Search results: the corporation not me

Yesterday, I posted information about the forthcoming UN Summit on Food Systems (UNFSS) and its Pre-Summit.  The Summit has been heavily criticized on the grounds that it:

• Sets agenda themes determined by corporate entities such as The World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation.
• Favors corporate technological solutions to food system problems.
• Ignores agroecology, organic farming, and indigenous knowledge.
• Excludes meaningful representation from people most affected by food system transformation.
• Promotes corporate control of food systems.
• Ignores the conflicted interests of its organizers.
• Is fundamentally undemocratic.

These criticisms are so severe that The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism for Relations with the UN (CSM) is organizing counter events July 25 to July 27.

• Download and share this call to action
• Learn more about CSM’s position as regards the UN Food Systems Summit

Much has been written to document such concerns.

Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism, North America: UN Food System Summit “Dialogue” events spark renewed concerns of corporate capture in North American food system and rural economies globally

In March 2020, 550 civil society organizations sent an open letter to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General condemning the involvement of the World Economic Forum in the UNFSS, the appointment of Ms. Agnes Kalibata as UNFSS Special Envoy due to her links to corporate agribusiness, the failure of the UNFSS to elevate the primacy and indivisibility of human rights frameworks as foundational to the governance of food systems, and the necessity of civil society organizations to have an autonomous, self-organized, and equal ‘seat at the table.’ These concerns have not been addressed despite numerous CSM interactions with UNFSS organizers.

The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES): An IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] for Food?”  How the UN Food Systems Summit is being used to advance a problematic new science-policy agenda.

Behind what sounds like a technocratic question is in fact a high-stakes battle over different visions of what constitutes legitimate science and relevant knowledge for food systems. This, in turn, is part of a broader battle over what food systems should look like and who should govern them.

Matthew Canfield, Molly D. Anderson and Philip McMichael.  UN Food Systems Summit 2021: Dismantling Democracy and Resetting Corporate Control of Food Systems.  Front. Sustain. Food Syst., 13 April 2021. [Note: this paper has an especially useful historical account of attempts to establish global food system governance]

Although few people will dispute that global food systems need transformation, it has become clear that the Summit is instead an effort by a powerful alliance of multinational corporations, philanthropies, and export-oriented countries to subvert multilateral institutions of food governance and capture the global narrative of “food systems transformation”…It elaborates how the current structure and forms of participant recruitment and public engagement lack basic transparency and accountability, fail to address significant conflicts of interest, and ignore human rights.

Independent scientists:  Open letter to policy makers: No new science-policy interface for food systems.

We call on governments and policymakers to…Support participatory processes that actively and meaningfully include plural perspectives and voices in food system governance. Farmers and other citizens need inclusive, participatory, and safe spaces within the CFS-HLPE process to co-create the knowledge necessary to govern food systems at global, national and local levels.

Maywa Montenegro, Matthew Canfield, and Alastair Iles.  Weaponizing Science in Global Food Policy.

Nobody disputes the need for urgent action to transform the food system. But the UNFSS has been criticized by human rights experts for its top-down and non-transparent organization. Indigenous peoples, peasants, and civil society groups around the world know their hard-won rights are under attack. Many are protesting the summit’s legitimacy and organizing counter-mobilizations.

Scientists are also contesting a summit because of its selective embrace of science, as seen in a boycott letter signed by nearly 300 academics, from Brazil to Italy to Japan.

Through the Summit, “science” has been weaponized by powerful actors not only to promote a technology-driven approach to food systems, but also to fragment global food security governance and create institutions more amenable to the demands of agribusiness.

Scientists: An open letter from scientists calling for a boycott of the 2021 Food Systems Summit.

Some critics of the UNFSS have suggested ways that the process could become less problematic: (1) it could incorporate a human rights framing into all of its “action tracks”; (2) it could create an action track led by the CSM on the corporate capture of food systems; and (3) it could designate the UN Committee on World Food Security as the institutional home to implement recommendations coming out of the summit.

