Weekend Reading

Reading

I've recently been reading the USDA's Weekly Reside Repeat Violator list.  It shows the packing plant and originating farm of meat found to have illegally high levels of antibiotics (not just antibiotics - that's ok, apparently - these are just the folks who took it way too far.) It's disgusting to see what we're eating: penicillin, neomycin, sulfadiazine, tetracycline, and on and on and on.  Cargill shows up numerous times -- and so does a company with "all natural" in it's name, so read your labels carefully. Dairy cows frequently appear on the list - the aging cows used for ground beef.

The Rudd Center at Yale has for years been doing terrific work on obesity and food marketing. Now, they've set up a website for school food reform advocates called SPARK. Be sure to sign up for their email list.

I ran across an article in the APA Monitor that reminded me of how much I love www.smarterlunchrooms.org with their tagline - Food is Not Nutritous Until It's Eaten. They have great ideas for how to get kids to make healthier choices including a blueprint/layout for school cafeteria lunch lines.the folks at the Cornell food and Brand Lab are behind it all.

Great article in the WSJ on lunch box notes.

Things to Do

Enjoy the Long Weekend. No school Monday. Consider apple picking.

The Queens County Farm Museum has opened their corn maze.

The Planting Fields has a family festival on Sat. and Sun.