Chef David Lawrence in the 1300 on Fillmore kitchen. Photo courtesy of 1300 Fillmore

At events like SF Chefs, we’ve noticed again and again that chef David Lawrence has culinary offerings that stand out. His “Soulful American” bites with roots in England and Jamaica include such dishes as shrimp grits and white grits with pesto, and organic skillet fried chicken, with an upscale twist. Lawrence’s plates tend to demonstrate how the deep South can cozy up with fresh California produce, using classic French technique.

Since opening in 2007, Lawrence’s restaurant, 1300 on Fillmore, remains a draw for Sunday gospel brunch crowds, as well as those looking for a group dinner or bar snack–the fried chicken or skillet catfish; meaty ribeye; variety of grits and even warm chocolate beignets with coffee soda are almost begging to be shared. Lawrence, a London native, is 1300 on Fillmore’s executive chef and managing partner. He has cooked for royalty and was formally trained in the culinary arts at Westminster College. In 1982, Lawrence joined England’s most celebrated and honored culinarians, Albert and Michel Roux, who were definitely considered “celeb chefs” there and were the chef-proprietors of the world-renowned Le Gavroche and the Waterside Inn (at that time, both three-star Michelin restaurants). Lawrence cooked his way through five of their famous restaurants and became a sous chef, in four short years. In 1986, Lawrence became chef de cuisine at Interlude Restaurant in London, which gave him the sweet chance to make meals for none other than the Prince and Princess of Wales; Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon; and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

He left for the U.S. in 1988 in a kismet vacation moment that led to chef de cuisine work with a former Le Gavroche chef named Kurt Graising who was opening 231 Ellsworth Restaurant in San Mateo. Lawrence next landed at the (ornate and beautiful) Carnelian Room and Cityscape restaurants in San Francisco, respectively. While at Cityscape, he created the Chefs for Kids program, which raised thousands of dollars for the Tenderloin After School program. Lawrence is also generous with his time for various local charity events. We caught up in person recently to find out more about his culinary style and career. His comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Bay Area Bites: Can you tell us about your successes & goals?
Lawrence: The restaurant just celebrated five years of business last October. When we opened the restaurant, it was all fanfare and then the economy crashed. We survived but had to cut back and there was no sous chef, and no general manager. My wife Monetta White and I did all that. We we’re able to do so with the support of the city and the people who came in. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved. Now I’m looking at expanding.

Our gospel brunch is on Sunday. For Easter, we decided to try something different, and keep our hours to the daytime and not open at night. I saw hordes of people walking back up to Pacific Heights as they left brunch. Then when I went to Safeway, I saw a line of people, and there were families and kids walking down here. I remember when we first came here and Monetta lived at Bush and Fillmore. Back then, no one went below Bush Street.

Bay Area Bites: What are your best selling menu items…and your favorites?
Lawrence: For the best seller, it’s always the fried chicken. When I walk around and go out, people say that fried chicken is the bestseller. It is so funny because I come from Europe and have worked with Michelin-starred chefs. I have no complaints but my claim to fame is chicken. I just turned 50 in February, and it’s, “Wow, I’m 50 and known for fried chicken.”

I am the most proud of dishes like shrimp and grits and fried chicken. The shrimp and grits dishes really got me to look at this cuisine and what we do. Monetta is from Mississippi and we’ve been together for 19 years. We have a similar thing in England where I am from that is cornmeal porridge: sugar, nutmeg, and spice to make it nice and creamy. I cooked the grits more or less the same way and decided to do it without the sugar. Slowly but surely, people became interested and back then, no one was doing this.

Bay Area Bites: As a chef and businessman, what would you like to be known for?
Lawrence: It’s a fine line doing both. I’ve seen many amazing chefs open restaurants and crash. I’ve seen many mediocre chefs succeed because of their business acumen. As a chef, you have to cook what your customers want instead of what your ego wants. It’s about getting that balance. With the restaurant’s earlier days, I had foie gras, lamb, and rabbit and it was great for me but I couldn’t sell it. I never wanted a hamburger but I put one on the menu because people want it. It’s about finding the fine line between your own ego and what makes sense and sells. That way, you can hopefully still enjoy what you do.

Bay Area Bites: Guilty pleasure?
Lawrence: My thing is chocolate HobNobs. You call them cookies, and I call them biscuits. I don’t buy them because I can’t eat just one.

Bay Area Bites: Where do you live?
Lawrence: We live right above the restaurant. The commute is awesome. I love it. If I get five minutes for myself, I can go upstairs. It gives me just enough time to recharge my batteries. I can pop down if someone is here and wants to say hello, which is the least I can do if they have come all this way to eat at my restaurant. 1300 is my love and will be my love for the rest of my life.

Related Information:

1300 on Fillmore
Address: Map
1300 Fillmore St.
San Francisco CA 94115
(415) 771-7100
Facebook: 1300 on Fillmore
Twitter: @1300onFillmore

1300 on Fillmore was featured on KQED’s Check, Please! Bay Area in 2012.
Watch the restaurant segment from the show:

Fast times on the Champs-Elysees: People walk past a McDonald’s on one of Paris’ most storied avenues. But it’s not just McD’s that has caught French interest: Fast food now accounts for the majority of restaurant spending in the country.
Photo: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images

Post by Amy Guttman, The Salt at NPR Food (04/30/13)

When it comes to culinary matters, France, in many minds, is synonymous with fine dining. So it might surprise you that, for the first time, sales at fast food chains have overtaken those at traditional restaurants in the country that gave us the word gastronomie.

