Julie Logue-Riordan is the owner of the cooking school “Cooking with Julie”. After living and working many years abroad in Asia and Africa, Julie now makes her home in Napa. In addition to running the cooking school Julie also is a Culinary Instructor for Copia. She is a Member of International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), San Francisco Professional Food Society, Chaine des Rotisseurs and Slow Food. She took some precious time to answer my questions.

• What do you remember about food when you were a child?
  

As a child I was fortunate as my father was an avid foodie.  He would take a long diversion for the best peaches.

• If I say Picnic, what do you think about?
  

A quiet place where all your senses bright, on a cotton blanket with fabulous artisan cheeses and a cool rose wine.  And a dog to eat the leftovers.

• What is your favorite food?
  

Does chocolate count?  Actually it depends on where I am and the season.  In Chaing Mai it would be Kao Soi and in Napa it would be Goats Leap cheese and of course one of our great red wines.  Hopefully wine is a food!

• What does good food brings?
  

Good food brings many benefits and best of all they are delicious.  It is a great way to build friendships

• What is a perfect meal?
  

A meal made with your own or locally grown produce and homemade bread.

• Do you think it is possible to feed the world in a mindful and sustainable way?
  

I believe it is possible but it will take time there are lots of politics involved that makes it difficult.  I’m encouraged regularly with people becoming aware and active even if it is only to visit their local farmers markets.

• Is food only food? Or is it bigger than simple nutriments?
  

What we eat is what we are.  Each time we eat or buy food we are making a statement about who we are and voting with our fork for the kind of place we want to live in.

• What do you think are the problems today with food and children?
  

Children are given too many choices and are being marketed to.

• If you could change one thing in the way we eat today, what wouldit be?  
  

I would get rid of high fructose corn syrup.

• Your fondest memory as a child about nature?
  

Fishing in streams, and hiking to pick berries.  Nature is so rewarding.

• What does spending time in nature brings you?
  

It revitalizes me in a wonderful way.

• Do you have plants at home? Why?
  

I have a garden and grow tomatoes, herbs and flowers.  I love having fresh veggies and fruits.  There is nothing more satisfying than clipping some fresh herbs to add a special flavour to a dish.

• If you could build your summer house anywhere in the world, where would it be? Why?
  

There are lots of wonderful places but my husband and I have dreamed of the south of France and in Sydney.  Wine, food, and culture.  Plus great weather.

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is the time children spend playing in nature?  
  

10  It is so important for children to know about nature even if it is only a park that they can get to.

• When you go on vacation, where do you go? Why?
  

I like a change of scene to imerse myself in the local culture whether it be somewhere in Europe or Asia

• If you could change one thing in the way cities and public buildings are designed, what would it be?
  

More public water fountains for people and dogs.

• Do you think enough is done to bring children to nature?
  

I’m not sure, I don’t know much about any programs.

• Do you think it is possible for human to grow in a mindful and sustainable manner?
  

It is possible and I try harder and harder each day!

Cousteau and Attenborough were my childhood heros. I watched and followed them religiously. In fact, when Cousteau died, I reacted like any child when their super hero dies, he simply can’t. He is suppose to live forever. I experienced the “super-hero-is-in-fact-human” denial.

This morning in the UK newspaper Independent, a recent survey has David extremely worried and wonder how children will know how to take care of Nature since they are so disconnected.

“The wild world is becoming so remote to children that they miss out, and an interest in the natural world doesn’t grow as it should. Nobody is going protect the natural world unless they understand it.”

Two great headlines in the news today. 

Ban On Energy Drinks

HILLSBOROUGH, N.J. (AP) ― They can be popular because they’re sweet, they give you a lift and they have hip-sounding names like Red Bull and Spike Shooter.

But school officials across the country aren’t as buzzed about caffeinated energy drinks as some of their students. They’re worried about young people gulping down too much caffeine—and getting so hyper that they lose focus on their studies.

“Being hepped up on caffeine can be a distraction to your learning,” said Joe Trybulski, principal of Hillsborough Middle School in central New Jersey.

The Hillsborough school, with more than 1,200 seventh and eighth graders, is among a growing number across the country that have banned or are considering banning energy drinks from their campuses….. click here for more.

Ikoma “Eco-City” to Cut Back on Vending Machines

Vending machines have come under fire lately for being bad for the environment, as inefficient 24-hour operation leads to significant amounts of electricity being wasted. Especially in Japan, there are over 5.4million vending machines (as of Dec 2007). Half of them are for beverages and it is said that if we eliminated ALL of them we could reduce at least ONE nuclear reactor (out of the total 55). Now, Ikoma City in Nara Prefecture is standing up and doing something about it.

