Food Politics

by Marion Nestle
Jul 29 2022

Weekend reading: food and political parties

R.C. Harris.  Party Food: A Partisan History of Food & Farming in America.  Common Ground, 2021 (147 pages plus an index).

The author, a politics professor at Washington & Lee University, sent me a copy of her book, which I have now read.

I love the cover.

This is a book about the differing views of Farm Bill provisions among Democrats and Republicans.

Harris points out, correctly, that recent books about food policy in the United States, mine among them, say practically nothing about the role of the two political parties in deciding food issues.  Here, she corrects this omission.

She does so using a sports analogy–red and blue teams with one goal: to win.  A brief excerpt:

Setting the Stage: Farmers on Welfare in a Capitalist Society

The main problem in our story is that farm policy is really about giving farmers federal dollars to stay in business—and this idea tends to divide the red team from the blue team.  The history of modern farm policy in the United States is essentially the history of social welfare policy—a policy designed to prop up the incomes of farm families…As a nation of independent, hardworking, self-sufficient citizens and immigrants, America has always been more likely to embrace capitalism and less likely to expect government support than nations with a history of kinds, vassals, and peasants.  This means America is much more centrist and market-oriented in its economic policy, making welfare the exception rather than the rule. (p.53)

I get what she’s saying and her points are worth considering, but I wish she had used a word other than “farmers.”  The ones who get corporate welfare in America are not your small subsistence farmers or even those of medium size.

A more precise term here would be Big Agriculture.

The Farm Bill is welfare for the rich.  That’s why the red team is for it.

But her contention that the food movement needs to pay more attention to party politics demands attention.

Voting really matters to our players on the field.  In fact, we learned that partisan farm policy is really field policy—what will keep the team on the field.  And, interestingly enough, this has a lot to dow with what is in the fields and on the tables (and on the menus, and in the regrigerator, and for sale at the store or local farmers market) where the players are elected.  In other words, political teams want to be re-elected so they can keep making political plays.  (p. 131)

As I keep saying, if you want the food movement to have power, run for office.

Maybe it’s time for a third team?

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Jul 28 2022

Front of pack labeling: Nutri-Score

Since I’ve figured out how to enbed videos, you might want to take a look at this one.

This one is about Nutri-Score, a front-of-package labeling system that started in France but is used in several European countries.  The system balances the healthful and unhealthful aspects of processed foods, and assigns a composite color-coded score, from A (very healthy) to E (oops), and from green to red.

Once you know how the system works, you can easily figure out which ultra-processed foods are best avoided.

The video is in French with English subtitles (but also comes in French without subtitles or with Spanish subtitles).

For more about Nutri-Score go here and here.
For what I’ve written previously about Nutri-Score, go here.

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Jul 27 2022

Taxing sugar-sweetened beverages: a how-to guide to legislation

We have Healthy Food America and the University of Washington, the UCONN Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health, and the Public Health Law Center at Mitchell Hamline School of Law to thank for this guide to tax legislation that will promote health and racial equity.

The report:

  • Reviews tax laws proposed and achieved in the US
  • Summarizes the experience of advocates and policymakers
  • Examines approaches used in alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis taxes
  • Recommends how to draft legislation to promote equity

The full report: Investing Sweetened Beverage Tax Revenues to Advance Equity: Recommendations for Drafting Legislation

The brief report is here.

An infographic provides a quick overview.

Other supporting materials are available on the Healthy Food America website.

Want to give this a try?  Here’s how.

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Jul 26 2022

Tara flour: a quick review of the research

A review article finds it nontoxic.You may recall that on June 17,  Daily Harvest issued a recall of its frozen vegan Crumbles product  after 500 or so adverse event reports, many of  severe liver damage among the 28,000 customers who ordered it.

Here’s what the front of the package looked like.

This product has lots of ingredients:

organic butternut squash, organic hemp seeds, organic cauliflower rice, organic extra virgin olive oil, organic french lentils, organic red lentils, organic tri-colored quinoa, organic cremini mushrooms, organic tara flour, organic leeks, organic parsley, water, organic cassava root flour, organic flax seeds, organic sacha inchi powder, chia seeds, organic porcini powder, himalayan sea salt, organic apple cider vinegar, organic onion powder, nutritional yeast, organic garlic powder, organic tomato powder, organic white pepper, organic coriander seeds, organic mustard powder, organic thyme.

As food safety lawyer Bill Marler predicted, tara flour has been identified as the ingredient at fault.

I had never heard of tara and had to look it up.  Since then, I’ve gotten curious and did some quick research.

Tara is a legume—a bean plant—grown in Peru and other Latin American countries.

Tara is grown for several purposes:

  • Pod tannins for industrial leather, keeping ships free of marine animals, and preparing textiles to accept dyes
  • Cosmetics (polysaccharides isolated from the seeds)
  • Food additives—protein flours and gums (from the endosperm)

The research literature on tara is remarkably extensive (Who knew?).

On the tannins:

On cosmetics:

On tara as a food ingredient:

From everything previously reported about tara over the past 20 years, there is no reason to think it might be unsafe.

So what’s going on?  How to explain “only” hundreds of cases of severe liver injury when 28,000 Crumbles meals were shipped during the time when cases were reported.

