Search results: a life in food

Candy makers, like all food producers, want to sell more of their products.  From the standpoint of Mars Wrigley Confectionary, you need to eat more candy.

By some accounts, the US doesn’t even rank in the top ten countries in per capita candy consumption.  The Census Bureau says the average American—does this mean you?—consumes 22 pounds of candy per year.

Candy sales come in peaks.

Mars—now Mars Wrigley—wants to fix that.

Its research shows that you find the candy aisle difficult to manage.

Mars Wrigley Confectionery surveyed 1,000 Americans last year to understand how Millennials and Baby Boomers experience treats as well as the role of social media in treating.

Mars Wrigley Confectionery has begun working with retailers to put these recommendations into action. The company has created a framework that unlocks the power of confectionery at the point of purchase — online and in-stores.

Its Path to Purchase strategy advises retailers to:

• Display candy in high-traffic areas
• Promote key moments with candy brands
• Maximize promotional space
• Transition to stand-up pouches (these encourage sales)
• Use micro-gifts to encourage customers to “shop, ship and secretly gift ‘boo’ packages and build their own ‘boo’ bundles.’”

At the same time,

Mars Wrigley Confectionery knows through its research that consumers view candy as a treat and continue to enjoy it as part of a balanced lifestyle, especially Millennials. In response, it’s important retailers provide consumers with a range of formats, calories and price options to drive sales.

A few examples include:

• More options for share sizes and resealable packaging.
• 100-calorie bars and packs, such as those available for Skittles, Dove, Twix and Snickers.
• Low calories gum choices such as Extra, Juicy Fruit and 5 gum.

You are not supposed to notice any of this.  Mars wants you to buy more candy.  You are a lot better off buying less.

If you find yourself buying more candy, take a close look at how and where it is displayed.

NutraIngredients is another one of those industry newsletters I read every day.  Here is its collection of articles—a special edition—on supplements.  In the United States, supplement ingredients and labels are governed by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, which effectively deregulated the products leaving the public to take the products on trust, sometimes justifiably, but sometimes not.

Special Edition: Transparency in Dietary Supplements

Issues concerning adulteration, identity and others swirl around the dietary supplement industry.  In this special edition, NutraIngredients-USA looks at the opportunities for proactively dealing with these questions in an effort to boost transparency and retain consumers’ trust.

• What’s in my product? Supplement brands, suppliers get creative as they vie for consumer trust:  From profiling their ingredient suppliers to setting up codes consumers can look up, supplement brands are using transparency to win over consumer trust… Read
• Transparency lens focused on supply end of supplement industry: Securing sources of supply is not only good business practice, it can also boost a company’s transparency efforts. Examples abound of companies putting raw cost concerns aside to push forward efforts to make sure fragile ecosystems are protected and potentially endangered species are nurtured… Read
• Efforts by AHPA, BAPP pull back veil on issues relating to identity, adulteration: Efforts by two major groups in the botanical trade are boosting transparency relating to the identity and purity of these ingredients… Read
• The dietary supplement industry has morphed into something much bigger, industry expert argues: “We are no longer the dietary supplement industry,” said Scott Bass, partner and head of global life sciences at Sidley Austin LLP, during his opening remarks as co-chair of ACI’s Sixth Annual Legal, Regulatory and Compliance Forum on Dietary Supplements in New York last week… Read
• Trade group advocates to keep skip lot testing option in dietary supplements GMPs: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is soliciting comments for a GMP code in which ingredient companies can petition for skip lot testing, but one trade group found discrepancies in the Federal Registrar notice… Read
• Study highlights progress in turmeric supplement quality, but concerns around synthetic curcumin adulteration: A new analysis of 87 different turmeric dietary supplements has highlighted the diversity of available products and the challenges this gives consumers. Concerns were also raised around potential adulteration with synthetic curcumin… Read
• Boswellia oleogum resin prone to adulteration, new bulletin outlines: The botanical Boswellia has been used for its anti-inflammatory properties for millennia, but it’s not uncommon to find some products today labeled as Boswellia to skimp on the amount of the botanical or to substitute in a less-researched form… Read
• Observers question adverse event reporting compliance for products sold on Amazon: Some industry observers are starting to question how many of the thousands of supplements sold on Amazon and other high volume online platforms comply with adverse event reporting requirements and other rules pertaining to the sales of these products… Read
• Consultant launches new regulatory compliance certification for dietary supplement companies: Curtis Walcker is the consultant slash owner behind consulting firm Dietary Supplement Experts, LLC. He launched a new certification this week, designed based on client feedback, to focus on everything from GMPs to FTC compliance… Read

In response to my post last week about a new report on the effects of meat production on climate change and the need to eat less meat, Ridge Shinn, a producer of 100% grass-fed beef reminded me that meat has a place in the diet and raising cattle does not have to harm the planet.

