The food industry is intensely interested in personalized nutrition because it can create and sell products appeared to be aimed directly at individual lifestyles and preferences.

This approach is aimed much more at marketing than it is about public health.

With that said, take a look at how the food industry is using this idea.

Special Edition: Personalized Nutrition

The future is personal, but the revolution is already taking place around us. Innovative science is combining with entrepreneurial endeavor to bring personalized nutrition to our fingertips.

Personalized nutrition is breaking down the silos and bringing together experts in genetics and genomic profiling, microbiology, nutrition and diet, mobile technology, big data, healthcare and more.

In this special edition we talk to the pioneers and experts in this sector, the scientists and the emerging brands, and the tech developers bringing the personalized nutrition future to the present day.

• Personalized nutrition approaches helping to drive evolution of supplement retailing: Personalized nutrition is being folded into the ongoing evolution of retailing in the dietary supplement space, market experts say… Read
• Research backs personalized nutrition process, even if data on customized products lacks, expert says: While personalized nutrition proponents like to push the benefits of the approach, there is little research that backs the notion that products customized for individual consumers lead to better health outcomes than do more generic formulas. But that misses the point, said one expert… Read
• Persona CEO: ‘Chase the shiny new technology that has a big price tag – that’s not always the best solution’: Is a lifestyle questionnaire ‘personal’ enough for personalized nutrition? Persona’s founder and CEO Jason Brown talks about growing a business in the personalized nutrition space.. Read
• Personalized nutrition ‘milestone’: InsideTracker data validates algorithmic platform to improve wellness: Data from 1,033 generally healthy individuals using InsideTracker shows that the automated, web-based personalized nutrition platform is capable of normalizing serum biomarker levels in healthy subjects… Read
• Food selfies and data: Nutrino wants to make personalized nutrition easier for users:A mathematician and an engineer bootstrapped a nutrition-tech company about seven years ago. Their goal was to create a platform that documents the diverse ways human bodies extract nutrition from food… Read
• ‘Hyper-personalised’ recommendations: Spoon Guru targets global domination with growing list of partnerships:UK food tech start-up Spoon Guru has a goal of becoming the dominant technology platform for users looking for product recommendations based on specific lifestyle goals or dietary needs, says co-founder and CEO Markus Stripf, as the company looks to increase its partners globally and launch in the USA… Read
• Nordic Group: Nutrigenomics needs to be ‘done with integrity’ – it’s too early for direct consumer models: Nutrigenomics is gaining plenty of attention but it remains extremely complex and unadapted to direct-to-consumer models, says the MD of Nordic Group – owner of DNA Life and more recently AthGene… Read
• Lux Research: ‘It’s paramount that microbiome data is used for personalized nutrition’: A new market research report explores how the personalized nutrition space can elevate itself beyond “just recommending diets” and become an integral part of preventive health care… Read
• Weight loss presents ‘lucrative’ opportunity in nutrigenomics, says analyst: Nutrigenomics remains a growing niche within the burgeoning personalised nutrition trend but there is significant potential to spark mass market appeal with a focus on weight loss, says a consumer expert… Read

The US Global Change Research Program released its 4th report on climate change Wednesday night, coincidentally or deliberately during the slow news Thanksgiving holiday.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is a Federal program mandated by Congress to coordinate Federal research and investments in understanding the forces shaping the global environment, both human and natural, and their impacts on society.

USGCRP comprises 13 Federal agencies that conduct or use research on global change and its impacts on society, in support of the Nation’s response to global change.

The report comes in two volumes, a technical report and an assessment report.

Don’t look for any good news here, especially for agriculture.

