Search results: a life in food

I thought this 2023 report was well worth a look.

Microbial diseases of animals can be transmitted to humans, and vice versa (witness COVID-19 in mink and zoo animals).  Some of these have led to serious epidemics.  Lots of people are worried that Confined Animal Feeding Operations could easily become the source of new and deadly forms of influenza.

But what interested me in this report is that industrial farm animal production is one of a great many sources of potential infectious disease transmission.

A few of the many examples, some well known to have caused Salmonella infections:

• Pets
• Hunted animals
• Production of bat guano and coyote urine (who knew?)
• Backyard chickens
• Crocodile farming
• Petting zoos
• Research animals

The report is cautious on the topic of the origin of COVID-19:

At the time of this writing, scientists continue to debate the precise origins of the virus but there is no question as to the impact it has had. Indeed, few aspects of daily life in the United States remain untouched.

The implication is clear.  We need much better monitoring of animal markets for pathogens.

The United States has no comprehensive strategy in place to address the threat of zoonotic disease. There are serious regulatory deficiencies across almost every animal industry. Large information gaps exist, and disease can seep between these cracks.

Lots to learn here and think about here.

Question of the day: What does a 30-second Super Bowl ad cost?

Answer: roughly $7 million (I’m not kidding—for 30 seconds).

Here is Statistica’s “Average cost of a 30-second Super Bowl TV commercial in the United States from 2002 to 2023.”

I have to confess to not being much of a football fan but I am riveted by the junk food content—and astronomical cost—of Super Bowl ads.

I first learned about this year’s collection from FoodNavigator—USA.

Super Bowl LVIII: The products, ads expected to make big plays during game dayWith the Super Bowl two weeks away, consumers are preparing their grocery lists and budgets for the big game day, as CPG brands ready their ads and promotions with the anticipation of receiving a volume boost the week after the game…. Read more

Here’s its prediction:

When it comes to what consumers will bring to Super Bowl parties, 72% said they will buy chips and dips, 44% pizza, 42% homemade appetizers, 35% side, and 33% pre-made appetizers.

Lesser purchased food items include fruit at 32%, cheese/charcuterie at 27%, and homemade desserts at 27%. Only 6% of consumers said they would bring nothing to a party.

Additionally, 47% of consumers said they are planning on purchasing alcoholic beverages, compared to 27% who said the same for non-alcoholic beverages.

However, 34% of shoppers under the age of 35, a demographic increasingly embracing a sober or sober-curious lifestyle, will be buying alcohol, compared to 72% of the consumers aged 55-64.

OK.  The Super Bowl is an occasion for junk food and alcohol.  Would you believe 1.45 billion chicken wings expected to be consumed during the game?

Brand Innovator lists the advertisers.  Here are some of the food and alcohol advertisers:

• Budweiser, Bud Light, and Michelob ULTRA
• Hellman’s Mayonnaise
• Pringles
• Doritos
• Reese’s
• Frito-Lay
• Nerds
• M&Ms
• Coors Light
• Popeyes
• Drumstick
• DraftKinds
• Starry
• Mountain Dew Baja Blast
• Oreo
• Molson Coors

Here are some summaries:

• The dairy ads
• The beverage ads

Enjoy the game, but watch those calories!

Addition: a reader sent this SuperBowl infographic with much more on its being the #2 eating occasion (after Thanksgiving).

John Brueggemann.  Food for the Future: Beautiful Stories from the Alternative Agro-Food Movement.  Lexington Books, 2023.

I did a blurb for this book:

Sociologist John Brueggemann examines the stories of people actively engaged in today’s small-scale food and farming movement toward healthier and more sustainable food systems.  Their commitment, passion, and pragmatism is so inspiring that we will all want to join or support this movement in every way we can.

This brief excerpt explains at a glance why these stories matter.

A central claim of this book, however, is that there is also a Beautiful Story.  Against this vast, execrable current, there is a dramatic countertrend, a trickle of clean, life-giving freshness that is rapidly gaining strength…This includes, most importantly, farms.  From the people I spoke to directly, others they mention, and secondary research, it seems clear to me that many farmers care deeply about the land, what they produce how they produce it, and its consequences for consumers.

I love food and through this research have come to revere those who make it available.  I find this movement to be stirring, both in terms of what it is doing for our food system, but more importantly for all the lessons it offers for how neighbors can live together.  I think this story is both credible and wondrous….We’ve got to have faith in each other.

I frequently get sent copies of e-mailed messages sent to members of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the professional organization for people holding credentials as Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RDN).

Disclosure: I do not hold this credential; long after I had a doctorate while I was doing a later master’s in public health, I fulfilled all of the graduate and clinical requirements but was still short one undergraduate course.

