I like posting collections of items on Thursdays.  Here are some fun ones.

• Desserts for dogs:  Ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s is unveiling two new flavors designed exclusively for canines.  Doggie Desserts by Ben & Jerry’s are frozen treats specifically formulated for dogs with a sunflower butter base. The two variants are peanut butter & pretzel swirls in Pontch’s Mix and pumpkin and mini cookies in Rosie’s Batch.  [As if overweight in dogs was not their number one health problem]
• Announcing a new dog food made from crickets-–“Jiminy’s.” [Thanks to Turn Texas Blue (@FerociousBeast) for this one]
• EFSA says mealworms safe for human consumption: ‘An important milestone towards commercialisation’: The European Food Safety Authority has published its first scientific opinion on an insect-derived food. The conclusion? Mealworms are safe for human consumption…. Read more.  The EFSA ruling is here.   [I am so relieved].
• Fried chicken alternative developed from peanut protein: ‘Five years from now, we want to market every part of the chicken’:  Haofood says it is the ‘world’s first’ plant-based chicken company to tap peanut protein as its primary ingredient…. Read more
• Delicacy and energy: Okinawa sea cucumber bar producer unveils domestic and international expansion plans:  Okinawa brand MGH is seeking to retail its sea cucumber energy bar into supermarkets and convenience stores in Japan, as well as exploring export opportunities… Read
• Blind tasting 3D printed alternative meat: ‘It tastes and feels like meat’:  Israeli start-up Redefine Meat has pulled off the ‘world’s largest’ blind taste test for its 3D printed meat alternative. The taste test targeted meat-eaters and the results are in. The company secured over a 90% acceptance rate…. Read more   
• Hershey reveals winning name for new candy bar: Hershey’s first extension of the Whatchamacallit candy bar line in 10 years will hit stores in February now that a winning name has emerged from a consumer contest: Whozeewhatzit. The new bar features rice crisps, a peanut butter creme layer and chocolate candy coating.

Food anyone?  Enjoy!

Palm oil is on my mind these days because I just did a blurb for a forthcoming book, Jocelyn Zuckerman’s Planet Palm: How Palm Oil Ended Up in Everything—and Endangered the World, which I will say more about when it is published in May.

Palm oil raises so many issues that it’s hard to know where to begin: unhealthy degree of fat saturation, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, child labor, labor exploitation, adulteration, and criminal behavior, with everyone who consumes products made with palm oil complicit in these problems.

Reporters for AP News have done some investigating.  Their most recent report talks about the links between child labor and Girl Scout Cookies. 

Olivia Chaffin, a Girl Scout in rural Tennessee, was a top cookie seller in her troop when she first heard rainforests were being destroyed to make way for ever-expanding palm oil plantations. On one of those plantations a continent away, 10-year-old Ima helped harvest the fruit that makes its way into a dizzying array of products sold by leading Western food and cosmetics brands….The AP’s investigation into child labor is part of a broader in-depth look at the industry that also exposed rape, forced labor, trafficking and slavery. Reporters crisscrossed Malaysia and Indonesia, speaking to more than 130 current and former workers – some two dozen of them child laborers – at nearly 25 companies…The AP found children working on plantations and corroborated accounts of abuse, whenever possible, by reviewing police reports and legal documents. Reporters also interviewed more than 100 activists, teachers, union leaders, government officials, researchers, lawyers and clergy, including some who helped victims of trafficking or sexual assault.

The AP also reports that abuses of labor in the palm oil industry are linked to world’s top brands and banks.

An Associated Press investigation found many like Jum in Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia – an invisible workforce consisting of millions of laborers from some of the poorest corners of Asia, many of them enduring various forms of exploitation, with the most serious abuses including child labor, outright slavery and allegations of rape. Together, the two countries produce about 85% of the world’s estimated $65 billion palm oil supply…The AP used the most recently published data from producers, traders and buyers of the world’s most-consumed vegetable oil, as well as U.S. Customs records, to link the laborers’ palm oil and its derivatives from the mills that process it to the supply chains of top Western companies like the makers of Oreo cookies, Lysol cleaners and Hershey’s chocolate treats.

Cargill, which is involved in this industry, has responded to the AP report; it denies the charges.

Cargill does not tolerate the use of human trafficking, forced labor or child labor in our operations or supply chains. We expect all Cargill employees and our suppliers to adhere to our formal Commitment to Human Rights, which we enhanced in 2019 to detail the principles we embed into our policies and systems to protect human rights around the world. This Commitment applies to our workplace, communities in which we operate, and supply chains….Our efforts on the ground in our palm supply chain in Malaysia, Indonesia, Guatemala and globally focus on health and safety, responsible recruitment, and transparent contract and pay practices to protect and empower our workers, especially women who depend on their work in palm oil to earn a living and support their families.

