American Public Health Assocation Recommendations

The American Public Health Assocation (APHA) recently issued "Toward a Healthy, Sustainable Food System" (Policy Number: 200712).  It provides an excellent summary of the state of America's food system and the public health implications of how we're currently operating. The APHA's report explicitly links issues relating to the food system with public health, which of course makes sense.  The APHA also has some interesting recommendations.  Among its many and sound recommendations, the APHA:

•  "Urges the public health community to increase its engagement in food system issues and to educate policymakers; media; food industry; and public health, nutrition, and environmental professionals about public health issues and solutions associated with the food system, including issues related to sustainability, nutrition, and justice."
• "Better align US investment emphasis with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and seek to make healthy, sustainably produced foods the affordable, convenient choices
• "Encourages governmental food procurement programs (including school breakfast, lunch, and snack programs and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) and institutional food providers to consider the benefits of locally and sustainably produced, healthy and fair trade foods and to take steps to incorporate these into their programs."
• "Encourages cooperative efforts in local food systems, with governmental support, to—
  a. Improve local food marketing, distribution, and processing capacity and infrastructure
  b. Establish and promote food policy councils to enable evaluating food systems and recommend changes
  c. Reduce barriers to obtaining sustainable, locally produced, fair trade and healthy foods
  d. Increase state and local cooperative extension program activities targeted to small farms and those producing fruits and vegetables"
• "Urges involvement of an independent body such as the Institute of Medicine or US Government Accountability Office to conduct a broad review of the public health impacts of US agricultural policy and engage in ongoing monitoring to assure that public health concerns are better heard in decisionmaking about agricultural policy."

The complete report is available at http://www.apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default.htm?id=1361

While it's not explicitly or strongly argued in this paper, school, home and community gardens could - and ought to be - an important strategy in creating a more healthy and sustainable food system.  Local gardening efforts are one of the most effective strategies in reducing barriers to obtaining sustainable, locally-produced, and healthy foods. School gardens provide an excellent way to improve nutrition on school grounds, and complement a number of APHA's suggestions about how to improve governmental food procurement programs.

While it doesn't plug gardening as strongly as it should, the APHA's report deserves wide distribution.  It should give all Americans - and especially policy makers - ample reason to consider again that our current national food system has real problems...and that the increasing number of Americans struggling with chronic, preventable diseases demonstrates this point. 

"A Garden for Everyone.  Everyone in a Garden."