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Nanotechnology involves the ability to control matter at the scale of a nanometer—one billionth of a meter. The world market for products that contain nanomaterials is expected to reach $2.6 trillion by 2015.

So says a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO): Nanotechnology: Nanomaterials Are Widely Used in Commerce, but EPA Faces Challenges in Regulating Risk. GAO-10-549, May 25, 2010.

GAO identified a variety of products that currently incorporate nanomaterials already available in commerce…[in] food and agriculture….The extent to which nanomaterials present a risk to human health and the environment depends on a combination of the toxicity of specific nanomaterials and the route and level of exposure to these materials. Although the body of research related to nanomaterials is growing, the current understanding of the risks posed by these materials is limited.

The effects of nanotechnology on the environment are regulated by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), which is why this report targets recommendations to EPA.

Shouldn’t some of those recommendations be directed toward FDA, the agency that regulates food safety?  Maybe GAO needs to do another report?

In the meantime, the European Food Safety Authority is preoccupied with issues related to the safety of food nanotechnology.

The risk assessment framework for nanotechnology in Europe – like so much else connected to the technology – appears to be in its infancy but developing at a rapid pace…. Nano knowledge gaps have led some to call for a ban on the use of nanomaterials in food products until their safety has been fully established. One area of concern is whether nanoparticles can migrate from packaging materials into foods.

In seeking to assess nanomaterials, the food safety body repeatedly used phrases such as “specific uncertainties”, “limited knowledge” and…“difficult to characterise, detect and measure” in relation to toxicokinetics and toxicology in food. Likely usage and exposure levels are also largely a mystery.

The European Food Safety Authority says that lack of knowledge means that risk assessment of risk assessments must be done on a “cautious case-by-case approach.”

Last April, the European Parliament’s environment committee said nanotech products should be withdrawn from the market until more is known about their safety.  In June, that committee added that nanotech foods should be assessed for safety before they are approved for use and labeled.

Doesn’t that sound reasonable?  Let’s hope it’s not too late to put such constraints in place, and in the U.S. too.

Food Safety: FDA Has Begun to Take Action to Address Weaknesses in Food Safety Research, but Gaps Remain. GAO-10-182R, April 23, 2010 (23 pages).

Imported food makes up a substantial and growing portion of the U.S. food supply, with 60 percent of fresh fruits and vegetables and 80 percent of seafood coming from across our borders….In January 2007 GAO designated federal oversight of food safety as a high-risk area needing urgent attention and transformation because of the federal government’s fragmented oversight of food safety. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for ensuring the safety of roughly 80 percent of the U.S. food supply–virtually all domestic and imported foods except for meat, poultry, and processed egg products–valued at a total of $466 billion annually, as of June 2008.

Food Safety: FDA Could Strengthen Oversight of Imported Food by Improving Enforcement and Seeking Additional Authorities.  GAO-10-699T, May 6, 2010 (20 pages).

In 2008, FDA inspected 153 foreign food facilities out of an estimated 189,000 such facilities registered with FDA…. FDA estimated that it would conduct 200 inspections in 2009 and 600 in 2010. GAO previously identified several gaps in enforcement that could allow food products that violate safety laws to enter U.S. commerce. For example, FDA has limited authority to assess penalties on importers who introduce such food products, and the lack of a unique identifier for firms exporting food products may allow contaminated food to evade FDA’s review.

As it has been saying for years, GAO wants FDA to ask Congress to give it statutory authority to:

• Recall products identified as unsafe
• Require companies to demonstrate that food ingredients are safe before using them
• Require preventive controls (e.g. HACCP) by firms producing foods that have been associated with repeated instances of serious health problems or death.

Note that the FDA does not have this authority now and must seek it from Congress.  The food safety bill now before Congress does some of this, which is one reason why it should be passed.  Note: the House passed the bill last August.  Eleven months later, the Senate is still sitting on it.  Not helpful.

Addition: Consumers Union has produced a video—starring Eric Schlosser—on why the Senate must pass the food safety bill, and right away.

