One picture is worth a thousand words.

Here is my favorite of USDA’s proposals for the front-of-package icon for GMO foods.

Translation: “be” means “bioengineered.”

Here are the options USDA proposes (thanks to FoodNavigator.com):

You can’t make this stuff up.

You have about 60 days to file comments.  By all means, do so.

I’ve been following the E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak caused by eating romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Arizona.

The CDC says the body count so far is:

• Cases = 121
• Hospitalizations = 52
• Deaths = 1

Where the cases have been found:

What the “epi curve” looks like:

What’s happening with the FDA’s investigation:

The FDA has identified one farm [Harrison Farms of Yuma, Arizona] as the source of the whole-head romaine lettuce that sickened several people at a correctional facility in Alaska. However, the agency has not determined where in the supply chain the contamination occurred…All of the lettuce in question from this farm was harvested during March 5-16 and is past its 21-day shelf life. Because the growing season in the Yuma region is at its end, the farm is not growing any lettuce at this time.

Most of the illnesses in this outbreak are not linked to romaine lettuce from this farm, and are associated with chopped romaine lettuce. The agency is investigating dozens of other fields as potential sources of the chopped romaine lettuce and will share information as it becomes available.

Some interesting aspects of this and other leafy green outbreaks:

• It takes two to three weeks from the time a case is first reported until it is confirmed.
• There have been about six dozen outbreaks traced to leafy greens since 1995, many unsolved.
• Because CDC and FDA can’t figure out the source, they have not issued a recall.
• The lack of traceability is a heads up for the produce industry.

In the meantime, the CDC’s advice to you:

• Do not eat or buy romaine lettuce unless you are sure it was not grown anywhere near Yuma.
• Do not eat or buy romaine lettuce if you cannot tell where it was grown.
• Do not eat salad mixes unless you are sure it is free of romaine lettuce.
• This applies to romaine lettuce in any form: heads, hearts, chopped, baby, organic, in salads or salad mixes.

But Consumer Reports says to avoid romaine lettuce entirely.

Seems like good advice until this one gets figured out.

Remember menu labeling?  In 2010, Congress said fast food places should reveal calories on their menus (New York City required this in 2008).

Food companies fought the measure and got delays, but the eight-year delay is up.  Menu labeling goes national today.

In a blog post, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb explained FDA thinking about such matters: the agency is pro-consumer and pro-market.

Information about how healthy our food is gives us the chance to make better choices about our diets. This same information also inspires competition among producers to formulate food in ways that make it more healthful…. food producers should be able to compete on the ability to develop foods that are healthier, and make reliable, science-based claims about these attributes to consumers.  So at FDA, we’re reforming our policies to make it more efficient to develop these claims. This clarity may encourage more manufacturers to invest in making foods healthier.

Uh oh.  More health claims (these, I insist, are about marketing, not health).  So that’s the trade-off; we get menu labeling at the price of more and inevitably misleading health claims.

Gottlieb defended the measure on Fox News.

If you have information on menu labels, the average consumer will reduce their caloric intake to 30-50 calories a day,” Gottlieb said during the interview. “That turns out to be about 3 to 5 pounds per year that you can lose just by having better information.

This is correct in theory, if you assume that one pound of fat contains about 3500 calories (this estimate comes from multiplying 454 grams per pound by 9 calories per gram for fat and rounding off).  Then it will take 3500 divided by 50 = 70 days to lose one pound.

In practice, such small calorie deficits are hardly measurable.  Most estimates suggest that losing weight requires a deficit of 300 to 500 calories a day (My co-author and I discuss all this in our book, Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics).

For an quick summary of the studies of menu labeling, JAMA has a useful review.

It’s great that Commissioner Gottlieb defended menu labeling on Fox News.  Looking at the calories on menu items is fun!

And it most definitely works for me.  If I see a muffin labeling at 700 calories, I share it with friends.