Holders of the RDN must complete 75 credits of continuing education courses every five years to maintain the credential.  Usually, dietitians must pay for courses to meet those credits.

But as my correspondents make clear, food complanies offer courses for credit—at no cost.

It is not at all difficult to fully meet credit requirements through industry-sponsored courses.

Here are some examples:

• International STEVIA Council.  Stevia: The Science Beehind the Sweet: a complimentary webinar that will review the most recent scientific evidence supporting the use of stevia to help reduce the risk of chronic diseases and improve quality of life.  https://www.todaysdietitian.com/marketing/webinars/2023/ISC/index.html
• This…Free CPEUs: Webinar on Dietary Diversity: Join PepsiCo Health & Nutrition Sciences on Thursday, December 7th for the latest research on incorporating more diverse foods, such as whole grains, legumes and other under-consumed food groups, in dietary patterns. This webinar will also feature a fun culinary demo! Earn 1.25 free CPEUs. Register now.
• The Latest on Low- and No-Calorie Sweeteners: What You Need to Know. This activity is accredited by Heartland Food Products Group. 1.0 CPEU FREE
• Looking for more free CPE opportunities?  IFIC has 20+ hours of CPEUs available here  [NOTE: IFIC, the International Food Information Council, is a food industry trade association focused on education].

Comment: One can only imagine what those sessions will say.  Do not expect anything critical about the sponsor’s products.

But here’s an even easier way to pick up a bunch of credits.

Free CPE Opportunities are Now Available for Reading the Dietary Guidelines for Americans!  A Special Treat for Professionals: Free CPE Units Available Now for Reading the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

You can now earn 2.0 free continuing professional education (CPE) credits for reading the Introduction and Chapter 1 of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025! Credits are provided by the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR), the credentialing body for Registered Dietitians and Dietetic Technicians, Registered.

The self-study module will equip professionals with knowledge of the scientific underpinnings that makes the Dietary Guidelines relevant across all life stages. Participants will also learn science-based advice on what to eat and drink to build a healthy diet that can promote health, help prevent diet-related chronic disease, and meet nutrient needs.

Visit CPE Opportunities | Dietary Guidelines for Americans to start earning credits and stay updated on the release of future modules.

Comment:  Let’s hope that dietitians have already read the Dietary Guidelines at some point.  Or maybe it takes free credits to get anyone to slog through its 150 pages.

In any case, AND should not be allowing food companies to “educate” dietitians.

Just to be fair: the society to which I belong, the American Society of Nutrition, is doing this.  It too should not.

I am suddenly deluged with items about chocolate, which seems to raise any number of food politics issues.

For today, let’s deal with three: content of toxic heavy metals, research conflicts of interest, and claims of sustainability,

I.  Heavy metals. I learned about this one from Food Safety News (FSN): Consumer Reports finds one-third of chocolate is high in heavy metals: CR today released test results that have it urging Hershey’s to get harmful lead and cadmium out of its chocolate products.

FSN conveniently provided a link to the full CR report, which says.

When we tested dark chocolate bars last year, we found lead or cadmium levels above CR’s thresholds in 23 of 28 bars, or 82 percent of them. Our results this time were similar. Of the seven bars we tested, five, or 71 percent, were above our levels for lead, cadmium, or both…Eating an ounce of four others would put you over our limit for lead.

Food Safety News also reports: Chocolate makers say they have heavy metals issue under control: The National Confectioners Association (NCA) : “Chocolate and cocoa are safe to eat and can be enjoyed as treats as they have been for centuries,” NCA says. “Food safety and product quality remain our highest priorities,… Continue Reading

ConsumerLab does its own testing for toxins in Dark Chocolate, Cocoa & Cacao Products.

Which dark chocolate and cocoa products are best?  Be careful! Several cocoa powders, cacao nibs, and some dark chocolates failed to pass our review due to contamination with high levels of cadmium, a toxic heavy metal (see What CL Found).

II.  Conflicts of interest. ConsumerLab also commented on cocoa flavanols.

Furthermore, levels of potentially beneficial cocoa flavanols ranged from just 1 mg to 374 mg in cocoa powders and mixes, 2 mg to 351 mg in dark chocolates, and 2 mg to 993 mg in supplements. Products also vary widely in calories per serving.

This took me right to an e-mail from a reader, Thijs van Rens, Professor of Economics, University of Warwick,.  He wanted me to see something he had read in The Conversation: “Flavanols are linked to better memory and heart health – here’s what foods you can eat to get these benefits.”

