Bettina Siegel writes with sad news: Dana Woldow died last week.

I will miss her.  Dana was my go-to person for information about school meal funding, a fierce advocate for getting more funding for school food service.  If you wanted to understand school food politics, her columns at Beyond Chron were essential reading.  The last one was posted September 19, 2016 with good and bad news about San Francisco’s school meals.

I often referred to her columns in this blog.  Here are some examples dating back to 2008:

• Feb 20, 2008: Thanks to Dana Woldow of the San Francisco Unified School District for sending this link to resources for making school meals healthier. Check out the salad bar video (way down at the bottom of the list of links). The city now has salad bars in 25 schools.
• Aug 25, 2008: And here’s a commentary in the San Francsico Chronicle from some folks on the front line of school lunches in the San Francisco Bay area.  Even a little more money would go a long way.
• Sept 5, 2009: Dana Woldow’s terrific 3-minute video detailing the situation in San Francisco’s public schools – as seen by kids in that system.  As the kids put it, “We need better school food!”
• May 24, 2013: Fortunately, Dana Woldow, also a long time food advocate, has just posted an interview with Ms. Siegel on just those points.
• Nov 5, 2014: Dana Woldow, who has covered these elections closely on the website Beyond Chron, has this to say about the Berkeley win.
• Feb 17, 2015: As to what all this [the fight over school food] is about, see Dana Woldow’s explanation in Beyond Chron.  As she bluntly puts the matter, “It would be comforting to think that SNA members are making those decisions based on what is most nutritious and healthy for growing kids, but unfortunately they are just as likely to be influenced by the recommendations of Big Food companies peddling processed crap.”
• March 9, 2015: Dana Woldow argues that the school food scene would be much easier if schools actually got enough money to pay for what they serve and for decent wages to school food service workers.
• July 21, 2015: Dana Woldow explains what’s really happening with schools that drop out of the meal programs ostensibly on the grounds that the new standards cost too much.

Dana: I will miss your tough, on-the-ground analysis of school food politics.  You always called it as you saw it.  And you saw plenty.

May others take up your cause.  Now.

The Consumer Goods Forum works with manufacturers and retailers to improve practices that benefit consumers such as food safety and health.

It has just released its latest Health & Wellness Progress report based on a survey it conducted in 2016.  The report is based on responses from 102 food, beverage, and retail companies.

The Forum encourages food companies to address health and wellness challenges: healthier products, the health of employees, consumer information, and responsible marketing.

I was particularly interested in seeing the results on product reformulation:

Here’s what’s being reformulated:

Will product reformulation make a difference to health?

Or, as some say, is it just another corporate political strategy, one aimed at diverting policies from moving towards mandatory approaches.

Product reformulation has been praised as a rare example of a “win-win” for the food and beverage industry and public health efforts to reduce obesity and NCDs [noncommunicable diseases], and has been described as a “pragmatic” nutrition policy…However [there are]…numerous reasons to suggest that voluntary reformulation also plays a role in the industry’s strategy to avoid unfavorable regulatory conditions, and this finding warrants significant consideration.

The latest is Connecticut.

• the bill says
• The Hartford Courant says
• The Connecticut Post says
• David Katz says

Here’s my list of taxes passed (!) and pending (?).  Have I missed any?  Please inform.

• Navajo Nation (!)
• Berkeley (!)
• Albany, CA (!)
• Oakland (!)
• San Francisco (!)
• Philadelphia (!!!) (sorry about forgetting it)
• Boulder (!)
• Chicago (!)
• Santa Fe (?)
• West Virginia (?)
• Seattle (?)
• Portland (?)

Healthy Food America has a handy map.

Addition: Bloomberg News has its own roundup

In response to my commentary in JAMA Internal Medicine late last year, “Food Industry Funding of Nutrition Research: The Relevance of History for Current Debates, the journal published an objecting letter from Morton Satin titled  “Incorrect Impressions Concerning Industry-Sponsored Research.”

Mr. Satin works for The Salt Institute, which promotes the idea that “everything’s better with a little salt.”

Here’s my reply to his letter:

In Reply Mr Satin raises several points in response to my recent Invited Commentary¹ about how food companies fund research for marketing purposes: (1) I give the impression that all industry-funded research is inherently tainted; (2) I ignore the industry’s triumph in fortifying foods with nutrients; (3) I fail to mention intellectual conflicts of interest; and (4) I should consider such issues before stereotyping.

