The FDA is under siege these days.  Two reasons why.

• Its failure to follow the advice of experts on how to reorganize the agency to give greater prominence and authority to food as opposed to drugs.
• Its failure to get on top of the safety and supply problems with infant formula.

As usual, Bill Marler gets right to the point.

Two top  food officials at the FDA have retired recently.

Food and Drug Administration Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) Susan Mayne announced that she will retire on May 31, 2023. Dr. Mayne has served as Director of CFSAN since January 2015. Another retirement among FDA leadership occurred earlier this year when FDA Deputy Commissioner of Food Policy and Response Frank Yiannas retired on February 24, 2023.

Frank Yiannis, formerly deputy commissioner for food policy at the FDA, testified to Congress:

Yiannas said that the FDA’s structure and culture exacerbated delays and that the agency had no data system in place to monitor key food supply chains. While Abbott is responsible for the safety and testing of its own powdered formula, he said, the sickened children and months-long shortage “was all a preventable tragedy” had FDA acted more urgently.

To deal with the uproar about infant formula, the FDA has just released:

• Status Update on FDA’s Infant Formula Response Activities
• Strategy to Help Prevent Cronobacter sakazakiiIllnesses Associated with Consumption of Powdered Infant Formula
• Letter to the Infant Formula Industry
• Enforcement Discretion to Manufacturers to Increase Infant Formula Supplies
• Press Release: FDA Outlines Immediate National Strategy to Further Increase the Resiliency of the U.S. Infant Formula Market

But this will not be enough.

Helena Bottemiller Evich’s most recent Politico report is titled “‘Lessons have not been learned’: FDA knew of positive test months before latest infant formula recall.”

And another recall of infant formula occurred more recently.

All of this increases the urgency of the calls on FDA to pay more attention to food issues.

Congress:  Act now!

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The potato industry is hard at work funding studies to relieve any anxiety you might have about eating potatoes.  For the record, I think they are delicious in almost any form.  In moderation, of course.

Two items.

I.  A press release from the Idaho Potato Commission: “Idaho Potatoes Are First Vegetable to Participate in American Diabetes Association Better Choices for Life Program.”

The purpose of the partnership is to help educate tens of millions of Americans on ways they can add Idaho potatoes to their meal plan.

Diabetes is one of the country’s greatest health crises…With a mission to prevent and cure diabetes and improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes, the number one question the ADA receives is, what can I eat? Many wrongly believe they cannot eat potatoes.

“We want those living with diabetes and prediabetes to feel confident eating potatoes with their breakfast, lunch or dinner as long as serving size and preparation recommendations are followed,” explained Jamey Higham, President & CEO, IPC.”

Comment: You can’t make up this stuff.

II.  A funded study.  Several readers sent me this one:

The study: Rebello CJ, et al.  Low-Energy Dense Potato- and Bean-Based Diets Reduce Body Weight and Insulin Resistance: A Randomized, Feeding, Equivalence Trial .  Journal of Medicinal Food.  2022;25(12). https://doi-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.1089/jmf.2022.0072

Conclusion: “Potato and Bean diets low in energy density were equally effective in reducing insulin resistance and promoting weight loss in individuals with impaired blood glucose control.”

Funding: “This work was supported in part by an investigator-initiated grant from the Alliance for Potato Research and Education …The funders (Alliance for Potato Research and Education and the National Institutes of Health) had no role in the design, analysis, or writing of this article. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsors or the National Institutes of Health.

Comment: The point of this study is to demonstrate that potatoes do not, as many believe, raise insulin and blood sugar levels.

The authors of the paper say: “We demonstrated that contrary to observations from epidemiological studies, potatoes do not adversely affect the glycemic response.”

But look at how the investigators prepared the potatoes: “To enhance resistance to starch and dietary fiber components, the potatoes were boiled with skins, refrigerated for 12 to 24 h before the whole potato was incorporated into the meals.”

That’s one way to reduce the blood sugar response to potatoes.  It works!

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While I’m catching up on items I’ve been wanting to post about I ran across this report from NIH about its nutrition research initiatives. 

 

Some highlights:

• NIH’s total investment in nutrition-related research was approximately $2.0 billion in FY20 and $2.1 billion in FY21.
• Nutrition research funding increased by approximately $510 million—a 25 percent overall increase—from FY14 to FY21
• Approximately half of the nutritionrelated projects in FY20 and FY21 were related to prevention or obesity.
• NIH sponsored workshops on Precision Nutrition, Food Insecurity, and Conflicting and Controversial Health Information in the Media
• Nutrition research comprises just under 5% of total NIH research obligations.
• NIH sponsored a study in 2021 of  low-fat compared to low-carb diet.
• A future direction will be to address how “food as medicine” can be improved in clinical settings.

