USDA Forest Service Employees Partner with Non-Profits In Vallejo

 

By Amanda Cundiff, Forest Service Region 5 Partnership Coordinator and Lara Polansky, Forest Service Presidential Management Fellow

In Vallejo, California, on a decommissioned Naval Shipyard called Mare Island, something good has emerged from hard times: a new community coalition to build and sustain a city garden. Home to over 110,000 individuals, Vallejo is known for being diverse, depressed, crime-ridden, and bankrupt. Since the Naval Shipyard closed and the recession hit, Vallejo has struggled with poverty, stretched city services, and troubled schools. Crime and poverty are high, and, perhaps as a result, Vallejo is a quintessential food desert.

Our coalition envisions a People’s Garden for Vallejo. The Garden will provide fresh produce to low-income residents and teach sustainable gardening practices. Coalition members each bring something vital to the project: volunteers to build and maintain the garden, low-income clients to benefit from vegetables and fresh eggs, and students to learn about nutrition and food production through action.
The lead partners in the Vallejo People’s Garden are:

Global Center for Success (www.globalcenterforsuccess.org) is a 501(c)(3) on Mare Island that provides supportive human services and programs to the homeless and needy. GCS is excited to start a garden right in its backyard to serve as an outdoor classroom, a community hub, and a source of free organic produce for its clients.

The Regional Office of the USDA Forest Service, located on Mare Island, employs over 200 people. The Forest Service will contribute volunteers and (eventually) land for a second garden. The convenient location of the Vallejo People’s Garden will provide an opportunity for employees to meet and work alongside our neighbors and have a healthy place to volunteer during lunch breaks and after work.

Betty Frank Senior Lunch Program is a 501(c)(3) feeding program that serves lunch daily in a community center, about 10 minutes from Mare Island in Vallejo. The coalition plans to provide fresh produce to this senior center’s kitchen and to arrange visits for seniors to tour and even volunteer in the garden. The drawn plans for the garden include handicapped-accessible raised beds that will be easy for seniors to reach. Additionally, teachers at Mare Island Elementary School across the street from the future garden site are excited about bringing students over for lessons in food production and nutrition.

Landscape Plan for garden site at the Global Center for Success site in Vallejo, CA, one mile from the USDA Forest Service Regional Office

The site of a future People’s Garden behind the Global Center for Success in Vallejo, CA. Volunteers cleared and mulched the site in fall 2009, but now the site is ready for a burst of new volunteer energy and a seed grant from Nature’s Path Organic Foods. Across the street, students at Mare Island Elementary School are walking from their bus to the school’s entrance. Students and teachers will be an important partner and beneficiary of the garden project.

Napa County, The Most Obese in Bay

Napa is the most obese county in the Bay Area and among the worst in the state, according to a recent study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

Napa County also stood out as having one of the highest diabetes rates in the Bay Area. The study uses 2007 data — the most recent information available— from the so-called California Health Interview Survey, which has been conducted every other year beginning in 2001, said Susan Babey, a co-author of the UCLA study.

More than 28 percent of Napa County’s population was obese in 2007, compared to between 25 percent and 29 percent in 2001, the study shows. When it comes to diabetes, 9.2 percent of Napa County residents had the illness in 2007, compared to at least 9 percent in 2001, according to the data.
The Napa County obesity rate of 28.6 percent was nearly three times higher than San Francisco’s 11.8 percent rate, the lowest in the Bay Area.

Among the nine Bay Area counties, only Solano County had a higher 2007 diabetes rate — 9.4 percent.
Babey said certain demographic risk factors make some people more likely than others to be on the losing side of the battle against obesity and diabetes.
“The prevalence of both obesity and diabetes were particularly high for low-income people, especially people with incomes below the poverty line,” she said.
These health epidemics hit Latino, black and less-educated people the hardest, Babey said.

Marin and San Francisco counties, which have some of the state’s lowest rates of obesity and diabetes, are among the wealthiest, according to study findings.
The 2008 median household incomes for Marin and San Francisco were $89,909 and $73,127, respectively, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The figure for Napa County was $64,829.

