Food as Health Reform: Michelle Obama's New Book -- American Grown

What was your favorite food when you were growing up? What was your most memorable experience with the food? What does eating mean to you?

Last time I visited in Tokyo, I brought back a green glass bowl from my parents' house. It was rather heavy to carry back home but, I love the well-balanced design and the fresh color, and it brings back great memories of my childhood. My mother used to serve salad with the green glass bowl, and I was very fond of the memory -- a fresh taste of tomato and seasonal green.

I've always loved vegetables more than anything, perhaps, because I grew up with them. Like New York City's kids who love sushi, I grew up in Tokyo with many different diverse foods. It greatly influenced my taste buds -- I can eat anything and like to explore new and different things.

These experiences have led me to believe that "we are what we grew up to eat", rather than "we are what we eat." Food is our most basic need, so it follows that our preference of food and cravings for particular food are usually developed when we are much younger. In other words, what we are feeding children today will shape tomorrow's diet and future life style.

This very fundamental idea of "we are what we grew up to eat" is finally seeming to sink into our society following two recent widely publicized food-related initiatives.

Disney's new logo for products
that meet its nutrition standard

One is coming from Disney. All products advertised on its child-focused television channels, radio stations and Web sites must comply with a strict new set of nutritional standards. This is a serious decision for Disney, since it means Disney may risk losing some advertising money -- the media industry's lifeline. Major American food companies spend $20 billion on marketing, and $950 million annually are spent on television marketing tailored to children under 12, according to industry estimates.

The second one is coming from New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. His proposal is to place a ban on the sale of large-size sodas and other sugary beverages. The ban would outlaw such drinks larger than 16 ounces at restaurants, food carts and any other establishments that receive letter grades for food service, with the exception of grocery stores. Perhaps taking a cue from NYC's proposal, now the Massachusetts city of Cambridge wants to outlaw large sugary drinks in restaurants. Cambridge is looking into a similar crackdown to combat obesity and diabetes.

Why do we care now? What's triggered these initiatives?

Did you know that Americans spend $100 million for diet aids and $200 billion for diet related illnesses each year? With these huge figures, we finally had to face the music: we realized how costly to it is to be ill, the significance of our diet is to our health, and that healthy eating habits prevent us from being ill. We started seeing food as health.

American Grown:
Michelle Obama's recent book

Michelle Obama seems to take "food as health" a step further to "food as health reform". In 2009, she planted a kitchen garden on the White House grounds, becoming the first first lady to do so since Eleanor Roosevelt. She has recently documented this in her new book called "American Grown".

I discussed the community garden as a platform of a trust-based society in my last post, "Building Trust in the City: The Case of El Sol Brillante " -- a post I received a lot of positive feedback on. The first lady also sees gardens as a symbol of the growing movement of eating healthy. As fresh vegetables, fruit, and herbs sprouted from the ground and her first harvest yielded 1,600 punds of produce, her effort inspired a new conversation across the country about the food we feed our families and the impact it has on the health and well-being of our children.

The first lady was a working mother in Chicago when she first addressed the issue of childhood health. Her pediatrician pulled her aside one day and suggested that she check out her family's diet. She was shocked when she found out how many things she could improve, and it was a beginning of a health awakening at her home. Her family stopped sugary drinks, started using portion control, and started going to local green markets to buy fresher foods. Her point of view has therefore been shaped from her initiative as working mother who cares very much about her daughers' well-being and the next generation's. She described her approach in a recent interview, saying it's about learning how to treat ourselves as gently as we treat our garden.

We are indeed what we raised to eat. With our generation, we are resetting the clock and rebuilding our health and healthy future, literally from ground up.


What balance do you try to achieve with food and health? What do you think of your diet?

Building Trust in the City: The Case of El Sol Brillante

What do you think about the word "trust"?  What does trust mean to you?  What defines trust in us?   How do you develop trust in your personal or business relationships?

Shared Squared Panels

I came across these questions this week when I attended a meeting called the T8 TRUST SUMMIT w/ NYC's finest minds hosted by Shared Squared.  Shared Squared is a community where people believe and promote a concept of collaborative consumption or sharing economy. 

We discussed trust that is essential to this economic model -- trust that has to happen in order for collaboration and sharing activities to flourish between strangers or virtual communities.  For example, consumers have to be convinced that their apartment or house is safe if they rent it via airbnb.com.  Or, consumers need to feel comfortable when they share a ride with strangers using carpooling.com.  

During the meeting, over 60 participants struggled to define what role trust plays in the new economy.

One of the participants described a community-based society that has always allowed us to have a sense of trust in each member of society in the past.  Listening to his comments, I was wondering where has this sense of trust gone?  When did we stop hitchhiking and become afraid that a stranger will harm us?

El Sol Brillante's front gate

The close relationship between the community and trust reminds me of my experience last weekend -- my visit to the community garden called El Sol Brillante, Sr.

It is a little park in New York City's East Village that is a part of the East Village Parks Conservancy and it is located on the south side of East 12th Street between Avenues A and B.

Did you know there are more than 600 community gardens in NYC? Several dozen of them are in the East Village area. Like El Sol Brillante, Sr., they are tended to by volunteer members of their garden associations/trusts.

