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.

The Business Roundtable’s Statement (and see B Corporation Statement below)

The Business Roundtable, an organization of corporations, issued a statement last week—in a two-page advertisement with all the signatures in the Wall Street Journal, no less—that got this New York Times headline: Shareholder Value Is No Longer Everything, Top C.E.O.s Say.

What?  This is some kind of joke, right?

I’ve been arguing for years that the Shareholder Value Movement, which forced corporations to single-mindedly focus on maximizing profits at the expense of every other societal value—attention to the welfare of workers, farm animals, public health, environmental protection—is responsible for just about everything that is wrong with our food system.

Corporations are now saying that they are committing to change that?

The Business Roundtable’s press release says that it is redefining the purpose of corporations to promote an economy that serves all Americans—customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders.   Here is its website with all the commitment info.

Its statement, signed by nearly 200 corporations, commits them to [with my comments]:

• Delivering value to our customers [they aren’t already doing this?].
• Investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them fairly and providing important benefits [this would indeed be a groundbreaking improvement].
• Dealing fairly and ethically with our suppliers [they weren’t doing this either?].
• Supporting the communities in which we work [another excellent idea].
• Generating long-term value for shareholders [isn’t this what they’ve been doing to the detriment of everything else?]

This sounds good, but how do they plan to solve the central dilemma?  How do they intend to pay workers decent wages, improve the communities in which they operate, and stop damaging the environment—and still maximize benefits for shareholders?

No surprise, they don’t say.

Also, as the Times noted,

There was no mention at the Roundtable of curbing executive compensation, a lightning-rod topic when the highest-paid 100 chief executives make 254 times the salary of an employee receiving the median pay at their company. And hardly a week goes by without a major company getting drawn into a contentious political debate. As consumers and employees hold companies to higher ethical standards, big brands increasingly have to defend their positions on worker pay, guns, immigration, President Trump and more.

I looked for food corporations among the signers (sorry if I missed any):

• Aramark
• Bayer (it owns Monsanto)
• Coca-Cola
• Land O’Lakes
• PepsiCo
• Procter & Gamble
• Walmart

This is a small list.  Where, for example, are Mars, Nestlé, and Unilever?

I see this as flat out public relations, a response to increasing public distrust of corporate America and demands for corporate accountability.

If the signers mean business, let’s see them deal with workers’ wages right away.

Otherwise, I’m not holding my breath

The B Corporation Statement

And here’s more.  Sunday’s New York Times carried this advertisement from Certified B Corporations “meeting the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.”

The ad is addressed to Business Rountable CEOs.

We are part of a community of Certified B Corporations who are walking the walk of stakeholder capitalism…We operate with a better model of corporate governance—benefit corporate governance—which gives us, and could give you, a way to combat short-termism and the freedom to make decisions to balance profit and purpose.

Among its food company signers are Ben & Jerry’s, Cabot Creamery Cooperative, Danone North America, King Arthur Flour, Sir Kensington’s, Stonyfield Organic, and Stumptown Coffee (there are others, as well).

I read this as a challenge: if the Business Rountable CEOs are serious about ensuring as B Corporations do, that “the purpose of capitalism is to work for everyone and for the long term,” why don’t they start by becoming B Corporations?

Until they do, the Business Roundtable statement is smoke and mirrors, to distract us from the damage the corporations are doing to our society and to our democratic institutions.

Effect of Montmorency tart cherry juice on cognitive performance in older adults: a randomized controlled trial, Sheau C. Chai,, et al. Food Funct., 2019,10, 4423-4431.

Method: In this randomized controlled trial, 37 adults between the ages of 65–80 with normal cognitive function were recruited and randomly assigned to consume two cups of Montmorency tart cherry juice for 12 weeks.

Results: The within-group analysis showed that the visual sustained attention (p < 0.0001) and spatial working memory (p = 0.06) improved after the 12-week consumption of tart cherry juice compared with corresponding baseline values. Daily tart cherry juice consumption may improve cognitive abilities.

Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that daily intake of Montmorency tart cherry juice may help improve subjective memory and cognitive abilities in older adults as evidenced by increased contentment with memory, improved visual sustained attention and spatial working memory, and reduced movement time and total errors made on new learning tasks in older adults. T

Acknowledgements: The present study was supported by the Cherry Research Committee of the Cherry Marketing Institute, a non-profit organization. Tart cherry concentrates were provided by the Cherry Marketing Institute. Funders had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis or interpretation, or writing of the manuscript.

Comment: I love cherries—a joy of summer—and wouldn’t it be wonderful if eating them was all you had to do to prevent cognitive decline.  Are cherries better than any other fruit or vegetable for this purpose?  This study did not examine that question but eating a healthy diet is always a good idea.  As for funders having no role, they don’t have to.  The mere fact that they funded this study skews the research question, as much evidence demonstrates (I reviewed this evidence in Unsavory Truth).

