NEWSBYJEAN STEVENS

While millions of Americans have started salivating over their Thanksgiving feasts this week, a huge number of folks may struggle to find any food at all. According to new data, the number of hungry Americans is at a record high, food pantries nationwide struggle to serve a growing number of visitors, and food stamps usage has peaked. So much for the land of plenty.

According to a new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) study released last week, about three times as many people today struggle to pay for food than just four years ago — 17 million American families qualify as "food insecure." Without food stamp benefits and other public assistance programs, that figure would be even higher. A full 25 percent of Americans are enrolled in some kind of food assistance program today. About 42 million Americans, or one in eight, rely on food stamps, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. These benefits average out to about $4 each day — hardly enough to eat well, but a huge help for families in need.

Despite their incredible importance, however, Congress is considering cutting that $4 to $3 under new federal legislation to reform school lunch, a cruel robbing of Peter to feed Paul. Try living on a $3 meal budget each day for a week through the Food Research and Action Center's (FRAC) Food Stamp Challenge. It's not easy, and it makes clear the fact that Americans are in desperate need of more SNAP funds, not less.

The sustainable food movement has been criticized (somewhat justifiably) as a movement for upper middle class, white, Whole Foods shoppers. Enter the Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners Conference. The event, which takes place in Brooklyn this weekend, will see the gathering of food activists and educators from across the nation to have a frank conversation about food justice.

The conference — designed for educators, farmers, food workers, community organizers, and leaders — aims to examine the junction of food, health, poverty, and access to develop strategies that can break down our current food system's barriers. America's current food system "is increasingly alienated from the needs of African Americans and dismissive of their demands,"  an alienation that explains the disparate health and nutrition trends within minority communities.

The event is coordinated by the Black Urban Growers (BUGS), an alliance of mostly black urban farmers, gardeners, and food activists. It will feature workshops arranged into four categories: Farmer to Farmer, Food Policy and Action Planning, Building Self-Reliant Communities, and From Seed to Table. The goal here is to develop ideas of how to connect rural and urban black farmers. Many workshops will examine the various political, cultural, and economic factors behind the gradual decline and near disappearance of quality food within black communities. Others will brainstorm and develop concrete strategies to combat this decline.

Does the government care more about the nutritional health of its people, or lining its pockets with funds from industry lobbyists? The question seems less rhetorical than ever in light of recent news of a war of motives within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

A little-known organization within the USDA's marketing department, Dairy Management, has been shamelessly scheming up ways to get Americans to eat more cheese. This plan comes as the USDA itself funds and manages various projects to reduce obesity, which tell Americans to eat less saturated fat and fewer calories (i.e. less dairy). According to an investigation by the New York Times, for the past several years, Dairy Management has teamed up with a handful of fast food restaurants to help them develop and market more cheese products — from cheese-laden burgers to pizza and more. This push led to millions in profit for the businesses, millions of pounds of cheese sold, and Americans convinced to consume insane amounts of cheese at their health's expense.

Armed with a budget of more than $140 million, the department "helped" develop and promote Burger King's Cheesy Angus Bacon and TenderCrisp chicken (which included two slices of cheese), Wendy's Double Melt sandwich, and more. These promotions, according to the NYT, contributed to sales of more than 30 million pounds of cheese. It helped Domino's Pizza last year to sell more cheese by marketing a new pizza with 40 percent more cheese topping. Eat one slice and you've eaten about two-thirds the daily saturated fat recommendation.

Few agree on the anticipated fallout from tomorrow's elections, and the same is true for the fate of one of the most promising pieces of legislation at the intersection of food and immigration policy. The AgJOBS Act has been stalled for more than a year now. The threat of a changing Congress could breathe new life into the bill — or kill it once and for all.

According to some political analysts, the Congressional shake-up might mean a shake-down for AgJOBS — the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act — which would offer a path to citizenship for the 2.1 million undocumented workers laboring in the farm industry. A number of Democrats and moderate Republicans in the House and Senate who have supported the act in the past may lose their seats, according to a new report by the Council for Foreign Relations (CFR). The Council cites Ronald Brownstein, writing for the National Journal, who argues that Republican representatives have begun to turn against guest-worker programs as a process for immigrants to gain citizenship in favor of stricter border control.

But even if the expected turnover creates little more than business as usual, as some pundits predict, some current representatives may still take action. There's a chance — albeit slim — that the bill may be pushed forward within the lame duck session before new representatives take their seats in January. A House committee already considered the bill back in September, around the same time when comedian Stephen Colbert testified in Congress in favor of the bill.

"Candy's Dark Side" is a Change.org series that looks at the health, ethical, and environmental costs of producing Halloween treats. Check back every day this week for more installments of this series.

During this week's ghoulish Halloween festivities, Americans will binge on a predicted $2.2 billion worth of candy — much of it chocolate. But despite the sweets' popularity, few consumers realize the truly scary labor conditions behind most of their peanut-butter cups and snack-sized chocolate bars.

Top cocoa-producing countries like Ghana and Cote D'Ivoire remain rife with forced child labor, child trafficking, extremely low pay, and near slave-like conditions, according to an annual audit released last month by Tulane University's Payson Center for International Development. These conditions have persisted despite Western and African government efforts to eliminate "blood chocolate," the report concludes, largely due to the lack of funding from private sector companies within the $10 billion chocolate industry. To keep the cost of our treats low, about 3.6 million children in West Africa work on cocoa farms, according to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), many of whom were trafficked illegally from other countries. There are about 150,000 child slaves just in Cote d’Ivoire. American kids may look forward to trick-or-treating, but many of those goodies were produced by children younger than them.

