Search results: a life in food

I ran across an interview with the chef José Andres in Departures, the luxury goods magazine.  Sprinkled among the ads for things I can’t imagine ever buying is a Q and A with Andres who, in addition to running a lot of restaurants, founded World Central Kitchen to feed people hit by disasters.

Adam Sachs asked the questions.  Here is the one that got my attention.

Q:   If you could change one thing in the American food system, what would it be?

JA:   First, we need to diversify the crops the government supports through subsidies.  We need to help small farmers across America grow more fruit, more vegetables.  And then put those fruits and vegetables into the school-lunch program and hire more veterans and train them to be cooks and work in those school kitchens, one rural school at a time, so that we are employing our veterans, giving our children better nutrition, which leads to better studies and a better future in the process.  Right now we are investing in subsidies that go to just a few grains like corn.  It’s making America unhealthy, and it’s making America less safe, because without a diversity of crops one day we will have a big problem with our food production.

The entire interview is worth a read.

I’m an Andres fan.

Joshua Specht.  Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America. Princeton University Press, 2019.

This is an enlightening, engrossing, and eminently readable cultural history of the beef industry in the United States, from the replacement of bison (and Native Americans) from the Great Plains to Big Meat to consumer concerns about the effects of beef on health and the environment.  What I so admire about this book is how it never loses sight of the big picture—the critical social and political forces that promoted the beef industry and made beef an icon of American society.

Specht summarizes big-picture aspects in his introduction:

The cattle-beef complex was the product of small debates, struggles, and fights over keeping one’s job, protecting a home, or making a dollar.  Ultimately, these were contests over what our food system should look like and how our society should be organized.  Low prices and sanitary meat at the expense of all else won out.  It was a system predicated on land dispossession, low wages, animal abuse, rancher impoverishment, and environmental degradation.  But it also democratized beef; hungry consumers could eat what they want3ed, and it tasted good.  Railroads, refrigeration, and capital made this system possible, but politics and struggle determined its contours (p.20).

Specht describes how the establishment of cattle ranching—e,g,, winning the West— meant the destruction of bison (and, therefore, Native American livelihoods).  Ranchers had to contend with the displaced and understandably angry Indians, of course, but also winter, drought, barbed wire, and theft.  Specht explains the political maneuvering that brought us to today’s highly consolidated, industrialized beef industry, controlled by just four companies, and producing most beef in CAFOs (controlled animal feeding operations) infamous for mistreatment of animals and environmental pollution.  How did this happen?

The refrigerator car and the managerial revolution explains how a small group of firms could dominate a world in which cattle were slaughtered in one place and eaten a continent or n ocean away, but the meatpackers’ victories over labor, the railroads, and local butchers explain how this state of affairs went from one that horrified people—pale grey meat in stuffy railcars—to one that was accepted as not only natural and inevitable, but laudable.  The key to the meatpackers’ success was that they would align their cause, centralized mass production of meat, with the interests of consumers (p. 178).

The interests of consumers?  Cheap meat.  As long as the present system keeps the price of meat affordable, it will be hard to mobilize public support for reforming the system.

This book is a welcome addition to the library of  books on the meaning of meat in America life, of which my favorites are Orville Schell’s Modern Meat (Random House, 1984) and Betty Fussell’s Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef (Harcourt, 2008).  Schell’s book predated Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, but covered much of the same territory.  Fussell’s is a cultural history.  Specht cites neither.  I commend them to his attention.

Earlier this year, the Lancet published two lengthy treatises arguing that the externalized costs of industrial meat production are unsustainable, and that halving current meat consumption must be a priority for improving human health and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.*  It’s too bad these reports came out too late to be included in Specht’s analysis.  I would love to hear his comments on them.

* The two Lancet reports from January 2019 are:

• Willett W, Rockström J, Loken B, Springmann M, Lang T, Vermeulen S, et al. Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Lancet. 2019;393:447–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31788-4.
• Swinburn BA, Kraak VI, Allender S, Atkins VJ, Baker PI, Bogard JR, et al. The Global syndemic of obesity, undernutrition, and climate change: The Lancet Commission report. Lancet. 2019;393:791–846. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736 (18)32822-8.

The industry newsletter, FoodNavigator.com, which I follow for its thorough coverage of this industry, has collected a set of its articles on sweeteners in a “special edition.”