If you have been reading FoodPolitics.com for long, you know that I love collections of industry newsletter columns on specific topics.  This one is on meal kits.  If you’ve never tried one, these are boxes of ingredients delivered to your door with recipes for what to do with them.

I’m not a user.  I tried two different kinds.   I have to admit that they cooked up into delicious meals.  But, I could not believe the number of bowls and pots I needed to make them, the enormous mess I had to clean up, and the piles of packaging that I had to throw out.

With that said, some of them are doing pretty well, and some are trying new things, according to these articles from FoodNavigator-USA’s terrific writers.

Special Edition: What’s for dinner tonight? The meal kit (r) evolution

Meal kit brands have tapped into a consumer need, but some have struggled to build a viable business model, with subscription based home delivery firms finding it hard to retain customers, and retailers finding it hard to manage shrink on in-store meal kits. The rapid growth of services from GrubHub to UberEats enabling consumers to order pre-prepared food for delivery in 20 minutes without a subscription has also presented consumers with options that didn’t exist when many meal kit brands got started. So where does the market go from here?

• Home Chef: Our instore meal kit business could be bigger than our ecommerce business in pretty short order:  Home Chef meal kits are now available in more than 1,000 Kroger stores targeting the significant subset of consumers that buy into the meal kit concept but don’t want to commit to a subscription, or don’t want to plan meals so far ahead, says Home Chef chief revenue officer Rich DeNardis… Read
• Meal kit co Purple Carrot acquired by Japanese online grocer for $12.8m (with $17.2m to follow if earn-out goals are met):  Plant-based meal kit co Purple Carrot has been sold to Japan’s largest meal kit and organic food delivery service Oisix ra daichi for an upfront payment of $12.8m, with another $17.2m due in 2021 if it achieves unspecified earn-out* goals… Read
• Blue Apron’s stock pops after partnering with Beyond Meat, but can it salvage the company’s stock?  Beleaguered meal kit company Blue Apron’s stock price surged 36% overnight after announcing July 16 that upcoming menus would feature the popular plant-based burger from Beyond Meat, which also saw a 3.6% bump in its stock in the same period… Read
• Chef’d and True Chef meal kits to ‘double if not triple’ retail footprint this year:  True Food Innovations will steam ahead expanding its retail offering of Chef’d and True Chef meal kits this year and will also reveal an exclusive licensing deal with a major CPG brand, its president says… Read
• Sun Basket expands beyond dinner to better reach ‘all people in the US interested in healthy eating’, says CMO:  Meal kit company Sun Basket has expanded its offerings from ready-to-make dinners to an online market of breakfast, lunch, and snack options created in collaboration with partner brands including bone broth and noodle company Nona Lim, fresh pasta brand Tallutos, soy producer Hodo Foods, and Hu Chocolate… Read
• Meal delivery service Veestro shares three strategies for making a startup profitable quickly:  Starting a business is one thing, but making it profitable is another, and one which often requires some trial and error, according to Monica Klausner, the co-founder of the plant-based meal delivery service Veestro… Read
• Sun Basket seals $30m Series E investment ramping up automation, personalization, and healthy meal offerings:  Meal kit service Sun Basket has closed $30m in a Series E investment led by PivotNorth Capital to accelerate its direct-to-consumer business offering AI-powered meal personalization and meal plans from breakfast to dinner… Read
• Blue Apron to trial same-day on demand delivery service in the Bay area:  Blue Apron will pilot a same-day on-demand service in the Bay Area enabling consumers to order meals by noon for delivery the same evening in an ongoing attempt to reach customers that buy into the meal kit concept but don’t necessarily want to commit to a subscription… Read
• Giant Food amps up fresh offer in new store concept: ‘We’re competing with everyone that sells food’:  We’re no longer a nation of pantry stockers. Many Americans don’t know what’s for dinner tonight, never mind next week, and with grocers now competing with everyone from GrubHub to IKEA, is it time for a radical rethink of the traditional supermarket layout as the lines between food retail and food service continue to blur?.. Read
• Instore meal kit sales reached $93m in 2018, says Nielsen:  US sales of in-store meal kits reached $93m in 2018, according to the latest Nielsen data, with 187 new retail meal kit items introduced during the year as high-profile brands sought to reach consumers that like the concept, but don’t want to commit to an online subscription… Read
• eMeals: We’re offering inspiration, curation, and delivery; but you have to chop your own carrots…Preparing delicious healthy home cooked meals every night requires inspiration, time and energy: things most working people are short of, hence, the growth of meal kits. But not everyone can afford them, is comfortable with the amount of packaging they create, or wants to commit to a subscription over the long-term, says Forrest Collier, CEO of meal planning and grocery shopping platform eMeals… Read
• OpenTable hops on mobile food ordering wagon:  Online restaurant reservation company OpenTable is expanding into food delivery and pick-up services by partnering with Caviar, Grubhub, and Uber Eats… Read
• Grubhub’s ‘State of the Plate’ report: Orders of the Impossible Burger up 82% year on year:  Grubhub has seen a significant increase in vegan and plant-based food orders in the past year based on user data of more than 500,000 food orders placed through the mobile app on an average day… Read

I’m indebted to Jerry Hagstrom’s Hagstrom Report for this one.

