Hillary's State Dept. Is Going To Try Using Food As A Diplomatic Tool

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State Department using food as tool for diplomacy​

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September 10, 2012
WASHINGTON – Top-rated chefs from across the nation are joining a new effort by the U.S. State Department to use food as a tool for diplomacy worldwide.

On Friday, more than 80 chefs are being inducted into the first American Chef Corps. These food experts could help the State Department prepare meals for visiting dignitaries, travel to U.S. embassies abroad for educational programs with foreign audiences or host culinary experts from around the world in their U.S. kitchens.

This month, chefs and food experts from 25 countries are visiting Washington, New York, San Francisco, the Midwest and New Orleans to learn about U.S. food culture in a State Department program.

The new Diplomatic Culinary Partnership is part of Clinton’s “smart power” philosophy of using “every diplomatic tool at our disposal,” said U.S. Chief of Protocol Capricia Penavic Marshall, in a written response to questions from The Associated Press.

Clinton’s focus on the role of food in person-to-person diplomacy began when she was first lady and Marshall served as White House social secretary.

Gone is a heavy reliance on French fare or catering menus to serve special guests.

At a February luncheon for Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, Marshall called on Chinese-American chef Ming Tsai, who owns the Wellesley, Mass., restaurant Blue Ginger. He created a special menu fusing Chinese and American cultures that included an “eight treasured rice packet” with a variety of flavors and gingered Swiss chard.

To feed British Prime Minister David Cameron in March, diplomats chose Chef April Bloomfield, owner of New York’s Spotted Pig, who was born in Britain. The menu included slow-cooked Atlantic salmon, herbed lentils, roasted fennel, cauliflower and petite carrots (ooohhh, yummy).

“By showcasing the best of American cuisine and creativity, we can show our guests a bit about ourselves,” Marshall said. “Likewise, by incorporating elements of our visitor’s culture, we can demonstrate respect and a desire to connect and engage.”

The State Department also offers snacks or tea to jet-lagged guests with a flavor from their homes to make them comfortable.

Chefs who have prepared a diplomatic meal or special program are being anointed State Chefs, a distinction that comes with a navy jacket with the American flag and their names embroidered in gold. The roster includes Ming, Bloomfield and famed Washington-area chef Jose Andres, who cooked for the 50th anniversary of the department’s Diplomatic Reception Rooms.

Food can send a message, Andres said, so he served dignitaries Louisiana Gulf shrimp to send a signal of support to fishermen struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina. He said showcasing the nation’s diverse offerings also shows that America “is more than just hot dogs and burgers.”

Other big names being enlisted include Bryan Voltaggio, a Maryland chef and runner up on TV’s “Top Chef” who prepared dinner for Japan’s prime minister, and Rick Bayless of Chicago who cooked President Barack Obama’s second state dinner for the Mexican president.

Washington Chef Mike Isabella, who gained fame on TV’s “Top Chef,” is the first new State Chef to formally represent America’s food culture abroad. He’s visiting Greece and Turkey on a trip he planned to research flavors for an upcoming restaurant.

For Clinton, he added visits to embassies and restaurants as a culinary ambassador. Isabella has met chefs in Greece and Turkey who want to know more about U.S. advances in moving food from farm to table and building stronger businesses.

“I just think food is the best way to bring people together,” he said. “Even if we don’t understand what we’re saying across the table from each other, we understand how happy we are when we’re sitting down together.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/09/10/state-department-to-induct-1st-american-chef-corps/#ixzz266jPx0Ya​

 

On another note:

Why Can't Obama Bail Out The 13 Million Hungry Children In The USA?​

Why can't Obama bail out the 13 Million Hungry Children In The USA? Yes why indeed do we spend trillions bailing out Wall Street and the banks but no one is screaming what about the 13 million hungry children here in the USA. No one including President Obama has offered to bail them out.And do you know that the 13 million is a conservative US government number.​

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Think about this. Recently 20 billion dollars was given to Bank of America to bail them out. With that amount every hungry child in America could eat for a year. And just think about this. If all the Bail Out money had been spent on the hunger and homeless problems facing America their would be no problem.​

http://crazyhorsesghost.hubpages.co...Out-The-13-Million-Hungry-Children-In-The-USA​

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Why hasn't ANY President taken care of that problem (hungry kids that is).

