Oats do not typically contain gluten, the protein that produces toxic symptoms in people with Celiac Disease.  They do, however, contain a protein that may trouble some people with the disease, but the real problem is that they are often produced in places that also produce products containing wheat, or other grains that do have gluten.

Thus, I was interested to receive the following email from Stephanie Laverone, who describes herself as someone with Celiac Disease.  At my request, she gave permission to reprint what she sent me.

She sent me a link to a published commentary, Oat Consumption by Celiac Disease Patients: Outcomes Range from Harmful to Beneficial, Depending on the Purity of the Oats.  

In the conclusion, the authors explain that oats can benefit or harm people with Celiac Disease, but say that

The outcome appears dependent on the purity of the oats consumed. ..Regardless though, adding oats deemed GF [gluten-free] by these new high standards to CD [Celiac Disease] patient diets, may safely provide the benefit of broader dietary options, leading to improved GFD [gluten-free diet] adherence and quality of life, while bolstering nutritional deficiencies and potentially aiding heart health.

The authors’ Acknowledgment states:

Both authors are salaried employees of PepsiCo Inc. or Quaker Foods and Snacks (QFS), a subsidiary of PepsiCo Inc., which funded this research. QFS has a commercial interest in gluten-free foods. The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of PepsiCo Inc.

Ms. Laverone writes (I’ve done some light editing for emphasis):

Gluten Free Oats are controversial in the Celiac Disease community. There is a question of potential cross-reactivity to proteins found in oats that is further complicated by the high rate of cross-contamination of oats by gluten-containing grains.

There are two categories of gluten-free oats currently sold in the US: purity protocol and mechanically/optically sorted. Purity protocol oats are generally considered to be gluten free from field to store while mechanical/optical sorting involves the removal of gluten-containing grains during the processing stage.

Quaker Oats’ Gluten-Free Oats are mechanically/optically sorted (How does Quaker make Gluten Free Oats?).

It is obviously advantageous for Quaker Oats if:

(1) Safe consumption of GF oats by people with Celiac Disease simply relies on gluten testing, and

(2) Mechanically/optically sorted oats test positive for 20+ ppm of gluten less frequently than purity protocol oats, as implied by the final column of the table on the second page [of the Quaker Oats document].

Quaker Oats’ cereals may well be gluten-free.  Let’s hope so.

Gluten intolerance may be controversial—do people who think they are intolerant to gluten, really have problems with it?—but for people with Celiac Disease there is no controversy whatsoever.  Such people must avoid gluten.  Full stop.

What raises a red flag for me is the website statement, “As is always the case, the…safety of our consumers is our number one priority.”

Why the red flag?  That’s what they all say.

As Stephanie Laverone understood, this is another troubling example of the issues that arise from industry-funded research and, in this case, opinion.

Caveat emptor.

Timothy D.  Lytton.  Outbreak: Foodborne Illness and the Evolving Food Safety System.  University of Chicago Press, 2019.

I did a blurb for this one:

In Outbreak, Lytton gives us a legal scholar’s superb analysis of how government, lawyers, and civil society are struggling to prevent the tragic and unnecessary illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths caused by microbial food contaminants.   Foodborne illness may seem like an intractable problem, but Lytton’s suggestions for dealing with it are well worth attention, as is everything else in this beautifully written, thoughtful, and readable account.  I couldn’t put it down.

Food safety attorney Bill Marler reviewed it for Food Safety News.

Lytton said his goal was to help readers understand the science, practicality, liability, enforcement and self-monitoring measures necessary to achieve higher levels of food safety. Meeting that goal includes helping readers understand the following:

• Why government spends so much more money justifying food safety regulations than evaluating whether they actually work.
• The need for greater experimentation in food safety regulation.
• Improving private third-party food safety auditing through greater liability exposure for negligent auditing.
• The potential for liability and recall insurance to improve food safety.
• The history of third-party food safety auditing (which goes back much earlier than AIB in the 1920s).
• The litigation dynamics of food safety lawsuits.

I was in Beijing a couple of weeks ago and did a supermarket tour.

Here’s my favorite souvenir:

Nestlé (no relation) markets to children, apparently.

I regret being unable to read the nutrition information, but this looks like a standard sugary breakfast cereal, chocolate-flavored.

I’m told this would be considered a snack food, not a breakfast food.

Translation, anyone?

