Food Politics

by Marion Nestle
Jan 28 2020

USDA’s infographics on school food purchases

The USDA has produced four infographics on its purchasing practices for school meals.

  • USDA Foods in Schools – This infographic summarizes nationwide USDA Foods purchases including the average cost per pound by food group and the breakdown of total spending and pounds received by food group.
  • USDA Foods in Schools: Summary by Program – This infographic shows a summary of purchases from all three programs: USDA Foods Bulk for Processing, USDA Foods Direct Delivery, and USDA DoD Fresh. It is important to note that the USDA Foods Bulk for Processing section only includes items classified as a bulk product on the USDA Foods Available List.
  • USDA Foods in Schools: State Overview– This infographic shows the average number of products ordered by States and the top five products by dollar value and volume. This infographic also displays the value of food orders by State.
  • USDA DoD Fresh in Schools – This infographic provides an overview of USDA DoD Fresh purchases including a summary of the top five fruit and vegetables received and the total pounds purchased. It is important to note that the items available through USDA DoD Fresh may vary by State.

I took a look at the first one and got stopped cold by this:

Protein?  What’s that?  The answer:  meat, poultry, fish, eggs, peanut butter, and sunflower seed butter.

I also wondered what DoD Fresh was about.  It is an agreement between USDA and the Department of Defense to supply fresh fruits and vegetables to schools.

For school food aficionados, there is much information here in a readily accessible format.  Enjoy!

Jan 27 2020

Industry-funded comment of the week: Tea, this time

Perspective: The Role of Beverages as a Source of Nutrients and Phytonutrients. Mario G Ferruzzi, Jirayu Tanprasertsuk, Penny Kris-Etherton, Connie M Weaver, Elizabeth J Johnson.  Advances in Nutrition, nmz115, https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmz115.  Published: 22 November 2019

Conclusions: “Modest shifts in beverage choices can help close the gaps between current intakes and dietary recommendations…[e.g.] Replacing SSBs with water, low-sodium tomato juice, nonfat milk, or unsweetened coffee or tea.”

Funder: “Supported by The Tea Council of the USA (to EJJ).”

Comment: This is a lengthy review of the health effects of a range of beverages—milk, soft drinks, sports drinks, alcohol—as well a coffee and tea.  Of tea, it says:

Tea is a major contributor to beverage intake in the US adult population with ∼1 of 3 adults reporting regular consumption on any given day. Tea provides few nutrients (∼2% of potassium intake in the United States), although it is considered to be a significant contributor to total fluoride intake….Green tea consumption was significantly inversely associated with CVD and all-cause mortality, whereas black tea consumption was significantly inversely associated with all-cancer and all-cause mortality…The evidence is accumulating that coffee and tea also have health benefits (see above) and are concentrated sources of dietary phytonutrients.

The discussion of tea is a small part of this review.  Did the Tea Council get what it paid for?  You decide.

Jan 24 2020

Weekend reading: Nature Food

It’s pretty exciting when a major international science journal starts a satellite journal devoted to food issues.  Welcome to Nature Food.

Volume 1 Issue 1Silos and systems: The image of a corn processing plant with storage silos represents an early stage of the food supply chain and entry point to a complex, increasingly globalized food system with broad health, economic, social and environmental interactions. The journey from silo to system starts here.

Here’s what’s in Volume 1, Issue 1, January 2020:  

