First cantaloupe, now papayas.

The CDC has opened up a homepage on Salmonella infections associated with eating Yellow Maradol Papayas.

Here’s the count so far:

• 47 Cases
• 12 States
• 12 Hospitalizations
• 1 Deaths

Food Safety News has the story.  And provides the label you had best avoid.

As usual, by the time the CDC finds out about outbreaks, cases have slowed down (it takes time to find them).

This one is affecting people in states all over the country.

Papayas grow on trees.  Salmonella are animal bacteria.  Monkeys?  Arboreal sloths?

A more likely explanation is that the fruit came in contact with human waste or dirty hands sometime during collection, transport, or processing.

What to do?

Bacteria are on the rind.  They get on the fruit itself when you cut through it.  You can try scrubbing the outside before you peel the papaya.  The CDC recommends discarding it and cleaning your kitchen carefully.

Better preventive controls?  They are on the books (the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act).

Enforcement?  Not unless Congress appropriates the funds.

Why won’t it?  FDA appropriations go through agricultural appropriations, not health.  Do ag committees care about food safety?

I wish.

Addition:  Food Safety News reports that the distributor of the papayas has started recalling them, but not publicly.

A reporter asks:

I was wondering if you could share your thoughts with me about the new study finding phthalates in boxed Mac & Cheese.  Should consumers be afraid of just Mac & Cheese, considering phthalates are ubiquitous and found in almost every food we consume? What are your recommendations?

Here’s what I said:

The moral of this story is to eat a healthy diet and you don’t have to worry about things like phthalates.  What is a healthy diet?  It’s one in which most of the calories come from relatively unprocessed fruits, vegetables, and grains, and heavily processed foods—like boxed Mac & Cheese—are kept to a minimum.  The phthalate-in-Mac-and-Cheese problem is a processing issue.  Phthalates leach in during processing.  You love Mac and Cheese?  Great.  Make your own.

What’s going on here?

For starters, I love Mac & Cheese, although not so much for the kind in boxes.

In case you don’t know much about this dish, check out the Hartman group’s useful historical Infographic.

As for phthalates:

• These are plasticizers in packaging with effects as endocrine disrupters.
• They have been associated with male infertility.
• The EPA is concerned about their toxicity and widespread environmental exposure.
• Researchers are worried about phthalates in fast food because of all the packaging and handling.

So why am I not more upset about them?  They are easy to avoid.  Just don’t eat foods in boxes.

David Katz has an excellent piece that puts phthalates in a wider dietary context:

This whole topic represents risk distortion, and it’s something we tend to do all the time. We all know, or certainly should, that a dietary pattern of wholesome, whole foods, mostly plants, is monumentally good for us. Such a diet not only minimizes bad chemicals in the food we eat, it – more importantly- minimizes bad food in the food we eat!

Remember menu labeling?  The idea started in New York City in 2008.  Here is one of my early posts on it.  My point in mentioning this: if you care about such things, menu labeling is useful, fun, and effective if you pay attention to it.

Despite a lot of research suggesting otherwise, menu labeling must work.  How else to explain industry’s ferocious and unrelenting opposition to it?

The latest is a lawsuit filed by the Food Marketing Institute and the National Association of Convenience Stores against New York City, which announced that it plans to enforce the regulations it has had in effect for nine years—even though the FDA has delayed national implementation once again until 2018.

To get some idea of what fast-food places are upset about, it helps to check in with the American Pizza Community, the friendly-sounding, but actually highly aggressive trade association for fast-food pizza places.

Here, for example, is its congratulatory statement to the FDA for delaying compliance with the law for another year:

The American Pizza Community welcomes the important step by the Food and Drug Administration toward applying common sense to federal menu labeling regulations…The previous approach threatened to impose excessive burdens on thousands of small businesses without achieving meaningful improvements in educating consumers. The American Pizza Community commends the Administration’s decision to extend the compliance date to May 7, 2018 and its request to collect comments for reducing the regulatory burden and increasing flexibility in implementation methods.  We support menu labeling and look forward to working with policy makers to implement a permanent solution that provides consumers with information and enables small business owners to comply with flexibility while continuing to thrive and create jobs.

By “support,” the pizza folks mean the “Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act of 2017.”

Instead of requiring calories to be posted next to the menu item, this bill would allow nutrition information to be available “solely by a remote-access menu (e.g., an Internet menu) for food establishments where the majority of orders are placed by customers who are off-premises.”

Also, “an establishment’s nutrient content disclosures may vary from actual nutrient content if the disclosures comply with current standards for reasonable basis.

The pizza industry has the Wall Street Journal on its side.

