I am indebted to the daily newsletter, Food Navigator Europe, for keeping me up to date on the latest developments in European food marketing.

With all of the fuss at my university about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the way we live, I was riveted by this article.

Artificial intelligence designs soda for Swiss market: ‘We were gripped by AI fever’

Its subtitle: It took just two days for Swiss beverage company Vivi Kola to develop the artificial intelligence-designed beverage using ChatGPT, Midjourney and Unreal Engine.

AI to make yet another sugary drink?  THIS is what AI is being used for?

Gripped by AI fever, the Vivi Kola team found that by leveraging AI tools, it was able to develop a low-sugar, vegan soda product with health benefits within just two days.

First steps involved asking ChatGPT to develop a vegan recipe using ingredients with known health benefits. The response included water, lime juice, haskap berry juice, ginger juice, chicory root powder, and cane sugar…According to ChatGPT, the drink would be full of antioxidants, strengthen the immune system, promote a healthy gut, and stimulate digestion.

The Vivi Kola team procured the ingredients, combined them, and conducted first taste tests.

Oh great.  Ultraprocessed foods created by AI.  Just what we (don’t) need.

I, for one, am not surprised, but am also not rejoicing.  Aero Farms has just filed for bankruptcy.

I thought Aero Farms was a valiant experiment in vertical leafy green farming run by some very smart people.

Pre-pandemic, I visited their factory in Newark, New Jersey, a couple of times and fjound the place impressive in concept, size, and production.

The photo can’t show how enormous this factory is, with rows of cloth-covered trays stacked to the high ceiling.  The company planted the greens on cloth and sprayed nutrients on the roots growing through the cloth.  The greens were clean, free of pathogenic bacteria, and surprisingly tasty.  They grew several different kinds, all with distinctive flavors.  All were tested to demonstrate their excellent nutritional value.

They sold the greens to a variety of local restaurants and institutions.

But I am not surprised by their going bankrupt.

I am currently working on an updated edition of What to Eat, in which I discuss food issues, one of them vertical farming.  From my research, I can tell you:

• The kinds of plants that can be grown in vertical farms are limited to those that need relatively low light (e.g. lettuce); even the best LED lights are not strong enough for more profitable vegetables.
• Lettuce from California costs half as much to produce as lettuce from East Cost vertical farms.
• The Achilles heel of indoor farming is the cost of all those lights.  Energy from the sun is free.  Electricity from the grid is anything but.
• AeroFarms reported $35 million in losses in 2021, but predicted profitability by 2024.

Vertical farming is in trouble unless it can solve the light problem.

Was it worth a try?  That’s for you to decide.

In the meantime, Aero Farms is keeping its Danville, California plant open and remaining optimistic that it can continue to brink in venture capital.

Industry reactions to the news are also not surprising.  Those who follow vertical farming knew this was coming.

I’m truly sorry for this experiment failed.

This article in Feed & Grain caught my attention: Cargill intends to sell its poultry business in China to private equity firm DCP Capital, according to reports.

Cargill is the tenth largest broiler producer in the world; it was responsible for the slaughter of an astonishing 625 million broilers last year, of which 49 million were in China.

You don’t hear much about Cargill because it is not publicly traded.  It is family held, but huge:  155,000 employees, annual revenues of more than $134 billion.

It makes that money from food oils, ingredients, grains, oilseeds, cotton, animal feed, and financial services.

According to this article,

Cargill in 2013 inaugurated its integrated poultry operation in Lai’an, Anhui, China, which included every stage of the supply chain: breeding, raising, feed production, hatching, slaughtering and processing…The company also opened a new US$48 million poultry complex in Chuzhou, Anhui, in 2019. That operation included breeding, raising, feed production, hatching and primary and further processing capabilities.

Now, Cargill is selling off its Chinese enterprises to venture capital.

Cargill must think it best to get out of China.

The venture capital company must think money can still be made there.

This, it seems to me, is an example of what is happening to the global food supply.

It is no longer about making sure that people have enough to eat and do not go hungry.

Food is about making money for investors.

That means keeping costs as low as possible, regardless of the effects on health or the environment.

Christina Leffel, a public health nutritionist in Florida, sent this one, which with both find amusing.

The study: Effects of Adding Lean Red Meat to a U.S.-Style Healthy Vegetarian Dietary Pattern on Gut Microbiota and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Young Adults: a Crossover Randomized Controlled Trial – The Journal of Nutrition.  VOLUME 153, ISSUE 5, P1439-1452, MAY 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tjnut.2023.03.013

Method:  19 participants consumed 3 study diets in random order: 1) healthy lacto-ovo vegetarian diet (LOV); 2) LOV plus 3 ounces/d of cooked unprocessed lean red meat (URM); and 3) LOV plus 3 ounces/d of cooked processed lean red meat (PRM). Measures: Fecal and fasting blood samples.

