Search results: a life in food

The World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research has just come out with an update on their 1997 report on diet and cancer risk and prevention. After five years of research, the groups have produced ten recommendations. These, no surprise, look not all that different from most other sets of dietary recommendations issued for the last 50 years or so for prevention of chronic disease risk.  The recommendations emphasize staying lean and being active (“eat less, move more”). The report will be loaded with data, charts, and references and I’m looking forward to getting my copy. Enjoy!

• Be as lean as possible within the normal range of body weight.
• Be physically active as part of everyday life.
• Limit consumption of energy-dense foods. Avoid sugary drinks.
• Eat mostly foods of plant origin.
• Limit intake of red meat and avoid processed meat.
• Limit alcoholic drinks.
• Limit consumption of salt. Avoid mouldy cereals (grains) or pulses (legumes).
• Aim to meet nutritional needs through diet alone.
• Mothers to breastfeed; children to be breastfed.
• Cancer survivors: Follow the recommendations for cancer prevention.

Today’s USA Today has several terrific stories about how hard it is to know where our food comes from and why it matters that we do. The cover story in the Life section follows Phil Lempert, the supermarket guru, around a store reading package labels to try to figure out the origins of ingredients. A second piece lists where specific foods come from. Dairy, peanut butter, bread, and soda pop are All-American, but Brazil is the number one source of orange juice. And who knew that fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables head the list of imported foods and Mexico is the leading source? A third story, in which I am quoted, discusses Country of Origin Labeling (COOL), a law passed by Congress years ago but endlessly postponed under pressure from food industries. Only supermarket fish are required to list the country that caught or farmed them, and as far as I can tell, this is a law ignored more often than not. If Congress doesn’t get its act together and put COOL into action, we won’t have a clue where our food comes from. Why do we need to know? Safety and miles traveled, for starters. Ever heard of COOL? It’s worth writing your representatives for this one.

Jennifer Grayson.  A Call to Farms: Reconnecting to Nature, Food, and Community in a Modern World.  Countryman Press, 2024.

What a great title! I did a blurb for Jennifer Grayson’s previous book, Unlatched: The Evolution of Breastfeeding and the Making of a Controversy, and was happy to have the chance to blurb this one too, not least because “A Call to Farms” is such a great title.  Grayson, as it happens, is one terrific writer.   

Here’s the new blurb:

In this deeply inspiring book, Jennifer Grayson examines the motives, practices, problems, and successes of a diverse collection of young small-scale farmers growing food sustainably and achieving enormous satisfaction and joy in the process. The farmers described in A Call to Farms, provide abundant reasons for hope in the future of food healthier for people and the planet as well as for its producers.  If you are looking for hope, here it is.

And here is a short excerpt capturing its essence:

A week into my first farm job, I realized it was the most joyful and fulfilling work I had ever experienced.  After two months of being outside all day, nearly every day, I felt the best—both physically and mentally—that I ever had in my life.  But the real transformation occurred as I began to meet and learn bout the new and driven farmers, graziers, and food activists emerging all over the country.  They hadn’t grown up in farming families; they came from backgrounds vastly underrepresented in agriculture; and many of them were far younger than I was, not to mention decades younger than the average American farmer.  I was awestruck by their intention and ingenuity.  They hadn’t turned to this way of life as some back-to-the-land fantasy.  They had chosen sustainable agriculture as a tactile way to effect environmental activism and food justice; for cultural reclamation; to reconnect to nature, food, and community; to live aligned with their values; to do, in the words of one farmer you’ll meet in this book, “something that means something.”

As I said, inspiring.  Get out there and farm!

I’m always interested in the latest updates on progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.

17 Goals to Transform Our World: The Sustainable Development Goals are a call for action by all countries – poor, rich and middle-income – to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. They recognize that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and address a range of social needs including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities, while tackling climate change and environmental protection.

Thid new progress report is just out: Sachs, J.D., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G. (2024). Sustainable Development Report 2024: The SDGs and the UN Summit of the Future. Dublin University Press. 500 pages (!).

Its first key finding:

On average, globally, only 16% of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved by 2030, with the remaining 84% demonstrating limited or a reversal of progress.