  • Editorial: From silos to systems.  The global food system needs a radical overhaul to sustainably feed 10 billion people by 2050. Nature Food calls on scientists from the many disciplines of food to contribute their knowledge and experience to a collective dialogue on food system transformation.
  • Comment: Planet-proofing the global food system  Without a great food system transformation, the world will fail to deliver both on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement. There are five grand challenges to be faced, by science and society, to effect that transformation.  Johan Rockström et al.
  • Comment: A national approach for transformation of the UK food system: Transformation of the food system at the national scale requires concerted action from government, business and civil society, based on sound evidence from the research community. A programme for transformation of the United Kingdom’s food system, for healthy people and a healthy environment, is described here.  Riaz Bhunnoo  & Guy M. Poppy.
  • Comment:  A future workforce of food-system analysts:  A programme developed across five UK universities aims to equip graduate professionals with the skills, tools and capabilities to better understand and manage food-system complexity for food security, for the environment and for enterprise.  John Ingram, et al.
  • Q&A:  Where there is political will, there is a way.  Tom Arnold has a wealth of experience in humanitarian and development approaches to combatting hunger. In his roles in food and agriculture, including with Scaling Up Nutrition and Task Force Rural Africa, he advocates for policy consistency and supportive relationships between civil society, business and government.  Anne Mullen.
  • News & Views: Uncertainties in global crop modelling.  A consistent global gridded multi-model assessment of wheat production under climate change points to large uncertainties arising from crop models, particularly in mid and high latitudes.  Ann-Kristin Koehler
  • News & Views:  The changing nature of our food systems.  The wealth of national food supply data, collected over decades by member states of the Food and Agriculture Organization, provides intriguing insights into regional transitions.  Roseline Remans
  • News & Views:  Running AMOC in the farming economy.  Climate tipping points, such as the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), could drive significant structural changes in agriculture, with profound consequences for global food security.  Tim G. Benton
  • News & Views:  From stinkweed to oilseed.  Up to now, creativity, ingenuity, time and more than a little luck have been essential for transforming a wild plant into a new food crop. Building on the understanding of gene function in Arabidopsis, the process of domestication can be rapidly accelerated.  Anne B. Britt
  • News & Views: Mind the (supply) gap.  The gap between global supply and demand of omega-3 fatty acids is twice previous estimates. Opportunities to narrow that gap include increasing use of fishery by-products and reducing food waste.  Brett D. Glencross
  • Perspective:  Nitrogen pollution policy beyond the farm.  This Perspective builds on the concept of full-chain nitrogen use efficiency to propose policy interventions and criteria that target major actors in the agri-food chain.  David R. Kanter et al.
  • Perspective:  The unmapped chemical complexity of our diet.  Advances such as machine learning may enable the full biochemical spectrum of food to be studied systematically. Uncovering the ‘dark matter’ of nutrition could open new avenues for a greater understanding of the composition of what we eat and how it relates to health and disease.  Albert-László Barabási et al.
  • Review Article:  The nexus between international trade, food systems, malnutrition and climate change.  Trade agreements can constrain or enable governments’ ability to implement food system-level actions aimed at improving nutrition and mitigating climate change. The technical and political aspects of trade agreements that interact with food systems are reviewed here, and the coherence between trade policy goals and public interest goals, such as nutrition and climate change, is discussed.  Sharon Friel et al
  • Brief Communication:  Systems approach to quantify the global omega-3 fatty acid cycle.  Omega-3 fatty acids are important for the human diet and for some aqua and animal feeds. This study reports a supply gap, and using quantitative systems analysis identifies targets for increasing efficiency in the global omega-3 cycle.  Helen A. Hamilton et al.
  • Article:  Multidimensional characterization of global food supply from 1961 to 2013.  Food systems are increasingly globalized and interdependent. Using food supply data from over 170 countries, Bentham et al. characterize global patterns of food supply change over five decades, highlighting the decline in the supply of animal source food and sugar in many Western countries, the increase in the supply of such foods in Asian countries and remarkably little change in food supply in the sub-Saharan Africa region.  James Bentham et al.
  • Article: Shifts in national land use and food production in Great Britain after a climate tipping point.  Collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) will impact agricultural land use and its economic value in Great Britain. Ritchie et al. model the impacts of smooth (conventional climate change) and abrupt (tipping point change) AMOC collapse on land use, arable farming and related economic outputs in Britain, as well as the economic feasibility of technological adaptations such as widespread irrigation. Paul D. L. Ritchie et al.
  • Article:  Identification and stacking of crucial traits required for the domestication of pennycress.  Thlaspi arvense (pennycress) has the potential to provide new sources of food and bioproducts when grown as a winter cover crop. Here, Chopra et al. demonstrate that multiple desirable traits can be stacked to rapidly domesticate pennycress. The resulting crop integrates into current crop rotations and produces seeds with improved nutritional qualities, easier harvesting and suitability for human consumption.  Ratan Chopra et al
  • Food for Thought:  The Londoner’s meal.  Globalization transforms societies, economies and cultures. As a subject, food allows us to draw unique narratives on these transformations . The history of pie and mash, also known as the ‘Londoner’s meal’, is such a story of globalization.  Ronald Ranta
Tags:
Jan 23 2020

What’s Up with the Microbiome?

