Search results: a life in food

Usually, I post something about research conflicts of intereest on Mondays, but am doing that today instead.

Three readers sent news about this study to me, so for that alone it’s worth sharing.

First, the press release:

Associations between mango eaters and moms-to-be: better diets and improved nutrient intakes: New NHANES analysis reveals meals including mangos associated with higher healthy eating index and better nutrition for healthy pregnancies.

Any time you see a headline like this, your first question should be: Who paid for this?

The study: Mango Consumption Was Associated with Higher Nutrient Intake and Diet Quality in Women of Childbearing Age and Older Adults.  Kristin Fulgoni and Victor L. Fulgoni III. Nutrients 2024, 16(2), 303; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16020303.

Conclusion: “This study suggests incorporating mango into the diet could increase select nutrient intake as well as diet quality in specific life stages of adult Americans.”

Funding: “This research was funded by the National Mango Board.”  [Bingo!]

Conflicts of interest: V.L.F.III and K.F. are employees of Nutrition Impact, LLC, a food and nutrition consulting firm which analyses NHANES data for numerous food and beverage companies and related entities. Nutrition Impact has a contract with the National Mango Board.

Comment: The National Mango Board contracted with the authors to produce this analysis. Its results are predictable.  Guess what: eating fruit increases intake of the nutrients contained in that fruit.  Eating fruit increases the quality of the diet.  I could have told them that.

I do love mangos, although they taste much better—like eating perfume—in their countries of origin.  I’m allergic to their skins and pits, however, and have to eat them carefully.  The Mango Board must think research results like this will increase sales.

Here’s how the Mango Board advertises this fruit:

Mangos pack a nutritional punch.

• Each serving of mango is fat free, sodium free and cholesterol free.
• Mangos contain over 20 different vitamins and minerals, helping to make them a superfood.

Tinight at 6:00, I’m moderating a conversation with Michelle King about her new book, at:

Archestratus Books, 164 Huron, Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  Information here.

Michelle T. King.  Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-Mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food.  WW Norton, 2024.

I had never heard of Fu Pei-mei when this book was sent to me so I was curious to find out who she was and what she had done to deserve such a close look from a food studies scholar.

My ignorance.

Fu (1931-2004) is most easily understood as the Julia Child of Taiwan, whose televised cooking shows charmed and enlightened cooks for decades after World War II.

Fu left mainland China for Taiwan in 1949 as a war refugee, and soon married.  She did not know how to cook, but housewives were expected to and her husband complained.  She was forced to learn, and hired restaurant cooks to teach her.  Once she did learn, she began teaching others and eventually landed on TV just when it was starting.  This, in turn, led to a remarkable career as a TV personality, cook, cookbook author, and world traveler.

But this book is much more than a biography.  It is also a cultural history.  As King puts it,

The circumstances of her birth and the timing of her culinary career gave Fu a front row seat to every major political and social event affecting modern Taiwan’s history for more than seventy years.  Through the pages of Fu’s cookbooks and the story of her life, we come to understand not only the twists and turns of Taiwan’s modern political history, but also the dynamic shift in women’s roles during the postwar economic boom, when women begn to leave kitchens and cooking behind for jobs in offices and factories.

Fu was mainland Chinese and her work got caught up in the politics of mainland vs. Taiwan; she represented Taiwan although her food represented—and highlighted—regional mainland Chinese cooking with Taiwanese cuisine only added later.

Reading this book raised a personal question for me: how did Fu do it?  Her husband did not want his wife working outside the home and it’s hard to imagine his approving her travel and fame.  Somehow, she managed.  King suggests that perhaps by not challenging her husband’s control of the family or its finances, she was able to be free to conduct her career.  Fu must have been one formidible woman.

Along with the biography and history, King includes “kitchen conversations,”excerpts from interviews with Chinese-Americans who have cooked from Fu’s books.

All of this made me want to find one of Fu’s bilingual cookbooks and see if I can produce some of my favorite Chinese dishes.  By all reports, the English translations of her recipes were clear, and they worked.

And so does Chop Fry Watch Learn.  

Can’t wait to find out more about it.  Join me tonight!

