August, 21 2012, 12:07pm EDT
Good Food on a Tight Budget: EWG's New Easy-to-Use Guide
First-of-its-kind food rankings list 100 foods that are healthy, cheap, clean and green
WASHINGTON
In an era of rising food prices and economic strains that have put one in four people on federal nutrition assistance, nearly all Americans must search for foods that are nutritious and affordable. To ease the pressure, Environmental Working Group's researchers have created Good Food on a Tight Budget, a science-based shopping guide of the top 100 foods that are healthy, cheap, clean and green.
"Putting good food on your family's table on a $5-or-$6-dollar-a-day budget is tough, but it's possible," said co-author Dawn Undurraga, EWG nutritionist and registered dietitian. "When shoppers fill their grocery carts with the foods on EWG's lists, they'll be doing something good for their health and the environment, meanwhile lowering their grocery bills and exposures to the worst chemicals."
Inside the easy-to-use guide, shoppers will find lists of foods that give consumers the biggest nutritional bang for their buck, simple tips for eating well, tasty recipes for meals and snacks, and easy tools for tracking food prices and preparing and planning meals at home. In collaboration with Share Our Strength's Cooking Matters and chef Ann Cooper, the guide provides 15 delicious low-cost recipes that average less than $1 a serving.
"Eight in ten low-income families cook dinner at home most nights, but many are struggling to afford the ingredients to make healthy meals," said Laura Seman, senior manager of program development and evaluation for Cooking Matters, a national program that helps families at risk of hunger get the most from their food resources. "Practical tools like Good Food on a Tight Budget can help families stretch their food dollar in a healthy way."
Click here to watch a short video of Seman, Undurraga and D.C. chef Alli Sosna discussing how the guide helps price-conscious families shop for and cook healthy, affordable food.
With long experience in analyzing government data to provide consumers with useful and accessible information, EWG is the first to develop this comprehensive food ranking system that balances nutrition, cost and environmental health concerns. EWG researchers assessed nearly 1,200 foods, comparing national average food prices and 19 different nutrients in order to identify the most nutritious foods that are easy on the wallet and the planet. They factored in pesticide residue rankings from EWG's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce and environmental impacts in EWG's Meat Eater's Guide to Climate Change + Health to help consumers lower their exposures to toxic chemicals and reduce their carbon footprints.
The analysis shows that:
* Raw cabbage is a top-ranked vegetable based on nutrition and price. At less than a dime a serving, it's cheaper than potatoes and can be served as a salad, stuffed, or used in sandwiches, stir-fries, stews and soups.
* Carrots, bananas, frozen broccoli, pears and watermelon receive high marks for nutrition and ring up at less than 30 cents a serving.
* Pears have even more fiber, potassium and folate - and fewer pesticide residues - than apples.
* Parsley packs a nutritional punch as potent as kale for a quarter of the cost.
* Roasted turkey topped the list of animal sources of protein. Hot dogs ranked dead last.
Other highlights of Good Food on a Tight Budget:
* Fresh isn't always more expensive. And canned isn't always cheaper. Fresh carrots are cheaper than frozen. Frozen corn can be cheaper than canned.
* Beans are cheaper and have a smaller carbon footprint than turkey.
* One serving of filling oatmeal is about half the cost of a bowl of sugared cereal.
* Brown rice costs as little as oatmeal and has twice as much fiber as white rice.
* Boil, bake or roast three servings of potatoes for the same cost as a single serving of hash browns.
* Plain yogurt has more calcium than sour cream and costs less.
* Queso blanco costs less than processed American cheese and like other soft cheeses, produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions than hard cheeses.
EWG's guide underscores that home cooking is the best way to save money and enjoy good food. The best strategy, it says, is to cook and freeze large batches of healthy foods such as soup and turkey chili. Another winning strategy: buying rice, beans and other dry or frozen staples in bulk from warehouse stores and a growing number of local markets.
Congress has an important role to play. For decades, EWG has fought for meaningful reforms to U.S. federal food, agricultural and biofuels policies to help bring down grocery prices, feed the hungry and increase access to and availability of affordable food, while improving Americans' diets.
Chef Cooper and leading medical expert Dr. Andrew Weil have high praise for the guide:
"Eating for health and wellness need not be expensive, and the Good Food on a Tight Budget shopping guide proves it," said Weil. "There's excellent information here, especially the lists of commonly available foods that provide the most nutrition for the lowest cost. I also like the recipe section, which features quick, whole-food dishes that are perfect for time-pressed modern families."
Cooper said, "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that of the children born in the year 2000, one out of every three Caucasians and one out of every two African Americans and Hispanics will contract diabetes in their lifetime. With that type of crisis looming, it is imperative that we feed our children healthy food, both at home and at school. This guide will serve as an important tool for helping kids and their families eat healthy while staying within a budget."
On Thursday (Aug. 23), EWG will release its recommendations (here) for healthy, affordable school lunch options for families and kids getting ready to go back to school. Tomorrow (Aug. 22), EWG and Share Our Strength will host a webinar to discuss the guide with food and nutrition policy experts, public health and anti-hunger groups.
The Environmental Working Group is a community 30 million strong, working to protect our environmental health by changing industry standards.
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Russia's Putin Secures Another Term
The controversial leader won a record number of votes for a post-Soviet candidate even as opponents organized a protest at noon on the election's third and last day.
