Search results: a life in food

The USDA announced last week the arrival of the Scientific Report of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC).

The DGAC deserves much praise for getting this job done on time under what I consider to be difficult constraints (large committee size, large areas of research to review, requirement that all recommendations be “evidence-based” which sounds good, but is unreasonable given the inability to conduct long-term controlled clinical studies).

The report is now open for public comment (see information at bottom of post).

The process to develop the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030 is under way. Get involved by providing written and oral comments to the Departments on the Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (Scientific Report). You may also sign up to receive email updates on news related to the development of the next edition of the Dietary Guidelines…For more information, visit the Public Comments to the Departments page.

A reminder about the process:  The DGAC report is advisory.  Since 2005, the agencies appoint an entirely separate internal governmental committee to write the actual guidelines.  This, of course, makes the process far more political and subject to lobbying (file comments!).

The recent election will install new leaders of USDA and HHS.  If they follow the same process, they will appoint and instruct the new committee.  Or, they can change the process entirely.

Another reminder: When I was on the DGAC in 1995, our committee chose the research questions, did the research, wrote the scientific report, and wrote the actual guidelines.  Those were the days.

Comments on the DGAC report

For starters, it’s 421 pages.

Its bottom line:

This healthy dietary pattern for individuals ages 2 years and older is: (1) higher in vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, whole grains, fish/seafood, and vegetable oils higher in unsaturated fat; and (2) lower in red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened foods and beverages, refined grains, and saturated fat. A healthy dietary pattern, as indicated by the systematic reviews, may also include consumption of fat-free or low-fat dairy and foods lower in sodium, and/or may include plant-based dietary options.

The proposed guidelines:

1. Follow a healthy dietary pattern at every life stage. At every life stage—infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, pregnancy, lactation, and older adulthood—it is never too early or too late to eat healthfully.
2. Customize and enjoy nutrient-dense food and beverage choices to reflect personal preferences, cultural traditions, and budgetary considerations.
3. Focus on meeting food group needs with nutrient-dense foods and beverages, and stay within calorie limits.
4. Limit foods and beverages higher in added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium, and limit alcoholic beverages.

This looks like all the other Dietary Guidelines since 1980.  Its bottom-line statement is more explicit than previously about reducing red meat and sugar-sweetened beverages.

Worth reading

• Support federal data.  I especially appreciated the strong support for strengthening nutrition monitoring, food composition data (FoodData Central, an invaluable resource), and updating the Dietary Reference Intakes.  Yes!
• The chapter on portion size.  At last!  Larger portions have more calories!

What’s missing

• A separate chapter on calories stated explicitly.  The report discusses concerns about obesity and diet-related chronic disease in an excellent paragraph on page 1, and mentions calories but “stay within calorie limits” doesn’t get at what’s needed.  I want more on “…adults and children [should] consume smaller portions of foods and beverages that are high in energy density and low in nutrient density.”
• A guideline to reduce consumption of ultra-processed foods.  This committee, unwisely in my view, chose not to advise minimizing intake of ultra-processed foods, deeming their definition too uncertain and ignoring what are now three controlled clinical trials demonstrating that diets based on these food induce people to overconsume calories.

What’s confusing

–The addition of recommendations for diets in early childhood.  This was done for the 2020-2025 guidelines and it involved doubling the size of the committee. This makes the committee’s work much harder and its report insufferably long.  I would rather see a separate report on children (this could deal with the effects of food marketing as well).

–The health equity lens.  I’m all for this but its discussion dominates the report.  It is discussed in a separate chapter but then in boxes and other places throughout.  The word “equity” is mentioned 217 times and “health equity lens” 38 times.

Although prior Committees incorporated basic demographic factors such as age, race, and ethnicity into their reviews of the science, this Committee considered additional factors and did so in a holistic manner as it reviewed, interpreted, and synthesized evidence across data analysis, systematic reviews, and food pattern modeling. In particular, this Committee considered factors that reflect social determinants of health (SDOH). In doing so, the Committee could interpret the evidence based on both demographic factors (which are considered to be downstream, i.e., more proximal in terms of their influence on behavior) and socioeconomic and political factors (which are considered to be upstream, i.e., broader societal factors that influence the distribution of power and resources). Addressing SDOH is considered key to achieving a just, equitable society.

