Good Enough to Eat

Enlarge

Fedele Bauccio | photo by James Goodin

Enlarge

Margaret Wittenberg | photo by Randal Ford

---

Related Content

slideshow

Clean, Healthy Food

Eduardo J. Sanchez
VP and Chief Medical Officer
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas
Dallas, Texas

A Doctor's Recipe

Eduardo J. Sanchez, 49, battled the issues that lead to childhood obesity -- poor diet and exercise -- as Texas's commissioner of health. He joined Blue Cross and Blue Shield last May.

"In medical school, I spent a summer in Brownsville, Texas, where a significant number of patients lived in colonias, border towns with no sewers, running water, or electricity. After a heavy rain, you'd have an outbreak of gastrointestinal disease, and it occurred to me: What makes more sense -- set up more clinics, or figure out how to offer clean water?

In trying to tackle pediatric diabetes, the clear issue is childhood obesity. When I was in government, if we didn't deal with it, the state would face soaring medical costs. We pushed to get vending machines out of elementary schools and reformed the school-lunch program so that students got less fried food and leaner meats. With fitness programs, we found healthy kids are smarter kids.

At Blue Cross, we have to be mindful that our bottom-line objective is to keep members healthy. And that's going to be more about diet and exercise than the doctor's office and the hospital."

Natalie Reitman-White
Sustainability Coordinator
Organically Grown Co.
Eugene, Oregon

Delivering the Goods

Natalie Reitman-White, 30, leads an initiative at the Northwest's largest organic-produce distributor to go to zero waste and cut fossil-fuel use -- not easy for a delivery company.

"There's a lot of low-hanging fruit, if you will: switching to biodiesel for our fleet, retraining our drivers so they don't sit with trucks idling. We launched a contest where drivers could compete for who got the highest mpg. Two employees went Dumpster diving to see what we were throwing away and what could be recycled, composted, or avoided, such as faxes. In the warehouse, we now sort trash at the beginning of a shift, when people aren't tired. These moves cut our waste in half.

The much bigger challenge is changing our supply chain. We can't do that alone. For example, we want to replace waxed-cardboard produce boxes, which can't be recycled, with reusuable plastic bins. But to do so, retailers have to agree to store them until we take them back. The industry as a whole has to work together."