The People’s Garden on the grounds of the Agriculture Department headquarters, intended by the Obama administration to highlight organic food, has been renamed and reconfigured.

It now features a “Voice of the Farmer” exhibit extolling the virtues of genetically modified alfalfa, corn and soybeans.

This is part of a “Trust in Food” initiative organized by Farm Journal magazine in partnership with its Foundation’s coalition of Big Ag companies.

It will be there until October 2020.

Will this encourage the public to have greater trust in food?  I doubt it.

▪ Agriculture Through the Voice of the Farmer: The Farm Journal Foundation’s website
▪ Trust in Food: A Farm Journal Initiative

The study: Recent Research on the Health Benefits of Blueberries and Their Anthocyanins.   Wilhelmina Kalt, Aedin Cassidy, Luke R Howard, Robert Krikorian, April J Stull, Francois Tremblay,Raul Zamora-Ros.   Advances in Nutrition, nmz065, https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmz065

Abstract conclusion: More evidence, and particularly human clinical evidence, is needed to better understand the potential for anthocyanin-rich blueberries to benefit public health. However, it is widely agreed that the regular consumption of tasty, ripe blueberries can be unconditionally recommended.

Overall conclusion:  It can be safely stated that daily moderate intake (50 mg anthocyanins, one-third cup of blueberries) can mitigate the risk of diseases and conditions of major socioeconomic importance in the Western world.

Funding: The United States Highbush Blueberry Council (USHBC) offered support for this article by providing an honorarium to each author but had no role in the design and conduct of the review.  Author disclosures: AC, LRH, RZ-R, no conflicts of interest. AC acts as an advisor to the USHBC grant committee and has received research support from the USHBC. RK, WK, AJS, and FT have received research funding from the USHBC and have no conflict of interest.

Comment:  This is a literature review.  The USHBC paid the authors to write it.  That makes this article a paid advertisement for blueberries.  Why the authors think they have no conflict of interest in taking the money to write this is beyond me.  We can ask why the USHBC thinks this kind of “study” is needed.  Of course blueberries are recommended.  They are a fruit and all fruits are recommended.  The USHBC wants you to think that blueberries are especially beneficial, but that can be said of any fruit.  Not all fruits have sponsors paying for articles, however.

JOURNALS OF GERONTOLOGY: SPECIAL SECTION: AGING AND BLUEBERRIES (thanks to Bradley Flansbaum for sending)

The papers in this series were supported in one way or another by one or another blueberry trade associations.

• Blue Versus Gray: Potential Health Benefits of Blueberries for Successful Aging.  Donald K Ingram, PhD.  The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Volume 74, Issue 7, July 2019, Pages 965–966. Sponsored by the Wild Blueberry Association of North America.
• Circulating Anthocyanin Metabolites Mediate Vascular Benefits of Blueberries: Insights From Randomized Controlled Trials, Metabolomics, and Nutrigenomics :  Ana Rodriguez-Mateos, et al.  The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Volume 74, Issue 7, July 2019, Pages 967–976. This work was supported by the Medical Research Committee of the University of Düsseldorf (9772574) and by an unrestricted grant from the Wild Blueberry Association of North America. ARM and CH have received unrestricted research grants from the Wild Blueberry Association of North America. The other authors declare no conflicts of interests.
• Blueberries Improve Neuroinflammation and Cognition differentially Depending on Individual Cognitive baseline Status.  Barbara Shukitt-Hale, et al. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Volume 74, Issue 7, July 2019, Pages 977–983.  This research was supported by USDA Intramural funds. The blueberry powder used in this study was provided at no cost under a Material Transfer Agreement between the USDA and the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council (USHBC). 
• Systematic Review of the Effects of Blueberry on Cognitive Performance as We Age .  Sabine Hein, et al. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Volume 74, Issue 7, July 2019, Pages 984–995.This work was supported by an unrestricted grant from the Wild Blueberry Association of North America.
• Polyphenols From Grape and Blueberry Improve Episodic Memory in Healthy Elderly with Lower Level of Memory Performance: A Bicentric Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Study  Julien Bensalem, et al. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Volume 74, Issue 7, July 2019, Pages 996–1007.  This work is part of the Neurophenols project. The specific aims of the program are to characterize and formulate fruit extracts from grape and blueberry and to evaluate their safety and efficacy in pre-clinical and clinical trials. Neurophenols Industry partners, some of which sell ingredients derived from grapes and blueberries, are listed here.

Comment: The introductory paper in this series explains what it is about: “The epidemiological evidence is strong and convincing regarding the health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables to ward off age-related diseases. However, what about individual foods?”  What about them?  I love blueberries but are they really better for older adults than raspberries, strawberries, or peaches, for that matter?  Variety is still a basic principle of nutrition.  Enjoy your fruit bowl.