Fifteen year ago, if someone had suggested that I'd be writing this column, I'd have asked what planet they were on.

I was working as a financial analyst that covered the food industry.  My day to day consisted of meeting with management teams, taking factory and store tours and cranking out reports on companies like Kroger, Safeway, Costco and Whole Foods.  I wasn't a foodie, and I couldn't cook.

My job included crunching the numbers, learning business models and evaluating the costs of production and distribution of our food supply.

Thank goodness.

Because today, that experience has served a greater purpose: the ability to look at the current state of our food system, the financial engineering of the science behind it and the economically motivated decisions that food industry executives make to meet their fiduciary duty to drive shareholder return and sheds light on how these decision are affecting the health of our families.

And it's becoming increasingly obvious that we've got a broken economic model at work in our food system.  Farmers are rewarded with taxpayer funded resources called subsidies for growing crops in a chemically-intensive, genetically and financially engineered kind of way to drive shareholder return for the chemical companies.  While on the other hand, farmers that are growing things organically, which means by law without the use of synthetic pesticides and crops genetically engineered to require increasing doses of toxic weed killer, have to pay fees to prove that their crops are safe, then fees to label those crops with the "USDA Organic" seal and then they don't receive the same crop insurance and marketing assistance programs that the other farmers do.

Add to that the fact that American companies formulate their products one way for eaters over seas, without the use of artificial colors, genetically engineered ingredients, high fructose corn syrup, and it's enough to get anyone going.  But the fact of the matter is that what we have to label as "organic food" here in the United States is more or less called "food" in other countries.  Because overseas, it's the products that contain all of the novel ingredients like, genetically engineered ones, that have to be labeled.

So what's a consumer to do?  Learn the Big 8.  These are the ingredients which, by law and according to our very own United States Department of Agriculture, are not allowed into the production of foods that are made organically:

Most people that follow food issues had their eyes on California last night.  Voters in the state were going to the polls to determine if the United States would finally join countries around the world and label ingredients recently introduced into our food that have been genetically engineered to produce their own insecticidal toxins, ingredients that are now regulated by the EPA as pesticides.

The legislation had the opportunity to impact all of us.  California recently voted on labeling an ingredient found in sodas, due to its potential link to cancer.  But rather than label it, soda companies decided to reformulate their products and they removed the ingredient in products around the country.  The same fate could happen with these genetically engineered ingredients if they were labeled - companies might simply want to opt out rather than carry any liability that a label might cause.

So the question put to California voters was essentially: should ingredients, now regulated as pesticides, be labeled in our food?

But it wasn't exactly framed that way.  And in the months leading up to the election, a tsunami of money poured into the state from chemical and pesticide companies from around the world.  These corporations selling the products, both the genetically engineered ingredients and the chemicals used on them, didn't feel it was neccessary to label these ingredients, they didn't want to cause alarm.

And with polling results in, they won in the California voting booth.

But did they win on the national stage?

Because rather than consider this "the end" of the issue, perhaps it should be seen as the beginning of a long-overdue dialogue in the United States, a dialogue that the industry spent $45 million dollars to try to keep from having.

Any grocery store shopper knows that a lot gets labeled: orange juice has to be labeled if it comes from concentrate, allergens are labeled, fat content, too.  But we have not yet joined over 50 countries around the world and called for the labeling of ingredients that have been engineered by the chemical companies to withstand increasing doses of their chemicals.

A recent Wall Street Journal poll asked: Do you think genetically engineered foods should be labeled?  87% said yes.

This is not a party issue, it is an American one.

And as more of us are waking up to the fact that the United States remains one of the only developed countries in the world to have failed to label these ingredients in our food supply, the question now seems to be: Is now the time to label genetically engineered foods, foods whose genetic makeup has been hardwired to withstand increasing doses of toxic chemicals or to produce insecticides within the plant itself.

The chemical companies that are both making the foods and selling the chemicals required to grow them often claim that their products are needed to feed the world.

It's an emotional argument.  Powerful, too, and does a lot to drive shareholder return.  But in light of the fact that 2 billion people are overweight or obese and 1 billion are hungry, according to the USDA, 40 percent of the food we produce is never eaten.

