster the collective will to alter the way we live in order to avert the worst repercussions of climate change? Those of us who live in densely populated cities already have the advantage of mass transit–and, ironically, greater access through farmers’ markets and CSAs (though not nearly enough in many communities) to the freshly harvested plant-based foods that form the cornerstone of a low-impact diet.

I don’t know if we’ll ever manage to liberate ourselves from the petroleum-based processed foods that currently dominate our food chain. But I’m heartened by the sight of so many New Yorkers attempting to grow food, whether it’s on the roof of a Brooklyn warehouse or the back of a Brooklyn-based pick-up truck, behind the barbed wire of Rikers Island, or in front of a housing project on the island formerly known as Mannahatta. Let freedom spring!

But our landscape is changing, literally, and I found evidence of a nascent rebellion against our car-centric cuisine in a rather ironic place: the grounds that surround Automotive High School in Brooklyn. I first noticed squash vines growing outside the auditorium at this vocational high school in Williamsburg back in June when I attended a screening there of No Impact Man hosted by Rooftop Films.

I was intrigued, but had no idea that Automotive High School’s edible landscaping was inspired by the school’s participation in Slow Food NYC’s Harvest Time program, whose mission is to create “a meaningful relationship between young people and their food and the environment by providing hands-on experiences, community engagement, and the enjoyment of good, healthful food.”

Automotive’s student body is 98% minorities, 93% of whom are male, and 86% qualify for the free lunch program, according to Jenny Kessler. Kessler teaches a class at Automotive High called “Food, Land and YOU,” in which students learn about how our food is produced and distributed.

A high school where kids enroll to prepare for a career in the automotive industry may seem an unlikely place to find future farmers or chefs, but Kessler’s class, which includes a field trip to a farm upstate, has proven to be a life-changing experience for some of Kessler’s students.

Kessler credits Slow Food NYC’s Harvest Time program with providing “essential, sustainable funding for most of our garden and cooking supplies. It has been a lifesaver.”

So, if you’re still thinking of Slow Food USA as some kind of fancy pants organization obsessed with artisanal wines and cheeses, get with the program–the Harvest Time program, that is, along with Slow Food’s many other worthy endeavors, such as their Time For Lunch campaign.

The organization I co-founded, Eating Liberally, was delighted to participate in that campaign by hosting an Eat-In on Labor Day at the Campos Community Garden where we got to sample some of the veggies planted earlier this spring by a group of high school kids as part of Slow Food NYC’s Harvest Time program.

We also had the pleasure of hearing Slow Food USA’s program manager, Jerusha Klemperer, talk about the importance of feeding our kids fresh, nutritious meals–something our schools are hard pressed to do when the $2.57 we allocate for free school meals leaves only a dollar or so for ingredients after you subtract all the overhead.

You can’t feed kids freshly prepared, wholesome foods at that price. But there is one thing you can buy for a dollar this month that will actually help support the campaign to bring real food back to our schools: you can become a member of Slow Food USA at whatever price you can afford to pay–yes, even only a dollar.

Why support Slow Food USA? Consider the case of Joseph Garcia, an 18 year-old who enrolled at Automotive High intending to become a mechanic. Thanks to Kessler’s class, which relies extensively on help from Slow Food NYC, Garcia found himself drawn instead to a career as a chef.

Garcia took Kessler’s class a year and a half ago, and is now studying the culinary arts at Monroe College. In a recent email exchange he answered my questions about how the Harvest Time program has changed his life:

KT: What inspired you to take the food/garden class?

JG: To be honest, when I was in high school, I didn’t choose to be in the food/gardening class. It was just assigned to me. I absolutely loved Ms. Kessler’s class because of her enthusiasm and her knowledge of the class subject. She taught me so much about organic and conventional farming. Ms. Kessler’s class has to be one of the few classes that I actually enjoyed in Automotive High School.

KT: How much did the class influence your decision to go to culinary school?

JG: Ms. Kessler’s class influenced me to go to culinary school because she always said that fresh fruit and vegetables are better than anything, and now that I make many dishes inside and outside of school, I can totally agree with her. I only use the freshest ingredients for my dishes.

KT: Did the class alter the way you thought about food?