Possibilities:

To prevent this from happening again, it’s necessary to identify the toxin.  I hope that happens soon.

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Jul 25 2022

Industry-funded study of the week: more prunes

Several people sent me this one:

Prunes preserve hip bone mineral density in a 12-month randomized controlled trial in postmenopausal women: the Prune Study.  The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,  nqac189, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqac189

Conclusions: A 50g daily dose of prunes can prevent loss of total hip BMD [bone mineral density] in postmenopausal females after six months, which persisted for 12-months…we propose that the 50g dose represents a valuable non-pharmacological treatment strategy that can be used to preserve hip BMD in postmenopausal females and possibly reduce hip fracture risk

Sources of Support: California Prune Board (Award Number: 180215)

Acknowledgments: We thank the California Prune Board for the funding and prunes…The California Prune Board had no role in the data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of manuscript.in this study.

Comment: The California Prune Board did not have to have that kind of role to get the outcome it wanted.  Research on funding effects shows that industry influence is exerted primarily in the ways the research question is framed and the results interpreted.  It also shows that investigators hardly ever recognize how industry funding exerts influence.

Reference:  Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.

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Jul 22 2022

Weekend viewing: Robert Reich on Big Ag

I came across this from a tweet by Ricardo J Salvador @cadwego
Wherein the former Secretary of Labor clearly lays out one of the major drivers for price increases, as well as a clear way for the Biden administration to use its authority to relieve the problem. The core issue is the anti-competitive, monopoly power of consolidated industries.
Just 4 firms control 85% of the beef market, 66% of the pork market, and 54% of the poultry market. The result? -Lower pay for farmers. -Bigger profits for monopolies. -Higher prices for you. There’s no question: We need to break up Big Ag.
He explains this in a video–How Farmers Are Getting Shafted By Monopolies–which, I am delighted to report, I figured out how to embed here.

 

His bottom line:

Just 4 firms control 85% of the beef market, 66% of the pork market, and 54% of the poultry market.

The result?
-Lower pay for farmers.
-Bigger profits for monopolies.
-Higher prices for you.

There’s no question: We need to break up Big Ag.

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Jul 21 2022

Keeping up with plant-based food products

Replacing animal-based foods with plan-based foods continues to be high on the startup agenda.  Here are some recent items:

On the business side:

Plant-based meat alternatives:

Plant-based chocolate:

Sufficiently delicious?  You decide.

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Jul 20 2022

The Daily Harvest recall mystery: update

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.

As Rachel Drori, the CEO of Daily Harvest, explains in her latest update (all are here).

At this time, we have identified tara flour as the cause of the issue. Our extensive investigation has involved many experts analyzing data from all sources. We have only used this ingredient in French Lentil + Leek Crumbles and we are no longer sourcing from this producer who does not provide any ingredients for our 140+ other items. This was the first and only time we’ve used tara flour, which has been available and used in the North American market as a plant-based source of protein prior to our use. Our investigation team will continue working with the FDA, the tara flour producer and others to help determine what specifically made people sick.

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.

The big question: what caused these problems?

As Drori says:

We considered all possibilities, including processing issues or infection, and have ruled all of them out: Hepatitis A, Norovirus, a range of mycotoxins, including aflatoxins, food-borne pathogens including Listeria, E.Coli, Salmonella, Staphylococcus Aureus (Staph), B.Cereus, and Clostridium Species and major allergens including egg, soy, milk, and gluten. Testing also confirmed there are no pesticides or the presence of heavy metal levels that would have caused the reported adverse effects.

The FDA is on the case.  Its most recent accounting gives these figures:

Total Adverse Illness Events: 277*
Hospitalizations: 96*
Deaths: 0
Last illness onset: July 9, 2022*
States with Adverse Illness Events: AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, MD, MA, MN, MI, MO, MT, NH, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VT, VA, WA, WI
Product Distribution: Nationwide
*Estimate based on Consumer Complaint and CAERs reports received by the FDA

The FDA’s previous update noted that the company shipped about 28,000 of these specific meals between April 28 and June 17.

Food safety lawyer Bill Marler, who represents many of the afflicted (and is filing lawsuits), says:

We have filed lawsuits in both state and federal court to more effectively push discovery against both Daily Harvest and the manufacturer of the product, Stone Gate. We need to know what is the likely common ingredient and who supplied it. We need to understand all food safety protocols and what went wrong. We need to know when these companies first were aware of the “Adverse Illness Events” and what was done with that information.

Marler’s latest summary is here.

ABC News reporter Melanie Woodrow (@Melanie Woodrow) spoke with some of the victims and their lawyers (not Bill Marler)  She Tweeted:

Spoke w/ two attorneys today who say #DailyHarvest has filed motions compelling their clients to arbitrate, meaning cases would play out in conference room not court. @DlyHarvest says customers agreed to terms that included an arbitration clause.

I truly do not understand why the toxin has not yet been identified.

This situation reminds me of how hard it was to identify melamine as the toxin in the massive pet food recalls of 2006.  I ended up writing a book about this case: Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine.

While waiting for answers, let’s all wish the victims a speedy recovery.

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