Babey said poorer neighborhoods with more convenience stores and fast food restaurants than farmers markets and supermarkets can keep some healthy food choices out of reach.
“If you boil it down, obesity results from consuming more calories than we expend … which sounds simple but really isn’t, because the things that we eat and the amount of physical activity we get are both influenced by the choices that we have available to us,” Babey said.

Cutting out or cutting down on soda is one of the easiest ways a person can reduce his or her obesity and diabetes risk, Babey said.“Increased sugar consumption has been linked to diabetes in an number of studies,” she said.

County Health Officer Dr. Karen Smith said the study data “may be a less accurate reflection of the countywide situation because of the small sample size” of its random telephone survey.
But Napa County — like the rest of the nation — is battling rising obesity rates and the condition’s many complications, she said.

“As is true elsewhere, these health issues are not evenly distributed across the county,” Smith said in an e-mail. “Instead, Latinos and our poorest residents are disproportionately affected.”
Smith said Napa County Public Health is working to find ways to help stem the obesity epidemic.
“Obesity is a complicated health and social issue that will require a multi-faceted approach that incorporates changes in individual behavior as well as changes in the way we live,” she said.

Obesity in adults is defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as something with a Body Mass Index of 30 or higher. Body Mass Index (BMI) is calculated from a person’s height and weight. A BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight.
Babey said plans are in the works at the federal level to offer incentives to grocery stores to expand into low-income neighborhoods — a move that would theoretically boost access to foods like fresh fruits and vegetables.

Overweight and obese people are more likely to suffer from a myriad of health problems, including high blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and some cancers, Smith said. Diabetic people are more at risk for heart and lung diseases, high blood pressure, amputation, blindness and other serious conditions, she said.

Dr. Andrew Fenton, a physician who works at Queen of the Valley Medical Center’s emergency department, said he sees evidence of the toll obesity is taking on Napa County.
One recent patient, he said, was so heavy she could not breathe properly because of excess weight pressing onto her mid-section.

“I have also seen kids who are so heavy that they develop hip fractures and the ends of their hips break up and just disintegrate,” Fenton said.
“I have also seen kids whose long bones in their legs bow out instead of being straight due to their excessive weight.”

The California Medical Association supports taxing sweetened beverages. Other groups are proposing a fast food tax to fight obesity, he said.
Babey said health care costs in California for diabetes come with a price tag of about $24 billion annually. Obesity costs are about $21 billion each year, she said.
“If the (obesity and diabetes) rates continue to go up, we can expect that price tag to go up as well,” she said.


posted by Napa Valley Register 9/11/10

Let's Do Lunch!

Why people need to have their lunch and eat it too.

Lunch. Let’s do lunch. Let’s skip lunch. Lunch is for wimps. It is many years since Gordon Gekko made that last infamous announcement and yet ‘lunch’ is still a dirty word.
We need to eat; but we seem also to need to justify the time spent doing it. Sometimes we sit alone at our computer while we wolf a sandwich (extra points if purchased from an entrepreneur with a basket actually in the office). Sometimes we snatch a bite while we rush round doing the domestic errands that will allow us to stay later that night. Sometimes we miss lunch altogether: we jog to burn up calories (the absolute opposite); or we go to the gym to work out (work up?) aggression before plunging back into the dog eat dog marketplace. Anything, anything but simply having lunch and enjoying it.

Why? When, indeed, eating in the middle of the day is a natural and healthy moment to do so — sustaining energy, allowing digestion and feeding conversation.
It is an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, broadly speaking. Further south, societies have a stronger tradition of eating, and then resting, in the middle of the day. The day starts earlier, is broken by some hours in the afternoon, and then goes on later into the evening. The anthropological explanation of this is climatic: it is the heat which dictates, not the digestion. Except that, now that Anglo-Saxon capitalism is dominant, in city after European city the habit is beginning to die, as desks must be staffed until Tokyo has gone to bed and New York has woken up. Global capitalism has overridden variations in the global climate.

