The World Resources Institute has issued this report.

Here’s what it does:

1.  We encourage countries and companies to adopt the global SDG 12.3 target as their own, measure their  food loss and waste (since what gets measured gets managed), and take action on the hotspots identified. Although simple, this “Target-Measure-Act” approach is proving effective.
2.  We identify a short-list of “to do’s” for each type of actor in the food supply chain. If you don’t know which actions to take, start with this list and go from there.
3.  To scale up the impact and pace of these actor-specific interventions, we recommend 10 interventions that tackle food loss and waste across the entire supply chain, target a handful of food loss and waste hotspots, and help
   set the enabling policy and financial conditions that are necessary for success.

It has a great laundry list of recommendations, some of which we can all do right now.

Others will require systems change.

Food for thought.

A reader, Gema Flores Monreal, who holds a doctorate in Food Science and Nutrition, pointed me to this study.  She noted that it examines the effects on blood pressure of eating 5 to 6 servings of dairy per day, twice what is typically recommended. 

it is easy to understand why a dairy company would want research like this.  People are consuming less dairy food, and the industry wants to reverse the decline.

The study:  Effect of high compared with low dairy intake on blood pressure in overweight middle-aged adults: results of a randomized crossover intervention study.  Rietsema S, and 11 other authors.  Am J Clin Nutr 2019;110:340–348.

Conclusions: “This intervention study shows that an HDD [high dairy diet] results in a reduction of both systolic and diastolic BP [blood pressure] in overweight middleaged men and women. If the results of our study are reproduced by other studies, advice for high dairy intake may be added to treatment and prevention of high BP.”

Funding: “Supported by the Public–Private Partnership Topconsortium voor Kennis en Innovatie (TKI) Agri & Food (TKI-AF-12104).”  FrieslandCampina, a Dutch multinational dairy cooperative, is part of the partnership.  Two of the authors are employed by FrieslandCampina.

Comment: As I discuss in Unsavory Truth, research like this has a high probability of producing biased results.  I’m reserving judgment about dairy foods and blood pressure until results like these are confirmed by independent research.

Nutritionism is a term coined by the Australian sociologist, Gyorgy Scrinis, and popularized by Michael Pollan.  It means reducing the value of a food to its content of specific nutrients.

This General Mills cereal advertisement is a perfect illustration of how nutritionism works.

Here is one of the six examples:

Chocolate Chex has more iron than black beans?

This may be a true statement, but it is misleading.

What General Mills is not saying is:

• Whether  iron is absorbed from Chocolate Chex as efficiently as it is from black beans.
• What nutrients are in black beans that do not appear in Chocolate Chex.
• How much sugar Chocolate Chex provides as compared to black beans.
• Which of these foods is better for your health.

Hence: Nutritionism.

My Twitter feed over the Labor Day weekend was full of messages like this one:

It took me a while to figure out what they were talking about, but eventually I was sent a link to a story in Vice about people who became ill on vegan diets. The article quotes me:

“Most healthy people should be able to adapt to an all-plant diet,” says Marion Nestle, nutritionist, professor, and James Beard Award-winning author. She emphasizes eating a “variety of plant food sources, taking in enough calories to maintain a healthy weight, and finding a good source of vitamin B12.”

The article describes the health problems reported by some followers of vegan diets.  It quotes me again:

Nestle notes these problems are more associated with “starvation” than a standard plant-based diet, which “should not cause people to lose weight or have any of those issues.” However, Nestle adds that a diet high in fibrous plants can take time to adapt to, and people who have been advised to eat a low-fiber diet “will have problems eating a wide enough variety of plant foods to meet nutrient needs.” In other words, many of these influencers may be masking disordered eating habits that are unsustainable.

So, in answer to the tweets:

• I am an omnivore.
• I do not endorse vegan or any other kind of diet.
• I believe that many widely different dietary patterns can support good health.
• It is possible, but not always easy, to eat healthfully on a vegan diet.

Healthy diets generally contain a wide variety of relatively unprocessed foods in adequate but not excessive amounts.

There are lots of good ways of doing this.  Enjoy!

I particularly like this poster celebrating Labor Day in 2014.