Results: The addition of unprocessed or processed lean red meats to a LOV HDP did not influence short-term changes in bacterial taxonomic composition.  When the data from all three diets were combined, “changes in some bacteria were associated with improvements in TC, LDL-C, triglycerides, and HDL-C concentrations, and TC/HDL-C ratio.”

Conclusions:  Healthy young adults who adopt an HDP that may be vegetarian or omnivorous, including lean red meat, experience short-term changes in gut microbial composition, which associate with improvements in multiple lipid-related cardiovascular risk factors.

Funding: “The study was cofunded by the Pork Checkoff, North Dakota Beef Commission, Beef Checkoff, and Foundation for Meat and Poultry Research and Education. The supporting sources had no role in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the report; or submission of the report for publication.

Author disclosures: “During the time this review was conducted, WWC received funding for research grants, travel or honoraria for scientific presentations, or consulting services from the following organizations: U.S. National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Agriculture (Hatch Funding), Pork Checkoff, National Pork Board, Beef Checkoff, North Dakota Beef Commission, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Foundation for Meat and Poultry Research and Education, American Egg Board, Whey Protein Research Consortium, National Dairy Council, Barilla Group, Mushroom Council, and the National Chicken Council. Additionally, SRL received funding for research grants, travel or honoraria for scientific presentations, or consulting services from the following organizations: U.S. National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation, Showalter Research Trust, Grain Foods Foundation, CP Kelco US, OLIPOP, Inc, Council for Responsible Nutrition. YW, T-WLC, MT, and CMC declare no conflict of interest. The funder and these other organizations had no role in the design and conduct of the study, analysis, interpretation of the results, and writing of the manuscript.”

Comment: This is yet another industry-funded study in which the funder claims no role–a statement that always makes me laugh.  That’s what they all say, despite much evidence that the funding influence in such situations can be considerable, although unrecognized.  For details, see my book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.

The meat industry, apparently, is trying to convince vegetarians that they can eat any kind of meat they want and not affect their cardiovascular risk.  This, of course, contradicts tons of other evidence, including associations with cancer risk.  These risks may not be mediated through the microbiome, however.  What this study says is that if you are worried about the risks of meat, you don’t have to worry that it changes your microbiome much, at least under the conditions of this study.

This absolutely superb—informative, eminently readable, compelling—book makes the strongest possible case for the benefits of not eating ultra-processed foods.

These, you may recall, are produced by industrial means, loaded with unfamiliar and questionable food additives, unable to be made in home kitchens, and designed deliberately to be irresistibly delicious, if not addictive, so as to make profits for food companies.

They also encourage people to eat more than they realize, and are consistently associated with poor health.

Van Tulleken is a British physician, scientist, and television star with his twin brother Xand.

Although I am thoroughly familiar with just about everything in this book having written extensively about these topics myself, I still found it to be a great read.

Van Tulleken tells stories really well.  I was hooked on page 30 with the description of Lyra, his 3-year-old daughter’s first encounter with a breakfast cereal aimed at kids.  He had decided to do a Morgan Spurlock  (Super Size Me!) experiment on himself and eat mainly ultra-processed foods for as long as he could stand it.  He began with a breakfast of Coco Pops cereal.

I had assumed that, having never tried Coco Pops, she [Lyra] wouldn’t have any interest in them.  But Kellogg’s had got her hooked before she’d had a mouthful.  She knew that here was a product designed with a three-year-old in mind.  Again, I told her no, so she collapsed on the floor crying and screaming with rage…My lingering doubts [about this cereal] were irrelevant ….Lyra had crawled out from under the table, filled her bowl and started to eat great fistfuls of dry Coco Pops, wide-eyed and ecstatic.  Defeated, I poured out the milk, and read the ingredients…Lyra put her ear to the bowl and shut her eyes, entranced. She then began to eat again.

And eat.  And eat.  As I watched her, it seemed she wasn’t fully in control…Lyra had hardly taken a breath.  I normally have to do a little cajoling at mealtimes, but the first bowl of Coco Pops had simply disappeared.  When I tried to suggest that one bowl was enough, the idea was immediately dismissed.  It felt like advising a smoker to stick to one cigarette.  Her eating wasn’t just mindless: it was trancelike.

This is just what ultra-processed foods are supposed to do.