This new capitalism is lean, mean and very hungry. Back in the bad old days, when socialist sensitivities were keen, business lunches possibly earned a bad name. Fat cat capitalists sat late into the afternoon over brandy and cigars, while their workers toiled in satanic mills, only emerging late in the afternoon with pale, hungry faces and emaciated limbs.
But now bosses are thinner than shop-floor workers — they can afford more expensive gyms — and brandy and cigars. Business entertaining goes on, but water is the order of the ambitious lunchtime drinker, and the lunch — notoriously never free — must be justified by a concrete deal, a bottom line, a result.

Meals are significant social moments in all cultures. Meals have always attracted rituals and meanings. They used to be far more simply and recognisably significant in our own culture. The directors would have lunch in their own dining room, and would invite others to join them. Banks, shops and offices would close for lunch. Lunch was important. And it was important throughout the week. Sunday lunch involved all the family sitting down. Christmas dinner still does. In America there is Thanksgiving. In church there is the Eucharist, the Mass, the Holy Communion, The Lord’s Supper : meals are where we find much that is significant about how we live, what is changing, what is enduring.

Lunch is an interface. Lunch is where work meets people (where colleagues became friends before the days of motivational workshops and team bonding courses). Lunch is where people talk and people think. It is where the new economy meets a very ancient set of rituals and customs. How we approach lunch says a lot about our attitude to work, and work’s attitude towards us.

Lunch has been on a long downhill trek — from luncheon to something, which we snatch, shamefaced, alone. So what have we gained by downgrading lunch? What have we lost?
“I’m going for lunch.” Yes, but are you going for lunch to eat; or are you going to do the things that you do instead of lunching? In one sense the latter could be said to be fraudulent because this hiatus in the working day is there in order that the natural human need to eat should be met. But on the other hand we don’t want to eat. So we have turned lunch into something else, something broader — time out during the working day. And so employers negotiate about how long ‘lunch’ — and other breaks — should be.

Is the time taken at the employee’s expense, or the employer’s? If it is just used by the employee at will, then cannot employers reasonably argue that it should not count towards the working day? If it is used to eat, because an eight- or ten-hour stretch without food involves significant loss of efficiency towards the end, then cannot an employee regard that as benefiting the organisation? Lunch, in those circumstances, becomes a necessary concomitant of employing people at all — and the employer’s business.

This is lunch as a battleground. It suggests a workplace that is a battlefield. Investment banks are the new sweatshops, as much as the new call centres — only with bigger bonuses. So that’s all right then? In a free market and a free society people are able to choose what they do with the time when they could be eating. That canteen, lunch-break culture was so paternalistic, so patronising. Yet now market pressures seem to work only one way. They have eaten up lunch for the keen employee. Modern business culture has become as food-friendly as a plague of locusts.

Historically, many communities dedicated to a common end have distrusted meals. Under the Rule of St Benedict monks eat in silence, listening to readings from improving texts. (When do the readers eat? But then, when do waiters have lunch?) The trouble is, eating is so charged. Rows over the family table. Class war fought with serried ranks of cutlery and fish servers. Meals are the traditional moment to betray your enemy under the guise of friendship: the invitation to break bread speaks of peace, but treachery often strikes. Dante puts traitors to their guests into the very lowest Hell.
It is a busy place.

And yet, we should nevertheless try to reclaim lunch for the new economy. Because, what is wrong with eating? Can’t we simply enjoy that necessary break in the working day, make a virtue out of the necessity, feed ourselves, replenish ourselves, come back to give it back to our work? A solitary sandwich maybe efficient but is it effective?

Everyone should think about lunch more. Employers should value employees as people who need to eat. Employees should value employers as people for whose sake — among others — they eat. And maybe the ritual meal, the nourishing meal, the creative meal, food not as a weakness but as collaboration, can come back into business. So, re-build the subsidised canteen, bring back the dinner ladies!

Perhaps, even, we could invite Dionysos back to the lunch table, to oil our ideas, give us a little courage to make that intuitive leap, speak up to the boss, help us to dare outline that off-the-wall idea. Of course, it would be dangerous, but it’s food for thought.

by Douglas (shared from What's Next: Top Trends)

Solano officials endorse first lady's 'Let's Move' anti-obesity campaign

As first lady Michelle Obama launched her campaign against childhood obesity Tuesday, local health and political leaders lauded efforts to fight the epidemic which puts legions of youth at health risk.