JG: Ms. Kessler’s class totally altered my view of food because back in high school I never used to care about what was healthy, where my food came from, or even how it was made. But now I take into consideration every detail when I am looking to make or even create a new dish.

KT: What was the most surprising thing you learned in the class?

JG: The most surprising thing I learned in the class was how bad pesticides really are to us and the environment. Also how bad animals are treated before they are killed.

KT: What did you most enjoy about gardening?

JG: The thing that I like the most about gardening is the hard work, the more hard work you put into your garden the better your plants and crops will grow. So afterwards you can enjoy “the fruits of your labor”.

Garcia added in a postscript that “I love what I am doing in school and enjoy cooking very much…As I prepare any dish I make sure I get the freshest of the freshest ingredients, and when I get the chance I cook with organic stuff as well.”

So here’s to Jenny Kessler and Slow Food NYC for throwing a wrench into Garcia’s goal of becoming a ‘grease monkey’ and getting him fired up about feeding folks fresh, healthy meals. Sure, we still need mechanics–and Automotive High is also doing great work teaching kids how to convert cars to biodiesel fuel–but we need more young chefs like Garcia giving us the means to fuel our own bodies on alternative energy, too; the kind that comes from wholesome, minimally processed foods. There’s a green job for you!

So why do our 21st century schools take their cues from the Brothers Grimm? I can see why a witch with a yen for chubby children would want to confine them and prime them with fatty foods. But unless we’re planning to eat our kids, too–as Jonathan Swift modestly proposed –I question the wisdom of keeping them indoors and pumping them full of empty carbs.

Slow Food USA’s Time For Lunch campaign aims to bring real food back to our schools. The campaign is part of a National Day of Action on Labor Day, September 7th, enlisting folks all over the country to host hundreds of “Eat-Ins”—potluck-style community events bringing people together to share a meal and show their support for school lunches comprised of wholesome, minimally processed foods, not commodity crop slop.

That simple, direct message stands in contrast to the schizophrenic signals we get from the USDA, which lobbies kids to eat their fruits and veggies even as it continues to underwrite the corn and soy farmers who flood our school cafeterias with cheap, high-calorie, low- nutrient foods that have driven fresh produce to the margins of school meals in recent decades.

One problem with fresh fruits and veggies, in addition to the fact that they can be a budget buster for perpetually cash-strapped schools, is that they’re more perishable than processed foods. Plus, someone has to actually prepare them. And many schools don’t even have kitchens, these days–or chefs who know how to make wholesome meals from scratch. They rely instead on prefab processed foods that can be nuked and scooped.

This abundance of lousy, unhealthy food, combined with rampant inactivity, is a formula that’s already saddled millions of kids with excess weight and the wide range of debilitating, depressing side effects that tend to come with it.

And kids are spending so much time online or on the couch that they don’t get enough sun exposure to get sufficient vitamin D. This may be a factor in the alarming rise of fractures and broken bones among children over the past decade; lack of vitamin D is a precursor to osteoporosis. Of course, drinking soda instead of milk doesn’t help, either.

It’s been widely publicized that kids today may “die at a younger age than their parents, thanks in large part to a sedentary lifestyle and poor eating habits. Type 2 diabetes afflicts so many children now that it can no longer be referred to as “adult onset” diabetes.

Do we really lack the resources to provide our kids with nutritious, wholesome meals? We’ve found ways to fight a war of choice and finance a bunch of bailouts; surely we can find a way to feed our children better.

The Time For Lunch campaign calls on Congress to allocate $1 more per child per day for lunch, in addition to the $2.57 that the USDA currently provides. Only a small portion of that $2.57 actually goes for ingredients, by the way–most of it gets spent on labor and other overhead costs.

Slow Food’s campaign also seeks to:

“…protect against foods that put children at risk by establishing strong standards for all food sold at school, including food from vending machines and school fast-food. In addition, the campaign is pushing for the government to provide mandatory funding to allow schools to teach children healthy eating habits by establishing farm-to-school programs and school gardens.”

Will Congress be persuaded? One thing is certain; Slow Food has a powerful ally in Michelle Obama when it comes to making the case for reconnecting our kids with growing, cooking, and eating fresh foods. With the First Lady and her formidable forearms doing some of the heavy lifting, the campaign for real food’s sure to get a massive lift.