Reminder: We love sweet foods.  Sugars have calories and encourage us to eat more of sweet foods.  Food companies wish they had a reasonable alternative to sugars that tasted as good and didn’t cause health problems.

Good luck with that!  In the meantime…

Special Edition: Sweeteners and sugar reduction

Food and beverage manufacturers have a far wider range of sweetening options than ever before, from coconut sugar and date syrup to allulose, monk fruit and new stevia blends. We explore the latest market developments, formulation challenges, and consumer research.

• Consumer fear of sugar is mounting – but is it deserved and what alternatives will consumers accept?  Using tactics such as “sin taxes” and a new bold-faced call-out for added sugar on the revised Nutrition Facts panel, public health advocates and regulators have targeted sugar as a primary caloric contributor in the ongoing obesity epidemic in the US – and sales data shows that consumers are listening… Read
• FDA guidance could prompt surge of interest in low-cal, tooth-friendly, rare sugar allulose:  FDA draft guidance allowing allulose to be excluded from the total and added sugars declarations on the Nutrition Facts panel could generate a surge of interest in the rare sugar, predict formulators… Read
• SmartSweets to double store count in 2019: ‘We’re making candy cool again,’ says founder:  Low-sugar confectionery startup SmartSweets is primed for solid expansion into mass and grocery this year, a move its founder says should bring Gen Y and Z back to the candy aisle… Read
• Sweeteners in focus: Where next for allulose, stevia, isomaltulose?  Are sugar alcohols losing their luster, will allulose take off, and is stevia still hot? FoodNavigator-USA caught up with Icon Foods, Cargill and Beneo to explore formulation trends as brands come under increasing pressure to reduce sugar and keep labels clean… Read
• Are zero calorie sweeteners fueling, rather than fighting, the obesity epidemic?  Are zero calorie sweeteners fueling, rather than fighting, the obesity epidemic by meddling with our metabolism or negatively altering our gut bacteria, as some critics claims? Or do they remain invaluable – and exhaustively tested – tools in the formulator’s toolbox?.. Read
• KIND challenges snack makers to better disclose sugar & sweeteners in products with an ‘X-ray’ popup:  In response to the public’s growing aversion to sugar, manufacturers across categories have reformulated and launched products made with alternative sweeteners, but increasingly consumers don’t want those either – but they also can’t as easily identify them, suggests a recent survey conducted by KIND… Read
• Amyris bids for 30% slice of stevia market by 2022 with new Reb M sweetener: ‘On a quality basis, it’s a superior product. It simply tastes better’:  Synthetic biology specialist Amyris has embarked on a mission to capture 30% of the global stevia sweeteners market by 2022 with a Reb M sweetener produced from cane sugar by a modified yeast strain, that it claims gives it a clear competitive advantage over rivals on cost and quality… Read
• Russell Stover corrects ‘brand communication problem’, brings sales growth to sugar-free chocolate product:  Russell Stover enjoyed years of market dominance when it first launched its seemingly ‘too-good-to-be-true’ sugar-free chocolate line in the ’80s. But lately, its sugar-free chocolate sales have wavered as it fell out of favor with consumers who perceived the products to be at odds with a growing better-for-you lifestyle… Read
• Lily’s Sweets CEO: ‘It feels like a mainstream trend [reducing sugar] is being boosted by a micro-trend [keto]’:  Consumers often say that if they’re going to indulge, they’d rather eat a small portion of something made with ‘real’ or familiar ingredients (butter, cane sugar, whole milk) than a more ‘processed’ low calorie/sugar/fat alternative… Read
• Finding stevia ‘polarizing’, beverage brand Petal switches up its sweetener ahead of national retail launch this summer:  Sparkling botanical beverage brand Petal has had a busy first year as the company doubled its product line with three new flavors, underwent a reformulation (swapping out stevia and erythritol for organic agave), and is now primed for national distribution in the coming months, shared CEO and founder, Candice Crane… Read
• Changes to Nutrition Facts label to call out ‘added sugar’ could save millions of lives, study suggests:  Impending changes to the Nutrition Facts label that will require products to clearly label the grams and percent Daily Value of added sugar could prevent or postpone nearly 1 million cases of cardiometabolic disease and save billions in healthcare and societal costs over the next 20 years, according to a modeling study published this month in the journal Circulation… Read
• Yeast-based production process for tagatose could unlock low GI sweetener’s commercial potential, say researchers:  A newly-engineered strain of yeast that can efficiently metabolize lactose into tagatose (a low-calorie, low-glycemic sweetener) may be the key to unlocking commercial-scale availability of the sweetener, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign believe… Read
• Sugar taxes: The global picture:  Sugar taxes continue to hit the headlines, but the introduction of new legislation is never straight-forward. We take a look at 20 countries around the globe where sugar taxes have been in the news… Read
• SweetLeaf Stevia CEO: The sugar substitutes category is flat, but stevia products were up 31% YOY in Q1:  If fat is back with a vengeance and protein remains on trend, sugar is now public enemy number one for many consumers, who want to cut down, but remain suspicious of the ‘natural’ credentials of some alternatives. FoodNavigator-USA caught up with Carol May (CM), CEO at Wisdom Natural Brands, maker of Sweetleaf Stevia, to find out what’s happening in the US sugar substitutes aisle… Read
  