That’s according to an annual survey of consumer spending, traffic and other restaurant data conducted by Gira Conseil, a food consultancy firm. The latest survey, to be released in May, found that fast food chains now account for 54 percent of all restaurant sales in France.

“In previous years, we could see fast food was gaining ground, but this is the first time it has overtaken restaurants where you are served at the table,” Julien Janneau of Gira Conseil told French newspaper Nouvel Observateur.

Consumption at casual eateries serving burgers, sandwiches, pizza and other fast food has increased 14 percent in the past year alone, according to the survey.

While McDonald’s has been in France since the 1970s, many industry observers say it wasn’t until the turn of this century that outlets for both American and European fast food chains really began proliferating. The fast food market is now so ripe that Subway says it has opened some 400 stores in the past decade, and Burger King, which shut its 39 French restaurants 16 years ago, recently re-entered the market with great success.

“We are the second-biggest consumer of fast food, after the U.S.,” Camille Labro, a food writer and regular contributor to Le Monde magazine, tells The Salt.

The rise of fast food has come as the French have grown lax about their notoriously rigid food culture rules. Frédéric Maquair, who co-founded Cojean, a Parisian chain of healthy fast food outlets, in 2001, notes that meals never used to be a solitary activity. “Before, people didn’t dare go by themselves to a restaurant, eating alone, reading a magazine,” he tells The Salt.

Nowadays, he and others say, the French have come to see fast food as freedom from the rigid gastronomical rules that used to bind them to sitting at a table, with other people, at specific times, for multiple courses.

But there’s another, more practical concern encouraging the fast food trend: a shrinking lunch break.

The French lunch hour has collapsed from 80 minutes back in 1975 to just 22 minutes, according to a 2011 study by insurer Malakoff Mederic. That, in turn, has hurt business at traditional cafes, where offerings — like the typical 13 euro ($15) multicourse lunch — are still geared toward leisurely eating habits that are, increasingly, a relic of the past.

The number of cafes in France has dropped from more than 200,000 after World War II to just 32,000 today, according to estimates from Gira Conseil.

“The offer has not changed,” says Gira Conseil’s Devanne Julien, “but the consumer is different.” Cafes, he says, “have not been able to adapt and compete with fast food.”

Indeed, adaptation has been a key to fast food’s success in France — where offerings tend to be healthier than in other parts of the world. There’s less emphasis on fried and more focus on fresh ingredients and local tastes.

At British chain Pret A Manger, known for its sandwiches, a third of the menu is dedicated to French classics like apple tart and the beloved jambon-beurre, or ham and butter — which might be called the French national sandwich.

And as we’ve previously reported, McDonald’s has risen to the top of the fast food pack in France, with more than 1,200 outlets, precisely by fine-tuning its menu to fit the local culture (think grass-fed beef burgers). In 2011, the company even opened a salad-only cafe, called McSalad, which managed to win a begrudging bit of praise from food writer Labro.

“The dressing was made with hazelnut and balsamic vinegar,” she admits reluctantly, “just like I make at home.”

But American chains like McDonald’s and Subway also attract French fans for the ways in which they depart from local customs — at least when it comes to wait staff, says Labro.

French waiters, she says, tend to be “so mean and unserviceable that the American way of doing things in fast food places is almost pleasant.”

Labro remains a steadfast opponent of fast food, but she can also see why its American-style service appeals to consumers. They’d “rather have an automated experience than a waiter ready to throw food in my face. It’s more relaxing.”

Copyright 2013 NPR.

A barista serves coffee at a cafe in Naples, Italy. The Italian city’s long-standing tradition of buying a cup for a less-fortunate stranger is now spreading across Europe. Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Post by Sylvia Poggioli, The Salt at NPR Food, (4/25/13)

Tough economic times and growing poverty in much of Europe are reviving a humble tradition that began some one-hundred years ago in the Italian city of Naples. It’s called caffè sospeso — “suspended coffee”: A customer pays in advance for a person who cannot afford a cup of coffee.

The Neapolitan writer Luciano de Crescenzo used the tradition as the title of one of his books, Caffè sospeso: Saggezza quotidiana in piccoli sorsi (“Suspended coffee: Daily wisdom in small sips”).

“It was a beautiful custom,” he recalls. “When a person who had a break of good luck entered a cafe and ordered a cup of coffee, he didn’t pay just for one, but for two cups, allowing someone less fortunate who entered later to have a cup of coffee for free.”

The barista would keep a log, and when someone popped his head in the doorway of the cafe and asked, “Is there anything suspended?” the barista would nod and serve him a cup of coffee … for free.

It’s an elegant way to show generosity: an act of charity in which donors and recipients never meet each other, the donor doesn’t show off and the recipient doesn’t have to show gratitude.

The writer says the tradition is part of the city’s philosophy of life. “In other words, it was a cup of coffee,” de Crescenzo says, “offered to the rest of humankind.” It was a time, he adds, when there were more customers who were poor than those who were well-off.