Mar 17, 2024
Despite protests on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin won reelection with more votes than any candidate since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Exit poll the Public Opinion Foundation (POF) put the final tally after three days of voting at 87.8%, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) at 87%, and Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) at 87.3%. Putin will now serve another six-year term, meaning he will have been at the helm of the Russian state for longer than any leader since Catherine the Great, surpassing Josef Stalin.
The election comes less than a month after the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and is likely to lead to more tensions between the Russian and U.S. governments.
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With most of Putin's prominent opponents either dead, imprisoned, or in exile, the elections results were considered a foregone conclusion by both friends and foes of his administration.
A Putin spokesperson said in 2023 that the election was "not really democracy" but instead "costly bureaucracy," according to CNN. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said the election was "obviously not free nor fair."
However, Russian opponents of Putin did find a way to demonstrate their position with a protest called "Noon Against Putin." The protest was called for by St. Petersburg politician Maxim Reznik, according to The Guardian. Participants were instructed to head to a polling place at noon and cast a paper ballot for one of the candidates running against Putin, or to write-in another candidate or spoil their ballot.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had endorsed the protest before his death last month in a Russian prison, leading the Independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper to dub it "Navalny's political testament."
The action drew crowds to polling places both in Russian cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg and at Russian embassies around the world.
"This is the first time in my life I have ever seen a queue for elections," one woman waiting in line in Moscow told
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Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who had also endorsed the protest, voted at the embassy in Berlin, while several protesters gathered outside the embassy in London.
"I expected there to be a lot of people, but not this many," London-based participant Maria Dorofeyeva told The Guardian, adding, "It gives me some hope to see how many people are not happy with the dictatorship, the war, with what's happening in Russia. And we want to stop it."
Ruslan Shaveddinov of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation told Reuters:
"We showed ourselves, all of Russia and the whole world that Putin is not Russia (and) that Putin has seized power in Russia."
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The U.S. was one of many Western countries that paused funding for UNRWA after the agency announced in January that it had fired 12 staffers over Israeli allegations that they had been involved in Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel. However, some countries including Canada, Sweden, the European Union, and Australia have since restored funding. A report has also emerged that Israel tortured UNRWA staffers into falsely confessing to involvement in the Hamas attack.
"Netanyahu has wanted to get rid of UNRWA because he had seen them as a means to continue the hopes of the Palestinian people for a homeland of their own."
Van Hollen's remarks on Sunday come days after he argued for the restoration of UNRWA funds on the floor of the U.S. Senate and criticized Republican legislators who wanted to permanently end funds for the organization that supports some 6 million Palestinian refugees in countries across the Middle East, including around 2 million in Gaza.
During his speech, he pointed out that the Netanyahu government had not shared the underlying evidence that UNRWA staffers participated in October 7 with either UNRWA itself or the U.S. government. He also urged his colleagues to read a classified Director of National Intelligence report on Netanyahu's claims of UNRWA complicity with Hamas.
On "Face the Nation," Van Hollen said that the person in charge of operations on the ground in UNRWA was a 20-year U.S. Army veteran.
"You can be sure he is not in cahoots with Hamas," the senator told Brennan.
He also repeated claims that Netanyahu has wanted to eliminate UNRWA entirely since at least 2017.
"Netanyahu has wanted to get rid of UNRWA because he had seen them as a means to continue the hopes of the Palestinian people for a homeland of their own," Van Hollen said, adding that the right-wing Israeli leader's "primary objective" was preventing the formation of a Palestinian state.
However, the dismantling of UNRWA would be especially catastrophic amid Israel's ongoing bombardment and invasion of Gaza, which has killed more than 31,000 people and put the survivors at risk of famine. No other organization has the infrastructure in place to distribute the necessary aid.
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Van Hollen also repeated his call for President Joe Biden to condition the sale of offensive military weapons to Israel on the country obeying international law and allowing aid into Gaza. While Israel sent the U.S. a letter saying it was in compliance with the law, "the day it was signed, clearly the Netanyahu government is not in compliance, because we see that they're continuing to restrict humanitarian assistance," he told Brennan.
Also on "Face the Nation" Sunday, United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Chief Executive Catherine Russell described the impact that a lack of aid was having on the children of Gaza.
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In reflecting on nearly 50 years of climate advocacy, former Vice President Al Gore said that he had "underestimated" the greed of the fossil fuel industry.
The remarks came in an interview published in USA Today on Sunday. When asked if he had any regrets, Gore responded that he had "put every ounce of energy" he had into climate advocacy, but added:
"I was pretty slow to recognize how important the massive funding of anti-climate messaging was going on. I underestimated the power of greed in the fossil fuel industry, the shamelessness in putting out the lies."
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"What's at stake is so incredible."
Gore, who tried to raise awareness about the climate crisis in the U.S. House of Representatives as early as 1981 and brought the issue to national attention in 2006's documentary An Inconvenient Truth, has taken a harsher tone against oil, gas, and coal companies in recent months. In August 2023, he said that the "climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis," and in September, he implored the industry to "get out of the way." In December, he lamented that the industry had "captured the COP process," referring to the appointment of the United Arab Emirates national oil company CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber to preside over the United Nations' COP28 climate conference in that country.
In the USA Today interview, Gore also named the fossil fuel industry when asked about his greatest frustration.
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