Here’s something I haven’t yet written about but I’m seeing so much on the topic that it’s due.

Microplastics are small (5 millimeters and much, much smaller) particles that come off of plastic containers, wrappings, and waste.  They are now everywhere and in everything, including oceans, water supplies, food, animals, and us.

Not nearly enough is known about their effects, but early signs are not reassuring.

Some examples:

Bottled water can contain thousands of particles of nanoplastics, research suggests:  Microplastics, which research suggests could be harmful to human health, are well-known infiltrators of a wide variety of food and beverages. Now, researchers have found that nanoplastics, the even smaller offspring of microplastics, are present in stratospheric quantities in bottled water, unbeknownst to us until now…. Read more

Plastic chemicals linked to $249 billion in US health care costs in 2018 alone, study finds: By contributing to the development of chronic disease and death, a group of hormone-disruptive plastic chemicals is costing the US health care system billions — over $249 billion in 2018 alone, a new study found.

Should We Care That We’re Drinking Nanoplastics? A new study this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science tells us that every bottle of water we’re drinking has hundreds of thousands of nanoplastics….Nanoplastics and microplastics are not innocuous, but their risks are poorly understood. They come with chemicals that can be endocrine disruptors and contribute to obesity.

How Plastic Can Harm Your Health: Plastic is everywhere—even in the foods we eat and the beverages we drink. CR’s [Consumer Reports’] recent tests of nearly 100 foods found two types of chemicals used in plastic, bisphenols and phthalates, in a wide variety of packaged foods.

Everything you need to know about plastic pollution:This year’s World Environment Day – the fiftieth iteration of the annual celebration of the planet – is focusing on the plastic pollution crisis. The reason? Humanity produces more than 430 million tonnes of plastic annually, two-thirds of which are short-lived products that soon become waste, filling the ocean and, often, working their way into the human food chain.

Plastic food packaging contains harmful endocrine disrupting chemicals, study confirms: Many plastic food contact materials – plastics that are used in the processing and packaging of food – contain toxic chemicals that disrupt the endocrine system and metabolism, according to a new study published in Environmental Science & Technology.

Microplastics: In January 2019, ECHA [European Chemicals Agency] proposed a wide-ranging restriction on microplastics in products placed on the EU/EEA market to avoid or reduce their release to the environment. A consultation on the restriction proposal was organised from March to September 2019….The proposal is expected to prevent the release of 500 000 tonnes of microplastics over 20 years.

Comment: We should be looking hard at similar restrictions and at methods for reducing use of plastics and phasing them out. This won’t be easy, as discussed in: Microplastic regulation should be more precise to incentivize both innovation and environmental safety.  Is this one more food issue we need to be worried about?  I think it is.

The USDA has made some changes to food packages for participants in the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).

In a Q and A, the USDA explains the changes and why it made them.

What are the WIC food packages?

The WIC food packages provide supplemental foods designed to address the specific nutritional needs of income-eligible pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum individuals, infants, and children up to five years of age who are at nutritional risk.

WIC participants receive a monthly benefit from one of seven science-based food packages, according to their life stage nutritional needs. Participants then use their WIC electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card to buy the food and beverages in their package.

If you want to know what’s actually in the package, it’s a lot easier to go to state sites; the USDA site does not help much.

Try New York State’s WIC site. Women with children can use their EBT benefits to buy these foods (women with infants can also get formula and baby food):

• Low fat (1%) or nonfat (skim) milk for women and children two years of age or older
• Whole milk for children one to two years of age
• Cheese, yogurt, evaporated milk, evaporated goat’s milk, or dry milk as milk substitutions
• Soy beverage and tofu as milk alternatives
• Dry beans, canned beans or peanut butter options
• Whole wheat bread or other whole grain options (whole wheat tortillas, brown rice, whole wheat pasta) for children and pregnant and mostly or fully breastfeeding women
• Cash value benefit for fresh, frozen or canned vegetables and fruits
  • Women receive $11.00-$16.50 depending on breastfeeding status
  • Children receive $9.00
• Eggs
• Whole grain cereals
• 100% unsweetened fruit juice
• Canned fish for fully breastfeeding women

Going back to the USDA site. I looked at the changes, lots of them excellent. 