It’s fitting that the tradition started in Naples, a city that prides itself on having the best coffee in Italy. And in a country where the first coffeehouse in Europe opened in 1683 (in Venice), that is no small claim.

Before the likes of Gaggia and Cimbali started producing the modern commercial espresso machines, Italians made coffee at home on the stovetop with a coffee maker known as a Napoletana.

Naples and coffee are inseparable, but the caffè sospeso tradition waned as Italy entered the boom years of postwar reconstruction and La Dolce Vita. For decades, the custom was confined mainly to the Christmas season.

Now, it’s made a comeback. Two years ago, with the eurozone crisis already raging, unemployment rising and small businesses closing on a daily basis, more and more Italians could no longer afford the national beverage — an espresso or a cappuccino. (According to the International Coffee Organization, which represents 44 coffee exporting countries, Italian per capita annual consumption of coffee has dropped to 5.6 kilograms, the lowest level in the past six years.)

Then someone remembered the old Neapolitan custom. So several nongovernmental organizations got together and — with the support of Naples Mayor Luigi de Magistris — Dec.10 was formally declared “Suspended Coffee Day.”

The practice is now spreading to other crisis-ravaged parts of Europe.

In Bulgaria, the European Union’s poorest country, where several desperate people have set themselves on fire in recent months, more than 150 cafes have joined an initiative modeled on the Neapolitan “suspended coffee” tradition.

In crisis-wracked Spain, a young man from Barcelona, Gonzalo Sapina, in a few short weeks started a network called Cafes Pendientes (“pending coffees”) and promoted the initiative among numerous coffee shops.

In France, several cafes now carry the logo “cafe en attente” (“waiting coffee”).

And there is even a site that lists establishments that have joined the “suspended coffee” initiative — the countries range from the U.K. and Ireland and Hungary to Australia and Canada.

The prepaid cup of coffee has become a symbol of grass-roots social solidarity at a time of mounting poverty in what, until recently, were affluent Western societies.

But now, back to Naples, where coffee is not a luxury but is considered, more or less, a basic human right.

And the variety is vast: You can order an espresso “ristretto” (“tightened,” i.e., stronger); or an espresso “macchiato” (“stained,” i.e., with a little milk); or an espresso “corretto” (“corrected,” i.e., with a shot of grappa, cognac or sambuca).

There’s only one iron-clad rule: Cappuccino — which takes its name from the white and beige colors of the Capuchin friars’ habits — is exclusively a breakfast beverage, and must never, never be consumed after 11 a.m. (OK, let’s say noon).

Copyright 2013 NPR.

The proposed People’s Community Market is a 12,000 square foot supermarket about the size of a typical Trader Joe’s. Rendering: Lowney Architecture

The wait in West Oakland may finally be over: An innovative approach to funding for an ambitious full-service, mid-sized grocery store looks likely to pay off. People’s Community Market, slated to anchor a vacant lot at the corner of busy West Grand Avenue and Market Street, will serve a community that is home to more than 50 liquor stores and over a dozen corner shops but lacks a supermarket. (The nearby worker owned-and-operated Mandela Foods Cooperative offers some local residents access to fresh produce and natural grocery items but the small store can’t meet the needs of the entire West Oakland area.)

For many residents, especially the car-less and seniors, who can schlep two hours to get to and from a supermarket by bus, the new grocery store can’t come soon enough. If all continues to go well on the fundraising front the market is projected to open in the fall of 2014. It has high-profile supporters such as Oakland cookbook author-chef-advocate Bryant Terry, who has emceed “Front Porch” fundraisers for the project, and Sam Mogannam of San Francisco’s wildly successful Bi-Rite Market, and a leadership team that includes Bill Fujimoto, the beloved former Monterey Market produce whisperer.

The project is raising money for the much-needed store in a novel approach. It’s selling stock in the supermarket in what’s known as a direct public offering, a fundraising approach successfully employed by other Bay Area businesses like packaged mac & cheese maker Annie’s Homegrown.

Brahm Ahmadi, founder and CEO of People’s Community Market, checked in with Bay Area Bites about the status of the capital-raising campaign, how it ties into a food financing initiative designed to increase access to healthy, affordable food in underserved communities in California (previously reported on BAB), and the lessons he’s learned in his crusade to get good grub into a neighborhood long overlooked by supermarket chains.

People’s Community Market founder Brahm Ahmadi is confident the West Oakland store will get funded. Photo courtesy of Brahm Ahmadi

Why did People’s Community Market decide to go the direct public offering route and how is it going?

We launched it at the beginning of November 2012 and have raised $350K so far. We’re shooting to reach $500K by the end of May as that will ignite the next key stages of the project — securing a loan and a lease. We hope to capitalize on the growing public interest in supporting local economies and thriving communities through investment in local small businesses and mission-driven enterprises.

We first tried to raise the equity funding from foundations and private investors. The foundations couldn’t sort out how to make an investment into a for-profit venture. The private investors weren’t interested in the low-margins and timeframes for when they’d get paid back. These investors also preferred fast growth and eventually selling to a larger company — neither of which fits with our goals of focusing on West Oakland and retaining local ownership.

We saw that crowdfunding, as a means of public financial support for small projects, was taking off and that the Occupy protest movement was signaling a public desire for something other than Wall Street. We thought these trends presented new opportunities for raising money from the public. But we wanted People’s Community Market to be a real and sustainable investment and for our backers to become true shareholders.

