A national survey of more than 12,000 students in grades 5 to 10 has found that television viewing is associated not only with unhealthy snacking while watching, but also with unhealthy eating at all times.
Researchers asked the children how much TV they watched; how often they snacked while watching; how often they ate fruits, vegetables and candy and drank soda; and how often they skipped breakfast.
The new storehouse, which opened in January, is the centerpiece of the LDS Church’s intricate network for taking care of its members and lending a hand to others in times of natural disasters, putting scriptural encouragements into action in the aftermath of hardship, hurricanes, floods, fires and earthquakes across the nation and around the world.
“As I walk through, I [don’t] think, ‘What a beautiful building’ but how the Lord must truly love the poor to provide this building to take care of their needs,” [Richard] Humpherys said during a tour of the facility, built with members’ donations.
Because of the cultural whiplash I experienced in regularly attending two remarkably different family meals, I have always been fascinated by the range of conversations that pass for normal at other people’s homes at mealtime: what rituals and rules of discourse do parents invent, to what conventions do they default or aspire?….
Amy Chua, the Yale Law professor who wrote “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” the controversial chronicle of her own overambitious parenting technique, said her immigrant parents imparted to her a passion for academics ”” but not over dinner. “We did not say one word,” she recalled. Eating and television news dominated the meal.
In her own home, she said, she and her husband, the law professor Jed Rubenfeld, try to devote about half the meal to catching up on their children’s lives and the other half to “bringing up interesting cases with moral dilemmas.”
The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that 45 million people in 2011 received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a 70% increase from 2007. It said the number of people receiving the benefits, commonly known as food stamps, would continue growing until 2014.
As our Eureka science magazine notes today, we waste 100 million tonnes of food a year. To throw away so much at a time when 925 million people are classed as hungry, and a further one billion are thought to be suffering from malnutrition, is as senselessly profligate as running a bath without inserting the bath plug. But eliminating the waste will never be enough to fill the world’s bellies.
Yes, selective breeding is starting to boost crop yields and improve food security in sub-Saharan Africa, just as it has been so successfully doing across Asia and the Americas over the past four decades. But without increased use of genetically modified crop varieties it seems inconceivable that food production will ever be abundant enough to keep pace with population growth.
Read it all (requires subscription).
With Passover just a month away a new app aims to help consumers keep kosher throughout the eight-day Jewish festival and to stay up to date on kosher products throughout the rest of the year.
Released by the Orthodox Union (OU), which promotes the values of the Orthodox Jewish community, the app called OU Kosher provides consumers with updates on products that have been certified by the OU, which is the world’s largest kosher certification agency.
The notion that we could mend some of the tatters in the modern social fabric through an initiative as modest as a communal meal may seem offensive to those who trust in the power of legislative and political solutions to cure society’s ills. But these restaurants would not be an alternative to traditional political methods. They would be a prior step, taken to humanize one another in our imaginations.
Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism have made significant contributions to political life, but their relevance to the problems of community are arguably never greater than when they depart from the modern political script and remind us that there is also value to be had in standing in a big hall singing a hymn or in ceremoniously washing a stranger’s feet or in sitting at a table with neighbors and partaking of lamb stew and conversation. These rituals, as much as the deliberations inside parliaments and law courts, are what help to hold our fractious and fragile societies together.
Try this: place a forkful of food in your mouth. It doesn’t matter what the food is, but make it something you love ”” let’s say it’s that first nibble from three hot, fragrant, perfectly cooked ravioli.
Now comes the hard part. Put the fork down. This could be a lot more challenging than you imagine, because that first bite was very good and another immediately beckons. You’re hungry….
The concept has roots in Buddhist teachings. Just as there are forms of meditation that involve sitting, breathing, standing and walking, many Buddhist teachers encourage their students to meditate with food, expanding consciousness by paying close attention to the sensation and purpose of each morsel.
At Cappuccio’s Meats in the Italian Market, the cuts of beef are cutting into the profits.
“Every week when I talk to my suppliers, I’m amazed by how much it’s going up,” said owner Domenick Crimi.
Beef prices soared more than 10 percent last year according to the Department of Agriculture, and they will likely go up at least another 5 percent this year.
The epiphany occurred at a baptism.
With more than 800 people waiting, Pastor Rick Warren took them one by one and immersed them in the church’s baptism pool. During this spiritual rite at Saddleback Church, the pastors hold the people briefly underwater, and then pull them out.
“On that particular day, I was baptizing 858 people,” Warren told his congregation last fall. “That took me literally four hours.”
“As I’m baptizing 858 people, along around 500, I thought this … ‘We’re all fat.’ ”
Through some basic analysis of census data, we can see what adopting the 180 percent [of the Federal poverty] line as the definition of poverty in North Carolina would have meant over the last nine years.
In every year since 2003, the number of North Carolinians under a 180 percent line hovers around 35 percent of the population, while the number of people falling below current poverty standards averages about 15 percent.
That is, the current poverty definitions show that approximately one in six people in North Carolina are in poverty. Using the more accurate 180 percent line would increase that proportion to one in three.
