Jennifer Harris and colleagues at the Rudd Center have a study out in Obesity on how food companies are making products to meet the USDA’s nutrition standards for snack foods—but look just like the original products that don’t.

These, the press release says, are confusing to parents and children.

A fact sheet provides the evidence.

Students believed that look-alike Smart Snacks and the less-nutritious versions of the brands sold in stores were similar in healthfulness and expected them to taste the same.

No wonder.

This, of course, is the result of “nutritionism,” the defining of the healthfulness of a food by its content of specific nutrients—vitamins, salt, sugar, saturated fat.

The “healthier” versions raise the question: Is a slightly better-for-you product a good choice?

Not necessarily, alas.

This is why food-based standards make more sense.  Snack foods have a place in kids diets, but ideally a small one.

The USDA intends to buy $20 million worth of cheese products and will give them to federal nutrition programs and food banks.

Why?

To raise the price of milk and help milk producers.

Milk producers think this is way too little.  They asked USDA to buy $150 million in cheese products.  This would take 900 million pounds of milk off the U.S. market, reduce supply, and increase prices.

Is life tough for dairy farmers?  So they say.

As for cheese, we already eat a lot of it, more every year.

Is this the best way to support dairy farmers?

Just asking…

Dairy fat and risk of cardiovascular disease in 3 cohorts of US adults

Mu Chen, Yanping Li, Qi Sun, An Pan, JoAnn E Manson, Kathryn M Rexrode, Walter C Willett, Eric B Rimm, and Frank B Hu

Am J Clin Nutr first published on 24 August 2016 doi:10.3945/ajcn.116.134460

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2016/08/23/ajcn.116.134460.abstract

High intake of regular-fat cheese compared with reduced-fat cheese does not affect LDL cholesterol or risk markers of the metabolic syndrome: a randomized controlled trial

Farinaz Raziani, Tine Tholstrup, Marlene D Kristensen, Matilde L Svanegaard, Christian Ritz, Arne Astrup, and Anne Raben

Am J Clin Nutr first published on 24 August 2016 doi:10.3945/ajcn.116.134932

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2016/08/23/ajcn.116.134932.abstract

Jennifer Falbe and other investigators from Kristin Madson’s group at UC Berkeley have just produced an analysis of the effects of the Berkeley soda tax on consumption patterns.

They surveyed people in low-income communities before and after the tax went into effect.  The result: an overall 21% decline in reported soda consumption in low-income Berkeley neighborhoods versus a 4% increase in equivalent neighborhoods in Oakland and San Francisco.

The Los Angeles Times breaks out these figures: 

In Oakland and San Francisco, which have not yet passed a tax, sales of regular sodas went up by 10%.

Other findings, as reported by Healthy Food America:

• During one of the hottest summers on record, Berkeley residents reported drinking 63 percent more bottled water, while comparison cities saw increases of just 19 percent.
• Only 2 percent of those surveyed reported crossing city lines to avoid the tax.
• The biggest drops came in consumption of soda (26%) and sports drinks (36%).

Agricultural economist Parke Wilde at Tufts views this study as empirical evidence for the benefits of taxes.  He writes on his US Food Policy blog that it’s time for his ag econ colleagues to take the benefits of taxes seriously:

There is a long tradition in my profession of doubting the potential impact of such taxes…Oklahoma State University economist Jayson Lusk, who also is president of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA), has blogged several times about soda taxes, agreeing with most of the Tamar Haspel column  in the Washington Post, and concluding stridently: “I’m sorry, but if my choice is between nothing and a policy that is paternalistic, regressive, will create economic distortions and deadweight loss, and is unlikely to have any significant effects on public health, I choose nothing” (emphasis added).

Wilde points out that Lusk has now modified those comments in a blog post.

All that said, I’m more than willing to accept the finding that the Berkeley city soda tax caused soda consumption to fall. The much more difficult question is: are Berkeley residents better off?

Yes, they are.

The Berkeley study is good news and a cheery start to the week.  Have a good one.

Addition

Politico adds up the “piles of cash” being spent on the soda tax votes in San Francisco, Oakland, and Alameda and analyzes the soda industry’s framing of the tax as a “grocery tax.”

Kristin Reynolds and Nevin Cohen.  Beyond the Kale: Urban Agriculture and Social Justice Activism in New York City.  University of Georgia Press, 2016.

This wonderfully titled book is about how urban agriculture can do plenty to help address race and class inequities:

Moving ‘beyond the kale’ means looking beyond the trendy aspects of growing food in the city to see people who have been using urban agriculture to make the food system less oppressive and more socially just.

The authors did extensive interviews with urban agriculture activists: farmers, gardeners, and organizational leaders.  Their book links food studies to agriculture and human values and provides ideas and resources for teachers, students, and anyone else who wants to get out there and dig—as a means to change the world.

At the end of July, President Obama signed S. 764 — National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, the GMO labeling law.

It requires food product labels to disclose GMO ingredients, but companies can decide for themselves among three options:

• On-package labels
• A symbol (yet to be developed by USDA)
• A link to a smartphone app or website (QR code)

But first the USDA has to figure out what the rules are.  It gets two years to propose rules, collect comments, repropose rules, etc.  It has established a web page for tracking progress.

The process is unlikely to be simple.  The law says sugar from beets grown from GMO seeds do not have to be labeled, but the USDA says it gets to decide how all this will work.

Just Label It collected signatures on a letter to major food companies asking them to adopt the first option: an on-package statement [I signed the letter and so did lots of other people].