Nisbett N, et al.  Equity and expertise in the UN Food Systems Summit.  BMJ Global Health. 2021;6:e006569.

…time is not late to take action in rebalancing powers and enabling a greater diversity of knowledge, not simply among a multiplicity of voices in multiple public forums, but explicitly engaged at the summit’s top table of expertise and summit leadership. It is also not late to adopt mechanisms that limit the engagement of those actors whose primary interests have driven our food systems to
become unhealthy, unsustainable and inequitable, so the voices of the people can be clearly heard..

An alternative: The Global People’s Summit on Food Systems

The People’s Summit is composed primarily of movements of landless peasants, agricultural workers, fisherfolk, indigenous people, rural women, and youth—or small food producers who produce 70% of the world’s food, yet remain among the world’s poorest and food insecure.  “The issue of landlessness and land grabbing is not on the agenda of the UNFSS.  Nowhere in its so-called Action Tracks do discussions highlight critical trends such as on land concentration and reconcentration in the hands of big agribusiness firms and their network of local landlords and compradors, nor on the massive displacement of rural communities to give way to big private investments and large development projects,” said Chennaiah Poguri, chairperson of the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC).

Additions

• Video explaining “multistakeholderism”
• Links (ongoing) to papers on the UN Food System Summit

Nutritional Viewpoints on Eggs and Cholesterol. by Michihiro Sugano and Ryosuke Matsuoka.  Foods 2021, 10(3), 494; https://doi.org/10.3390/foods10030494

Opinion:  This review says that although Japanese people eat more eggs than Americans, they may be protected against higher cholesterol levels due to the differences in everything else they eat (more seafood, for example?).

Conclusion: “Although randomized controlled trials with long-term follow-up are required to evaluate the association between consumption of eggs and human health, available information, at least from the nutritional viewpoint, suggests that egg is a healthy and cost-efficient food worldwide.”

Conflicts of interest: “M.S. declares no conflicts of interest, and R.M. is an employee of Kewpie Corporation. There are no other patents, products in development, or marketed products to declare. Kewpie Corporation has no conflicts of interest with this research.”

Comment: Really?  No conflicts of interest?  But Kewpie is Japan’s #1 mayonaise company.  Kewpie says that it “uses about four billion eggs a year. Recognizing that eggs contain all the necessary ingredients for creating life, we continually study ways of effectively utilizing such ingredients and manufacture fine chemicals for use in a broad range of food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical applications.”

One of those ways, apparently, is to get its employees to write opinion pieces like this.

With that said, concerns about eggs and cholesterol have diminished in recent years.  The 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans says not a word about eggs and cholesterol; it just recommends eggs as a source of protein.  A study in the American Heart Association Journal finds no association between eggs and heart disease mortality.

The American Heart Association notes that eggs are the leading source of dietary cholesterol but their negative effects may be confounded by the fact that they are so often eaten with bacon and sausage.  The AHA egg recommendations:

• Vegetarians (lacto-ovo) who do not consume meat-based cholesterol-containing foods may include more dairy and eggs in their diets within the context of moderation discussed herein.
• Patients with dyslipidemia, particularly those with diabetes mellitus or at risk for heart failure, should be cautious in consuming foods rich in cholesterol.
• For older normocholesterolemic patients, given the nutritional benefits and convenience of eggs, consumption of up to 2 eggs per day is acceptable within the context of a heart-healthy dietary pattern.

And even with that said, the authors should have disclosed Kewpie’s evident conflicted interests.

I’ve just had a book review published in the American Journal of Public Health: “Public health nutrition deserves more attention.”