The city is aiming to eliminate all non-essential vending machines from city facilities such as parks and gymnasiums within a 6-month period started in April, 2008. Currently, there are 39 cigarette and drinks vending machines in Ikoma, but the city is looking to get rid of as many as possible….. click here for more.

So nice advertising from the San Francisco Zoo. Today, on the The Cool Hunter website. The campaign is called “When San Franciscans connect with their animal” On the “about” section of the site, here is what we find:

From a young age, it’s an almost instinctive human emotion to want t connect with animals.  As children, we’ve all fantasized what it must be like to have a tail. Or wings. Maybe even feathers. It’s this curiosity that fuels our imagination and makes us want to learn more about animals and their relationship to us.

Once activated, this curiosity never leaves-even later when we become adults.

Launching in 2008, the “our gallery site” is part of the Critter Quest interactive media campaign built out of the San Francisco Zoo’s mission statement of connecting people with wildlife, inspiring caring for nature and advance conservation action. Instead of just showing pictures of animals to get people to remember the zoo, we wanted to create opportunities to get Bay Area residents to re-connect with animals - as well as to remind everyone that the SF Zoo belongs to all of us. 

I came upon a blog entry from an Australian about the book Fatland. The book was reviewed in the NY Times in 2003. 

At least from a business perspective, the fattening of America may well have been a necessity. Food companies grow by selling us more of their products. The challenge they face is that the American population is growing much more slowly than the American food supply — a prescription for falling rates of profit. Agribusiness now produces 3,800 calories of food a day for every American, 500 calories more than it produced 30 years ago. (And by the government’s lights, at least a thousand more calories than most people need.) So what’s a food company to do? The answer couldn’t be simpler or more imperative: get each of us to eat more. A lot more.

Critser doesn’t put it quite this way, but his subject is the nutritional contradictions of capitalism. There’s only so much food one person can consume (unlike shoes or CD’s), or so you would think. But Big Food has been nothing short of ingenious in devising ways to transform its overproduction into our overconsumption — and body fat. The best parts of this book show how, in the space of two decades, Americans learned to eat, on average, an additional 200 calories a day. In the words of James O. Hill, a physiologist Critser interviewed, getting fat today is less an aberration than ”a normal response to the American environment.”

In today’s NY Times, an article about the infamous High Fructose Corn Syrup. HFCS is what many people have been pointing the finger at for quite some times. It is often how people differentiate Europe from America. The drastic increase of this substance’s intake is in direct correlation with America’s weight.

Most of the carbohydrates we eat are made up of chains of glucose. When glucose enters the bloodstream, the body releases insulin to help regulate it. Fructose, on the other hand, is processed in the liver. To greatly simplify the situation: When too much fructose enters the liver, the liver can’t process it all fast enough for the body to use as sugar. Instead, it starts making fats from the fructose and sending them off into the bloodstream as triglycerides. (From Fructose, Sweet but Dangerous)

From the article

In humans, triglycerides, which are a type of fat in the blood, are mostly formed in the liver. Dr. Parks said the liver acts like “a traffic cop” who coordinates how the body uses dietary sugars. When the liver encounters glucose, it decides whether the body needs to store it, burn it for energy or turn it into triglycerides.

But when fructose enters the body, it bypasses the process and ends up being quickly converted to body fat.

“It’s basically sneaking into the rock concert through the fence,” Dr. Parks said. “It’s a less-controlled movement of fructose through these pathways that causes it to contribute to greater triglyceride synthesis. The bottom line of this study is that fructose very quickly gets made into fat in the body.”

Fructose is not bad by itself, what has changed over the years is that the increase in consumption is in astronomical proportion. High Fructose Corn Syrup is in everything and mostly in soda, and drinks like gatorade, which kids drinks some many in a single day.

Panel OKs one-year ban on new fast-food restaurants in South L.A.

The measure is part of an effort to address health problems in the area. Some question how such eateries will be defined.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer 

9:42 PM PDT, July 22, 2008

A proposal that would place at least a one-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a broad swath of neighborhoods, mostly in South Los Angeles, won unanimous support from a Los Angeles City Council committee Tuesday.

If approved by the full council and signed by the mayor, the law would prevent fast-food chains from opening new restaurants in a 32-square-mile area, including West Adams, Baldwin Village and Leimert Park. The moratorium would be in effect for one year, with the possibility of two six-month extensions.

 

• Ban on new fast-food restaurants

• Opinion: Editorial - Banning fast food in South L.A.

The measure, proposed by Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose 9th District includes much of South Los Angeles, defines a fast-food restaurant as “any establishment which dispenses food for consumption on or off the premises, and which has the following characteristics: a limited menu, items prepared in advance or prepared or heated quickly, no table orders and food served in disposable wrapping or containers.”

