FreshPaper looks like small, square paper towels. They are infused with a mixture of organic spices and botanicals that inhibit bacterial and fungal growth and extend the life of quickly perishable produce. One sheet of maple-scented FreshPaper helped my basket of very ripe strawberries last more than a week in the fridge. A sheet tossed into a plastic bag with cilantro helped the herb last about 10 days.

Read all about it and the super-smart 27-year-old who invented it, Kavita Shukla, on the Washington Post. Distribution is ramping up fast. But wherever you are, you can buy it on FreshPaper’s site, www.fenugreen.com

But it does make sense to focus on lower-cost, flexible and efficient ways to improve food access. The Green Cart program in New York does just that. In my latest Smarter Food column in the Washington Post, I look at how and why green carts work so well. The program required no changes in zoning and no new bureaucracy. Potential vendors apply for permits through the same process as someone who wants to sell hot dogs or soft pretzels. And barriers to entry are low. On average it costs vendors about $3,000 to get up and running. No wonder other cities — Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Chicago and others — are adapting the model to work for their needy populations.  Read the whole story here and let me know what you think of New York’s Green Carts and other food-access initiatives.

Image courtesy of the New York Times

Does the American public need more information about healthy eating? Or do we pretty much know what we need to about food — and still eat poorly for other reasons, like living in a “food desert” or being too busy for “slow food”? That’s the question the New York Times asked me and several other pundits on healthy eating in its latest Room For Debate forum.

My answer: Yes and no. Most Americans know what to eat but getting them to change their habits is the hard part. But as I saw last year while reporting a book on what people eat, and why they eat it, in Huntington, W.Va., many Americans do have access to, and can afford, better food. They just choose not to eat it. Or rather, they choose not to take the time to shop for it, to plan and cook their meals, when they can hit the drive-through or have a pizza delivered or pop a Stouffer’s entrée into the microwave.

Does this mean the battle is lost? On the contrary. A new and growing group of studies point to a third way to persuade Americans to make small but essential changes to their diets and lifestyles. Based on behavior-change theories — a kind of grassroots behavioral economics for public health — these strategies address a range of personal, cultural and environmental factors that affect what people eat. These strategies, I argue, help Americans to understand not only how to eat well but also how to incorporate a healthy diet into their own lives.

Other West Virginia counties paid attention. Last August, Rhonda McCoy, the head of food service for Cabell County schools, ran a training sessions for seven of the state’s poorest counties, teaching the cooks how to make multi-use tomato sauces and tricks to cut up mountains of salad greens safely and efficiently. In return, each county agreed to cook breakfast and lunch from scratch five days a week for a year and serve free breakfast and lunch to all students.

The new food has been an unqualified success. Students have embraced the new recipes. And the number of students eating breakfast has nearly doubled, bringing in more than a million extra federal dollars in the first four months.

In Kanawha County, home to the state capitol of Charleston, things did not go so smoothly, reports an excellent article in the West Virginia Gazette. The cooks weren’t trained. And many (though not all) were furious that they were being asked to work harder–chopping vegetables by hand and making sauces from scratch–instead of opening boxes and popping trays in the microwave. At one school, the article reports, “they served a pizza that’s supposed to be finely sliced, sautéed vegetables with melted cheese. Instead, [cooks] piled chunks of raw vegetables and cheese on it, about three or four inches high, and called it scratch cooking.” As one administrator observed:  “No wonder the kids didn’t like it.”

Within months, according to the article, protesting school cooks packed Kanawha school board meetings. At some schools, students quit eating school meals in droves. With fewer students eating, Kanawha County’s food program is projected to make about $350,000 less than it did the previous year, according to the state Department of Education.

It’s easy to see why schools want to jump on the eat-healthy bandwagon. Cabell and other West Virginia counties have shown that it can be done — even on a shoestring budget. But changing the way children eat at school requires thoughtful training, investment in equipment, and  buy-in from both workers and students. Kanawha County is a case study of how the rush to change is anything but a recipe for success.

Wendell Pierce at his new convenience store, Sterling Express. (Courtesy of The New York Times)

Well, I’m not going to lie. I’m pretty chuffed. I have stories in both of today’s New York Times and Washington Post food sections.