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I hear things like this.  According to a report from the Associated Press, the FDA plans to follow the Trump administration’s deregulaory agenda by getting rid of the standard of identity rules for frozen cherry pies.

The rules currently require commercial frozen cherry pies to be filled with “mature, pitted, stemmed cherries that are fresh, frozen, and/or canned,” to contain at least 25% cherries by weight, and to have no more than 15% of the cherries with blemishes.

In October, then-FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb sent out this tweet.

In a June email, the FDA said it planned to revoke the standard for frozen cherry pies in April. It has kept its word.

My questions:

• Without the standard of identity, are we likely to have more or fewer cherries in frozen cherry pie?  [Want to make a bet?  I’m guessing fewer].
• What lobbying group got the FDA to do this, and why did the FDA agree?
• Did ex-Commissioner Gottlieb really consider this a top priority for FDA? [If so, we are in even worse trouble than even I imagined].

I’m stuck on regulatory priority.  Food safety, anyone?

As for the origins of the cherry pie count, see this excellent piece in the Washington Post by historian Xaq Frohlich.

The New York Times writes about the tragedy of Wisconsin dairy farms.

Over the past two years, nearly 1,200 of the state’s dairy farms have stopped milking cows and so far this year, another 212 have disappeared, with many shifting production to beef or vegetables. The total number of herds in Wisconsin is now below 8,000 — about half as many as 15 years ago. In 2018, 49 Wisconsin farms filed for bankruptcy — the highest of any state in the country, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

It explains this as the result of “The rise of corporate farms and more efficient milking processes have led to an oversupply as consumption of milk has waned nationally.”

What’s going on with dairy farming is astonishingly poor policy, especially for small farmers who are now a deeply endangered species.

How to explain?  Bad policy.

In what other industry would you find producers continuing to ramp up production while demand slides, and then stuffing the growing pile of surplus into warehouses, hoping the federal government will buy some of it?

• The current dairy production support system favors Big Dairy.
• Government subsidies encourage dairy farmers to produce more milk.  Large producers get more subsidies than small ones.
• Large producers produce more milk.
• Milk production is up.
• Milk consumption is down (but not because of vegan ideology).
• Milk surpluses get converted to cheese.

The result: The government is now stockpiling 1.4 billion pounds of cheese.

Should dairy farmers go back to a system of restricting production the way they do in Canada?

One thing is for sure.  If we want local dairy farms to survive, we have to find a way to pay dairy farmers as much or more than it costs them to produce.

Serious policy thinking, anyone?

To launch the Portuguese translation of Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, I am going to Brazil.

I’ve posted details under Appearances.  Other details are here.

And here’s the overall schedule.

Press reports:

• O GLOBO (RIO DE JANEIRO)
• ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO  
• FOLHA DE SÃO PAULO

Sandro Galea.  Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health.  Oxford University Press, 2019.

I blurbed this one:

A superb account of how money, power, politics, and the luck of the draw affect the health of individuals and populations. It should inspire us all to follow Galea in championing public health as an essential public good, and in treasuring and preserving the core values of public health—fairness, justice, and compassion for all.

Galea is the dean of the school of public health at Boston University and a prolific writer on public health topics, including food on occasion.  I am a big fan of his work.  I like his focus on social, economic, and environmental determinants of health and his consistent promotion of the core values of public health.  If you don’t really get what public health is about, this book is a great place to start.

Here is a brief sample from the chapter titled “Choice.”

We imagine our choices to be, for the most part, beyond the reach of outside influence and that, when we choose, we do so from an unlimited array of options; no one tells us what to eat, whether or not we are permitted to exercise, or who we must embrace as a life partner.  For this reason, much of our conversation about health has to do with “lifestyle”—making the correct choices for ourselves, choices which, we believe, will lead to better health.

…Yes, we can choose the food we eat, but our options are limited by what we can afford and by what kinds of food are available for purchase near our home.  These factors, in turn, depend on the quality of our neighborhood and the size of our income, which depends on larger socioeconomic forces over which we have little control.  Likewise, we can only choose to exercise if we live near parks, walkable streets, or athletic facilities, and we can only choose a person to marry from among the individuals we encounter within our community.  Place, power, money, politics, and people—all the forces we discuss in this book—shape the variables that ultimately influence our health.

This is BeverageDaily.com’s monthly beer special, from the industry’s point of view.  If you don’t think of beer as an industry, think again.

