Food Politics

by Marion Nestle
Dec 1 2020

How retailers exploit Covid-19: high profits from low pay and food assistance for workers

Brookings has a new report: Windfall profits and deadly risks: How the biggest retail companies are compensating essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We find that while top retail companies’ profits have soared during the pandemic, pay for their frontline workers—in most cases—has not. In total, the top retail companies in our analysis earned on average an extra $16.9 billion in profit this year compared to last—a stunning 39% increase—while stock prices are up an average of 33%. And with few exceptions, frontline retail workers have seen little of this windfall. The 13 companies we studied raised pay for their frontline workers by an average of just $1.11 per hour since the pandemic began—a 10% increase on top of wages that are often too low to meet a family’s basic needs. On average, it has been 133 days since the retail workers in our analysis last received any hazard pay.

In a blog about this report, Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria summarize its findings in these headlines:

  • Bezos gets $73 billion; Amazon workers get 95 cents per hour
  • CVS profits increase 27%; CVS workers get 2% raise
  • Walton family adds $45 billion to its wealth; Walmart workers get 63 cents per hour
  • Kroger cancels “hero pay,” authorizes $1 billion stock repurchases

How are these workers getting by?  Federal food assistanc.  A new government report has the data.

The report is titled “FEDERAL SOCIAL SAFETY NET PROGRAMS: Millions of Full-Time Workers Rely on Federal Health Care and Food Assistance Programs.”

It finds that roughly half of Medicaid and SNAP enrollees work at least 35 hours a week, but make so little money that they qualify for these programs.

The employers of low-wage workers who get federal benefits are companies like Walmart, McDonald’s, Waffle House, Kroger, Burger King, and Wendy’s.

What this means is that taxpayers are making up the shortfall in wages, and that use of Medicaid and SNAP are externalized costs of these businesses, as these reports make clear.

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Nov 30 2020

Industry-funded nutrition-and-Covid advice: take our supplements!

I’m always interested in how food, beverage, and supplement companies are taking advantage of fears of Covid-19 to sell their products.

The supplement company. Nutricia, has produced a report, Learnings from a Global Pandemic: The Role of Nutrition in COVID-19 Recovery and the Ongoing Pursuit of Healthy Aging 

The logic of this report goes:

  • Covid-19 disproportionally affects older adults.
  • Healthy immune systems help prevent bad outcomes.
  • Nutrition is important for a healthy immune system.

No argument there.  At issue is how to have a healthy immune system.

A wealth of mechanistic and clinical data21 show that beyond protein and energy, vitamins (including A, B6, B12, C, D, E, and folate) and trace elements (zinc, iron, selenium, magnesium, and copper) and omega-3 fatty acids (eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid) play important and complementary roles in supporting the immune system. Inadequate intake of these nutrients can lead to a decrease in resistance to infections and as a consequence an increase in disease burden.

Therefore, the question is how to get these nutrients.  I vote for food.  Nutricia, no surprise, has another suggestion, especially for hospitalized patients:

Treatment should continue after hospital discharge with ONS [oral nutritional supplements] and individualized nutritional plans.

Nutricia is owned by Danone.  Danone announced this week that  it is cutting 2000 jobs to save more than a billion dollars.

As the pandemic continues to surge, the yogurt and beverage giant has been impacted by the closure of restaurants and other venues that reduced demand for its water, a reduction of SKUs [stock keeping units] offered by its retail partners and a drop in the number of births that has curtailed consumption of its baby formula products.

One solution: sell more supplements, and use Covid-19 to do so.

Will supplements protect against catching Covid-19 or experiencing its worst symptoms?  I’m waiting for the data.

I still think it’s healthier to get nutrients from foods.

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Nov 27 2020

Weekend reading: Jennifer Clapp’s 3rd edition of Food

Jennifer Clapp.  Food.  3rd edition.  Polity Press, 2020.  

Food (Resources): Clapp, Jennifer: 9781509541775: Amazon.com: Books

I did a blurb for this one, as I did for the previous two editions:

In this newly updated edition of Food, Jennifer Clapp explains how our current global food system affects every aspect of what we eat and, therefore, our health and welfare. Food unpacks and clarifies what is happening now in the industrialized marketing of food and its international trade, control by corporations, and financialization.  As for what is to be done, Clapp provides a roadmap to a food system that promotes the health of people and the environment, in ways that ensure food justice, equity, and sovereignty.

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Nov 26 2020

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving

 

A gift cartoon from Cagle.

Enjoy the day.  Stay safe.  Stay sane.

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Nov 25 2020

The State of Obesity, 2020: no downturn in prevalence

Trust for America’s Health has just issued its annual report on obesity in America.

The full report is here.

