Sam Kass.  The Last Supper: How to Overcome the Future Food Crisis.  Crown, 2025. 246 pages.

Here’s my blurb:

Part memoir—his version of his chef-activist time in the Obama White House–and part rousing call to action on climate change, The Last Supper is Sam Kass’s impressively compelling manifesto for food system transformation.  Read it and get to work.

Kass argues that to transform food systems so they focus on health and sustainability, we need to change four pillars: culture, policy, business, and technology.

From the pillar on changing culture:

But government ignoring the will of the people to produce better food in better ways is not the reason our politics and our businesses are failing us.  While this tale is easy to digest, it overlooks a more uncomfortable truth: Voters and consumers, the very people these systems serve, are complicit in the problem.  At the root of this is our culture.

The reality is that most people don’t prioritize climate change or regenerative agriculture when making decisions about food and politicians.  Most don’t even consider it.,  Convenience, price, and taste reign supreme in consumer choices, and as a result the market responds to those demands rather than focusing on sustainability. [pp 51-52]

From the pillar on changing business:

Wall Street’s focus on quarterly earnings deeply embeds short-term thinking in publicly traded companies.  If investors don’t begin to steer money toward companies that are investing in better food, in food produced in more sustainable ways, and reducing the footprint of their operations, we are going to make only small, incremental progress.  I believe large-scale change will start to happen as investors in food and agricultural companies begin to realize how much risk these companies are holding because of climate change.  And none of that risk is priced into their stock prices. [p. 158]

You don’t have to agree with everything Kass says (he has some snippy comments on my opinions) to appreciate how good this book is.  It’s full of interesting observations and ideas about what needs to be done to create needed changes.  He calls it a roadmap for action.  It is and I wish we would all get to work on it.

Here’s the trend.

At issue is what’s happening now.

The White House says: Americans Are Paying Less This Thanksgiving.

President Donald J. Trump promised to crush inflation and lower prices — and he’s delivering this Thanksgiving, with the classic holiday feast about 3% cheaper than last year, according to a brand new report. Americans are seeing across-the-board price declines for the holiday staples, with dinner rolls down 22%, frozen vegetables down 15%, and items like turkeys, stuffing, gravy mix, fresh cranberries, and pumpkin pies all costing less.

It’s proof that under President Trump’s leadership, America is winning the war on high prices — even as Democrats grind the country to a halt with their deranged, reckless government shutdown.

Alas, not everyone sees it this way.

Any good news is welcome these days, and this news is terrific: Peanut allergies have plummeted in children, study shows.

When peanut allergies were increasing, pediatricians advised total abstinence.  But experience in Israel argued the opposite: introduce peanuts early.

In 2017, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases formally recommended the early-introduction approach and issued national guidelines.

The new study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, found that food allergy rates in children under 3 fell after those guidelines were put into place — dropping to 0.93 percent between 2017 and 2020, from 1.46 percent between 2012 and 2015. That’s a 36 percent reduction in all food allergies, driven largely by a 43 percent drop in peanut allergies.

JAMA did an editorial: Peanut Allergies Appear to Be on the Decline Following Early Introduction Guidelines

But many now believe that the guidance to avoid peanuts in the first years of life likely backfired, as introducing them early may protect against peanut allergies.

Against that backdrop, the push toward early introduction of allergenic foods to children has grown steadily in recent years. Randomized clinical trials have demonstrated that early peanut introduction may actually help prevent allergy.

One of the neat things about having done this blog for so long (since 2007!) is that I can look back on what I’ve said previously.  I’ve been writing about peanut allergies for a long time.

• June 2016: Israel’s solution to peanut allergies
• February 2015: Fingers crossed: good news about preventing peanut allergies
• May 2010: Peanut allergies on the increase
• November 2008: Food allergies: OK to eat peanuts if pregnant?

Peanut allergies can be deadly.  If feeding kids a variety of foods early and often can head off food allergies, let’s go for it!

The FDA is cutting down its safety inspections of foreign food imports, even though nearly all seafood, about 60% of fresh fruit and about 40% of vegetables are imported, and we increasingly rely on food imports.

As ProPublica explains, Foreign Food Safety Inspections Hit Historic Low After Trump Cuts.

These crucial foreign inspections are neither easy nor cheap. They typically last longer than domestic ones and cost nearly $40,000 a visit, and they can require months of logistical planning, special visas and diplomatic approval from the host country…Then Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, which set firm targets for the agency: It needed to conduct more than 19,000 foreign food inspections annually by 2016 and increase the number of food field staff to no fewer than 5,000 workers.