We spend too much money supporting people other than our own. It's not new. It didn't start with President Obama.

You're reaching here Coin.

I'm all for kids getting a free lunch and breakfast at school if they need it but man do I hear the naysayers on that one.

It cost taxpayers money after all and goes toward a socialist agenda after all.
Folks take advantage of it.

Honestly, I'm sure many do but for those that don't should we let the kids starve?

You're "anti-socialist" but it seems you're pushing a socialist solution here.

It would cost both you and I tax dollars to see that kids get fed. I have no problem with that and doubt you really do either. Kids need to eat.

If 1 in 10 is just "working the system" I'll deal with it. The other 9 might really need it.

Still, it smacks of socialism.

 

If it means feeding hungry children, then you can call me a socialist all you want. I'll take your arrows, but show me some results.

To answer your question, I don't know why past presidents haven't tackled the problem of hunger in our country. I think we should look to our current leaders to solve today's problems, however. That's why they're elected.

 

I'm with Coin on this one...we gotta take care of the kids!
This is were the liberal narrative goes off the track in my opinion- There is certainly a middle ground between compassion & a nanny state.

 

Hum? You'd never have guessed the boys on the Right are FOR kids having enough to eat and that they support the Republican Party at the same time. Makes you have to wonder if they even know their own political party.


Republicans are trying to balance the budget through spending cuts i.e. “smaller government”. Well – this is what their version of smaller government looks like…instead of raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans – they want to cut vital programs for KIDS…school lunch programs etc. The problem with kids nowadays is that they’re just too lazy to pay their own way – they’re the welfare queens of society…always mooching off of their parents. <sarcasm/>.
When I was a kid – there were times in my life that I was on the free lunch program. My mom didn’t make enough money and I’m lucky that I was able to eat. Children need food in order to be good students…and this doesn’t seem like something that I would characterize as “government waste” but the GOP does. All of this despite the fact what economists are saying – RAISE TAXES ON THE RICH and you’ll be able to balance the vast majority of the budget.
From the Center for American Progress – article HERE:

• The House Committee on Agriculture found 100 percent of its savings from cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Nearly half (48 percent) of the program’s 46 million participants are children. And because the House budget included cuts to a provision that coordinates this essential nutrition assistance with other safety net programs, 280,000 children would no longer be automatically eligible for free school breakfast and lunch.

• The House Ways and Means Committee axed programs that help abused or neglected children and gutted programs that help low-income working families with kids. The committee eliminated the Social Services Block Grant, which helps over 11 million kids through funding to states for services such as child abuse prevention and intervention, foster care, and child protective services.

• The House Ways and Means Committee would also deny access to the child tax credit to parents who pay federal income taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number instead of a Social Security number, mainly harming American children whose parents are low-income working immigrants. Specifically, this change would take $1,800 away from the families of 5.5 million children in working families with incomes below the poverty level at a time when more than 1 in 5 kids are living in poverty.

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Read more: http://www.classwarfareexists.com/the-republican-war-on-kids/#ixzz26AQHXQrw
Follow us: classwarfareexists on Facebook

 

Hmmm...guess it kinda blows your "lock step" argument all the hell, doesn't it?
For the record, we as a nation, should help those unable to help themselves (not those unwilling to help themselves). We should do it out of compassion not just to shore up a voting bloc as the liberals tend to do.

 

No not at all. I'm sure House Republicans did voted in lockstep to take food out of children's mouths. If you support congressional Republicans, which I know you do, YOU are in lockstep too. You don't get to be on both sides of the issue no matter what you pretend here.

 

Yeah, you'll just have to excuse me for not putting much faith in the propaganda spewed by a whacky internet site called "class warfare exists" with the title "Republican war on kids". Kinda reeks of far left partisanship to me.