U.S. agriculture and the communities it supports are threatened by increases in temperatures, drought, heavy precipitation events, and wildfire on rangelands (Figure 1.10) (Ch. 10: Ag & Rural, KM 1 and 2, Case Study “Groundwater Depletion in the Ogallala Aquifer Region”; Ch. 23: S. Great Plains, KM 1, Case Study “The Edwards Aquifer”). Yields of major U.S. crops (such as corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, and cotton) are expected to decline over this century as a consequence of increases in temperatures and possibly changes in water availability and disease and pest outbreaks (Ch. 10: Ag & Rural, KM 1). Increases in growing season temperatures in the Midwest are projected to be the largest contributing factor to declines in U.S. agricultural productivity (Ch. 21: Midwest, KM 1). Climate change is also expected to lead to large-scale shifts in the availability and prices of many agricultural products across the world, with corresponding impacts on U.S. agricultural producers and the U.S. economy (Ch. 16: International, KM 1).

Chapter 10 has four key messages, none of them cheerful:

1:  REDUCED AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY: Food and forage production will decline in regions experiencing increased frequency and duration of drought. Shifting precipitation patterns, when associated with high temperatures, will intensify wildfires that reduce forage on rangelands, accelerate the depletion of water supplies for irrigation, and expand the distribution and incidence of pests and diseases for crops and livestock. Modern breeding approaches and the use of novel genes from crop wild relatives are being employed to develop higher-yielding, stress-tolerant crops.

2: DEGRADATION OF SOIL AND WATER RESOURCES: The degradation of critical soil and water resources will expand as extreme precipitation events increase across our agricultural landscape. Sustainable crop production is threatened by excessive runoff, leaching, and flooding, which results in soil erosion, degraded water quality in lakes and streams, and damage to rural community infrastructure. Management practices to restore soil structure and the hydrologic function of landscapes are essential for improving resilience to these challenges.

3.  HEALTH CHALLENGES TO RURAL POPULATIONS AND LIVESTOCK: Challenges to human and livestock health are growing due to the increased frequency and intensity of high temperature extremes. Extreme heat conditions contribute to heat exhaustion, heatstroke, and heart attacks in humans. Heat stress in livestock results in large economic losses for producers. Expanded health services in rural areas, heat-tolerant livestock, and improved design of confined animal housing are all important advances to minimize these challenges.

4: VULNERABILITY AND ADAPTIVE CAPACITY OF RURAL COMMUNITIES: Residents in rural communities often have limited capacity to respond to climate change impacts, due to poverty and limitations in community resources. Communication, transportation, water, and sanitary infrastructure are vulnerable to disruption from climate stressors. Achieving social resilience to these challenges would require increases in local capacity to make adaptive improvements in shared community resources.

The recommendations: reduce greenhouse gas emissions, now.

My colleagues who attended the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics annual meeting and Expo brought back examples of what I love to call dietetic junk foods.

The big trends in such products are gluten-free and allergy-free—apparently without much regard for taste (at least by my standards).

Here is an example of a gluten-free product: 

Check the ingredient list:

Cane sugar, pea starch, potato starch,non-hydrogenated shortening (palm oil, modified palm oil), white rice flour, tapioca starch, water, tapioca syrup, pea protein, salt, pea fiber, natural flavor, modified cellulose, inulin, sodium bicarbonate, sunflower lecithin, beta-carotene (color).

And, in case you were worried, it’s “not a product of genetic engineering.”

To me they taste like chalk, but sweet.

Here’s an example of an allergy-free product:

It too has a long ingredient list:

Organic rolled oats, rice protein crisps (rice protein, rice starch), tapioca syrup, cocoa butter, pearled sorghum crisps, organic caramel (organic cane sugar, water), date paste, brown sugar, dried banana, roasted and salted sunflower seeds (sunflower kernels, sunflower oil, salt) safflower oil, white pearled sorghum flour, popped sorghum.

But this one is remarkable for what it does not contain:

I did not particularly like the texture or taste (off flavors) of this one.

Apparently, the Expo had loads of these.

Why?  Real (relatively unprocessed) foods are less profitable, alas.

Even though my book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, is now published, I’m still collecting particularly entertaining examples of industry-funded research that should trigger the question, “Guess who paid for this?”