The FDA has never fulfilled this congressional mandate…ProPublica’s Annie Waldman and Brandon Roberts crunched the numbers and found that the U.S. is on track to have the fewest foreign food inspections since 2011 (excluding pandemic years).

This does not bode well for food safety.

It’s not as if we don’t already have plenty of food safety problems.

• The FDA’s list of current recalls and warnings
• The USDA’s list of current recalls and warnings

To review the status of food safety regulation:

• We have plenty of laws requiring all food producers to follow rigorous procedures to greatly reduce the risk of pathogenic contaminants.
• But these laws work much, much better when they are enforced through inspection.
• It’s not that food producers want to make customers sick; it’s that it’s all too easy to cut corners on safety.
• No food producer wants to test for pathogens; if they find any, they have to recall products.
• The system only works with firm oversight.

Fewer inspections gives producers license to be sloppier.

Not a good idea.

I learned about this one from Leslie Raabe, who does media relations for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

I had to share this link with you. We had quite a discussion about it in our morning Comms team meeting. A study pointing to the benefits of canned beans but funded by cannedbeans.org….If the research is conducted correctly and findings are consistent with other studies, is it appropriate to cite it even if the company funding the research may benefit from its promotion?

She sent a link to the press release: New Study Reveals That Canned Beans Significantly Improve Nutrient Intake and Diet Quality in U.S. Adults.

 A recently published study…demonstrates that replacing commonly consumed protein foods with canned beans (including kidney beans, black beans, chickpeas and pinto beans) significantly increased shortfall nutrient intakes and improved diet quality in adults in the United States.

The study: Replacing Protein Foods for Canned Beans Increases Shortfall Nutrient Intakes and Improves Diet Quality in Adults 

• Methods: A modeling analysis was completed in free-living American adults using data from What We Eat in American 2001-2018, the dietary component of the United States National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
• Results: The isocaloric substitution of protein foods with 1 and 2 servings of canned beans daily to the US typical dietary pattern significantly improved shortfall nutrient intakes.
• Conclusions: Replacing commonly consumed protein foods with canned beans significantly increased shortfall nutrient intakes and improved diet quality. Greater canned bean consumption should be considered within future dietary recommendations as a strategy to promote nutrient intake shortfalls and improve deficits with current diet quality scores.
• Funding: This research was funded by Cannedbeans.org on behalf of Bush’s Brothers & Company and the Coalition for the Advancement of Pulses.

Comment: Why would anyone not believe the results of this study.  If you provide foods with more nutrients, diets will be more nutritious.  The only thing surprising about this study is that anyone thought it was worth the trouble to do.  I can only think of one reason: Canned Beans wants to sell more of them.  Will this marketing study do the trick?  Time will tell.

The USDA is engaged in a concerted effort to reduce enrollment in SNAP, even though people who qualify are entitled to benefits.

Assigning food stamps (SNAP) to the USDA was a mistake from the get go, but once SNAP was part of the Farm Bill it seemed to make sense.  SNAP takes up most of the USDA’s budget, the blue in this figure.

Even so, I’m stunned by the tone and relentlessness of USDA’s dealings with SNAP beneficiaries—as if they were all lazy, nonworking parasites cheating taxpayers, despite all the evidence to the contrary.  Most SNAP recipients who can work, do work.  They just don’t get paid enough to survive .

Here are some recent USDA statements and directives.

• SNAP recipients will need to reapply for benefits.
• Lawfully resident immigrants are no longer entitled to SMAP benefits, effective immediately.
• States are not permitted to issue exceptions to work requirements

And then we have USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins’ announcement on X:

On the brighter side, the Food Research & Action Center has organized nearly 1500 National, State, and Community-based Organizations to sign a letter to Congress to protect SNAP benefits.

As of November 19, the FDA says 31 infants have botulism most likely as a result of exposure to ByHeart Whole Nutrition infant formula.  The CDC investigation details are here.

In its most recent letter to customers, ByHeart is finally taking some responsibility for this disaster.

When I wrote about this on November 12, I tried hard to give ByHeart the benefit of the doubt.  I had some sympathy for the difficulty of testing for botulinum spores (seeds) in infant formula.  The tests can only measure the toxin produced by the organisms that develop from the germinated spores (infants consume spores; when the spores germinate, the organisms produce the toxin).

But then I became less sympathetic, for two reasons.

The first is the company’s sloppy production practices.  I had forgotten about my post in November 2023 about the FDA’s warning letter to ByHeart (and other formula companies) for violating basic food safety standards during production.

The New York Times has written about more recent food safety violations: Infant Formula Company Tied to Botulism Outbreak Had Known Problems.