The whole point of cattle raising is to graze the animals on land that cannot be used to produce food for people and let them turn grass into edible meat.  Raising cattle on grass, sustainably, regenerates the land and reduces carbon emissions.

Shinn summarizes the evidence in comments that he and other sustainable livestock farmers submitted to the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.

As ranchers and farmers who produce 100% grass-fed beef, we submit that the research on our product is already in. We are already employing techniques that soil scientists have validated since the 1990s. We know that corn is bad for cattle and that corn-fed meat is unhealthy for humans. Therefore we raise our beef on grass and pasture alone. We are managing our pastures and our herds to foster the soil microbes that science has shown to be critical to producing healthy meat, sequestering carbon, restoring soil fertility, and retaining water.

He also sent other useful resources on this issue.

A 2016 scientific paper by WR Teague et al in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation on the role of ruminant animals in reducing carbon footprints.

Incorporating forages and ruminants into regeneratively managed agroecosystems can elevate soil organic C, improve soil ecological function by minimizing the damage of tillage and inorganic fertilizers and biocides, and enhance biodiversity and wildlife habitat. We conclude that to ensure longterm sustainability and ecological resilience of agroecosystems, agricultural production should be guided by policies and regenerative management protocols that include ruminant grazing.

A 2010 essay by Tara Kelly in Time Magazine based on a book review.

in his new book, Meat: A Benign Extravagance, Simon Fairlie, a British farmer and former editor of the Ecologist magazine, tears apart the theory that being carnivorous is bad for the planet — and says that eating moderate amounts of meat could be greener than going vegan.

A 2010 article by the journalist Lisa Abend, also in Time Magazine.

Environmentalists have been giving cows a bad rap in recent years. Between what bovines eat and what they excrete, cattle production emits a lot of greenhouse gas. But if fed solely grass, cows could play a key role in reversing climate change.

I think the arguments are compelling.  Animals have a place in human diets when they are raised sustainably and as humanely as possible.

Raising animals this way means fewer of them.  We still have to eat less meat—and eat meat of better environmental quality.

We could do this….

Amy Trubek.  Making Modern Meals: How Americans Cook Today.  University of California Press, 2017.

Amy Trubek, an anthropologist (who also trained as a chef) at the University of Vermont, turns her attention to the meaning of cooking in our current era.  Cooking is, as she titles her chapters, at once a chore, occupation, art, craft, and means to achieve health.

She approached these topics as an anthropologist, using participant observations of bakeries and interviews with city and rural participants about their thoughts about cooks and cooking.  She uses this research as a window on contemporary life.

So, what of the dominant narrative that cooking is in decline because home cooks don’t cook…Can we trust this assumption?  Not really….Perhaps the culprit is the organization and structure of modern life.  In multiple discourses (occurring in cookbooks, historical and contemporary media, interviews with cooks, etc.) there exists a pervasive sense of lack and loss as to what we can and should do in our domestic lives.  Almost seventy years ago, Avis DeVoto complained that she did not have time to cook…In this narrative, home cooking is much more episodic than in earlier times because it needs to be, given the expansion of daily demands, and skills and tasks related to meal preparation are given up so that cooking can be fit into modern life [pp. 106-107].

Paul Greenberg.  The Omega Principle: Seafood and the Quest for a Long Life and a Healthier Planet.  Penguin Press, 2018.

This is the third installment of Paul Greenberg’s fish trilogy (the previous two are Four Fish and American Catch, both also well worth the read).

This one sounds like a book about nutrition—a nutrient—but it’s not.  It may have started out that way, as a book about omega-3 fatty acids whose principal dietary source is fish, but Greenberg soon figured out that claims for the miraculous health benefits of omega-3s don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Instead, he uses omega-3s as an organizing framework for discussing how we use and misuse fish for industrial purposes.  To do this, he travels.  He goes to the Mediterranean to examine what happens to anchovies, Peru to see what happens to anchoveta, to the Antarctic to see what happens to krill.

His point?  If we destroy the bottom of the seafood chain to make fishmeal or fertilizer, we destroy the ecology of fish higher up on the food chain.

Greenberg is a lively, entertaining writer who tells great fish tales in pursuit of a serious message: if we want food in our future, we need to eat lower on the food chain.

