foodmuseumblog

Dumb Stuff from the Garden Front

"A disabled Ohio man has been ordered to stop selling vegetables from his front yard. Wesley Wood says the few dollars he earned selling tomatoes, broccoli, and peppers helped supplement his Social Security checks. But officials told him it’s illegal to sell produce from a private home, so Wood will now give his vegetables away. “I just don’t want to see the stuff go to waste,” said Wood. “And I have a lot of it.”

Via The Week

Foodie asks ---Is it illegal in Ohio? In, say,  Akron? In the USA? Where?  Terrible reporting.

BBC News - Sweet success for Lindt in chocolate Easter bunny case

4 April 2011

Sweet success for Lindt in chocolate Easter bunny case Lindt says other firms must not confuse shoppers with similar rabbits.

Row over Easter bunny turns sour.

The Swiss chocolate firm Lindt and Spruengli has won a marathon court battle to protect its golden Easter bunnies from an Austrian rival.A Vienna court has told the Hauswirth company to stop making its own chocolate rabbits wrapped in gold foil.The legal battle dates back to 2004. The Lindt bunny, sporting a red ribbon and bell, first appeared in 1952 was given EU trademark status in 2000.The Vienna court said Hauswirth's bunny could be confused with Lindt's.A Lindt manager, Adalbert Lechner, said the judgement had confirmed his company's view that "Hauswirth harmed our trademark"."We hope the legal proceedings are finally closed with this judgement," he said.Hauswirth had argued that Lindt was using its trademark clout to crush competitors.

via www.bbc.co.uk

Bunnies fight back, softly.

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition » Archive » GMO Alfalfa Approved With No Restrictions? Stay Informed & Take Action

The Obama Administration’s recent decision to allow unlimited, non-restricted commercial planting of genetically-engineered (GE) alfalfa resistant to the herbicide commercially known as Roundup was a huge disappointment to the sustainable and organic agriculture community.

via sustainableagriculture.net

And apparently sugar beets, too.

Tks to Summit Springs Farm, Maine, for the link.

Cheerios Not So Cheery Today

Cereal of any kind is my absolute last choice for breakfast, well past cold pizza, two day old Chinese leftovers, broccoli, whatever. But Cheerios have their place, usually strewn across one of those high chair trays, awaiting the movement of tiny fingers.

Kids of a certain age--able to sit but not totally into real, tasty food--apparently adore chasing these little round o thingies around said tray. I've seen babies pick the o's up,  stare at each one, and eat each one. I have also seen kids slam all the o's to one side, crush them, and then run them charmingly through their already sticky hair. Other more sensible children pick them up and rain them down on family pets of the canine variety, eagerly lying in wait below the high chair.

These last kiddies most likely loathe the o's, finding them dry as dust and equally as tasty.
Give me raspberries, Mum, give me buttered blueberry muffins, come on!

All that aside, the Cheerios folks are in trouble with the FDA for touting the cholesterol-reducing delights of their product, right on the box, and also, it seems to me,  in lengthy commercials featuring a grown woman who should know better smacking her lips over a bowl of cereal while nagging her spouse, ad infinitum. Apparently, the health claims of Cheerios put it in a category of "drug," and "drugs" must be approved by the FDA.

Whether the FDA should go after good ol' Cheerios is not really of great concern. I'd rather they ban crappy soft drinks from the land. ( Right.)

Topps Goes Bottoms Up After Burger Recall

According to today's NYTimes report, the first hint that frozen hamburger patties from Topps Meat Company of Elizabeth, NJ might carry the E.coli bacteria came on July 5 when a girl in Pennsylvania sickened after eating one. Testing confirmed the bacteria to be present on September 7.  ( Over a month for these results??)

Yet the USDA apparently did not announce the recall of 21.7 million pounds of meat until September 25. Today Topps, in business since 1940, closed its doors and sent 87 employees home.

The Times stated that "Anthony D’Urso, the chief operating officer at Topps, said the company was unable to withstand the financial burden of the recall.

“This is tragic for all concerned,” Mr. D’Urso said in a statement. “In one week we have gone from the largest U.S. manufacturer of frozen hamburgers to a company that cannot overcome the economic reality of a recall this large.”"   I think he missed the part about being falling ill from eating his company's tainted products...