As for deforestation, the industry argues for shared responsibility: Palm oil: Why shared responsibility is needed to cement sustainability improvements:  There is a disconnect between the reputation and reality of palm oil. Popular media paint palm oil as a primary driver of deforestation…. Read more

All of this suggests: Turbulent times ahead? Malaysia palm oil faces uncertain 2021 with price, production and policy challengesThe palm oil industry in Malaysia needs to prepare itself for an uncertain year ahead with expected price volatility, production decrease and policy changes in the west, with the government attempting to shift to more value-added products in hopes of providing a boost…. Read more

One of the great ironies of all this is that palm oil, which is highly saturated (and, therefore, raises the risk of heart disease), has been promoted and used by the processed food industry as a replacement for trans fats, now mostly gone from the market since required to be listed on Nutrition Facts labels.

Can palm oil be produced fairly and sustainably?  The answer depends on whom you ask.  The Independent has a quick overview of the controversies.

The Government Accountability Office has produced an interactive web site on “Global Food Security Assistance.”

To use the site, you choose a year (2018 is the most recent), a sector (agriculture, fishing, school food, nutrition, etc), a donor country, and a recipient country.  You hover over the dots to get more specific info.

Plenty to find out here.

As for what good food aid does, and what its problems are, you can consult other GAO reports here.

And as for what kind of money we are talking about here, I’ll repeat what I said in a previous post about the new stimulus package:

International Food Assistance: $1.74 billion for Food for Peace grants and $230 million for the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition program (note that this is the most the US has ever spent for these programs.

The study: Effects of Unsweetened Preloads and Preloads Sweetened with Caloric or Low-/No-Calorie [LNCS] Sweeteners on Subsequent Energy Intakes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Controlled Human Intervention Studies.  Han Youl Lee, Maia Jack, Theresa Poon, Daniel Noori, Carolina Venditti, Samer Hamamji, Kathy Musa-Veloso.  Advances in Nutrition, nmaa157, https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmaa157

Conclusions:  “These findings suggest that LNCS-sweetened foods and beverages are viable alternatives to CS-sweetened foods and beverages to manage short-term energy intake.

Funder: The American Beverage Association provided funding for the work presented herein.

Author disclosures: MJ is a paid employee of the American Beverage Association. Intertek Health Sciences, Inc.(HYL, TP, DN, CV, SH, KMV), works for the American Beverage Association as paid scientific and regulatory consultants.

Comment: This is a study paid for by the American Beverage Association, a trade association for the makers of soft drinks, sweetened with sugars or artificial sweeteners, conducted in-house.  Its purpose is to demonstrate that artificial and low-calorie sweeteners will help you lose weight, something that independently funded studies often do not.  I’d classsify this as marketing research.  I don’t think it belongs in professional journals published by the American Society for Nutrition.  We need a new journal for this, as Corinna Hawkes of City University London once suggested, “The Journal of Industry-Funded Research.”

Sonja Stummerer & Martin Hablesreiter.   Food Design Small: Reflections on Food, Design and Language.  De Gruyter 2020.

Their other books are bigger:  Food Design XL (2009) and Eat Design (2014).

These are unusual, to say the least, and great fun.

For one thing, the authors do not take themselves too seriously: They like to be known as honey and bunny, lower case.

For another, they think of food primarily as a design object. Of vegetables cut into small cubes, for example, they say:

Whether the design of frozen vegetables into small cubes is simple, functional, appropriate for the product and timeless, and of greater or lesser practical use, cannt be answered withoiut an adequate reference system (value system, ideology).  From today’s perspective, the answer would probaly be negative even though there is undeniably a certain timelessness about the product.

They point out that specific shapes convey specific associations.

Food in the shape of a triangle is actually rather unusual: psychologically because it always has an acute angle pointing at the consumer; ergonomically (especially with small objects such as chocolates) because it fits poorly in the mouth; and technically because (industrially) triangles are not easy to produce, stack and package.  One exception is the Toblerone….

And they are very much into semiotic theories, which, they say, can illuminate our lives and help solve environmental problems.

The photographs are in black and white but give the idea of how honey and bunny use food and dining as design objects (the photos are bigger, better, and more colorful in the XL version).

If you like this sort of thing—and I most definitely do—this is a quirky book that encourages thinking about food in entirely different ways.

Great fun indeed.

As to why it matters, let me quote from the introduction to the book by my NYU colleague Fabio Parasecoli:

What is important to me is nt so much elaboratig a univocal and final definition of food design, but rather understanding why we are even talking about food design, how and why it emerged, how it connects to the developments within design at large, and why it is emerging at this specific historical point in time.  There may not be any firm answers yet, but it is quite likely that food design is a manifestation of the overall growing interest in food and the acknowledgment of its centrality to huma life.

I’ve been collecting predictions of what’s going to happen to the food industry this year.  Here are some, about cooking, sales, products, flavors, regulations, e-sales, robotics, and agriculture.