And the book comes with recipes.  My favorite: Roulades of Antarctic penguin breast.  It begins: “Never make this recipe, please.”

The FDA held a public meeting last week on lab-grown “meat,” meaning, in FDA-speak, “foods produced using animal cell culture technology.”  The meeting agenda is here.

At issue are:

• Basic questions about transparency, marketing, environmental sustainability (see report by Friends of the Earth).
• The safety of these products (Consumer Reports has questions about the safety of these products).
• Can these products be called meat?  (The Atlantic calls this issue “farcical”).
• Which agency, FDA or USDA, should regulate them and decide such questions?

The FDA’s announcement of the meeting, and FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb’s statement staked FDA’s territory over these products.  Gottlieb said:

The FDA has a long history of ensuring food safety and applying our statutory framework while supporting rapidly evolving areas of technological innovation in food. The agency currently evaluates microbial, algal and fungal cells generated by large-scale culture and used as direct food ingredients. The agency administers safety assessment programs for a broad array of food ingredients, including foods derived from genetically engineered plants, and also manages safety issues associated with cell culture technology in therapeutic settings.

But if these foods are meat, then USDA is responsible for their regulation.  In a statement to Politico (behind paywall), a USDA spokesperson said:

According to federal law, meat and poultry inspections are the sole purview of USDA, so we expect any product marketed as ‘meat’ to be USDA’s responsibility. We look forward to working with FDA as we engage the public on this issue.”

Politico points out what’s at stake in the jurisdictional dispute.

There are at least 10 lab-grown meat companies across the globe that are furiously working to figure out how to get their products to market. Some of the startups are driven by a desire to reduce animal agriculture’s environmental footprint as developing countries increasingly drive demand for meat and dairy products. Major investors who’ve moved to get into the action include innovators like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Tyson Ventures, an investment arm of meat giant Tyson Foods.

The meat industry, as you might expect, does not want these foods to be called “meat.”  But the industry has not reached agreement on strategies (some meat companies have invested in lab-grown meat startups).

The US Cattlemen’s Association (USCA) in February asked federal government regulators to adopt a definition for meat that would exclude cell-cultured products (often called “clean meat“).  This week though, the more-powerful National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) asked the same regulatory agency to rule the opposite.

The NCBA wrote  a letter to USDA stating its position:

NCBA is alarmed by the growing number of flagrantly deceptive food product labels proliferating the marketplace. Consumers have the right to expect that the information on food labels is truthful and not misleading, just as all food products should expect to compete on a fair, level playing field…NCBA firmly believes that the term beef should only be applicable to products derived from actual livestock raised by farmers and ranchers.

Global Meat News has a good summary of the industry’s concerns.

Four members of Congress chided the FDA for jumping into this:

Cell-based food technologies and products are an emerging science, and both agencies should be working collaboratively on a scientific approach towards a framework to regulate these products.

Good luck with that.  The Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN) has a report on the FDA meeting.  I’m quoted:

Between the two agencies, I favor FDA…USDA’s primary role is to support and defend industrial agricultural production. The agency tolerates, but is unenthusiastic about organics. It will do the same for lab-based meat.

The FDA has opened questions about lab-grown meat for public comment.  File comments here.  The deadline is September 25.

Added comment

At a Politico Summit meeting today,

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said…that the agency is working closely with USDA on early efforts to establish a regulatory framework for lab-grown meat, or “cell-cultured foods,” the FDA’s preferred name for it.

We shall see.

By this time, you have no doubt heard about the Trump Administration’s attempts to stop the World Health Organization from promoting breastfeeding.  Incredible but true.

Here is a brief timeline of how this story got out.

May 25   Lucy Sullivan, executive director o 1000 Days (the first 1000 days of life are critical to an infant’s survival) sent out a tweet warning of a battle brewing over breastfeeding at WHO’s World Health Assembly, where countries are negotiating a resolution on infant and young child feeding.

June 7   Amruta Byatnal writes about “A Moment of Reckoning for Nutrition Advocates at the WHA” [World Health Assembly: “Nutrition advocates have accused the U.S. of siding with private sector interests, sparking a controversy over what they assumed would be a routine effort to provide advice on breastfeeding and the use of breast milk substitutes.”

July 8  The New York Times takes the story national: “Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution by U.S. Stuns World Health Officials.”  The Guardian also publishes an account.   These make it clear that the Trump Administration threatened Ecuador to drop its support of breastfeeding.  As the Times put it,

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced….The confrontation was the latest example of the Trump administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues.

Ironically, Russia stepped in and introduced the measure, which passed despite US attempts to block it.