One is expanded benefits in general, and for fruits and vegetables in particular.

Another is improved benefits for women who are breastfeeding.

But for Breakfast Cereals, here’s what the USDA proposed.And here’s what it got, post lobbying.

The bottom line: less whole grain, and more sugar.

Does this make any difference?

In principle, yes. The USDA should not make decisions based on the food companies’ demands to make their products qualify more easily for WIC purchases.

It would be good to keep as much ultra-processed junk food as possible out of the WIC package.

These cave-ins are unlikely to make any noticable difference to health, but set a bad precedent.

Here’s what happened with the rest of the package, mostly to the good.

• Fruits and Vegetables
• Juice
• Milk and Milk Substitutions
• Infant Foods
• Add Infant Formula Flexibilities and Create a Separate Food Package for Partially (Mostly) Breastfeeding Participants
• Whole Wheat Bread,
• Whole Grain Bread, and Whole Grain Options
• Canned Fish
• Legumes and Eggs
• Maximum Monthly Allowances

Nina Guilbeault.  The Good Eater: A Vegan’s Search for the Future of Food.  Bloomsbury, 2024.

I did a back-cover blurb for this book:

The Good Eater is a vegan sociologist’s remarkably open-minded exploration of the historical, ethical, health, environmental, and social justice implications of not eating meat.  Guilbeault’s extensive research and interviews get right into the tough questions about this movement, leaving us free to choose for ourselves whether to eat this way.

Guilbeault has followed vegan dietary practices (no animal products) for a long time but was troubled by the self-righteousness and proselytizing of many vegans.  As a trained sociologist, she set out to investigate the origins, practices, and effects of vegan diets, through reading but also through interviews with what seems like everyone having anything to do with animal welfare and plant-forward diets.  The result is an exceptionally broad look at the who’s who of veganism, from historical figures to contemporary entrepreneurs and chefs.  The book is well written, rational, and not at all uncritical.

Here’s are a couple of excerpts:

Projections show that to avert environmental disaster by 2050 we need to reduce our meat consumption by at least a third, and by half in North America and Europe…But many people still eat eggs for breakfast and yogurt as a snack, put dairy milk in their coffee, add a slice of ham to their sandwich for lunch, and choose a piece of meat or fish for dinner, all in one day.  A reduction from that daily menu to a couple of eggs and a small piece of meat or fish once a week seems like a hefty drop, yet that is how humanity has eaten for most of our natural history.  (pp 284-285)

I can understand why, for many people, a vegan lifestyle seems unappealing, overwhelming, or even downright offensive.  As we know, meat has played a key part in our cultural and evolutionary history, and habits are notoriously difficult to break.  Veganism requires a shift in identity as well as the embrace of a social category still on the fringe….This is partly because being vegan in a non-vegan world is hard, but also because the vegan movement places an emphasis on moral perfection.  Yet…long-lasting, sustainable change doesn’t come from a place of shame, judgment, and guilt.  It comes from a place of joy and a sense of belonging.  (p 290)

 

Jim Krieger, of Healthy Food America forwarded this request for research proposals (RFP) from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s Senior Director of Human Nutrition Research.,

On behalf of The Beef Checkoff, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) is conducting a request for proposals (RFP) in Human Nutrition, to further understand beef’s nutritional qualities and define beef’s role in a healthy diet to nourish and optimize health at every life stage including research topics related to growth and development, healthy aging, and reduced risk of chronic disease… As part of their long-standing commitment to further scientific discovery, beef farmers and ranchers are invested in funding high quality, rigorous research — from observational epidemiological and clinical intervention trials to modeling and substitution analyses. As nutrition science continues to evolve, broadening and deepening the beef nutrition evidence base is essential to ensure that consumers have the most up-to-date information to make informed choices about the foods they eat

The Human Nutrition Research Program follows a two-part application process, beginning with the submission of a preproposal. Pre-proposals are intended to be a brief overview of the proposed project. Pre-proposals must meet the submission deadline and follow the guidelines in the RFP to be considered. Principal Investigators may submit more than one pre-proposal. Please share this RFP with interested colleagues

PRE-PROPOSALS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY Wednesday April 3, 2024 at 11:59pm MT.