• Off track: SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG14 (Life Below Water), SDG15 (Life on Land) and SDG16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions).
• Reversal of progress: obesity rate (under SDG 2), press freedom (under SDG 16), the red list index (under SDG 15), sustainable nitrogen management (under SDG 2), life expectancy at birth (under SDG 3).

Its key finding specifically related to food:

SDG targets related to food and land systems are particularly off-track: Globally, 600 million people will still suffer from hunger by 2030, obesity is increasing globally, and greenhouse gas emissions from Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) represent almost a quarter of annual global GHG emissions.

What needs to be done:

The recommendations:

Significant progress is possible but requires several dramatic changes:

1) avoid overconsumption beyond recommended levels and limit animal-based protein consumption with dietary shifts compatible with cultural preferences;

2) invest to foster productivity, particularly for products and areas with strong demand growth; and

3) implement inclusive, robust, and transparent monitoring systems to halt deforestation.

And how, exactly, are we to do this?  This, the report does not, and cannot, specify.

Report resources

• Website
• Data Visualization

By the time the FDA posted this outbreak alert, the cucumbers had all been picked, shipped, and done their damage.

The outbreak

Total Illnesses: 449
Hospitalizations: 125
Deaths: 0
Last Illness Onset: June 4, 2024
States with Cases: AL, AR, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, KY, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, VT, WA, WI [31 states]

The CDC investigation:  Of 188 people interviewed (69%) reported eating cucumbers.

The product

cucumbers distributed by Fresh Start Produce Sales, Inc. and grown by Bedner Growers, Inc., of Boynton Beach, FL. Recalled cucumbers are beyond shelf life and should no longer be available for sale to consumers in stores.  Bedner Growers, Inc.’s growing and harvesting seasons are over. There is no product from this farm on the market and likely no ongoing risk to the public.

The self-protective reaction

According to Food Safety News,

the Florida Department of Agriculture (FDOA) called the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) tracing of a Salmonella outbreak to a local cucumber grower “at best inaccurate, and at worst misleading.” Apparently, the head of food safety at the FDOA, who told the FDA in an email “We find the science inaccurate, unsubstantiated and unnecessarily damaging to the firm implicated.”

Comment

This outbreak is worth special attention, not least because so many people were affected in so many states, and the cucumbers were gone by the time investigators knew they were the most likely cause.

• Half the cases were due to a new kind of Salmonella, S. Braenderup.
• The FDA idenified S. Braenderup in untreated canal water used for irrigation.

Salmonella in the water?  This means there must be some kind of enormous CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) nearby, spilling its cattle, dairy, or poutry waste into local streams.

The regulatory issues

This brings me to law professor Timothy Lytton’s latest paper on precisely this issue:  Lytton, Timothy D., Known Unknowns: Unmeasurable Hazards and the Limits of Risk Regulation (July 02, 2024). Oklahoma Law Review, Vol. 76, No. 4, p. 857, 2024.

This Article develops general principles for addressing known unknowns using a case study of efforts to regulate agricultural water quality. Contaminated water used to cultivate fresh produce is a well-known cause of recurrent foodborne illness outbreaks. Unfortunately, it has, so far, proven impossible to reliably quantify the risk of human illness from any given source of agricultural water.

At least one problem here is the split in regulatory authority between FDA (cucumbers) and USDA (animals).  FDA has no authority over CAFOs.  Its authority stops at the farm.  How is the cucumber farmer supposed to stop toxic forms of Salmonella from getting onto cucumber fields?

That is the insoluble regulatory problem Lytton’s piece addresses.

The FDA has issued its boringly titled Southwest Agricultural Region Environmental Microbiology Study (2019 – 2024).

The report seems designed to be boring.  Its subject, however, is anything but.

Let me do some translating (in Italics).

• “The study was designed to improve understanding of the environmental factors that may impact the presence of foodborne pathogens in the Southwest agricultural region.”  [Leafy greens contaminated with pathogenic bacteria make lots of people really sick, undoubtedly because they come in contact with CAFOs, confined animal feeding operations].
• “Samples were collected from irrigation waters, soil, sediments, air/dust, animal fecal material, wildlife scat, and other sources across approximately a 54 mile (7,000 acres) area of the southwest growing region.” [It’s about time the FDA did this].
• “Special attention was given to the geography of the study region and the types and locations of agricultural and other adjacent and nearby land use activities relative to produce production areas.  For example, there is a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) with more than 80,000 head of cattle and an associated compost operation in proximity to some of the produce production areas studied. [Oh.  What a surprise].