The number of students receiving subsidized lunches rose to 21 million last school year from 18 million in 2006-7, a 17 percent increase, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data from the Department of Agriculture, which administers the meals program. Eleven states, including Florida, Nevada, New Jersey and Tennessee, had four-year increases of 25 percent or more, huge shifts in a vast program long characterized by incremental growth.
The Agriculture Department has not yet released data for September and October.
“These are very large increases and a direct reflection of the hardships American families are facing,” said Benjamin Senauer, a University of Minnesota economist who studies the meals program, adding that the surge had happened so quickly “that people like myself who do research are struggling to keep up with it.”
BOB ABERNETHY: One important lobby is the Christian group Bread for the World, which fights hunger here and abroad. Reverend David Beckmann, a Lutheran pastor, is president of Bread for the World. David welcome.
DAVID BECKMANN (President, Bread for the World): Thank you.
ABERNETHY: Bring us up to date, how many hungry people are there in the United States?
BECKMANN: It’s now 1 in 7 Americans who lives in a household that runs out of food.
In what has become a pre-Thanksgiving tradition in the Charleston area, thousands came together for the annual “Feeding the Multitude” event to share fellowship and their cultures on Johns Island on Saturday.
Nearly 1,000 volunteers from more than 30 churches on Johns and Wadmalaw islands pulled together this week to provide a free Thanksgiving-style feast for nearly 2,000 in the fourth annual event at St. John’s Parish (Episcopal) Church. Volunteers also took meals to 200 people who are unable to leave homes and leftovers to Crisis Ministries.
He’s 96 and drives an Olds Cutlass. She’s 90 and carries pre-cooked meals to the doors of those in need, stopping to chat as long as she can.
Together, they’ve put in more than 5,500 hours of volunteering.
John C. Green’s intellect has earned him a reputation as one of the nation’s experts on the political landscape.
His heart has moved him to be a faithful volunteer in the food pantry at an inner-city ministry that is dedicated to feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, nurturing children and strengthening families.
“I’ve always been interested in helping the hungry,” said Green, director of the University of Akron’s Bliss Institute of Applied Politics. “My religious values teach me that we are to provide for those without the basics in life, and food is one of those essentials.”
Irom Sharmila’s mother has a simple dream: sitting down to a meal with her daughter.
Irom hasn’t willingly ingested food or water for 11 years, in protest of a law granting legal immunity to the armed forces for human rights abuses. As the anniversary of her hunger strike nears, her mother imagines what might be.
“I’m still waiting for her to come home,” said Shakhi Devi, 78, holding an album of her daughter’s photos. She rarely visits the 39-year-old, the world’s longest-serving hunger striker, because it’s too painful.
How rich is too rich for food stamps? The answer depends on where you live.
In Michigan, if you have $5,000 in liquid assets or a car or truck worth more than $15,000, you’re probably out of luck under new rules launched this month.
Earlier this month, the state of Michigan began asking residents about their assets ”” homes, cars, stocks, bonds, even lottery winnings ”” in addition to income when they receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the formal name for food stamps.
Members of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh are in a race where the winners are people who otherwise would be hungry.
Twenty-two of the 31 parishes in the diocese, assigned to one of two teams, have been competing in the diocese’s Race Against Hunger. The teams earn points as they host food drives, educate the public about hunger and food sources, cook at soup kitchens and repack food at the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank in Duquesne. The points are symbolic, serving only to spur volunteers on in a friendly competition.
“It’s outreach. We’re reaching out beyond the walls of our own church, our own parish, so we are taking care of people within the Western Pennsylvania diocesan area,” said Judy Rosensteel of North Versailles, a member of All Souls Episcopal Church.
The theme chosen for the Day: “Food Prices: From Crisis to Stability,” invites us to reflect on the importance of the different factors that can give people and communities essential resources, beginning with agricultural work, which must not be considered as a secondary activity, but as the objective of every strategy of growth and integral development. This is still more important if we keep in mind that the availability of foods is increasingly conditioned by the volatility of prices and sudden climatic changes. We observe at the same time a continuous abandonment of rural areas with a global decline in agricultural production and, hence, in food reserves. Moreover, spreading everywhere, unfortunately, is the idea that food is just one more merchandise and, hence, also subject to speculative movements.
It cannot be ignored that — despite the progress achieved up to now and the hopes based on an economy that increasingly respects the dignity of every person — the future of the human family is in need of a new impulse to overcome present fragilities and uncertainties. Although we live in a global dimension, there are evident signs of the profound division between those who lack daily sustenance and those who have many resources, using them often for ends other than food and even destroying them. Confirmed thus is that globalization makes us feel closer but not brothers (cf. Caritas in Veritate, 19). Because of this, those Christian values inscribed in the heart of every person and which have always inspired his action must be rediscovered: the feeling of compassion and humanity toward others and the duty of solidarity and commitment to justice, must again be the basis of every activity, including those carried out by the international community.
The crisis is deepening for some of the 13m East Africans worst-hit by one of the most devastating droughts in 60 years, aid agencies have warned.
