Search results: a life in food

Remember last year’s scandal about the 300,000 Chinese infants who developed kidney disease after being fed infant formula laced with melamine?  That anyone would put melamine into infant formula was shocking on its own (although the previous year’s scandal over melamine in pet food ought to have been fair warning, as I explained in my book, Pet Food Politics).

Even more shocking is that the Sanlu infant formula company knew about problems with its milk long before it issued a recall, in part because it did not want to embarrass the country just prior to the start of the Olympic games in Beijing.

Now, Chinese authorities have executed two men deemed responsible for adding melamine to the milk powder sold to Sanlu.  The Sanlu manager was given a life jail sentence, and 18 others involved with the Sanlu company also have been jailed for up to 15 years.

One can always debate whether the punishment fits the crime but a BBC press account quotes a lawyer who laid the blame on

an inadequate regulatory system…It’s hard to understand why these people are give such harsh punishment because generally speaking… there is a lack of monitoring and regulation…It’s the food supervision and inspection authorities that are responsible for this.

Congress, take notice: pass that food safety bill now!

The Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, announced yesterday that all eight food companies involved in the Smart Choices program have agreed to drop out pending his investigation and the FDA’s decision about front-of-package labeling.  Says Blumenthal:

Food manufacturers now realize that continued use of the logo would only mislead and compound consumer confusion. Other food labels richly deserve the same scrutiny — which we will give them with relish.

My investigation into Smart Choices, now supported by the FDA, continues to seek any scientific research or evidence behind a program that promotes mayonnaise, sugar-loaded cereal and ice cream as Smart Choices.

Many in the food and beverage industry have sugarcoated their labels — diverting and distracting consumers from nutrition truth, and pushing them toward obesity and disease. Self responsibility and good parenting are key to healthy lifestyles, but impossible when food manufacturers misguide them.

Our initiative should send a message to other food manufacturers that labeling must be completely truthful and accurate without hype or spin, especially when appealing to children. I am strongly encouraged by interest in our investigation by other attorneys general who can form a powerful coalition against misleading or deceptive food labeling.

Keep an eye out for what other city and state attorneys will be doing about food labels.   FDA: get busy!

Yesterday, 20 family physicians in Contra Costa County, California, ripped up their membership cards in the American Academy of Family Physicians in protest over the AAFP’s partnership with Coca-Cola.

The director of the Contra Costa Department of Health Services, Dr. William Walker, announced that he was resigning his 25-year membership in AAFP.  In his statement, Dr. Walker said:

…I am appalled and ashamed of this partnership between Coca-Cola and the American Academy of Family Physicians. How can any organization that claims to promote public health join forces with a company that promotes products that put our children at risk for obesity, heart disease and early death.

…The AAFP is supposed to be an organization that works to protect the health of children not put them at risk. Their decision to take soda money is all the more unconscionable because, unlike doctors in the 40s, they well know the negative health impact of soda. There is no shortage of documentation that soda is a major contributor to our nation’s obesity epidemic.

…Let me be clear about something: as disappointed as I am with the American Academy of Family Physicians for being duped into thinking that Coca Cola wants to help promote health, the real problem here is our children are being put at risk.

Companies like Coca Cola are polluting our communities with deceptive advertising promoting products that put our children’s health at risk.

…as a family practice doctor and the Health Officer for Contra Costa, I do have a prescription for every parent, teacher, community leader and student:

Look beyond the glitzy advertising that makes you think pouring liquid containing sugar into your body is healthy. Read the label. Look at the ingredients. I’m not suggesting that you boycott sugared drinks, but please make an informed decision about what you are consuming.

I’m calling on every city and neighborhood in our County to fight back against the industry that pushes these harmful products. I ask the American Academy of Family Physicians to end this unhealthy partnership and to join us in leading this important campaign to take back the health of our residents and end the obesity epidemic.

Strong words, indeed.  I hope that the AAFP – and other health and nutrition organizations that might consider food industry partnerships – pay close attention to these words.

* The event was covered in the Contra Costa Times. The Health Department’s website includes the press release and also a video and podcast.

Addendum:

Big news!  According to an AP report today, the group that runs the Smart Choices program has announced that it will “postpone” active recruitment of new products and will not encourage use of the logo while the FDA is in the process of examining front-of-package labeling issues.

Who says the FDA does not have any power?  I think it does.  And let’s welcome it back on the job.

