Thanks to Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, for sending a link to the Center’s video on public understanding of brochures put out by fast food chains. This reminds me a lot of my screen debut in SuperSize Me! where Morgan Spurlock tries to find out if anyone can define calories.  I used to have a clip of it at www.foodpolitics.com, but it seems to have vanished.

This must be my week for being asked about snack foods. The San Francisco Chronicle (see previous post) wanted to know about pizza? Eating Liberally wants to know about popcorn. Same question, same answer.

Try to get your mind around this one. To make high fructose corn syrup, it is necessary to (1) extract the starch from corn, (2) treat the starch with an enzyme to break it into glucose, and (3) treat the glucose with another enzyme to turn about half of it into fructose. OK class, explain how this can be considered natural? Answer: because the enzymes are fixed to a column and do not actually mix with the starch. Oh. So the FDA considers HFCS natural because Archer Daniels Midland and the Corn Refiners Association asked it to. Regime change, anyone?

After 20 years of controversy, Monsanto is looking for a buyer for recombinant bovine somatotropin, the growth hormone that increases milk production in dairy cows. How come? According to the New York Times, Monsanto says this has nothing to do with problems selling the hormone and didn’t say a word about consumer opposition. I think consumer opposition had plenty to do with this, don’t you?

I figure I might as well have some fun with my new column in the San Francisco Chronicle. The column is a Q and A, and the first sets of Qs came from the editors. This one is about pizza, things. They tell me the next questions will come from readers, and the plan is to run the column once a month.

Center for Science in the Public Interest has a new study out on the nutrient composition of kids’ meals in fast food restaurants. Of course they are all (OK, just 93%) too high in calories. Of course the default option includes sodas (Subway is the sole exception).  If calories were on menu boards, would parents think twice about ordering these things?  Might be worth a try, given that the average child under 18, or so reports USA Today, eats 167 meals a year in restaurants.

As predicted, other cities and counties are following New York’s example and requiring calories to be listed on menu boards. The latest is Portland, which follows Seattle and San Francisco, if you are keeping score.  In Portland, 90 chains are involved so there will be plenty to talk about.  Who’s next?

Sunday’s New York Times has a beautifully illustrated account of how the U.S. food supply has changed since 1970, based on USDA food supply data. These do not measure actual food intake. Instead they measure food produced in the U.S., less exports, plus imports. The USDA has collected (or computed) such data since 1909 and to the extent that they are collected the same way every year, give a good idea of food trends, even though they overestimate actual food intake. I like this USDA data set a lot. It shows that production of all foods is up, with the biggest increases in fats (59%), grains (42%), and sugars and corn sweeteners (17%). Vegetables are up (15%), but so are corn sweeteners (373%), cream cheese (350%), and sour cream (275%). The article doesn’t say so, but calories went up from about 3,200 to 4,000, an increase of 800 calories per person per day since the 1970s. Why are Americans gaining weight? Duh. There is more food around and we are eating it.