Season of Sharing: Vitamin conspiracy punishment funding brings good food to Food Bank

I knew getting names wouldn”t be easy but I didn”t want anonymous sources in this week”s story on how the Fort Bragg Food Bank impacts nutrition in our community.

On Monday, I saw a former real estate listing client and another prominent community member-pal on my way into the Food Bank. Quotes?

No way. It was clear from their eyes they didn”t want to talk. The Food Bank has many new clients this year who need food but don”t want the stigma that many think comes with using the non-profit.

However, I was in luck.

I just knew from their open and confident manner that the two men I saw bantering their way through the senior citizens” line would have no qualms about being named in the paper.

I was right.

Ernest Crouch is “81 going on 19,” a bright-eyed man in a ball cap whose wits haven”t fled him at all.

He pointed to the mountain of vegetables available when I asked about good healthy food.

“The healthy food is here for the taking for people who wouldn”t be able to afford it otherwise. The Food Bank can”t make people eat it,” Crouch said.

Crouch worked as an upscale hotel manager for years until the glorious day he was able to buy half the business.

That”s all in the past now.

“I woke up one day to go to the doctor and hear you have cancer,”” he said.

That ended his big plans and his work career. He now relies on Social Security but needs the Fort Bragg Food Bank. Although he enjoys the healthy food, he covered up some sweet rolls he had chosen along with some lettuce, smiling.

The story I hoped to get a human angle on was just too hard to explain while the sources checked out the cantaloupe for freshness.

The first part of the story is we all paid too much for vitamins from 1989 to 1999 due to a global corporate conspiracy.

The second is that this year, Crouch and all the rest of the Fort Bragg Food Bank clients are eating more nutritious food as a result.

Come again? This is a tricky and tangled tale.

The tangled tale

The U.S. Justice Department, working with several state attorneys general, forced six vitamin companies to fork over $225 million for wrongly overcharging consumers for vitamins.

In an anti-trust settlement that has been widely heralded as appropriate and far-reaching, the ill-gotten corporate gains are being used to ease hunger and improve nutrition, especially in rural areas.

A recent United Nations report documents how poverty is the leading cause of poor nutrition, which in turn creates huge costs to society in lost worker productivity, higher health care costs and even crime. Poor nutrition is actually helping to kill the world”s economy.

The corporate rip-off by the six firms that control 80 percent of the market wasn”t just for bottles of vitamins.

Vitamins are used in many products, including vitamin pills, foods such as milk, cereal and bread, and feed for chickens, cattle and fish, a Justice Department press release said.

The California Food Bank System got $7,213,278 of the corporate vitamin conspiracy money to distribute to 40 food banks.

Separately, the local food bank also won a $90,000 grant to provide healthy foods for two years to several Northern California food banks.

Unfortunately Fort Bragg Food Bank Executive Director Nancy Severy wrote the grant request last winter, just before food and fuel prices skyrocketed. She has had to revise plans to provide two new healthy food items in each weekly assistance bag down to one item.

When I went through the line last week, the item was brown rice. There were several other healthy foods that didn”t come from the grant. When I asked about those, I found they came from a mystery donor who provides a $100 monthly check exclusively to buy at Down Home Foods in Fort Bragg.

“There are a lot of little things that help add up to better nutrition for our clients,” said Severy.

For some people, the healthy effort is working.

Nutrition

A food bank consumer recently came in with a bag of white rice. He was there to trade it in for the more nutritious brown rice plentiful at the Fort Bragg Food Bank this year, Severy said.

“He wasn”t the counterculture type client that one might expect to eat health food. He was a traditional, old Fort Bragg client who had read about how much brown rice is healthier. I thought it was a good sign,” said Severy.

The United Nations report documented how governments in China and Sri Lanka reduced not just hunger but many societal problems by direct distribution of brown rice to the poorest of residents, using systems quite similar to the local food bank. The Asian efforts are called one of the world”s most effective efforts in reducing social problems way beyond hunger.

Elementary school children in China all learn of the ancient Chinese royal dynasty that died off in a famine in part because they took the best polished rice for themselves, with lower classes getting the healthier brown rice.

Alas, in Fort Bragg many people skipped the brown rice as I went through the line. Many went quickly for the delicious bakery treats donated by Harvest Market and Safeway.