Update, July 8: President Obama states support of the Senate’s food safety bill.

Several readers have asked me to comment on the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning a previous ban on growing Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) alfalfa.

What happened with this case is so complicated that Food Chemical News (June 28 2010) produced a timeline to help track the events.

In summary:

• The Supreme Court’s decision overturned lower court bans on growing Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” (herbicide-resistant) alfalfa.
• The lower courts imposed the ban because the USDA had failed to prepare the required Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) evaluating the consequences of planting GM alfalfa.
• USDA did not prepare a full EIS because its preliminary investigations showed that planting GM alfalfa had “no significant impact.”

As explained by FoodSafetyNews.com,  environmental groups argued that the USDA is required by law to prepare a full EIS and sued to ban GM alfalfa. The court agreed and said GM alfalfa could not be planted until USDA prepared an EIS. An appeals court upheld this decision. The Supreme Court now says that decision was too drastic, in effect permitting USDA to decide whether to allow GM alfalfa to be planted pending completion of the EIS.

In response to this situation, the USDA says it will (1) thoroughly review the Supreme Court’s decision before deciding what to do about GM alfalfa, and (2) complete the EIS in time for next spring’s planting.

For environmental and business groups, two issues are at stake:

• Organics: As FoodNavigator.com explains, if GM alfalfa is planted, it will contaminate conventional alfalfa, the main forage crop for organic dairy cattle. Organic dairy producers will not be able to sell milk as Certified Organic.
• International trade: If conventional alfalfa is contaminated by GM alfalfa, growers of conventional alfalfa will not be able to sell their crops to countries that forbid import of GM crops.

On these grounds, fifty-six members of Congress signed a letter to the USDA Secretary asking him not to deregulate GM alfalfa.

My comment: Until USDA decides what to do, the game is not over. Now is the time to let USDA know whether you think GM alfalfa should be deregulated. And while you are at it, why not toss in an opinion about whether you think GM foods should be labeled as such.

USDA has just released  the most recent statistics on use of genetically modified crops in the U.S.

This, of course, does not include sugar beets, which are also in the over 90% range.

How to interpret this?  If you eat any processed foods containing corn, soybeans, or beet sugar, you should assume that they have a high probability of containing genetically modified ingredients.

You don’t like this?  Choose organics!

You think GM foods should be labeled?  Write your congressional representatives!

My monthly Food Matters column in the San Francisco Chronicle answers readers’ questions and these tend to be about nutrition rather than food politics.   Today’s column is about diets aimed at controlling the amount of acid excreted in urine:

Low acid diet may not prevent bone loss

Q: I’ve just read “Building Bone Vitality: A Revolutionary Plan to Prevent Bone Loss and Reverse Osteoporosis,” by Amy Lanou and Michael Castleman.

The writers contend that a high acid diet causes bone loss and other negative health outcomes. The book is so well documented and the theory so logically explained that I find it compelling.

However, I am not a scientist and would appreciate your opinion.

A: Ordinarily I would not bother to read a book with the word “Revolutionary” in its title. In diet books, “revolutionary” invariably means using a grain of scientific truth to construct a dietary theory that contradicts current thinking but cannot be proven by current research.

But two readers asked about this book and I was curious about it for another reason. Last year, I gave a talk at a spa where I was seated at dinner next to a couple who announced that they were following a low-acid diet. To my amazement, they excused themselves during the meal to measure the pH of their urine.

Stay with me: pH is a measure of acidity or hydrogen ion concentration. pH 7 is neutral. Above 7 is basic or alkaline. Below 7 is acidic.

I could not believe that anyone would bother to measure urine pH, let alone leave dinner to do so. The pH of blood is tightly regulated and must stay within a slightly alkaline range of 7.36 to 7.4. Bicarbonate buffering systems keep it that way, and excreting excess acid is exactly what the kidney is supposed to do.

The authors are proponents of vegan diets. Here, they argue that small increases in blood acidity cause calcium to be leached from bones to help neutralize it. Over time, these small losses weaken bones and lead to osteoporosis.

