Food Politics

by Marion Nestle
Mar 16 2023

The politics of chocolate: a few items with comment

Mars convinces emerging market consumers to eat more chocolate, the Financial Times reports.

Mars has embarked on a drive to convince developing country consumers to eat more chocolate, claiming it is on track to double the value of its confetionery sales in emerging markets in teh five years to 2024….”The amount of chocolate that an Indian or Mexican consumes is 10 times or less than a European…So there is a gigantic opportunity take that low…per capita consumption closer to Europe.”

[In response to a question about the health effects of eating more chocolate] “To continue to be a super successful snacking company, we need to evolve our portfolio…and offer choices….If you go to India, you go to Mexico right now, you will see new offerings [from] us that are playing at the lower price point that didn’t exist [before].”

Lead and cadmium could be in your dark chocolate,says Consumer Reports.

CR tested a mix of brands, including smaller ones, such as Alter Eco and Mast, and more familiar ones, like Dove and Ghirardelli.

For 23 of the bars, eating just an ounce a day would put an adult over a level that public health authorities and CR’s experts say may be harmful for at least one of those heavy metals. Five of the bars were above those levels for both cadmium and lead. Read more about how CR tested dark chocolate (PDF).

NCA [National Confectioners Association] issues statement on Consumer Reports study into heavy metals in chocolate and cocoa.

Chocolate and cocoa are safe to eat and can be enjoyed as treats as they have been for centuries.  The…guidelines cited in the Consumer Reports study are not food safety standards…cadmium and lead are present in cocoa and chocolate due to soil and that bean cleaning during processing cocoa beans reduces lead and cadmium in chocolate products.

[and, of course] Food safety and product quality remain our highest priorities and we remain dedicated to being transparent and socially responsible.

Hershey debuts plant-based Reese’s and chocolate bar: The confections, which will hit shelves in March and April, are made with oats. This will be the first time the company offers permanent products in the category.

Comment

I don’t particularly like dark chocolate anyway.  Milk chocolate will have fewer heavy metals because it contains less cocoa and the Consumer Reports article is quite clear on which chocolates have fewer heavy metals.

But all of these items are about how to sell more chocolate which, alas, is not exactly a health food.  Do people in Mexico and India need more chocolate in their diets?  of course not, but chocolate companies “need” more sales regardless of health consequences.

This is about profits to shareholders, not public health.

And of course chocolate has a place in healthy diets—just not one that requires eating more of it.

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Mar 15 2023

FDA allows health claim for cocoa flavanols, sort of

Here’s what the FDA is doing these days.

To  my astonishment, the FDA says it will allow a health claim for cocoa flavanols and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.

OK, it’s a qualified health claim, but still.  The whole thing is absurd.

Qualified health claims are just that; they have to include the qualifier which usually says there’s no or not much research to back up the claim.

The FDA gives several examples of what it will allow.  Here are two:

  • “Cocoa flavanols in high flavanol cocoa powder may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, although the FDA has concluded that there is very limited scientific evidence for this claim.”
  • “Very limited scientific evidence suggests that consuming cocoa flavanols in high flavanol cocoa powder, which contains at least 4% of naturally conserved cocoa flavanols, may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.”

The FDA also says:

This qualified health claim only applies specifically to cocoa flavanols in high flavanol cocoa powder and foods that contain high flavanol cocoa powder. The claim does not apply to regular cocoa powder, foods containing regular cocoa powder, or other food products made from cacao beans, such as chocolate.

Not that anyone can tell the difference.

This silliness came about because  of a petition from the chocolate company, Barry Callebaut AG in Switzerland.

My surprise was that Callebaut was behind the petition, not Mars.

Mars, after all, has been funding this kind of research for years (see my industry-funded study of the week from March 2022).

I can’t wait to see how Callebaut or Mars will use this claim.  I haven’t seen it anywhere yet.  Let me know if you do.

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Mar 14 2023

Alarming (in)action from the FDA

Last week I posted about Bill Marler’s “Take the F out of the FDA” campaign.

Since then, he additionally posted letters from the FDA that make it clear how poorly the agency is doing its job to protect all of us against foodborne illness.

Let’s start with the the agency’s March 8 letter to companies making infant formula.