He pointed out that the author “…received research funding from Mars, Inc., a company engaged in flavanol research and flavanol-related commercial activities.”  He added:

I got suspicious about the funding when I read this:  “This is why flavanols extracted from cocoa are an ideal model, as they contain the two main types of flavanols.”

In fact, I was going to comment and complain about The Conversation publishing something like this, until I noticed the one-but-last paragraph:

“It’s also important to note that while the flavanols used in many studies were extracted from cocoa, unfortunately chocolate (even dark chocolate) is a very poor source of flavanols – despite what some headlines might claim. This is because these flavanols are lost during processing.”

Not sure what to make of the article. On the one hand, the author clearly states not to eat chocolate for this reason and the funding is clearly disclosed. On the other hand, how many readers will get to the one-but-last paragraph and check the disclosure statement. On balance, I could imagine Mars Inc. would be quite happy about this article.

Indeed yes.  That’s why they paid for it (but see clarification below)

III.  Sustainability.  This also came in a e-mail, this time a press release from Chocolate Scorecard, a group that rates chocolate companies on practices related to traceability, wages, child labor, deforestation, agroecology, etc.  Its key messages:

• Sustainability claims of chocolate companies cannot necessarily be trusted.
• Only 11% of chocolate companies can fully trace where their cocoa comes from – without knowing they cannot claim sustainability.
• Farmers need to be paid more for their cocoa to ensure a sustainable life.

“100% sustainably sourced cocoa,” says the sign on the stand promoting a well-known chocolate brand in the supermarket. The message is not one you can necessarily trust.

…A recent report by Oxfam claims that the “net income of farmers decreased by an estimated 16.38% between the 2019/20 and 2021/22 harvesting season.” When the price of cocoa increases everything else a farmer purchases increases in price, leaving worse off in reality. This is associated with increases in profits in chocolate companies.

The Chocolate Scorecard is a collective of 37 NGO’s and Universities. They are calling on chocolate companies to commit to a ‘living income’ for cocoa farmers.

And you thought you were just eating candy.

Additions

Readers wrote to remind me to add:

• John Oliver’s brilliant piece on low wages and child labor among chocolate workers.
• Food Empowerment Project’s Chocolate List (of chocolate companies not using child labor)

Clarification

The author of the flavanol article wrote to say that my comment could be interpreted as suggesting he was paid to write it, which he was not.  That was not my intention and I apologize for giving that impression.  I do see research or commentary paid for by food companies, but such instances are rare. The “funding effect,” as I discuss in my book Unsavory Truth, gives the appearance of conflicted interest no matter what its actual level of influence.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. released its annual State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report last week.  Its conclusions are sobering.

Global hunger is still far above pre-pandemic levels. It is estimated that between 690 and 783 million people in the world faced hunger in 2022. This is 122 million more people than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, the increase in global hunger observed in the last two years has stalled and, in 2022, there were about 3.8 million fewer people suffering from hunger than in 2021. The economic recovery from the pandemic has contributed to this, but there is no doubt that the modest progress has been undermined by rising food and energy prices magnified by the war inUkraine. There is no room for complacency, though, as hunger is still on the rise throughout Africa, Western Asia and the Caribbean.

Ultra-processed foods are a critical part of this story.  The word “processed” comes up 264 times in this report; “highly processed” comes up 99 times .  Some examples:

• Healthy diets are essential for achieving food security goals and improving nutritional outcomes. A healthy diet…is based on a wide range of unprocessed or minimally processed foods, balanced across food groups, while it restricts the consumption of highly processed foods and drink products…Eating a healthy diet throughout the life cycle is critical for preventing all forms of malnutrition, including child stunting and wasting, micronutrient deficiencies and overweight or obesity. It also helps reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and certain types of cancer.
• The unfinished agendas to reduce stunting, wasting and micronutrient deficiency, along with rising overweight and obesity, represent the current challenge to address multiple forms of malnutrition. Malnutrition in all its forms is related to poor diets, the rise of low-cost
  nutrient-poor foods and the increasing availability of highly processed foods in rural areas.
• Supply-side factors, including globalized technology in food production, transportation and marketing, coupled with an increase in demand for readily available foods, have contributed to a substantial expansion of supermarkets, hypermarkets, food deliveries and other convenience retailers. However, these are also associated with increased supply and spread of energy-dense and highly processed foods.
• However, urbanization has also contributed to the spread and consumption of processed and highly processed foods, which are increasingly cheap, readily available and marketed, with private sector small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and larger companies often setting the nutrition landscape. Cost comparisons of individual food items and/or food groups from existing studies indicate that the cost of nutritious foods – such as fruits, vegetables and animal source foods – is typically higher than the cost of energy-dense foods high in fats, sugars and/or salt, and of staple foods, oils and sugars.
• The dynamics of supply and demand for processed foods, however, are complex. There has been a surge on the supply side, with small and medium enterprises and large private companies alike making massive aggregate investments in all types of processed foods (from minimally to highly processed) in response to demand. At the same time, aggressive marketing and relatively low pricing – and even interference in policies to curb consumption of highly processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages – are driving up consumption.