“The food we get is what it is, and people will eat what they want to eat,” said Severy.

As the world”s poor get poorer and the entire economic system cools, the web of problems caused by poor nutrition is getting worse. In the United States, the cheapest food is that highest in calories. Lifelong patterns of eating sweets and fast food have created an obesity epidemic that makes Americans among the least healthy people in the developed world.

People who can afford fresh vegetables and have the time to avoid greasy treats from the fast food drive-through, have better health.

With Crouch in line was former Food Bank volunteer John Patterson.

The duo briefly reminded me of George Burns and Art Carney in the movie “Gray Panthers,” with Patterson playing the gangly Carney.

“I”ve been tall all my life, but then I met you,” he said. (I”m 6-foot-8.)

Patterson lives on Social Security and came to pick up food for himself and a homebound neighbor. Like Crouch, he was quick with the quip, which I found when I asked his age.

“I wondered how long it would take you to get the crux of the interview,” he said, revealing that he is 68,

“This food bank helps quite a bit in getting people the healthier food they need,” he said as he looked at cantaloupes that ranged from just ripe to well past ripe.

Local farmers donate some of the tastiest produce, but it often comes in huge amounts, is just past ripe and is stacked high outside.

Patterson got two pounds of cheese, which he pointed out is something very good for people who aren”t struggling with obesity. Older people need healthy food higher in calories, with dairy products a big boost for those who can handle lactose.

Patterson was a truck driver until he broke his leg. He shows how the leg is now held together with a titanium rod and the ankle doesn”t face in the right direction.

“That”s why I went on Social Security,” he says.

“It would have healed fine if the doctor hadn”t forgotten I was a diabetic and let me walk on it too soon,” he said.

Another man delighting in the fresh food was Woody Warden, who had never used a food bank this year despite a loss in income.

“I was on the Top Ramen diet,” he said.

Top Ramen, a noodle-heavy instant soup, is included in every Food Bank bag. Clients also get a selection of canned staples such as corn, hash and tuna, along with flour, dried beans and a mixture of other cans in the bag. Then, clients get to pick from about a dozen other items, from fruit juices to breads.

The tangled thread

Back to the story more tangled than a bowl of Top Ramen noodles.

The District of Columbia, 21 states, and Puerto Rico reached a settlement with six vitamins manufacturers to resolve allegations of antitrust law violations arising out of an international cartel to fix the prices of vitamins during 1989 to 1999. The manufacturers have coughed up $225 million to compensate consumers and businesses for the jacked-up prices they paid for vitamins. The settlement also resolves numerous pending class action suits.

In addition, in a separate agreement, the manufacturers will pay more than $29 million to compensate state governments and the governments of the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico for overcharges on governmental vitamin purchases.

It was the first time that the District served in a leadership capacity in the negotiation of a multi-state antitrust settlement, the Justice Department Press release states.

The settlements involve three European companies — Hoffman-La Roche Inc., BASF Corporation, and Aventis Animal Nutrition S.A. (formerly Rhone-Poulenc) — and three Japanese companies — Takeda Chemical Industries, Ltd., Eisai Co., Ltd., and Daiichi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. Together, these companies have controlled more than 80 percent of the world”s vitamin market. The firms are also related to some better-known U.S. conglomerates, which were not named in the anti-trust action.

Season of Sharing

The goal of the Advocate-News and Mendocino Beacon”s annual Season of Sharing fund drive is to raise a substantial chunk of money that the Food Bank can draw on year-round, not just during the holidays when donations tend to flow most freely. Last year the community donated $37,214.15; this year”s target is $40,000.

The Community Foundation of Mendocino County administers the Season of Sharing free of charge as a courtesy to the newspapers, so every cent donated goes to the Food Bank.

Checks should be made out to the Community Foundation of Mendocino County (CFMC), and mailed to Advocate-News, P.O. Box 1188, Fort Bragg, 95437, or you”re welcome to bring them to the newspaper office, located at 450 N. Franklin St.

If you have any questions about our fund drive, call the newspapers at 964-5642. The fund-raiser runs through Dec. 31.

Donors” names are printed each week, unless they ask to remain anonymous.

Contributions received this week from Dr. P.P. Coukoulis, Little River Inn, Gilbert and Marian Roden, Charles Lee in memory of Jean, and one anonymous donor brought the total to $4,680.