The agency is asking—not requiring—infant formula companies to:

  • Evaluate their systems for ensuring safety
  • Comply with existing regulations
  • Follow existing rules, and
  • “Voluntarily notify the Agency any time a product sample is found to be positive for Cronobacter spp. or Salmonella, even if the affected lot(s) have not been  distributed.”

What?

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) of 2011 gave the FDA the authority to ensure safe food by requiring HACCP-like process controls at every stage of production.

Infant formula is the sole source of food for many babies.

The formula crisis of last year, where Abbott Labs produced formula contaminated with Cronobacter and Salmonella, meant that Abbott was not following the law and should have been required to clean up its act instantly.

Companies are supposed to test to make sure their process controls are working.

If FSMA did not require companies to notify the FDA when they found contamination, the FDA should be going to Congress to get that authority to announce its rulemaking to get that authority.

This is not a time for politeness.  Infants’ lives are at stake.

The FDA may argue that it cannot take action because so few companies make infant formula (illustrating why industry consolidation is not good for society).

But it must.  Marler is clear on what the FDA needs to do.

  • Put an inspector in every infant formula plant, 24/7.
  • Require product testing and report results to the CDC (to compare with illness).
  • Lobby to make Cronobacter a reportable infection (to reveal the extent of the problem).

To demonstrate the ineffectiveness of politeness, Marler also posted this 2005 letter from the FDA to lettuce growers (“we strongly encourage your industry to begin or intensify immediately efforts”)….  This was followed a year later by the Dole spinach recalls of 2006 (199 cases, 102 hospitalizations, 3 deaths) and many others, leading up to congressional action in passing FSMA.

It’s the FDA’s job to enforce FSMA.

If the FDA is too captured by industry to do that, let’s get the F out of it and into some place that is serious about doing something about food safety.

FDA Commissioner Califf ‘s tweeted response to Marler’s campaign—a thread of 14 tweets— is not reassuring.

There should be no question in anyone’s mind that the F in FDA is a top priority for me. We’ve accomplished a tremendous amount in the last 10 years to make the American food supply as safe as it’s ever been & improve the nutritional quality of foods. 
Not only does the U.S. have one of the safest food supplies in the world, we’ve also advanced our capabilities to detect pathogens. We’re now detecting more outbreaks & safety issues using modern methods like Whole Genome Sequencing that would have eluded detection in the past….
Creating a new foods agency isn’t in the FDA’s purview and would take years to put in place and distract from the important work that needs to be done today.
Right.  So do it.  Unsafe infant formula is a national scandal, unacceptable by any standard.
Addition: FoodFix reports this morning that the FDA has requested some of this authority in its legislative proposal (see page 4).as part of the Biden administration’s fiscal 2024 budget request that was unveiled Thursday (see page 4).
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Mar 13 2023

Industry-funded study of the week: Walnuts

I always enjoy the Headline vs Study section of the newsletter, Obesity and Energetics Offerings.

I particularly like this one because the headline says one thing but the study says another, and the authors put a positive spin on the results (interpretation bias).

The study: The Effects of Walnuts and Academic Stress on Mental Health, General Well-Being and the Gut Microbiota in a Sample of University Students: A Randomised Clinical Trial.  Nutrients 2022, 14(22), 4776; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14224776

Rationale: Poorer mental health is common in undergraduate students due to academic stress. An interplay between stress and diet exists, with stress influencing food choices.

Results: Academic stress was associated with lower gut microbial diversity in females, which was improved by walnut consumption.  The effects of academic stress or walnut consumption in male participants could not be established due to small numbers of participants. Thus, walnut consumption may have a protective effect against some of the negative impacts of academic stress, however sex-dependent mechanisms require further study.

Overall conclusion: While daily consumption of walnuts could not alleviate disturbances in mood, it had a protective effect against the negative impacts of academic stress on mental health…daily walnut consumption over 16 weeks was able to alleviate the negative effects of academic stress on the diversity of the gut microbiota in females, however the relevance of these changes to the biochemistry of chronic stressors such as academic stress requires further study.

Funding: This research was co-funded by the University of South Australia (UniSA) and the California Walnuts Board & Commission…Walnuts for the study participants were provided by the California Walnuts Board & Commission. ..We thank Walnuts Australia for providing walnuts to the control group (upon completion of the study)….