The USDA website has a different, somewhat more complex report on this.

Deputy Assistant Administrator for the USDA Office of Policy, Dr. Daniel Engeljohn, said the agency would require all beef plants to demonstrate they have E.coli: 0157: H7 under control, based on a checklist established in 2002.

He went on to say, limply, "We are notifying all slaughter and grinder establishments that it is their responsibility to ensure that these measures are in place. " 

(The words "slaughter and grinder" really stick in my craw, like a piece of tainted meat. Mass animal processing described in raw terms.)

Those #$?%&*!! Blue Booze Laws

Yesterday morning I was loading up at Trader Joe's, after being away a bit, and when I pushed the cart over towards my favorite el cheapo Pinot Noir, GASP!, that annoying white rope was up in the wine department, like limp tinsel  on the mis-shaped  last-tree-in-the-lot on Christmas Eve.

Grrr....The so-called Blue Laws passed during Depression-era years used to bar liquor sales anytime on Sunday. Here in New Mexico one may not purchase alcohol before noon on the first day of the week.  This website indicates that 19 states still have Blue Laws on the books. ( Many communities have their own laws re booze, also.)

Now--I have a crazy nostalgia for the time when nothing much was open on Sunday and people took a break from consuming and mindless shopping. But in today's economy, with many people working multiple jobs, Sunday shopping is probably here to stay.

So each time I encounter that rope, I ask---what, are we babies? Do they think we will tap the bottle open on the floor and down the Pinot by 9:30 am well before the 11 am service?  What is this about?

Another law encountered here is that underage checkers cannot touch the booze that lurks among the tp, celery, and dog chews in your groceries---only a "mature" individual who has undergone rigorous training in the reading of drivers licenses can do so.  Does this law protect the young checker from a life of decadence and debauchery? Is it in place to irritate eldery tipplers? Wha?

Please advise.

Imported Food Up, Inspections Down, Consumers Go Plant Your Gardens!

25,000 shipments of food a day, 20 million a year, arrive in US ports, bringing Americans much of what we eat.  92% of all fresh and frozen seafood in the US market comes from abroad, primarily from Asia. 75% of the apple juice we drink, 72% of the mushrooms we eat, and 52% of the table grapes we munch arrives by ship at 418 ports across the country.

Only 1 % of the containers entering the country are inspected. Why? The FDA's budget for food inspection has been cut consistently for over 10 years. Only300 FDA food inspectors are on the job. ( How about putting those vigilant water bottle inspectors at airports to work at the ports?)

When Americans' family pets started falling ill during the recent pet food poisonings, it started to occur to some people to take a look at what we humans eat. According to Ann Bowser who recently reported on all this for PBS' The News Hour With Jim Lehrer, there are 76 million incidents of food poisoning among Americans each year, and 5000 deaths. How many are linked to poor food handling practices on the part of overseas suppliers she did not say. But apparently it is not uncommon for some unscrupulous seafood purveyors to add illegal antibodies to fish or shellfish, sometimes to mask the obvious past the sell-by date condition of their products.

I expect that most growers and packers of food for the US market--like those in Mexico, Canada , Chile, and Brazil, for example, ---want to maintain high standards and retain our business.  As do the Chinese, the world's largest grower of just about everything. The Chinese government recently underscored their commitment to quality trade by sentencing to death the former head of that country's food and drug agency. ( Because of the whole melamine thing, sickening and killing people, animals, etc. Heckuva job, Zheng Xiaoyu!)

US retailers have turned to overseas suppliers for food purchases in many cases because of fewer regulations in those countries and because labor and production costs are much less expensive. Of course we Americans have long expected both our gasoline and our food to be cheap....

Most American consumers rely on imports--a tiny minority grows their own or buys locally to the exclusion of anything else.  We look forward to the issue of food being on top of the list during any future discussions of the security of the homeland. ( And my gawd, doesn't "Homeland Security" sound creepily un-American linguistically, and hasn't it done so from the inception?)

Baked Beans as WMD's...............

  Apparently actor Hugh Grant attacked a paparazzi with a "tub" of baked beans. No word as to whether or not his missile was filled with the egregiously horrendous British Heinz product, or with actual home-baked navy beans made with molasses, brown sugar, pork, dry mustard and so on.