As for my nutrition colleagues in the American Society of Nutrition, the group that competed to manage the program and has been defending it ever since, here’s what they now say:

Dear ASN Member,

Today the Smart Choices Program announced the decision to voluntarily postpone active operations and not encourage wider use of the Smart Choices Program logo. This move follows an announcement by FDA Commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, M.D. on Oct. 20, 2009, which said that the agency intends to develop standardized criteria on which future front-of-package (FOP) nutrition or shelf labeling will be based. In a letter captioned, “Guidance for Industry” and posted on its website, the FDA stated: “We want to work with the food industry − retailers and manufacturers alike − as well as nutrition and design experts and the Institute of Medicine, to develop an optimal, common approach to nutrition-related FOP and shelf labeling that all Americans can trust and use to build better diets and improve their health.”

ASN commends the FDA on its announcement of intent to develop standardized criteria on which front-of-pack nutrition and shelf labeling could be based. In addition, ASN fully supports the decision of the Smart Choices Program Board of Directors to postpone their active operations as FDA works to address both front-of-pack and on shelf labeling.  “ASN will continue to provide nutrition science expertise within the dialogue on front-of-pack labeling in order to best serve the interests of the health of Americans,” said ASN President Jim Hill in a statement to media.

Sincerely,

ASN Executive Board

As I have explained in previous posts about Smart Choices, the ASN should never have gotten involved in this dubious enterprise in the first place.  The organization was lucky to get out of this so easily.  I hope it does not make the same mistake again.

The press had a field day with the Smart Choices logo on Froot Loops.  As Rebecca Ruiz at Forbes puts it, “the uproar over the program has conveyed a definitive message to industry: Don’t try to disguise a nutritional sin with a stamp of approval.”

On October 6, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) announced its new partnership with Coca-Cola.  What does AAFP get from this?  A grant “to develop consumer education content on beverages and sweeteners for FamilyDoctor.org.”

The AAFP, says its president, looks forward to

working with The Coca-Cola Company, and other companies in the future, on the development of educational materials to teach consumers how to make the right choices and incorporate the products they love into a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle.

Coca-Cola must be thrilled with this.  As its CEO explains in an op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, soft drinks are entirely benign and have nothing to do with obesity.  Obesity is due to lack of physical activity and eating too much of other foods, not Coke.  His view of the situation is entirely predictable.

But what about the AAFP?  Family practice doctors have been telling me for years that it is not unusual for them to see overweight kids and adults in their practices who consume 1,000 to 2,000 calories a day from soft drinks alone.  The first piece of advice to give any overweight person is to stop drinking soft drinks (or other sugary drinks).

This partnership places the AAFP in embarrassing conflict of interest.  I gather that members were not consulted.  They need to make their voices heard.  I hope AAFP members decide that no matter what Coke paid for this partnership, their loss of credibility is not worth the price.

Addendum: Here’s what a Chicago Tribune blogger has to say about this.

Further addendum, October 10: As noted in the comments, AAFP members were consulted, more or less.  Apparently, they decided Big Food was less of a problem than Big Pharm.  Really?  How about selling out to neither?

I don’t usually take estimates of the cost of bad diets and obesity too seriously because they are necessarily based on multiple assumptions, none of them verifiable.  But I do like to collect them.  Here are two papers from the American Journal of Health Promotion estimating such costs.  One estimates the health benefits and savings in medical costs from diets reduced in saturated fat, sodium, and calories (a savings of $60-120 billion), and the other estimates cost savings and productivity increases for reduction in calories and sodium ($109-256 billion).  Whatever the real savings are, they are likely to be enormous.  And that’s just money.  It’s harder to put a value on quality of life.  Maybe that’s all we need to know at this point.

Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy has invented a Revenue Calculator for Soft Drink Taxes for estimating the amounts of money states and cities could raise from taxes on soft drinks.  You type in the state or city, estimate the size of the tax, decide what kinds of drinks it’s for, and push the  button.  Bingo.  California could raise about $1.8 billion a year from a 1 cent tax.

And the Department of Health and Human Service has hooked up with the Advertising Council for a new kids’ activity campaign on the Internet, this one using Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things tied in to a movie coming out in October.  I wasn’t so happy about the last such campaign, which featured Shrek and is still up on the site.  Shrek also advertises junk foods.  Maybe this one will work better?

This book has its own Facebook Page (Feed Your Pet Right) on which Mal Nesheim and I deal with current issues about pet food, answer questions, and respond to comments.

Order from your local independent bookstore or Free Press/Simon and Schuster or Amazon or Borders or Barnes & Noble or IndieBound.

Media Interviews and book reviews [scroll all the way down to read review examples]

September/October 2010 Review in The Bark magazine

September 2010 Pet Food Industry review by Packaged Facts

August 18, 2010 Jill Richardson reviews the book on AlterNet

August 18, 2010 Jill Richardson blogs about the book

July 28, 2010 Interview with Amy Lieberman on Zootoo.com

July 17, 2010 Radio interview with Evan Kleinman on Good Food

June 28, 2010 Podcast interview with Tracie Hotchner’s “Authors on Animals”June 25, 2010 DailyAdvance.com review by Vicky Hagmeister.