July 9  President Trump sends out a tweet:

July 9  Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services, also sends out a tweet, supporting the President: “America has a long history of supporting mothers and breastfeeding around the world and is the largest bilateral donor of such foreign assistance programs. Those unable to breastfeed shouldn’t be stigmatized; they should be equally supported with info and access to alternatives.”

July 9  The New York Times publishes an editorial: “Why Breast-Feeding Scares Donald Trump.”  Its answer: “It comes down to public health abroad could hurt American companies’ profits.”

What this is about

Infant formula works for babies, but breastfeeding is demonstrably better.  This is especially true for women who cannot afford formula, do not have clean water to dilute the powder properly, or lack refrigeration to store formula properly.

But breastfeeding has a serious political problem: it does not make money for formula companies.  As I explained in Waht to Eat:

Infant formulas cause controversy and are endlessly contentious for three important reasons.  Formulas are (1) largely unnecessary (most mothers can breast feed their infants), (2) not as perfect as breast milk for feeding babies, and (3) more expensive than breast feeding.  Breast milk is nutritionally superior to formula, but from a marketing standpoint it has one serious disadvantage: it is free.   Beyond one-time purchases of breast pumps, storage bottles, or special clothing, nobody makes money from it.

Formula companies are happy to pay lip service to “breast is best,” as long as policies do not promote breastfeeding over formula.

This is not the first time the US has taken this position.  In 1981, when the United Nations developed the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes, all of its member countries agreed to abide by the Code except for the United States and South Africa.  Eventually, South Africa signed on.  The U.S. was the last hold out and did not agree to abide by the Code until 1994.  Why not?  Because the Code could set a precedent that might adversely affect U.S. corporations.

The Washington Post (“US efforts”) and The Atlantic (“epic battle”) review this history.

The formula industry’s problem

As I also explained in What to Eat, only about 4 million babies are born in the US each year, meaning that the formula market is limited and static.  That is why formula companies work so hard to convince mothers that breastfeeding is too difficult, unsanitary, inefficient, and ineffective to continue, and that they would be better off switching to formulas and staying on formulas long past the time when babies should be eating solid foods.

The reactions

My favorites are from

• Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (in an interview with Food Chemical News).

• From the American Public Health Association
• From medical experts interviewed in the New York Times
• From Vox

Add this to the growing list of ways the Trump Administration favors corporate interests over public health. Alas.

Additions

Maplight reports:

Three of the largest infant formula companies — U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories, Swiss-based Nestle, and U.K.-based Reckitt Benckiser — have spent $60.7 million lobbying U.S. lawmakers and officials during the last decade….While the New York Times reported that the formula manufacturers didn’t play a visible role in the debate over the WHO resolution, lobbying records show they have a significant Capitol Hill presence that often extends beyond infant nutrition.

Stephen Colbert’s take

 

The AP reports that the reason the WHO committee on preventing noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) did not recommend soda taxes is that the US representative vetoed the idea.

The Trump administration has torpedoed a plan to recommend higher taxes on sugary drinks, forcing a World Health Organization panel to back off the U.N. agency’s previous call for such taxes as a way to fight obesity, diabetes and other life-threatening conditions.

The move disappointed many public health experts but was enthusiastically welcomed by the International Food and Beverage Alliance — a group that represents companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo. and Unilever.

The WHO committee’s report appeared in The Lancet last week.  About soda taxes, it said:

The Commissioners represented rich and diverse views and perspectives. There was broad agreement in most areas, but some views were conflicting and could not be resolved. As such, some recommendations, such as reducing sugar consumption through effective taxation on sugar-sweetened beverages and the accountability of the private sector, could not be reflected in this report, despite broad support from many Commissioners.

It did not include soda taxes in its tax recommendation:

Implement fiscal measures, including raising taxes on tobacco and alcohol, and consider evidence-based fiscal measures for other unhealthy products.

This omission is striking in view of WHO’s strong previous positions on the need to reduce NCDs as part of the agency’s Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, and on reducing sugars and taxing sodas as a means to achieve those goals:

• In 2015, WHO recommended  that sugars be consumed at less than 10% of calories.
• In 2016, WHO recommended taxes on sugary drinks as a way to reduce sugar intake and prevent NCDs.

Again a US veto?  Recall the infamous incident in 2003 when the US blocked the agency from recommending a reduction in sugar intake.

The US should not be holding WHO hostage to public health measures.

WHO should not be caving in to US threats.

NCDs are the major cause of worldwide death and disability and we need worldwide efforts to prevent them.  This calls for cooperation, not blackmail.

Shame.