I was a member of the commission that developed the SNAP to Health report.  We recommended getting more information about what foods SNAP participants purchase with their benefits and conducting pilot studies or taking sugary drinks out of the eligible items.

Now SNAP to Health has redesigned its website as a a virtual town hall for information and resources regarding food insecurity, obesity prevention, and the current state of federal food assistance programs.  It has also added sections for WIC resources.

Here’s the press release about the new site.

And here’s one more item about SNAP

Pushing for drug testing of SNAP recipients: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is still trying to do this in his state.  According to Politico, 

Wisconsin U.S. District Court Judge Charles Clevert threw out a lawsuit the state had filed against USDA in July 2015 that sought to prevent the department from blocking the state from implementing a drug-testing requirement for recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. Clevert said Wisconsin filed suit too soon, because it did not allow USDA to formally reject the state’s new requirement. Normally, states request waivers from USDA when they want to add their own SNAP requirements, but Wisconsin filed its suit preemptively — leading Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to suggest shortly after the suit was filed that it was a political move by Walker, since he was a GOP candidate in the 2016 presidential race. (Walker ended his campaign in September 2015.)

“The reason why [Walker] hasn’t requested a waiver is because he knows it’s not going to be granted because the law is pretty clear,” Vilsack said at the time.

This is a bad idea.  I hope he forgets it.

The FDA recently published its Annual Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed in 2015 for Use in Food-Producing Animals.

The report finds bad news and good news.

The bad news :

The report shows that sales and distribution of all antimicrobials increased 1 percent from 2014 through 2015, tying for the lowest annual increase since 2009. The percentage of those antimicrobials that are considered medically important in human medicine increased by 2 percent from 2014 through 2015.

The good news: This ties for the lowest annual increase since 2009.

But here’s a summary of antibiotic use in animal agriculture:—9.7 million kilograms of medically important drugs (that’s about 20 million pounds) and another 5.9 million kilograms of antibiotics that are not important medically. (about 13 million pounds).

The report comes with a Q and A.  Here is an example:

Does a summary report exist for antimicrobial sales and distribution for human drugs?  Yes. Please see: http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/InformationbyDrugClass/ucm261160.htm.

Then go to: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/DrugSafety/InformationbyDrugClass/UCM319435.pdf

3.28 million kilograms of selected systemic antibacterial drugs were sold during year 2010 and around 3.29 million kilograms were sold during year 2011. Active ingredient amoxicillin had the highest proportion of total kilograms sold of all selected systemic antibacterial drug products throughout the time period examined.

OK, but the objective needs to be to decrease use of antimicrobials in animal agriculture and use them only for treatment of illnesses, not prevention.

Gary Taubes: The Case Against Sugar.  Knopf, 2016.

The title of this book says just what it is: a legal brief arguing that sugar is the cause of just about everything that ails us: obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease, of course, but also cancer, high blood pressure and, therefore, stroke, as well as gout and Alzheimer’s disease.

This book makes a different argument: that sugars like sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup are fundamental causes of diabetes and obesity, using the same simple concept of causality that we employ when we say smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer.  It’s not because we eat too much of these sugars…but because they have unique physiological, metabolic, and endocrinological (i.e. hormonal) effects in the human body that directly trigger these disorders.

Sugar, Taubes says, is the basis of a simple unifying hypothesis—insulin resistance—to explain all of these conditions.  To make this case, he provides vast amounts of evidence: historical, observational, and interventional.

Is he right?  Many of his hypotheses are testable and it is greatly to his credit that he has organized the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSi) to do just that.

Taubes is an excellent writer, clear and compelling, and he covers an enormous territory here, from slavery to manipulation of research by the sugar industry.

I worry that focusing on one substance—sugar—smacks of “nutritionism,” reducing the complexities of dietary patterns and health risks to just sugar.   I also think questions remain about the dietary context in which we consume sugar, particularly calories but also complex carbohydrates (starch), which gets digested to sugar—glucose.  Should we not be worried about excess glucose on its own?

If I understand the last chapter correctly, Taubes ducks the question of how much sugar is OK to eat.  Or maybe it’s not ducking.  Maybe what he is saying is that the only safe level of sugar is none.

If so, that is well below the 10% of calories recommended as an upper daily limit by the US Dietary Guidelines and the World Health Organization on the basis of those committees’ reviews of the science.

Let’s get those hypotheses tested.

In the meantime, I am all for eating less sugar.

If this book encourages people to cut down on sugar, it’s all to the good.

PepsiCo has pledged to put real money behind promoting healthy foods, and it is doing just that with a new Tropicana campaign—Morning Spark.

The idea is to get millennials to drink orange juice in the morning, especially Tropicana OJ.

The campaign is going on the APlus.com site, whose cofounder is Ashton Kutcher.

The idea is to

introduce Tropicana to new audiences in new ways, through compelling and engaging content that people can connect to and want to share. Approaching 70 years, Tropicana is a heritage brand and realizes that today, more than ever, we can bring something people truly need to America’s breakfast tables – positivity and optimism. We hope this is the first step in redefining what Tropicana stands for in America’s households.