As a former member of the editorial board of Gastronomica, I was invited by its new editorial collective to contribute to a compilation of letters to young people entering the still new field of food studies.

Here is my contribution:

Welcome to the world of food studies, a field we at NYU adopted in 1996.  That date may well be before you were born, but we view our programs as still young, hungry, ambitious, and striving to find their place in the world, just as you must be.  We designed them to respond to demands for deeper and more complex analyses of the role of food in culture and society, and of how food systems operate, in practice as well as in theory.  We hoped we would attract students who wanted to learn about—but also to act on–what our society needs to do to solve major food-system problems: food insecurity, chronic disease, and climate change.  And here you are, ready, we hope, to take them on.

Without question, they need taking on.  Food insecurity—lack of access to a reliable daily supply of adequate food—affects roughly fifteen percent of Americans and nearly a billion people worldwide.  At the same time, about two billion people consume so much food that they become overweight and at increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other leading causes of premature death and disability.  Furthermore, the way we typically produce and consume food depletes soil and water resources, pollutes streams, and generates unsustainable amounts of greenhouse gases–thereby affecting everyone on the planet.  The urgent need to solve these problems is the obvious response to the challenge, “why study food?”

I’m guessing you will hear this question often.  We certainly do.  To address it, we also point out that sales of food exceed a trillion dollars annually in the United States, that everyone eats, and that food is one of life’s greatest pleasures.  Food matters–physiologically, economically, socially, psychologically, and emotionally.

How to deal with all this?  Study hard.  Learn everything you can about everything you can.  Be curious.  Follow leads.  Dig deeply.  But never lose sight of the pleasure.  Delight in what you are learning about food and what it means, but also use what you learn to take even deeper pleasure in food itself.

–Marion Nestle, Emerita Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, New York University

Knowing that this review was sponsored by the dairy industry, can you predict its conclusions?

Association between dairy intake and the risk of contracting type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis with subgroup analysis of men versus women. Moshe Mishali, Shiri Prizant-Passal, Tova Avrech, and Yehuda Shoenfeld . Nutrition Reviews 2019;77(6):417–429.

Conclusions: “In conclusion, these results, indicating that dairy product consumption decreases the risk of T2D and CVD, are in line with the recommendations for the public to consume dairy products. The findings about sex differences and the positive effect of milk on women need further establishment. Future studies should focus on isolating the effect of dairy products for men and women throughout their life span

Funding. This work was financed by the Israel Dairy Board.

Declaration of interests. M.M. is a consultant for the Israel Dairy Board. S.P. was paid for her work by the Israel Dairy Board. T.A. is Chief Health Officer at the Israel Dairy Board. Y.S. is a consultant for the Israel Dairy Board.

Comment: This is a study paid for by the Israeli dairy industry.  As such, it can well be considered an advertisement.  Like other such industry-funded studies (as I discuss in Unsavory Truth), it puts a positive spin on equivocal results (“need further establishment”).

Kevin D. Walker.  The Grand Food Bargain and the Mindless Drive for More.  Island Press, 2019. 