Conflicts of interest: The sponsors had no role in the design, execution, interpretation, or writing of the study. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Comment: The study didn’t show much, despite the enormous amount of work that went into it.  This looks like an excellent example of interpretation bias—putting a positive spin on barely significant results.  Industry-funded research usuall gets interpreted positively and recipients of industry funding believe that it does not influence them or cause conflicted interests.  But much research says it does.  And then, of course, this is a study of the effects of one food, usually not eaten in large amounts (nuts are expensive!) in diets containing large numbers of other foods.  Attributing big health effects to any one food hardly ever makes sense.

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Mar 10 2023

Weekend reading: stopping the rising prevalence of overweight and obesity

The World Obesity Atlas 2023, published by World Obesity Federation, predicts that unless preventive interventions succeed, by 2035:

  • The global economic impact of overweight and obesity will reach $4.32 trillion annually and constitute nearly 3% of global GDP.
  • The majority—51% or more than 4 billion people—will be living with overweight or obesity.
  • One in four people—nearly 2 billion—will have obesity.
  • The economic impact of overweight and obesity is estimated to be over $370 billion a year in low and lower-middle income countries alone.
  • Childhood obesity could more than double.

Here’s the prediction for the U.S.

In the report, the World Obesity Federation:

  • Notes that member states of WHO committed to halt the increase in obesity rates at 2010 levels by 2025. No country is on track to meet these targets.
  • Calls on governments to develop national action plans.
  • Calls on governments to improve health care.
  • Calls for building on the ROOTS framework for tackling obesity: Recognising the root causes, monitoring Obesity data, investing in Obesity prevention, ensuring access to Treatments, and adopting a Systems-based approach.

The documents:

Comment

This is a global problem requiring global solutions., and actions by every government, including ours.   We need a national obesity prevention plan focused on strategies like to work (reduction of food insecurity, improved health care, better education, restrictions on marketing junk food, etc).

Otherwise,  we are all headed to Wall-E, which will turn out to be prescient, rather than dystopian.

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Mar 9 2023

The School Nutrition Association vs. USDA’s nutrition standards

Try as hard as I can, I will never understand why everyone—rich or poor, democrat or republican—isn’t doing everything possibly to make sure that all kids in schools are offered healthy breakfasts and lunches, every day, at no cost.

Children are the future of our country.  We need them to be healthy.

That is why I will never understand how anyone could oppose universal school meals and the strongest nutrition standards possible, let alone the people who produce those meals as represented by the School Nutrition Association (SNA).

OK, the SNA strongly encourages partnerships with food and beverage companies.  The SNA does not list its donors on iany obvious place on its website, but does list the ones that contribute to its annual meeting.   A few years ago, reporters said food companies accounted for half the organization’s revenues.

Perhaps that accounts for the SNA’s long-standing opposition to improving nutrition standards for school meals and the USDA’s latest efforts to do so.

The SNA’s 2023 position paper calls for some useful things: higher reimbursement rates for school meals, universal school meals, reductions in administrative burdens.

But, it also wants: the USDA to drop its new “additional, unachievable rules.”

In February, USDA proposed stricter, long-term nutrition rules. However, 88.8% of school nutrition directors reported challenges
obtaining sufficient menu items (e.g. whole-grain, low-sodium, low-fat options) to meet current standards. Additionally, 97.8% are concerned about the availability of foods to meet the July 2023 transitional sodium limits. To keep students eating healthy school meals, USDA must support school nutrition professionals as they work to maintain current standards.

Briget Huber, writing for FERN, quotes the SNA’s director of media relations.

Additional rules are just not feasible for schools right now…Interim rules cutting sodium more modestly than in the USDA’s new proposal take effect in July, and in a recent survey, SNA members “overwhelmingly” said they were not prepared to meet even those standards…They are very concerned about the availability of foods that meet the targets and are acceptable to students… schools are struggling to staff their kitchens,…They have to compete with local fast-food restaurants and food service establishments that, quite frankly, have a better budget for increasing salaries.

In my experience, schools where personnel believe that healthy meals are important somehow manage to achieve the standards and get the kids to eat the foods.  I think the SNA should be supporting them, not undermining them.