The Food and Drug Administration can’t possibly fulfill all of the responsibilities it claims to have, and here’s one way the Trump Administration can set better priorities: Direct the agency to end its effort to inform Americans that pizza contains calories.

I guess the hope is that if they delay long enough, menu labeling will quietly disappear.

CSPI, however, has other ideas.  It filed a lawsuit to force the FDA to implement the regulations.

This lawsuit asserts that the delay of the menu labeling requirement—published without prior notice or an opportunity for comment, one day before the menu labeling rule was supposed to take effect—is illegal and must be vacated.  Since the regulated industry was ready to comply before the delay, it can promptly comply with the menu labeling rule once reinstated and, thus, begin to provide this important health information to the public without delay, according to the complaint.

Recall that menu labeling was authorized by Congress as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.  No wonder CSPI wants the rules implemented right away.

The ACA is still with us—so far.

Healthy Food America is relatively new on the food advocacy scene but I am always impressed by the useful resources it produces.

It is my go-to place for information about soda taxes and other ways to reduce sugars and sugary drinks.

It offers, for example:

• Soda tax maps
• Report with Ninjas for Health on Coca-Cola’s involvement with researchers and reporters
• Toolkit for advocates working to reduce sugars
• Research Watch summaries
• Daily news feed

Useful?  Yes!

I received this inquiry from a reporter wanting a comment:

Hi, Marion, I’m doing a story about the trend of waters that claim to have extra health benefits because of their added “molecular oxygen” or “molecular hydrogen.”

Another reporter asked

I’m looking for comment on whether regularly drinking bottled water with a pH as low as 4 could stress the system, etc….the story I’m writing goes into more detail on the how and why of low-pH waters and how they may or may not affect health.

My first reaction: you have to be kidding.

I think these waters are hilarious—products of brilliant marketing.

The basic facts:

• Water is two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, neutral in acidity.  The body has a terrific buffering system to keep the blood at exactly the right level of neutrality (pH 7.35-7.45).
• Stomach contents are extremely acid: pH 1.5-3.5.
• Gases in water quickly equilibrate with air.

At the Fancy Food Show, I picked up a plastic pouch of hydrogen-infused water

clinically proven [no references or data given] to help reduce inflammation and is a powerful source of antioxidants.  It’s perfect for your workout, beauty, and overall daily routine.”

This product also claims to provide anti-inflammatory benefits, relieve fatigue and jet lag, improve fitness performance, boost energy, and enhance circulation and cell function.

I asked what it tasted like.  Water, they said.

It did.

• The upside: harmless.
• The downside: silly.

Caveat emptor.

Food politics generally doesn’t usually get into matters of religion, but sometimes has to.   Today’s issue is whether bread for the Catholic Eucharist can be gluten-free.

No, it can’t.

As the New York Times explains,

The unleavened bread that Roman Catholics use in the celebration of Mass must contain some gluten, even if only a trace amount, according to a new Vatican directive.

The directive…affirms an existing policy. But it may help to relieve some of the confusion surrounding church doctrine on gluten…The issue is especially urgent for people with celiac disease…or for those with other digestive conditions that make them vulnerable even to small amounts of gluten… “The confusion can be great when these ‘breads’ are advertised as gluten-free alongside what are described as gluten-free but are in fact low-gluten altar breads,” according to the Catholic Church in England and Wales. “The confusion can also be the cause of great upset both to those Catholics who are allergic to gluten and to those who minister to them.”

People with celiac disease cannot eat wheat, rye, or barley, which contain gluten proteins.  If they do,  the gluten leads to a toxic product that causes severe damage to the intestinal tract and other serious symptoms.

About 1 out of every 133 people has this condition.  This prevalence has remained constant over time.  But the number of people consuming gluten-free diets has greatly increased.  This could be because people just feel better not eating bread and pasta, or maybe because their celiac disease has just not been diagnosed.

The Hartman group has a useful Infographic about gluten-free trends.

Fortunately, lots of gluten-free products are now available, even if some Catholic jurisdictions forbid them.

NPR talks about one option option for gluten-avoiding Catholics:

That is where the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration of Clyde, Mo., come in. After a decade of work, they came up with a Vatican-approved wafer, using wheat starch and water. It contains just .001 percent gluten, an amount low enough for most celiac sufferers…They sell about 15,000 breads per week…”We believe Communion is the actual body of Christ and that’s the center point of our liturgy as Catholics — being able to receive Jesus.

What about other religions?  My inside source at the Episcopal Grace Cathedral in San Francisco tells me that its services use

bread rather than wafers for communion, and almost always have a gluten-free alternative on hand (the bread is baked fresh for this purpose by the Bread Ministry!).