The New York Times story, In New Orleans, An Actor Turns Grocer,  profiles one of my favorite actors, Wendell Pierce. The star of HBO’s “Treme” and “The Wire” is leading the charge in New Orleans to bring  grocery stores back to the city where they are still sorely lacking seven years after Hurricane Katrina.

The Washington Post story, Making Fast Food More Sustainable is this month’s Smarter Food column. It charts the efforts of Nick Pihakis, who owns the southern Jim ‘N Nick’s barbeque chain, to bring sustainable meats and vegetables to the casual dining space without raising prices above what his customers can afford.

Not a bad week’s work. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

A customer picks up her customized CSA share from Star Hollow Farms. (Image courtesy of The Washington Post)

If it’s February, it must be time to feel guilty.

It’s not because I’ve broken any new-year diet resolutions. (I don’t make any.) It’s because I will not join a CSA.

Community-supported agriculture programs, or CSAs, traditionally offer a weekly box of seasonal produce from a local farm. Customers pay upfront so the farmer has the cash on hand to buy seeds and equipment, and a guide for what and how much to grow. (Some plans also require that members put in a few hours’ work on the farm.) In exchange they receive an assortment of whatever is ready for harvest that week. That might mean a lot of greens in early spring and an overload of tomatoes in high summer — or if there’s a blight, no tomatoes at all. The benefit, or so they tell me, is that participation supports local growers and teaches families to cook with what Mother Nature provides rather than the global panoply of foods available year-round at the grocery store.

Maybe. But a model designed to serve the producer and not the customer will never be, well, sustainable. And in my experience, CSA customers get the short end of the stick. If I take a vacation in the summer, I pay for food I never receive. If I want more food one week to throw a party and less the next? Tough luck.

The good news, as I write in my latest Smarter Food column for The Washington Post, is that farmers and a new crop of food entrepreneurs are getting the message that, at least some of the time, the customer should have options. Flexible CSA models are sprouting up around the country, proving that subscription services can work for farmers and consumers. Some, dubbed multi-farm CSAs, offer produce from a network of small farms for more variety. Others let customers choose what and how much goes into their weekly box or use pre-paid credit at the farmers market or online.

Do you belong to a CSA? Do you think it’s fabulous? Or too restrictive? Check out my column and let me know what you think.

New grocery stores like Walmart may not help America eat better.

How can we change the way America eats? If there is one thing most people agree on, it’s that we need to make healthy food more accessible and affordable to low-income families.

Or do we? A new survey from Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters program, challenges a piece of the conventional wisdom. The poll of 1,500 families reveals that most low-income families are satisfied with the availability of good food. Seventy-seven percent of urban families were satisfied with their options versus 69 percent of rural families. The greater obstacles to healthy meals are planning skills, time and, yes, price.

According to the survey:

• Families with a stay-at-home mom or an unemployed parent are far more likely to prepare healthy from-scratch meals. An at-home parent makes dinner from scratch 4.4 times per week versus 3.6 for families where the adult(s) are employed full-time. Homemakers, the unemployed and disabled were more likely to agree that that cooking healthy meals was a realistic goal than those that worked full time.
• Families that regularly budget and plan for meals before shopping, using a written grocery list, for example, are the same families who eat healthy, balanced or made from-scratch dinners most days of the week. Families that always or often plan are significantly more likely to provide healthy meals five or more times a week. However, overall 35 percent and 55 percent of survey respondents don’t regularly use written grocery lists or plan meals before going to the store, respectively.
• Price is a factor. One in four families report choosing less healthy foods often or always because of price. But, the report smartly notes that this can be overcome by educating families about the benefits of canned and frozen fruits and vegetables, which cost a fraction of fresh ones and don’t rot in the crisper drawer. While 81 percent of families said that fresh produce was extremely healthy, just 32 percent of parents rated frozen fruits and vegetables as extremely healthy and only 12 percent said that canned ones offered great nutritional benefits.