"Beans on toast" has long been a Brit comfort food--I well recall years ago the time I ordered it at a motorway joint that clearly had no veggie food available. It arrived, the pale, reddish beans sliding across the white toast--on top?  An ordinary household thumbtack.

Reader, I sent it back.  Beans can indeed be dangerous.

The Perils of Eating, PLUS, Is the Homeland Secure?

The world's number one exporter of fruits and vegetables, China, is finally coming under scrutiny as its customers get a hint that tainted pet food ingredients could well lead to iffy items aimed at humans.

According to a piece in today's Washington Post, "China has been especially poor at meeting international standards. The United States subjects only a small fraction of its food imports to close inspection, but each month rejects about 200 shipments from China, mostly because of concerns about pesticides and antibiotics and about misleading labeling. In February, border inspectors for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration blocked peas tainted by pesticides, dried white plums containing banned additives, pepper contaminated with salmonella and frozen crawfish that were filthy.

Since 2000, some countries have temporarily banned whole categories of Chinese imports. The European Union stopped shipments of shrimp because of banned antibiotics. Japan blocked tea and spinach, citing excessive antibiotic residue. And South Korea banned fermented cabbage after finding parasites in some shipments.

As globalization of the food supply progresses, "the food gets more anonymous and gradually you get into a situation where you don't know where exactly it came from and you get more vulnerable to poor quality," said Michiel Keyzer, director of the Centre for World Food Studies at Vrije University in Amsterdam, who researches China's exports to the European Union."

Meanwhile, back home, Congress held hearings about the American spinach and salmonella- afflicted peanut butter that caused sickness and, in the case of the E.coli-tainted spinach, death.

Seldom mentioned is that fact that the numerous US regulatory agencies involved in food safety are understaffed and lacking adequate lines of communication and cooperation with one another.  They often overlap on or duplicate some tasks, while leaving other areas of concern unexplored.

But worse---get a load of this April 22 report by Elizabeth Williamson in the Washington Post.

"The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show.

Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, the documents show."

Before the hearings began panel chairman Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich said this:  "This administration does not like regulation, this administration does not like spending money, and it has a hostility toward government. The poisonous result is that a program like the FDA is going to suffer at every turn of the road."

Food safety is as much a national security issue as my audacious attempt to carry on an airplane a sealed bottle of water and 4.1 ounces of face cream. Please.

Small Family Farm Threatens National Security?

Yesterday dozens of  federal agents in 20 vehicles invaded  Mike Zimmerman's 40 acre dairy farm, Sandhills Dairy, in Towner, North Dakota,  supposedly in pursuit of illegal aliens. Some of Zimmerman's workers, all of whom were hired after showing legal papers, were arrested by members of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE) team. Mike's son was grabbed as he came out of the shower.

The AP reported:

"Mike Zimmerman, who operates the Sandhills Dairy, estimated about 50 officers were on the scene Tuesday. He said they displayed weapons, kicked down doors and handcuffed his son and employees. Officers also handcuffed a longtime friend of his, held a gun to his head and asked for his birth certificate, Zimmerman said.

"It's an unbelievable, frustrating and humiliating experience," Zimmerman said of the raid."

We all carry our birth certificates around with us regularly, don't we, tucked in next to our marriage licenses and college diplomas?  Hope Mike's milk didn't curdle.

European Health Ministers Take On Obesity

Today's story by Maria Cheng from myway.com via Raw Story reports that:

"European health ministers from 53 countries approved the world's first charter to fight obesity on Thursday, vowing greater action against the epidemic of expanding waistlines across the continent.

The charter, approved in Istanbul, Turkey, was drafted by the World Health Organization in consultation with its European member states. It is the first real attempt to compel national authorities to take concrete action to combat obesity."

According to the article,  half of all Europeans, ( that's a large group of disparate people!,) and 20 percent of its children are overweight.

"One of the charter's more contentious inclusions is an obligation for the private sector to limit the marketing of fatty, sugary foods to children. It calls for specific regulatory measures to "substantially reduce" the advertising of unhealthy foods to children.

The clause implies that governments should introduce legislation regarding marketing to children, with an eventual move to adopting an international code of practice. In the past, the food industry has fought against such regulation, since it may eat into their profits."