World Food Day is being marked nearly three months since the UN declared a famine in parts of the Horn of Africa.
But people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and the newly-formed Republic of South Sudan remain in desperate need of food, water and emergency healthcare.
The Vatican is calling particular attention to the dire circumstances of the peoples of the Horn of Africa, in particular Somalia, who have been facing a severe drought and food crisis since July.
The press office published an informative noted on the “Efforts and Commitment of the Catholic Church in the Horn of Africa,” which is issued in conjunction with a press conference held today by the Pontifical Council Cor Unum on the plight of several East African countries.
Presented in a question-and-answer format, the note summarized the situation in countries such as Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia: “A severe drought, conflict and lack of governments have led to massive numbers of people going hungry.
A decision by Ohio officials to remove all pork products from prison menus in response to a lawsuit by Muslim inmates is not sitting well with the state’s pork producers and processors.
Both promise action of their own, including a possible counter lawsuit, to address what they consider an unfair and illogical decision.
“We really think it’s not in the best interest, frankly, of the whole prison system,” said Dick Isler, executive director of the Ohio Pork Producers Council. “It seems like we’re letting a small group make the rules when it really isn’t in the best interest of the rest of prisoners.”
Pope Benedict XVI asked the international community to continue aid to the drought- and famine-stricken Horn of Africa and asked individuals to offer prayers and donate money to help save the millions facing death.
“I invited everyone to offer prayers and concrete aid for their many brothers and sisters so harshly tried, and particularly for the children, who die in that region each day because of sickness and a lack of water and food,” the pope said Oct. 5 at the end of his weekly general audience.
… in recent years, the break-fast party has become part of the Jewish social calendar. From Los Angeles to Chicago to New York, many are attending large, crowded break-fasts, where the spirit of the High Holy Days can get lost in the mixing, and where the day’s solemnity quickly abates, smothered by large quantities of cream cheese and hummus.
Vanessa Ochs, who teaches religion at the University of Virginia, says the new, bigger break-fast raises theological questions. Even before the day of repentance is over, many people are forced to think about the meal they will be serving.
“In the last 25 years, the break-fast has, in some friendship groups, become such a moment for gratitude and coming together that people will stay home from services to cook and prepare,” Dr. Ochs said. “That isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing, but from a non-halakhic” ”” extra-legal ”” “perspective, if this meal marks who is in your friendship circle, and who is going to be there for you, then this is a holy communal feast.”
Muffins costing $16 (£10) and biscuits at $10 were among the “extravagant and wasteful” conference spending by the US justice department, a report has found.
Critics voiced outrage at the spending shown in the internal audit, including $8 coffees and $32-per-person snacks.
The justice department said it accepted the findings, adding that it had taken steps since 2009 “to ensure that these problems do not occur again”.
In June, 14.6% of the U.S. population relied on food stamps. Food stamp rolls have risen 9.5% in the past year, though recent months show the pace of growth is slowing.
Mississippi reported the largest share of its population relying on food stamps, more than 21%, though that included some disaster assistance. One in five residents in New Mexico, Tennessee and Oregon were also food stamp recipients.
Beginning Sept. 1, Hungarians will have to pay a 10 forint (€ 0.37) tax on foods with high fat, sugar and salt content, as well as increased tariffs on soda and alcohol. The expected annual proceeds of €70 million will go toward state health care costs, including those associated with addressing the country’s 18.8 percent obesity rate, which is more than 3 percent higher than the European Union average of 15.5 percent according to a 2010 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In Germany, by comparison, 13.6 percent of adults are obese, with Romania at the bottom of the list with 7.9 percent.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said, “Those who live unhealthily have to contribute more.” In other words, the new law is based on the idea that those whose diets land them in the hospital should help foot the bill, particularly in a country with a health care deficit of €370 million.
For over a decade from his pulpit here at Oak Hill Baptist in North Mississippi, the Rev. Michael O. Minor has waged war against obesity and bad health. In the Delta this may seem akin to waging war against humidity, but Mr. Minor has the air of the salesman he once was, and the animated persistence to match.
Years into his war, he is beginning to claim victories.
The National Baptist Convention, which represents some seven million people in nearly 10,000 churches, is ramping up a far-reaching health campaign devised by Mr. Minor, which aims to have a “health ambassador” in every member church by September 2012. The goals of the program, the most ambitious of its kind, will be demanding but concrete, said the Rev. George W. Waddles Sr., the president of the convention’s Congress of Christian Education.
Genna Saucedo supervises cashiers at a Wal-Mart in Pico Rivera, California, but her wages aren’t enough to feed herself and her 12-year-old son.
Saucedo, who earns $9.70 an hour for about 26 hours a week and lives with her mother, is one of the many Americans who survive because of government handouts in what has rapidly become a food stamp nation.
Altogether, there are now almost 46 million people in the United States on food stamps, roughly 15 percent of the population. That’s an increase of 74 percent since 2007, just before the financial crisis and a deep recession led to mass job losses.