Weekend Reading

Reading

USA Today reports on a new survey revealing that 2/3rds of teachers have students who regularly come to school hungry.

More sugar than a Snickers bar? McDonald's 'healthy' oatmeal. Read more.

Really Shouldn't we get to know if we are eating something that has been genetically modified. Mark Bittman thinks so.

The WSJ reported on how to pick your fish -- which you are supposed to be eating a lot of -- covering issues of health and sustainability.

Horizon's new DHA-fortified organic milk might not be so organic as reported by Food Safety News.

Industrially farmed chickens are fed arsenic. Read more.

Apps

The Good Guide has an app for your iphone that gives you a "green score" on the products you're considering buying. Use at the store this weeken dor to check the Tyson chicken nuggets they serve at school. You can also use their website if you're anti-app.

Action

Action for Healthy Kids is promoting a campaign with Kelloggs - upload or text a picture of your breakfast and they will help provide breakfast in schools to kids who need it.

From Slow Food USA:

Spring's going to be a lot quieter this year. Something is killing off almost 40% of North American honeybees each year, and it's threatening our entire food chain. Mounting scientific evidence suggests agricultural pesticides are one of the culprits.

The Environmental Protection Agency has the power to investigate and ban the pesticides thought to be responsible but, despite their own scientists' advice and under pressure from pesticides companies, they're dragging their feet.

Much of the plant-life we depend on for food exists thanks to honeybees. Now the bees are depending on us to return the favor. Click here to sign our petition calling on the EPA to solve the mystery that's killing our buzz:

http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5986/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5833

From the Environmental Working Group:

In case you missed it: The budget legislation passed by the House of Representatives would slash $747 million -- about 10 percent -- from the 2011 budget for the Special Supplemental Feeding Program for Women, Infants and Children. It's commonly known as "WIC."

WIC was created in 1974 to provide a very modest but crucial measure of food assistance to low-income moms and little kids who are at "nutrition risk." To qualify for this modest assistance, recipients must be poor -- very poor. Some 68 percent of WIC beneficiaries live at, or below, the poverty line. That's about $22,000 for a family of four.

Congress was quick to slash a food program for poor kids during the worst economy in 80 years, but it cut not one penny from the country's farm subsidy programs -- at a time when the farmers who receive the subsidies are enjoying record-high crop prices and incomes.

By cutting just a fraction of what we spend on farm subsidies, the House could have held WIC harmless and continued to give a little help to deserving poor little kids at serious "nutrition risk."

I wrote a Huffington Post column on the cut to WIC and how it symbolizes an unacceptably lopsided and wrong-headed approach to food and agriculture policy. Please read the column (it's below) and then stand with EWG Action Fund and let your representative know that you want a fair, equitable food system that begins to help the country heal its dietary and environmental woes.