So with the guidance and counsel of Cutting Edge Capital in Oakland, we launched a direct public stock offering (DPO) that enables California residents of diverse economic backgrounds to buy shares in our venture and earn a modest return while supporting West Oakland families to attain healthier and more socially connected lives.

Why not try Kickstarter, or similar crowdsourcing options popular with new food enterprises, instead?

It’s hard to raise a large amount of money (most projects raise $10K-$100K) through crowdfunding and it’s a very crowded and noisy space and, therefore, pretty hard to stand out.

Can you explain how the DPO ties into the California Fresh Works Fund?

The California Fresh Works Fund will proceed with a below-market-rate loan for two-thirds of our financing once we have secured the other one-third as equity. The DPO is how we’re raising the one-third equity we need to leverage the loan opportunity. What this means is that every dollar that someone invests into our project by purchasing shares will be matched by two dollars in debt financing from the California Fresh Works Fund.

People’s Grocery sponsored a program called the Grub Box as a short-term solution to getting fresh food to folks in a neighborhood with no full-service supermarket. Photo: Scott Braley

What kind of people have signed up as shareholders and what reasons have they given for investing?

The vast majority of people who have become founding shareholders are working class and middle class individuals and families. This is a very local- and small-investor based campaign. Unfortunately, most West Oakland residents can’t afford the $1,000 minimum investment. And we can’t afford to lower the minimum investment at this time. We’re planning a secondary offering that will launch in the summer that will enable West Oakland residents to contribute financially at a rate they can afford.

The most consistent theme I hear about why people invest is that people really care about the problem we’re trying to address – that 25,000 people in West Oakland don’t have access to a full-service grocer and that 48% of them are obese or at unhealthy weights. They’re drawn to the social impact we’re looking to make, as well as the economic impact in terms of job creation, tax revenue generation, etc. It seems like a lot of folks are just tired of the options of either donating to charities or investing in Wall Street. They want to be more locally engaged with their money and to do it in a more financially sustainable way that allows them to have a positive and meaningful impact.

What’s in it for the investor? What level of risk are people taking on?

Investors will receive a 3% compounded annual interest rate, which is better than a 10-year treasury bill currently offering 2% or less in annual interest. Investors will also receive a 1% annual store credit. Shareholders can choose to redeem their investment beginning at the end of the seventh full year of business.

Like all investments that don’t offer guarantees (including all stock investments on Wall Street), there is risk in this investment. If the business fails the investors will lose their money. That’s why this is an equity investment. The risks are covered extensively in our offering memorandum.

This project has taken more than a decade to get up and running, why so long?

One reason some people think it has taken so long is that our nonprofit sister organization, People’s Grocery, has been talking about opening a grocery store since we founded the organization back in 2002. The reality is that we didn’t really start working on creating a grocery store until I left People’s Grocery in 2010 and founded People’s Community Market that fall. So it has really only been 2.5 years. Most mid-sized grocery stores and supermarkets take three to four years from planning to launch. So we’re pretty much on target.

Between 2002-2010 we built a strong base and social capital in West Oakland, rallying the community together toward a vision for a community food system and getting first hand-experience and knowledge by operating and testing smaller food projects and enterprises. We took this long-term approach because we knew that a strong foundation of relationships and support had to be established in order for a larger business venture to succeed. Social capital and community engagement are key assets in the success of independent grocers.

People’s Community Market plans to provide education — like cooking classes — at its store. Photo: Scott Braley

How close does it feel to actually happening and how will you measure success?

I think we’re in the final stretch toward the store becoming a reality. Just opening a store founded on the model and principles we’re backing into it will be a success. Obviously, we’ll be measuring financial performance in terms of both traditional business metrics and local economic impacts like job creation, employee retention/training, contributing to the local economy, etc. We’ll also measure health impacts, dietary change and residents becoming more socially connected and increasing their community networks.

Are there any lessons learned or advice you’d like to share with others launching a food business?

The only thing I might have done differently is not talk about the idea of opening a grocery store so early on because, in a culture of short-term thinking, most people can’t understand a long-term vision and plan. My advice to anyone who wants to open a community-based business is to make an honest assessment of the skills, resources and relationships they have in relation to what they need to succeed and then create a way of filling the gap. Give yourself time to hone your skills and networks and build your foundation. Don’t worry about the pressures of society to move at a faster rate than what enables you to optimize your project.

While many people enjoy sweet treats — like these chocolate bunnies — the price of a key ingredient has some people bitter. A government subsidy program is criticized for keeping sugar prices too high. But as prices fall, the government may buy 400,000 tons of sugar to help struggling processors.
Photo: Toby Talbot/AP

Post by by Dan Bobkoff, The Salt at NPR Food (3/28/13)

While you indulge in some Easter Peeps and chocolates this weekend, you might want to think about all that sugar. No, this isn’t a calorie warning. In the U.S., raw sugar can cost twice the world average.

Critics say U.S. sugar policy artificially inflates sugar prices to benefit an exclusive group of processors — even though it leads to higher food prices. But this year, prices fell anyway. Now, the government could be poised to use taxpayer dollars to buy up the excess sugar.

American sugar starts where you’d expect: in a field, like Gary Gravois’ sugarcane crop in Napoleonville, La.