The investigation’s findings

• “STEC [Shiga toxin-producing E. coli] can survive in the air and that dust can act as a transfer mechanism for both pathogens and indicator organisms (e.g. generic E. coli) from adjacent and nearby land to water, soil, and plant tissue “[toxic bacteria spread from CAFOs by air and dust].
• “The research team repeatedly observed that generic E. coli concentrations and STEC prevalence and isolation frequency increased as irrigation canal water flowed past an adjacent livestock and compost operation” [toxic bacteria spread from CAFOs by water].
• “…birds and other wildlife do not appear to be significant sources of STEC or E. coli O157:H7 ” [blaming wild birds for contaminating leafy greens is not going to work].
• “STEC strains detected in water, sediment, and plant tissue harvested from our research plots genetically matched strains isolated in air samples providing evidence that bacteria in air can transfer to other locations and surfaces.”  [Toxic bacteria get around easily].

The conclusions

Having proven that CAFOs contaminate air, soil, and water with toxic bacteria, the report concludes:

The preliminary results of this study stress the interconnectedness between people, animals and the environment and serve as an important model for how to foster productive dialogue among diverse stakeholders to improve food safety.

Comment

Foster dialogue?  They have to be kidding.  CAFOs need to be held responsible for the waste produced by their animals.  Human wastes are not allowed to be released untreated into the environment; neither should animal wastes.

Here is food safety lawyer Bill Marler’s comment.

This seems to be a slow news week so I’m going to get caught up on research papers I think worth reading.

I first heard about this study from this video, from Dr. Greger’s newsletter announcement (I subscribe).

Here’s the study: Ornish D, et al.  Effects of intensive lifestyle changes on the progression of mild cognitive impairment or early dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease: a randomized, controlled clinical trial.  Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy volume 16, Article number: 122 (2024).  https://alzres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13195-024-01482-z.

It put 50 or so people in their 70s or older on “an intensive multidomain lifestyle intervention compared to a wait-list usual care control group” for 20 weeks.

People on the lifestyle intervention—diet, exercise, stress management, group support—did better.

The first author, Dean Ornish, runs a lifestyle modification program.

Comment: Wouldn’t this be terrific!  At the very least it is further evidence for the health benefits of a largely (not necessarily exclusively) plant-based diet.  Eating plant foods is strongly associated with prevention of any number of undesirable conditions.  The Alzheimer’s Association already recommends the DASH or Mediterranean diet patterns; both are plant based.

Eat your veggies.  Do so cannot hurt and might help—a lot.

This is Memorial Day, and it seems appropriate to use this time and space to mourn the death of filmmaker Morgan Spurlock last week.  He was only 53.

I had brief appearances as a talking head in Super Size Me! (2004) and also Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! (2017)—although so briefly that I did not get mentioned in the credits.

Super Size Me! was the first time I was interviewed for a major documentary and I wish I could remember more about its filming, which took place a year or so before the film’s release.  By the time it came out, I had forgotten about it, but was invited to the premier—a thrilling experience.

The film was fun—enormously entertaining as well as educational.  Morgan was a great storyteller, and one with a mission to improve the American diet.  The first film focused on overeating fast food.  The second focused more on food system issues; it too is well worth seeing.

In 2019, I wrote a blog post about the second film which, when released, was accompanied by a pop-up restaurant: “From my food politics point of view, the film is a must-see.  It is a compelling, beautifully photographed, disturbing, cynical, utterly devastating account of industrial chicken production.”

Spurlock was a great filmmaker, and I view the end of his life as a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.   He took a highly ethical position and wrote a confession about his poor behavior toward women.  This destroyed his career and the film disappeared.

I hoped he would recover from that and did not know of his illness.  His loss saddens me enormously. I hope his memory will be a blessing.

Addition, May 28: I’m quoted in an assessment of Spurlock’s work in the Times of London.