The Greenhorns, “a grassroots organization working to support and promote new generations of young farmers, ” has just released the third volume in its Farmer’s Almanac series.

Farmer’s Almanac, Vol. III: Commons of Sky, Knowledge, Land, Water.   Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017.

I did a blurb for Volume II (2015): A Contemporary Compendium for Agrarians, Interventionists, and Patriots of Place

This Farmer’s Almanac has all of the best features of the classic versions—wonderful drawings and charts–along with a pot pourri of modern philosophical musings on agrarian values.  It’s a browser’s delight!

More information about Volume III is here.

For previous volumes, send email to office@thegreenhorns.net.

I just received this invitation:

Save The Date

FDA invites our Constituent Update subscribers to Save the Date for the

FDA Public Meeting on the Use of the Term “Healthy” in the Labeling of Human Food

Thursday, March 9, 2017 (8:30 AM‐5:30 PM)

Hilton Washington DC/Rockville Hotel

 1750 Rockville Pike

Rockville, Maryland 20852

This refers to FDA’s “public process to redefine the healthy” nutrient content claim for food labeling.”

This involved opening its proposals up for public comment, extending the comment period until April 26 this year., and holding this public meeting “to facilitate further dialogue on this topic.”

This all came about as a result of the KIND company’s petition to FDA to advertise its nut-grain-and chocolate bars as “healthy,” even though the nuts and chocolate have more fat than is allowed in the FDA’s current definition.  The FDA agreed that KIND could use the term.

The irony is that this enormous effort applies to processed food products.  OK, some are more processed than others, but eating whole, relatively unprocessed foods is what’s really healthy.

This is about how food companies can market products.  It is not about health.

FDA has produced these documents:

• Guidance for Industry: Use of the Term “Healthy” in the Labeling of Human Food Products
• Constituent Update: FDA to Redefine “Healthy” Claim for Food Labeling

As a distraction from Brexit, perhaps, the British government has just launched a new anti-acrylamide campaign aimed at home cooks: “Go for Gold.”

By Gold, it is referring to the preferred color of toast: the lighter the color, the less acrylamide, a carcinogen formed when foods containing sugars and the amino acid asparagine are cooked at high temperatures.  This is a Maillard reaction, which causes baked, fried, and toasted foods to turn attractively brown and delicious.

As the BBC explains,

The response?  Critics immediately complained that evidence linking acrylamide to cancer is weak and that this campaign is unnecessarily scary and distracting from real public health problems such as food insecurity and obesity.

I’ve written about Acrylamide several times in the past.  Here’s what I said in 2009: “Acrylamide, sigh”:

I don’t know what to say about acrylamide.  Acrylamide is the powerful carcinogen that gets formed when carbohydrates and proteins are cooked together at high temperature, as in dark toast, French fries, and potato chips. I just can’t figure out how bad it is, and I like my toast well toasted.  But: Canada recently added acrylamide to its list of toxic substances.  The European Union has just listed it as a hazardous chemical “of high concern.”

It’s better to avoid it, I guess.  But is this a number one priority for a national public health campaign?

The two agencies have just issued advice to pregnant women about eating fish.

Fatty fish have long-chain omega-3 fatty acids which are good for health.

But some have methylmercury, which is toxic to the developing fetus.

And all have PCBs or other organic compounds that are unlikely to promote health.

The advice?  Eat 2 to 3 servings of lower-mercury fish per week for a total of 8-12 ounces

That’s fine, but which fish are low in methylmercury?

For this, the agencies have created an reference chart that sorts 62 types of fish into three categories:

“Best Choices” (eat two to three servings a week)

“Good Choices” (eat one serving a week)

“Fish to Avoid”

Here’s where things get tricky.

• Choices to avoid include, among others, Bigeye Tuna and Tilefish from the Gulf of Mexico.
• Good choices include Albacore and Yellowfin Tuna and Tilefish from the Atlantic Ocean.

Good luck telling the difference.

As I’ve written before (and also see this post and this one about fish politics), if you want to avoid methylmercury during pregnancy, it’s best to avoid tuna.  Consumer Reports advises pregnant women not to eat tuna at all.

Center for Science in the Public Interest says:

The best advice for pregnant or nursing women and parents of small children is to choose fish that are low in mercury and high in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon and sardines. They should avoid albacore tuna altogether, and consume tuna labeled as ‘light tuna’ very sparingly — no more than two ounces per week for women and one ounce per week for kids.

And are PCBs a non-issue?  Could fish politics have anything to do with this?