The problem is particularly acute in Solano County, surveys show. At least one-third of Solano's fifth-graders are overweight, and 31 percent of seventh- and ninth-graders are unfit, the Children's Network reported.

"Solano County has one of the worst track records (in the Bay Area) of kids who are at healthy weight," Children's Network Executive Director Kim Thomas said.

A separate county 5-year needs assessment indicates that nearly 23 percent of Solano children aged 5-19 are overweight.

The national "Let's Move" public awareness campaign encompasses a four-pronged approach -- helping parents make better food choices, serving healthier food in school, making healthy food more available and affordable, and encouraging children to exercise more.

Nationwide, one in three American children is overweight or obese, putting them at higher risk of developing diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other illnesses. Furthermore, health experts say today's children could have shorter life spans than their parents.

Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, called the Let's Move campaign "one of the more important things we've done to change the status of obesity over the next few years."

Miller said the first lady will bring the "right players" together for an effective campaign, including pediatricians, food and drink manufacturers, school lunch program experts and others involved in child nutrition.

"This is about changing our behavior and knowledge about what foods are good for us and what foods are not, and our behaviors in terms of getting enough exercise," Miller said.

Meanwhile, Congress can help by reauthorizing the federal school meal and nutrition program, and also help find ways to allow schools to bolster physical education classes, some which have been cut due to fiscal constraints, Miller said.

Here are some highlights of the Let's Move campaign:

 * The Food and Drug Administration will work with food manufacturers and retailers on food labels to reflect calorie and fat contents.

* The American Academy of Pediatrics will encourage doctors to monitor children's height and weight used to measure body fat.

* A proposal will go before Congress to offer tax breaks to encourage grocery stores to offer more nutritious foods, and to encourage communities to stage farmers markets.

Local efforts are also under way to combat childhood obesity.

Solano County Public Health Education Manager Robin Cox said the county is working with the Solano Transportation Authority to encourage children to walk or bike to school.

At the Children's Network, Thomas endorsed efforts to remove sugary drinks and candy from schools, and other efforts to make fresh produce available in low-income neighborhoods. She added that widespread changes are in order.

"We all have to integrate better nutrition and more exercise into the way we live our lives. We all have an element of personal responsibility," Thomas said.

Orignally published by Vallejo Times Herald Feb 2010. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact staff writer Sarah Rohrs at srohrs@timesheraldonline.com.

What's More Important: Diet or Exercise?

If you could choose between diet or exercise, diet actually has far more influence on developing your ideal lean body mass and overall health than exercise. It accounts for about 80 percent of the health benefits derived from a healthy lifestyle, but of course both are necessary for optimal health.

Unfortunately, many are confused on this issue and believe that as long as they're exercising appropriately, they don't have to be very careful with their food choices.

This simply is not true.

If you want to lose weight, your first action item should be to drastically reduce or eliminate all forms of sugar from your diet, particularly fructose. Fructose is a major contributor to:

·         Insulin resistance and obesity

·         Elevated blood pressure

·         Elevated triglycerides and elevated LDL

·         Depletion of vitamins and minerals

·         Cardiovascular disease, liver disease, cancer, arthritis and even gout

You'll also want to cut out most grains, including organic ones, as they break down into sugar in your body. The easiest way to avoid both fructose and grains is to stop buying processed foods, and focus on a diet of fresh whole foods, cooked from scratch instead.

The reason why fructose and grain-avoidance is so important for optimal health and weight is because these are the primary contributors to insulin resistance, which not only hampers your ability to lose weight, but also gives rise to virtually every chronic disease we know of.

 Posted By Dr. Mercola | December 17 2011

4 Tips to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain

HO HO HEAVY!
How to avoid Holiday Weight Gain
'Tis the season to be feeding! It's that time of year when delectable treats, and everything sweet tickles your fancy. With so many parties and plates shoved in your face, how can you possibly manage to avoid the Santa sack? Check out these party favors below to avoid the bulge.