I did a blurb for this one:

A former USDA insider’s account of what our Grand Food Bargain—a system focused on ever-increasing production of cheap food—actually costs Americans in poor health, environmental degradation, and loss of agrarian values and community.  Walker’s views are well worth reading for his insights into how our food system needs to be transformed

Some snippets:

• Early farm bills, sold to the public by promising more food with less uncertainty, were designed to stabilize food prices and increase farm income.  Eight decades later, new farm bills are still being enacted despite average farm income long ago surpassing non-farm income and continuing food surplus.  Each new bill is an increasingly costly grab bag of subsidies and protections, which invariably attracts more interest groups and lobbying.  Other than loose connections to agriculture, no coherent policy direction exists (p. 91).
• Narrow [scientific and technical] expertise alone, for example, does not address the connections among rising rates of obesity, exhaustion of fossil waters, escalating nitrous oxide in the atmosphere, noxious weeds immune to legacy pesticides, growing antibiotic resistance—all the result of how the modern food system operates and how society now lives (p. 114).
• As sophisticated financial strategies are grafted onto the modern food system, more mergers and acquisitions by ever-larger multinational companies follow.  Food is no longer valued for its ability to sustain life, but only for its ability to generate profits.  Whether higher returns come from squeezing farmers under contract to grow pigs or poultry, creating a monopoly on seeds that can be doused with chemicals, or selling food laden with cheap calories makes no difference (p. 141).

Walker’s remedy?  Let food be our teacher.  It’s worth reading what he means by this.

Here’s Canada’s new food guide:

Doesn’t this look a lot like the USDA’s MyPlate?

Actually, the Canadian guide is better.  Even though it retains the annoying “Protein” section (we don’t eat protein; we eat foods containing protein and lots of other nutrients), it drops the dairy requirement.  Even better, it comes with mostly useful suggestions: [my comments]:

• Be mindful of your eating habits
• Cook more often
• Enjoy your food [Yes!]
• Eat meals with others
• Use food labels
• Limit foods high in sodium, sugars or saturated fat [alas, the usual switch from foods to nutrients when talking about eating less]
• Be aware of food marketing [yes, but lots more on this please]

I can see why this has been greeted with some enthusiasm and less criticism than usual:

• Globe and Mail: “good upgrade, skirts around inequality”
• Yoni Freedhoff’s Weighty Matters: “a giant step forward”and on why the food guide is important even if nobody looks at it
• Bill Jeffrey’s Food for Life Report: still fuzzy about amounts and reflects industry lobbying
• Along with 2 minutes of satire (from the program 22 Minutes)

The documents

• Canada’s new food guide
• Canada’s food guide snapshot
• Revision process
• Canada’s Dietary Guidelines
• History of Canada’s food guide
• Healthy eating recommendations
• Evidence behind Canada’s food guide

I think this collection of articles from FoodNavigator on the dairy industry is especially clear in revealing three notable trends: (1) the ongoing decline in milk consumption, (2) a more recent decline in yogurt consumption, and (3) an increase in production, availability, and marketing of dairy products high in fat.  Take a look:

 Special Edition: Dairy innovation

It’s been a challenging year for many dairy brands, with continued weakness in fluid milk and yogurt categories and growing competition from dairy-free alternatives. But there has been no shortage of innovation, spanning everything from ‘intentionally less sweet’ high protein yogurt launches to  whole milk and even ‘triple cream’ offerings as fat roars back in some parts of the category.

