Happiest of holiday seasons to readers near and far!

I have a book manuscript due the first week in January and need to focus on getting it done.

My holiday wish for me:

Except for an occasional holiday greeting, I won’t be posting anything new until sometime that week.

I wish you the warmest, least stressful, and most joyous holidays!

And happiest of new year’s greetings to you all.  May it be a good one (we can and must hope).

Aaron S. Gross, Jody Myers, and Jordan D. Rosenblum.  Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food.  New York University Press, 2020. 

This book comes with heavy-duty endorsements: a Foreword by Hasia Diner, and an Afterword by Jonathan Safran Foer.

I was interested to read it and did a blurb for it.

Feasting and Fasting is a fascinating account of the history of Jewish food, within and outside of dietary laws.   The authors engage in Talmudic debates about how specific foods and diets as a whole do or do not define Jewish identity.  Crisco is for Jews?  Peanut oil caused such debates?  Who knew.  This book is a great read.

What to quote?  So many choices.  Here’s a snippet from Jordan Rosenblum’s chapter on Jews and garlic:

After the Exodus from Egypt, when the Israelites wandered in the desert, they grew tired of eating only manna.  Comparing the varied diet that they ate as slaves in Egypt to the unvaried diet that they now enjoyed as free women and men, a few troublemakers complained: “The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, “If only we had meat to eat!  We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.”

This, as it turns out, is the only mention of garlic in the Hebrew Bible.  In this chapter,

we shall briefly explore the historical association between Jews and garlic that develops over the next three millennia.  In doing so, we shall see how garlic eventually functions both internally (by Jews) and externally (by non-Jews) as a symbol that represents Self and Other—or, in the terminology favored in anthropology and food studies, how garlic operates as a metanym for Jews.

Pet food continues to be an ongoing source of news, and pet food politics an ongoing source of interest:

• The FDA reports and classifies pet food recalls on a dedicated website.  There have only been a few recalls recently, but for the big picture, check the recall archive.
• US pet spending grew at double rate of household income.  Pet owners in the United States spent US$87 billion on pets in 2018, up from 2013’s US$57.8 billion according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey of Consumer Finances data analyzed by MagnifyMoney.
• Blog: 2020 outlook: Top human food trends, insights for pet food: Debbie Phillips-Donaldson, editor of Pet Food Industry: Pet food in 2020 and beyond can look to human food trends like storytelling, sustainability and ones focused on ingredients and customization.
• 35 lawsuits combine over Hill’s vitamin D dog food recall:  A Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated 35 lawsuits against Hill’s Pet Nutrition into a single federal legal action.
• Pet Food Processing is another useful source of news and information.

Comment: My book with Malden Nesheim, Feed Your Pet Right, is actually an analysis of the pet food industry.  It came out in 2010 but holds up pretty well, I think, as a means for understanding recent events in pet food politics.

Really?  Camel’s milk?  I am indebted to DairyReporter.com for a review of research on the health benefits of camel’s milk.

According to this overview, camel’s milk can

• Prevent colorectal cancer
• Reduce cellular inflammation due to diabetes
• Cures autism
• Enhances immunity
• Cures hepatitis
• Prevents food allergies

A miracle food?

Alas, the article explains, most of these studies were performed in mice or published in journals unlikely to be rigorously peer reviewed.

What can I tell you about the nutritional quality of camel’s milk?

Unfortunately, the USDA’s food composition data base does not have an entry for camel’s milk.  What looks like a reasonable review of the nutritional value of camel’s milk (which you can download from this site) suggests that there are differences in nutrient composition between cow’s and camel’s milks, but the differences are small.  Because the proteins differ, people sensitive or allergic to cow’s milk will have an easier time consuming camel’s milk.

The big issue with camel’s milk in the United States is that it is not pasteurized.  Raw milk carries a greater food safety risk than pasteurized milk.

The FDA also has issued a warning against unproven claims that camel milk prevents autism.

I’m not seeing any particular health benefits from drinking camel milk other than avoiding allergic reactions to cow’s milk.

If you insist on drinking it, make sure it comes from a producer who diligently tests it for pathogens.

The election in the UK last week means that plans for Brexit will go forward (although the how and when are a wait-and-see).

I have been curious to know how Brexit would affect the UK’s food and agriculture systems.  A quick search turned up a Parliament briefing paper: “Brexit: Trade issues for food and agriculture.”

Its summary mentions these issues:

• Only 61% of the food eaten in the UK is produced in the UK.  Of imported food, 70% comes from the EU.
• The UK exported £22 billion in food, feed, and drink in 2018; two-thirds of that is exported to the EU.
• Trade between EU members is tariff-free.  A UK-EU free trade agreement will have to be negotiated.
• To continue trading with the EU, the UK would have to demonstrate compliance with EU food and safety standards.
• UK exports might have to undergo additional animal and plant health checks at UK-EU borders.