First, my commentary was about research sponsored by food companies specifically to demonstrate the health benefits or lack of harm of a product, or to cast doubt on evidence to the contrary. It referred to a particularly egregious example—the sugar industry’s attempt to manipulate research results.² Although some industry-funded research does produce results contrary to the sponsor’s interests, such instances are rare.³ Most ends up useful in some way to the sponsors’ commercial objectives; it is marketing research, not basic science.

The point by Mr Satin about nutrient fortification has merit, but most of the basic research on nutrients used in fortification was conducted by independent scientists. Mr Satin’s own Salt Institute credits independent scientists for promoting iodization and convincing the industry to cooperate with public health authorities to iodize salt.⁴Pasteurization kills pathogens; iodide and fluoride address geographical deficiencies; and niacin, folic acid, and fiber replace amounts removed from foods by processing in the first place. Once public health authorities recognized the need, they demanded milk pasteurization or the addition of nutrients to flour. When dental researchers discovered that fluoride prevents cavities, Procter & Gamble recognized its marketing potential and funded research on fluoridated toothpaste.⁵

All scientists have intellectual biases—that is how science gets done and why science works best when researchers with different views of science repeat each other’s experiments. But the goals of scientists pursuing intellectual hypotheses differ markedly from those of companies seeking to sell food products.

Questioning food industry funding raises sensitive issues, not least because its influence on researchers occurs unconsciously, is usually unintentional, and is difficult for recipients to recognize.⁶ Food companies are not public health agencies and should not be expected to be; their first priority is to provide profits to owners and shareholders. Funding research helps with that effort. My purpose in writing the Invited Commentary was to bring the contradictions of food industry research funding to the attention of readers.

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Nestle’s salary from New York University supports her research, manuscript preparation, and website at https://foodpolitics.com. She also earns royalties from books and honoraria and travel from lectures about matters relevant to the initial Invited Commentary and this Letter in Reply.

References

1. Nestle  M.  Food industry funding of nutrition research: the relevance of history for current debates.  JAMA Intern Med 2016;176(11):1685-1686.  PubMedArticle

2.  Kearns  CE, Schmidt  LA, Glantz  SA.  Sugar industry and coronary heart disease research: a historical analysis of internal industry documents.  JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(11):1680-1685.PubMedArticle

3.  Lesser  LI, Ebbeling  CB, Goozner  M, Wypij  D, Ludwig  DS.  Relationship between funding source and conclusion among nutrition-related scientific articles.  PLoS Med. 2007;4(1):e5. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040005PubMedArticle

4.  The Salt Institute. Iodized salt. http://www.saltinstitute.org/news-articles/iodized-salt/. Published July 13, 2013. Accessed January 17, 2017.

5.  Ksander  Y. The invention of fluoride toothpaste. Indiana Public Media. http://indianapublicmedia.org/momentofindianahistory/the-invention-of-flouride-toothpaste/. Published July 10, 2006. Accessed January 17, 2017.

6.  Lo  B, Field  MJ.  Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2009.

Rolling back nutrition standards #1: Added Sugars

The new administration is hard at work undoing the gains of the last one.

In my post on the nominee for FDA Commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, I noted that he’d been saying nothing about food.  Now he is.

He told Congress this week that he’s open to “pushing back the Nutrition Facts label update deadline [of July 2018] to align it with USDA’s coming GMO labeling regulation.”

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has plenty say about this.  As it explains, the food industry wants the

deadline to be pushed back to align with the USDA’s coming GMO disclosure regulation — a measure that isn’t likely to kick in for a few years (at least)… Gottlieb suggested during the hearing that he may be open to aligning the deadlines…You want to try to consolidate the label changes when you’re making label changes as a matter of public health, he said, adding that requiring companies to update their labels repeatedly is costly.

But wait!  Doesn’t this sound just like what food company leaders said in March in a letter to HHS Secretary Tom Price?

On behalf of the food and beverage industry, we are writing to express our concern with the current compliance deadline of July 2018 for the Nutrition Facts and Serving Size (NFL) rules and to request extending the deadline to May 2021.

May 2021?  Let’s hope we all live that long.

Reminder: Everyone would be healthier eating less sugar.