June 23, 2010 San Francisco Chronicle Q and A with Meridith May.  Great photos!

June 10, 2010 Corby Kummer comments on the book on the Atlantic Food Channel.

June 8, 2010 Christie Keith’s review for the San Francisco Chronicle online

June 5, 2010 The San Francisco Chronicle online Tails of the City reviews the book

June 1, 2010 Jane Brody writes about the book in her Personal Health column

May 22, 2010 Live blogging from Omnivore Books on PetConnection by Christie Keith

May 20, 2010 Interview with Joyce Slayton on Chow.com

May 14, 2010 Good Morning America with JuJu Chang

May 13, 2010 Interview with Kerry Trueman, Eating Liberally, Mudroom

May 13, 2010 Brian Lehrer NPR radio

May 13, 2010 St Louis Post-Dispatch review

May 12, 2010: Diane Rehm Show , NPR radio

May 11, 2010: Time.com Q and A (print)

Summary

Feed Your Pet Right is an entertaining and informative examination of the booming pet food industry—its history, constituent companies, products, and marketing practices—written by two experts who took an objective look at the science behind pet food industry practices and claims. The book should be of interest to anyone who cares about how businesses function in today’s market economy but it especially aims to give pet owners the facts they need to decide for themselves how best to feed their cats or dogs.

The result of extensive research by experts in animal and human nutrition, the book covers the range of pet food products available, analyzes the ingredients in those products, reveals how and why pet food labels look the way they do, and explains how to read and decode the information and health claims on those labels. With this information, pet owners can better evaluate the quality and safety of what they are buying for their cats and dogs.

The authors make no attempt to dictate how pet owners should feed their cats and dogs. Instead, Feed Your Pet Right provides a roadmap to providing healthful diets for cats and dogs in ways that fit the great range of pet owners’ personal beliefs, value systems, and lifestyle choices.

The book also explains how pet foods are and are not regulated, how pet food companies influence government oversight and veterinary training and research, and how ethical considerations affect pet food research and product development. The book concludes with specific recommendations not only for pet owners, but also for the pet food industry, government regulators, and veterinarians.

Co-author: Dr. Malden Nesheim:

Malden Nesheim was born in Rochelle, Illinois. He earned a BS degree in Agricultural Science (1953) and an MS degree in Animal Nutrition (1954) from the University of Illinois and the Ph.D. degree in Nutrition (1959) from Cornell University.

Nesheim joined the Cornell faculty in 1959. In 1974 he was named Professor of Nutrition and Director of the newly formed Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell, a post which he held until the summer of 1987 when he was appointed Vice President for Planning and Budgeting. In 1989 he was appointed Provost of Cornell University. In that position, he was the chief academic officer of Cornell University responsible for oversight of all programs on the Ithaca campus. In 1995, he was named Provost Emeritus and became professor of Nutrition Emeritus in 1997.

Nesheim received the American Institute of Nutrition’s Conrad A. Elvehjem Award for public service, was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Fellow of the American Society of Nutritional Sciences. He has served as President of the American Institute of Nutrition and on several review panels for the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Agriculture. He chaired the NIH Nutrition Study Section from 1983-1986, and was a member of the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine for nine years. He chaired the 1990 joint USDA/HHS Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. In 1995 he was appointed Chair of a Presidential Commission on Dietary Supplement Labels. He finished his term as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Pan American Health and Education Foundation in 2008.

How we came to write this book:

The idea for this book originated as an extension of Marion Nestle’s book, What to Eat, which addressed common questions about human food choices using supermarkets as an organizing principle. The book did not cover the pet food aisle, which in most supermarkets is extensive and loaded with products whose labels differ greatly from those on foods for humans and are indecipherable to most people. We were curious to know what those products were and what their labels meant. What to Eat is a guide to how to think about human food choices. Feed Your Pet Right is a guide to how to think about food choices for cats and dogs.

Early comments

From Dr. David Fraser, former dean of the Veterinary College at the University of Sydney:

I have at last finished reading the manuscript of your book…Your book is mind blowingly excellent!! It is brilliant in every way. It is comprehensive in scope. It is so clearly impartial – free of any hidden influence on the writers. The style of writing is extremely attractive and should make this book accessible to any reader regardless of their knowledge level…The book of course is written for the USA. Nevertheless, I shall be recommending that my veterinary students read it…I am amazed at the range of issues that you covered. Together they give the most complete understanding of commercial pet foods that could possibly be created…your recommendations and criticisms are all highly relevant to the Australian situation.