The second is the “it’s not our fault” stance of the company in its “Update for our ByHeart Family” [My comments]

Today, we were made aware by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) that a single, previously-opened sample from one of the two recalled batches of ByHeart formula tested positive for Clostridium botulinum, the bacteria that causes infant botulism. We are treating the CDPH’s test result very seriously.  [Right.  Of course you are].

However, testing from a previously-opened can lacks scientific basis to establish causation between the product and illness. We know that Clostridium botulinum is a bacteria that exists naturally in the environment—in places like soil, dust, and even vegetables—meaning that an opened can can be contaminated in multiple ways. [Great.  Let’s blame parents for sloppy formula dilution]

Currently global regulatory and scientific authorities do not recommend testing powder infant formula for Clostridium botulinum, and no U.S. or global infant formula company tests for Clostridium botulinum. [Are you really saying that this isn’t your fault, it’s the FDA’s?]

Today, the Lancet publishes three major papers on ultra-processed foods and human health: science, policy, and politics (I am a co-author on the policy and politics papers).  Here’s Peter Bond’s photo, the logo for the series.

THE PAPERS

I.  SCIENCE

Ultra-processed foods and human health: the main thesis and the evidence. Carlos A Monteiro, Maria LC Louzada, Euridice Steele-Martinez, Geoffrey Cannon, Giovanna C Andrade, Phillip Baker, Maira Bes-Rastrollo, Marialaura Bonaccio, Ashley N Gearhardt, Neha Khandpur, Marit Kolby, Renata B Levy, Priscila P Machado, Jean-Claude Moubarac, Leandro F M Rezende, Juan A Rivera, Gyorgy Scrinis, Bernard Srour, Boyd Swinburn, Mathilde Touvier.

This first paper defines ultra-processed foods and diets as including three specific elements:

• Industrially produced
• Made from cheap ingredients extracted from whole foods, combined with additives
• Designed to maximize industry profits

It presents the evidence in support of three hypotheses about ultra-processed dietary patterns.  These:

• Globally displace traditional diets based on whole foods.
• Reduce dietary quality.
• Are a key driver of the escalating global burden of diet-related chronic diseases.

II.  POLICY

Policies to halt and reverse the rise in ultra-processed food production, marketing, and consumption. [Full text here] Gyorgy Scrinis, Barry M Popkin, Camila Corvalan, Ana Clara Duran, Marion Nestle, Mark Lawrence, Phillip Baker, Carlos A Monteiro, Christopher Millet, Jean-Claude Moubarac, Patricia Jaime, Neha Khandpur.

This paper presents evidence in support of policies to:

• Reduce intake of ultra-processed foods as well as those high in sugar, salt, and fats.
• Restrict the marketing, availability, and affordability of ultra-processed foods (examples: taxes, warning labels, advertising bans, limits on use in schools, etc).
• Restrict the marketing and political power of transnational food corporations (manufacturers, retailers, fast food chains, agricultural producers).
• Support the production, availability, and affordability of minimally processed foods.

III.  POLITICS

Towards unified global action on ultra-processed foods: understanding commercial determinants, countering corporate power, and mobilising a public health response.  [Full text here] Phillip Baker, Scott Slater, Mariel White, Benjamin Wood, Alejandra Contreras, Camila Corvalán, Arun Gupta, Karen Hofman, Petronell Kruger, Amos Laar, Mark Lawrence, Mikateko Mafuyeka, Melissa Mialon, Carlos A Monteiro, Silver Nanema, Sirinya Phulkerd, Barry M Popkin, Paulo Serodio, Katherine Shats, Christoffer Van Tulleken, Marion Nestle, Simón Barquera.

This paper describes how the food industry is the main barrier to reducing intake of ultra-processed foods.

Food companies exert political power through corporate political activities, coordinated through a global network of front groups, multi-stakeholder initiatives, and research partners.  They:

• Engage in direct lobbying,, infiltrate government agencies, and litigate
• Promote corporate-friendly governance models, forms of regulation, and civil societies
• Frame debate, generate favorable research evidence, and manufacture scientific doubt

To counter such corporate practices, actions are needed to

• Disrupt the ultraprocessed business model
• Redistributing resources to other types of food producers
• Protect food governance from corporate interference
• Implement robust conflict of interest safeguards in policy making, research, and professional practice.

This paper also addresses and responds to criticisms of the ultra-processed concept.

KEY MESSAGE: Reducing production and consumption of ultra-processed foods is a priority global health issue.

Thereore, ultra-processed foods require a global response to:

• Confront corporate power,
• Reclaim public policy space
• Restructure food systems to prioritize health, equity, and sustainability over corporate profit.

No excuses.  Get to work!

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