Other sources mention additional issues:

• The loss of EU funding for UK farming and rural communities development (this amounted to more than €26 billion from 2014-2020).
• The loss of food and farming businesses and jobs
• Weakened food regulations
• Food shortages

There may be an upside, but I had to dig to find anyone hopeful of a silver lining.

The UK has an unprecedented opportunity, in the context of Brexit, to equip its food system to withstand these challenges, but the transition will need to be managed carefully. Any reconfiguration will first need to understand and take account of what citizens and consumers value most about the food system. Second, a UK-wide and cross-government approach will be necessary to foster a holistic, profitable, healthy and sustainable food system for all.

I saw this tweet from Washington Post columnist Tamar Haspel:

I took the bait.

Science Daily summarized the study.

Incorporating 2-3 serves (250g) of fresh lean pork each week, the Mediterranean-Pork (Med-Pork) diet delivers cognitive benefits, while also catering to Western tastes, and ensuring much lower greenhouse-gas emissions than beef production.

Since the article gave the name of the lead author, Alexandra Wade, and the name of the study, MedPork, I had no trouble finding the actual study.

The study:  A Mediterranean Diet with Fresh, Lean Pork Improves Processing Speed and Mood: Cognitive Findings from the MedPork Randomised Controlled Trial.  Wade A, et al.  Nutrients 2019, 11, 1521; doi:10.3390/nu11071521.

Conclusion: “Compared to LF [low-fat diet], the MedPork intervention led to higher processing speed performance (p = 0.01) and emotional role functioning (p = 0.03).”

Funding: “This study was funded by the Pork Cooperative Research Centre (#3B-113). The Pork CRC had no role in the study design, implementation, analysis or interpretation of data. Acknowledgments…We would also like to acknowledge the following organisations for their generous contributions: Almond Board of Australia for the donation of almonds; Cobram Estate for the donation of Australian extra virgin olive oil; and Simplot Australia Pty Ltd. for the donation of legumes, tuna and salmon.”

Comment:  This study was so obviously industry-funded that Haspel could tell without even looking at it (the Science Daily article did not mention the funder—it should have).  What these investigators did was to add a bit more than half a pound of pork a week to an otherwise healthful diet; They found that people like this diet better than one that is low-fat.  Why would anyone do a study like this?  I can think of only one reason: to give pork a health aura so you will eat more of it, obviously.

Addition

A reader points out that this is not Wade et al’s only sponsored study.  Here are some  others:

• A Mediterranean Diet with Fresh, Lean Pork Improves Processing Speed and Mood: Cognitive Findings from the MedPork Randomised Controlled Trial.  Wade AT, Davis CR, Dyer KA, Hodgson JM, Woodman RJ, Keage HAD, Murphy KJ.  Nutrients. 2019 Jul 4;11(7). pii: E1521. doi: 10.3390/nu11071521. Sponsor: Pork Cooperative Research Centre
• A Mediterranean Diet to Improve Cardiovascular and Cognitive Health: Protocol for a Randomised Controlled Intervention Study.  Wade AT, Davis CR, Dyer KA, Hodgson JM, Woodman RJ, Keage HA, Murphy KJ.  Nutrients. 2017 Feb 16;9(2). pii: E145. doi: 10.3390/nu9020145.  Sponsor: Dairy Australia.
• Including pork in the Mediterranean diet for an Australian population: Protocol for a randomised controlled trial assessing cardiovascular risk and cognitive function.  Wade AT, Davis CR, Dyer KA, Hodgson JM, Woodman RJ, Keage HAD, Murphy KJ.  Nutr J. 2017 Dec 22;16(1):84. doi: 10.1186/s12937-017-0306-x.  Sponsor: Pork Cooperative Research Council
• A Mediterranean diet supplemented with dairy foods improves markers of cardiovascular risk: results from the MedDairy randomized controlled trial.  Wade AT, Davis CR, Dyer KA, Hodgson JM, Woodman RJ, Murphy KJ.  Am J Clin Nutr. 2018 Dec 1;108(6):1166-1182. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/nqy207.  Sponsor: Dairy Australia Effects of Mediterranean diet supplemented with lean pork on blood pressure and markers of cardiovascular risk: findings from the MedPork trial.  Wade AT, Davis CR, Dyer KA, Hodgson JM, Woodman RJ, Murphy KJ.  Br J Nutr. 2019 Oct 28;122(8):873-883. doi: 10.1017/S0007114519001168. Epub 2019 Sep 23.  Sponsor: Pork Cooperative
  Research Centre.