The Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN) announces that its long-time reporter, Leah Douglas, is leaving to take a job with Reuters.

FERN is also giving up its counts of Covid cases and deaths among farm workers and meat-packing workers.

This week we wrapped up the mapping project of Covid-19 outbreaks at food-production facilities and farms around the nation. This nearly 18-month-long project, spearheaded and updated almost daily by staff writer and associate editor Leah Douglas, came to an end largely because of a lack of reliable data.

As Leah explains, companies and states have decided to keep much of their data secret, even with the rise of the Delta variant. But to date she has counted nearly 100,000 cases and 466 deaths among food system workers.

Here is an example of the data she produced.  In the absence of any industry or government tracking, her project was all we had.

And here’s another one.

You can see why these companies don’t want anyone to have these data.  Leah did a great job of working with what she could find.

I will miss her work on this project but look forward to seeing what she does for Reuters.

Congratulations Leah!

As I discussed in my book, What to Eat, the entire purpose of a grocery store or supermarket is to encourage sales, particularly impulse buys of profitable items.  Food and beverage companies pay stores to place their most profitable products where customers can most easily see them.

This makes checkout counters prime grocery real estate.

Mars Wrigley tells you how this works.

Mars Wrigley showcases new impulse shopping solutions and products

Mars Wrigley said its multifaceted merchandising solutions will shape impulse throughout the shopper journey and provide an effective retail experience, be it at curbside pick-up, online or in-store.

The company is set to work alongside retail partners to implement solutions that reimagine impulse at checkout and identify new spaces in aisle and digitally to optimise category presence and drive conversion [i.e., sales].

Spearheading this growth is its new Accelerating Impulse Moments (AIM) insights platform. This four-pillar platform consists of conversion strategies for retailers across all channels in stores and online, with Snacks Aisle Optimization, Secondary Display Growth, Transaction Zone Reinvention and Digital Solutions Execution.

These strategies will help retailers shape impulse throughout the shopper journey to create an effective and engaging omni-channel experience.

Comment: You are the subject of this “effective and engaging omni-channel experience.”  This may look as if it is about helping grocers market products, but it is really about getting you to buy candy and chewing gum.

I subscribe to a newsletter, Obesity and Energetics Offerings, that often includes a section on “Headline versus Study.”  This demonstrates how  headline writers jump actual findings and draw attention-getting conclusions that the studies don’t always support.

Here are four examples, all from the UK Biobank study, an enormous epidemiologic investigation of half a million participants who filled out a dietary questionnaire, and then were followed and tested to see what diseases they developed.  These data enable investigators to link specific dietary factors to disease risk.

Such links are associations. 

This kind of study is not designed to determine whether a dietary factor causes (or prevents) a disease.  For that, other kinds of research are required.

These four examples examine associations of coffee intake with disease risk.  That’s all they do.

The headlines, however, assume causation—an epidemiologic fallacy.

I.  Headline: A Daily Dose of Coffee May Protect You from COVID-19.

Study: Self-Reported Dietary Behaviors and Incident COVID-19 in the UK Biobank.

Results: After multivariable adjustment, the odds (95% CI) of COVID-19 positivity was 0.90 (0.83, 0.96) when consuming 2–3 cups of coffee/day (vs. <1 cup/day), 0.88 (0.80, 0.98) when consuming vegetables in the third quartile of servings/day (vs. lowest quartile), 1.14 (1.01, 1.29) when consuming fourth quartile servings of processed meats (vs. lowest quartile), and 0.91 (0.85, 0.98) when having been breastfed (vs. not breastfed). Associations were attenuated when further adjusted for COVID-19 exposure, but patterns of associations remained.

Conclusions: In the UK Biobank, consumption of coffee, vegetables, and being breastfed as a baby were favorably associated with incident COVID-19; intake of processed meat was adversely associated.

Caveats:  This study looked at associations of several dietary factors to Covid risk: breastfed as baby, and consumption of coffee, tea, oily fish, processed meat, red meat, fruit, and vegetables.  Based on the results, the fallacious headlines could just as easily have read:

• Vegetables may protect you from COVID-19
• Being breastfed may protect you from COVID-19
• Processed meats may increase your risk of COVID-19

The operative word is “may.”  This means that “may not” might also be appropriate.