Is a food shortage really the problem?  Or is it a shortage in earnings visibility that has these companies quietly pushing their products on us, spending $45 million to make sure that they don't have to label them for fear that labels might lead Americans to join eaters in other countries and  opt out?

"The world is hungry because of politics and economics, not because we can't grow food" a farmer from Australia recently said.  And if you go wide, beyond the consumers and farmers, and dig into the politics of food, you realize how complicated and politically, economically and finanicially loaded the issue has become.

The companies engineering these crops to withstand their chemicals  say they are safe.  They've conducted their own research because the FDA has not.

It's not the first time that ingredients with the potential to cause harm have been marketed this way.  Doctors marketed cigarettes to our grandmothers.  Like the tobacco industry, the pesticide and chemical industries fund research, protected under intellectual property law that is not subject to peer review, and then present it as evidence that their products are safe.  That's their job, to market their products so that they can drive shareholder return.  But what about the rest of us, the world's 7 billion stakeholders in the food supply - those of us, not known by the names given to our portfolios, but those of us simply called "eaters"?

A researcher with the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research and director of the Molecular Embryology Laboratory said,"The noteworthy thing is that there are no studies of embryos on the world level and none where (the chemical routinely doused on these genetically engineered crops) glyphosate is injected into embryos.”

We don't know what these foods are doing to our children.  And while correlation is not causation, from 1992-2007, there was a9.4% increase in childhood cancers in the United States.  Children in the United States where cancer is now the leading cause of death by disease in kids under the age of fifteen also have skyrocketing rates of food allergies and have earned the title "Generation Rx".

Is it the new, genetically engineered ingredients in the food?  We'd have no idea, since there are no labels.

That's hard to hear, especially for those of us that dismissed concerns around genetically engineered foods as some hippy, fringy, purist thing.  It can be so hard to hear that when industry claims there is "no evidence of harm", you almost want to believe them.  But if you think about it, without labels, there simply is no evidence.  And "no evidence of harm" is not the same as "evidence of no harm."

Labels are needed to prove a direct cause and effect. And while we don't yet have them, mounting hospitalization records, record drug sales and an increasingly allergic, diabetic, cancer-stricken and obese population in which 46 children are diagnosed with cancer every day might suggest that we should take a closer look and introduce labeling here in the United States as a conservative measure to protect the heath of our citizens, the way the health of citizens in every country in the European Union, Australia, Japan, Russia and China are protected (to name a few).

And while in the face of record amounts of campaign spending money by the chemical, pesticide and junk food companies, the labeling initiative was defeated in California, what that campaign started was a long-overdue national dialogue.  This is not "the end" of anything but the beginning of a national discussion.

It brought an awareness to the fact that the FDA does not require pre-market safety testing of these foods, that no long-term human, prenatal or pediatric studies have been conducted and that Americans remain one of the only developed countries in the world whose citizens have not been give the liberty of labels in order to make an informed choice about the foods that we are eating.

States matter.  To get a feel for just how much take a look at the first seat belt law which was introduced by a state in 1984, in no time, others followed.  And today, in the absence of any federal seat belt law, it speaks to the important role that states play in protecting the health of their populations by using preventative measures to protect citizens from potential harm.

So what can Americans do next?  Keep up the pressure at the state level.  Begin a dialogue.  Find a friend who cares about this as much as you do.  Join the national movement that is calling on the FDA to address the issue on behalf of all Americans.  A 53 to 47% loss is not something to bury heads over given that the opposition flooded the campaign with $45 million in marketing, but rather something for which to keep heads up, looking forward, as we focus on the FDA and work to address this at the national level.

The health of our country and our economy are dependent on the heath of Americans.  41% of Americans are now expected to get cancer and there is a growing burden that disease is placing on our economy.  Labeling these new ingredients in our food supply, ingredients that are now regulated by the EPA as "pesticides,"  just might prove to be one of the smartest economic measures of our time.

To learn more about genetically engineered foods and the pesticides being routinely applied to them, please visit one of the following sites, known for their independent research:

• Just Label It
  
• Our Right to Know

In the absence of any federal labeling law, California is trying to become the first state to label genetically engineered ingredients in foods.  This could impact the county, as they represent the largest state economy in the US and the 8th largest in the world.

