jonathan.halperin's blog

The words we use reflect the extent to which our thinking is clear or muddled. Speaker after speaker at The New York Times conference at Stone Barns on Food for Tomorrow spoke to the issue of words and meaning.

As we recover from our annual Halloween sugar binge, worth $2.4 billion to the candy industry, rumblings of change can be heard from every corner of the food system.

I led a discussion on sugar and public health with Rob Lustig, Laurie David, Emily Luchetti and Cindy Gershen.

“Fresh as the month of May” is how Philip Morris introduced the iconic Marlboro Man in 1955, based on a photograph of a real cowboy from Life Magazine.

From earthquakes and mudslides in Chile, Japan and California; from droughts across America’s fruit and vegetable heartland; to flooding in Pakistan and creeping lava in Hawaii as well as a smoking volcano in Iceland; from killings in Ferguson, Missouri, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine; from the collapse of the state in Libya and the rise of the Islamic State across the Middle East; from Gaza to the Golan Heights one could be forgiven for feeling that things are coming unstuck.

I really like sugar. I know too much sugar is bad for me. FedUp, the new movie, is very sobering.

In 2012, a little bakery just north of New York City became the first business licensed in New York State as a Benefit Corporation. (External Blog, The Cynthia & George Mitchell Foundation)

This year’s CERES conference in Boston was provocative and challenging -- as it should be in celebration of 25 years of creative, innovative, and collaborative advocacy to bring greater openness and accountability to corporate behavior. And it is behavior, of course, that needs to change; openness and accountability are only the tools of the trade in modifying corporate practices.

Since participating recently in the UN Investor Summit on Climate Risk, and in preparing for the Sustainable Land & Water Program Expert Workshop in Amsterdam on Friday, I’ve been thinking more about risk as fundamental conceptual framework for making meaningful comparisons and connections.

I am comforted by the awareness that changes we dismiss as inconceivable are often viewed by historians as having been inevitable. A Happy New Year might thus include news of the following momentous changes.

Video for the first two morning panels of The James Beard Foundation 2013 Food Conference (The Paradox of Appetite: Hungering for Change, Oct. 21-22) appears below. For the entire two-day's proceedings, visit the James Beard Foundation's 3013 Food Conference video channel.

With more than 47,000,000 Americans only able to buy their next meal because they are on SNAP, formerly Food Stamps, one wonders where these people live. 47 million sure sounds like a big number. But where are they?

The story of hunger in America is quite instructive, and as the radical right plays financial chicken with the federal budget and the good faith and credit of the United States, 47,000,000 citizens wonder where they will find their next meal. In an America where compassion remains a core value, this is only possible because people have differing visions of reality.

As summer slowly releases its muggy grip on the nation’s capitol, I had an opportunity to talk with the Israeli ambassador to the United State, Michael Oren. With the civil war in Syria propelled to front and center, he reminded us that “it’s the neighborhood we live in.”

Speaking truth to power rarely happens. But with four members of the SNAP Alumni network in the halls of Congress last week it did.

In a rare series of events on Capitol Hill yesterday, and continuing today, the real experts on hunger in America met with senior members of Congress and their staffs.

Rich and deep conversations are the hallmark of CERES conferences and this year in San Francisco was no exception, as CERES looks forward to its 25th anniversary in 2014.

I have buses on my mind – lots and lots of school buses sitting in parking lots all over the world.

Implementation, not definition, is the challenge for sustainability today.

As Representative Jim McGovern said from the floor of the House of Representatives a few days before president Obama’s State of the Union last evening, “Hunger is a political condition.”

Richard Stone has produced a provocative and important new documentary on nuclear power that was screened this week at the Sundance Film Festival. But as important as it is, Pandora’s Promise is a film that in its current configuration undermines itself.

From the Beard Foundation 2013 conference-planning meeting – the focus this year will be ‘appetite’ – to the screening last week at the Ford Foundation of A Place at the Table, the importance of food as central to a sustainable future is becoming ever clearer.

As Hurricane Sandy shifted the national conversation in the closing days of the U.S. 2012 presidential campaign, so too has the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School interrupted the partisan machinations over government spending and taxation. As we look forward to 2013 and beyond we thus have a rare moment to reflect and observe that these issues share a common root: the respective roles of government and business to shape our future as people and as a national community.

If Americans and Brits are “separated by a common language,” then Israelis and Palestinians are surely divided by a shared geography. Here in London, small daily protests outside the Israeli embassy brought British riot police into the streets adjacent to the new Whole Foods market in the tony Kensington region aglow with pre-Christmas displays.

As I prepare for meetings next week in London, and a presentation to Unilever, I wonder what I will be asked about the U.S. election – how to make sense of it. The explanations and interpretations are many.

As a trustee of The Marcus Foundation I am honored that we have launched a new initiative to bring renewed attention and policy change to ending hunger in America, through collaboration with Participant Media and A Place at The Table. This effort was recognized by The James Beard Foundation during its 2012 annual awards dinner this week in New York City.

Authenticity is the touchstone of trust, the defining characteristic mentioned repeatedly at this week’s James Beard Foundation conference. From Genetic modification of food to mother’s milk, from food service providers to artisan foragers, from Nashville to Portland the exploration of trust and distrust was both deep and wide in this live-streamed conference.

Trust and the American Food System is the theme of this week’s annual James Beard Foundation conference in New York: A Crisis in Confidence: Creating a Better, More Sustainable Food World We Can Trust. I moderate a panel Thursday morning with Sam Kass from The White House and Eric Goldstein, Chief Executive of the New York City Office of School Support Services.

Responding to a comment from Joe Nocera about Howard Schultz’s unique background, both as the company founder and a kid from Brooklyn who grew up in public housing, I reframed the question back to the link between organizational and leadership values – and perceptions of time.