When is the summit of the Americas on this issue?

Beyond Bizarre Food News Coverage--The Suspect Fingered Prawns

Never thought I would write a syllable about this peculiar fellow named Karr, but the AP ( August 21) insisted on providing details of his (maybe last decent) meal, on the Thai Airways plane that brought him Business Class from Thailand to the United States.

"Before takeoff, he sipped champagne. During dinner, Karr had pate, salad with walnut dressing and fried king prawn with steamed rice and broccoli, followed by a slice of Valrhona chocolate cake for dessert. Karr had a beer before a glass of French chardonnay with the main course."

Thanks for sharing, AP.

Fuel, Farmers and Food

With fuel costs rising regularly, will small-scale growers whose customers are local be able to keep their prices lower than the farmers who ship long distance?  According to a recent piece by Stacy Matlock in the Santa Fe New Mexican,  Matthew Romero,  head of the Santa Fe Farmers Market Institute, says he is spending $140 a week to run his truck, as compared to about $50 two years ago. And parts he needs for his farm cost 30 to 40 percent more to ship. So he has already raised his prices.  Roasted green chiles will run over $30 a bushel, instead of $20, last year's price.

On the other hand, Romero has a loyal customer base that probably expects to buy his fresh products at local growers markets regardless.  A small 3 acre farm one hour from Santa Fe is so efficiently run its owners don't think the fuel issue will affect their prices much. They think local growers, in fact, will have more opportunity to gain new customers as food prices rise nationally.

( For a fine look at farm markets in the Washington, DC area, read this report in the Washington Post.)

On the national front, Michelle Chen reported for The New Standard in May that the Senate Appropriations Committee was proposing emergency funding in "energy assistance" for farmers. 

Chen writes: "According to an analysis by the watchdog organization Environmental Working Group, among the 1.1 million farms that stand to gain from the proposed measure, the bonus is heavily skewed toward the largest enterprises, with 47 major commercial farms raking in aid payments exceeding $100,000.

Overall, the top ten percent would sweep up about 60 percent of the funds, leaving nearly 900,000 farmers sharing the short end of the handout, receiving only about $370 on average. Farms producing non-subsidized crops, including many fruit and vegetable producers, would receive no subsidy, regardless of how much they lost to high fuel prices. "

The U.S. government announced in July that wholesale food costs,  along with gas prices, recently rose at their fastest pace in 20 months.

( Photo from Contra Costa, CA., Health Services.)

Americans Will Eat Roofing Paper Happily In Their Snacks As Long as Snacks Are Fat-Free Dept: Olestra

Remember olestra? It's a fake fat, with no calories, approved by the FDA but linked to many cases of stomach cramps and diarrhea. Olestra also appears to deplete the body's fat-soluble vitamins. First used by Frito-Lay in its line of  Wow! chip products, olestra is still there, but since 2004 "Wow" has been called "Light,"  thus confusing snackers who thought they were avoiding olestra. Apparently, for many, frequent bathroom runs continued.

Over the long run, diarrhea can be a fairly effective weight loss tool, of course.  Just ask anyone with cholera.

(Above: Olestra molecule--a cry for help? The finger? Diagram from Elmhurst College, http://www.elmhurst.edu/)

The Center for Science in the Public Interest threatened to sue Frito-Lay unless it clearly labeled front and back the Tostitos, Lay's and Ruffles containing olestra. ( Olestra was listed as an ingredient, and Olean, the brand name of olestra, was on the front.)  Frito-Lay has agreed, according to yesterday's AP Story, and also made an unrestricted grant of $150,000 to Harvard Medical School's nutrition division.

Back in 2003, the FDA changed the labeling requirement for olestra, stating:

" The FDA concluded that the label statement was no longer warranted because:

"Real-life" consumption studies of products containing olestra showed olestra caused only infrequent, mild gastrointestinal (GI) effects. In fact, a 6-week study with more than 3,000 people showed that the group consuming olestra-containing chips experienced only a minor increase in bowel movement frequency compared to those people who consumed only full-fat chips.

• Post-market studies showed consumers are aware of olestra and its potential GI effects. "

Naturally the labeling change caused snack giants to introduce new lines of items containing the fake fat.