1. Aim for seven-a-day
So often we focus on subtracting things out of our diet rather than adding and replacing. Try to eat seven more servings of fruit and vegetables each day. Pledge to eat at least five before you snack on anything sweet. These low calorie treats will ensure that you are less hungry more often.

2. Never go to a party hungry
If it's good for grocery shopping, it's good at this year's Christmas party. If you find that your mouth starts to water just thinking about going to the big bash, slow your roll and grab some raw cabbage. Just kidding, unless you like cabbage. Grab three fruits or veggies of your choice to eat on your way to the holiday party, and curb that appetite before it crashes.

3. Talk More
Conversation is calorie free. Focus on socializing and spend the evening having good conversation. Just make sure all the celery is out of your front teeth…and bring Listerine strips.

4. Only One
If you get tired of people asking you, "to eat something," choose the small­est plate and decorate it with only one treat per hour. Be careful! Small plates can be deceptive. Building food castles on tiny plates is a party foul for your tummy.

>> read more healthy tips at www.solanofit.com

Shape Up America! Wants to Extend Medicare Coverage for Obesity Treatment to All Obese Americans

Obesity treatment, counseling should be covered: Dr. Koop’s group

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — As the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) considers what health benefits must be covered by new state insurance plans operating under the Affordable Care Act, one of the nation’s leading groups on healthy weight for life is encouraging HHS to follow the lead of its agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), by extending Medicare coverage for obesity screenings and physician-based counseling to the rest of the obese population.

Calling CMS’s November 29 coverage decision a “major step forward” in the nation’s fight against obesity, Shape Up America! is now advocating that HHS extend existing CMS policies to the estimated 70 million Americans who are obese (those with a Body Mass Index of 30 and above). Besides lauding the CMS decision to cover counseling for obese adults on Medicare, the organization is further pressing HHS to follow CMS’s earlier national coverage policy, which pays for surgical treatment for the severely obese (those with a BMI of 40 or higher or with a BMI of 35 and above if they have a chronic medical condition such as diabetes or high blood pressure).

Because of the high prevalence of obesity and its correlation to many chronic diseases, this disorder is responsible for more health care expenditures than any other medical condition.
“As HHS defines the essential health benefits private insurance plans must cover under the Affordable Care Act, the agency should not overlook the pressing issue of combating obesity in America,” said Barbara J. Moore, Ph.D., president and CEO of Shape Up America! “Including comprehensive obesity counseling and evidence-based treatment regimens is justified to improve the health outcomes and reduce the costs associated with chronic diseases associated with obesity. Moreover, CMS’s coverage policies establish a solid foundation for HHS to act.”

According to Shape Up America!, there is an urgent need for public policy to address the difficult challenges affecting the more than 15 million adults and 2.7 million children who are severely obese and face a greatly increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthma and osteoarthritis. Now comprising approximately 5.7 percent of the U.S. population, the severely obese are 2-3 times more likely to die of preventable disease than persons at a healthy weight. In fact, life expectancy for those with severe obesity can be reduced by as much as 8 to 12 years.

Because cost effectiveness is a major factor influencing HHS decision-making, Shape Up America! laid out the cost benefits of extending CMS policies to all obese Americans. Addressing the strong correlation between obesity and chronic disease, the organization cited findings from a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issue brief, which reported that between 1987 and 2007 the difference in spending on obese individuals compared to those of normal weight increased from 8 percent to 38 percent – or almost a five-fold increase.

Based on these findings, Shape Up America! cautioned that unless HHS intercedes to give obese Americans greater access to comprehensive obesity counseling and evidence-based treatment regimens, healthcare expenditures attributed to obesity will only increase from the estimated $198 billion a year currently spent on the direct and indirect costs of obesityto as much as $344 billion by 2018, or 21% of direct health care spending.

When it comes to the severely obese, Shape Up America! also challenged the conventional wisdom that adults needing to lose 100 pounds or more can achieve lasting weight loss through methods that are effective for the moderately obese — diet, exercise, pharmacotherapy and behavior modification. Although these interventions work in some significantly overweight individuals, controlled studies show these efforts alone are usually ineffective for producing durable weight loss in severely obese patients.  In contrast, weight-loss surgery followed by appropriate lifelong medical care produces clinically significant, lasting weight reduction in the majority of severely obese patients and improves most, if not all, comorbidities of obesity.