Adding calcium to the diet, they claim, is not enough to replace the losses. They parse the results of 1,200 research studies to argue that dairy foods cannot protect against osteoporosis. Instead, low acidity – meaning too much meat – provides the best current explanation for worldwide rates of osteoporosis.

The authors provide an entertaining list of the acid-producing potential of more than 100 foods. As they put it, “flesh foods”- beef, chicken and fish – produce the most acid, with grains coming in second.

Dairy, oddly, is low-acid, except for cheeses. They produce the most. Four ounces of Parmesan, for example, yield 34 milliequivalents (mEq). Compare this to 4 ounces of trout (11 mEq), beef (8), cornflakes (6) or yogurt (1).

Acidity depends largely, but not exclusively, on protein content. All proteins form acid, but “flesh” proteins yield more. They contain more sulfurous amino acids than do plant proteins. Meat and grains also have more acid-forming phosphates.

In contrast, fruits and vegetables contain loads of alkali-producing potassium and magnesium. They have minus numbers: apples (-2 mEq), potatoes and cauliflower (-4), and avocados (-8), with the alkali prize going to raisins (-21).

To prove this theory, research must demonstrate four things: foods have differential effects on urine pH, acid-producing diets cause calcium to be excreted, calcium excretion reflects loss of calcium from bones, and acid-induced calcium losses lead to osteoporosis.

Research easily confirms that animal foods and grains produce more acid than do fruits and vegetables and cause calcium to be excreted in urine. Evidence for everything else, however, is much less certain. Although some studies find bone losses with high-acid diets, a recent “meta-analysis” published in the Journal of Bone Mineral Research concluded that urine calcium does not reflect bone calcium. It found little justification for the idea that alkaline foods prevent bone calcium losses.

Kidney specialists agree. I asked Dr. Jerome Lowenstein, author of “Acids and Basics: A Guide to Understanding Acid-Base Disorders,” for comment. He says bone calcium is involved in maintaining normal blood pH, but so are many other factors.

Normal kidneys maintain normal blood pH over a very wide range of diets. Diet may affect acid-base balance in people with damaged or diseased kidneys, but matters less to people with normal kidneys. Bone losses do occur in kidney disease but not because bone serves as an acid buffer.

“If it did, patients with advanced kidney disease would become invertebrate within a couple of years,” he says.

How to make sense of this? To prevent osteoporosis, the authors promote a vegan diet based on low-acid fruits, vegetables and beans, with no or minimal acid-producing meat, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese and grains.

Revolutionary? Hardly.

Last month’s report from the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee called for a shift in food intake patterns to a more plant-based diet, one with more vegetables, beans, fruits, whole grains, nuts, seeds, seafood and low-fat milk products, and only moderate amounts of lean meats, poultry and eggs.

Eat healthfully, and you automatically eat low-acid.

So: eat vegetables with your meat, forget about pH testing, and enjoy your dinner.

By analogy with cigarettes, taxes on sodas might discourage people—especially young people—from consuming sugary drinks.  This might help with weight issues.

According to a new analysis by USDA economists,

A tax-induced 20-percent price increase on caloric sweetened beverages could cause an average reduction of 37 calories per day, or 3.8 pounds of body weight over a year, for adults and an average of 43 calories per day, or 4.5 pounds over a year, for children. Given these reductions in calorie consumption, results show an estimated decline in adult overweight prevalence (66.9 to 62.4 percent) and obesity prevalence (33.4 to 30.4 percent), as well as the child at-risk-for-overweight prevalence (32.3 to 27.0 percent) and the overweight prevalence (16.6 to 13.7 percent).

Soft drink companies know this all too well.  Hence, intense industry lobbying.  In the case of New York State, the lobbying succeeded.  Soda taxes are history (for now).

New York Times 7-2-10

As the New York Times explains:

Final lobbyist filings are not yet in, but estimates of the amount spent…range from $2.5 million, by Mr. Finnegan’s count, to $5 million, by the beverage industry’s count. The American Beverage Association spent $9.4 million in the first four months of the year to oppose New York’s soda tax, according to a search of public lobbying records by the New York State Healthy Eating and Physical Activity Alliance. Most of the money was spent on advertising, media and strategy.