“It’s just something in the culture of South Louisiana,” Gravois says. “If you’re a farmer, that’s pretty much what you do.”

And in the end, that sugar might end up in a jelly bean. Bob Simpson, president of Jelly Belly in California, says it’s 40 percent of the product and the “most expensive ingredient.”

A Sweet Deal?

Sugar costs are a complicated combination of import restrictions, production quotas and a kind of guaranteed price.

“The U.S. sugar system is essentially a Soviet-style control on production,” says Chris Edwards, an economist at the Cato Institute.

The effect of these policies, he says, is that U.S. sugar prices normally remain artificially high — sometimes twice the world price. (Last year, the price of sugar around the world averaged 26.5 cents per pound, compared with 43.4 cents in the U.S.) That hurts food companies and leads to higher prices at the grocery store.

“The core goal of policymakers has been to push up U.S. sugar prices to the benefit of U.S. sugar growers,” Edwards says.

A big part of this policy is a sweet loan program for the processors that refine sugar. To pay growers like Gravois right away, processors can take out government loans. The sugar itself is the collateral.

This leads to an interesting choice: If sugar prices go up, processors sell it on the open market and make a profit. If prices fall, they can just hand over their sugar to the government and keep the loan money.

Sugar’s Price Tag

The program is supposed to run at no cost to taxpayers.

“The loans are typically repaid in most years,” says Joe Glauber, chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But that could change this year. Even with all those import restrictions and price supports, sugar prices fell. Farmers like Gravois produced a lot more than expected.

“Last year was the best crop we ever made,” Gravois says.

That’s why processors might now be tempted to forfeit their sugar to the government instead of selling it. This is where your tax dollars come in.

The government is considering buying that surplus sugar directly from processors and then selling it at a loss to companies that make ethanol. That would take some of the surplus off the market, boosting processors’ profits, but taxpayers could be on the hook for millions of dollars.

‘It Is What It Is’

The USDA says it’s not to blame. The agency just administers what Congress sets in the farm bill.

“It is what it is. It’s been a program that supports a lot of sugar producers and has had a lot of support in Congress over the years,” Glauber says.

In fact, import tariffs on sugar date back to 1789. Other provisions originated during the Great Depression.

Sugar policy has been so contentious for so long that the two sides have derisive nicknames for each other — it’s “Big Sugar” versus “Big Candy.”

Representing Big Candy is Bob Simpson from Jelly Belly, who also chairs the National Confectioners Association. “We’d just like them to compete on a fair, open market without the intrusion of the federal government,” he says.

He says Jelly Belly opened a plant in Thailand, partly to get cheaper sugar for markets overseas.

Defending Big Sugar is Jack Roney of the American Sugar Alliance.

“There’s really no reason for contention about U.S. sugar policy. It’s the most successful of any U.S. commodity policy,” says Roney, who adds that in most years this program costs taxpayers nothing — unlike other farm supports.

He blames falling prices on Mexican imports which, under the North American Free Trade Agreement, are not controlled by tariffs.

What To Do With Excess

Roney says the argument over higher food prices is really about food companies lobbying to get sugar prices down. “Is that out of some altruistic desire to help consumers? Well, no. It’s so they can increase profits,” he says.

He says ditching the sugar supports would put thousands of jobs at risk.

But opposition to the sugar policy has brought together an unusual alliance of libertarian conservatives, environmentalists, food companies and lawmakers from both parties.

In the meantime, the government has about six months to decide whether to buy excess sugar using our dollars.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

A shopper at a branch of South African retailer Pick n Pay in Johannesburg. Health insurer Discovery offers rebates on health food at the chain to its members who enroll in a health promotion program.
Photo: SIPHIWE SIBEKO/Reuters/Landov

Post by Allison Aubrey, The Salt at NPR Food (3/19/13)

At $2.50 a pound, broccoli may seem too expensive. But cut the price by 25 percent, and our thinking about whether we should buy it may change.

A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine concludes that rebates on healthy food purchases lead to significant changes in what people put in their grocery carts.

It was actually South Africa’s largest insurer, Discovery, in partnership with Vitality Group, that decided to offer 10 percent and 25 percent cash-back rebates to members of its health promotion program on fruits, vegetables, non-fat dairy and other healthful foods at one supermarket chain. (To get the 25 percent rebate, members had to fill out a questionnaire.)

Researchers at the RAND Corporation then looked at their spending on these foods and found that they increased 9.3 percent (calculated as a ratio of spending on healthy food to total food spending) with the 25 percent rebate. A 10 percent rebate nudged people to buy healthier stuff, too, just a little less — a 6 percent increase.

“People did react fairly strong,” says Roland Sturm of RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., the study’s lead author. Even the smaller rebate was “enough to change behavior.”

The analysis looked at the purchases of more than 170,000 households, 60 percent of which were eligible for the rebate.

In the U.S., Wal-Mart and a company called HumanaVitality are now testing a similar healthful food incentives pilot program. Members of HumanaVitality, a partnership between the Vitality Group (owned by Discovery) and health insurer Humana, save 5 percent when they buy foods with the Great For You label at Wal-Mart.

But is a 5 percent rebate, or discount, enough to motivate people to change their shopping patterns? It’s not clear. HumanaVitality will find out when they analyze the results in September.

