Promoting The New Guidelines
QUESTION: What do a cereal company, a public relations firm, and a supermarket chain have in common?

ANSWER: They are all working with USDA to help get the word out about the benefits of good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.

Nutritionists at USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion organized a roundtable of food industry representatives who met on July 19 with Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services Shirley Watkins and Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion Executive Director Rajen Anand.

The topic: spreading the word about the recently released “Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2000.” The Guidelines give consumers science-based advice about making food choices that promote health and help prevent disease. In addition, they provide the basis for federal nutrition policy and nutrition education activities.

Carole Davis, director of the Center’s Nutrition Promotion Staff, described the purpose of the roundtable. “We need fresh and innovative approaches to getting the messages contained in the Guidelines out to all Americans,” she noted. “But USDA can’t do this alone--so Under Secretary Watkins and Center Executive Director Anand have asked food industry leaders to join with us to get out this message: that everyone can make choices to improve their health and well-being.”

Center marketing specialist Jackie Haven added that “It’s clear the messages of the Guidelines resonate with people across America, and food industry representatives want to be part of this effort to encourage healthy living through the new Guidelines.”

“Widespread use of the Guidelines is especially important now with the rising rates of obesity in America, especially childhood obesity,” she added. “All Americans need to be aware of how much, as well as what, they are eating.”

Attendees at the roundtable heard about plans USDA is making to promote the Guidelines, as well as discuss how they may be able to add to those efforts. “It’s a win-win-win situation, in my opinion,” observed Center nutritionist David Herring. “USDA effectively promotes the Guidelines, the partners benefit from sales of their products and good public relations, and the American public receives the most updated, healthful information available.”

The roundtable followed the release of the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2000" in May. The Guidelines are updated every five years, and the 2000 version marks the fifth published since 1980. They are based on recommendations from an 11-member Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, a group of nutrition and medical researchers. The January 1996 USDA News carried a story about the 1995 version of the Guidelines.

“This 'Aim-Build-Choose’ graphic will help focus people’s attention on the Dietary Guidelines,” says the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion’s Carole Davis (2nd from left) to OC’s Julie Olson (3rd from left), as she reviews the exhibit promoting the new “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” with the Center’s John Webster (left), Trish Britten (2nd from right), Jackie Haven (right), and David Herring (kneeling). This new exhibit is one of several initiatives which Center staffers have recently launched to promote the Guidelines. --Photo by Ron Hall

Center nutritionist Trish Britten explained that several new features are emphasized in this latest revision of the Guidelines. “The Guidelines are now grouped to make them easier to remember, understand, and use,” she noted. “The overall message of the Guidelines comes from these groups: Aim for fitness, Build a healthy base, and Choose sensibly. These are the ABCs for good health.”

Center nutritionist Alyson Escobar said that, for the first time, the Guidelines contain recommendations on physical activity and safe food handling to prevent illness. “These two new guidelines,” she pointed out, “give consumers important messages: that being physically active and keeping food safe to eat are vital to good health.”

Davis and her staff were in charge of developing the 39-page Dietary Guidelines booklet, working with staff from the Agricultural Research Service and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to produce this joint USDA/HHS publication. Julie Olson, an art director with the Design Center in the Office of Communications, coordinated its design.

Center staff are already busy giving presentations to educators and health professionals to help get the word out about the new Guidelines. For instance, in June Britten spoke on the Guidelines to District of Columbia nutritionists with the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Then in July Center nutritionist Charlotte Pratt described the new Guidelines to an audience of school health workers in Washington, DC.

“There is great interest among these professionals in using the Guidelines,” Pratt said.

--John Webster

“A Layer Of Cellophane”
The firefighters have long since left Los Alamos, N.M.--following the devastating fire in that area in early May--and their attention has turned to major infernos in such states as Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.

But specialists with the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Forest Service are still focusing on Los Alamos, as they attempt to help bring charred land areas back to life.

The fire in the Los Alamos area, known as the Cerro Grande Fire, began on May 4 when National Park Service fire crews at its Bandelier National Monument in north-central New Mexico purposely started a 'prescribed fire’ to clear out underbrush that was thought to be potential fuel for some future wildfire.

However, partly because of low humidity and high winds, that fire got out of control. It then spread quickly and ultimately burned about 47,650 acres of National Forest land, private land, tribal land, and U.S. Department of Energy land, including destroying more than 200 homes and burning some structures at the nuclear weapons laboratory in that area. Of that total acreage, at least 20,000 acres were considered most heavily damaged and environmentally sensitive.

Accordingly, once the fire was contained, NRCS and FS specialists teamed up to begin seeding those 20,000 acres. According to Rosendo Trevino, NRCS state conservationist in New Mexico, based in Albuquerque, the goal was to get ground cover growing quickly to reduce soil erosion, restore vegetation destroyed by the fire, and reduce the potential for storm flow runoff and flooding.

“We wanted to help nature start the healing process,” he emphasized.

