The headline in The Guardian: UK children shorter, fatter and sicker amid poor diet and poverty, report finds.

Here’s the report.

It’s principal findings:

• The height of 5 year olds has been falling since 2013.
• Obesity among 10-11 year olds has increased by 30% since 2006.
• Type 2 diabetes among under 25s has increased by 22% in the past 5 years.
• Babies born today will enjoy a year less good health than babies born a decade ago.

As it says in the introduction,

Crucially, the report not only highlights a deeply worrying increase in conditions driven by calorie dense diets such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, but also highlights the equally concerning and substantially less talked about results of poor-quality diets and undernutrition….All children should be able to eat in way that fuels their bodies and minds, giving them sufficient calories and nutrients to be free from hunger and diseases of nutritional deficiency, while being protected from the bombardment of ultra-processed, highly sugary and salty foods that most often contribute to excess calorie intake but lack vitamins, minerals, fibre, healthy fats and quality protein.

Comment

I’m guessing if a similar study were to be done in the United States, its results would be similar.  Children are the future of our nation and society; they deserve good health and protection against junk food.

I saw this one in a newsletter:

Ashwagandha intake linked to memory and attention benefits: Acute and repeated supplementation with liposomal ashwagandha may boost select cognitive effects, including memory, attention, vigilance and reaction time in healthy adults, says a new study…. Read more

The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements says

Several randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials, most of them fairly small in size and of short duration, have found that ashwagandha may reduce perceived stress and anxiety and improve the quality and duration of sleep [6,7,31]. Because studies have used various ashwagandha preparations (with different extraction and standardization processes) and doses, it is difficult to identify specific extracts or recommended amounts [6,32]…In addition, ashwagandha may have potential adverse effects on the liver and thyroid and might not be safe for people with prostate cancer or those who are pregnant or nursing.

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health says:

• Research shows that some ashwagandha preparations may be effective for insomnia and stress. However, evidence is unclear about its effects on anxiety.
• There is some limited evidence that suggests that taking ashwagandha for 2 to 4 months may increase testosterone levels and sperm quality.
• There isn’t enough evidence to determine if ashwagandha is helpful for any other health conditions, such as asthma, athletic performance, cognitive function, diabetes, menopause, and female infertility.
• There is not enough high-quality evidence suggesting that ashwagandha is helpful in treating COVID-19.

When it comes to supplements, evidence is not the issue.  Belief is what matters.  The mere suggestion that a supplement might work is all it takes to convince people to buy it.  And if nothing else, supplements have powerful placebo effects.  We could all use some of those these days.

The USDA has just summarized its accomplishments with respect to food and nutrition assisttance since the pandemic.  It’s an impressive list.

The report has loads of enlightening charts.  This one shows the substantial increase in spending on food assistance over the years, and recently.

This report has the advantage of putting everything in one place.

This report uses preliminary data from USDA, Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) to examine program trends and policy changes in USDA’s largest domestic food and nutrition assistance programs through FY 2023. It also summarizes two 2023 USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) reports including one that examines the prevalence of household food insecurity in the United States in 2022 and another that documents the share of households with school-aged children reporting difficulty paying for expenses after pandemic waivers allowing schools to serve free meals expired in 2022.

If you want to understand why food assistance is anything but a bipartisan issue, the facts and figures here tell the story.  I’m glad to have this one.

If you haven’t been worried about microplastics in your body, perhaps this study will get your attention.

Here’s the abstract:

Its alarming conclusion:

The detection of MPs in penile tissue raises inquiries on the ramifications of environmental pollutants on sexual health.
Our research adds a key dimension to the discussion on man-made pollutants, focusing on MPs in the male reproductive system.

Everyone is worried about the decline in male sperm counts.  Could endocrine disrupting plastics be a cause?  If so, it’s time to get serious about cleaning them up and not producing more.

This is a big personal loss.  I met Narsai David—chef, host, raconteur, radio personality, philanthropist, theater lover, friend—in 1955 when we lived at the student co-ops at Berkeley.  These required 5 hours of work a week, and I did mine peeling potatoes under Narsai’s supervision at the co-op central kitchen.

We stayed in touch over the years, sometimes memorably, as when we were both filmed with Craig Claiborne and Frank Blair for the KQED show, Over Easy in 1980 or so (that’s me on the right).

And then there was the 1997 Oldways trip to Crete where Narsai whipped off breads for the hundred or so guests lucky enough to be at that dinner.