Other comments

From the Meat Institute:  Meat Institute Issues Statement on the Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee

“The Meat Institute remains strongly opposed to the Report’s recommendation to reduce meat consumption and will urge the agencies to reject it,” said Meat Institute President and CEO Julie Anna Potts.

From the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine: Prioritizing Plant-Based Protein in the Scientific Report of the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Committee is a Step Forward, Doctors Say

For the first time, the advisory committee tasked with making scientific recommendations for revising the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended that the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines “include more nutrient-dense plant-based meal and dietary recommendation options,” prioritize plant-based protein over animal protein, and recognize the many benefits of beans, peas, and lentils as a protein source. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) continued to discourage consuming foods like red meat, eggs, and dairy that are high in saturated fat, while also suggesting that the next Dietary Guidelines for Americans specifically recommend plain drinking water as the primary beverage for people to consume.

I can’t wait to see what comes next.

How to commennt

A 60-day public comment period on the Committee’s Scientific Report is open through February 10, 2025. More information about how to provide written and oral comments to the Departments is available at DietaryGuidelines.gov.

• Read about opportunities to provide public comments, including requirements for oral comments 
• Register to provide oral comments to the Departments.   Note: do this now.  Spaces are limited.
• Submit written public comments to the Departments
• Register to attend the virtual public meeting to hear oral comments on the Scientific Report  

Read the Committee’s Scientific Report 

What are healthy diets? Joint statement by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization

What this is about:

Healthy diets promote health, growth and development, support active lifestyles, prevent nutrient deficiencies and excesses, communicable and noncommunicable diseases, foodborne diseases and promote wellbeing. The exact make-up of a diet will vary depending on individual characteristics, preferences and beliefs, cultural context, locally available foods and dietary customs. However, the basic principles of what constitutes healthy diets remain the same.

The guiding principles: Adequate, Balanced, Moderate, Diverse.

Here’s what they mean by Balance:

The actual guidelines are discussed under the Moderate principle.

• Sodium: restrict to 2 grams/d (5 g table salt)
• Sugars: restrict to 10% or less of daily calories.
• Saturated fat: restrict to 10% of calories, with no more than 1% from trans fat

FAO and WHO duck making a clear statement about the next two issues, although their implications are clear.

• Red and processed meat: even low levels may have negative health consequences
• Ultra-processed foods: these have negative health consequences

I wish they had stated these recommendations more clearly.  Yes they are controversial with big industries lobbying against any suggestion to eat less of these foods, but these agencies, or at least WHO, should put public health first.

I recognize that these agencies have constituencies of nearly 200 countries, many with strong meat and ultra-processed food industries.  I also recognize that the agencies have no power other than leadership to get any of those countries to do anything.

They at least stated what they thought.  It’s up to country governments to take action.  I hope they do.

Sara B. Franklin.  The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America.  Atria Books, 2024.  316 pages.

I badly wanted to read this book.  Sara Franklin got her doctorate in Food Studies in my NYU department and I met Judith Jones several times in the 1990s and 2000s (she died in 2017).

Judith Jones is famous in food circles for rescuing Julia Child’s manuscript for Mastering the Art of French Cooking and getting Knopf to publish it.

But the best way to understand her impact is to take a look at the jaw-dropping list of authors she edited; it takes up two and a half double-columned pages, and includes poets (WH Auden, Sylvia Plath, Sharon Olds) and writers (Andre Gide, John Hersey, Langton Hughes), as well as a breathtaking list of food writers: MFK Fisher, Marion Cunningham, Elizabeth David, Scott Peakock, Elisabeth Rosin, Jeffrey Steingarten, and on and on.  And, oh yes, Anne Frank.

The story here is of a woman who began her editing career in 1949 when the best women could aspire to was secretarial work.  She worked her way up through the system, but did not fight it and was always treated as someone who didn’t matter much, despite that incredible list of authors, many of them deeply devoted to Judith for what she did for them.

As an author, I can tell you that a good editor is a treasure and she was a terrific one.  She got her authors to clarify, explain, focus, and make their books readable, understandable, and enjoyable for wide audiences.  This takes insight and the ability to inspire authors to do their best work—genuine talent.  It also requires stepping back and letting the authors shine.  This book details Judith’s way of staying in the background, not always to her advantage.