The purpose of doing this is “to make everyone feel welcome and included.”

Amen to that.

Here’s another one of this site’s roundup of articles on specific topics, written from the perspective of food companies.  Paleo sells.

Special Edition: Paleo: Fad, Trend, or Movement?

Definitions vary, but most advocates of the Paleo diet think the dietary rot set in once humans stopped hunting and gathering and started to grow crops and raise animals for food. So grains, legumes, and dairy are typically off limits (although some Paleo fans say grass-fed dairy is OK). While critics say any diet that eliminates major food groups should be treated with caution, the number of products featuring Paleo claims and certifications is growing rapidly, and many retailers and manufacturers are now looking at how to tap into the trend, which some market researchers see as the next evolution of low carb, and gluten-free.

• Natural channel still accounts for bulk of Paleo product sales, but sales in conventional channels are growing faster, says SPINS: Where are Paleo-positioned products thriving? SPINS data break it down by channel and category… Read
• Low-carb, gluten-free and now Paleo… Another anti-grain fad or a true concern for bakers?: Bakers shouldn’t worry too much about Paleo, but the trend does call for increased grain education and better industry innovation, warn grain advocacy groups… Read
• Whole30 certification helps brands boost exposure, sales and shelf space: Certifying a product as approved by the popular Whole30 diet is a “pretty intensive” process, according to the diet’s co-creator, but for the few and proud that make the cut, the licensing deal can provide exposure to a fiercely loyal consumer base, boost sales significantly and help secure shelf space in competitive categories… Read
• PALEO IN FOCUS: Are we ‘supposed’ to drink cow’s milk? It’s the wrong question, says professor: ‘Paleo’ fans argue that the dietary rot set in when we stopped hunting and gathering and started producing foods (dairy, grains, legumes) our bodies are not adapted to digest. But does the theory behind this approach hold water?.. Read
• Passionate paleo followers can fuel brand awareness, sales for compliant packaged products: Between 1 to 3 million people in the United States follow the paleo diet, and yet relatively few packaged products comply with the regime – making it a market brimming with potential that once tapped could quickly drive brand awareness and sales, according to the co-founders of frozen dessert brand Snow Monkey… Watch now
• What’s the size of the Paleo foods prize? Mintel and IRI weigh in: Paleo themed product sales could soar to $4bn in the US in the next three years if enough manufacturers invest, according to IRI, although Mintel says we’re not looking at the next Greek yogurt… Read
• Paleo certification requests have doubled annually, scheme embraced by ‘household names,’ says Paleo Foundation: Demand for Paleo-certified products are on the rise. But is the diet – and the certification scheme – based on sound science? We chat with Paleo’s critics and proponents to get the inside scoop… Read
• Our Paleo ancestors were more active than us, but did they really have an optimal diet?: Supporters of the ‘Paleo’ diet (a hunter/gatherer-style approach to eating) urge us to eschew grains, dairy and legumes – among other things. But any diet that eliminates major food groups should be treated with caution, argue two high-profile dietitians we quizzed as part of our weight management special edition… Read
• Meteoric sales growth at Primal Kitchen: ‘Things just exploded as soon as we launched’: “We did everything you’re not supposed to do,” observes the COO of Primal Kitchen, which exploded out of the blocks with a sugar-free avocado oil-based mayo in February 2015, notched up revenues of $13.2m in 2016, and is expecting to almost double that in 2017. ..

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has a new report out calling for better federal oversight of memory supplements.

These are a growing market with sales estimated at $643 million in 2015, almost double since 2006.

FDA and FTC share oversight of memory supplement labeling and advertising, respectively, but neither approves claims in advance.  For this, thank the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 which pretty much lets supplement makers claim whatever they like for their products, as long as they word the claims carefully.

GAO found ads for memory supplements claiming that they would boost, enhance, improve, increase, or maintain a healthy memory.  They also made claims related to general brain health, cognitive function, and well-being.

Amazon sells these things. It advertises them like this:

Brain and Memory Booster – All Natural Formula- Brain supplement helps improve memory, mood, clarity and focus and protect against mental decline, depression, anxiety.

Do they work?

Alas, no, according to Consumer Reports.  But that doesn’t stop Americans from spending $91 million on them in 2015.

Really, something needs to be done about DSHEA.

Here’s the GAO report: Memory Supplements: Clarifying FDA and FTC Roles Could Strengthen Oversight and Enhance Consumer Awareness.
GAO-17-416.

• Report: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-416
• Highlights: http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/684621.pdf
• Podcast: http://www.gao.gov/multimedia/podcasts/684501