Search results: USDA meat

Here’s another nutrition question that doesn’t go away.

This new study is just out: Egg and cholesterol consumption and mortality from cardiovascular and different causes in the United States: A population-based cohort study.

Its conclusion:

In this study, intakes of eggs and cholesterol were associated with higher all-cause, CVD, and cancer mortality. The increased mortality associated with egg consumption was largely influenced by cholesterol intake. Our findings suggest limiting cholesterol intake and replacing whole eggs with egg whites/substitutes or other alternative protein sources for facilitating cardiovascular health and long-term survival.

This gets right into the funny business of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines.  As I explained,

the recommendation to limit cholesterol has been dropped [from the 2015 Guidelines], but the document says, confusingly, that “this change does not suggest that dietary cholesterol is no longer important to consider when building healthy eating patterns. As recommended by the IOM, individuals should eat as little dietary cholesterol as possible while consuming a healthy eating pattern.”  Could the dropping of the limit have anything to do with egg-industry funding of research on eggs, the largest source of dietary cholesterol, and blood cholesterol?  The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has just filed a lawsuiton that very point.

Well, here we go again.  My thoughts:

This is association, not causation.  The paper gives this caveat: “At baseline, participants with higher whole egg consumption had a higher BMI and lower household income. They were less educated, less physically active, more likely to smoke and have a high cholesterol level, and less likely to take aspirin. They also had higher red meat intake; lower intakes of fruit, dairy products, and sugar-sweetened beverages; and lower HEI-2015 score.”

Eggs, it seems, track with other unhealthful dietary behaviors.

The egg situation is a mess to sort out because the egg industry funds so many studies in its own defense and these invariably show no effect.

But eggs are one food in complicated diets and it’s really hard to look at them independently of everything else in the diet and lifestyle.

What to do?  Moderation is always good advice.

I can’t believe we are even talking about this, but the FDA, USDA, and CDC have just issued a rare joint statement addressing it [my emphases throughout].

After more than a year since the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak was declared a global health emergency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue to underscore that there is no credible evidence of food or food packaging associated with or as a likely source of viral transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus causing COVID-19.

This, no doubt, is in response to statements from the World Health Organization team that visited Wuhan to determine the source of the virus causing Covid-19.  This team has not yet issued its report, but members of the team have talked to reporters.

Nature, for example, reports:

The researchers largely discounted the controversial theory that the virus accidentally leaked from a laboratory, and suggested that SARS-CoV-2 probably first passed to people from an animal — already a leading hypothesis among researchers. But the team also offered two hypotheses promoted by the Chinese government and media: that the virus, or its most recent ancestor, might have come from an animal outside China, and that once it was circulating in people, it could have spread on frozen wildlife and other cold packaged goods….Dominic Dwyer, a medical virologist at New South Wales Health Pathology in Sydney, Australia, and a member of the WHO team, says there is some evidence that the coronavirus could have spread on contaminated fish and meat at Chinese markets, and more details will be included in the written report.

According to the Wall Street Journal,

Beijing has blamed frozen-food imports as one cause of a string of recent outbreaks, and it has introduced mandatory testing and disinfection of foreign goods, saying it found traces of the virus on packaging of products including American pork, Saudi shrimp and Brazilian beef.

This idea has had a profound effect on sales of frozen foods.

Everyone seems to agree that there are four key hypotheses to explain the origin of this particular Coronavirus: 

• Direct animal vector
• Intermediary animal vector
• Laboratory accident
• Frozen food products,

The team could not identify a specific animal vector, dismissed the idea of a laboratory accident, but left open the possibility of frozen food.

The frozen food idea was suggested by the Chinese.

Several top Chinese scientists have further suggested that the Sars-CoV-2 virus that causes the Covid-19 disease may have arrived in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan city, the location of the world‘s first known outbreak, via frozen food imports, or what’s referred to as cold-chain transmission.

The WHO team’s report is considered a public relations win for the Chinese.

The W.H.O. team opened the door to a theory embraced by Chinese officials, saying it was possible the virus might have spread to humans through shipments of frozen food, an idea that has gained little traction with scientists outside China.… The virus was circulating in Wuhan several weeks before it appeared at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where some of the earliest clusters were initially reported, the experts said. It most likely emerged in bats and spread to humans through another small mammal, though the experts said they have not been able to identify the species.