Sara Franklin got to know Judith Jones, was given access to her papers, and conducted loads of interviews as the basis for this book.  She tells the story of one woman’s career, but sets it against the background of changes in society and in the food world since the 1950s and in the lives of the authors she edited—the era that I too have lived through and these are people I know, explaining why I so enjoyed reading this.

I especially like the way Sara weaves herself into the book but mostly lets Judith speak for herself.  An excerpt:

“Dick [Judith’s husband] didn’t take criticism well,” Judith told me, “And I thought it awkward to play the two roles,” editor and wife at once, “so I just shut up.  I would have liked more back and forth, but people have their hang-ups”…Judith had been caught off guard by how overwhelmed she’d become by family life, and the perpetual juggle of working motherhood.  Keeping up with the demands of her career while remaining attentive and available to Dick and the children, Judith found, was an almost impossible balancing act, with “so much,” she remarked, “dumped on the woman.”  With no models to look to, Judith was flying blind. “I hadn’t really thought about it,” she told me.  “It just seemed natural.”

As I said, a classic woman’s story of the era.

Much of the book describes Judith’s acquisition of important books and the ways she worked with their authors.  I wish I had had the chance to work with her.  I know I’m not alone in thinking that would have been an honor and a privilege.

Sara’s book is terrific.  And we are so proud of her.

The book was reviewed in the New York Times: She Was More Than the Woman Who Made Julia Child Famous: In “The Editor,” Sara B. Franklin argues that Judith Jones was a “publishing legend,” transcending industry sexism to champion cookbooks — and Anne Frank.

CANDY

IFT’s Food Technology Sweet and Spooky:  Halloween is one of the most popular times for consumers to purchase candy. Mars, in partnership with Ipsos Omnibus, surveyed nearly 3,000 U.S. adults about their Halloween plans to learn more about how consumers celebrate.

Interactive Candy Map 2024: Our map ranks the most popular Halloween candy in each state in America, as well as the first and second runners up. Our results are firmly grounded in 17 years of candy sales data! Key Takeaways: – Reese’s Cups Loses #1 Spot for the First Time Ever.

The WORST Halloween Candy 2024: People get really fired up about the candy they don’t like. Over 10,000 survey responses from the past 12 months! Key Takeaways — – Circus Peanuts Retain #1 Worst Spot; – Candy Corn on Both Lists? Divisive.

Better-for-you candy brands are going all in on Halloween: “Better-for-you candy brands are hoping that adults will dole out low-sugar gummies or chocolate-dipped nuts to trick-or-treaters this Halloween season,“ Modern Retail reported.

New York Times Candy IQ: Trick or treat! See how much you really know about sweets with this quiz.

PUMPKINS

World’s largest pumpkin: Minnesota grower wins again at World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off. 2,471 pounds. That wasn’t enough to beat the world record he set last year — that pumpkin was 2,749 pounds.

Scaring Halloween Trick-or-Treaters Is Free. But This Pumpkin? $13.50: Each application of pepper spray for pests costs the Dykemans, who calculate many expenditures by acre, about $150 per acre. Two charcoal filters, $400 apiece, protect operators in this John Deere tractor ($67,000 in 2008), which takes $130 of diesel. Fertilizer prices, which soared in part because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have come down in recent months. But it remains a significant cost, the Dykemans said, at $200 per acre.

Pumpkin Seeds: A Tiny Seed With Big Benefits: With Halloween just around the corner, pumpkins are everywhere! However, many people overlook a highly nutrient-rich part of the pumpkin – the seeds…For instance, just a small handful provides around 40% of the recommended daily value for magnesium

Pumpkins: Background & Statistics: All States produce some pumpkins, but six States produce most of them. According to the most recent USDA, Census of Agriculture, in 2022, about 45 percent of pumpkin acres were harvested in the top six pumpkin-producing States, measured by pumpkin weight. 

HOLIDAY ECONOMICS

Pricing fears grow ahead of Halloween: Cocoa and sugar prices are reported to have reached frightening highs, with alarming price rallies predicted…. Read more

Halloween’s Mutation: From Humble Holiday to Retail Monstrosity: In 2024, consumers are expected to spend $11.6 billion celebrating the holiday, up from $3.3 billion in 2005….Spending on candy is expected to reach $3.5 billion this year.