Derek Yach of the Vitality Group acknowledges that a 10 percent rebate would be better than 5 percent. As my colleague Dan Charles has reported, Yach, a former PepsiCo vice president, and Vitality Group, are at the forefront of this movement to try to incentivize wellness.

But Yach says the findings of the RAND study suggest that diets can be shifted. And this, he believes, has huge implications for public policy.

Some two-thirds of healthcare spending is linked to lifestyle diseases such as obesity, Type-2 diabetes that can be prevented or controlled by healthier diets and lifestyle. So the insurers sponsoring these incentive programs are hoping they’ll help curb future healthcare costs.

While the study is among the first to evaluate a large rebate program, it’s important to look at what shoppers did with the cash they got back. Did they use the 25 percent savings on broccoli to buy doughnuts? Nope — they increased their spending on healthy foods.

But incentive programs have also been known to fall flat. As we’ve reported, researchers at the University of Buffalo found that subsidizing healthy food led to the unintended consequence of people spending more on high-calorie, low-nutrient foods. This was a small study that took place in a simulated market setting, not a real grocery store.

But this new study shows that over the long-term, it may be possible to nudge people towards wellness by consistently making healthy food cheaper.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Genetically modified to be enriched with beta-carotene, golden rice grains (left) are a deep yellow. At right, white rice grains. Photo: Isagani Serrano/International Rice Research Institute

Listen to the Story on Morning Edition

Post by Dan Charles, The Salt at NPR Food (3/7/13)

There’s a kind of rice growing in some test plots in the Philippines that’s unlike any rice ever seen before. It’s yellow. Its backers call it “golden rice.” It’s been genetically modified so that it contains beta-carotene, the source of vitamin A.

Millions of people in Asia and Africa don’t get enough of this vital nutrient, so this rice has become the symbol of an idea: that genetically engineered crops can be a tool to improve the lives of the poor.

It’s a statement that rouses emotions and sets off fierce arguments. There’s a raging, global debate about such crops.

But before we get to that debate, and the role that golden rice plays in it, let’s travel back in time to golden rice’s origins.

It began with a conversation in 1984.

The science of biotechnology was in its infancy at this point. There were no genetically engineered crops yet. Scientists were just figuring out how to find genes and move them between different organisms.

Some people at the Rockefeller Foundation thought that these techniques might be useful for giving farmers in poor countries a bigger harvest.

So they set up a meeting at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), in the Philippines, to talk about this.

Gary Toenniessen, who was in charge of the foundation’s biotechnology program at the time, says that a lot of people at this meeting were very skeptical about biotechnology. They were plant breeders, masters of the traditional way to improve crops.

One evening, after the formal sessions, “a group of these breeders were sitting around at the guesthouse at IRRI, having a beer or two,” says Toenniessen. After listening to their skepticism for a while, Toenniessen spoke up. If this technology did actually pan out, he said, and you could put any gene you wanted into rice, which one would you pick? “What’s your favorite gene?”

They went around the room. Breeders talked about genes for resisting disease or surviving droughts.

They came to a breeder named Peter Jennings, a legendary figure in these circles. He’d created perhaps the most famous variety of rice in history, called IR 8, which launched the so-called Green Revolution in rice-growing countries of Asia in the 1960s.

“Yellow endosperm,” said Jennings. (The endosperm of a grain of rice or wheat is the main part that’s eaten.)

“That kind of took everybody by surprise. It certainly took me by surprise. So I said, ‘Why?’” Toenniessen recalls.

Jennings explained that the color yellow signals the presence of beta-carotene — the source of vitamin A. Yellow kinds of corn or sorghum exist naturally, and for years, Jennings said, he had been looking for similar varieties of rice. Regular white rice doesn’t provide this vital nutrient, and it’s a big problem.

“When children are weaned, they’re often weaned on a rice gruel. And if they don’t get any beta-carotene or vitamin A during that period, they can be harmed for the rest of their lives,” says Toenniessen.

Toenniessen was persuaded, and the Rockefeller Foundation started a program aimed at creating, through technology, what Jennings had not been able to find in nature.

A global network of scientists at nonprofit research institutes started working on the problem.

The first real breakthrough came in 1999. Scientists in Switzerland inserted two genes into rice that switched on production of beta-carotene. A few years later, other researchers created an even better version.

A single bowl of this new golden rice can supply 60 percent of a child’s daily requirement of vitamin A.

“It’s a great product. And it’s beautiful! It looks just like saffron rice,” says Toenniessen, who’s now a managing director at the Rockefeller Foundation.

Golden rice plants at a confined field trial in 2010. Photo: Courtesy of the International Rice Research Institute

For instance, consider what happened just a few months ago. Some U.S.-funded researchers published the results of a nutritional study showing that people’s bodies easily absorb the beta-carotene in golden rice. They’d carried out that study among children in China.

The result seemed like great news. But the environmental group Greenpeace immediately called it a scandal.

“People are angry, really furious about these tests, using Chinese children as guinea pigs,” says Wang Jing, a campaigner for Greenpeace in China.

The Chinese government reacted quickly. It punished three Chinese co-authors of the study, removing them from their jobs.

In a report on the case, Chinese authorities say that the researchers didn’t get all the approvals they needed before carrying out the study. Also, the researchers told the children, and their parents, that this was a special kind of rice high in beta-carotene, but they didn’t always say it was genetically modified.