• Flexible, diverse breweries are the way forward for small craft: The craft beer industry is navigating a more mature growth pattern in 2019: a theme that was explored at the 36th annual Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) in Denver… Read
• Outdoor clothing brand Patagonia sues Anheuser-Busch over ‘copycat’ beer brand: Outdoor clothing and gear brand Patagonia, Inc has filed a lawsuit against Anheuser-Busch: accusing the beer giant of ‘attempting to copy Patagonia’s famous brand identity’ with its Patagonia beer brand… Read
• Constellation Brands: ‘2019 sees a monumental shift for Corona as it expands into a more comprehensive beer family’:  Constellation Brands is expanding its core Corona brand with new launches that appeal to a wider range of consumers and occasions – including the nationwide US rollout this month of premium alcohol-spiked refresher Corona Refresca… Read
• ‘Probably not the best beer in the world – so we’ve changed it’: Carlsberg challenges drinkers to reappraise its beer: Carlsberg is relaunching in the UK with a rebrewed lager, accompanied by ‘its most honest consumer campaign ever’. Will its relaunch be able to shake up the mainstream – and can it encourage a new generation of drinkers to re-appraise its beer?.. Read
• US craft beer has settled into a ‘more mature growth pattern’: The Brewers Association (BA) released its annual growth report this week: showing craft brewery volumes have increased by 4% and now account for 13.2% of the US beer market… Read
• Samuel Adams Summer Ale gets first recipe change in 23 years: US brewer Samuel ‘Sam’ Adams has updated the formula of its seasonal favorite Summer Ale with ‘lighter and brighter’ flavors… Read
• New Zealand boasts more breweries per capita than the US, UK and Australia:  New Zealand now has more breweries on a per capita basis than the US, UK and Australia: creating a $2.3bn ($1.6bn USD) industry. And there’s still plenty of room to grow: “Highlighting our home-grown ingredients and locally produced products will go a long way to boost the overall New Zealand beer brand,” says The Brewers Association of New Zealand… Read
• Reshaping beer: Better labels, advanced branding tech and new bottle formats: Beer packaging has been a ‘sea of sameness’ for decades, according to glass container manufacturer O-I. Traditional amber glass bottles and aluminum cans covered in paper labels has been the norm, but the time may be ripe for a major change… Read
• Craft beer trends: ‘Huge growth’ in lower alcohol brews and beer in cans: The UK craft beer market is seeing ‘huge growth’ in cans and no & low alcohol beers, according to online craft beer distribution marketplace EeBriaTrade… Read
• Guinness stops using plastic packaging with its beer: Diageo’s beer brands will replace plastic ring carriers and shrink wrap with recyclable and biodegradable cardboard: the equivalent of removing 40 million plastic bottles from the world… Read
• Zero hero? Heineken wants no-alcohol beer to rival Coke in Singapore following Europe sales boom: Heineken’s new zero-alcohol beer Heineken 0.0 is the brand’s pioneering foray into the Low and No Alcohol (LNA) category in Singapore, with the firm targeting availability in locations such as salad bars, gyms and offices as it seeks to rival soft drinks giants such as Coca-Cola… Read
• Suntory Beer installs 3D printing technology to print images on beer: Suntory Beer has partnered with Ripples to roll out 700 Ripple Maker PM devices to print 3D images, emojis and messages onto beer… Read
• BrewDog acquires Berlin brewery and taproom from Stone Brewing: Scottish craft brewer BrewDog is acquiring Stone Brewing’s brewery and taproom in Berlin. It has also announced the latest round of Equity for Punks to fund its plans for a brewery in China and craft beer hotel in London… Read
• Lion acquires Magic Rock Brewing: Australian beer and beverage company Lion has acquired 100% of UK craft brewer Magic Rock Brewing Company, as it seeks to become ‘a key player’ in the UK craft market… Read
• Dunkin’ releases second beer innovation with Harpoon Brewery: Last fall Dunkin’ announced a limited edition partnership with Harpoon Brewery for its first-ever beer, the Harpoon Dunkin’ Coffee Porter. The two have teamed up again for a warm weather brew, the Harpoon Dunkin’ Summer Coffee Pale Ale. Dunkin’ also recently expanded its Signature Latte line with three permanent flavors… Read

And, thanks to reader Polly Adema, here is one more:

• Beer as a wellness beverage?  The mind boggles.