How could this affect all of us?  When legislation was proposed in California for Coke and Pepsi to label a caramel color in their sodas as potentially carcinogenic, rather than do so, the soda giants reformulated their products....across the country.

If this legislation (Proposition 37) passes in California, as Jillian Michaels, Danny DeVito, Dave Matthews and others are urging in this public service announcement, the food industry might very well decide to reformulate their products here in the US for all of us, in order to avoid the liability that these labels might carry, removing GMOs from their products and replacing them with alternatives, much like what they have done in over 40 countries around the world, like all European countries, the UK, China, Australia, Japan and India, where GMOs are already labeled.

If you have friends or family in California, please share this important message, as we all have the right to know what we are eating, and what happens in California has the potential to impact all of us.

 To learn more about this proposition and its ability to impact all of us, please visit California's Right to Know

If you eat and pay taxes, you might want to know about “The Farm Bill.”

Remember the bailout that we funded for the banks?  Well, the same thing is happening in our food system.

And today, seventy leading chefs, authors, food policy experts, nutritionists, CEOs, and environment and health organizations sent an open letter to Members of Congress urging lawmakers to modernize the Farm Bill and make nutritious and healthy foods more affordable to all Americans.

According to a July 2011 poll , 78% of Americans want healthy food to be more affordable.  Not surprising when you consider the rates of diseases like diabetes, asthma and cancer that we are seeing in the health of our loved ones.

If you are one of the countless Americans who has ever stopped to wonder why fresh fruit is so expensive and processed and packaged food is so cheap, it’s largely because of the “Farm Bill” and the way that we currently allocate our taxpayer resources in our national food budget.

How it stands right now is that as taxpayers, we are writing checks and that money is being used as taxpayer funded payments called “subsidies” to support the growing of corn and soy, crops used to make our processed foods. Few of the dollars that we send in are used to support other foods in any meaningful way.  In other words, our current system keeps the foods that use these ingredients, mainly the cheap processed foods, cheap, while making everything else seem expensive.

Can you imagine if  instead of funding the junk food, we funded other foods?  Like apples and carrots for example?  We could afford to carry them in schools, at home and in hospitals. Our food companies would use more of them in their products, as they’d be cheaper to source, and we would benefit from the nutritional differences.

Sound too good to be true?  It is, right now.

And some might argue (and they do) that we need our current subsidy system to avoid mass starvation.  How else are we going to feed the world?  But interestingly, just this week, according to the World Health Organization and Business Week, there is so much extra food floating around the globe that not only is it increasing rates of obesity, but we also waste a third of what is produced, it’s simply thrown away. As a result, obesity is a far greater threat facing the globe than starvation, and malnutrition is affecting both.

In other words, we have subsidized a food system that is making us fat, sick and undernourished.

Some food corporations and production groups, especially those who grow soy and corn believe that these handouts are necessary to guarantee stable prices, a food supply and to protect food crops from steep price declines.  Apparently, they may not be aware that the global banks and Wall Street can wreak havoc on food prices by trading what are known as “collateralized commodity obligations” in which they bundle up a whole bunch of these assets in order to profit off of the trades. But how could they be aware of these derivatives?  They are hardly regulated.

But back to the "Farm Bill," the bill would also provide an estimated $9 billion a year to continue a long-standing insurance program that benefits only farmers of commodity crops.  In other words, farmers are paid to buy and grow corn and soy.  They won’t get the same level of insurance if they grow something else, like apples, carrots or tomatoes.  In the current system, with the subsidies and insurance promises, the system only pays farmers to keep growing corn and soy crops.  There is no safety net if they choose to grow anything else.  Who can blame them?  Times are tough.

Which is why today’s letter to Congress is so important.  It calls for an end to this lopsided allocation of taxpayer resources and our lopsided funding of the food system and asks for an end to the bailout of Big Ag that allocates $140 billion to companies engineering corn and soybean seeds from which so many of the ingredients now found in our fake, fast and processed foods are derived.  Right now, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “about one-third of the subsidies awarded under (last year’s) program went to just 4% of farmers.”

