The Berkeley Media Studies Group has just released a “Framing Brief” with “how-to” advice for breastfeeding advocates.  The Brief argues that babies’ health is not a sufficient reason to get moms to breastfeed.

Instead, advocates need to help create environments that support breastfeeding.

This  and a previous report on breastfeeding issues, “Talking about Breastfeeding,” were commissioned by the California WIC Association with support from The California Endowment.

That these reports come none too soon is evident from a recent commentary that the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (“the Code”) has become ineffectual.

The Code is an international agreement about what infant formula companies can and cannot ethically do to promote their products, based on substantial research that infant formula marketing undermines breastfeeding.

According to the study in the Archives of Diseases of Children, the Code has become

mired by a series of alleged violations and boycotts, which are counter productive to the code’s goal….[These include an] unrelenting series of disputes, predominantly relating to alleged violations of the code, which have provoked high profile acrimonious exchanges, boycotts and legal proceedings…[leading] to an atmosphere of mistrust that has now become embedded between key agencies.

The author focuses on disputes between the non-governmental group Baby Milk Action and infant formula manufacturer Nestlé (no relation).  He recommends that an  “ombudsman” or some other independent body be given authority “to arbitrate and ensure that actions taken by respective parties are in keeping with the spirit of the code.”

This is not a bad idea—if the body is truly independent. Take a look at the Baby Milk Action website and judge for yourself whether you think the group makes a compelling case for Code violations.  Some of them seem pretty obvious to me.

As I recount in Food Politics, infant formula companies have a long pre-Code history of putting sales before infant health.  Almost everyone I know thinks the situation has improved post-Code, but not nearly enough.

As I explain in What to Eat, formula companies have a business-model problem: there are only so many infants born each year and they only use formula for a limited time.

The companies only have two choices for growth: recruit more babies onto formula or extend the period of formula feeding.  The first strategy was well documented pre-Code and continues to be documented.  The second is illustrated by the now withdrawn product, chocolate toddler formula Enfagrow (see previous posts).

Breastfeeding advocates: read the new reports and get busy!

Update, July 31: Patty Rundall of Baby Milk Action has written a rebuttal to the commentary.  Other ideas?  You can forward them to her at prundall@babymilkaction.org.

Anti-tobacco advocates have been worried for years that concerns about obesity would draw funding away from anti-smoking initiatives (see previous posts).  Their fears are justified, as described in today’s New York Times and in a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Years of experience have taught anti-smoking advocates that countering the marketing efforts of cigarette companies required constant vigilance.  It also taught them that cigarette companies take immediate advantage of any weakening of resistance to their efforts.

Cigarettes remain the leading cause of preventable deaths among Americans.  Cigarette marketing aimed at children remains a national—and international—public health scandal.

Health should not be a zero-sum game.  Anti-obesity advocates have much to learn from anti-smoking advocates.  How about joining forces to improve the health of Americans?

I love food posters.  Thanks to Food Safety News for the heads up about the National Library of Medicine’s exhibit of marvelous food posters from World Wars I and II.  Many of these can be seen online at the Smithsonian’s site.  The exhibit was curated by Cory Bernat, who comments on it and also has a collection posted on the web (I’ve seen it and it’s wonderfully downloadable, but seems to have a bandwidth problem at the moment).  Enjoy!

Taking about raw milk stirs up a can of worms, with plenty of ideology governing opinions on all sides.  My posting of Bill Marler’s list of recent raw milk outbreaks a couple of days ago elicited much heat and one appropriate question: How do raw milk outbreaks compare to outbreaks from Pasteurized milk.

People must be asking Marler the same question, because he has just answered it.   Outbreaks from pasteurized milk products do occur, but they are rare, especially because far more people drink Pasteurized than raw milk.    Here is his summary table.  He puts the supporting documentation on the real raw milk facts website.

And here is the CDC’s Q and A on raw milk.

My view: yes, people should have the right to drink raw milk if they want to, but they need to know—and take responsibility for—the risks.  And everyone who produces raw milk should use a HACCP (preventive control) plan and stick to it in letter and in spirit.