The results are truly alarming, especially because obesity—and the conditions for which it increases risk—also increase the risk of poor Covid-19 outcome.

The U.S. adult obesity rate stands at 42.4 percent, the first time the national rate has passed the 40 percent mark, and further evidence of the country’s obesity crisis. The national adult obesity rate has increased by 26 percent since 2008…Rates of childhood obesity are also increasing with the latest data showing that 19.3 percent of U.S. young people, ages 2 to 19, have obesity. In the mid-1970s, 5.5 percent of young people had obesity.

The report has a special section on the link between food insecurity and obesity.

Food insecurity and obesity have many of the same risk factors (e.g., income or race/ethnicity) and often coexist in populations. Researchers have hypothesized several mechanisms for how food insecurity might lead to obesity. These include the direct limitations to a healthy diet that come from inadequate food affordability and/or availability; stress and anxiety about food insecurity
that generate higher levels of stress hormones, which heighten appetite; and a physiological response in which the body stores higher fat amounts in response to reduced food availability.

As always, this is a terrific source of current information about America’s increasingly prevalent health problem and what’s being done—and needs to be done—to solve it.

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Nov 24 2020

Digital marketing to children: two reports

The thing about digital marketing to kids is that parents hardly ever see it.  And it works.  Really well.

The first report comes from the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern.

The report comes with three issue briefs.

The second report comes from public health advocates in Australia, also about digital marketing on kids.

All of this is really happening.  Advocates: get to work!

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Nov 23 2020

Industry-funded study of the week: dairy foods and child growth

Growth and Development of Preschool Children (12–60 Months): A Review of the Effect of Dairy Intake.   David C. Clark, Christopher J. Cifelli, Matthew A Pikosky.  Nutrients 2020, 12(11), 3556; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12113556

The study:  A narrative review of studies of dairy intake and child growth, cognitive development, and weight gain.
Results: there is a positive association between dairy intake and linear growth. The impact of milk or dairy products on cognitive development is less clear due to a lack of evidence and is a gap in the literature that should be addressed. Regarding the impact on body weight, the majority of evidence suggests there is either no association or an inverse association between milk intake by preschool children on overweight and obesity later in life.
Funding: “The work involved for this manuscript was funded by National Dairy Council (provided to D.C.C.).”
Conflicts of interest: “C.J.C. and M.A.P. are employees of National Dairy Council.”
Comment: The Dairy Council has a vested interest in demonstrating that dairy foods promote linear growth and cognitive function in young children, but do not promote overweight or obesity. This dairy-funded literature review is remarkable for its cautious interpretation: “the absence of data from studies conducted in low- and middle-income countries is a serious gap, especially given the dual burden of undernutrition and overnutrition that is becoming prevalent in developing countries.”  That’s another reason for this study: sell more dairy foods in middle- and low-income countries.  China, for example, is pushing dairy products as a means to grow taller children; it does so despite widespread lactose intolerance among the Chinese population.
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Nov 20 2020

Weekend reading: Deborah Madison!

Deborah Madison.  An Onion in My Pocket: A Life with Vegetables.  Alfred A. Knopf/Borzoi, 2020. 

Here’s my back-of-the-book jacket blurb:

Onion in My Pocket is a riveting account of how Deborah Madison’s previous 20-year incarnation as a serious student of Zen Buddhism prepared her to become the consummate vegetarian cook and cookbook writer.  We are all fortunate that she loves vegetables—and healthier as a result.

Madison is the author of more than a dozen books about vegetarian cooking.  She opened Greens in San Francisco, a restaurant that moved vegetarian cooking from the fringe to the mainstream.  Going there—or to Tassajara–during the heyday of the San Francisco Zen Center was a sublime culinary experience, well worth the long wait to get in.

Of her time at Greens, Madison writes:

At that time I had a tendency to cook richly, using plenty of butter, eggs, and cream when it made sense.  I was unsure about bringing vegetarian food into a mainstream venue, and I knew that we could always make something good when we relied on cream or buttery crusts, and that customers would like them.  Fat was easy to fall back on in this way.  Also this was 1979 and the early 1980s, an era of cream, butter, and cheese–not just at Greens but in restaurants everywhere.  Our dinners were rich, celebratory splurges, not substitutes for home cooking.  I can’t tell you how many people have told me they were proposed to at Greens, or got married there.

No wonder the food was so good!

Her cooking now is lighter, but still wonderful.

In Onion, Madison is too polite to mention what was happening at the Zen Center at the time she left to cook at Chez Panisse and explore the wider world.  That story—a #MeToo forerunner–is covered in Michael Downing’s “Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion and Excess at the San Francisco Zen Center.”

This book is about discovering the deliciousness of vegetables.  We need it.

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