Monsanto’s corporate behavior has been so counterproductive that it has damaged the reputation of the entire food biotechnology industry (I document this in Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety).

What to do?

How about convincing journalists that food biotechnology is the solution to the world’s food problems and that any criticism of it is a critique of science in the same category as climate-change denial (as I told Thacker).

The journalist Paul Thacker explains that strategy in an article in today’s Progressive.

In recent months, media outlets have reported on a disturbing trend of corporate-sponsored journalism. The British Medical Journal exposed a multiyear campaign by Coca-Cola to influence reporters covering obesity by secretly funding journalism conferences at the University of Colorado. The watchdog group Health News Review reported that two journalism professors at the University of Kansas asked more than 1,100 health-care reporters about their views on opioids in a survey that was funded, in part, by the Center for Practical Bioethics, a group the U.S. Senate Finance Committee investigated for its ties to opioid manufacturers…Hints of the biotech industry’s media tactics have leaked from court cases filed against Monsanto alleging glyphosate causes cancer. Several filings reference internal Monsanto documents that describe the company’s social media strategy called “Let Nothing Go”—a program in which individuals who appear to have no connection to the industry rapidly respond to negative social media posts regarding Monsanto, GMOs, and agrichemicals.

His article describes the fierce industry pushback against anyone who raises questions about food biotechnology.

I know about that pushback firsthand.  That’s why this site no longer accepts comments.

We need open discussion about issues related to food biotechnology.  This article is a good place to begin.

I am a big fan of Wendell Berry, the inspiring Kentucky professor and farmer, long a leading and inspiring proponent of agrarian values.  He displays these values in his own life—he walks the talk—as well as in his many books, poems, and, these days, tweets (@WendellDaily).

Now there is a movie about him, “Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry.”  It’s a lovely and touching film about Berry’s early start and young family.  His wife and daughter appear in the film, but the contemporary man does not.  He says he doesn’t do movies (a position with which I am increasingly sympathetic).

The film documents what industrial agriculture has done to rural America—emptied it of people, communities, and a way of life (as Berry puts it, the Russians did this with police; we did it with economics).

The film also shows how going  back to a more sustainable production system is good for soil, animals, and food, and makes farmers better off and happier.

This may sound like fantasy, but here is the Union of Concerned Scientists with a new report documenting precisely those benefits: Rotating Crops, Turning Profits.

As UCS scientific director Ricardo Salvador wrote me in an email:

A valid critique of the [crop rotation] system, for all its benefits (saves soil, cleans water, reduces inputs and chemical pollution, increases biodiversity, reduces pest pressure, boosts yields and profitability), is that not all Iowa farmers could adopt the system without reducing supply of corn/soy, increasing their price, and thereby driving farmers back to the system. What is the economic equilibrium point? It is an important question.

The short of it, after our economist’s painstaking analysis, is that 20 – 40% of current Iowa corn/soy acreage could be transferred into the system without distorting market dynamics. Interestingly, approximately that amount of corn/soy land in Iowa is highly erodible and should not be in that system to begin with. Farmers attempt to force the issue because of current policy incentives. If instead that ground were put into the extended rotation, it would save megatons of soil and billions of dollars of environmental and health damage annually… All of this, at great profit to the farmer—it should not be forgotten.

This is important work and it’s just thrilling that the Register is writing about it.  I hope everyone in Iowa reads the editorial and pays attention to its lessons.

• Executive summary
• Full report
• Technical appendices
• Editorial in the Des Moines Register

From the UK comes one of the best documents I’ve ever seen about food system policy:

It has information about why we need a coherent, comprehensive food policy, what it has to address, how to set priorities for putting policies in action, and how to build a movement to get there.

Olivier de Schutter, formerly the United Nations special rapporteur on the Right to Food, wrote the Foreword.

We need one of these for the United States.  In the meantime, this is really useful.

Food organizations, professors, students: take a look.

Here’s the main site where you can find out more about this initiative.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByOC-u0iVRMGLUVKem12RHNhMU0/view

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has a new study with a startling conclusion: “frequent consumption of fried potatoes appears to be associated with an increased mortality risk” (here’s a news report about it).