Neighbors enjoying the afternoon

A lush, well-tended garden provides the community a true oasis. An artful wrought-iron fence surrounds park, creating a whimsical feeling and inviting passers-by.  When I visited last weekend, several neighbors were working on the garden while some were simply enjoying the peaceful afternoon.   The garden is open to the public when a member is present. 

Many historic buildings in NYC share interesting, sometimes twisted, stories.   El Sol Brillante, Sr., is not an exception: it has an interesting history behind its beautiful surface.  In the 1970's, difficult economic times meant that city coffers were unable to meet budgetary needs.  According to the website TreeBranch Network, "overgrown land created 'mugger cover' hiding drug deals and other nefarious activities."  Empty and abandoned lots rundown and arson-destroyed buildings came into city ownership for nonpayment of taxes.  That became the source of much of the vacant land.  The land El Sol Brillante, Sr., sits on was owned by the city and eventually was sold to the community garden coalition.  That was a starting point of turning the "mugger cover" into an urban oasis.

When I walked down the space, I immediately felt a sense of community and trust -- trust that the garden would not be vandalized or destroyed, trust that people would care for others' effort, and trust coming from the people who built trust in the community when violence and poverty were all around the East Village.  I found the community gardens a powerful and dynamic platform to re-create a trust-based society in NYC. 

Building trust in the urban environment takes time and patience.  But, El Sol Brillante, Sr., shows me that it can be done. 

Have you visited a neighborhood garden or park recently?  What is your experience?

Learning How to Live with Biking in the City: NYC Introducing Citi Bike Program

How do we figure out the best way to get from point A to point B?  Does finding the most scenic and peaceful route, such as one with a walk by a beautiful park, matter to you?  Is the quickest and most cost-efficient route, such as by subway, more important to you?  Or, is getting to where you're going as quickly as possible, such as in a taxi that is able to rush through the streets, the best way for you?

In New York City, there are many ways to get around the city -- subways, trains, buses, taxis, pedicabs, ferries and bikes, to name a few.  I often use HopStop apps to find the most efficient way to get to my destination of the day.  With these kinds of choices, New Yorkers can plan how to get to where they're going in any number of ways. 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, of all people who commute to work in NYC, 41% use the subway, 24% drive alone, 12% take the bus, 10% walk to work, 2% travel by commuter rail, 5% carpool, 1% use a taxi, 0.6% ride their bike to work, and 0.2% travel by ferry.

The NYC Subway is the largest rapid transit system in the world when measured by track mileage (656 miles, or 1,056 km of mainline track).  With such excellent public transportation, NYC has been regarded as one of the most energy-efficient cities in the U.S. 

To further expand and improve our current transportation system, in May 2012, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced that 10,000 bikes, docked at 600 stations, are expected to be available for Citi Bike Share Program by next summer.  The city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) said it would unveil a map of the bike stations in May and the first bikes are scheduled to reach the streets in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn at the end of July 2012. 

Citibank endorsed $41M for the Share Program in NYC

In 2009, the NYC DOT announced a strategic plan with an accelerated goal of doubling bike commuting between 2007 and 2012, and tripling it by 2017.  Amazingly, the city reached the goal of doubling bike commuting in 2011, a year early, and a recent New York Times article, "This is How We Ride", and its number of readers responses show just how overwhelmed New Yorkers are about the recent increase of bike riders in the city.

One of the Times readers, Yang Congtou from Beijing, referring to other readers' opinions, said "It always surprises me that the resistance to bicycles is so deeply entrenched in the US."

I don't know if this attitude reflects general opinion of most Americans but, certainly New Yorkers are not thrilled by the recent increasing use of bike use in the city.  Over 8 Million New Yorkers in five boroughs have to live harmoniously with cranky and self-absorbed pedestrians and aggressive taxi drivers.  But add to that bikers flying down the street and ignoring traffic rules, and no wonder why many New Yorkers feel uncomfortable about growing number of bikers in the city.   

More than 200 cities around the world now have bike-share programs and people especially in Europe take advantage of these programs.  In many cities in the world, the bike is increasingly regarded as an integral part of urban transportation.  In line with this trend NYC's DOT will launch a Citi Bike Share Program.

What, then, is the gap between what the DOT is promoting for the city's transformation and how the bike in general is perceived?  Why do we struggle with this change in NYC?  What can we do about it?

I found the magic words to understanding the city's issues in one sentence of the article.   The writer, David Byrne, noted, "European bikers take traffic rules seriously."  This, however, is not the case with NYC bikers.  I just don't know how many times that I've been almost run over by bikers who ignore red traffic lights, and I don't know when I've seen any law enforcement stop this hazard.  

In one of my past posts "New Wealth", I discussed how the new world allows us to breathe and gives us freedom.  I firmly believe our increasingly globalized and interlinked economies and communities will bring us "new wealth" and a new paradigm.   Still, we need to follow basic rules in order to live harmoniously and freely with millions of people in condensed urban environments.  If the DOT would like to transform the city, it needs to have a practical and effective plan for handling the new traffic. 

Living considerately -- that is a mark of a true sustainable society.  Do you agree?

<Information of NYC Bike Map>
http://www.nycbikemaps.com/