2.  Headline: Too Much Coffee Can Cause Your Brain to Shrink, Raise Risk of Dementia by 53 Percent, Study Finds.

Study: Associations Among High Coffee Consumption, Brain Volume and Risk of Dementia and Stroke in UK Biobank.

Results: There were inverse linear associations between habitual coffee consumption and total brain (fully adjusted β per cup −1.42, 95% CI −1.89, −0.94), grey matter (β −0.91, 95% CI −1.20, −0.62), white matter (β −0.51, 95% CI −0.83, −0.19) and hippocampal volumes (β −0.01, 95% CI −0.02, −0.003), but no evidence to support an association with white matter hyperintensity (WMH) volume (β −0.01, 95% CI −0.07, 0.05). The association between coffee consumption and dementia was non-linear (Pnon-linearity= 0.0001), with evidence for higher odds for non-coffee and decaffeinated coffee drinkers and those drinking >6 cups/day, compared to light coffee drinkers. After full covariate adjustment, consumption of >6 cups/day was associated with 53% higher odds of dementia compared to consumption of 1–2 cups/day (fully adjusted OR 1.53, 95% CI 1.28, 1.83), with less evidence for an association with stroke (OR 1.17, 95% CI 1.00, 1.37, p = 0.055).

Conclusion: High coffee consumption was associated with smaller total brain volumes and increased odds of dementia.

Caveat: But why non-linear?  If coffee had these effects, shouldn’t more of it should have more of an effect?  Association, alas, does not equal causation.

3.  Headline: Your Morning Cup of Coffee May Lower Your Risk of Liver Disease.

Study: All Coffee Types are Associated with Lower Risk of Adverse Clinical Outcomes in Chronic Liver Disease: A UK Biobank Study.

Results: Compared to non-coffee drinkers, coffee drinkers had lower adjusted HRs of CLD (HR 0.79, 95% CI 0.72–0.86), CLD or steatosis (HR 0.80, 95% CI 0.75–0.86), death from CLD (HR 0.51, 95% CI 0.39–0.67) and HCC (HR 0.80, 95% CI 0.54–1.19). The associations for decaffeinated, instant and ground coffee individually were similar to all types combined.

Conclusion: The finding that all types of coffee are protective against CLD is significant given the increasing incidence of CLD worldwide and the potential of coffee as an intervention to prevent CLD onset or progression.

4.  Headline: Coffee Drinking Won’t Harm Your Health, New Study Reveals Caffeine Lowers Arrhythmia Risk.

Study: Coffee Consumption and Incident Tachyarrhythmias with Mendelian Randomization for Caffeine Metabolism in the UK Biobank.

Findings  In this large, prospective, population-based community cohort study of more than 300 000 participants, each additional daily cup of coffee was associated with a 3% reduced risk of developing an arrhythmia; these associations were not significantly modified by genetic variants that affect caffeine metabolism.

Meaning  Neither habitual coffee consumption nor genetically mediated differences in caffeine metabolism was associated with a heightened risk of cardiac arrhythmias.

Comment: Whether coffee drinking is good, bad, or indifferent to health has long been hotly debated.  For a long time, studies seemed aimed at proving coffee bad for health.  Now, studies seem aimed at showing the opposite.  The UK Biobank is expensive; its funders are largely private foundations and government agencies.  As far as I can tell, the coffee industry is not involved.  My take on all of this?  Take these epidemiological associations with a pinch of caffeine, and enjoy coffee if you like it.

The study: Impact of low-fat and full-fat dairy foods on fasting lipid profile and blood pressure: exploratory endpoints of a randomized controlled trial.  Kelsey A Schmidt, et al. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, nqab131, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqab131.  Published: 13 July 2021

Background: “Dietary guidelines traditionally recommend low-fat dairy because dairy’s high saturated fat content is thought to promote cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, emerging evidence indicates that dairy fat may not negatively impact CVD risk factors when consumed in foods with a complex matrix.”