PET SAFETY? SURE, WHY NOT?

Halloween Pet Safety: It’s the season for costumes, candy, and creepy décor. Halloween can be one of the most fun holidays for a pet, but also one of the most hazardous. From choosing safe costumes to takeaways on trick or treating, the following Halloween pet safety tips will help both you and your dog have a frightfully delightful holiday. Continue Reading.

RESOURCES

Institute for Food Technology’s confection content collection: Explore IFT’s collection of scientific resources on chocolate, hard candy, and other confections.

Enjoy the holiday!

I attended a meeting at Cornell last week at which FDA Commissioner Robert Califf answered questions from faculty and staff.

He started out by remarking on the poor health status of Americans, despite our spending twice as much on health as any other country.  He noted the disparities in health status, particularly singling out the declining health of rural Americans.

In answer to questions from panel members and, later, from the audience, he said (my notes and paraphrase, unless in quotes):

• We have real health problems on the ground right now.
• The  big issue is chronic disease, on which we are “doing terribly.”
• We have to deal with the marketing of ultra-processed foods designed to make you hungry for more.
• On tradeoffs in trying to discourage ultra-processed foods: This isn’t like drugs with clear risk/benefit calculations.  Food research has big confidence intervals and less rigorous estimates. The FDA has lots of bosses.  The executive branch and Congress can overrule anything it does.
• One Health (the movement to treat human and animal health issues as parts of a whole) is essential to the future of humanity.
• Climate change has moved pathogens into areas where they didn’t used to be.
• Action on animal antibiotics stagnated as a result of the pandemic: “We are all sinners in this regard.”
• We need a global strategy; infectious diseases do not respect borders.
• ”There is a lot of rhetoric about food safety, but the systems do not come together as they should.
• There is too much financial influence on policy.  “Policy is everyone’s job.”
• A lot of people are making a lot of money on our food and health systems, but it’s not spent on the right things.
• On the Supreme Court’s overturn of Chevron: the FDA cannot extend its rulings beyond what Congress intended.  It will slow things down.
• “We should reserve most of our energy to do our jobs well.”
• Courage is important: we must have courage to do things differently.

Comment

I was impressed by his knowledge, thoughtfulness, and concern about public health issues, especially those around food, as well as his understanding of the current political barriers against using expertise and regulation to improve food systems and public health.

He used the occasion to encourage students to consider careers in the FDA and noted the remarkably low turnover of permanent staff.

Jerry Mande sent me a link to a report of remarks the Commisioner made in December: America has a life expectancy crisis. But it’s not a political priority (Washington Post), and also to Helena Bottemiller Evich’s report, FDA Commissioner says ultra-processed foods drive addictive behavior.

So the Commissioner is giving serious thought to these issues.  So are others: see Announcement below.

The big question: who at FDA will take the lead on all this?

The FDA has just undergone a major reorganization.

As of October 1, the Human Foods Program looks like this.

The big question: who will head the new Nutrition Center of Excellence?

My big hope: Califf will appoint someone to that position who shares his committment to reducing diet-associated chronic disease.  Fingers crossed.

Announcement

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), announced that his Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) will hold a hearing on the urgent need for the FDA to “adequately protect Americans – especially children – from unhealthy foods that are pushed on consumers by the food and beverage industry.”  Here is his invitation letter to Commissioner Califf and Deputy Commissioner Jim Jones, who heads the FDA’s Human Foods Program.

When: 10:00 a.m. ET, Thursday, December 5, 2024
Where: Room 562 Dirksen Senate Office Building. The hearing will also be livestreamed on the HELP Committee’s website and Sanders’ socials.

Ronnie Cummins and André Leu.  The Regenerative Agriculture Solution: A Revolutionary Approach to Building Soil, Creating Climate Resilience, and Supporting Human and Planetary Health.  Chelsea Green, 2024.

I was asked to do a blurb for this one, and did:

This book is a testament to the vision of the late Ronnie Cummins.  His friend, André Leu, memorializes Cummins’ lifelong work with this overview of the demonstrable benefits of regenerative agriculture for everything in the book’s subtitle, and more.  Cummins’ case study on agave illustrates these benefits perfectly, making this book a useful as well as touching tribute.