Here are the documents

• Eating Fish: What Pregnant Women and Parents Should Know
• Federal Register Notice Announcing the Advice
• FDA and EPA final advice (this updates advice proposed in June 2014)

Last week I posted this about Canada’s new food label:

• A Canadian study shows that two-thirds of packaged foods sold in Canada have added sugar.
• Canada’s new food label is causing a fuss over the sugar listing because it (a) does not distinguish between intrinsic and added sugars, and (b) sets 100 grams per day as the standard amount.  Looks like the Canadian sugar lobby won this one.

I received a note from a reader who sent an article from the Canada Gazette giving some of the background for these decisions.

The government did a cost-benefit analysis of the then-proposed label:

Costs were estimated based on the inclusion of all regulatory options that were presented during consultations (i.e. the U.S. approach for added sugar, mandatory inclusion of vitamin D in the NFt). Stakeholders indicated that the cost would be a maximum of $727.1 million and with the removal of outliers, $598 million. However, the decision to use a Daily Value approach for sugars instead of added sugars would significantly lower these costs…The coming-into-force period of 5 years was chosen to minimize the cost of implementing the proposed amendments.

How did the Daily Value get to be 100 grams per day, twice the U.S. Daily Value of 50 grams?  All it says is:

A DV of 100 g is being proposed for sugar, and the declaration of the % DV for sugar in the NFt would be mandated for all foods.

Food industry politics in action!

George Kent.  Caring about Hunger.  Irene Publishing, 2016

Kent is a former professor of political science at the University of Hawai’i who in his retirement is teaching at the University of Sydney in Australia and Saybrook University in California.  His book is about the causes of hunger and how to overcome them.   He’s been at this for a long time and can boil the causes down to brief summaries.

• Disjunction: Hunger and poverty persist largely because the people who have the power to solve the problems are not the ones who have the problems.
• Compassion: On the whole, the people who have the power do not have much compassion for the powerless.
• Material interests: The powerful serve mainly the powerful, not the powerless, because the powerless cannot do much for the benefit of the powerful.

Much of the book focuses on compassion and what he calls “caring.”

• Hunger is less likely to occur where people care about one another’s well being.
• Caring behavior is strengthened when people work and play together.
• Hunger in any community is likely to be reduced by encouraging people to work and play together, especially in food-related activities.

He gives plenty of examples of how to make all this work.

Utopian?  Yes, but we need to start somewhere.

I am late in getting to this report on school meals from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations, which came out in early December. 

Their jointly sponsored Kids Safe and Healthful Foods Project took a good hard look at how schools were faring under the Obama administration’s rules for healthier lunches, breakfasts, and snacks. 

Some of their findings:

• 6 in 10 directors said they faced only a few or no ongoing obstacles to meeting updated breakfast requirements; 4 in 10 said the same of the lunch guidelines.
• For breakfast and lunch, the commonly cited challenges were sodium and whole grain targets.
• Most programs use a mix of strategies—three, on average—to encourage students to eat nutritious meals (e.g., salad bars).
• Holding taste tests with students and redistributing uneaten, sealed foods were among the most effective ways to reduce waste (but only about 40% of schools were doing this). 
• Programs preparing more foods from scratch and increased the use of salad bars were more likely to report that student participation rose or was unchanged from 2011-2015.
• Two-thirds of schools reported compliance with the Smart Snacks nutrition standards.
• Equipment and labor costs were the most frequently reported financial concerns.
• 84 percent of program directors reported rising or stable combined revenue (meal reimbursements plus snack and beverage sales) in the past year. 

Most schools are managing; some are still having problems.  My guess is that what I’ve always observed is still true: if the school food director and the principal are committed to serving healthier meals, they find a way to do that.  If not, they don’t.  Schools that cook from scratch do better—but that also takes commitment.

Most needed are (1) enough money to do it right, and (2) education, training, and decent pay for school food service personnel.

Documents and links:

• The press release
• About the report
• The full report
•  Audio recording of media briefing
• Recent research on nutritional benefits of school meals
• The Pew and RWJ website on the Kids’ Safe and Healthful Foods Project

Last week was a big one for comments about sugars.  I’m traveling this week but here’s a quick round-up.

• Julia Belluz of Vox explains what sugar is about (I’m quoted) and displays a great graphic of where it hides in food (here’s an excerpt).
  
• Gary Taubes, author of The Case Against Sugar, summarizes how the sugar industry attempted to manipulate research on the effects of fat v. sugar and heart disease risk.
• Yoni Freedhoff counters with a somewhat different perspective on Taubes’ interpretations and the sugar story.
• A Canadian study shows that two-thirds of packaged foods sold in Canada have added sugar.
• Canada’s new food label is causing a fuss over the sugar listing because it (a) does not distinguish between intrinsic and added sugars, and (b) sets 100 grams per day as the standard amount.  Looks like the Canadian sugar lobby won this one.