The team, as I mentioned, considered a laboratory origin unlikely.

The team called for further investigation into the possibility of “cold chain” transmission, referring to the transport and trade of frozen food.

US Federal agencies don’t believe this for a minute; hence, their joint statement.

So if frozen foods are not at fault, and no animal vector can be conclusively identified, that leaves us with the dismissed-out-of-hand laboratory origin.

So what’s up with that?  Wuhan, where the pandemic started, happens to be the site of a laboratory that works on Coronaviruses.  

• New York Magazine has a long investigative report on this topic.
• Independent Science News has published several articles examining this possibility (the latest is here).
• US Right to Know has a reading list on Covid-19 origins

Why does the origin of the pandemic matter?  

• If we don’t know how this one happened, how can we take steps to prevent the next one?
• And it matters a lot to the makers of frozen foods.

I only have a few more comments about the Dietary Guidelines beyond what I posted last week.

One is my surprise that the USDA did not do a new food guide.  The existing one, after all, dates from the Obama administration.  It has not changed.

Here’s how it is explained in the new guidelines:

My translation: Eat more plant foods, eat less meat, avoid ultraprocessed foods (including sugary beverages).

This requires a translation because the guidelines say nothing about ultraprocessed junk foods, and they try hard to avoid singling out foods to avoid.

These guidelines are similar to those in 2015 and are, therefore, woefully out of date.

They do mention the pandemic, once:

The importance of following the Dietary Guidelines across all life stages has been brought into focus even more with the emergence of COVID-19, as people living with diet-related chronic conditions and diseases are at an increased risk of severe illness from the novel coronavirus (p. 4).

They do mention food insecurity several times, for example:

In 2019, 10.5 percent of households were food insecure at least some time during the year. Food insecurity occurs when access to nutritionally adequate and safe food is limited or uncertain. Food insecurity can be temporary or persist over time, preventing individuals and families from following a healthy dietary pattern that aligns with the Dietary Guidelines. The prevalence of food insecurity typically rises during times of economic downturn as households experience greater hardship. Government and nongovernment nutrition assistance programs help alleviate food insecurity and play an essential role by providing food, meals, and educational resources so that participants can make healthy food choices within their budget (p. 50).

And they do mention food assistance programs (on page 81), although they do not discuss how the USDA has been relentless in trying to cut those programs.

Nothing about food systems.  Nothing about the effects of food production and consumption on climate change and sustainablity.

Nothing about eating less meat other than implying that eating less processed meat might be a good idea.

One other point: the complexity is increasing.  Here is the history of the page numbers:

As I’m fond of saying, Michael Pollan can do all this in seven words: “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.”

If we can’t do better than this 164 pages of obfuscation, isn’t it about time to stop requiring these things every five years?

Here’s what other people are saying about them

• New York Times report (I’m quoted)
• Wall Street Journal (quotes American Beverage and Beer Associations)
• New York Daily News (I’m quoted)
• CNN (I’m quoted)
• Bipartisan Policy Center [Dan Glickman (Dem) and Ann Veneman (Rep), former USDA secretaries]
• Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (accuses guidelines of racial bias)
• USA Today
• National Fisheries Institute 
• Produce for Better Health Foundation

I am all for making sure that farmers make a decent living but most agricultural subsidies go to Big Ag—the producers of corn and soybeans fed mainly to animals or, in the case of corn, as ethanol for car fuel.

These taxpayer-funded payments are enormous and represent increasing percentages of the income of Big Ag.

For example, see this chart from the Wall Street Journal.

As part of the Trump administration’s effort to get votes from farmers and ranchers, it pledged $37.2 billion to them in the spring and summer with an addition $14 billion in September.

Why is this about the election?  The Washington Post says “Trump’s farmer bailout gave $21 billion to red counties and $2.1 billion to blue ones.”

At a campaign rally in Wisconsin last week, President Trump didn’t mince words about how much his administration had done to bolster the economic fortunes of farmers…I gave $28 billion to the farmers, many of them right here, $28 billion, $12 billion and $16 billion, two years”… That redistribution was facilitated through the Agriculture Department’s Market Facilitation Program. According to data obtained by the Environmental Working Group through a Freedom of Information Act request, that program disbursed more than $23 billion in the 2018 and 2019 program years.