Submit a Pre-Proposal here to join our RFP email list and get information about new research funding opportunities.

Comment: This is how industry funded research begins.  The RFP is not open-ended; it is not asking you to find out whether beef has benefits.  If you want this funding, you had best come up with a research plan highly likely to demonstrate the benefits of beef in nourishing and optimizing health—otherwise, it won’t be funded. This is the USDA-sponsored Beef Checkoff at work.

Here’s your chance!

Today I’m participating on a panel discussion on Ozempic at 12:30 EDT.  See announcement to the right; register for it here. 

I watched the Oprah special on the obesity drugs.

Its messages:

• Obesity is a disease, requiring treatment.
• These drugs offer treatment.
• The drugs are effective; side effects are minimal.
• Yes they are expensive and therefore, promote inequality; therefore, the government should pay for them.

The program was a one-hour, prime-time commercial for the drugs.

The physicians who testified on their behalf consult for the drug companies.

The program has already had an effect.  cause the FDA says semaglutide helps prevent heart attacks, strokes, and deaths in overweigth people, the government will now authorize payment through Medicare Part D.

Here’s what was not discussed.

• The fortunes the drug companies spent on getting doctors, health professionals, and influencers to promote the drugs and minimize their side effects.  See Reuters for US doctors and The Guardian for European influencers.
• The sharp rise in obesity prevalence between 1980 and 2000 and the environmental and commercial reasons for it.
• Anything about prevention. and changing that food environment.
• Anything serious about the down side of taking the drugs (lifetime treatment, cost, side effects, loss of joy in eating).

An editorial in The Lancet says:

A simple pill or injection will undoubtedly help some patients, but it cannot be the sole basis for addressing the complexities of obesity. Obesity is a product of not only an individual’s circumstances and behaviour, but also society at large, shaped by global food markets and trade agreements. Multidimensional approaches are needed to curb the effects of the obesogenic environment, particularly against an international industry that promotes overproduction of cheap food and drinks. Physical activity needs to increase; walking and cycling for journeys to work or school should be normalised and made easier and safer. Sugar taxes and curbs on marketing of high-energy, high-fat, ultra-processed foods need to be implemented. Prevention must be the foundation upon which everything else follows.

Other comments

• The New York Times account focuses on stigma.
• USA Today says people are suing the drug companies over side effects.

Much to be said about all this.  Stay tuned.

I have long argued that industry funded studies are about marketing, not science.

Here is a prime example (it caught my eye in Food News from the Institute of Food Technologists).

PR Newswire Cornell University partners with Danone and Symbrosia for new study: The study will aim to prove oil-based seaweed product has the potential to be more effective than existing solutions.  Read More

I went right to the source: a press release from Danone, North America: Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Study, in partnership with Symbrosia and Danone North America, Aims to Prove Effectiveness of Seaweed Oil Extract for Livestock Methane Reduction.

Symbrosia, a Hawaii-based cleantech startup that uses seaweed to drastically reduce livestock methane emissions, is excited to announce a study with Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (Cornell CALS), supported by Danone North America, a leading food and beverage company. Designed by Associate Professor Joe McFadden, the study aims to prove the effectiveness of an Asparagopsis-based seaweed oil extract for reducing livestock methane emissions compared to Symbrosia’s existing freeze-dried seaweed products…

As the press release explains, “The team’s plan [is] to ensure the study’s impact on the environment and sustainable agriculture is maximized.”

Thus, the purpose of this study—and the teams’ design plan—is explicit: to prove the superiority of this product.  That’s marketing, not science.

If it were about science, the investigators would design their study to find out which product does a better job of reducing methane emissions, if any.  This may sound like a subtle difference, but it is anything but.

Research on the effects of industry funding—“the funding effect”—shows how easy it is to design studies to give desired answers.  These researchers should be doing everything possible to make sure their study design is as objective as possible.

For a review of this and other research on food industry funding, see my Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.