Rolling back nutrition standards #2: School food

According to Politico, Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts wants the USDA to undo the school meal nutrition standards put in place by the Obama administration.  In a letter to the USDA Acting Deputy Secretary, Roberts said:

I urge you to act administratively and provide immediate relief from certain egregious aspects of the standards, particularly in regards to the rapidly approaching sodium limits and the dairy and whole grain requirements,..After providing immediate relief, I urge you to provide long-term flexibility and certainty for our schools, our food service directors, and other stakeholders.

Reminder: the school nutrition standards are working just fine.

Much ink has been spilled and many pixels displayed over Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner commercial, now pulled with an apology from the company.

If you somehow missed what this was about, here’s a selection of comments:

• WPXI Pittsburgh: Bernice King criticizes Pepsi in pointed tweet
• Huffington Post: 3 Mistakes Pepsi Made that Entrepreneurs Should Avoid
• Slate Magazine blog: Beck Bennett Has the Conversation Everyone Involved in Pepsi’s Bad Ad Somehow Avoided
• Christian Post: Is Pepsi, Kendall Jenner Ad Video Really Racist?
• WFPL: Strange Fruit: Pepsi Solved Racism!
• The Interrobang: Protester Tries Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi Move On Portland Mayo

Saturday Night Live has the last word on it.  This too got ink and pixels.

• The Washington Post asks: How did that Kendall Jenner-Pepsi ad even get made? SNL imagines an answer.
• Time Manazine: SNL Gives Inside Look Into How the ‘Tone-Deaf’ Kendall Jenner Pepsi Commercial Was Made
• USA Today: ‘SNL’ imagines how that problematic Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad happened

Addition

Late Night with Seth Myers has an “alternative ending”

When I was in Berkeley a couple of weeks ago, I met Dechen Tsering who works with Health, Housing and Community Services for that city.  She keeps an eye on what’s happening with the revenues collected from the city’s soda tax.

She sent me a link to the soda tax Website.

It’s full of useful information about the tax and what is happening with it.

Since 2015, the Berkeley City Council has allocated a total of $5 million from the General Funds for community agency grants and Public Health Division staffing to support the Healthy Berkeley Program. The funded programs aim to reduce consumption of all sugar-sweetened beverages.

If you want to know which organizations are getting tax funds in 2017, take a look here.

And here’s more than you ever wanted to know:

1. Complete SSB Tax Ordinance.

2. Glossary of definitions.

3. FAQs about the SSB tax.

4. SSB tax revenue 10.20.2015

5. SSB tax revenue 2.9.2016

6. SSB tax revenue 5.2.2016

7. SSB tax revenue 3.29.2017

8. SSB tax forms and instructions

Impressive, no?  A bright ray of sunshine for the weekend.

FoodNavigator-USA, a food-industry newsletter that I read regularly, publishes occasional “Special Editions,” meaning collections of articles it has published on specific topics.  This one is on Sweeteners and Sugar Reduction,

Food and beverage manufacturers have a far wider range of sweetening options than ever before, from coconut sugar to allulose, monk fruit and new stevia blends. This special edition looks at the latest market developments, the changing political landscape, formulation challenges and consumer research. It will also address some labeling and regulatory issues affecting the market, from new FDA requirements to list added sugar on the Nutrition Facts label and the extent to which the ‘GMO factor’ is impacting purchasing decisions for sweeteners.