He was the most extraordinarily generous person, quietly contributing to food, co-op, theater, and I’m sure other groups throughout the Bay Area.  He was on my list for people to see every time I was out there, sometime appearing on his radio show, and sometimes invited to his and Veni’s home for warm and gracious evenings.

We were friends for more than 60 years, it shocks me to realize.  I’m so saddened by his loss.

The California Table Grape Commission funds lots of research for an explicit purpose: “to help discover how and why grapes are beneficial to health.”

It lengthy list of funded projects is here.  Published studies are here.

You want to do one of these studies?  Let them know here.

Grape research is conducted using a freeze-dried table grape powder, designed to facilitate reproducible data and to provide researchers with a grape sample that is available year-round. Additionally, a grape powder placebo is made available.

Comment: If you want funding, you need to design your study to show benefits.  The Commission is unlikely to risk funding proposals unlikely to show benefits.  [Thanks to David Michaels for sending this one].

And Charles Platkin sent me the press release for one of the Commission’s funded studies: Hu, W., Zheng, R., Feng, Y., Tan, D., Chung-Tsing, G.C., Su, X., and Kim, J.E. (2023). Impacts of regular consumption of grapes on macular pigment accumulation in Singapore older adults: a randomized, controlled trial. Food Funct. 14, 8321-8330. Doi: 10.1039/d3fo02105j.  The abstract is here.

Conclusions: Regular intake of grapes may improve eye health in Singapore older adults, specifically in augmenting MPOD, which can be explained by an increase in plasma total antioxidant capacity and phenolic content, and the downregulation of AGEs.

I’m all for eating grapes and every other fruit.  Does one kind of fruit have more substantial effects on health than any other?  The study did not compare grapes to any other fruit; it just looked at the benefits of grapes.

I’m guessing lots of other fruits will do the same.

The moral: eat a variety of fruits and vegetables.  And be skeptical about the importance of studies like this.

[Oops.  This one did not get sent out, apparently.  Hope it works this time].

*****

The current bird flu pandemic is a huge worry, because the current strain, H5N1, is highly pathogenic .

Although there have only been 4 reported cases in humans since 2022, the strain has infected:

• Nearly 100 million chickens .
• 101 herds of dairy cattle.
• Some number of cats

The CDC says: “Mammals can be infected with H5N1 bird flu viruses when they eat infected birds, poultry, or other animals and/or if they are exposed to environments contaminated with virus. Spread of H5N1 bird flu viruses from mammal to mammal is thought to be rare, but possible.”

Oh great.

The epidemiological fear, of course, is the more cattle affected, the more the virus can mutate (sound familiar?).

the personal fear is that the milk supply might contain active viruses.  Untreated milk does, and lots.

But the NIH says tests show that the virus is destroyed by standard Pasteurization methods.

The FDA says (as it always has): do not drink raw milk.

This seems like especially good advice at the moment.

I’m going to be tracking this closely.  Stay tuned.

Resources

• USDA’s home page for bird flu in livestock.
• USDA’s home page for detections of bird flu.
• CDC’s bird flu current situation page.
• CDC’s dairy herd situation page.

Also

The industry-fun Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) is doing a webinar , Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) and Its Impact on Food Production Industries.” June 24 at 1 PM CST. Register for it here.

This is a report from the WHO Regional Office for Europe: Commercial determinants of noncommunicable diseases in the WHO European Region.  

This report describes how i”7500 deaths per day in the Region are attributed to commercial determinants, such as tobacco, alcohol, processed food, fossil fuels and occupational practices. These commercial products and practices contribute to 25% of all deaths in the Region.

These industries, says WHO, “glamourize and normalize the use of harmful products, including harmful ones often targeting children and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups and others.”

Overall, it documents how these industries use their market power to:

• Maintain monopolistic positions, extend product lines into new sectors, and manipulate pricing
• Engage in political practices to prevent, weaken, and delay public health regulations
• Influence scientific research and public understanding of health issues to favour their commercial interests
• Use CSR [corporate social responsibility] initiatives to improve their public image and gain influence
• Avoid taxes, shift profits to tax havens
• Use financial strategies to deprive governments of revenues needed to fund public health.
• Use laws to oppose policies aimed at addressing the NCD burden
• exploit crises and emergencies to advance their commercial interests

In other words, this report describes how industries use the “playbook” to advance their interests.

While specific to Europe, its findings and recommendations are widely generalizable.

And the report gives plenty of references for everything it reports and recommends.