“They actually hid the fact that golden rice is a genetically modified crop,” says Wang.

For some people, this makes all the difference in the world.

This is where golden rice gets caught up in the bigger argument over genetically engineered crops — specifically, the argument over who benefits from them.

Neth Daño, who works in the Philippines for the ETC Group, an advocate on behalf of small farmers, says the main purpose of genetically modifying crops has not been to help people; it’s been driven by profit.

“A handful of corporations in developing countries has reaped billions in profits selling genetically modified seeds and proprietary herbicides,” she says. Yet those companies have always claimed that this technology would benefit the poor. “The poor have always been at the center of each and every assertion about the importance of genetically modified organisms to mankind.”

So this is the real significance of golden rice, she says. It gives biotech companies a chance to say, “See, biotechnology is good for the poor!”

“Some proponents are already announcing that the debate is over, that the golden rice product is the clincher.”

Don’t misunderstand me, Daño says: Golden rice is not purely public relations. It is, indeed, supposed to help malnourished people — although she doesn’t think it’s a very good way to help. She thinks it will be more expensive and less effective than traditional nutrition programs.

This rice is mainly going to help the image of biotechnology, she says.

This mixture of motives — helping people and promoting biotechnology — also shows up in the biography of the man who’s now leading the golden rice effort.

Dr. Gerard Barry, IRRI’s golden rice project leader, inspects golden rice in the screen house. Photo: Bill Sta. Clara/International Rice Research Institute

He’s listed as first inventor on some of Monsanto’s most valuable patents. He found the gene that made crops immune to the weedkiller Roundup. That gene is now in soybeans, corn and cotton grown on hundreds of millions of acres.

But along the way, Barry also got interested in rice. “It was very exciting. It was probably my favorite crop to work on,” he says. “Because you got to meet really passionate people. Rice is something that’s vital to large numbers of people. I mean, a couple of billion people eat it.”

Ten years ago, Barry left the corporate world and moved to the nonprofit International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines — the place where the idea of golden rice was born.

His job is now to shepherd it down the home stretch to the finish line.

Part of the job involves old-fashioned plant breeding to transfer the beta-carotene genes into rice varieties that farmers like to grow.

But before farmers can get their hands on golden rice, government regulators in each country need to agree that it’s safe.

Later this year, the network of golden rice researchers will apply for approval in the Philippines. After that, they’ll do the same in Bangladesh.

Yet that’s only the first step. They’ll have to roll out a marketing campaign on behalf of golden rice, and the campaign has to reach the poorest people in the most remote villages.

“Golden rice will be good for everybody, but some people need it more,” Barry says. “Our job is to make sure that [those] people have access to it, understand the value of it, and ask for it.”

This will be the final test of that 30-year-old brainstorm — the idea that genetically altered rice actually could be a cheap, self-multiplying source of this vital nutrient.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

The poster for the documentary A Place At The Table.

Many of us don’t think of the U.S. as the land of the underfed.

In this era of the expanding waistlines, we hear far more concern about obesity than we do about hunger. But the two are more closely connected that many of us realize.

A new documentary, A Place at the Table, peels back the curtain on the problem of food insecurity, weaving the stories of low-income Americans who struggle to put healthy food on the table, despite the fact that they have jobs.

As we’ve reported, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that about about 50 million Americans fall into this category of “food insecure” — meaning they don’t always have the resources to buy the food they need. This includes nearly 17 million children in the U.S.

I attended a screening of the film – along with a panel discussion with the producers and folks from Participant Media (the people behind Food Inc.). Judging from the reaction of the audience, the film works. At a gut level, the story of Barbie, a single mom from Philly who grew up in poverty, is wrenching.

As Barbie tries to break the cycle, she finds at times that she makes too much money to qualify for federal food assistance. And her paycheck runs out long before the end of the month.

As we watch her open cans of cheap pasta and peer into her near-empty fridge, our hearts leap.

The film includes the voices of hunger and nutrition experts, as well as advocates who criticize federal farm subsidies of crops such as wheat and corn. These crops supply the bulk of our nation’s processed foods, which tend to be calorie dense, and nutrient poor.

Food policy expert Marion Nestle points out there are no subsidies for fruits and vegetables — one reason, perhaps, that they’re so much more expensive. Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, weighs in, too.

But as producer Lori Silverbush (married to chef Tom Colicchio, who appears in the film) pointed out during the after-screening discussion, subsidies are just one part of a complex story.

The bottom line, according to hunger advocate Billy Shore of Share Our Strength: “Childhood hunger in this nation is a solvable problem.” Shore says we have enough food and good nutrition programs.

“What we need is to make sure the kids who need the food are able to access the programs,” Shore says.

Participant Media, which helped embolden the food movement with Food, Inc., is hoping that the film serves another call to action.

They’ve launched a website that will serve as a hub for for all sorts of hunger-related advocacy. And groups including Bread for the World, Feeding America, FRAC and Share Our Strength are all represented.