Councilman Jose Huizar questioned that definition during the meeting of the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee and requested clarification from city planners — particularly the definition of a “limited menu” — before the proposal goes before the council.

“McDonald’s has been increasing the number of items on their menu, so at what point would they exceed that definition?” Huizar said.

Councilman Jack Weiss said restrictions on fast-food restaurants in Westwood have caused problems for such businesses as Ben & Jerry’s and Smoothie King, which would not otherwise be considered fast-food outlets.

Restaurant lobbyists initially opposed the law. But Andrew Casana, a lobbyist for the Sacramento-based California Restaurant Assn., said his group is working with Perry and other council members and is waiting to see how they define fast food and plan to deal with lots that remain vacant after the law expires.

Perry said that after speaking with restaurant lobbyists, she amended her proposal to allow for “fast-food casual” restaurants, such as Subway or Pastagina, that do not have heat lamps or drive-through windows and that prepare fresh food to order.

Perry said she has been attempting to address the health issues associated with fast food, such as diabetes and obesity. She is trying to persuade supermarket chains and sit-down restaurants to open in her district, which has been especially hard hit with such health problems.

The Community Redevelopment Agency is offering grocers and restaurants incentives that include tax credits, electricity discounts and expedited reviews by the city Planning Department and Building and Safety Department.

“It’s important to offer incentives to bring restaurants into an area, especially an area that has suffered prejudices and stereotypes,” Perry said.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks, whose entire 8th District is within the affected area, attended Tuesday’s meeting and expressed support for the proposed law.

Huizar called for the city to do more to combat pervasive junk food advertising by educating children in South L.A. about healthy eating.

Julia Ansley, 66, a retired elementary school teacher who has lived in South L.A. more than 40 years, attended the meeting and said afterward that she was encouraged by the vote. “It’s much needed,” she said of the proposed ordinance. “Our community has been neglected by city planners.”

In April, the county Department of Public Health released a study showing that 30% of South Los Angeles adults were obese, compared with about 21% of adults countywide. South L.A. also has the highest incidence of diabetes in the county, 11.7% compared with 8.1% for the county as a whole.

A Times analysis of the city’s roughly 8,200 restaurants late last year found that South L.A. had the highest concentration of fast-food eateries. Per capita, the area has fewer eateries of any kind than the Westside, downtown or Hollywood, and about the same as the Valley. But a much higher percentage of restaurants in South L.A. belong to fast-food chains, and the area has far fewer grocery stores than other parts of town.

molly.hennessy-fiske @latimes.com

In 2007, the Big Fat companies (after the Big Tobacco) decided, after intense marketing sessions, to publicly limit their advertising to children. The move was so bold that New York Times reported on it. That same year, Ad Council, the Government and the Big Fat teamed up for an awareness campaign on obesity - their solution - Shrek. Now Which? comes out with their latest report on how the Big Fat is only playing with numbers, taking from one place and adding to another. Their marketing budgets are not decreasing, far from it. They are just being re-allocated to new mediums, more modern and as deadly as TV. 

The seriousness of all this makes me laugh. I keep picturing their meetings when they talk about how to keep selling and at the same time appeal to the public’s concern. If you want to have an idea of how it must be, check DirecTV’s new line up of commercial. 

On Ad Council’s obesity awareness campaign website, there is a page listing all the partners. Among them are Coca Cola, PepsiCo, Kellogs, Kraft, McDonald, Del Monte, General Mills, Hershey, and Cartoon Network - who survives only because of those companies. Children for them are Billions and Billions in revenue. They will not only do everything to look like they are listening and care for children, but they will also do everything to make sure they maintain and expand that market. They will not lower their marketing budget, only re-allocate it. And increase it.

The first sign of a problem is denial. Deny there is a problem. Am I fat? Of course not, look around. I look like everyone else. Stores sell XXXL shirts because it is normal. Restaurants serve portions that big because it is normal. Fast Food stands are everywhere because they are so convenient and so tasty. I don’t have a problem. The rest of the world wants me to have a problem, but I don’t! 

This is pretty much the level of conversation I have when talking about our food and health system. 

In 1999, BBC wrote about people’s denial. Then Forbes wrote about it in 2006. This month, the Chicago Tribune talks about the perceptions of obesity are changing.

With larger people everywhere, individuals who are slightly overweight may now think of themselves as average and those who are heavier may think of themselves as having only a minor weight problem, the study’s authors suggest.

This year, we started to talk about Airlines charging by weight. People went nuts, saying that it was inhuman. I say we should do it. Or at least put a surcharge.

We keep talking about obesity and overweight with white gloves, making sure to crop out the faces of people on those fat images. I say put them on. Lets start to face what we have become. How much more disconnected from our body, from our health can we be?