Van Tulleken calls for government policies to be made without food company involvement, and for policies to restrict the marketing of such foods.

Yes!

The book is published today by Norton. I thought it was a great read.

The workshop covered the ways that funding sources (especially corporate funders) influence research quality and outcomes (precisely the topic of my book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.

The report is a succinct yet thorough summary of the research on the effects of funding on research design, outcome, and interpretation.

Some of the speakers:

• Lisa Bero, PhD, Chief Scientist, Center for Bioethics and Humanities, at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Overview of the Evidence on Sponsor Influence
• David Michaels PhD, MPH, epidemiologist and professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health; former Assistant Secretary of Labor for the OSHA. How to Protect Public Health in the Face of Disinformation.
• Gary Ruskin, Executive Director, U.S. Right to Know,  Where are the points of influence on scientific research?
• Martin McKee, CBE, MD, president of the British Medical Association and Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. What You Don’t See That Counts: A Peek Behind the Smokescreen
• Laura A. Schmidt, PhD, Professor Health Policy in the School of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. Industry Funding Bias in the Case of Nutrition Science

This report is a great place to begin if the topic is new to you.

And so is this, of course.

Thanks to Bill Marler for keeping us all up to date on the Daily Harvest saga.  He keeps up with the literature and writes, Is the Tara mystery closer to being solved?

My most recent post on this mystery was almost a year ago.

To review: Daily Harvest is a company that makes and ships preprepared vegan frozen meals, one of which, French Lentil + Leek Crumbles, has been recalled after several hundred people who ate it developed serious problems with their livers and gall bladders.

This was no trivial incident.  The FDA reported “As of 10/18/2022, there were 393 adverse illness reports in 39 states with 133 hospitalization and 0 deaths.”  But it could not detrmine the specific cause or route of contamination.

My post had breaking news:

The ingredient that caused the illnesses among people who consumed Daily Harvest’s French Lentil + Leek Crumbles has been identified, sort of.  As suspected, it’s the tara flour.  But what’s the toxin in the tara flour?  That, we still don’t know.

Now we have a new study: Is Baikiain in Tara Flour a Causative Agent for the Adverse Events Associated with the Recalled Frozen French Lentil & Leek Crumbles Food Product? A Working Hypothesis. 

In summary, the results of these initial studies support a working hypothesis that the adverse events reported by individuals consuming the Daily Harvest Crumbles product originate from the tara flour ingredient and are due, at least in part, to high levels of nonprotein amino acids (e.g., baikiain). It is further hypothesized that in vivo metabolism of metabolically unstable baikiain results in a toxic metabolite(s) that depletes glutathione and/or is an irreversible enzyme inhibitor (for L-pipecolate oxidase), resulting in adverse events which are dependent on the dose consumed and potentially exacerbated for individuals that have specific genetic predispositions.

Baikiain, which I had never heard of, is an analog of the amino acid proline.  In bacteria, it catalyzes proline destruction.  If it does this in humans, it also might account for the liver toxicity experienced by people who ate the Daily Harvest frozen meals containing tara.

The authors of the tara flour study identified baikiain in the flour.  They gave baikiain to mice, who did not fare well with it.

The hypothesis here is that some people are more susceptible to the toxic effects of baikiain than others.  The French Lentil + Leek Crumbles were sent to 26,000 customers, of which 400 or so got sick, more than 100 of them badly enough to have to be hospitalized; some required surgery.

The lesson here is that food ingredients need better testing.   Whoever makes tara must consider it GRAS (generally recognized as safe) for human consumption.

As Tom Neltner writes,

Tara flour is yet another example of how FDA’s GRAS program is broken—putting the health of Americans at unnecessary risk. FDA should use its big food reboot to fix the program so that we can have confidence in the safety of our food. The agency should also work with members of Congress who have introduced bills intended to fix GRAS and to have FDA reevaluate old food safety decisions in light of new science.

Amen to that.

Is anyone else as upset as I am about the Debt Limit bill just passed by the House and Senate and signed by the President?

Senator Bernie Sanders, maybe.  Here’s why he voted against it.

Yes, the bill:

• Averted a default on the debt which everyone agrees would have been catastrophic (but the crisis should have been prevented in the first place)
• Will probably not cut SNAP benefits by much if at all (if you believe the Congressional Budget Office)
• Could have been a lot worse (a very low bar)
• Is considered a big win by the White House (oh dear)

But, and it’s a big but:

• It proved that bullying works.

The bullies know it, and are exulting.

The Farm Bill is next.  Watch what the bullies do to it.

What ever happened to government of the people, by the people, for the people?

Existential angst, anyone?  I’ve got plenty.