Leonard Atencio, supervisor of the Santa Fe National Forest, based in Santa Fe, N.M., noted that the initiative, an aerial seeding, used 381,000 pounds of native grass and small grain seeds. “The goal was to apply 60 seeds per square foot, and in the process ultimately establish 9 to 15 plants per square foot,” he noted.

Barry Imler, FS range and wildlife specialist on the Santa Fe National Forest who has been overseeing the rehabilitation operations following the Cerro Grande Fire, said that FS coordinated the use of a helicopter and several planes for the aerial seeding operations--the last of which was completed on July 28.

NRCS and FS also worked with volunteer crews and firefighters in related rehabilitation activities, including raking, mulching, and seeding; placement of log erosion barriers; hazard tree removal; and road rehabilitation.

But there was a unique complication to the seeding initiative, called “hydrophobicity.” Arlene Tugel, an NRCS soil scientist with the NRCS Soil Quality Institute, based in Las Cruces, N.M., explained that hydrophobicity refers to a condition that can develop in the soil after a fire.

“Hydrophobic soils occur after a really hot fire in which waxy materials from the burned vegetation penetrate the soil and coat the soil particles, causing them to repel water,” she advised. “It’s like someone has draped a layer of cellophane over the ground which then slows water movement into the soil, resulting instead in excessive water runoff.”

Ken Scheffe, the NRCS state soil scientist based in Albuquerque, added that the heat of the fire will determine the depth to which the waxy materials have penetrated the soil. “Based on that depth,” he advised, “it could take several years, including several freeze-thaw cycles through winters, before the soil is able to readily accept rainfall or snowfall.”

But one positive note, he added, is that hydrophobic soils tend to have enough cracks and fissures in them so that grass and plant seeds can lodge there, take root, and grow--and, in the process, assist in the breakup of the waxy, water-repellant layer of soil.

“Fires are part of nature,” Tugel observed. “But when there has been a long time between fires, the resulting vegetative buildup makes soil more vulnerable to this phenomenon of hydrophobicity--and that’s what happened in many areas of the Cerro Grande Fire.”

--Ron Hall

A Life-Saving Weather 'Heads-Up’
Here’s a story about how five minutes might save your life--and how, if you live in rural America, employees with the Rural Utilities Service are trying to get you that five minutes.

Summertime in America marks the middle of tornado season. The ability to get advance notification of approaching tornados could spell the difference between surviving such a storm, or not.

That’s why over the years the National Weather Service (NWS), part of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, has encouraged residents of tornado-prone parts of the country to purchase 'weather radios.’ The normal message of a 'weather radio’ consists of real-time, uninterrupted, localized weather reports from NWS. But during tornado emergencies NWS activates 'weather radios’ that may be turned off, so that even people who may be sleeping will still receive NWS’s tornado warnings–-and thereby be informed of their vulnerability to approaching tornados. This is unlike watching a weather report on TV--which requires the listener to already be aware of the impending crisis in the first place.

But you can’t hear a 'weather radio’ unless your geographic area is covered by a transmitter. So emergency radio transmitters have been installed on tall towers around the country to strengthen those weather signals--thereby reaching more citizens with their timely weather warnings.

“The complication,” advised Ed Cameron, director of the Advance Services Division in RUS’s Telecommunications Program, “is that in the late 1960s and '70s the push was on to install those transmitters throughout urban America. But virtually none were installed in rural America.”

“This meant that, even if residents of rural America had 'weather radios,’ they might not be covered by a transmitter--so the radio wouldn’t have any signal to receive.”

“As a result,” he advised, “many in rural areas can’t get those early warnings--which might mean the difference between surviving a tornado and succumbing to it.”

Accordingly, this past spring RUS teamed up with NWS to launch an increased effort to extend emergency radio service to rural areas of the nation. Cameron explained that RUS headquarters and field employees are identifying utilities which own towers in rural areas around the country which are not currently receiving NWS’s weather transmissions. Then NWS staffers are working with those rural utilities to obtain 'tower space’ to install emergency radio transmitters onto those utility towers, to provide warning signals to residents of that rural area.

Cameron advised that more than two-thirds of the land area west of the Mississippi River are still not covered by these NWS weather radio transmissions, and large rural areas of the eastern part of the country also lack such coverage.

The results so far?

Cameron noted that RUS employees publicized this initiative nationwide. Then, for instance, in Missouri they identified utilities which owned four towers in rural areas of Missouri which had not been receiving NWS weather transmissions. NWS has since worked with local rural electric cooperatives to install emergency radio transmitters onto those four.

He added that, while the focus is often on tornados, this particular communications initiative applies to other natural disasters, such as hurricanes, flash floods, and even emergency freeze warnings for farmers, as well as to human-caused disasters such as chemical spills.

“Each emergency radio transmitter costs about $80,000,” Cameron pointed out, “so it’s significant when we’re able to make this happen--in order to benefit the residents of rural America.”

--Ron Hall