The report emphasizes the importance of food processing in contributing to poor diets and health.

What is to be done?  From the Brief summary:

Leveraging connectivity across the rural–urban continuum will require adequate governance mechanisms and institutions to coordinate coherent investment beyond sectoral and administrative boundaries. To this end, subnational governments can play a key role in designing and implementing policies beyond the traditional top-down approach. Approaches to agrifood systems governance should ensure policy coherence among local, regional and national settings through the engagement of relevant agrifood systems stakeholders at all levels.

I read this as saying what’s need is community-based, bottom up approaches at the local level.  That’s a great place to start.  Go for it.

Resources

• The online report
• The  pdf
• The digital report
• The Brief 
• And see Access to food in 2022: filling data gaps. Results of twenty national surveys using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)

If you thought yesterday’s post about blueberries as a means to reduce hypertension in menopausal women seemed far-fetched, you are missing the point.

The food industry views menopause as a marketing opportunity.

‘We need the food industry to recognise this opportunity and step up to the plate’: Campaigner urges more NPD to embrace the menopause: The menopause represents a significant untapped opportunity for food and beverage brands, FoodNavigator’s Positive Nutrition Summit hears…. Read more

The menopause hits at a life stage when many women are particularly busy and time-poor and it is, at best, an inconvenience…This audience is now demanding more from brands – they don’t want to have to struggle and search to find items that support their symptoms. GenM research shows that 78% of women would be happy to shop for products labelled as menopause-friendly, while a further 90% of menopausal women want brands to be more inclusive to menopause. We need the food industry to recognise this opportunity and step up to the plate.

And then there’s this one:

Marketing sports nutrition products for menopausal women:  A variety of products are geared toward youth and seniors, but where do women in their 50s fit?… Watch now

Alexis Collins, director of product and brand strategy, Stratum, said one ingredient stands out to her most: NEM, the company’s flagship, branded eggshell membrane. Our ingredient is natural eggshell membrane also known as NEM and NEM is a joint health ingredient that has been specifically clinically researched in postmenopausal women to show fast exercise recovery.

Eggshell membrane.  Why didn’t I think of that?

*******

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

I very much appreciate the weekly newsletter, ObesityandEnergetics.org (If you want to subscribe, do so here).

I particularly enjoy its section, Headline vs Study.  Here’s the most recent, with my additions.

Headline: “Astonishing” Effects of Grape Consumption and “Remarkable” Impacts on Health and Lifespans.

Study: Grape Powder (Not Grapes) Modulates Gene Expression, Reduces Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, and Extends Longevity… In Female Mice.

I took a look at the study.

• Conclusion: “These results suggest the potential of dietary grapes to modulate hepatic gene expression, prevent oxidative damage, induce fatty acid metabolism, ameliorate NAFLD (non-alcohol fatty liver disease), and increase longevity when co-administered with a high-fat diet.”
• Funding: This work was supported in part by the California Table Grape Commission. The sponsor was not involved: in the preparation of the article; in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication.

Here is another study:

Study: Behavioral and Genetic Changes of Grape Powder (Not Grapes)… In Female Mice.

Its funding?  “This research was supported in part by the California Table Grape Commission.”

And one more:

Study: Grape Powder (Not Grapes) Modifies Hepatic and Urinary Metabolite Profiles… In Female Mice.

This study is also enlightening.

• Conflicts of interest: [onE of the authors] “serves on the scientific advisory board of the California Table Grape Commission. There are no other conflicts to declare.”
• Acknowledgements:  [two of the authors] “acknowledge grant support from the California Table Grape Commission and seed grant funding from Long Island University. The California Table Grape Commission was not involved: in the preparation of the article; in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication.”

Comment:  As usual, these authors deny the problems inherent in industry funded studies that have marketing of health benefits as their primary purpose.  Grapes are fruits.  Fruits are healthy.  Do grapes perform health miracles?  Only if you believe in miracles.  Should you eat grapes?  Sure, if you like them.

You don’t believe this is about marketing?  Here’s one more headline (thanks to Karen Zornow Leiding for sending).  And you know who funded this.

Eating grapes can counteract harmful effects from processed foods, while boosting metabolism too

************

Coming soon!  My memoir coming out in October.

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.