NutraIngredients.com, one of those industry newsletters I follow closely, publishes numerous articles on probiotics, gut health, and the microbiome.  I have a few examples here, but let’s start with this one:

Postbiotics?  For this, a glossary may help:

  • Probiotics:  Beneficial microbes in the intestinal tract
  • Prebiotics:  Food substances that promote the growth of probiotics
  • Synbiotics:  Probiotics and Prebiotics together
  • Postbiotics:  Bioactive substances produced by probiotics (e.g., microbial cells, cell constituents, metabolites).
  • Parabiotics:  Heat-killed microorganisms

More articles on these topics:

And Natural Products Insider has a report on prebiotic supplements available for downloading.

Jan 22 2020

USDA issues guidance for non-GMO labeling

The USDA has issued a guide for meat and poultry sellers explaining what they need to do to claim that their products are non-GMO.  This, apparently, will do.

What, you may ask, are they to do if their products are GMO?  Here’s your answer.

That USDA is allowing the use of non-GMO rather than non-bioengineered must be considered some kind of miracle or oversight.

AgriPulse says producers want more guidance before trying to comply with whatever the biotech labeling law means.

I can’t wait to see if meat sellers use any of this.

Jan 21 2020

The USDA never gives up in favoring corporate interests over kids’ health: the new school food rules

If it weren’t so tragic, we could all have a big laugh at the USDA’s latest announcement of how it plans to weaken the nutrition standards for school meals.   Here’s how it starts:

Delivering on his promise to act on feedback from dietary professionals, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced two proposals today that will put local school and summer food service operators back in the driver’s seat of their programs, because they know their children best. Under the school meals proposed rule, school nutrition professionals have more flexibility to serve appetizing and healthy meals that appeal to their students’ preferences and subsequently reduce food waste…These improvements build on the 2018 reforms that preserve strong nutrition standards while providing schools the additional flexibilities they need to best serve America’s students [the words in red are my emphasis].

This is USDA doublespeak.  My translation:

  • Dietary professionals: USDA is not talking about me here.  It is referring to the School Nutrition Association, which represents school food service workers, and receives nearly half its funding from food companies that sell products to schools.
  • Driver’s seat: This is Trump’s USDA saying that it is not bound by anything accomplished by Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign.
  • Flexibility: This means that schools can decide on their own to ignore nutrition standards and let kids eat all the junk food they want.
  • Improvements: This refers to benefits for the companies that sell junk foods in schools.
  • 2018 reforms:  In USDA-speak, “reform” usually means rollback of rules or budget cuts; it never means real improvement.

I just can’t get my head around why there is so much political pressure to feed junk food to kids.  Doesn’t everyone want kids to be healthy?  Apparently not.

Bettina Siegel, author of Kids’ Food and blogger at The Lunch Tray, has her own analytical deconstruction of what this announcement means.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest interprets USDA’s proposals as an “assault on school meals.”

In an email, a reader who wishes to remain anonymous sent me some notes on the large body of research, some of it from the agency itself, countering USDA’s claims that the current nutrition standards are not working.

  • USDA’s own research shows that meals are healthier, plate waste has not increased, and most schools are complying with nutrition standards.
  • Healthy Eating Research shows that the nutritional quality of school meals has improved under the current rules.
  • A study from the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity shows that low-income kids are eating better under the existing standards.
  • Surveys from Bridging the Gap show that most kids like the healthier school lunches.
  • poll conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, and American Heart Association shows that more than 70% of parents support healthier school nutrition standards, and more than 90% want fruits or vegetables served with every meal.
  • A Harvard study stimates that the current nutrition standards will prevent more than 2 million cases of childhood obesity and save nearly $800 million in health care costs over 10 years.

In short, school meals are not broken and do not need fixing.  This is about politics, in this case USDA’s pandering to food company interests at the expense of kids’ health.

Shameful.

Jan 20 2020

Conflicted research argument of the week: meat versus plants

I could not keep up with the number of e-mails I got last week with the subject line “Have you seen this?”

“This” referred to an opinion piece in JAMA entitled Backlash Over Meat Dietary Recommendations Raises Questions About Corporate Ties to Nutrition Scientists.

Definitely up my alley.

The article describes the outraged reaction to a series of papers in the Annals of Internal Medicine last year arguing that recommendations to eat less meat are unfounded (I posted about this at the time).  Some of the investigators involved in the meat papers turned out to have undisclosed ties to meat industry interests.

The JAMA article points out that the most outraged objections to the Annals papers came from investigators who have plenty of industry ties (plant-based) of their own.

My book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, provides loads of evidence for a basic observation: research funded by food companies, regardless of the particular food studied, tends to produce results favorable to the sponsor’s interests.

It also describes how industry influence occurs at an unconscious level; recipients are unaware that they are being influenced.