For lovers of French fries, this is unhappy news.  Or is it?

The study looked at potato intake (fried and unfried) reported by 4440 participants aged 45–79 y at baseline for 8 years, as part of a study on osteoarthritis.  Participants with the highest consumption of potatoes had the same mortality as those consuming the lowest amount.

But when they looked at the subgroup consuming fried potatoes 2–3 times per week, the risk of mortality doubled.

It’s not potatoes that might be a problem; it’s just those that are fried.  Even so,

• The study is based on intake reported in food frequency questionnaires
• The results are not cleanly dose-related; mortality rates were higher among people reporting fried potatoes twice a week than those reporting more
• People who eat lots of fried potatoes are likely to indulge in other unhealthful dietary or lifestyle practices.

But this is not the first study to report health problems among frequent eaters of fried potatoes.  See:

• Potato consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease: 2 prospective cohort studies
• Fried-food consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease: a prospective study in 2 cohorts of US women and men
• Maternal intake of fried foods and risk of gestational diabetes mellitus.
• Potato Consumption and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes
• Adolescent Energy Drink Use Related to Intake of Fried and High-sugar Foods

This is a lot to blame on one food.  I vote for lifestyle confounding.

Put French fries in your once-in-awhile category.  I’m saving my allotment for the Belgian ones.

From the USDA’s partnership with the Ad Council…

I’ve been asked to comment on Amazon’s proposal to buy Whole Foods.  So much has been written about it that it’s hard to add anything new.

My immediate thoughts:

• Monopoly capitalism in action
• Amazon owns everything
• This won’t help feed the poor

The facts: Amazon offered $13.7 billion to buy Whole Foods.  This may seem like a lot of money but it’s just 3% of Amazon’s $470 billion holdings.

How did this happen?

• Whole Foods CEO calls it “love at first sight” and a “whirlwind courtship.”
• But the marriage depends on approval by anti-trust regulators.

What are the implications?

Effect on retailers: Their stocks dropped immediately.  Amazon is serious competition.

Disruption: This may be a major disruption to grocers, but this industry may have had it coming.

Organics: Whole Foods specializes in organics; producers already cannot keep up with demand.  Farmers will have to grow more, but if Amazon imports organics that will open up possibilities for fraud.

E-commerce: this could increase the value of physical stores if done right, as well as online grocery shopping.

Food chains: Amazon on top.

 “Conscious capitalism”: The end

Maybe, feeding the world (says Alice Waters)

Better food for all?  Civil Eats considers this question, but asks will this do what Walmart does—force lower wages for workers and lower prices for farmers. 

Humor: Alexa: tell me some jokes about Whole Foods’s prices, drones, and Amazon’s ruling the world.

The EPA is not doing enough to prevent weed resistance to the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup) says a new report from the EPA’s Inspector General’s Office (OIG) ,which draws in part on a report from the agbiotech company, Pioneer: Weed Management in the Era of Glyphosate Resistance

The EPA OIG report explains that glyphosate (Roundup) is used on crops modified to tolerate this herbicide, which kills surrounding weeds but leaves the GMO crop intact.

If you use enough of it long enough, weeds develop resistance.

US farmers are planting more herbicide-resistant GMO corn and soybeans (this figure is from the Pioneer report):

Here’s how much glyphosate US farmers are using:

• 2002: 110 million pounds
• 2012: 283.5 million pounds

Weeds resistant to herbicides were first reported in 1968.  Weed resistance is now increasing rapidly (this figure is from the OIG report).

Weeds resistant to glyphosate are spreading rapidly throughout the US (this figure is in both reports).

What should government do to stop this?  A quick lesson on GMO regulation:

• USDA regulates these crops.
• EPA regulates herbicides used on these crops.
• FDA regulates their safety.