• Retail sales of French-style yogurt Oui have topped $100m, says General Mills: US retail sales of yogurt have tailed off in the past two years as Greek has lost its luster. But this is just a temporary blip, predicts the president of General Mills’ US yogurt business, who is confident the overall category will return to growth… Read
• Peak Yogurt taps into keto trend with 17% milk fat ‘triple cream’ yogurts: ‘Milk fat is one of nature’s original superfoods’:  Fat is back in the dairy aisles, if the recent proliferation of products touting their whole milk (c. 3.5% milk fat) credentials is anything to go by. But San Francisco-based start-up Peak Yogurt is taking the trend one step further in a bid to carve a niche in the market with ‘triple cream’ yogurts boasting 15-17% milk fat with low or no added sugar that tap into the keto trend… Read
• Tillamook CEO talks dairy innovation and ambitions of reaching $1bn in sales:  Tillamook County Creamery Association has had a loyal regional following in the Pacific Northwest for more than 100 years (founded in 1909), but in order to secure its next 100 years the dairy co-operative needed to execute a national growth strategy set forth by CEO Patrick G. Criteser who has ambitions of hitting $1bn in annual sales… Read
• Whole-fat and convenient merchandising drive dairy sales moving forward, IRI:  Fat has not only become more accepted among consumers but also the focal point of many popular diets such as keto and paleo. As a result, sales of some, not all, whole-fat dairy products are reaping the benefits of a renewed interest in fat influenced by convenient merchandising at retail, according to IRI… Read
• Full fat and Icelandic pockets of growth in lackluster US yogurt market; while flavored milk and lactose-free help offset declines in fluid milk:  US retail sales of yogurt have continued to fall over the past year, although there have been pockets of growth in Icelandic style and full fat products, according to data from Nielsen and SPINS… Read
• American cheesemakers must balance innovation & cost with consumer education to thrive:  Free from the constraints of the appellation d’origine contrôlée that dictate how cheese in Europe is made, American cheese makers are able to add innovative twists to traditional methods to create unique products that meet evolving consumer demand, according to leadership at the American Cheese Society… Read
• Siggi’s launches whole milk Simple Sides, says top line grew 36% in latest 52 weeks:  Icelandic skyr brand siggi’s aims to expand its share of the US yogurt market with a move into the ‘mix-ins’ category via the launch of Simple Sides, a new line of whole milk skyr with a side of dried fruits and nuts containing no added sugar… Read
• Chobani gears up for national rollout of low sugar, high protein, Hint Of yogurts:  Chobani is rolling out its Hint Of… low sugar, high protein, Greek yogurts nationwide in August following a successful debut in the Pacific, Northeast and Florida markets, with ‘new formats’ of the brand hitting stores in January 2019… Read
• Arla introduces skyr cream cheese line: ‘We’re trying to get in early on that adoption curve…’:  It’s not as big as Greek just yet, but the explosive growth of Icelandic skyr in the yogurt aisle could inspire a flurry of skyr-infused spin-offs in other parts of the store, predicts Arla Foods Inc, which has recently launched a skyr cream cheese in the US market with three times the protein and just over half the calories of regular cream cheese… Read
• General Mills unveils ‘intentionally less sweet’ YQ by Yoplait: ‘It’s unlike anything that exists in the yogurt aisle today’:  Following on from the success of its French-style yogurt Oui, General Mills has unveiled YQ by Yoplait, a 99% lactose-free yogurt made with ultra-filtered milk (milk filtered to concentrate the protein and reduce the lactose/milk sugar) that “delivers big on protein with an intentionally less sweet taste.”.. Read
• Ample Hills Creamery hopes square pints will build brand awareness, loyalty and community:  By thinking inside the box, the husband and wife duo behind Brooklyn-based ice cream company Ample Hills Creamery hopes to better connect consumers to each other and the brand with the launch of unique square-shaped pints at retail… Read
• Got milk? Yes, but not as we used to know it, Jim:  While sales of plain dairy milk have been declining for years, and US yogurt production has dropped off after peaking in 2014, new data shows the continued growth of cheese, butter, and ready-to-drink coffee, yogurt drinks and protein beverages featuring dairy milk, suggesting that the growing interest in all things plant-based has not prompted a mass consumer exodus away from dairy, but that consumption habits are changing… Read
• Plant-based and dairy drive growth in yogurt side-by-side, Danone exec says:  While still growing at a healthy clip, the yogurt category is slowing slightly – but Danone North America still sees significant potential for the segment, especially related to options that are plant-based, lower in sugar, packed with science-back probiotic strains and dairy-based, according to a top company executive… Read
• Children are drinking less milk and juice as they get older… But what are they drinking instead?  New government data* shows that water accounted for 43.7% of beverage consumption among US kids aged 2-19 in the period 2013-2016, followed by milk (21.5%), soft drinks (19.9%), and 100% juice (7.3%)… Read
• a2 Milk rolls out at Walmart: ‘It’s a real validation of our business proposition’:  Tummy-friendly brand a2 Milk is now in more than 6,000 stores in the US, including Walmart. However, the reception from the wider dairy industry has been “lukewarm at best,” claims its US CEO Blake Waltrip: ‘There’s an irrational fear that this is somehow going to vilify milk, when in fact it’s going to bring consumers back to milk.”.. Read