Let’s honor, protect, and pay the people who harvest our vegetables, slaughter our meat, and prepare our food.

The New York Times carried a plea this week for more attention to food and nutrition policy from presidential candidates.

Civil Eats is tracking what they are saying.

So is Jerry Hagstrom, who has given permission to re-post these links from his Hagstrom Report, a daily newsletter about “agriculture news as it happens,” to which I gratefully subscribe (the Washington Post just ran a story about him).

Hagstrom collected agricultural position statements posted by candidates in Iowa.

▪ Joe Biden — The Biden Plan for Rural America
▪ Pete Buttigieg — A Commitment to America’s Heartland: Unleashing the Potential of Rural America
▪ — Securing a Healthy Future for Rural America
▪ John Delaney — Heartland Fair Deal
▪ Kirsten Gillibrand — Rebuilding Rural America for Our Future
▪ Kamala Harris (video) — Kamala Harris answers question on Rural America, July 4, 2019, Indianola, Iowa
▪ Amy Klobuchar — Plan from the Heartland: Strengthening our Agricultural and Rural Communities
▪ Tim Ryan — Improving Our Agriculture and Food System
▪ Bernie Sanders — Revitalizing Rural America
▪ Elizabeth Warren — My Plan to Invest in Rural America
▪ — The Farm Economy
▪ Donald Trump — Land and Agriculture: President Donald J. Trump Achievements

Videos of all the “soapbox” speeches, In alphabetical order

▪ Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.
▪ Former Vice President Joe Biden
▪ Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.
▪ Montana Gov. Steve Bullock
▪ South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg
▪ Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro
▪ New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio
▪ Former Rep. John Delaney, D-Md.
▪ Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii
▪ Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.
▪ Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.
▪ Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper — Withdrew from race Thursday
▪ Washington Gov. Jay Inslee
▪ Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
▪ Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass.
▪ Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio
▪ Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt.
▪ Former Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa.
▪ Hedge fund manager and activist Tom Steyer
▪ Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
▪ Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, Republican
▪ Author Marianne Williamson
▪ Entrepreneur Andrew Yang

I ran across an interview with the chef José Andres in Departures, the luxury goods magazine.  Sprinkled among the ads for things I can’t imagine ever buying is a Q and A with Andres who, in addition to running a lot of restaurants, founded World Central Kitchen to feed people hit by disasters.

Adam Sachs asked the questions.  Here is the one that got my attention.

Q:   If you could change one thing in the American food system, what would it be?

JA:   First, we need to diversify the crops the government supports through subsidies.  We need to help small farmers across America grow more fruit, more vegetables.  And then put those fruits and vegetables into the school-lunch program and hire more veterans and train them to be cooks and work in those school kitchens, one rural school at a time, so that we are employing our veterans, giving our children better nutrition, which leads to better studies and a better future in the process.  Right now we are investing in subsidies that go to just a few grains like corn.  It’s making America unhealthy, and it’s making America less safe, because without a diversity of crops one day we will have a big problem with our food production.

The entire interview is worth a read.

I’m an Andres fan.

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, explains in The Atlantic Why It’s Immigrants Who Pack Your Meat.

You really should read the whole thing.  It’s a powerful indictment.  Here are a few excerpts. 

• The immigration raid last week at seven poultry plants in rural Mississippi was a perfect symbol of the Trump administration’s racism, lies, hypocrisy, and contempt for the poor. It was also a case study in how an industry with a long history of defying the law has managed to shift the blame and punishment onto workers.
• What Trump has described as an immigrant “invasion” was actually a corporate recruitment drive for poor, vulnerable, undocumented, often desperate workers.
• The immigrant workers arrested in Mississippi the other day were earning about $12.50 an hour. Adjusted for inflation, during the late 1970s, the wages of meatpacking workers in Iowa and Colorado were about $50 an hour.
• Over the years, I’ve spent time with countless farmworkers and meatpacking workers who entered the United States without proper documentation. Almost all of them were hardworking and deeply religious. They had taken enormous risks and suffered great hardships on behalf of their families. Today workers like them are the bedrock of our food system. And they are now being scapegoated, hunted down, and terrorized at the direction of a president who inherited about $400 million from his father, watches television all day, and employs undocumented immigrants at his golf resorts.