According to the letter sent to Congress today, Americans "are deeply concerned that it would continue to give away subsidies worth tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to the largest commodity crop growers, insurance companies, and agribusinesses even as it drastically underfunds programs to promote the health and food security of all Americans”.

Mass starvation?  It seems that mass malnutrition in an increasingly obese world in which too much food is being produced, thrown away and wasted seems more likely.

It also seems that the Farm Bill, this taxpayer funded piece of legislation, “is out of step with the nation’s priorities and what the American public expects and wants from our food and farm policy.”

And while this funding of the status quo might be good for the chemical companies and for those whose products have to be purchased  by our nation’s farmers in order to grow these two crops, it doesn’t seem to be benefiting the millions of stakeholders in the food supply, nor the farmers themselves, nor the growing number of obese and overweight Americans who rely on cheap, processed foods to feed their families in quite the same way.

A better "Farm Bill" would fund a diverse and healthy food system, especially in light of the fact that a growing number of us and our national economy are being impacted by obesity, diabetes, cancer, allergies and autism, diseases and conditions that are increasingly being shown to have a link to diet and nutrition.

So while you may not have heard of the “Farm Bill” until recently, this Senate bill is arguably one of the most important pieces of legislation Congress will consider this year, and it is set to go to the floor in the coming week.

And if you haven’t heard about it, you’re not alone.  But “unless we – meaning all of us who eat and pay taxes – demand Congress fundamentally change the way it writes the next farm bill, I can guarantee the interests of agribusiness will once again come out on top,” said Ken Cook, president and co-founder of EWG. “We have a real opportunity to compel members of Congress to work on behalf of our health and the environment if they hear from all of us now.  Eaters - it's time to get in the game."

Let’s go, America.  Game on.

CALL TO ACTION: The Farm Bill—the most important legislation when it comes to your food- is about to be voted on in the US Senate. Now is the time to stand up and fix our broken food system. Together, we can create a food system and a Farm Bill that is fairer, healthier and more sustainable for all Americans http://tiny.cc/ff26ew

When I first heard the term "organic" several years ago, I dismissed it. It connoted a "status" and conjured up two different images: lifestyles of the rich and famous or perhaps some alternative, hippie thing.

I was wrong.

The term "organic" actually refers to the way agricultural products are grown and processed and legally details the permitted use (or not) of certain ingredients in these foods.

The details are that the U.S. Congress adopted the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) in 1990 as part of the 1990 Farm Bill which was then followed with the National Organic Program final rule published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The standards include a national list of approved synthetic and prohibited non-synthetic substances for organic production which means that organically produced foods also must be produced without the use of:

• antibiotics
• artificial growth hormones
• high fructose corn syrup
• artificial dyes (made from coal tar and petrochemicals)
• artificial sweeteners derived from chemicals
• synthetically created chemical pesticide and fertilizers
• genetically engineered proteins and ingredients
• sewage sludge
• irradiation

Wow, who knew that conventional, non-organic food could contain these ingredients?  Not many of us, since sewage sludge and artificial growth hormones aren't on the label.

What about cloning animals or those genetically engineered salmon, hard-wired to double their weight? Those would be considered inconsistent with organic practices, too, because of the laboratory intervention required.

In other words, what we call "organic food,"  our grandmothers would have simply called "food."  Because a lot of these new ingredients didn't exist when we were younger, having only been created in laboratories, patented and then introduced into our foods in the last few decades.

LOOK FOR THE SEAL

Products labeled “100% Organic” and carrying the “USDA Organic” seal adhere to a strict legal standard: national organic standards require that organic growers and handlers be certified by third-party state or private agencies or other organizations that are accredited by USDA. Anyone who knowingly sells or mislabels as organic a product that was not produced and handled in accordance with the regulations can be subject to a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per violation.

WHY ORGANICS COST MORE

Admittedly, the high price of organic food can irritate anyone.  But the scrutiny that these foods undergo is enormous and expensive, driving prices at the cash register and for those producing them on the farm.  Why the costs?  Because the cost structure on our food supply offers taxpayer-funded resources called subsidies to the farmers using genetically engineered seeds and saturating crops in insecticides and weed killers, while charging the organic farmers fees to prove that their crops are safe.