From a report from Agricultural Economic Insights:  USDA’s direct payments to Big Ag will equal 36% of net farm income, up from 22% in 2018=2019.  These payments used to account for around 10% of net farm income.

Check out its map:

Finally, it’s good to review the big picture of what happened to food and farming under Trump.  Civil Eats has an excellent review by Lisa Held.

To offset the effects of the tariffs, in 2018, USDA began distributing cash payments through the Commodity Credit Corporation at unprecedented levels, with no appropriations or oversight from Congress. In 2020, as the pandemic hit the farm economy, it added another source of government payments via the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP). Overall, Trump’s USDA has handed out more government dollars to farmers than any administration prior. In both 2019 and 2020, more than 40 percent of farm incomes came from federal assistance—the only thing keeping farm incomes afloat.

Those payments have been controversial because they have almost exclusively benefited the largest farms and agriculture companies. Two-thirds of the trade aid payments went to agriculture producers in the top 10 percent, including corporations, such as the $67 million paid to JBS USA, a subsidiary of the Brazilian-owned meatpacking giant. Small farms, especially diversified operations and those run by socially disadvantaged Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) farmers, have largely been unable to access CFAP assistance.

All of this leaves plenty of room for improvement.

President-elect Biden: get to work!

I’m trying to figure out how much money—over and above what’s appropriated through the farm bill—is going to Big Ag.  I wish someone would add it up for me.

Here’s what I know so far:

The USDA has given producers more than $10 billion in Coronavirus assistance.  This includes nearly $1 billion to Iowa farmers.  Lesser amounts went to producers in Nebraska, California, Texas, Minnesota and Wisconsin.  Overall, about half went to livestock producers.

According to the Environmental Working Group,

The largest and wealthiest U.S. farm businesses received the biggest share of almost $33 billion in payments from two subsidy programs – one created by the Trump administration to respond to the president’s trade war and the other by Congress in response to the coronavirus pandemic.  The Market Facilitation Program, or MFP, was intended to offset the perceived damage done by the administration’s trade war, which reduced many farmers’ access to lucrative Chinese markets. Payments for the 2018 and 2019 crop years were just over $23 billion – more than $8.5 billion for 2018 and $14.5 billion for 2019.

Chuck Abbott of the Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN) says:

With its new offer of $14 billion in coronavirus relief, the Trump administration could spend $50 billion — quadruple the cost of the auto industry bailout — in less than three years to buffer the impact of trade war and pandemic on agriculture. Farm groups welcomed the second round of coronavirus assistance while critics said it was “old-fashioned vote-buying” ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election.

And the largesse does not stop.  The House has proposed a $120 billion rescue fund that includes relief programs for livestock and dairy farmers and food processors, such as “$1.25 billion to assist contract growers of poultry and livestock growers who face revenue losses due to reduced placements related to COVID-19”

This money goes to Big Ag—Soybeans, Corn, Meat—mainly in mid-West Trump country.

What about food for people?  Well, we have the $4 billion Farmers to Families food boxes, although how much of that goes to farmers as opposed to distributors is unknown.

I am interested in the politics of CBD edibles and supplements, and have been collecting items.  The big issue, of course, is regulation.

The FDA has a web page devoted to this topic:

FDA Regulation of Cannabis and Cannabis-Derived Products, Including Cannabidiol (CBD)

• Consumer Information
• FDA Communications
• Regulatory Resources
• Questions and Answers

Here are some recent articles on what’s happening with CBD.

