I just read one of the best straight forward articles about the federal Government  subsidizing the wrong foods. This excellent article was written by Mr.Kyle Smith in today’s New York Post. In Mr. Smith’s article titled “The Fat and the furious, he talks about state government officials taxing sweetened drinks and at the same time the federal government is subsidizing meat and dairy,high saturated fat foods. 

Now I would much rather see someone eat a steak than a bag of chips, on the other hand I would not recommend having steak every night, eating right is about common sense, but it has to be taught because our nutrition IQ in this country is less than adequate. I know this by some of the very basic questions that i have been asked at health fairs, the answers are obvious to me, but not to others.

Mr. Smith also brings up a very important point, in a study done from 1995 to 2005, only a 13.23%  of federal funds were subsidized for the producers of grains and less than 1% of federal food subsidies were awarded to fruit and vegetable producers. The federal food related agencies have grains at the base of their nutrition recommended pyramids, meaning that they should be a larger part of your diet. This topic can go on and on, the bottom line is educating the public and I am not talking about public service announcements to eat more fruits and vegetables, please! .

 My question is how do you eat more fruits and vegetables? How do you cook vegetables properly so that you enjoy them and look forward to eating them, how do you incorporate shopping time in your schedule to make sure they are always in your refrigerator. This is in part why I started my company Culinary Fitness, I found out first hand how hard it can be to designing a sound eating plan, and i am an experienced chef, people say , ” Oh it’s easy for you to eat right, you are a chef you love to cook”, I am no longer a full time working chef, I work a 9 to 5 and it is still hard to eat right at times. I do not care if you love to cook or not, not every body feels like cooking when they get home from work. The reason we will grab any food we can get our hands on, is to fill the hunger gap so we can get on with our day. I had to design my own healthy eating plan and it started with common sense and time management, and realizing where I was wasting my time.

Not everyone has the means for a home cook or the means to go out to eat every night, nor should they. This eating right thing that is so popular in our society right now is a result of increased health-care premiums do to increased diet related diseases in this country. I like to think that the recent increased concern is because, people are sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, because they are eating what ever garbage food that is available and it also because of a lack of  time management when it comes to shopping and healthy meal preparation.

 The federal government wants to help with good eating habits, for instance web sites like www.smallstep.gov. I beleive the best place to start is at the high school level, by teaching students what I teach, for example, how to read food labels, how to shop on a low income, how to manage your time to incorporate healthy meal preparation. It should be a required class. Look at the problems we have with children’s obesity and children born with cleft lips. I will make an effort in the near future to help raise money for the children that need this surgery through an organization called Smile train. The advertisement that the Smile train places in magazines askes for donations to help fund the corrective surgery. It  states at the bottom of the page that this deformity is a nutrition related problem during pregnancy.

 When I was teaching culinary arts in the federal prison system, I was also studying diet and crime and the relationship between the two. Out of twenty inmates, there was not one that could ever remember eating a balanced meal. Everyone of the twenty inmates all recall eating processed junk food from the bag.

Too much time is wasted in students senior year on subjects that will not be used. The three most important changes that must be done in our school system are healthy meal preparation, career exploration, and personal finance. I mention healthy meal preparation first, because if you do not eat right at the beginning of day, your may not have the energy to make it through the day to be effective at what you do.

I have seen the Culinary Institute of America offering classes to children 9 years old an up and I do not think it is because they are trying to breed the next iron chef. They realize that parents work long hard days and do not feel like taking on the task of preparing dinner when they get home. If parents can get help from their children to at least have the prep work done by the time they get home, that is half of the battle.

When I was taking my nutritional cuisine class two years ago at The Culinary Institute of America, a friend of mine chef David Lavoie, chef for the NYU faculty,was also taking the class. David worked in France and we discussed why they do not have the diet related illnesses that we have in this country, he said they learn how to cook at a young age even of they are not aspiring to be chefs, they always have a stock pot on the stove, you don’t see them eating bags of processed junk. 

I was hired by a public utility company for four years in a row to show their employees how to cook low fat food, last year they cut their health fair program because of the cost, and at the same time Workman’s compensation claims for diabetes, high blood pressure and stress are on the rise.

I work for the federal government in an agency that takes disability claims. I have seen the cost of medicare increase steadily over the last five years. It kills me to see elderly people in this country that cannot afford medicare. Federal funds could be going in a better direction.

According to the Culinary Institute of America’s video , The Healthy Palate, we are about to see  the first generation that will not outlive the prior generation because of poor eating habits, and we are well on our way.

 I must applaud the president and first lady for their efforts to make changes with programs like  chefs move to schools and the president’s mission to wipe out childhood hunger. The fact is, the president and first lady are trying, they are an obvious example of  people living a healthy lifestyle. The first lady has been making very big with strides with “chefs move to school” program, www.nutrition.gov , where chef’s like myself will be helping to educate school food service programs to make healthier options available to the students.

 The first lady has a kitchen staff well aware that the first family does not want fatty food. The white house has an organic garden. The white house chef has been featured in Men’s Health magazine for his healthy dishes. This week The New York Times published an article that the first lady request the pastry chef make smaller portions. When the president visited my city, he worked out at my gym. They are practicing what they are preaching, and to me that is very important. The president and the first lady have a busy schedules  just like the rest of us and they are taking the time to eat right and exercise.   We can do this also.

My agency has a program called Feds get fit, in the e-mail that was sent to everyone in my office, it had many nutrition related links, it would have taken me at least one hour to read every link,again, we have to take the time to read and educate ourselves. I am trying to do what I can to help educate the public by writing this blog and handing out recipes in public.

Our future of practicing  healthy eating habits is up to guys like me to create new recipes that people can enjoy with out their health suffering in the process. It it also up to the food technologists that work for major food corporations to come up with lower fat and lower sodium items. The food technologist   have the absolute hardest job when it comes to producing food items that are good for us and have a shelf life that is long enough so that  product line does not fail, and god forbid in this economy, it would lead to future layoffs. This is where federal funds are needed, to help food technologists find healthier ingredients in their company’s products instead of using trans fats.

The people of this country must realize that we cannot leave our health totally up to the food manufactures or the government. From a food companies point of view, if they alter a recipe a of a popular food item , they have to worry about a  decrease in sales, these companies have employees, these employees have families to support. We have already seen labels that say 30% less sodium, I tell people in my lectures, %30 less than what? the previous product that had god only knows how much sodium that was in the  original  product, the point is, is that they are trying.

The Wall Street journal had an article last year that said the FDA will allow any food manufacturer to put 3% percent trans fat in their products without it be put on the nutrition facts label!, so if the nutrition facts label says zero trans fat, it can still have three percent trans fat, killing me softly! This is not easy for the federal government or food manufacturers because taste is king, no matter if the product is healthy or not, because if it did not matter we would not have so many diabetics and people with celiac spru etc. If they alter the flavor, they could seriously reduce sales.

 The foods with no labels are the best foods, fruits and vegetables. I work for the Department of Health and Human services, sadly I am not in a job that I can help people with my knowledge and passion for food and health. As always the best in health, Chef Kevin Carvalho.