It’s for a textbook on public health nutrition but doing it gave me the opportunity to say some things I want public health professionals to know.  I started the review like this:

Public Health Nutrition deserves more attention

Food and nutrition deserve much more attention from public health professionals.  On the grounds of prevalence alone, diet-related conditions affect enormous numbers of people.  Everybody eats.  Everybody is at risk of eating too little for health or survival, or too much to the point of weight gain and increased prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).  By the latest count, nearly 700 million people in the world do not get enough to eat on a daily basis, a number that has increased by tens of millions over the past five years and will surely increase by many millions more as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.[i]   At the same time, about two billion adults are overweight or obese, and few countries are prepared to deal with the resulting onslaught of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.[ii]  Beyond that, food production, distribution, consumption, and disposal—collectively food systems—are responsible for a quarter or more of greenhouse gas emissions; climate change affects the health of everyone on the planet.[iii]

The same social, behavioral, economic, and structural determinants that affect health also affect nutritional health, and it is no accident that food choices are flash points for arguments about culture, identity, social class, inequity, and power, as well as about the role of government, private enterprise, and civil society in food systems.   From a public health standpoint, everyone–regardless of income, class, race, gender, or age—should have the power to choose diets that meet nutritional needs, promote health and longevity, protect the environment, and are affordable, culturally appropriate, and delicious.

Nutrition in 2021

For people in high-income countries, dietary prescriptions for health and sustainability advise eating less meat but more foods from plant sources.[iv]  Optimal diets should minimize consumption of ultra-processed foods, those that are industrially produced, bear little resemblance to the basic foods from which they were derived, cannot be prepared in home kitchens, and are now compellingly associated with NCD risk and mortality.[v]  We now know that ultra-processed foods encourage people to unwittingly take in more calories and gain weight.[vi]

Agenda for 2021

Today, a book for researchers and practitioners of public health nutrition needs to emphasize coordinated—triple-duty—recommendations and interventions to deal with hunger and food insecurity, obesity and its consequences, and the effects of food production and dietary choices on the environment.  Such approaches, as described by a Lancet Commission early in 2019,⁴ should encourage populations of high-income countries to eat less meat but more vegetables, those in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to consume a greater variety of foods, and everyone, everywhere to reduce intake of ultra-processed foods.  As that Commission argued, public health nutritionists must recognize that attempts to improve diets, nutritional status, nutritional inequities, and food systems face daunting barriers from governments captured by corporations, civil society too weak to demand more democratic institutions, and food companies granted far too much power to prioritize profits at the expense of public health.  Nutritionists need knowledge and the tools to resist food company marketing and lobbying, to advocate for regulatory controls of those practices, and to promote civil society actions to demand healthier and more sustainable food systems.[vii]

I then go on to talk about the book itself, which alas, did not have much to say about this agenda.

References to the first part of this review

[i] The World Bank.  Brief: Food Security and COVID-19. December 14, 2020. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/brief/food-security-and-covid-19#:~:text=In%20November%202020%2C%20the%20U.N.,insecure%20people%20in%20the%20world. Accessed January 2, 2021.

[ii] WHO.  Obesity and overweight: Key facts.  Geneva: WHO.  April 1, 2020. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight. Accessed January 2, 2021.

[iii] International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. COVID-19 and the crisis in food systems: symptoms, causes, and potential solutions. IPES-Food, April 2020. www.ipesfood.org/pages/covid19. Accessed January 2, 2021.

[iv] Swinburn BA, Kraak V, Allender S, et al. The global syndemic of obesity, undernutrition, and climate change: The Lancet Commission report. Lancet. 2019;393:791–846.

[v]  Monteiro CA, Cannon G, Levy RB, et al.  Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutr. 2019;22(5):936–941.

[vi] Hall KD, Ayuketah A, Brychta R, et al. Ultra-processed diets cause excess calorie intake and weight gain: an inpatient randomized controlled trial of ad libitum food intake. Cell Metab. 2019;30, 67–77.

[vii]  Jayaraman S, De Master K, eds.  Bite Back: People Taking On Corporate Food and Winning.  Oakland, CA: University of California Press; 2020.

