FAO has this eye-catching new teaser for its new report on water and agriculture. Check out the teaser first. Its graphics move (the blades on the wind turbinesshow below turn, for example)
Its main point:
Everyone needs to pay attention to water use, and the teaser and the report state the policy recommendations.
I subscribe to Obesity and Energetics Offerings because it’s a great way to keep up with current research and commentary on just about anything related to diet and activity.
One of the things I particularly like about it is its section called “Headline vs Study.”
Here is its most recent example:
The headline, from Pet Food Industry magazine (an unusually well written and edited source of information about this industry), refers to a survey of veterinarians done by Hill’s Pet Nutrition, a maker of pet foods.
According to veterinarians, more than 71% of pet professionals say the pandemic has impacted the way pets eat…Since the start of Covid-19, one third (33%) of pet parents with an overweight pet say their pet became overweight during the pandemic…veterinarians state that only 12% of pet parents proactively flag concerns with their pet’s weight. Moreover, nearly two in three veterinarians say pet parents act surprised (64%) or defensive (64%) upon learning about their pet’s weight issues.
Pet parents? You know who you are.
What is this about?
IRONICALLY, TOO MUCH “TREAT LOVE” DURING THESE DIFFICULT TIMES IS THE MAIN CULPRIT.
Treats, as Mal Nesheim and I explain in our book about the pet food industry, Feed Your Pet Right, have calories, and those calories—just like the ones from any snack—add up.
Obesity in pets does just what it does in humans; it raises the risk of chronic disease, especially type-2 diabetes
A new study just out in the BMJ, which compared obesity in dogs to that of their owners, says:
Data indicated that owners of a dog with diabetes were more likely to develop type 2 diabetes during follow-up than owners of a dog without diabetes. It is possible that dogs with diabetes could serve as a sentinel for shared diabetogenic health behaviours and environmental exposures.
Pet parents: Walk those dogs! Love them some other way!
I post often about conflicts of interest in nutrition research, mainly because I worry about how to improve the quality of nutrition research studies. Nutrition research is under attack for weaknesses well known to nutrition researchers, but recently rediscovered by critics outside the field who do not, unfortunately, propose meaningful alternatives (see this, for example).
Mainstream nutrition researchers have called for a new approach to nutrition research.
“The time has come for a national ‘moonshot’ on nutrition research,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, Dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, chair of the session. “A strengthening of federal nutrition research has significant potential to generate new discoveries to improve and sustain the health of all Americans, reduce healthcare costs, improve health disparities, create new businesses and jobs, reinvigorate farms and rural communities, strengthen military readiness and optimize use of our natural resources.”
These researchers called for two priorities: a new authority for robust cross-governmental coordination of nutrition research; and strengthened authority and investment for nutrition research within the NIH.
It looks like they got it! The NIH has proposed to transfer its existing Office of Nutrition Research into the NIH Director’s Office.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has proposed to transfer the Office of Nutrition Research (ONR) from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI) within the NIH Office of the Director. DPCPSI was created by Congress to enhance NIH-wide coordination of cross-cutting research topics.
This proposed move follows two reports from NIH about nutrition research:
And now NIH says it is doing this!
The response from the public and the nutrition research community was overwhelmingly supportive. Such a move was also supported by the Council of Councils, an NIH advisory group, during a special meeting on December 30, 2020.
I’m pleased to share that this week, NIH has begun the official transfer of ONR to DPCPSI. This reorganization positions ONR to enhance engagement of the NIH Institutes and Centers in implementing the 2020-2030 Strategic Plan for NIH Nutrition Research to develop new collaborations and relationships focused on nutrition research within and outside NIH, and to ensure coordination of and leadership for nutrition research across the agency.
Will this strengthen the quality of nutrition research? I certainly hope so.
Coca-Cola, according to an account in the Wall Street Journal, announced that it is cutting 2,200 jobs globally, including 1,200 in the U.S., as a result of the pandemic-induced closure of the places where its products are sold: restaurants, bars, movie theaters and sports stadiums.