As for evidence contrary to the SNA’s position:

  • Center for Science in the Public Interest keeps a scorecard on school meals.  Its data show much compliance with standards.
  • Tufts University researchers  find that school meals are healthier than those eaten at home or anywhere else.
  • The USDA’s School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study finds most school able to meet the standards and that meals are getting more nutritious.
  • Researchers have shown: following passage of the law that improved USDA’s school nutrition standards, its “implementation was associated with a significant decrease in [Body Mass Index] among school-aged youths in the US. The findings suggest that school meal programs represent a key opportunity for interventions to combat the childhood obesity epidemic given the high rates of program participation and the proportion of total calories consumed through school-based meals.

Yes there are financial and logistical difficulties.  And yes, kids in school won’t be eating food that is as junky.  That’s the point!

The SNA should be leading the country on encouraging schools to serve the healthiest meals possible.  That it is not doing so is a disgrace.

Here are the USDA’s infographics (other resources are also available at the USDA’s site):

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Mar 8 2023

Bill Marler’s new campaign: Get the F out of the FDA

Food safety lawyer Bill Marler is calling for a new food agency on the grounds that the “FDA food reorganization plan is a “dismal failure.”

His campaign includes online advertisements, social media promotion, and survivors of foodborne illness coming to Washington DC to visit Congressional leaders and hand out “GET THE F OUT OF THE FDA” t-shirts. (Marler also will give free t-shirts to the first 100 people to request one at www.marlerblog.com—I’ve already asked for one)

Marler represents victims of food poisonings and thinks the FDA is not nearly as concerned about food safety as it needs to be because its primary focus is on drugs.

He’s also planning to run ads: “Food safety is suffering at FDA because the people at the top are doing drugs.”

He does have a sense of humor.  Marler is dead serious about cleaning up our ongoing, endless food safety problems.

Will this help?  Let’s hope.

Also

A separate food agency might be able to address what Bill Frist, Dan Glickman, and Jerold Mande are calling for: preventing unsafe food in all its manifestations, not only acute microbial, but also hyper-caloric.

 

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Mar 7 2023

The food industry vs. public health: the FDA’s “Healthy” label proposal

 A few months ago, I wrote about the FDA’s proposal for allowing the use of the word “Healthy” on food labels.  I said:

If we must have health claims on food packages, the FDA’s proposals are pretty good. They require any product labeled “healthy” to contain some real food (as opposed to a collection of chemical ingredients or, as author Michael Pollan calls them, “food-like objects”), and for the first time they include limits on sugars…These proposed rules would exclude almost all cereals marketed to children.

Now, the Consumer Brands Association (formerly Grocery Manufacturers Association), which represents Big Food, and which objects to the FDA’s proposal, has proposed an alternative framework.

The CBA is clear about its objectives.  It worries that

consumers could second guess or even reject items that might no longer be qualified to bear the “healthy” claim that can bear the claim today…As it stands, the proposed rule would eliminate an inordinate number of packaged products from being considered “healthy.”

That, of course, is its point.

The CBA issued what I read as a clear threat:

FDA’s proposed changes to its “healthy” definition will contradict the current Dietary Guidelines, causing confusion among consumers and potentially inviting legal challenges for the agency.

In other words, if the FDA does not back down on this, CBA intends to go to court over it.

This was also clear from the CBAs 54-page set of comments to the FDA.  As quoted in the Washington Post, the CBA said:

We are particularly concerned by the overly stringent proposed added sugars thresholds. We appreciate FDA’s interest in assessing added sugars intake. We believe, however, that FDA’s restrictive approach to added sugars content in foods described as healthy is unwarranted and outside FDA’s authority given the lack of scientific consensus on the relationship between sugar intake and diet-related disease.

Ted Kyle, who writes the excellent newsletter, ConscienHealth, also quoted the CBA:

Manufacturers have the right to label foods that are objectively ‘healthy’ as such, based on a definition of ‘healthy’ that is truthful, factual, and non-controversial. We are concerned that limiting the truthful and non-misleading use of the word ‘healthy’ in product labeling could harm both the consumer and the manufacturer.

As Kyle put it, “If you did not catch it, this is a freedom of commercial speech argument. Any guesses how the current Supreme Court might rule on that one? Yep, corporations are people too.”

As I am ever saying, food companies are not social service or public health agencies.  They are businesses whose first priority is returns of profits to shareholders, regardless of how their products affect health (or the environment, for that matter).

The pushback on the FDA’s seemingly trivial “Healthy” idea, is enought to make me think it might actually have some impact.

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