Method: “Participants were then randomly assigned to 1 of 3 diets, either continuing the limited-dairy diet or switching to a diet containing 3.3 servings/d of either low-fat or full-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese for 12 wk.”

Conclusions: “In men and women with metabolic syndrome, a diet rich in full-fat dairy had no effects on fasting lipid profile or blood pressure compared with diets limited in dairy or rich in low-fat dairy. Therefore, dairy fat, when consumed as part of complex whole foods, does not adversely impact these classic CVD risk factors.”

Funding: “National Dairy Council, Dairy Farmers of Canada, Dutch Dairy Association (Nederlandse Zuivel Organisatie), Dairy Australia, and the French Dairy Interbranch Organization (CNIEL),” and NIH and others.

Conflict of interest: “This study was initiated by the principal investigator (MK). The dairy-related funding organizations suggested changes to details of the study design prior to the conduct of the study, some of which were implemented. Otherwise, the funding organizations had no impact on the design or conduct of the trial or the analysis and interpretation of study data.”

Comment: Let’s give these investigators high marks for disclosing that the dairy funders influenced the design of the study, which, as we know from the data of Lisa Bero and her colleagues, is the place where biases caused by industry funding most typically show up.  Food companies that fund research are looking for benefits; they won’t risk study designs that might yield inconvenient results.

Reference: For a summary of research on the “funding effect”—the observations that research sponsored by food companies almost invariably produces results favorable to the sponsor’s interests and that recipients of industry funding typically did not intend to be influenced and do not recognize the influence—see my book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.

I recently ran across this useful website: Climate Change Resources, with live links to each of these sections.

But it also has a general section on the impact of food production and consumption, with ideas about what to think about:

• Eating food that is locally grown and sustainably raised
• Eating less meat which can have a significant impact on deforestation
• Reducing foods with palm oil can again impact deforestation
• Buying food with little or no packaging, paper or plastic
• Being attentive to food waste
• Thinking a bit more about fish?

It also links to the World Resources Institute’s How to sustainably feed 10 billion people by 2050, in 21 charts.

This, in turn comes from a WRI report, Creating a Sustainable Food Future: A Menu of Solutions to Feed Nearly 10 Billion People by 2050.

We have plenty of work to do.  And here are plenty of ideas about where to start.

I know I’ve already posted one of these this week, but this one is too good not to share.

Let’s start with the press coverage: Snack yourself young: Study investigates the effects of daily almond consumption on wrinkles

A study by American research found that eating almonds daily reduces wrinkle severity – along with improving skin pigmentation – in postmenopausal women.

The 2021 study – published in Nutrients and funded by the Almond Board of California – expands upon findings of a 2019 study​​ that found there may be more than one reason to add almonds to a daily skin care routine.​​

And here’s the study in question: Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial on the Effects of Almonds on Facial Wrinkles and Pigmentation.  Authors: Sivamani RK, Rybak I, Carrington AE, Dhaliwal S, et al.  Nutrients. 2021; 13(3):785

This is not their first on this topic.  See: Prospective randomized controlled pilot study on the effects of almond consumption on skin lipids and wrinkles.  Author: Sivamani RK, Foolad N, Vaughn AR, Rybak I, et al   Phytother Res. 2019 Dec;33(12):3212-3217

Nor are these the first studies to link specific foods to wrinkle prevention.  I’ve written previously about a study on mangos and wrinkle prevention, sponsored—of course—by a mango trade association.

I wish companies and trade associations would stop doing studies of one food and some health outcome. Diets that contain reasonable proportions of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are demonstrably healthy.  Can any one food really make all that much difference?

The sellers of these foods would like you to think they are “superfoods.”  Alas, no such thing exists.  But it’s a great marketing strategy.

As for sponsored research in general?

For a summary of research on the “funding effect”—the observation that research sponsored by food companies almost invariably produces results favorable to the sponsor’s interests but that recipients of industry funding typically do not recognize its influence—see my book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.

I was of course interested to see this press release from Nature:

Health researchers report funder pressure to suppress results: Small study hints that interference from bodies funding research into public-health issues such as nutrition and exercise might be more common than realized.

