Really?  Another peanut butter Salmonella recall?  The last one was a disaster (more than 700 cases of illness and 9 deaths).  Among other things, it resulted in imprisonment for the head of the Peanut Corporation of America.

Well, here we go again.

The FDA announced the outbreak traced to Smucker’s Jif.

It also announced Smucker’s recall of those products.

And it provided links to further information.

• What is Salmonella
• Food Safety Tips for Consumers & Retailers During an Outbreak
• Who to Contact

The CDC announced its investigation results to date.

• Illnesses: 16
• Hospitalizations: 2
• Deaths: 0
• States: 12
• Recall: Yes
• Investigation status: Active

And it issued a food safety alert. Peanut butter has a long shelf life.  Discard Jif peanut butter with lot code numbers 1274425 through 2140425, with “425” at the end of the first 7 numbers.

But that’s not all.  Companies using Jif peanut butter dip with precut vegetables or in candy were also in trouble (see list at the end).

How does Salmonella get into peanut butter?  Scientific American explained how this happened the last time.

Feces from some animal is a strong possibility. A leak in the roof, for example, caused one of the early outbreaks. How salmonella got into the water that was on the roof, no one knows for sure. Maybe birds, for instance, which accumulate around peanut butter processing plants.  The roasting of peanuts is the only step that will kill the salmonella. If contamination occurs after the roasting process, the game is over and salmonella is going to survive. Studies have shown that salmonella can survive for many months in peanut butter once it’s present.

Preventive controls, anyone?

And here, thanks to Bill Marler and Food Safety News, is the current list of Jif recalls: .

• The JM Smucker Co. – US May 20, 2022
• The JM Smucker Co. – Canada May 21, 2022

The collateral damage:

• Rainbow Asset Limited – Hong Kong:May 23, 2022
• Randy Ltd. – Israel:May 23, 2022
• Albertsons Companies(11 store-prepared items) May 21, 2022
• Bix Produce Company(2 products containing Jif Creamy Peanut Butter To Go 1.5 oz. cup) May 26, 2022
• Cargill(multiple products containing peanut butter, sold at the Wilbur Chocolate Retail Store in Lititz, Pa. and online at Wilburbuds.com.) May 23, 2022
• Coblentz Chocolate Company(multiple peanut butter products) May 24, 2022
• Country Fresh(select fresh-cut fruit snack trays and fruit snack cups) May 24, 2022
• Fresh Del Monte(fresh-cut fruit and vegetable products containing ready-to-eat Jif^® peanut butter dip) May 24, 2022
• Fudgeamentals(several fudge products made with Jif Peanut Butter) May 25, 2022
• Garden Cut, LLC(Garden Cut products containing 0.750z Jif Peanut Butter Cup) May 24, 2022
• Giant(Store Brand Apples, Pretzels & Celery with Peanut Butter) May 23, 2022
• Martin’s(Store Brand Apples, Pretzels & Celery with Peanut Butter) May 23, 2022
• Mary’s Harvest Fresh Foods Inc(Mary’s Harvest Celery Peanut Butter Cup G&G and Apple Peanut Butter Cup G&G) May 24, 2022
• Price Chopper(M32 Apples, Cheese and Pretzels with Peanut Butter Tray) May 23, 2022
• Taher Inc.(“Fresh Seasons Power Packs”) May 24, 2022
• Wawa(two products containing Jif Peanut Butter) May 24, 2022
• Wegmans(Wegmans Snack with Apple, Pretzels, Cheese and Peanut Butter) May 22, 2022

Cranberry marketing gets wilder and wilder.  Last week I posted a study of endothelial function paid for by the cranberry industry.

But here’s a study that tops it.  I learned about it from a headline in NutraIngredients.com: Cranberry consumption may boost memory and ward off dementia in elderly, study finds.

Oh come on.  Really?

I went right to it.