Sam Kass was, of course, the Obamas’ personal family chef and Michelle Obama’s policy person in charge of Let’s Move.  This is his first book, part memoir of his culinary background and time with the Obamas in Chicago and Washington (riveting), part food philosophy (even small steps toward eating count for a lot), and part recipes (delicious, easy, and my kind of food).

Also, the photographs of Sam, his family, and the food are gorgeous.  This is one stunningly produced cookbook (thanks to Clarkson Potter Publishers).

My cousin, theater director Robert Moss, took a look at it when staying at my apartment.  He ended his thank-you note with this comment:

P.S.  I loved the Sam Kass book–made me want to cook now!

Me too.

This is one of FoodNavigator’-USA’s ongoing series of collected articles on specific topics from a food-industry perspective, in this case, digestive health.

Special Edition: Digestive health

Digestive health used to revolve around roughage, but as understanding of the relationship between our gut and our overall health has grown, consumers are now exploring everything from prebiotic fibers and probiotics to a new wave of fermented foods or simply avoiding foods that make them feel bloated or lethargic. We explore how consumers are thinking about gut health and how manufacturers can tap into demand for foods that make our microbes happy.

• How are consumers thinking about digestive health? Hartman Group weighs in: For some consumers, digestive health is about avoiding foods that make them feel bloated or lethargic, for some, it’s about ‘roughage’ and ‘regularity,’ while for others it’s about keeping their guts happy with prebiotics and probiotics, says Hartman Group… Read
• Green banana flour: A powerful new tool in the digestive health toolbox?  Milled starchy unripe bananas – which are low in sugar and high in RS2 resistant starch – can help people better control their blood glucose, but they also confer an exciting range of digestive benefits, making them a powerful new gut health ingredient, claims the firm behind NuBana green banana flour… Read
• Not all fiber is created equally, creators of resistant starch-packed Barley+ argue: Consumer demand for fiber is on the rise thanks in part to increased awareness of the ingredient’s cancer-fighting and other health benefits, but according to recent research not all fiber packs the same punch… Watch now
• Good mood food? Consumers are catching onto prebiotics, says dietitian turned food entrepreneur: While nutrition scientists are still unlocking the secrets of the gut microbiome, consumers increasingly understand that what we feed the army of microbes that line our digestive tracts may be intimately connected to our physical – and mental – health and wellbeing, says Kara Landau, the dietitian behind a new brand dedicated to gut health: Uplift: Good Mood Food… Read
• Beneo: ‘Prebiotics open a whole new door to the world of gut health that hasn’t been well explored in the US’: Brands and consumers are getting more comfortable talking about digestive health, with the conversation shifting beyond getting enough fiber for regular bowel movements, to the gut microbiome, says Beneo, which says growing interest in probiotics is helping Americans get their heads about the concept of prebiotics… Read
• Dannon continues yogurt and gut microbiome exploration with $50,000 in fellowship grants: As part of Danone North America, the Dannon Probiotics Fellowship Grant Program has awarded two graduate students with $25,000 each to help fund their independent and novel studies of yogurt, probiotics, and the human gut microbiome… Read
• Paleo On The Go sees ‘huge’ potential for convenient, auto immune protocol compliant products: With one in five Americans suffering from an auto immune disease and looking for ways to manage their conditions through diet, the market potential for foods and beverage that comply with the auto immune protocol is “huge,” and yet relatively untapped, according to one entrepreneur in the space… Read
• CHR Hansen sees growing demand for probiotics in drinkable yogurts, kids’ snacks, plant-based fermented foods: US consumers are increasingly interested in the relationship between intestinal bacteria and overall health, says CHR Hansen, but there is some confusion about which foods and beverages contain probiotics: live microorganisms that, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host (according to the World Health Organization)… Read
• FDA issues guidance on added sugar, dietary fiber, serving sizes: The FDA has unveiled guidance on added sugars, serving sizes and dietary fibers to help manufacturers implement the new Nutrition Facts label, and says it’s working on a plan to incentivize manufacturers to make healthier products and “provide consumers with helpful tools to make healthy food choices, including clarity on food label claims.”.. Read
• Unique milling process qualifies Grain Millers’ oat hull fiber as ‘intrinsic and intact’ dietary fiber under FDA rules, claims company: Should oat hull fiber be classified as a dietary fiber? It depends, according to Grain Millers, which claims that its unique, mechanical milling process ensures that its oat hull fiber is the only one on the market that meets the FDA’s definition of ‘intrinsic and intact’ fibers, and queries whether oat fibers made using traditional chemical methods meet the FDA definition of ‘isolated or synthetic’ fibers either… Read
• Barrel Creek Provisions breathes new life into fermented foods: Barrel Creek Provisions has undergone a brand transformation to establish itself as a formidable player in the fermented foods category, a market that continues to grow alongside consumers’ interest in gut health and probiotics… Read