Matured Hop-Derived Bitter Components in Beer Improve Hippocampus-Dependent Memory Through Activation of the Vagus Nerve, by Tatsuhiro Ayabe, Rena Ohya, Yoshimasa Taniguchi, Kazutoshi Shindo, Keiji Kondo & Yasuhisa Ano .  Scientific Reports, 2018; 8: 15372.

Background: Our group has focused on the constituents of beer, and we found that iso-α-acids, major bitter components in beer derived from hops (Humulus lupulus L.), improve cognitive impairment in an Alzheimer’s disease (AD) mouse model and high fat diet-induced obese mice.

Conclusion: Vagus nerve activation by the intake of food materials including MHBA [matured hop bitter acids] may be a safe and effective approach for improving cognitive function.

Competing Interests: T.A., R.O., Y.T., K.K. and Y.A. are employed by Kirin Co., Ltd. The authors declare no other competing interests with this manuscript.

[Thanks to Eric Bardot and Maggie Tauranac for sending this excellent example}.

Nobody should be surprised by the results of the latest WHO report on the lack of progress in curbing the marketing of highly processed junk foods to children.

The report looks at marketing policies across WHO Europe’s member countries.  The data show that while about half the countries have taken some steps to limit junk food marketing to kids, even these steps do not go nearly far enough.

Actions focus mainly on

• Advertising but ignore other methods for reaching children.
• Children up to age 12 or 13, but not others.

The report notes the need for more consistent definitions and regulations across the various countries, especially with respect to digital media.

The report documents the negative effects of highly processed foods on kids’ health.  It also documents the uphill nature of addressing this problem.

From the standpoint of the food industry, marketing to children in the line in the sand.  They cannot stop marketing to kids and still sell junk foods aimed at kids.

The report provides plenty of evidence for food companies’ prioritizing profit over public health.

The National Farmers’ Union computes the farmers’ share of the cost of your Thanksgiving dinner.

The farmers’ share?  11 cents.

How come?

And turkey growers, who raise the staple Thanksgiving dish, received just $0.06 per pound retailing at $1.29..that $0.06 figure—while striking on its own—is particularly egregious when considering the fact that poultry integrators received $0.53 per pound.

Happy Thanksgiving food politics.

Dr. Robert Lustig notes that the American Diabetes Association (ADA) has just released its newest guidelines for management of type 2 diabetes in children.

He has plenty to say about this organization, its ties to the pharmaceutical industry, and its lack of focus on effective dietary approaches to prevention and treatment—at a time when “insulin prices have soared into the stratosphere.”

The ADA, he says,

is a “bought” organization. Bought by Big Pharma. It’s only about the money. It’s not about lives or health or society. This is extortion. Big Food is Al Capone. And the ADA is Frank Nitti, his henchman.

The ADA recommendations do talk about physical activity and diet, but judge the evidence for them as not particularly strong (grades B and C).

These are standard recommendations, but difficult to follow consistently, not least because they are not nearly forceful or specific enough.

Dr. Lustig would like much greater emphasis on restricting sugars.  That’s a good place to begin.

I was surprised to read a recent paper in the American Heart Association journal arguing that dietary diversity may not be good for health:

“Eat a variety of foods,” or dietary diversity, is a widely
accepted recommendation to promote a healthy, nutritionally adequate
diet and to reduce the risk of major chronic diseases. However, recent
evidence from observational studies suggests that greater dietary diversity is associated with suboptimal eating patterns, that is, higher intakes of processed foods, refined grains, and sugar-sweetened beverages and lower intakes of minimally processed foods, such as fish, fruits, and vegetables, and may be associated with weight gain and obesity in adult populations.

Obviously, eating a variety of junk food is unlikely to improve health.  But the variety recommendation has never been intended to include junk food.

Here’s a summary of the variety recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines from 1980 to 2015:

These have increasingly specified healthy foods.

Eat your veggies!  Enjoy!