The study: Chronic Consumption of Cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) for 12 Weeks Improves Episodic Memory and Regional Brain Perfusion in Healthy Older Adults: A Randomised, Placebo-Controlled, Parallel-Groups Feasibility Study.  Emma Flanagan, Donnie Cameron, Rashed Sobhan, Chloe Wong, Matthew G. Pontifex, Nicole Tosi, Pedro Mena, Daniele Del Rio³, Saber Sami, Arjan Narbad, Michael Müller, Michael Hornberger and David Vauzour.  Front. Nutr., 19 May 2022 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.849902

Design: This was a 12-week randomised placebo-controlled trial of freeze-dried cranberry powder in 60 older adults aged between 50 and 80 years. Investigators measured memory and executive function, did neuroimaging, and took blood samples before and after .

Results: “Cranberry supplementation for 12 weeks was associated with improvements in visual episodic memory in aged participants when compared to placebo.”

Conclusions: “The results of this study indicate that daily cranberry supplementation (equivalent to 1 small cup of cranberries) over a 12-week period improves episodic memory performance and neural functioning.”

Funding: “This research was supported by a Cranberry Institute grant…The Cranberry Institute was not involved in the design, implementation, analysis, and interpretation of the data.”

Conflict of Interest: “DV, MH, MM, and AN received funding from the Cranberry Institute.  The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.”

Publisher’s Note:  “All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.”

Comment: This is the first time I have ever seen a Publisher’s Note like this.  Even the publisher is troubled by the fact that this study is funded by a cranberry industry trade group and the four most senior authors report funding from the group.  Without even getting into whether cranberry powder is equivalent to cranberries, whether anyone can eat cranberries without adding their weight in sugar, or whether any other fruit might have similar effects, we should ask whether it makes any sense at all to think that any one single food could boost memory and prevent dementia in the elderly.

For detailed discussion of how industry funding influences research, and the consequences of such practices, see my book Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.

Brian Kateman.  Meat Me Half-Way: How Changing the Way We Eat Can Improve Our Lives and Save Our Planet.  Prometheus Books, 2022. 

I hadn’t expected this book to be so compelling, but it was and I did a blurb for it.

Meat Me Half-Way is an exceptionally thoughtful and well-argued synthesis of the rationale for the “reducetarian” movement to eat less (but not necessarily zero) meat as a means to improve human and planetary health. I especially like the book’s call to unite vegans, vegetarians, proponents of plant-based and cell-based meats, and advocates for regenerative agriculture in this common cause.  Sign me up!

Kateman says

Ultimately, we all want to see the end of factory farming…we must support, or at least not actively oppose, legal approaches toward that end—even when others’ solutions for chipping away at factory farming are not our preferred ones.  This means plant-based meat and cell-cultured meat advocates not actively opposing better meat—even if they don’t think better meat is the ethical, environmental, or nutritional ideal.  This also of course means better-meat advocates not opposing plant-based and cell-cultured meat for not being “the real thing.  (P. 179)

Food companies are madly trying to find plant proteins they can use to make plant-based meat alternatives.  The plant-based scene is hard to keep up with, but I am trying.

• Tracking the plant-based protein movement: From plant-based burgers to chick’n nuggets, companies have launched a variety of new products, made acquisitions and forged partnerships to be in the meat alternative space. According to the Good Food Institute, $5.9 billion has been invested in alternative protein companies — plant-based, fermentation and cultivated or cell-based — between 2010 and 2020.

Check out the variety of plants under research.