• FDA chief Hahn says it would be ‘fool’s game’ to try to shut down CBD markets: FDA Commissioner Dr Stephen Hahn, MD, in a speech on Wednesday that despite its continued concern about insufficient safety data FDA has no plans to try to shut down the CBD markets. Hahn said that would amount to a “fool’s game.”… Read more
• FDA report on CBD seen as ‘disappointing’ recap of status quo: A report on CBD delivered by FDA Commissioner Dr Stephen Hahn, MD, was seen by food and dietary supplement industry stakeholders as offering little hope of a timely regulatory solution for the ingredient…. Read more
• Economic Viability of Industrial Hemp in the United States: A Review of State Pilot Programs: After a hiatus of almost 45 years, the 2014 Farm Bill reintroduced industrial hemp production in the U.S. through State pilot programs. This study documents outcomes and lessons learned from the State pilot programs.
•  GALLERY: Trend watching at the Cannabis Forum… ‘The hippies are being pushed out and the suits are coming in’:The hemp-derived CBD market is growing rapidly, although many CPG brands and retailers are waiting for clarity from the FDA on the regulatory path forward for cannabidiol before piling in, but what will distinguish the winners from the losers in this space? FoodNavigator-USA headed to the BevNET/Nosh Cannabis Forum in Santa Monica to find out. Read more
• CBD industry headed toward big overcapacity, expert asserts: The hemp/CBD industry may have gotten the cart before the horse in terms of extraction capacity and raw material supply, said an investment analyst familiar with the sector…. Read more
• FSAI issues updates to CBD food and supplement recall: The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has updated its recall of CBD-related foods and food supplements that have flagged up safety concerns due to the presence of delta‐9‐tetrahydrocannabinol or THC…. Read more
• Hemp-based meat: New Zealand firm eyes 2021 launch for minimally processed, sustainable new product: New Zealand alternative protein firm Sustainable Foods is planning a 2021 launch for its hemp-based meat analogues, which will be made will locally-grown hemp and processed using the firm’s own hydroelectric power plant…. Read more
• USDA seeks more hemp comments: For the second time, the Agricultural Marketing Service re-opened the public comment period for its industrial hemp regulations, this time asking for comment by Oct. 8 on a dozen topics including disposal and remediation of plants containing too much THC, whether to allow a longer harvest window after samples are gathered for testing and whether to allow more laboratories to conduct THC tests.

The report of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is now available in online preprint.

It sets a record at 835 pages.

Its conclusions are highly consistent with those of previous Dietary Guidelines.

It recommends eating more of these foods:

Common characteristics of dietary patterns associated with positive health outcomes include higher intake of vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, low- or nonfat dairy, lean meat and poultry, seafood, nuts, and unsaturated vegetable oils.

It recommends eating less of these foods:

The Committee found that negative (detrimental) health outcomes were associated with dietary patterns characterized by higher intake of red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened foods and beverages, and refined grains.

It retained the recommendation: Eat less red and processed meats

It retained the recommendation to eat less saturated fat (replace with polyunsaturated or monounsaturated)

Thus, the Committee recommends that dietary cholesterol and saturated fat intake be as low as possible within a healthy dietary pattern, and that saturated fat intake be limited to less than of 10 percent of total energy intake, as recommended by the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This recommendation applies to adults and children ages 2 years and older.

It tightened up restrictions on alcoholic beverages from 2 drinks a day for men to 1 drink:

The Committee concluded that no evidence exists to relax current Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommendations, and there is evidence to tighten them for men such that recommended limits for both men and women who drink would be 1 drink per day on days when alcohol is consumed.

It tightened up restrictions on added sugars, from 10% of calories to 6%:

After considering the scientific evidence for the potential health impacts of added sugars intake, along with findings from model-based estimations of energy available in the dietary pattern after meeting nutrient requirements, the Committee suggests that less than 6 percent of energy from added sugars is more consistent with a dietary pattern that is nutritionally adequate while avoiding excess energy intake from added sugars than is a pattern with less than 10 percent energy from added sugars.

What’s missing?

• Salt: The report says remarkably little about sodium beyond that it is overconsumed and people should “reduce sodium intake.”  It’s possible that I missed it, but I could not find suggestions for quantitative limits.
• Ultraprocessed: The word does not appear in the report except in the references.  A large body of evidence supports an association of ultraprocessed foods to poor health.  If the committee considered this evidence, it did not spell it out explicitly.
• Sustainability: This was off the table from the beginning but this committee recommends that it be considered next time in the context of a food systems approach to the Dietary Guidelines (p.771).

Comment

This is an impressive, solid, conservative review of the existing science highly consistent with previous Dietary Guidelines but with mostly stronger recommendations.

This committee was up against:

• A tight time frame
• A first-time mandate to review literature on infancy, pregnancy, and lactation in addition to that for adults
• A first-time process in which the agencies set the research agenda, not the committee
• The Coronavirus pandemic

At the outset, I was concerned that the committee members might be heavily biased in favor of food industry interests.  If they were, such biases do not show up in the final report.  I think this committee deserves much praise for producing a report of this quality under these circumstances.