Who writes these things?  Oh well.

Here’s what the campaign is doing: a social experiment video.  The press release says:

To create the first video, Tropicana visited a coffee shop in Brooklyn on a weekday morning to hand out compliments to people and see if it sparked a change in their attitude, and it did. To see people light up and smile when we told them something positive we noticed was truly amazing. We can’t wait to do more of these efforts with A Plus.  Celebrities who shared the launch video: Ashton Kutcher, Adam Levine, Robin Thicke and Lil Wayne.

What is this about really?  “The orange juice category has faced challenges including declining sales, nutrition misconceptions and disease threatening citrus crops.”

The campaign points out the benefits of OJ: One 8-ounce glass of Tropicana’s 100% orange juice provides:

• A day’s supply of vitamin C – an antioxidant that promotes healthy skin and gums, helps your body to absorb iron from food and helps maintain a healthy immune system.
• Folic acid, which is essential for women of childbearing age.
• As much potassium as a banana. Potassium helps to maintain healthy blood pressure, among other benefits.

Funny thing: the campaign does not mention the 22 grams of sugars in 8 ounces.

Really, I have no trouble with 8 ounces of orange juice even though it must represent the juice of at least three oranges.

And really, freshly squeezed OJ is utterly delicious.  It is also less sweet than Tropicana.

For nutritional purists, an orange is a better choice.

But I’m totally for advertising healthier products, so let’s give Pepsi credit for this campaign.

Here’s what the Washington Post has to say about all this (I’m quoted)

The Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has a new report out on TV food marketing to kids.

Even though the time kids spend watching TV has not changed much since 2008″

• They are seeing more food ads per hour
• White adolescents are seeing 18% more ads.
• Black adolescents are seeing 30% more ads.

Get those kids outside this week!

• Here’s the press release
• Here’s the report

Thanks to Maria Fernanda Gombi-Vaca in São Paulo for taking a photo of  Coca-Cola’s Christmas display.

Fortunately, Christmas tree ornaments have no sugar or calories…

Larry Cohen.  Prevention Diaries: The Practice and Pursuit of Health for All.  Oxford, 2016.

Larry Cohen is an old friend and I was happy to be asked to do a blurb for his terrific book:

Prevention Diaries is Larry Cohen’s intensely personal and introspective account of why stopping health problems before they start makes sense for individuals and for societies—and is possible.  His stories of how advocates have successfully intervened to prevent problems caused by unhealthy eating, cigarettes, automobiles, guns, violence, and system inequalities should inspire everyone interested in public health to get involved in prevention programs that will make a real difference in people’s lives.

Here’s a brief excerpt from his “food for thought” chapter:

The realities of our food system can feel overwhelming—too large and too entrenched to change all at once.  But, as with so many big problems, communities and businesses are taking valuable steps to create the system we want and need.  Indeed, it feels like the United States is at the beginning of a sea-change in its pproach to food—with a swell of interest in seemingly old approaches, like farmers’ markets, heirloom produce, and cooking from scratch, which benefit consumers and workers.  As the movement has been building, its momentum and innovation have increasingly started to reshape government policies and industry practices in ways that ensure all people can enjoy the fruits of a healthier food system (p. 93).

From his lips to God’s ear, as the saying goes.

The Associated Press reporter Candice Choi has a special interest in industry-funded research (as I do) and has been using emails obtained through FOIA requests to document connections between funders and researchers that otherwise would not come to light.

Yesterday, she reported some follow up on the article I was surprised to see published in the Annals of Internal Medicine—the one I wrote about in my last post.

Ms. Choi came up with these delicious tidbits:

• Mars Inc., which is one of the companies that funds ILSI (the International Life Sciences Institute, which funded the study in the Annals charging that dietary guidelines for sugar are based on weak evidence), is now denouncing the study on the grounds that “the paper undermines the work of public health officials and makes all industry-funded research look bad…[and] creates more doubt for consumers rather than helping them make better choices.”
• Mars is saying this even though emails show that two Mars executives knew about the study last year.
• Mars now said it will make clear to ILSI hat it does not support such work.
• ILSI’s executive director says ILSI devised the concept for the study, but the paper originally said that the authors wrote the protocol and conducted the study independently from the funder. Oops.  When confronted with the Associated Press emails “showing the group sent the authors ‘requested revisions’ on the proposal last year,” the journal corrected that statement to make clear that ILSI “reviewed and approved” the protocol.
• One of the authors did not fully disclose her consulting and research agreements with companies that make high-sugar foods.  The AP had emails demonstrating this author’s financial ties to Coca-Cola and to ILSI for a previous grant on the same topic.  The Annals now show a more complete disclosure statement.

The point of all this is that when food companies sponsor research, they sometimes are much more involved in it than they would like to let on.

Mars is right.  These kinds of incidents make all industry-funded research look bad.  Mars should know.  It funds research to make chocolate look like a health food.