Here's Proctor & Gamble's pr output on Olean, developed by P&G and appropved by the FDA in 1996.  In the website's FAQ section, there's this:

"Olean is made from ingredients found in common foods like vegetable oil and sugar. Then, it’s processed in a way that adds zero fat to the snacks you love. Since Olean is not digested, it’s similar to eating foods like apples, corn and bran, where the insoluble fiber is not broken down by the body. So, when you eat Olean snacks, the Olean passes through the digestive tract without adding any dietary fat or calories. And, because Olean molecules are much larger than those of ordinary fats, the body's digestive enzymes cannot break them down. " ( Foodie is trying for the jaundiced effect up there, just for emphasis.)

Here's how the Center for Science in the Public Interest reports on olestra.

USDA Has Beef With Too Much Testing

What started out as mild interest by Foodie in a tiny beef story, is now a consuming desire to know more about the USDA denying slaughterhouses the right to test their own cattle for mad cow disease. Here's where it began.

USA Today reported recently that chef David Burke,  owner of davidburke & donatella in New York, and David Burke's Primehouse in Chicago, now owns, along with investors, a $250,000 Angus bull, the better to insure the quality of the beef that will turn up at his restaurants, presumably.

The bull hangs out at Creekstone Farms in Kentucky, from which Burke has bought beef for some time. ( Creekstone's steaks and roasts carry the Certified Humane Raised & Handled Label. )

While the bull story caught our attention, of far greater interest was this. Foodie discovered that Creekstone had made news two years ago by deciding to  set up its own mad cow testing unit, in part to assure its Japanese customers. ( The company slaughters over 300,000 animals a year.)

An LA Times story ( April 20, 2004) reported this:

"According to the Washington Post, Creekstone invested $500,000 to build the first mad cow testing lab in a U.S. slaughterhouse and hired chemists and biologists to staff the operation. The only thing it needed was testing kits. That's where the company ran into trouble. By law, the Department of Agriculture controls the sale of the kits, and it refused to sell Creekstone enough to test all of its cows. The USDA said that allowing even a small meatpacking company like Creekstone to test every cow it slaughtered would undermine the agency's official position that random testing was scientifically adequate to assure safety.  ( Emphasis Foodie's.)

What it didn't say was that the rest of the meatpacking industry was adamantly opposed to such testing, which is expensive, and had no desire to compete with Creekstone's fully certified beef. "If testing is allowed at Creekstone . ," the president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. told the Post, "we think it would become the international standard and the domestic standard, too."

On March 23, 2006 Creekstone finally filed suit against the USDA. " Creekstone has sued USDA for refusing to allow the company to voluntarily test cattle for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) at its Arkansas City, Kansas facility." Read the company press release in full.

"No one in the USDA or the meat industry will admit it, but there is only one real reason for banning private testing: more mad cows will be found. All the other excuses are just rationalizations." Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, authors, Mad Cow USA. 

( Photo of Texas Black Angus Bull from www.deercreekangus.com)

The "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor," Thing--Immigration

With "the immigration issue" raging these days, Foodie thinks it sensible to point out the obvious-- that not only does migrant labor pick our fruit and vegetables, has done for decades, but newish immigrants also prepare food, cook, serve and clean up,  at multitudinous of the nation's restaurants and food joints.  ( And do gardening and yard work, work as maids in hotels, clean homes, construct roads, build houses, etc., etc .,  etc.)

In parallel immigration news, a company started in 1940 by a 16 year-old native of India, Harry Singh, is now the nation's largest grower of vine-ripened tomatoes.  It's based in Oceanside, California. In 1990 Harry Singh & Sons built housing specifically for the Mexican workers who came seasonally to the farm to pick tomatoes--the 25,000 square foot complex of bunks, bathrooms, laundry rooms, a cafeteria and so on won praise and awards.  At the time company spokespersons brushed aside the notion their $ 2.5 million effort was totally altruistic--"enlightened self-interest" was mentioned, including the notion that good loyal workers of long standing should be encouraged to continue to return.