 

 

Boris Johnson, the UK’s admittedly overweight prime minister, has suddenly become a champion of anti-obesity policy, following his bout with Covid-19.

As the Washington Post puts it, “Boris Johnson says ‘I was too fat’ as he launches anti-obesity campaign.”

The campaign is based on two reports, one detailing the high and growing prevalence of obesity in Great Britain and its links to Covid-19 susceptibility.

The second is a government policy report, which says it is

• introducing a new campaign – a call to action for everyone who is overweight to take steps to move towards a healthier weight, with evidence-based tools and apps with advice on how to lose weight and keep it off
• working to expand weight management services available through the NHS [National Health Service], so more people get the support they need to lose weight
• publishing a 4-nation public consultation to gather views and evidence on our current ‘traffic light’ label to help people make healthy food choices
• introducing legislation to require large out-of-home food businesses, including restaurants, cafes and takeaways with more than 250 employees, to add calorie labels to the food they sell
• consulting on our intention to make companies provide calorie labelling on alcohol
• legislating to end the promotion of foods high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) by restricting volume promotions such as buy one get one free, and the placement of these foods in prominent locations intended to encourage purchasing, both online and in physical stores in England
• banning the advertising of HFSS products being shown on TV and online before 9pm and holding a short consultation as soon as possible on how we introduce a total HFSS advertising restriction online

The UK food industry does not like this.  It insists that this campaign is “a terrible missed opportunity.”

I was interested to see Hank Cardello’s comment on this (Cardello is with the conservative Hudson Institute in the US): “How A Libertarian Is Tackling Obesity And Why Big Food Should Worry.”  Cardello thinks that Johnson’s efforts are the wave of the future.  The food industry should stop fighting public health measures, he says.  Instead, it should:

• Get ahead of imposed regulations instead of resisting change. Instead of fighting public health initiatives, they can lead the way with research that defines workable steps to reverse the obesity crisis.
• Educate with public service ads. It’s time that food and restaurant corporations air public service announcements (PSAs) about healthy eating and the impact of high sugar, salt and fat on health and obesity.
• Commit to a BHAG (”Big Hairy Audacious Goal”). They can decide, for instance, that at least 50% of the products they sell will be healthier versions or in smaller portions.

Wouldn’t that be terrific, and it’s great that he’s saying so (I keep telling him that he sounds more like me every day).

But can food companies follow his advice?  Not as long as they put profits to shareholders, first, alas.

That’s what really needs to change.

The furor over the “don’t-worry-about-meat” papers published earlier this week (see my post) did not have much to say about the lead author’s previous association with the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), disclosed in a “you don’t need to worry about sugar” review from the same journal in 2016: “This project was funded by the Technical Committee on Dietary Carbohydrates of ILSI North America.”  The meat papers did not mention the previous connection to ILSI, even though it occurred within the past three years.  They should have.

ILSI is a classic food-industry front group, one that tries to stay under the radar but is not succeeding very well lately.

The New York Times titled its recent ILSI investigation: A Shadowy Industry Group Shapes Food Policy Around the World.

This reminded me of what I wrote about ILSI in my book Unsavory Truth (2018).  When I was working on the last chapters of the book, I realized that something about ILSI’s role turned up in practically every chapter.  Here, I refer to a study funded by ILSI.

The front-group funder was the North American branch of the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), an organization that turns up often in this book. ILSI describes itself as an independent scientific think tank, but it was created and is largely funded by the food industry. This makes it, by definition, a front group.

But you might not realize this from reading the study authors’ disclosure statement, which describes ILSI as “a public, nonprofit scientific foundation that provides . . . a neutral forum for government, academic, and industry scientists to discuss and resolve scientific issues of common concern for the well-being of the general public” (1).

ILSI keeps a relatively low public profile but seems never to miss an opportunity to defend the interests of its four hundred or so corporate sponsors. Its 2016 annual report takes four pages and fifteen columns to list industry supporters of its national and international branches; these contribute two-thirds of this group’s nearly $18 million in annual revenues (the rest comes from government or private grants or contributions). ILSI’s board of trustees is about half industry and half academia, all unpaid volunteers.