How the influence gets expressed is also the subject of research.  Bias most frequently turns up in the framing of the research question.  It also turns up frequently in the interpretation of results.

Here is an example from a study of a healthy plant food—walnuts.

The study: Effect of a 2-year diet intervention with walnuts on cognitive decline. The Walnuts And Healthy Aging (WAHA) study: a randomized controlled trial.  Aleix Sala-Vila, Cinta Valls-Pedret, Sujatha Rajaram, Nina Coll-Padrós, Montserrat Cofán, Mercè Serra-Mir,  Ana M Pérez-Heras, Irene Roth, Tania M Freitas-Simoes, Mónica Doménech, Carlos Calvo, Anna López-Illamola, Edward Bitok, Natalie K Buxton, Lynnley Huey, Adam Arechiga, Keiji Oda, Grace J Lee, Dolores Corella, Lídia Vaqué-Alcázar, Roser Sala-Llonch, David Bartrés-Faz, Joan Sabaté, and Emilio Ros1.  Am J Clin Nutr 2020;00:1–11.

Conclusions: Walnut supplementation for 2 y had no effect on cognition in healthy elders. However, brain fMRI and post hoc analyses by site suggest that walnuts might delay cognitive decline in subgroups at higher risk. These encouraging but inconclusive results warrant further investigation.

Conflicts of Interest: AS-V, SR, JS, and ER have received research funding through their institutions from the California Walnut Commission, Folsom, CA, USA. JS and ER were nonpaid members of the California Walnut Commission Scientific Advisory Council. ER was a paid member of the California Walnut Commission Health Research Advisory Group. JS has received honoraria from the California Walnut Commission for presentations.  AS-V has received support from the CaliforniaWalnut Commission to attend professional meetings. All other authors report no conflicts of interest.

Comment: This looks to me like a classic example of interpretation bias.  Although the study showed no effect of walnut supplementation, the authors interpret its overall results as encouraging.  This is putting a positive spin on null results.

Walnuts—and other kinds of nuts—are plant foods with healthy fats.  Why does the California Walnut Commission need to do this?  So you will buy walnuts rather than hazelnuts, pecans, or macadamia nuts (all of which are sponsoring their own positive-result studies).  Studies like these are mostly about marketing.

Questions of whether meat is healthy or unhealthy—and, if unhealthy, at what level of intake—are about much more than marketing.   They need to be studied as objectively as possible.  It’s best to keep industry influence far away from such studies.

Even if the science is done well from start to finish, researchers’ ties to food company sponsors give the appearance of conflicted interests.  Such ties are best avoided from the get-go.

Follow-up

Jan 17 2020

Weekend reading: McDonald’s in Black America

Marcia Chatelain.  Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America.  Liveright, 2020.  

I did a blurb for this book, and was happy to do it:

Marcia Chatelain uses the complex interrelationship of black communities with McDonald’s to explore the history of American racism and the struggle for civil rights.   Franchise is an eye-opener for anyone who cares about why diet-related chronic disease is more prevalent in these communities and what it is really like to be black in America.

Here are a few selected excerpts to give you the idea:

The contemporary health crisis among black America—like all of our society’s most pressing problems—has a history.  By unmasking the process of how fast food “became black,” we are able to appreciate the difficult decisions black America has had to make under the stress of racial trauma, political exclusion, and social alienation.  This story is about how capitalism can unify cohorts to serve its interests, even as it dissembles communities…Ultimately, history encourages us to be more compassionate toward individuals navigating few choices, and history cautions us to be far more critical of the institutions and structures that have the power to take choices away (p. 23).

To ignore the positive impacts of franchise networks among communities of color that appreciate their contributions would be shortsighted.  It is equally shortsighted to ignore the government subsidies, civil right organization endorsements, limited community resources, and economic desperation that supports the dubious idea that fast food—and business on the whole—can breathe life into an underdeveloped community (p. 253).

The idea of financially sound black institutions is alluring across the ideological spectrum because it allows white conservatives and liberals alike to claim plausible deniability in their role in supporting systems and politics that maintain racial capitalism (p. 260).

This book is concerned with the reasons that places like Ferguson are more likely to get a fast food restaurant than direct cash aid to the poor, oversight over the police department, or jobs that pay more than $8.60 per hour (p. 263).

This book was reviewed in the New York Times:

“Franchise” is a serious work of history….“History encourages us to be more compassionate toward individuals navigating few choices,” Chatelain writes, “and history cautions us to be far more critical of the institutions and structures that have the power to take choices away.”