The Organic Consumers Association has collected half a million signatures in its campaign to support the on-package statement.  This group calls QR codes “the Mark of Monsanto” and suggests a “buycott” of products from the Grocery Manufacturers Association and its members for supporting this preemptive law.

Expect the labeling fights to drag on for years.  In the meantime, Mars and other companies have gone right ahead and put on-package disclosures on their candy labels.

And the world did not come to an end.

Just label it!

My book, Soda Politics, came out not quite a year ago but so much has happened since then that it’s been hard to keep up with everything that’s happening in campaigns to discourage consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.

Fortunately, Healthy Food America’s Casey Hinds puts out a daily roundup of sugar and soda news (you can sign up for it and HFA’s other materials here).

A few recent items of particular interest:

USA Today’s editorial, “soda taxes fall flat“

More effective ways already are being used to change people’s diets. The best use of government authority is to empower people with the information they need to make healthier choices.

The editorial comes with a poll, still up.  You can vote on it here.  At this moment only 183 votes have come in, 51% strongly in favor of the editorial opinion.

Jim Krieger of Healthy Food America did a counterpoint

The time has come to tax sugary drinks like we tax tobacco. The analogy is powerful: As with tobacco, rock-solid evidence shows habitual use harms health. Sugary drinks are a prime culprit in rampant health problems — diabetes, obesity, and heart, dental and liver disease – that cut lives short and drive up health care costs.  Tobacco taxes have reduced smoking, while raising money to make lives better. Taxing sugary drinks would do the same

This too has a poll on which you can still vote.  Only 92 votes have come in, and only 38% strongly agree.

Americans don’t like taxes.  Even so, either this issue doesn’t generate much interest or it’s just August and too hot to think about such things.

The beverage industry spent $10.6 million to oppose Philadelphia’s soda tax initiative

The soft drink industry does not like taxes and seems willing to put fortunes into opposing them.

The Philadelphia City Council passed the tax anyway.  I keep thinking of all the good things nearly $11 million could do for public health.

Melbourne’s The Alfred Hospital reduces sugary drink consumption

The hospital did an experiment to see if they could shift the mix of drinks purchased from sugary to less sugary.  They did this by increasing the price of sugary drinks and hiding them under counters.  Sales of sugar-sweetened beverages sales fell by 36,500 drinks in a year.

I don’t get it.  Why not just stop selling them altogether?

That’s it for this August Monday.  Stay cool.  More to come.

Addition, August 23

A reader from New Zealand writes to say that “all of its hospitals no longer sell sugary sodas and some are also beginning to remove juice and artificially sweetened beverages due to their acidic nature and detrimental impact on oral health.”

Michaela DeSoucey.  Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food.  Princeton University Press, 2016. 

I thought this book was exceptionally interesting and did a blurb for it:

Contested Tastes takes a deep dive into the gastropolitics of foie gras, the fatty duck liver commonly consumed in France but much less so in America.  Whether or not you approve of eating this food, you will want to read this riveting case study of how fights among stakeholders—producers and eaters of fatty duck liver, of course, but also animal welfare advocates, chefs, and government officials—reflect much larger issues of national identity, class, economic markets, and who gets to decide what we have for dinner.

Here’s a brief excerpt from her chapter on Chicago’s decision in 2006 to ban the sale of foie gras in restaurants, rescinded two years later and considered a fiasco by the Chicago Tribune.

Personal and social identities, as well as consumer movements, are realized through commodities and solidified through consumer behavior.  This lends a political dimension to the act of choosing, or refusing, certain foods…But yet, one can only “vote” as an eater among the choices made available by the business and regulatory communities…who has the ability and resources to “vote with their forks” remains a salient issue of social class.  This analogy casually affirms the liberal rhetoric of personal choice, bypassing the myriad ways in which one’s choices are influenced by others and their life circumstances.  This is the gastropolitical model that surrounded events in Chicago, meshing the language of taste and of choice with that of overt stakeholder politics.

This is an example of food studies in action—using food to explore the deeper cultural implications of important issues in our society.

I breathed a long sigh when I read Gina Kolata’s We’re So Confused: The Problems With Food and Exercise Studies in the New York Times on August 11.

Nearly everything you have been told about the food you eat and the exercise you do and their effects on your health should be met with a raised eyebrow… The problem is one of signal to noise. You can’t discern the signal — a lower risk of dementia, or a longer life, or less obesity, or less cancer — because the noise, the enormous uncertainty in the measurement of such things as how much you exercise or what exactly you eat, is overwhelming. The signal is often weak, meaning if there is an effect of lifestyle it is minuscule, nothing like the link between smoking and lung cancer, for example.

This is a pessimist’s view.  I, however, am an optimist.

Nutrition advice could not be easier to understand.  Eat plenty of vegetables and fruits; balance calories; don’t eat too much junk food.

David Katz must agree.  He asks: Diets, Doubts, and Doughnuts: Are We TRULY Clueless?

No, we are not, absolutely not, emphatically NOT clueless about the basic care and feeding of Homo sapiens…In the New York Times this past week, Gina Kolata made the case that almost all studies about diet, exercise, and health are suspect in one way or another, and that therefore we are confused about lifestyle practices for health, and justifiably so. The first point is valid; the second is utter nonsense…A global consensus of expert judgment concurs… Routine physical activity and a diet of mostly minimally processed vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds and water when thirsty redounds consistently to the advantage of human health. It offers benefits to the planet as well.

Or, as Michael Pollan famously put it:

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

Articles like that one add to the confusion; they don’t help clear it up.