The company expects to save $350 to $550 million annually as a result.
Let’s put these savings in context. Coca-Cola brought in $37.27 billion in revenues in 2019.
For the company, the eliminated jobs mean “less decision making, less bureaucracy and ultimately less people.”
Corporations, as I have reported previously, have pledged to consider social values—like fairness to employees—in their day to day operations as much as they consider returns to stockholders.
If they are going to make such promises, they need to be held to them.
I learned about this one from a press release: “Can eating mangoes reduce women’s facial wrinkles?”
A new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis, finds eating Ataulfo mangoes, also known as honey or Champagne mangoes, may have another benefit — reducing facial wrinkles in older women with fairer skin. The study was published in the journal Nutrients.
Postmenopausal women who ate a half cup of Ataulfo mangoes four times a week saw a 23 percent decrease in deep wrinkles after two months and a 20 percent decrease after four months.
Surely, this can’t be serious? Who paid for this?
The study: Prospective Evaluation of Mango Fruit Intake on Facial Wrinkles and Erythema in Postmenopausal Women: A Randomized Clinical Pilot Study. Vivien W. Fam, Roberta R. Holt Carl L. Keen, Raja K. Sivamani . and Robert M. Hackman. Nutrients 2020, 12(11), 3381; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12113381
Method: Women were given either 85 g or 250 g of mangos to eat every day for 16 weeks. Their wrinkles were photographed and measured before and after.
Conclusion: “The intake of 85 g of mangos reduced wrinkles in fair-skinned postmenopausal women, while an intake of 250 g showed the opposite effect.”
Funding: “This study was supported in part by a grant from the National Mango Board (NMB)…which also supplied the fresh mangos for the study. The NMB had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, manuscript preparation, or publication decision.”
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Comment: I love mangos (despite being somewhat allergic to them), but come on. According to the press release, the researchers “said it’s unclear why consuming more mango would increase the severity of wrinkles but speculate that it may be related to a robust amount of sugar in the larger portion of mangoes.” Another interpretation is that mangos have no effect (which makes more sense). In any case, this study did not compare mangos to any other fruit. This is a classic case of an industry-sponsored study coming out with results favorable to the sponsor’s interests and allowing those interests to be announced in a press release. The authors may think industry sponsorship does not create a conflict of interest, but much evidence strongly suggests that it does (I reviewed that evidence in my book, Unsavory Truth).
I am a big fan of Howard Bauchner, the editor-in-chief of JAMA, who not only promotes science but also seems to have a lot of integrity. I think it’s worth reading his new year’s wish list for medicine and science.
What concerns him, and what’s on his list applies just as well to food and nutrition. He says, for example,
An increasingly important question is whether, in a country in which “profit” dominates, it will be possible to have a fair and equitable health care system. Has profit, self-interest, and greed come to dominate the landscape of US medicine? And as the Great Pandemic of 2020 has demonstrated, health care disparities remain a fundamental problem in the US health care system.
Here are some of the items on his wish list:
Amen.
And to his final comment—“This list is my hope for 2021 and beyond: a respect for science, scientists, and public health officials, healthy and civil debate, and a fundamental commitment that no individual in the US should be without health insurance”—I would add: a food system designed to prevent food insecurity and promote health for people and the environment.
A scientific report in Proceedings of the National Academies titled Livestock plants and COVID-19 transmission,” demonstrates the impact of Covid-19 on workers in meat and poultry processing plants.
Our study suggests that, among essential industries, livestock processing poses a particular public health risk extending far beyond meatpacking companies and their employees. We estimate livestock plants to be associated with 236,000 to 310,000 COVID-19 cases (6 to 8% of total) and 4,300 to 5,200 deaths (3 to 4% of total) as of July 21….This study shows that meat and poultry slaughter plants were in fact vectors of the disease…Researchers found that poultry plants showed a significant relationship with COVID-19 cases, with pork plants showing the strongest relationship. Beef plants showed the strongest relationship with deaths from the illness.