Reviews in print

Library Journal, April 1, 2010:

Nestle, Marion & Malden C. Nesheim. Feed Your Pet Right: The Authoritative Guide to Feeding Your Dog and Cat. Free Pr: S. & S. May 2010. c.320p. illus. index. ISBN 978-1-4391-6642-0. pap. $18. PETS

Dog and cat owners encounter a dizzying array of choices and confusing labels when shopping for pet foods in supermarkets. They will welcome the information Nestle (nutrition, New York Univ.; Pet Food Politics) and Nesheim (nutrition, emeritus, Cornell Univ.) obtained from their research and firsthand experience. Readers learn what pets are supposed to eat (dogs are omnivores; cats are carnivores) and the scientific standards and government regulations that led to the development of commercial pet food. Owners are guided through the many food choices, including dry, canned, wet, and semimoist foods; products called “premium,” “all natural,” “prescription diet,” and “hairball control”; and more unconventional diets, like raw, vegetarian, and home cooked. After discussing various foods and nutrients, they conclude with specific and sensible recommendations for pet owners, the industry, and the government. VERDICT Filled with useful information, this well-written guide is the pet nutrition counterpart to Nestle’s human nutrition guide, What To Eat. Recommended for all pet owners.—Eva Lautemann, Georgia Perimeter Coll. Lib., Clarkston

Tulsa World, May 9, 2010

Surprising bits about kibble, by Kim Brown, World Scene Writer

We’re a culture obsessed with food, so why not be that way about pet food?

The answer is what authors Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim search for in their new book, “Feed Your Pet Right: The Authoritative Guide to Feeding Your Dog and Cat,” (Simon & Schuster, $16.99).

From breaking down pet food labels to detailing the many nutrition plans for your dog or cat, the authors dig deep into the $40 billion a year pet industry and learn that there are no definitive answers.

But they first take us through history to learn what our domestic animals used to eat, and how it compares with the foods we feed them today.

Not only do they tackle the commercial pet food industry, but the authors also look inside the natural and organic product claims on some specialty, or more expensive, pet food products.

Some of Nestle and Nesheim’s research surprised them, particularly that they found was no single diet to be superior.

“The books that are out there tend to cite every bit of research or experience they can muster to argue that you must feed your pet only one kind of diet — only commercial pet food, only one or another alternative pet food, only meat, only grains and vegetables, only raw foods, or only home-cooked foods. Humans don’t eat only one way. Pets don’t need to either. Any or all of those methods, singly or together, can promote excellent health in a dog or cat,” they write.

In fact, they find that commercial pet food is “adequate and appropriate” for many pets.

“We found no evidence that these foods routinely cause nutrient deficiencies or other health problems or shorten pets’ lives ” they write.

However, they also lament that there is no “real research” to tell if pets are living longer lives now than before.

Cape Cod Times, May 9, 2010, Bookshelf, by Melanie Lauwers

One of the hottest topics going is how we feed ourselves in the modern world — where our food comes from, how it’s processed and whether we get the best possible nutrition from our diet. But what about our pets? We spend millions of dollars each year on wet and dry food, treats and supplements, and truthfully, how much do we know about those products? And how do we know they’re right for our pets?

Expert nutritionist Marion Nestle of New York University and Cornell University professor emeritus Malden Nesheim explain what pets used to eat, what they eat now and what they actually need in their diet to stay healthy and happy. Included are analyses of pet food products and recommendations for owners, the pet food industry and regulators. There’s more than plain old kibble in this pet food encyclopedia.

I’ve just been contacted by Mike Smith of Change.org.  This group is organizing a letter-writing campaign about the Smart Choices program.  You don’t know what this is about?  See previous posts.  Here’s what he says:

At Change.org we are also outraged by the Smart Choices program and are concerned that members of the American Dietetic Association and nutrition experts are allied with Smart Choices, happy to mislead the public about what constitutes a healthy / smart choice. We’ve already had 3,000 people email the Smart Choices panel demanding they stop shilling for Kellogg’s and better support consumers in this action campaign…We’ve had big successes in the recent weeks — we got the Department of Labor to release its list of slave made goods to consumers, had Chipotle agree to better rights for their tomato farmers, and persuaded Live Nation to cancel concerts by an anti-gay musician. Having you on board will hopefully tip the balance and encourage the Smart Choices board to make crucial changes that won’t allow Froot Loops to be presented as a Smart Choice.

How about adding your voice to the protest against the Smart Choices program, or what has now become known as the “Better than a Doughnut” program?  It’s easy to do.   Just click on this link.   Thanks Mike.

Update September 18:  Here’s another good reason to be concerned about this program.  It was paid for by industry to the tune of $1.47 million, according to Forbes.