The study was funded by ConAgra, which has led some to be suspicious of the results. But the data reflect what my husband, Brent Cunningham, and I saw while reporting for six months in Huntington, West Virginia. Among the families we followed, the very poorest was the one most likely to cook healthy meals at home. But it required intense planning and basic cooking skills. The families least likely to eat well were the ones who, frankly, didn’t have to.  They had enough money to swing by Burger King for dinner on the way home instead of cooking family meals and eating leftovers. (See my recent post on the Atlantic: Fast Food’s Dirty Little Secret.) They shopped impulsively, instead of methodically, at the grocery store, which meant their carts were filled with frozen pizzas, chips and snacks.

It’s fashionable to blame a lack of access to good food for America’s lousy eating habits. It may be easier to plunk down a new Walmart in the inner city. (And the schemes also may help cash-starved politicians generate corporate campaign contributions.) But the Cooking Matters survey is more evidence that helping families to eat better is a lot more complicated.

It could have been a turning point in America’s war on obesity. This morning on the Today show, Food Network star Paula Deen—the queen of deep-fried Twinkies—admitted that she had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. But when asked whether fans should cut back on the “yummy, fattening” recipes she promotes, she told Al Roker: “Honey I’m your cook, not your doctor.”

Deen’s position is hardly a surprise. This is a woman known for fried chicken and broccoli “salad” that includes sugar, mayonnaise, cheese and bacon. Deen knows that even a mention of healthy, responsible eating could undermine her multimillion-dollar television-and-cookbook empire built on the glories sugar and lard.

Still, it was a grand disappointment. While everyone from Anthony Bourdain to Frank Bruni have called Deen a menace to a healthy society, I always believed that Deen, or someone like her, might be the key to change. Everyday Americans, including a large number that struggle with weight and diabetes, like Deen. They listen to her. As I wrote in a piece on the Atlantic in August, Deen, despite herself, might just be the secret ingredient to changing the way Americans eat.

If that sounds ridiculous, think again about the power of celebrity-awareness campaigns. Magic Johnson singlehandedly changed the debate about the AIDS virus when he public with his diagnosis of HIV. (It’s worth noting, too, that the move hasn’t damaged his career as a broadcaster and endorser.) Christopher Reeves, aka Superman, raised money for research on spinal cord injuries and public empathy for people with disabilities. Lance Armstrong, despite all the controversy over doping, has made supporting cancer research eminently cool

Deen has chosen a different path. Three years after her diagnosis, she’s signed on as a paid spokeswoman for diabetes drugs–her way, she says, of bringing something to the table. Moreover, she denies that her fat-and-sugar-laden recipes have any role to play in the skyrocketing rates of Type 2 diabetes. Fans may see her on TV twice a day swooning over cream pies and “Uncle Bubba’s Wings” but she only cooks and eats that kind of food while filming: “30 days out of 365 days — and it’s for entertainment.”

In the end, Deen told Al Roker: “You have to be responsible for yourself.” It’s advice that the fatty-food diva clearly and cynically has decided to follow herself.

Local Roots market manager, Jessica Eikleberry. (Ben Leitschuh for The Washington Post)

This month’s Smarter Food focuses on an innovative coop in Wooster, Ohio called Local Roots. The carefully conceived venture solves many of the issues faced by  small farmers and foodies who love them/

Here’s how it works: The coop rents shelf space to local farmers for the bargain price of $10 a month. They drop off once or twice a week. But, unlike at a farmers market, they don’t have to stand there and sell their wares. Instead, customers shop as they would at a grocery store. They can buy milk from grass-fed cows, eggs, locally baked walnut bread and produce from dozens of farmers but still check out at a single cash register, using cash, a check, a credit card, even food stamps.

Launched two years ago in a renovated warehouse off Wooster’s main drag, the market is thriving. On a recent visit, the shelves were stocked with potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, arugula, nine varieties of apples, grass-fed milk, jam, maple syrup and locally milled flour. And this is the slow season.

Let’s hope this savvy model catches on elsewhere.

As Frank Brigsten, a renowned New Orleans chef and Nacio customer, told me: “The shrimping industry in America has been struggling for a long while. Lance saw the writing on the wall. He is a visionary in his profession.” (Frank also graciously contributed this delicious recipe for shrimp cornbread.)

Besides being an all-around feel-good story, Nacio is a model for small fisherman in the Gulf. Here’s to hoping many follow in his path.