This is a setback, but probably temporary.  Sooner or later, soda taxes will come.  Bring on the research!

Addition, July 5: Harvard researchers have just published a paper in the American Journal of Public Health showing that raising the price of sodas in a hospital cafeteria does indeed discourage sales.

In preparation for eating over the 4th of July weekend, here’s what’s happening on the salt frontier.

The CDC says fewer than 10% of Americans meet sodium recommendations. Only 5.5% of adults who should be consuming low sodium diets(≤1,500 mg/day) actually do so.  Less than 20% of adults consume the amount currently recommended for healthy adults, ≤2,300 mg/day. Overall, only 9.6% of adults met their applicable recommended limit.

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) says the U.K. is making great progress on reducing salt consumption. Even though UK salt intakes are still above the target of 6g/day after seven years of campaigning, FSA is happy about what the campaign achieved: a 10% reduction in average daily intakes from 9.5g/day to 8.6g/day.  This is substantial progress, given “the complexity of the task and the FSA’s modest budget.”

The New York Times explains part of the complexity: food industry resistance.  In an article titled, “The hard sell on salt” (May 29), the Times interviews food company executives who talk about why they must, must use salt and lots of it in processed foods.

The Salt Institute attacks the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee report. The report recommends a limit of 1,500 mg/day sodium because 70% of the U.S. population is at risk of high blood pressure. According to Food Chemical News (June 16), the Salt Institute claims that reducing salt intake to recommended levels would only make the obesity epidemic worse: “Most nutritionists agree that reduced sodium in food preparations will very likely increase the obesity crisis because individuals will consume more calories just to satisfy their innate sodium appetite.”

Most?  I don’t think so.  Because 77% of salt (sodium chloride) is in processed and restaurant foods, I see the salt issue as one of consumer choice.  Consumers can always add salt to foods.  They cannot take it out.

Enjoy a happy, healthy, safe, and lower salt 4th of July!

I’ve just read an enlightening paper in the July issue of the American Journal of Public Health (see Note below) about the tobacco industry’s role in and funding of “We Card,” a program ostensibly aimed at discouraging smoking among young people by encouraging retail cigarette sellers to “card” underage buyers.

The paper is an analysis of internal food company discussions about this program in cigarette company documents released as part of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.  These documents are now publicly available on the University of  California San Francisco (UCSF) website.

This analysis demonstrates that the actual purpose of tobacco industry support for the program was to make the industry look good (public relations) and to convince legislators and health officials that regulation would be unnecessary.

The industry effectively recruited astonishing numbers of private business, retail, and trade groups (expected) and state health, legal, and police agencies (which should have known better) as partners in this program.  The paper lists these groups in tables that take up nearly five pages.

As the paper explains:

Economic theory predicts that industry self-regulation will achieve social benefits far smaller than those gained from government regulation, although governments increasingly view self-regulation as a means to achieve public goals without public spending. However, industries and governments may have competing agendas, suggesting that public health advocates should be wary of self-regulation strategies…. This program’s success in reaching tobacco retailers and attracting independent allies has made We Card one of the tobacco industry’s major public relations achievements. However, despite industry claims that the program is effective, internal industry evidence suggests that We Card has not reduced tobacco sales to minors and that it was not designed to do so. Instead, We Card was explicitly structured to improve the industry’s public image and to thwart regulation and law enforcement activity.

The authors’ conclusion: “Policymakers should be cautious about accepting industry self-regulation at face value, both because it redounds to the industry’s benefit and because it is ineffective.”

Proponents of food industry self-regulation and of partnerships and alliances with food companies should read this study carefully.

Note: Only the Abstract is available to non-subscribers.  The reference is Apollonio DE, Malone RE, The “We Card” Program: Tobacco Industry “Youth Smoking Prevention” as Industry Self Preservation.. Am J Public Health 2010;100:1188-1201.