Want to weigh in on it? 

The agencies are taking public comments until August 13.  On August 11, there will be an online public meeting for even more comments.

What’s next?

This report is advisory, only.  USDA and HHS must boil this down to the actual 2020 Dietary Guidelines.  Whereas the committee process was transparent, the boiling down process is highly secretive, or was in 2015.  It will be interesting to see what the agencies do, especially given the heavy lobbying by proponents of meat, saturated fat, and low-carbohydrate diets.

Let’s start the latest round of items related to food boxes for the hungry (which I’ve been following closely) with the New York Times Sunday Magazine cover for May 31: cars lined up in San Antonio for handouts from food banks.

To deal with this problem—and that of farmers destroying animals and crops—the USDA  has issued contracts to companies to collect the food and pack it into boxes to be delivered to food banks.

The contracts were issued in a great hurry, with just the kind of results you might expect.

Some members of Congress were so concerned about the haste and lack of oversight that they wrote a letter to Secretary Perdue raising questions about the entire process.

This new program was announced on April 17, 2020, and solicitations were accepted for one week.  USDA then announced $1.2 billion in contracts just one week later, on May 8, 2020, with awardees expected to begin box deliveries as soon as May 15, 2020…We are concerned, however, that contracts were awarded to entities with little to no experience in agriculture or food distribution and with little capacity to meet the obligations of their award.

Little funding is going for boxes in New England, for example, and none to Maine or Alaska.

Put another way, the Northeast has 10% of the country’s population and 33% of COVID-19 cases but is receiving only 4% of food relief dollars, according to ProPublica’s analysis of data from the USDA, the Census Bureau and Johns Hopkins University.

USDA has already cancelled one $40 million contract with an avocado producer.

Politico’s Helena Bottemiller Evich and Ryan McCrimmon have been closely following this story, particularly events related to a company in San Antonio.

CRE8AD8 (pronounced “create a date”), a San Antonio event marketing firm, received $39 million to deliver food boxes in the Southwest, sparking questions about its qualifications from produce industry veterans, local lawmakers and top ag policymakers in Washington. The San Antonio Express-News also reported that the company made dubious claims about its clients, credentials and affiliations.

They report that Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) wrote to Secretary Perdue calling for revocation of the contract.

Despite these objections, the USDA rushed through a license to CRE8AD8 to allow it to operate as a produce business. CRE8AD8 posted on its Facebook page: “We’ve received our PACA license! Let’s feed America!”

The reporters note:

It’s been more than a month since an aerial photo of thousands of cars waiting in line for food in a San Antonio parking lot went viral — a gut-wrenching sign of the huge need amid economic fallout from Covid-19. But USDA’s new Farmers to Families Food Box program has yet to come through for that hard-hit community.,,The San Antonio Food Bank has not received a single box from CRE8AD8 (pronounced “create a date”), the embattled event planner that received a massive $39 million USDA contract in its own backyard. The food bank says it’s currently getting about 10 percent of what it expected from the program, all from smaller contractors.

Overall,

The fledgling food box program is working well for many nonprofits and food banks serving food to people in need. Of the roughly dozen major food banks POLITICO contacted, nearly all reported that they had begun receiving boxes, though many deliveries starting behind schedule.

All of this is likely to go on for a long time.  The Packer says that USDA will do a second round of funding for box distributors.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is planning another round of contracts for the Farmers to Families Food Box Program, according to an administrator of the program who touted its successes during a Produce Marketing Association Virtual Town Hall.

Additions

From Politico, June 1:

The Texas-based event planner that received a $39 million contract from USDA to supply boxes of meat, dairy, fruits and vegetables has delivered its first 235 boxes to the San Antonio Food Bank. CRE8AD8 agreed to provide 750,000 boxes to feeding organizations across the Southwest by June 30. The company’s CEO said more food will be delivered this week to food banks in Arizona, Texas and Utah. More from the San Antonio Express-News.

From Politico, June 2: The Wisconsin dairy industry is concerned that its industry has been left out of the USDA payments for boxes; Members of Congress wrote the USDA Secretary to complain that Wisconsin-based businesses received less than 1 percent of the funding.