A recent study finds pasteurization of milk to be an effective preventive measure against avian influenza in mice.

We found that milk pasteurization fully inactivated pandemic H1N1 and bovine H5N1 influenza viruses yet preserved hemagglutinin (HA) protein integrity. In mice, repeated oral exposure to inactivated virus did not alter mortality after H5N1 virus challenge.

This is excellent news.  It means that the risk of getting bird flu from pasteurized milk is extremely low.

Bird flu is increasingly widespread in dairy cattle.

The CDC says the risk to humans is low, but 71 cases have been observed so far, with one death.

The situation with bird flu is one more reason to expect bettter safety from pasteurized than raw milk.

The FDA continues to say that pasteurized milk is safer.  Its page on raw milk offers these links.

• Food Safety and Raw Milk
• The Dangers of Raw Milk: Unpasteurized Milk Can Pose a Serious Health Risk
• Questions & Answers: Raw Milk
• Raw Milk Misconceptions and the Danger of Raw Milk Consumption

The FDA reports that from 1998 through 2018, there were 202 outbreaks linked to drinking raw milk, which caused 2,645 illnesses and 228 hospitalizations.

This is a lot or not, depending on point of view, but all were likely to have been prevented by pasteurization.

The Raw Milk Institute insists on the benefits of raw milk.

My assessment: there may be benefits, but they are marginal.  There are safer ways to improve immunity.

The risks of raw milk may be infrequent, but when it comes to milk, I’d rather play it safe.

If you are wondering about the effects of China’s not buying US soybeans (and the Trump administrations bailout of Argentinean soybeans), Farm Action says the real problem started decades ago.  

Its analysis is well worth reading.

The numbers reveal how concentrated our agricultural system has become. In 2024:

• Soybeans were the number one U.S. agricultural export, worth about $24.5 billion.
• More than half of all U.S. soybeans were exported, and China historically bought more than half of that total (roughly $12.6 billion worth).
• Soybeans contributed $46.9 billion to total U.S. farm income.

The current crisis, it says, is “the result of decades of decisions that put export growth ahead of food security at home.”

Farm Action wants agricultural policies that will break the cycle of overproduction and bailouts.

1. Grow food, not just livestock feed crops: Incentivize production of fruits, vegetables, and nutrient-dense crops for local markets.
2. Reform subsidies: Redirect federal spending away from endless bailouts and toward programs that reward resilience and healthy food production.
3. Rebuild local infrastructure: Invest in regional processing, storage, and distribution to give farmers alternatives to export markets.
4. Break up corporate monopolies: Enforce antitrust laws to restore competition in input and processing markets.

How to do this, it does not say.  But these goals are worth advocacy.

Start on them now.

We might get lucky.

Thanks to Charles Platkin, who directs the Center for Food as Medicine & Longevity, for sending this press release from the Peanut Institute: New research finds dietary intervention of peanuts improves brain vascular function and memory.  

The NUTRIM study of 31 healthy older adults ranging in age from 60-75 observed that consuming 60 grams (approximately two servings) of peanuts daily for 16 weeks increased global cerebral blood flow (CBF) by 3.6% and verbal memory by 5.8%. In addition to the brain improvements, systolic blood pressure and pulse pressure decreased by 5 mmHg and 4 mmHg, respectively.

This seemed fantastic, and worth a look.

The study: Longer-term skin-roasted peanut consumption improves brain vascular function and memory: A randomized, single-blind, controlled crossover trial in healthy older adults.  Clinical Nutrition 2025;55:170-179.  

Conclusions: Daily consumption of skin-roasted peanuts for 16 weeks improved brain vascular function in healthy older men and women. These favorable effects may underlie the observed improvements in verbal memory, highlighting a potential mechanism by which increased peanut intake beneficially affects cognitive performance.

Funding: This research was funded through a grant from The Peanut Institute Foundation (TPIF). TPIF did not participate in the study design, data acquisition or analysis, decisions regarding publication, or the writing of the manuscript.

Comment: The logic behind this study goes like this: The Mediterranean and DASH diets are associated with less decline in cognition with aging.  Nuts are part of both diets and also show that correlation.  Peanuts, which are legumes high in protein, should do that too.  I can’t wait to see how peanuts will be marketed based on this study.

OK, give peanuts a try, but watch out for the calories.  Participants in this study must have added the two ounces of peanuts to their regular diets. and guess what: “self-reported dietary intake data indicated a higher caloric intake during the peanut intervention.”  They gained an average of 0,7 kg (1.5 pounds), which the authors deem not clinically meaningful.

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.