I did not know much of this and am happy to have the report.

The documents

• Nutrition Research Report 2020-2021: Executive Summary 
• Nutrition Research Report 2020-2021
• NIH Nutrition Research Reports:  2017-2019

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A report, Science Education in an Age of Misinformation, from Stanford University and written by a distinguished group of scientists addresses a question I get asked all the time: how do you know whom to trust when reading articles about food and nutrition.

It presents a decision tree for evaluating information sources.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although most of the report is focused on other science topics, it includes one nutrition example (Example 3, pages 34 and 35).

Example 3 presents two websites, one from the Partnership for a Healthier America, the other from ILSI, the International Life Sciences Institute.

The suggested lesson asks students to use the decision tree to evaluate the credibility of the information on the websites.

For this example,

if students search for ‘Partnership for a Healthier America,’ they will find that one of the first links to appear in the search results is from Wikipedia…they may decide to start with the Wikipedia page to get a broad sense of what other information is available about the organization. There students will read that PHA is a nonprofit organization focused on health and nutrition. Its president and CEO is Nancy Roman, who has years of experience working for world food programs, food banks, and nutrition non-profit organizations.

On the other hand, when students apply the same strategy to the ISLI web page, they are also likely to begin with the Wikipedia entry. This tells a very different story. While ISLI is also a nonprofit organization, the Wikipedia entry shows it was funded by a Coca-Cola executive and has numerous ties to food and chemical companies, such as McDonald’s and Pepsi. Such ties represent a clear conflict of interest and would strongly suggest that ISLI is not a credible source of information.

A good start?  I think yes.  Take a look and decide for yourself.

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Today, Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) is introducing the Food and Farm Act of 2023.  A summary of the bill is here.

This legislation is a comprehensive, alternative Farm Bill that advances four principles of agricultural reform:

(1) focusing resources on those who need it most;

(2) fostering innovation;

(3) encouraging investments in people and the planet; and

(4) ensuring access to healthy foods.

His bill has much to recommend it.  I gave it a blurb:

It’s great that Congressman Blumenauer wants to “shift the Farm Bill.”  The current Farm Bill focuses on producing feed for animals and fuel for cars.  It’s time to transform it to support policies that promote food for people and sustainable production practices.  Blumenauer’s Bill is a great step in that direction and is worth all our support.”

I also like Senator Cory Booker’s analysis.  He tweeted:

Right now, our dietary guidelines tell us that 50% of the food we eat should be fruits and vegetables – but less than 10% of our Farm Bill subsidies currently go to fruits and vegetables. The 2023 Farm bill will be an important opportunity to change this.

He explains all this in a 30-second video.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition also has a video (4-minutes) as part of its primer on the Farm Bill.

Farm Bill Basics

1. WHAT DOES THE FARM BILL COVER?
2. WHO IN CONGRESS WRITES THE FARM BILL?
3. WHAT ISN’T IN THE FARM BILL?
4. HOW MUCH DOES THE FARM BILL COST?
5. HOW DOES THE FARM BILL PROCESS WORK?
6. FARM BILL WEBINARS

Its pie chart explains the politics .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Farm Bill is a shotgun wedding between supports for Big Agriculture and SNAP—the green three-quarters of the pie.  There aren’t enough votes to do either, so President Johnson’s brilliant logroll is still necessary.

Republicans want spending on nutrition to decline, and fast, and are insisting on work requirements which, if passed, would undoubtedly decrease rolls (and greatly increase poverty).

We are still at the beginning of this Farm Bill round.  Stay tuned.

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It feels like spring (at last!) in New York so I’m thinking about strawberries.

Last September, Lisa Young sent me a copy of an email she had received from a public relations agency.

Good Morning –

Today is World Alzheimer’s Day and a new study has found that eating Strawberries may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias.

In fact, the compounds that give strawberries their beautiful red color may have several health benefits, such as lowering the risk of heart disease and some cancers and improving blood sugar control. And now researchers have found that one of those compounds, known as pelargonidin, may slow or prevent the development of Alzheimer’s Disease by lowering the number of twisted fibers inside the brain that contain a protein called tau. These twisted fibers are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s Disease.