Foodie has no idea what wages the company pays its workers. But.... this is a company founded by immigrants, and still run by family members--its COO, Luawanna Hallstrom, was shown on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning. She suggested that even if companies like hers were to pay farm workers $14 an hour, most Americans would not apply for these jobs, or if they did, they wouldn't be able to stick with the hard, hot labor involved.  Callers were loud in their disbelief--"How do you know?"  Apparently she believes this to be true, but may have no hard data to back it up. How many of you, dear readers, would take a decent-paying seasonal farm work job? Let us know.

Here are Ms. Hallstrom's views as broadcast over NPR in September 2005.

Here's the current viewpoint of the AFL-CIO. 

According to the Washington Post, here's what the Senate is supposedly doing, right now.

Here's the poem Emma Lazarus wrote in 1883 for an art auction organized to raise money for the building of the Statue of Liberty. 

High Tea Ruled OK by Supremes, in Sacramental Settings

The Supremes have spoken unanimously in favor of allowing followers of a tiny religious sect to continue to use hallucinogenic tea called hoasca in their ceremonies.  And as the Brazilian-origin sect known as O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal exists right here in Foodie's territory of New Mexico, this is indeed pertinent news. The Washington Post reports this , Feb 22:

"In his opinion, ( Supreme Court Chief Justice John) Roberts wrote that everything the government said about the DMT ( dimethyltryptamine)  in hoasca also applies to the mescaline in peyote, which Native Americans have been allowed to use in religious ceremonies for 35 years.

"If such use is permitted . . . for hundreds of thousands of Native Americans practicing their faith, it is difficult to see how those same findings alone can preclude any consideration of a similar exception for the 130 or so American members of the UDV who want to practice theirs," Roberts wrote."

Known more commonly by the Quechua word ayahuasca, hoasca refers both to the Amazonian rainforest vine itself and the brew made from it. Wikipedia provides an exhaustive look at this sacramental tea often tied to shamanic ceremonies.  It is listed as a Schedule I drug under the U.S. Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

(Photo of hoasca from www.gameshout.com.)

Feeding Tubes Follow Eating Disorder

We suppose there are times when feeding tubes conveying products simuilar to Ensure or other mixes sometimes called "blenderized" foods  are welcomed by patients and their families--they are medical necessities.  And comatized folks, many of whom will wake up to lead decent lives, surely benefit from these methods.
But to feed an unresponsive someone for 15 years through a tube surgically inserted in her stomach?
Ironically, the actual Terri in the news these days suffered grievously because she was over weight.  She hated her state of body, feared she would never attract a mate, and thus dieted fiercely to become acceptably thin. She found her husband and then worried she would lose him  if the pounds didn't stay off.  According to several news sources, she became a vomiter and one day vomited so much her potassium-deprived heart stopped.  The lack of oxygen to her brain thus caused the state she has been in for 15 years.

Quoth the Craven Cookie Rapper...

Okay, so while we're on cookies, some of you may have missed the Denver Post piece by Electa Draper about the Durango, Colorado girls who decided to bake cookies last July and drop them off  at neighbors' houses, anonymously, just for fun. Each batch of cookies came with the words, "Have a great night."
Well-- a 49 year-old woman was so alarmed by the rapping on her door at 10:30 at night, she went into an anxiety lather and ended up in the emergency room, albeit the next morning. (??)  And then sued the girls. ( Evidently there was nothing wrong with the cookies.)
A judge awarded the woman $900 to cover her medical bills.

Hue and cry!  Hue and cry!  Pls read the Denver Post story linked to above.

Fear, people.
"  Suddenly there came a tapping,
   As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "

Okay, so it was 10:30, not "late" to an 18 year-old,  but later than the norm for a social call. But has Poe indeed ruined us all for anything akin to "gentle rapping?"

A colleague of mine --we both served on our cozy community's civic association board--told me once that he keeps a loaded gun next to his bed, as does his adult daughter.
But why, I asked him.  "You can never be too careful with strangers," he answered.

Arnold Says CA to Terminate Junk in School Vending Machines

Twinkies may someday be out, apples in, in CA school vending machines, if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger can move ahead with appropriate legislation.

According to an article by mindfully.org, " 'First of all, we in California this year are introducing legislation that would ban all the sale of junk food in the schools,' Schwarzenegger said.

Aides said later that the governor supports a bill by Democratic state Sen. Martha Escutia that would ban soft drinks at public schools, and that the administration hopes to develop a more comprehensive legislative package dealing with snack foods. "