USDA’s Economic Research Service has a new report on China’s investment in agriculture and farmland.

China’s outward agricultural investments are growing rapidly.

The purchases are everywhere: Indonesia, New Zealand, Bulgaria, Jamaica, etc., but some is in the United States.

China owns Smithfield, for example (see previous post).

The report is worth a serious read.  If you aren’t up to that, take a look at the tables and figures.  I wanted to reproduce a lot more of them.

The Intercept published an account last week pointing out that:

• Amazon will soon accept grocery orders from SNAP (food stamp) participants
• One third of Amazon employees are paid so little that they depend on SNAP for food
• Taxpayers also subsidize Amazon with tax breaks, subsidies, and infrastructure improvements

Amazon pays its employees a median (half above, half below) annual salary of $28,466.

The New York Times  points out that critics

have produced studies that say Amazon’s warehouses — which employ more than 125,000 full-time workers in the United States — don’t increase total local employment because of losses in other sectors. They also question the wisdom of subsidies to attract them. The American Booksellers Association, which represents independent bookstores, recently published a similar report on Amazon’s economic impact.

Amazon generated nearly $178 billion in online sales in 2017, its income grew by 27.8%, and it made $3 billion in profit.

Now we know why.

As anyone who has ever been within sniffing distance of an industrial pig farm can tell you, the stench is pervasive, gets into your clothes, and seems impossible to avoid or wash out.  It seems incomprehensible that pig producers could be permitted to cause such odors and impose the stench on neighbors.

When I was on the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, the primary finding of our investigations was this: Laws existed to stop pollution but nobody enforced them.

But now neighbors of a North Carolina hog farm sued Smithfield—and won!

As Politico explained

The jury agreed with the 10 plaintiffs in the civil case, who contended that a contractor to Smithfield Foods created a situation where residents could no longer enjoy their property because of noxious smells. Waste from the hogs is stored in open-air lagoons and sprayed onto fields as fertilizer. Neighbors said manure particles traveled to their property located a few hundred feet from the farm, coating their homes, clothing and cars.

The judges instructions to the jury were simple.

The first question to the jury was whether Murphy-Brown had “substantially and unreasonably” interfered with the plaintiffs’ use and enjoyment of their property. For each of them, the jury answered “yes” and awarded them $75,000 in compensation.  As to whether the company was liable for punitive damages, the jury again answered yes, and awarded each the same amount – $5 million.

They won’t actually get this amount; North Carolina laws cap damage payments.

Nevertheless, the verdict opens the possibility for other such lawsuits and further damages.

Smithfield will appeal, of course.

These lawsuits are an outrageous attack on animal agriculture, rural North Carolina and thousands of independent family farmers who own and operate contract farms. These farmers are apparently not safe from attack even if they fully comply with all federal, state and local laws and regulations. The lawsuits are a serious threat to a major industry, to North Carolina’s entire economy and to the jobs and livelihoods of tens of thousands of North Carolinians.

Yes, but does Smithfield have the right to ruin the lives of people in the community and create vast amounts of stinking waste that is not treated—amounts larger than that produced by people in small cities.

We would not dream of leaving human waste exposed and untreated.  Pig waste is no different.

Let’s hope the verdict sticks and causes big changes in animal production methods.