The new study, which was supported by the National Institute of Aging and the California Strawberry Commission, was conducted postmortem on the brains of participants of the Rush Memory and Aging Project (MAP). Participants with the highest level of pelargonidin intake prior to their death also had less buildup in the brain of protein fragments called amyloid beta plaques – another hallmark of Alzheimers Disease. Pelargonidin is primarily found in berries. In this study, strawberries were the principal source of pelargonidin….

The study: Agarwal P, Holland TM, James BD, Cherian LJ, Aggarwal NT, Leurgans SE, Bennett DA, Schneider JA. Pelargonidin and Berry Intake Association with Alzheimer’s Disease Neuropathology: A Community-Based Study. J Alzheimers Dis. 2022;88(2):653-661. doi: 10.3233/JAD-215600. PMID: 35694918.

Results: “participants in the highest quartile of pelargonidin intake when compared to those in the lowest quartile, had less amyloid-β load (β (SE) = -0.293 (0.14), p = 0.038), and fewer phosphorylated tau tangles…”

Conclusion: “Higher intake of pelargonidin, a bioactive present in strawberries, is associated with less AD neuropathology, primarily phosphorylated tau tangles.”

Comment: I love strawberries and grow them in pots on my terrace.  But this study?  It looks at one chemical among many in strawberries and associates it with improved symptoms.  Association, alas, does not indicate causation.  If you give this a moment’s thought, could you believe that eating a few strawberries every day would help you prevent Alzheimer’s?  I’m all for plant-based diets.  And I’m all for eating strawberries.  But to imply that strawberries alone can control hunger, be good for your heart, especially if they come from California (as the Commission says on its website), seems a bit much.

Are strawberries demonstrably better for Alzheimer’s than any other berry or fruit?  The California Strawberry Commission is not interested in asking comparative questions.  It just wants you to buy more strawberries.

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The Environmental Working Group has just published its annual lists of Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen.

• The Dirty Dozen—those with the highest levels of harmful pesticides:  Strawberries, spinach, kale/collards/mustard greens, peaches, pears, nectarines, apples, grapes, peppers, cherries, blueberries, green beans.
• The Clean Fifteen—those with the lowest levels of harmful pesticides: Avocados, sweet corn, pineapple, onions,papaya, sweet peas (frozen), asparagus, honeydew melon, kiwi, cabbage, mushrooms, mangoes, sweet potatoes, watermelon, carrots

What always interests me about these lists is how nobody except the EWG wants to deal with pesticides on produce, and how much pushback the EWG gets from industry.

IFIC, the International Food Information Council (an industry front group), criticizes the EWG for promoting “organic produce as being safer and healthier than conventional produce.”  It says (my paraphrase except for direct quotes):

1. You don’t need to avoid any kind of produce.
2. Regulators ensure all foods are safe.
3. Regulators inspect and monitor all foods.
4. Residues are on all foods but “they are not to be feared.”
5. “Giving elite status to organic produce is detrimental to people’s health.”
6. Everybody agrees people need to eat more produce.
7. “Shelf-stable foods, organic or conventional, present relatiable and healthy foods for all of us.”

My translation: Don’t bother with organics, ultra-processed foods are fine.

The Alliance for Food and Farming (a produce industry trade group) says:

Despite peer reviewed research showing it is scientifically unsupportable and negatively impacts consumers, the so-called “dirty dozen” list will be released soon  This list was developed to invoke misplaced safety fears about fruits and vegetables – the food group we are encouraged to eat more of every day to improve physical and mental health, prevent illness and increase lifespan.

This group says the “Dirty Dozen” recommendations are “unsupportable” and “negatively impact consumers and produce consumption.”

It says,

• Just wash it! According to the FDA, washing produce under running tap water can reduce and often eliminate pesticide residues, if they are present at all.
• A farmer’s first consumer is their own family so food safety is always their priority.

Comment: We use a lot of pesticides, more than 400 in the US alone, and more than 2.5 million metric tons annualy, worldwide.

We can debate the degree of harm caused to individuals, especially children, but there is no question they are bad for soil and the environment, and I’ve never heard anything suggesting they are good for us.

We would be better off eating fewer of them and producing food in ways that use less of them.

If EWG pushing farming in that direction, it needs it.

Choose organics as a means to encourage more sustainable production practices (vote with your fork).

Advocate for policies to reduce pesticide use (vote with your vote).

And thank EWG for holding industry’s feet to the fire.

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