• Waitrose identifies top 2021 consumer food trends:  Home cooking, support for British producers and winter barbecues are just some of the key trends highlighted in Waitrose’s 2021 food and drink report. Read more
• Food industry trends for 2021:  Key industry figures predict where the challenges and opportunities will be found in 2021. Read more
• 2021 Food Trends Product Developers Must Know:  Find out which trends R&D chefs and CPG food manufacturers should focus on to drive profits.
• What trends will shape flavour innovation in 2021?  The seismic events of 2020 have shaped consumer behaviours and expectations. The COVID-19 pandemic has reached every part of our lives – and the flavours we crave are no exception. Here’s our round-up of the flavour trends we can expect to tickle out taste buds in 2021… Read
• From ‘dark kitchens’ to dual quality: Expert predicts 2021’s regulatory hotspots:  What regulatory challenges should food makers be mindful of in 2021?  Read
• Retail predictions 2021: Experts talk bricks-and-mortar and the ‘jet propulsion’ of e-commerce:  What key challenges are in store for supermarket retailers as we move into 2021? Will bricks-and-mortar continue to play an important role? Do experts predict e-commerce to continue its unprecedented boom?.. Read
• Robotics, AI and the future of food: ‘The COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis that robots were built to address’:  COVID-19 has accelerated interest in the role that automation, robotics and data can play in food and agricultural production. We speak to industry leaders to learn about the latest developments… Read
• Eat the rainbow: ADM expects consumers to explore beyond their palate’s comfort zones in 2021:  Colour plays a vital role in delighting the senses, differentiating flavour expectations and aiding in taste perceptions. It also adds to consumer’s assessment of the snack’s ‘health halo’… Read
• FrieslandCampina Ingredients sees four key trends for 2021:  FrieslandCampina Ingredients has released a new report outlining the trends and developments for the future of performance and active nutrition… Read
• 9 Questions Facing Agriculture In 2021:  Each year  Agricultural Economic Insights carves out time to think about the issues and uncertainties facing agriculture in the coming year.

President Biden has blocked the Trump Administration’s allowance of increased speeds on poultry processing lines.

I first heard about this from an announcement from Food and Water Watch.

As described by The Counter, the Trump rule allowed facilities “to slaughter chickens at a rate of 175 birds per minute—equivalent to 3 birds a second—up from the industry standard of 140 birds per minute.”  

As the Washington Post describes, poultry processing plants with higher line speeds are more dangerous for workers.

The history of the rule changes over the past few years is given on the USDA website.

But line speeds are only one of the problems with poultry safety.  Salmonella is another.  The history of attempts to reduce Salmonella in poultry is summarized by Michael Taylor, former USDA official, at FoodSafetyNews.com: “Our poultry safety regulation isn’t working: It’s past time to fix it.”

This is why food safety groups have filed a petition

urging FSIS [USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service] to modernize its food safety standards by establishing enforceable standards targeting Salmonella types of greatest public health concern while reducing all Salmonella and Campylobacter in poultry. We also ask that FSIS ensure the safety of the food supply chain from farm to fork by requiring slaughter establishments to adopt and implement effective supply chain programs, and by publishing finalized versions of its “DRAFT FSIS Compliance Guidance for Controlling Salmonella and Campylobacter in Raw Poultry.”

Biden’s first 100 days seems like a terrific opportunity to make poultry production safer for workers and for people who eat the poultry produced in these plants.

I’ll start with a déjà vu, thanks to Daniel Bowman Simon, who reminds me that President John F. Kennedy’s first executive orderwas to expand food distribution programs that both helped farmers and fed the poor.

President Biden is taking steps in the same direction.  On January 22, the USDA announced:

• P-EBT Benefit Increase: “the Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) connects low-income families with kids with food dollars equivalent to the value of the meals missed due to COVID-related school and childcare closures….USDA will increase the current daily benefit amount by approximately 15% to tackle the serious problem of child food insecurity during this school year when need is greatest.”  This is great but the big problem with this program has been delays.  Let’s hope those get fixed too.
• SNAP Emergency Allotments to States: USDA wants to “allow states to provide extra SNAP benefits through Emergency Allotments to the lowest-income households.”  This is because the increases to SNAP authorized by Congress were set up in such a way that they did not go to the lowest-income households (37% of SNAP households) most in need.
• Revising the Thrifty Food Plan Per 2018 Farm Bill:  This plan, the basis for determining SNAP benefits, is decades old, out of date, and unrealistic for SNAP households.  USDA needs to revise it.

In addition, Biden is calling for More Congressional Action:  

• Extend the 15% SNAP benefit increase
• Invest another $3 billion through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
• Look for creative ways to support restaurants as a critical link in the food supply chain to help feed families in need
• Provide U.S. Territories with $1 billion in additional nutrition assistance funding

OK.  This does not go far enough and who knows what this Congress will do.  But it’s a start, and a good one.

But that’s not all: Biden has appointed Stacy Dean as deputy undersecretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, the piece of USDA responsible for food assistance.  This puts her in charge of all this.

I consider this a superb appointment.  Nobody knows more about food assistance programs.  I learned this when I was editing a set of papers about SNAP for the American Journal of Public Health in 2019.  She and colleagues at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities wrote the basic article for the series.

So: our job now is to loudly and strongly support everything USDA is doing to improve and expand food assistance, and to encourage the agency to take even bigger steps.  Make sure Stacy gets all the support she needs to really do sometime to improve food security for the millions of American adults and children who need it badly.