• Four emerging plant proteins to watch: Pongamia, hemp, barley, and chickpea: Hemp, barley, chickpeas, and Pongamia (a.k.a. ‘vertical soy’) are four plant-based proteins to watch in the next decade, according to panelists at FoodNavigator-USA’s recent ‘Plant-based protein in focus’ webinar, who predicted advances in crop breeding to increase protein content or functionality will also unlock new opportunities in the field…. Read more
• Tate & Lyle bets big on chickpea protein, flour, with deal to acquire Nutriati. Tate & Lyle – a global ingredients company best known for sweeteners, fibers, and texturizing ingredients – has moved into the burgeoning plant-based protein arena with a deal to acquire Virginia-based chickpea protein and flour co Nutriati, six months after striking a deal to distribute its ingredients…. Read more
• New varieties with 75% more protein could catapult chickpea from niche to mainstream player in plant protein arena, says NuCicer: New chickpea varieties with 75% more protein could transform the legume from a niche to a mainstream player in the plant-based protein arena, says San Francisco-based startup NuCicer, which is also developing varieties with specific functional attributes tailored for food applications…. Read more
• Could sunflower protein join the plant-based protein major league? It ‘checks all the boxes’ says Burcon. Sunflower is the world’s third largest oilseed crop behind soy and canola, so why isn’t it a major player in the plant-based protein arena?… Read more
• ‘A highly soluble, complete protein, with functional properties very close to whey protein…’ DSM gears up to launch upcycled canola protein isolate.  DSM is gearing up to launch commercial quantities of upcycled canola protein isolate extracted from Non GMO rapeseed at a new facility in Dieppe, France, later this year, and says it is seeing interest from firms spanning plant-based meat and dairy, to sports nutrition…. Read more
• Beyond soy and pea… Mikuna expands plant protein toolbox with Chocho whole food. It might fit squarely in the ‘niche’ segment of the plant-based protein category right now, but the speed with which Chocho – a protein-packed variety of lupin that grows in the Andes – has gained traction online and in Erewhon stores in southern California, suggests it has the potential to become a much more significant player, argues Mikuna CEO Tara Kriese…. Read more
• Beneo builds new pulse-processing plant for ‘rising star’ ingredient faba bean: The ingredients supplier is investing €50m in the new facility to make protein concentrate, starch rich flour and hulls from faba beans – a crops that comes with ‘convincing sustainable credentials’, Beneo’s Christoph Boettger tells FoodNavigator…. Read more Ingredion has made an equity investment (of an undisclosed sum) in Israeli firm InnovoPro, which has developed a suite of highly functional chickpea ingredients including protein concentrates, textured vegetable proteins, and most recently, egg replacements…. Read more
• ‘Food oasis in the desert’: Locally grown dates fuel production of mushroom protein in Oman: Alt protein supplier MycoTechnology has teamed up with Oman Investment Authority to produce mushroom protein in the desert…. Read more
• Plant protein that behaves like animal protein? Lemna-fueled Plantible Foods raises $21.5m, gears up for 2022 launch: Plantible Foods – a startup producing protein from lemna, a fast-growing aquatic plant that can be harvested all year round, has raised $21.5m in a series A round* led by Astanor Ventures, as it gears up for a commercial launch in 2022…. Read more
• The tech behind ‘single-ingredient’ smoked salmon analogue revealed: ‘Our spirulina can act as a complete replacement for animal-based protein’ An Israeli food tech company has developed a proprietary process leveraging spirulina to mimic ‘virtually any type of fish and animal tissue’. It’s first product: a ‘single-ingredient’ smoked salmon analogue.  Read more

And now we have an FDA-approved ingredient that mimics blood hemoglobin.

• Motif FoodWorks launches HEMAMI heme-binding protein delivering the ‘flavor and aroma of real meat,’ receives GRAS no questions letter from FDA. HEMAMI – a much-anticipated meaty flavor Boston-Based Motif FoodWorks reckons could be a gamechanger in the meat alternatives arena by delivering the flavor and aroma of the real thing – is now commercially available for large-scale distribution to customers…. Read more

Obviously, there is big money in the plant-based space.

• Louis Dreyfus Co plans to enter plant protein market later this year with initial focus on North America: Louis Dreyfus Company – a leading global agricultural commodity trader with interests in grains and oilseeds, coffee, cotton, juice, rice, sugar, and freight – plans to enter the plant-based protein market later this year…. Read more

I was interested to see this graph in a recent report, USDA Agricultural Projections to 2031.

What this says is that agricultural imports are soon expected to be greater than agricultural exports.

Within the next year or so, the United States will be a net importer of agricultural products.