It referred to a study published in PLoS One: ““He who pays the piper calls the tune”: Researcher experiences of funder suppression of health behaviour intervention trial findings.”

This was a small study, but its results confirm what has long been suspected.  Funders call the tune.  These results are entirely consistent with those from similar examinations of studies paid for by cigarette, chemical, and drug companies, as I discuss in my book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.

 

 

 

 

 

Lorraine Lewandrowski, a correspondent who keeps me up to date on the dairy industry,  forwarded this bad-news article from the Vermont Digger: Danone, owner of Horizon Organic, to terminate contracts with Vermont farmers

The move represents the latest blow to an industry that has been struggling for years from rising production costs that have outpaced consumer prices. The number of dairy farms in Vermont has decreased by 37% in the past 10 years and by 69% in the past 24 years, according to a 2021 report from the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation.

Organic dairy farms decreased by 8% between 2010 and 2020. Vermont had a total of 181 organic dairy farms at the end of 2020, according to the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont.

As the Real Organic Project explains it,

The Food and Agriculture Reporting Network’s FERN AgInsider had more information (behind a paywall)

The decision is just the latest squeeze on organic dairy producers, who face rising costs and pressures to consolidate…Danone North America, owner of Horizon Organic, said it had sent non-renewal notices to 89 producers in the Northeast. “We … did not make this decision lightly. Growing transportation and operational challenges in the dairy industry, particularly in the Northeast, led to this difficult decision…We will be supporting new partners that better align with our manufacturing footprint.”

This requires a blunt translation: organic milk in the Northeast costs more so Danone is cutting its losses.

Organic dairies in Midwestern and Western states, particularly Texas, have enormous herds and are able to produce milk at lower cost.

It’s cheaper for Danone to buy milk from them and ship it east than it is to buy from smaller local dairies.  This is Big Organic Dairy in action, and it’s not pretty.

As an official of the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance says:

Danone, the parent company of Horizon Organics, believes it has adequate supply in the Midwest and Western parts of the U.S. and can get the milk at a lower cost from larger operations.

Comment #1: the hypocrisy

Danone proudly proclaims its B Corp status.

Danone cites its B Corp ambition:

an expression of our long-time commitment to sustainable business and to Danone’s dual project of economic success and social progress.

Social progress, anyone?

Comment #2: weakness in the organic herd definition

At the moment, the definition is ambiguous and makes it easy for Big Dairy to accumulate large numbers of animals that may meet the definition of organic in letter, but hardly in spirit.

The Organic Trade Association (OTC) explains this issue

The USDA National Organic Program regulations include requirements for the transition of dairy animals (cows, goats, sheep) into organic milk production. Milk  sold or represented as organic must be from livestock that have been under continuous organic management for at least one year. This one-year transition period is allowed only when converting a conventional herd to organic. Once a distinct herd has been converted to organic production, all dairy animals must be under organic management from the last third of gestation.

But OTC says,

Due to a lack of specificity in the regulations, some USDA-accredited certifiers allow dairies to routinely bring non-organic animals into an organic operation, and transition them for one year, rather than raise their own replacement animals under organic management from the last third of gestation…This practice…is a violation of the organic standards and creates an economic disadvantage for organic farmers who raise their own organic replacement animals under organic management in accordance with the regulations.

The National Organic Coalition says:

the lack of consistent enforcement with regard to dairy pasture requirements as well as origin of livestock rules have contributed to the oversupply of organic milk in the market.  This has had a devastating effect on organic dairy prices to farmers, and left many organic farmers and those transitioning to organic with stranded investments because there are no buyers for their milk.

The USDA first proposed to tighten the rules in 2015:

The proposed rule would require that organic milk and milk products must be from animals that have been under continuous organic management from the last third of gestation onward, with a limited exception for newly certified organic dairy producers.

Big Organic has taken advantage of these loopholes.

Danone is putting profit over social values.  It does not deserve its B Corp status.

Presumably, USDA’s National Organic Standards Board is dealing with this issue.  It needs to act quickly to protect small dairy farmers.

Nothing less than the integrity of the organic program is at stake.

If you want to help, write or call your elected representatives and ask them to get USDA to speed up rulemaking on this issue.