Studies also demonstrate a significant reduction in the risk of death from obesity-related chronic diseases in patients who had surgery, including a 92 percent drop in death from diabetes, a 60 percent reduction in cancer deaths and a 56 percent reduction in deaths from cardiovascular disease.

Reinforcing these research findings, Shape Up America! pointed to a number of international studies that have measured the amount of time it takes for insurers to recoup the direct medical costs of bariatric surgery to treat obesity-related disease. Outside the U.S., where severe obesity prevalence is increasing rapidly in all developed countries, economic analyses demonstrate the cost savings of surgical intervention for the severely obese. This includes one government-sponsored economic analysis, which showed that bariatric surgery is cost-effective and would realize a net savings for the U.K. health care system in less than 2 years.

Among the research conducted in the U.S. is a large study comparing the health claims data for more than 7,000 patients treated with laparoscopic surgery with a matched control group of severely obese individuals, which found that the surgical treatment paid for itself in 0-2 years for patients with diabetes and within 4 years for the rest of the surgery-eligible population. Moreover, the study found that even after including the costs of follow-up care or adverse events, there was a 23 percent reduction in the average annual costs for diabetes medications (from $678 annually to $550 annually) in the 5 years after surgery.

Along with this body of evidence, Shape Up America! offered another important argument for including the treatment of severe obesity as an essential health benefit: ample precedent already exists through both government policy and the decisions of the medical community. Currently, CMS has implemented a national coverage policy for weight-loss surgery to help reduce significant health risks associated with severe obesity and a significant number of commercial payers now recognize the health savings associated with this treatment. In addition, a number of prominent medical societies have issued consensus statements or revised their clinical practice guidelines to recommend surgical intervention, including the American Academy for Clinical Endocrinologists, American Diabetes Associationand the American Heart Association.

“When it comes to the cost effectiveness of specific healthcare services, there is ample evidence to include the treatment of severe obesity both to avert disease, suffering and death and to control healthcare costs,” said Dr. Moore. “Policies that expand obesity counseling for the moderately obese and cover surgical interventions for those with severe obesity are urgently needed to help stem the obesity epidemic in America.”

About Shape Up America!Shape Up America! was founded in 1994 by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to raise awareness of obesity as a health issue and to provide responsible information on weight management to the public and to health care professionals. The organization maintains an award winning website – www.shapeup.org – accessed by more than 100,000 visitors each month.

SOURCE Shape Up America!

Financial Fitness

Investing for a FitFuture

With Jim Riley, CFP, EA

Welcome to "Your Financial Fitness," a column designed to provide a platform for questions on finance and retirement. Each column addresses topical questions, submitted by readers and generalized for all. Questions are selected based on their suitability for the column. See below for submission information.

Tom (Vallejo, Ca) asks: I’m nearing retirement and I am confused as to how to progress with managing my portfolio.  I don’t want to take a lot of risk, but then I don’t want to leave all my funds in a bank account earning low interest.  Any ideas?  

Tom, I would first consider writing a financial plan.  Getting all the details about your finances down on paper should precede making comprehensive investment decisions.  Some individuals can accomplish this on their own using spreadsheets or financial planning software.  Most people, at one point or another, will seek professional advice.  Go to www.cfp.net for a list of planners in your area.

With that said, there is one thing I advise my clients to do as much as possible, and that is to pay their retirement expenses with income as much as possible.  You do not want to regularly be in a position to have to sell stocks or bonds to pay the bills.  I suggest you look into investments that pay you a regular stream of income.  Depending on your circumstances, you may not want to invest exclusively in this manner, but all things considered, this would be a good place to start. 

Jim Riley, is the director of planning for Napa Wealth Management. He has an extensive background in wealth management with particular expertise in retirement planning, tax preparation, insurance and accounting matters. Send submissions to money@solanofitmag.com.