The EPA Inspector General says EPA is not doing enough to mitigate herbicide resistance:

• It is not communicating with farmers or other stakeholders about managing resistance.
• It is not collecting data on herbicide resistance through its adverse incident reporting database.
• It is not dealing with the need to develop alternatives.
• It is not tracking progress in addressing weed resistance.
• It needs to do better.

What should be done?  Pioneer says:

A truly integrated strategy should incorporate non-chemical control tactics as well. Mechanical weed control and crop rotation are examples of two such tactics available to growers, but the feasibility of their implementation will vary depending on the characteristics of a cropping system.

Non-chemical control tactics?  Sounds like sustainable agriculture, no?

Weed resistance is a big reason not to use glyphosate.

Another is its suspected carcinogenicity, but I will save that for another time.

I was interviewed by Cindy Kuzma, a reporter for VICE, about research on chocolate.  Her story is here.  Her questions were great (I wish all reporters asked such interesting questions).  Here’s our Q and A:

CK:  I noticed you haven’t written about chocolate for a while—perhaps it has been quiet on that front, or there are just a lot of other things happening! But another study about its health benefits, this time in regards to atrial fibrillation, brought it to my editors’ attention. Rather than just report on those findings they’ve asked me to take a broader view of the issue, which I appreciate.

MN: First let me comment on this study.  It is trying to tell me that 1-3 ounces of chocolate a month produces measurable health benefits?  That seems incredible and probably is, particularly because nothing is said about dose relationships.

CK:  How do you explain briefly to consumers why studies of health benefits linked to a single food are problematic/not terribly useful at best? (You’ve used the term “nutrifluff” before; is that still what might apply here?)

MN: People eat many different kinds of food every day.  The authors of this study say confounding factors might be involved.  That means that people who eat moderate amounts of chocolate (1-3 ounces a month is not much) might eat healthier diets, exercise more, or have other habits that reduce atrial fibrillation.

CK:  When it comes to chocolate specifically—how has industry shaped the public discussion of chocolate’s health benefits? MARS has obviously played quite a crucial role with its whole Center for Cocoa Health Science and its marketing of the CocoaVia supplement … how much influence has that single company had, and how would you advise consumers to view the research/claims tied to that type of industry funding?

MN: Mars is careful to say that cocoa processing into chocolate normally destroys flavonoids, which is why it developed a special preservation process and provides flavonoids in capsules, not chocolate.  But people tend to interpret the studies as “chocolate is really good for me.”  The study at issue here is independently funded.  In general, industry-funded studies come to conclusions favorable to the sponsor.  They require especially cautious interpretation.  But this one does too because it does not seem plausible.

CK: Like much of the research on the purported health benefits of chocolate, the new findings about atrial fibrillation come from an observational study. How do you typically explain the limitations of this type of research, and what the average health news consumer might not understand about the differences between correlation and causation?

MN: This study obtained information about chocolate consumption from food frequency questionnaires in which people tick off the number of times they have eaten a food in a week, month, or year, depending on how the question is asked.  I find these things impossible to fill out because I can’t remember at that level of specificity.  Chocolate shows up as a factor but other foods might too.  That’s why you can’t say chocolate is a cause of reduced atrial fibrillation; that observation could be due to any number of other factors.

CK: Even in randomized controlled trials—what other factors might wise consumers keep in mind when evaluating research? (I’m thinking about how often studies use the types or amounts of chocolate people regularly eat, rather than extracts/purified versions/large quantities, as well as whether they evaluate clinically significant outcomes like disease and mortality vs. isolated biomarkers or other less meaningful endpoints.)

MN: Interpretation of studies always has to be done in the context of everything else that is known about the topic.  One study should not change food choices, especially if it is industry-sponsored.  Anytime I hear “everything you thought you knew about nutrition is wrong,” a red flag goes up.  That’s not how science works.

CK:  Anything else you’d say overall about the role of a food like chocolate in a nutritious diet, and how much these health claims should/shouldn’t influence individuals’ regular habits?

MN: Chocolate is candy, not a health food.  Candy in moderation is just fine.  Every food in moderation is just fine.  Maybe the people in that study practiced moderation pretty easily and that’s why they came out as healthier.