Addition: I’ve just been sent links to three Los Angeles Times stories about a raid (with drawn guns, yet) on a Venice grocery store selling raw milk.  A long piece explains what this is about and includes a video of the raid.  A third story talks about the debates about raw milk, also with a video.

Eric Schlosser has an excellent op-ed in today’s New York Times, “Unsafe at any meal.”

You would think, he points out, that a bill that passed the House nearly a year ago,

with such broad support, on a public health issue of such fundamental importance, would easily reach the floor of the Senate for a vote. But it has been languishing, stuck in some legislative limbo. Food processors reluctant to oppose the bill openly will be delighted if it dies a quiet death.

How come?

because, right now, very few cases of food poisoning are ever actually linked to what the person ate, and companies that sell contaminated products routinely avoid liability. The economic cost is instead imposed on society. …Without tough food safety rules, a perverse economic incentive guides the marketplace. Adulterated food is cheaper to produce than safe food. Since consumers cannot tell the difference between the two, companies that try to do the right thing are forced to compete with companies that couldn’t care less.

As for the concerns of small farmers:

For months, however, the Internet has been rife with wild rumors and accusations: that the bill is really a subterfuge cleverly designed to eliminate small farms and strengthen the grip of industrial agriculture; that it would outlaw organic production; that it would hand over the nation’s food supply to Monsanto.   Those arguments may be sincere. But the bill very clearly instructs the Food and Drug Administration to focus its enforcement efforts on plants that pose the greatest risk of causing large-scale outbreaks.

What’s holding up this bill?  Nothing but politics of the worst kind.  Lives are at stake here and everyone who cares about our food system should be urging the Senate to get moving.  Thanks Eric for writing this piece.  I hope it helps.

It’s a hot weekend and I’m feeling lazy, so I will do a bit of borrowing and reproduce Bill Marler’s summary of year-to-date illnesses caused by raw milk products (click on the chart to make it bigger and easier to read).

On his website devoted to the topic, www.realrawmilkfacts.com, Marler presents a litigator’s view of the issues related to raw milk, with plenty of documents to back of his position.

My view: everyone who produces food should produce safe food.  If I were producing raw milk, I’d be testing it like mad to make sure it didn’t harbor dangerous pathogens, but that’s just me.

I never cease to be amazed by the problems that food technologists worry about. 

A German chocolate company—and the state of Schleswig-Holstein—are funding $2 million worth of research to find a method to safely add chocolate pieces to yogurt.

Why is the safety of chocolate in yogurt a problem?  Yogurt is wet and dissolves the sugar crystals in chocolate, making it messy.  Worse, chocolate is not sterile and yogurt is an ideal bacterial growth medium.

Sterilizing chocolate, it seems, is not easy:

The constituents of the cocoa are very sensitive. Excessively high temperatures and incorrect cleaning, roasting, grinding or conching impair the quality of the finished chocolate pieces. All that has to be taken into account when you are developing new sterilisation techniques.

Researchers, get busy!  Please, please solve this problem right away.

And in the meantime, for those of you desperate for chocolate in your yogurt, how about tossing in a handful of M&Ms?

Kellogg announced yesterday that won’t put health claims on at least some of its cereal boxes.  According to reports, “Kellogg’s FiberPlus Antioxidants Cereals do not make health claims, but rather state the amount of fiber and antioxidants on the front of pack [my emphasis].”

FibrePlus Antioxidant brand is formulated to deliver 35 to 40 percent of a consumer’s daily fiber (depending on variety) along with antioxidant vitamins C and E.

Take a look at the packages.

According to FDA regulations, describing the level of antioxidant nutrients present in a food is a nutrient content claim, not a health claim.  Even so, such claims are only allowed if the nutrients have an established Reference Daily Intake.  Antioxidant vitamins C and E do have RDIs, so this must mean that what Kellogg is doing is OK.

OK, so labeling the package with antioxidants, fiber, and whole grains does not constitite a health claim.  Kellogg is not pretending that these things actually DO anything special for health.

It doesn’t have to.  By this time, everyone knows that these nutrients are the ones you are supposed to be eating.  Does an implied health claim differ from an  overt health claim?  You  have to decide this for yourself.

Do not expect the FDA to help.  As I discussed a couple of days ago, these kinds of things cannot be an FDA priority—unless Congress decides they should be.