It does strike me as odd though that you would feign such compassion for children while your party is on a campaign to kill as many unborn children as possible. What was that about being on both sides of an issue.

 

Is there something specifically you find inaccurate on this biased website? I mean specifically. You've just learned that websites can be both partisan and factually correct. A lesson lost on Right-wingers because they just aren't used to it.

So tell us what the website got wrong. Criticizing the site itself is just the coward's way out of a lost argument. Tell us what you find inaccurate specifically about what they have written if you even can.
Can you refute:

• The House Committee on Agriculture found 100 percent of its savings from cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
• Specifically, this change would take $1,800 away from the families of 5.5 million children in working families with incomes below the poverty level at a time when more than 1 in 5 kids are living in poverty.
• The committee eliminated the Social Services Block Grant, which helps over 11 million kids through funding to states for services such as child abuse prevention and intervention, foster care, and child protective services.

Or any of these figures?

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23 Democrats Voted Against Gillibrand’s Food Stamp Rescue Legislation


June 21, 2012
HONEST TO GOD, when Sen. Scott Brown is more compassionately progressive than Al Franken, Tom Harkin, Dick Durbin, and including Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who also happens to chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, you know special interests have strangled the Democratic Party so thoroughly that the tilt to the right has now gone into a full fledged swoon.

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http://www.taylormarsh.com/blog/201...st-gillibrands-food-stamp-rescue-legislation/

 

The rhetoric is about the middle class, for many reasons. The hungriest people are in the lower classes.

 

And when the children grow up? Not everyone is capable of taking care of themselves, especially after being mired in poverty their entire lives. That type of living breeds disease and malnutrition. If you expect every diseased and hungry person to function as a healthy well fed person your expectations are much too high.

 

And when they grow up? When they grow up they become adults & adults need to take the lead in making their own way in the world. If they are physically or mentally handicapped it's a different story but for those who aren't, being born poor isn't an excuse...too many of us have overcome that for me to believe it's an automatic death sentence.

 

They should become self-sufficient as adults.

You're absolutely correct. If a person is unable to take care of themselves, they will need assistance. I don't think anyone is advocating not providing assistance to those in need. Society's goal, however, should be to make people a benefit to society instead of a detriment.

No one expects a diseased and hungry person to function the same as a well-fed person. That's why I advocate feeding children, taking care of their medical needs, housing them, educating them, etc. so that one day they will become beneficial adults who will contribute back to society. Once they become healthy, stable adults, however, the supplements should end.

 

Of course that won't happen because libs know that healthy, stable adults typically don't vote democrat. The left has to keep the supplements flowing in order to shore up that voting bloc.

 

I never said being raised in poverty is an automatic death sentence, though I will say life is far shorter for some and is filled with much more difficulty than you appear to understand. Diseases go unchecked more frequently for someone in poverty, even if a disease is suspected. Most children survive to adulthood, but some are very diseased by then. Work suffers because the person suffers, with varied aches and pains...some of which I don't care to think about too often, as they are horrific. Some children grow up in this way, and a lifetime of overwhelming burden isn't something easily shaken off...that is to say that people are not cured of those burdens at 18. Some of them will be strong enough to make a wealthy future for themselves, some will always be impoverished despite their best efforts, most will be cleaning toilets or digging dirt or clerking at a retail store.

 

Yeah, nothing's fair in life....

 

Kindness and caring helps people tolerate the unfairness of it all. Without that caring and kindness, what reason do people have to tolerate the unfairness of it all, anymore?

Be careful what you wish for lol

 

Kindness & caring? Of course, but that really isn't what we are talking about here, are we? The liberal narrative says you aren't capable of caring for yourself so the state has to do it. To alot of people this message is very attractive & they are more than willing to give up and succumb to the will of the gov't if it means a free ride & a life free from personal responsibility. This mindset has to stop & it needs to begin with the liberal leadership who are bent to accumulate votes regardless of the consequences.