Today, in America, portions are out of control. The old admonition to eat everything on your plate no longer applies when processed foods add little nutrition and loads of calories. With an epidemic of obesity, people need to know more than what to eat, and what not to eat to stay healthy. They also need to learn to distinguish a sufficient portion, from one that packs on the pounds. In her opening talk, nutritionist Dr. Lisa Young, author of The Portion Teller Plan pointed out that by definition, fast food is cheap food. Super-sizing your portion costs food companies nothing, but eating over-sized portions can cost you your health.

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As resources and volunteers head to Haiti, I learned that among the medical personnel who have traveled there to serve are Urban Zen presenter and good friend, Dr. Mark Hyman, MD, and his lovely wife, Pier Boutin, also a physician. Traveling with them are a medical team.

The dedicated pair arrived in Port Au Prince on Friday night, and according to a report sent to a colleague, which I'll quote here, they found "the conditions to be absolutely horrific, a scene of death, devastation, and chaos."

“Human poverty is hugely susceptible to nature's depredations, and Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries, has again and again been the victim of demonically destructive wind, rain and flood,” wrote Amy Wilentz who has lived in and written about Haiti.

“In the developed world, such vulnerability would lead quickly to measures for the public safety. But Haitians cannot expect what Paul Farmer, an anthropologist and physician who has worked there for more than two decades, calls 'protection from the foreseeable.'”

Donna Karan, Sonja Nuttall, and the staff, family, friends of Urban Zen Foundation extend their sympathy and condolences to Rodney Yee and his family. 2009 brought great loss to the Yee family with the passing of both Albert and later Evelyn Yee. Urban Zen Foundation is grateful to the Yee family for graciously establishing two scholarship funds for the Urban Zen Integrative Therapy (UZIT) Program. Rodney has dedicated his masterful expertise and passion for integrative therapy as he inspires dedication and knowledge to the students of the UZIT program.

Check back soon for more information.

I consider myself solution oriented. I was fifteen when this actually dawned on me.

I spent many of my earlier years in and out of doctor’s offices — allergies, asthma, bronchitis and pneumonia. I had regular allergy shots and filled my young body with three inhalers, pills and my “all time favorite” prednisone (a steroid), all to help me breathe. If you know what it’s like not to be able to breathe then you know that you will do ANYTHING you can to open up those airways! And drugs it was! I was young so my parents were calling the shots, not me — until I was fifteen.

I had the good fortune to spend my summers in Montauk, New York, a small beach community at the very tip of the Southern fork of Long Island. My summer job—cooking in the local health food store (a uncommon treasure back in the 1980’s). I was surrounded by the purest foods and food products I had ever laid eyes on — I was a kid in a candy store, but it wasn’t candy I was seeing or buying! It was then that I came upon Food and Healing by Annemarie Colbin—how what you eat determines your health, well-being and quality of life. Needless to say, this was the beginning of a new beginning for me.

As a reporter for the Park Slope Food Coop (the oldest food coop in the U.S.—yay!), last May, I attended the first Brooklyn Food Conference. This vibrant event brought together committed people seeking to build a healthy, sustainable, and socially just food system.

“We wanted to connect everyone involved in the food movement,” says Conference Organizer Nancy Rohmer. “If you’re working on health but don’t connect and involve people from the environment and social justice movements, you lose some of your power and support.”

Following the Conference, eighty people met to build an ongoing organization, eventually launching the Brooklyn Food Coalition, a grass roots community-based food organization in Brooklyn, with ten active neighborhood chapters in Park Slope, Bedford Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Flatbush, Fort Green/Clinton,Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Prospect Heights, Sunset Park, and Kensington/Windsor Terrace.

“Our members and activists are the decision makers. They determine what actions we’ll take,” Rohmer reports. For example, the Sunset Park group is focusing on immigrant food workers. They’re planning a youth summit this Spring leading up to a nationwide forum to be held in June in Detroit.

With a plethora of vacant lots transformed into urban farms, the Motor City has morphed into the biggest center for urban agriculture. Among the issues targeted by the Coalition are national food policy, school foods, mapping and surveys, and supporting the “Fresh Initiative” which gives supermarkets tax breaks to set up shop in low income neighborhoods. This gives families access to foods that protect adults and children from obesity—an initiative aligned with the goals of Urban Zen which on January 20^th will host the first program of its 2010 series, Food Solutions, which offers people tools for making healthy food changes.

Through the billion meals it serves daily, New York City has huge buying power. The Coalition will ask the Mayor to locally source as much food as possible. This will expand upstate New York agriculture through enhancing the economic platform for food farmers, create new business in the city. and build the upstate/downstate relationship.

The school food program is another key issue that unites health, sustainability, and social justice. “We want our kids to be healthy,” says Rohmer, pointing out that many city kids eat their only meal of the day at school. Unfortunately, with inadequate financial support from government, the current guidelines for food selections emphasize high carb and high sugar content foods, which research

shows are the very foods that contribute to obesity. In addition, to avoid liability, schools subcontract food service to large industrial suppliers who offer foods of low nutrient quality. Says Rohmer, the schools “want the food cheap, with an adequate calorie count, and minimal liability. This is very bad formula for healthy food.” The Coalition supports a national movement for a universal free breakfast and lunch program.

According to Rohmer, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) first founded the federal school lunch program back in the 1940’s in order to distribute subsidized foods grown by farmers during the Great Depression. Their goal was never specifically to meet the nutritional needs of children.

To build support for improving school food, the Coalition will invite parents and teachers to co-create a movement to change school foods. What begins at the neighborhood level will hopefully build to citywide actions for school food in New York City. Over the next three months, the Coalition will also prepare for future national legislation via a campaign directed towards an upcoming Congressional vote for the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act, an appropriate entrée point for increasing allocations to improve school food.

To learn more, participate, and comment, you can go to their website at: http://www.brooklynfoodcoalition.org

For health insight, information, and action, you’re invited to get the free Health Outlook at www.health-journalist.com