The USDA has done its own analysis: “The share of all COVID-19 cases in nonmetro [rural] areas has been growing since late March, increasing from 3.6 percent on April 1 to 15.6 percent on December 7.”
Among nonmetro counties, the highest COVID-19 case rates are found in farming-dependent and manufacturing-dependent counties. The high prevalence of COVID-19 in manufacturing-dependent counties is due partly to higher COVID-19 case rates in meatpacking-dependent counties (those in which 20 percent or more of employment is in the meatpacking industry), almost all of which are manufacturing-dependent counties.
But another USDA report, specifically about the meatpacking industry, looks to me as though it is hiding what is happening in those plants. It includes a chart indicating no special increase in cases among meatpacking workers. No surprise, if meatpacking plants are epicenters that spread the infection to the local community (but the report doesn’t say that).
What it does say is this:
The two-week moving average number of new daily cases rose in meatpacking-dependent counties through the remainder of April, reaching a peak of nearly 50 cases per 100,000 by the end of the month. This two-week moving average was more than 10 times the prevalence seen in other rural counties. Even though cases in meatpacking-dependent counties started to decline in the month of May, they remained significantly higher compared to other rural counties, falling to just under seven times the number of average daily cases by the end of May.…Even though meatpacking-dependent counties are dealing with a second wave, the surge in rural new cases does not appear to be driven by new outbreaks in the meatpacking industry. Meatpacking-dependent counties have maintained an almost identical pattern to other rural counties for a fifth straight month.
Confused? Me too. This looks like a whitewash.
Is this one result of the USDA’s moving the Economic Research Service out of Washington DC to Kansas City, a move clearly meant to—successfully—decimate the agency?
Politico asks: can the ERS move be reversed? Not easily, alas.
It’s a good thing independent scientists and investigators are keeping an eye on this situation.
Leah Douglas of the Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN) deserves much praise for tracking infections and deaths among farm and meatpacking workers.
I’m trying to make sense of the new $900 billion stimulus bill signed by President Trump a week or so ago. This is not easy to do; it’s 5500 pages of government-speak.
The bill has $26 billion for food and nutrition, of which half goes to Big Ag (sigh) and the other half to food assistance (good, but not enough).
Why the sigh for farm aid? Here’s what the accounting looks like:
Big Agriculture: $13 billion on top of what else it got in 2020
Small Ag: $225 million (not billion) for growers of specialty crops like fruits, nuts and vegetables.
SNAP: a 15% expansion through June 2021. This will mean a lot to recipients, but it’s still not enough.
SNAP Fruit and vegetable incentives: $75 million (not billion) for the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program,
Pandemic-EBT: this authorizes extra benefits for families who have kids normally getting subsidized school meals (but this has been delayed)
Food banks: $400 million (not billion) for the Emergency Food Assistance Program, $400 million (not billion) for milk,
Disadvantaged, veteran, and beginning farmers: $75 million (not billion)
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.
Pet foods: By congressional directive:
FDA is directed to provide an update on the investigation it is undertaking regarding canine dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) and the manner in which it has released information to the public. The update shall include: the case definition FDA uses to include or exclude cases and the scientific work ongoing at the agency and with collaborating partners for identifying a causation of DCM; how FDA distinguishes cases of DCM due to genetic predisposition in certain breeds; how the agency plans to work with pet food companies and the veterinary cardiology community during the investigation; and the timing and nature of any future public reporting.
PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl) chemicals in food packaging: “directs FDA to review any new scientific information pertaining to PF AS chemicals and determine whether food packaging continues to meet the safety standards of a reasonable certainty of no harm under intended conditions of use.”
Restaurants: they get whatever they can out of the $284 billion Paycheck Protection Program. The trade association for independent restaurants points out that this is nowhere near enough. Even the Wall Street Journal says restaurants need help; their situation is bleak.
Business lunches: the full cost can now be deducted as a business expense, but nobody expects this to help restaurants much.
There is undoubtedly more, but that’s enough for now.
Politico has done a great job of covering these provisions, but is behind a paywall. The Counter also has an especially good summary..