And back to that idea that hunger and obesity live in close quarters. I think Michael O’Sullivan of the Washington Post summed it up best in a review of the documentary:

“The problem, as Table shows, isn’t that the next meal never comes. It’s that when it arrives, too often it is filled with empty calories,” O’Sullivan writes.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Escolar, right, is often substituted for more expensive Albacore tuna (left), a report on mislabeled seafood found. Photo: Yoon S. Byun/Boston Globe via Getty Images

Now a report from the ocean conservation group Oceana confirms that there’s a pretty decent chance that fish on the plate or on ice in the seafood case is not what it’s labeled to be. That means that seafood wallet cards designed by conservation groups to help steer consumers towards sustainable choices may not be doing much good.

Between 2010 and 2012, Oceana took 1,215 seafood samples from 674 retail outlets in 21 states. When they tested the DNA, they found that 33 percent were mislabeled. Sushi vendors and grocery stores were the most likely outlets to sell mislabeled food, though Oceana says the fraud can happen before it reaches them.

Earlier investigations by Oceana and the Boston Globe revealed that seafood mislabeling is common in cities like New York and Boston, where people eat a lot of fish. But the report out Thursday shows it’s happening across the country, and is as bad or worse in places like Texas and Colorado. Some 49 percent of the retail outlets sampled in Austin and Houston sold mislabeled seafood, while 36 percent in Colorado did so.

So what’s the big deal with fish sold under a pseudonym? Well, for one, it’s often just a form of swindling – a cheap fish like tilapia sold as red snapper. But Oceana says the practice also can put consumers at health risk when species like king mackerel, which is high in mercury, or escolar, which contains a naturally occurring toxin than can cause gastrointestinal problems, are marketed as grouper and white tuna, respectively.

Oceana’s also concerned that substituting cheaper, easier-to-find fish for rarer, more valuable ones gives consumers a distorted sense of the market. Of the fish types most heavily sampled by Oceana, those sold as snapper and tuna had the highest mislabeling rates — 87 and 59 percent. Only seven of the 120 samples of red snapper purchased nationwide were actually red snapper, the report found.

“The majority of fraud is various fish standing in for snapper – it’s used as catch-all name for all kinds of white fleshed fish,” says Oceana senior scientist Kimberly Warner. “But there are real conservation concerns when you slip in things in place of the real thing. People think snapper must be doing great because it’s everywhere, but it’s overfished.”

Consumers using wallet cards from groups like the Monterey Bay Aquarium and NRDC could end up buying exactly the species they’re trying to avoid, Warner says, because mislabeling is so prevalent.

One reason mislabeling has gotten so rampant is that the U.S. now imports 90 percent of its seafood and less than 2 percent is inspected for fraud. That means would-be fraudsters have a lot new options for substitutions.The Food and Drug Administration regularly updates its list of seafood approved for sale – in 2012 alone, 19 new species were added to the list, including cornetfish, sampa and claresse.

So what’s the government or a consumer to do about all this? Oceana would like to see an international traceability system where retailers would be required to tell consumers where and when a fish was caught and what gear was used. Requirements like these would help the industry — one of the least transparent in the food system — more accountable.

The National Fisheries Institute argues that the problem is one of enforcement — the FDA needs to do a better job of enforcing laws that are already on the books to discourage fraud. And they encourage consumers to seek out retailers through the Better Seafood Board.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

A corn field is shrouded in mist at sunrise in rural Springfield, Neb. Photo: Nati Harnik/AP

Post by Dan Charles, The Salt at NPR Food

For years, I’ve been hearing stories about the changing agricultural landscape of the northern plains. Grasslands are disappearing, farmers told me. They’re being replaced by fields of corn and soybeans.

This week, those stories got a big dose of scientific, peer-reviewed validation. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows actual pictures — derived from satellite data — of that changing landscape. The images show that farmers in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska converted 1.3 million acres of grassland into soybean and corn production between 2006 and 2011.

“This is kind of the worst-kept secret in the Northern Plains. We just put some numbers on it,” says Christopher Wright, from South Dakota State University, who got funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy to take a close look at this phenomenon. Earlier studies from the Environmental Working Group and the USDA’s Economic Research Service have also looked at it, each using slightly different methods.

Hot spots of grassland conversion: This map shows the percentage of existing grasslands that were converted into corn or soybean fields between 2006 and 2011. Photo: Christopher K. Wright/South Dakota State University

In southern Iowa, Wright says, much of the land conversion is taking place on hillsides. The soil of those fields, without permanent grass to hold it in place, is now much more likely to wash into streams and ponds. And on the western edge of this region, farmers are taking a chance on corn and soybeans in places that sometimes don’t get enough rainfall for these thirsty crops.

Why? There’s one very simple reason: Corn and soybean prices are high, so farmers can earn a lot of money growing those crops. Meanwhile, funding has been declining for one important alternative — the government’s Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to protect wildlife and water quality by keeping land in grass.

Another reason, however, is getting increasing attention: crop insurance. The government subsidizes private insurance policies that cover the risks of poor harvests, or even that prices will fall. Because farmers don’t pay for the full cost of this insurance, critics of crop insurance say that it encourages risky behavior: planting crops in areas that don’t drain well, where rainfall is unreliable, or on hillsides where soil erosion is a problem.

Critics say that the government should drastically reduce its subsidies for such insurance. Not only is it fiscally irresponsible, they say. It’s encouraging farmers to destroy the grasslands of the northern plains, a priceless and increasingly scarce natural treasure.

Copyright 2013 NPR.