• Senomyx unveils ‘natural’ sweetener breakthrough, plans GRAS notification by end of 2019: Senomyx has identified a new zero-calorie, high-potency sweetening compound found in trace levels in monk fruit, which it plans to produce on a commercial scale via fermentation… Read
• Consumers want stevia from the leaf, says PureCircle: ‘They want naturally-sourced plant-based ingredients’: As the technology around producing steviol glycosides continues to evolve, transparency in labeling will be critical if consumer trust in ‘natural’ sweeteners is to be retained, says PureCircle, which claims to be the “clear market leader in terms of production capacity and R&D” when it comes to stevia extracts… Read
• Where next for stevia? From designer glycoside blends to fermentation and enzyme modification: If high purity Reb A used to be the only game in town when it comes to stevia, the game has become a lot more sophisticated in the past couple of years as suppliers compete to provide the best-tasting combinations of steviol glycosides, and products become more application-specific, says Sweet Green Fields chief science officer Mel Jackson PhD… Read
• Allulose could change the sugar reduction game… if labeling rules are changed, says Tate & Lyle: Allulose – an ultra low-calorie sugar found naturally in jackfruit and figs that Tate & Lyle is making in commercial quantities from corn using enzymes – has got some high profile advocates including Quest Nutrition, but would gain significantly more traction if manufacturers were not required to include it as added sugar on US food labels, says Tate & Lyle… Read
• FDA issues GRAS no objection letter for Sweegen’s Bestevia Reb-M – which starts with the leaf, then undergoes ‘enzymatic conversion’: California-based SweeGen has received a GRAS no objections letter from the FDA for the use of its Bestevia branded Reb-M – manufactured from stevia leaf extracts converted to Reb M using enzymes – for use as a general purpose sweetener for food and beverage applications in the US… Read
• Big Tree Farms unveils golden coconut sugar to compete with refined white sugar: ‘This is going to be a truly disruptive sweetener’: Big Tree Farms has developed a paler, finer ‘golden’ organic Fair trade coconut sugar that can replace refined white sugar in applications where coarser, darker coconut sugars aren’t ideal, says the company, which has been selling coconut sweeteners for a decade and is still generating double digit growth year-on-year as consumers embrace their ‘unrefined’ and low-GI credentials… Read
• New kid on the block explores novel business model for stevia production: California-based B’BOX Group claims to have developed a proprietary technique for producing clean-tasting, high-purity stevia extracts that is so fast and cost-efficient that it says leading CPG manufacturers are considering buying the technology and producing their own sweeteners – a new model for the industry… Read
• ADM teams up with GLG Lifetech to add stevia and monk fruit to its portfolio: ADM is bringing two sweetener brands, SweetRight stevia and VerySweet monk fruit, to market following a tie up with Canadian high potency sweeteners specialist GLG Lifetech… Read
• Should foods high in added sugar be disqualified from making nutrient content and health claims?  High levels of added sugar should disqualify foods from being able to make health claims, or nutrient content claims such as ‘healthy’ or ‘high fiber,’ argues a citizen’s petition filed last week by the nonprofit advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists… Read
• Confused about added sugar? FDA issues draft guidance on Nutrition Facts changes: The FDA has attempted to clear up some of the confusion over defining and calculating added sugar, in new draft guidance designed to help firms get to grips with the key changes it is making to the Nutrition Facts panel… Read
• Sparkling ICE unveils $37m ad campaign, queries soda tax inconsistencies: ‘It’s a mess’: Talking Rain Beverage Co has unveiled a $37m national ad campaign that president Kevin Klock says will give Sparkling ICE a stronger brand identity – something it has historically lacked, despite its meteoric growth (estimated retail sales have surged from around $10m in 2011 to well over $600m today)… Read
• Ag Committee weighs whether SNAP should pay for sugary drinks: Prohibiting the purchase of sugar-sweetened beverages and other “unhealthy” foods and beverages with SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps, likely would not discourage their consumption, but would be costly and difficult for retailers to implement, industry stakeholders argued on Capitol Hill last week. .. Read
• Kellogg, Post & General Mills hit with wave of lawsuits as plaintiff’s bar turns up the heat on sugar: If a high percentage of the calories in your product are from added sugar, and you are stating or implying that it’s healthy and nutritious, are you at risk of a false advertising lawsuit? A flurry of lawsuits recently filed vs Kellogg, General Mills and Post Foods suggest the answer is yes, although legal experts predict the plaintiffs face an uphill battle… Read
• Misfit Juicery’s two-prong approach to addressing the anti-sugar trend’s threat to juice: Startup Misfit Juicery is taking a two prong approach to the growing threat to the juice category posed by consumers’ increasing concern about sugar, and in doing so is setting itself apart from the competition… Read
• Health advocates argue for a tax on sugary drinks in Canada to save lives and healthcare costs: Twenty-four public health advocates and organizations are calling on the Canadian government to levy a significant tax on manufacturers of sugary drinks to discourage consumption and help fund healthy living initiatives… Read
• In age of sugar reduction and ‘clean label,’ sweetener manufacturers adapt: A combination of shifting consumer demand for ‘clean label’ and a new FDA requirement to list added sugars on nutrition panels means sweetener manufacturers are navigating through new territory… Read
• Chicago snack start-up No Denial Foods targets low-sugar shoppers seeking indulgence: “Sugar is the new fat” when it comes to dietary villains, says No Denial Foods Founder Debbie Wood. “Sugar is going to be on a lot of people’s radar.”.. Read