This short book is a touchingly sentimental project.  It started out as Ronnie Cummins’ account of how to use agave fronds (which otherwise would be wasted), ground to the consistency of cole slaw and then fermented, for sustainable animal feed.

But Cummins died after writing only two chapters.  The publisher thought agave was too narrow a topic to make book length; it advised broadening the scope to regenerative agriculture with agave as a case study.  Leu, an old friend of Cummins’, took this on.

So there are really two books here, on two topics, by two different authors, in two distinct voices.  Even so, it works as a basic introduction to the benefits of regenerative agriculture for sustainability.

I think the agave example would be better as a monograph, but Cummins hadn’t done enough on it.  Too bad.  He was really excited about its possibilities.  Agave stores moisture from air and does not need much water to grow.

So I projected, if you could grow enough plants, in this case billions of agaves and companion trees, grow them large enough, and interplant them on millions and millions of acres of the world’s currently decarbonized and unproductive rangelands, you could conceivably draw down a critical mass of excess carbon from the atmosphere (where too much CO₂ contributes to climate change) and put in into the plants and trees aboveground, and into the soil belowground, where it belongs.  By greening the desert and the drylands you could dramatically increase soil fertility, retain and store rainfall, restore landscapes and biodiversity, reforest semi-desert areas, regenerate rural livelihoods, and eventually restabilize the climate.  I could hardly fall asleep.

This book is Cummins’ living memorial.

Thanks to Hugh Joseph for this one: Running for the Ribeye.

Team Beef was created in 2009 by the national beef checkoff program, the marketing and research group that requires beef producers and importers to pay a $1-per-head on animals they market. The stated goal is to “promote beef’s health benefits and showcase people leading active and healthy lifestyles fueled by lean beef,” according to the Cattlemen’s Beef Board website. There are more than 20 teams across the country, each independently run by the respective state’s beef board.

…“Team Beef is a collection of runners and athletes … that believe in beef as a powerful protein to fuel their training and their everyday lives,” said Kentucky rancher Joe Lowe, in a promotional video that includes him cheersing his wife Cassie with beef jerky.

…Some states require that team members go through an online, self-guided course called Masters of Beef Advocacy that trains them on how to speak knowledgeably about environmental sustainability, beef nutrition, animal welfare, and beef safety.

Comment

This is a great way to advertise beef, to associate beef with sports, and to deflect attention from the role of beef production in climate change, antibiotic overuse, and pollution of soil, air, and water.  The checkoff program is a partnership with the USDA.  Extremist Republicans want to get rid of checkoff programs (see Project 2025 agenda).  So do I (politics does indeed make strange bedfellows).

Susan Greenhalgh. Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola.  University of Chicago Press, 2024.

This terrific book picks up where I left off with Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning) (2015) and Unsavory Truth: How the Food Industry Skews the Science of What We Eat (2018).

Susan Greenhalgh’s focus, however, is on ILSI, the International Life Sciences Institute (now renamed the Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences).  ILSI is a classic industry front group,  It was created originally by Coca-Cola to make sure science promoted corporate interests.  It is funded by big food companies.  It positions itself as an independent think tank.  Hence: front group.

Soda Science documents how ILSI, working through personal connections (guanxi) at the Chinese Ministry of Health, convinced the Chinese government to target obesity prevention measures at physical activity (“move more”), rather than diet (“eat less,” or “eat better”).

The first half of the book tells the story of ILSI’s role in the Global Energy Balance Network, a group outed as funded by Coca-Cola (I wrote about this in 2015, particularly here, here, and here in The Guardian).

The second half gives an intimate, first-hand account of how science politics works in China.

Greenhalgh is a distinguished anthropologist.  She retired from Harvard as as the John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Research Professor of Chinese Society (she is an expert on China).  She uses social science methods—interviews and qualitative research as well as document review—to study this particular example of soda politics.

• The International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI): true colors revealed (October 3, 2019)
• ILSI tracked media responses to my book, Unsavory Truth (February 22, 2023)

The story she tells here is fascinating in its own right and a great read.

It also makes one other point: social science methods are really useful in getting information unavailable any other way.

I say this because bench scientists tend to look down on qualitative research and consider it non-research.  I disagree.  I think qualitative research is essential, and has plenty to contribute.  This book is a great example of why.