With 925 million people undernourished worldwide, this past weekend's international World Food Day, designed by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to congratulate efforts to stop hunger, just rings a bit premature.

The discussion among agricultural policy leaders who met late last week in Des Moines at the annual World Food Prize symposium, however, provided far more than just accolades. In a breath of fresh air to recent championing of the expansion of Western Big Ag tech, speakers argued for fair, sustainable strategies to help small-scale farmers in developing nations.

The annual symposium, attended by a mix of small farmers and agricultural officials from Liberia, Pakistan, and other countries, featured philanthropist and farmer Howard Buffett. He hit the nail on the head when he told the Associated Press that expensive fertilizers and equipment used in Western countries — and pushed onto developing countries in the name of hunger prevention — are not the magical solution to help the millions of people who are undernourished.
“People want to provide a silver bullet solution and there aren’t any,”Buffett said. “It’s not easy to do and you can’t take technology, better seed and fertilizer and think that’s going to solve the problem.”

Frustrated by a measly $1.92 billion profit for the third-quarter, PepsiCo is the third of several companies in the past few months to announce plans for a new "nutrition research" subsidiary company, dubbed the "Global Nutrition Group."

The new group — part of the company's strategy to raise revenue to $30 billion by 2020 — illustrates a "new PR direction," a public relations analyst told ABC News. "They've really been working over the past several years to go from this fun-for-you snack to this good-for-your snack." To do this, the company will research and develop new products that the company claims will be "healthy." The company will also rebrand current PepsiCo products, reduce salt in other products, or pair them with healthier snacks like carrots, hummus, or whole grain chips.

Just two weeks ago, Disney announced the launch of "Disney Magic of Healthy Living," a new initiative to further promote its line of Disney-branded "nutritionally balanced range of foods." As I described last week, chocolate and candy behemoth Nestle announced plans for two new "nutrition science" companies. More and more junk food producers are trying their greasy hands at creating supposedly "healthier" foods.

Skip the medicine cabinet and prescriptions. Just head to the store to pick up some Nestle food products guaranteed to fight disease and boost nutrition.

That's the goal, anyway, of two new "health science" companies that Nestle announced last week, Nestle Health Science S.A. (based in South America) and the Nestle Institute of Health Sciences (based in America). Nestle, an $111 billion company known for its chocolate, will spend millions within the two subsidiaries to research and develop new products that the company says will help treat diabetes, heart disease, and other health maladies.

Every other sentence in the company's press release about the institutes induces the gag reflex. The two subsidiaries will "pioneer a new industry between food and pharma" so Nestle can "develop the innovative area of personalized health science nutrition" since the health care system is now "unsustainable." Paul Bulcke, Nestle's chief executive officer, called the new subsidiaries a "promising business opportunity" that will allow the company to "keep the necessary focus on Nestle’s extremely important food, beverages, and nutrition business."

The subsidiaries are the latest in a line of Nestle's efforts to boost profit by researching disease and nutrition in ways that conveniently lead to new products. The company — which owns 6,000 brands including Nesquik, PowerBar, Toll House, Hot Pockets, Dreyer's/Edy's Ice Cream, and Stouffer's — has been steadily toeing a foothold in the pharmaceutical industry since 1986. In 2006, it bought Novartis, a pharmaceutical company, and earlier this year it bought VitaFlo.

Thanks to Tyson Foods for reminding us of an oftentimes-forgotten component of a sustainable food system — gender equity and equal hiring practices.

According to a complaint filed earlier this month by the Department of Labor, a Tyson Foods, Inc. meatpacking plant in Illinois may have systematically discriminated against hundreds of women in its hiring practices, another wrinkle in the company's less than pristine environmental, health, and workers'-rights record.

If the complaint holds up, the world's top chicken processor and supplier of beef and pork may have to pay back-wages to about 750 women and employment to about 100 women who applied for entry-level jobs but were rejected. The federal government may also be forbidden from entering into further contracts with Tyson Fresh Meats, a Tyson subsidiary, until the situation is resolved due to an executive order that states government contractors can't discriminate by gender. If the government stops doing business with the meat producer, Tyson stands to lose millions of dollars in contracts.

Better be wary of your pantries, kids. Fare like Macaroni & Cheese, Chips Ahoy, and Miracle Whip might appear all innocent, but these Kraft products represent part of a colossal snack-and-candy-based ambition to take over the world.

That's what it sounded like last week, at least, when Kraft Foods, Inc.  announced its new "global growth strategy." In an investors meeting in New York City, CEO Irene Rosenfeld called the company a “global snacks powerhouse" with "significant presence in high-growth developing markets," ready to "take our performance to the next level.”

That's some big talk for Kraft, already America's largest food company, home of Ritz Crackers, Oreos, Cool-Whip, Planter's nuts, and about 80 other brands, several dozen of them more than a century old. The junk food behemoth rakes in $48 billion each year and already does more than half of its business outside of North America, with 26 percent of that business in developing countries. It reaches 140 countries through its brands, with most of its profit comes from brands that outperform every other competitor in their category. Now Kraft wants more power? Really?

Yes, really, and Kraft ain't selling sustainability. The company's stretching its tentacles deeper into the global south by developing, promoting, and dominating those countries' food markets with the same foods we Americans are addicted to — candy, crackers, cookies, snack bars, and treats. Indeed, about 51 percent of Kraft products fall into the "confectionary" and "snacks" category, a percentage that will most likely expand.