Several Unrelated Items About Food

I like the blogosphere around this time of year because you can easily figure out who the Jewish bloggers are (the ones posting). Anyway, since all Jewish holidays are devoted to food (and pretty much only food), here are a few musings about that which we eat.

• There's some kind of mini-uproar about Barack Obama ordering spam musubi on the golf course in Hawaii this week. Not only is there a very good Hawaiian restaurant on the Westside of LA that serves spam musubi, but they sell T-shirts which read "What the hell is spam musubi?" that will hopefully start flying off the shelves now that the delicacy has a Presidential imprimatur. For the unenlightened, it's basically sushi with Spam instead of fish.

• I am breaking with all known Jewish traditions this Christmas and not going to a Chinese restaurant, but instead a potluck for wayward members of the tribe. My contribution will be butternut squash soup, perfect on this unusually cold California day.

• It's not too late to give to your local food bank. Demand is up significantly over the past several months as the recession deepens. Second Harvest is a good place to connect with the food bank that needs the most help in your area. I did a little work at the Westside Food Bank in Santa Monica over the weekend, and it was a good feelings.

• Speaking of food assistance, and turning to a food-related story that has actual policy implications, the Obama transition is considering using food assistance programs to encourage better nutrition.

For decades, the government has treated hunger and obesity as unrelated phenomena. But at a news conference last week in Chicago, Tom Vilsack, President-elect Barack Obama's choice for agriculture secretary, said he would put "nutrition at the center of all food assistance programs," a signal that he will get involved next year when Congress moves to reauthorize nutrition programs that support school breakfasts and lunches as well as summer food for children.

"For a long time, we've looked at hunger and obesity separately," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the committee that will draft the legislation. "It's not a zero-sum game."

This is a great idea. The tragedy of being poor is that your food options are typically cheap, high-fat products that end up leading to obesity. By offering major discounts to the purchase of produce with food stamps, for example, we help to solve both a hunger problem and a public health problem. There is a reasonable concern that the government becomes too paternalistic over this, but the very real concern about obesity among the poor outweighs it. I would also encourage farmer's markets in low-income communities that accept food stamps; much of this is a problem of access, as only fast food restaurants and convenience stores seem to proliferate in depressed communities instead of full-service groceries.