That's like getting fined to wear your seat belt.

In other words, it's an un-level playing field right now.  And if we were all sitting down as a national family at our national dinner table, I don't think that any of us would want to be using our resources this way.  Wouldn't we rather have the organic food be the one that we fund, making it cheaper, more affordable and more accessible to all Americans?

But right now, it's not.  So should you choose to opt out of our conventional, chemically-intensive food production system and try something organic, you'll be joining a growing segment of the population and are not alone.

WHERE TO START?  Hop on over to Prevention, where I've written more.....

Source: The Organic Trade Association (OTA) and Organic Trade Association’s 2007 Manufacturer Survey (Because USDA does not yet do comprehensive market studies of organic sales, as it does for conventional U.S. agriculture.)

Anyone who has followed my work, knows that I sing a constant refrain:

None of us can do everything, but all of us can do something.

Thank goodness, right?  Especially when there are certain things that you know you are just not good at. 

For me, that lack in expertise revolves around tools for design technology.  I have never been trained in them, think they can be used to create pieces of work that are absolutely beautiful and am in awe (and so envious) of those who possess the talent.

So when someone reached out to share the work that she had created after hearing one of my TEDx talks, it absolutely blew me away.  It is something that leveraged her unique talents with her passion (which we happen to share about clean and safe food) and inspired me so much that I wanted to share it here.  

Hope it inspires you, too!

It's not every day that you come upon a food video that stops you in your tracks. One that makes you sit up and take notice, that doesn't turn you off or shut you down. 

Recently, the social media food world has been abuzz with a Chipotle commercial that includes a song by Willie Nelson urging us to go "back to the start".  The premise is that agriculture is no longer what we want it to be with too many toxic inputs, externalized costs and unintended consequences.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have real concern over the way that our current agricultural system is structured: farmers are contractually obligated to buy certain products, while using seeds that have not been tested for their long-term performance and then have to be licensed for use due to their patents, and are obligated to a system in which at any time, fuel, fertilizer or licensing fees can suddenly spike, impacting their incomes, their livelihoods, their debt levels and so much more.  

And yet at the same time, modern day farming has brought tremendous advances.  Having spent time with farmers in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Washington state and other parts of our amazing country, I am in awe of what farming looks like today. I have listened and learned about tractors outfitted with computers that enable things their grandfathers could never have dreamt of.  A recent post, highlighted by Monsanto on Twitter and seen on America's Farmers blog (written by a farmer's wife who is also a mother of four) shares that insight and paints the picture of what farming looks like today for those who haven't been able to get there themselves. She writes:

"Today, a farmer feeds 155 people. In 1960, one farmer fed only 26. Today, our tractors and combines are mostly run off of computers...dropping one seed every six inches for proper placing of a corn plant. Our sprayers and manure spreaders are also monitored by computers to spread correct amounts of nutrients over our precious soils..." 

And as I reflect on all of it, of the passion, the dedication and the love on display, including Bill Gates recent public relations tour to rebrand farming as 'high-tech agriculture," I can't help but think that what we need isn't a rebranding campaign or a food fight but a food education, one in which there is an honest  dialogue, with experts brought to the table, from all parts of the food continuum.  

A dialogue that educates, revealing the limits and constraints we have not yet seen because of the lack of open science due to the patents that protect the changes in our food supply as intellectual property of chemical giants.  

A dialogue that informs not just to farmers, but also livestock breeders and consumers, one that brings truth and transparency to the table, that isn't afraid of labels that are so descriptive and informative that farmers and consumers are given the freedom of choice on which our country was founded.

A dialogue that through its revelations, lowers the barriers to entry so that rather than a monopolized food supply that does not allow for the best, most efficient, effective and affordable products to be brought to market, we can create a food system that gives farmers financial flexibility to choose the best practices, consumers the information they need to make an informed choice when it comes to feeding their families, and data required to build a food system that is embraced around the world, so that once again, American farmers are restored to their place of admiration.  

We're not there yet.  Not close, so until we are, I'll keep working on it, and I hope that you will, too.  Lend your voice to the food dialogues, lend your talents to creating a healthy food system, and remember, that the most important thing that you could do before doing anything is to listen.