As the report puts it:

Agricultural exports are expected to grow at an annual rate averaging 0.8 percent per year from 2021 through 2031. The value of U.S. agricultural imports is projected to increase by an average annual rate of 6 percent over that same period as domestic consumer spending is expected to remain strong over the next decade combined with domestic preferences for an array of agricultural goods that continue
to exceed domestic production.

I think we need to ask what this means for long-term food security in this country.

The next Farm Bill is under discussion.  It ought to deal with the question of how US agriculture can produce more food for people rather than feed for animals and fuel to cars.

I keep remembering a meeting I went to in Washington DC years ago, where a USDA official said that he did not think Americans should waste land for growing food when it could be done so much more cheaply elsewhere.   I hope USDA thinks differently now.

US food aid to other countries has long been criticized as proving more benefit to us than to whoever we are trying to help.

This is because our laws require at least half of the ships carrying food donations to be owned by Americans.  This rule can be waived in emergencies such as what’s happening in the Ukraine.

Senators Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) have introduced a resolution to waive this rule until early 2025.

What’s amazing about the rule is how much it costs.

USAID says it will cost $388 million to provide $282 million in food aid to Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Yemen.

A big part of the excess cost is due to cargo preference rules (fuel costs also contribute).

In 2015, the Government Accountability Office published an analysis which demonstrated

Cargo preference for food aid (CPFA) requirements increased the overall cost of shipping food aid by an average of 23 percent, or $107 million, over what the cost would have been had CPFA requirements not been applied…differences in the implementation of CPFA requirements by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) contributed to a higher shipping rate for USDA.

Needless to say, the US shipping industry opposes any change to the rules.

The reduction of cargo would only further endanger the jobs of civilian merchant mariners creating the distinct possibility that there will not be enough mariners to meet military surge and sustainment requirements for future military conflicts. When foreign flag shipping companies are currently making record profits amidst global supply chain disruptions, now is not the time to weaken critical policies that would come at the expense of American businesses and working families.

The study:  Daily consumption of cranberry improves endothelial function in healthy adults: a double blind randomized controlled trial.  Christian Heiss,  et al.  Food & Function.  2022;7.  DOI https://doi.org/10.1039/D2FO00080F

Objective: To investigate the vascular effects of acute and daily consumption of freeze dried whole cranberry in healthy men and how effects relate to circulating cranberry (poly)phenol metabolites.

Methods: A double-blind, parallel-group, randomized controlled trial was conducted in 45 healthy male adults randomly allocated to 1 month daily consumption of either cranberry (9 g powder solubilized in water equivalent to 100 g of fresh cranberries, 525 mg total (poly)phenols) or control (9 g powder, no (poly)phenols).

Results: Cranberry consumption significantly increased FMD [flow-mediated dilation].

Conclusions: Acute and daily consumption of whole cranberry powder for 1 month improves vascular function in healthy men and this is linked with specific metabolite profiles in plasma.

Funding: This study was funded by the Cranberry Institute and by the Research Committee of the Medical Faculty of Heinrich-Heine University Dusseldorf (grant number 9772574). The authors also acknowledge a Susanne Bunnenberg Heart Foundation grant to Dusseldorf Heart Centre.

Comment: I like cranberries.  Of course I consider them healthy to eat.  All fruits have health benefits.

But cranberry powder?

And cranberries are tart,; they need sugar.  Ocean Spray’s cranberry sauce recipe calls for one cup of sugar added to 12 ounces of cranberries.

Moderation, please!

The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems has issued a  special report:

The report identifies four structural weaknesses that make foods systems vulnerable to price shocks

• Dependency on food imports
• Dependencies in production systems
• Opaque, dysfunctional, and speculation-prone grain markets
• Vicious cycles of conflict, climate change, poverty, and food insecurity

Doing something about these problems is a tall order.

The IPES-Food panel calls for urgent action to:

• support food importing countries (including through debt relief),
• curb excessive commodity speculation and enhance market transparency,
• reduce reliance on fertilizers and fossil energy in food production,
• build up regional grain reserves & food security response systems,
• and accelerate steps to diversify food production and restructure trade flows.

Here are:

• The special report
• The press release