Critics describe ILSI as a “two-level” organization. On the surface, it engages in legitimate scientific activities. But deep down, it provides funders with “global lobbying services . . . structured in a way which ensures that the funding corporations have majority membership in all its major decision-making committees.” (2).

(1) Besley JC, McCright AM, Zahry NR, et al.  Perceived conflict of interest in health science partnerships. PLoS One. 2017;12(4):e0175643.  McComas KA.  Session 5: Nutrition communication. The role of trust in health communication and the effect of conflicts of interest among scientists.  Proc Nutr Soc. 2008;67(4):428-36.

(2) Miller D, Harkins C. Corporate strategy and corporate capture: food and alcohol industry and lobbying and public health. Crit Soc Policy. 2010;30:564-89.

I have written about ILSI in previous blog posts:

• Coca-Cola’s political influence in China: documented evidence
• Mars Inc says goodbye to ILSI, hello to science policy
• Industry-funded study says advice to eat less sugar is based on bad science (surprise) 

Others have also written about this organization:

• Are industry-funded charities promoting “advocacy-led studies” or “evidence-based science”?: A case study of the International Life Sciences Institute
• US Right to Know’s facts on ILSI

It’s about time ILSI’s practices are being exposed.

The George Institute in Australia (see clarification below) publishes an annual index holding the ten largest U.S. food and beverage corporations accountable for how they addrss nutrition challenges.

The 2018 Index ranks corporations on their governance, products, accessability, marketing, lifestyle, labeling, and engagement.  Here’s what it looks like.

Here’s how this is explained:

Seven out of ten companies claim to focus on improving health and nutrition (all except Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper Snapple and Kraft Heinz), as expressed in their mission statements or corporate growth strategies, the objectives they defined related to health and wellness are mostly limited to product development, product reformulation and responsible marketing. Only two companies (Nestlé and Unilever) have defined a more comprehensive set of objectives within their nutrition strategy.

To remind you: food corporations are not social service or public health agencies.  They have stockholders to please as their first priority.  The conflicts of interest with public health approaches are obvious.  That’s why none of them does particularly well on this Index.

Clarification from a reader

I believe you are referring to the US Spotlight Index, a product of the Access to Nutrition Foundation, an independent nonprofit in the Netherlands.  (https://www.accesstonutrition.org).  The George Institute provided research support for the US Spotlight index. RWJF [Robert Wood Johnson Foundation] was a major funder.  The Foundation has also published an India Spotlight Index (2016) and a Global Index (latest in 2018).  Shiriki Kumanyika chairs the Expert Group.

Jonathan Marks.  The Perils of Partnership: Industry Influence, Institutional Integrity, and Public Health.  Oxford University Press, 2019.

I blurbed this one:

Jonathan Marks is the go-to expert on the hazards of public-private partnerships.  His account of the perils reads easily, is well referenced, is clear and to the point, and applies to partnerships with drug, food, and any other corporations.  Anyone who cares about the ethical implications of such partnerships for public health will find this book invaluable.

The book is about industry partnerships in general, but Marks uses food-company examples such as the American Beverage Association’s gift to the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania in what seemed to be a direct exchange for the city’s dropping a soda tax initiative, and the USDA’s promotion of cheese.

Marks concludes that

Public-private partnerships, multistakeholder initiatives, and other close relations with industry are premised on a positive conception of consensus, compromise, and collaboration.  But the “three C’s” are not inherently good.  On the contrary, tension between regulators and corporations is ordinarily necessary to protect public health.  And achieving common ground with industry may put off the table measures that might promote public health.  The default relation between industry and government should be arm’s lengths relations involving institutional tension, “struggle,” and direct conflict.

The point: the agenda of corporations is to promote profit, not public health.  This creates an inherent tension, not easily resolved.