Mayor Nutter wants to treat the city's weight and wallet problems in his 2010-11 budget with the same remedy: the nation's highest tax on all sweetened beverages including soda, energy drinks, ice tea, even chocolate milk.
Nutter's plan would put Philadelphia at the front of the movement to tax sweet drinks, an effort that the beverage industry already opposes and that could encounter resistance in City Council.
The tax rate would be 2 cents per ounce, 40 cents on a 20-ounce bottle of soda. The levy would cover fountain-drink syrups and powders, based on the number of liquid ounces they produce. Diet drinks without added sugar and baby formula would be excluded.
City officials said they could raise $77 million a year. Health Commissioner Donald F. Schwarz estimated that a typical city resident drinks a half-liter of sweet beverages a day.
Not mentioned above, but confirmed is that the tax would also apply to flavored, sweetened milk. At 2 cents an ounce, it's about double the most commonly discussed tax and would add $1.34 to the price of a two-liter bottle of soda. If enacted, there's no question it will affect consumption.
Look, nobody likes taxes, but Philly already consumes above average amounts of soda and has high rates of obesity. Plus, for any arguments about regressivity of a soda tax (since it would theoretically hit low-income folks harder), it's important to remember that this is all about preserving services that help those low-income folks the most. I don't agree that a reduction in soda consumption because of price is on par with that same person losing access to vital city services -- we need to have some sense of perspective.
It will be very interesting to see if this tax can make it into law. Meanwhile, Democrats everywhere could learn something from Mayor Michael Nutter. Even if the City Council halves his tax to a penny per ounce, it's still going to be effective. Somehow, Dems seem to think that negotiating with oneself is the best strategy. Nuttter seems to be coming in high to make sure he gets something meaningful out of it. Anyway, stay tuned. The fight over this will no doubt be something to see.
Junk Food Taxes May Be Better than Healthy Food Subsidies
An interesting new study was just published in Psychological Science, about a lab experiment at SUNY Buffalo that suggests junk-food taxes increase the overall nutritional quality of a shopping trip, while subsidies on healthy foods actually decrease the nutritionally quality (via Science Daily).
[Study author and clinical psychologist Dr. Leonard] Epstein and colleagues simulated a grocery store, "stocked" with images of everything from bananas and whole wheat bread to Dr. Pepper and nachos. A group of volunteers -- all mothers -- were given laboratory "money" to shop for a week's groceries for the family. Each food item was priced the same as groceries at a real grocery nearby, and each food came with basic nutritional information.
The mother-volunteers went shopping several times in the simulated grocery. First they shopped with the regular prices, but afterward the researchers imposed either taxes or subsidies on the foods. That is, they either raised the prices of unhealthy foods by 12.5 percent, and then by 25 percent; or they discounted the price of healthy foods comparably. Then they watched what the mothers purchased.
The study authors separated food into two categories, "high calorie for nutrient" food and "low calorie for nutrient" food -- i.e. junk food and healthy food. They did this so that they could specifically measure the effect pricing changes had on the nutritional content of a participant's shopping basket. As you might expect, taxing junk food reduced junk food purchases, and subsidizing healthy food increased healthy food purchases. But the story does not end there. The researchers discovered that taxing the bad stuff was far more effective from a nutritional standpoint than subsidizing the good stuff -- and not just because prices affected sales.
The junk food taxes caused a real shift in nutritional quality because the money saved on junk food was spent on healthy food, which has more nutrients per calories. However, when the researchers subsidized healthy food in their test, many participants spent the savings on -- wait for it -- junk food. A subsidy for health foods actually increased the amount of fat, protein, and carbohydrates from that simulated shopping trip by about 10 percent each.
Another entry in the New York Times fantastic "Toxic Waters" series came out Sunday. This latest one is about the slow but tragically effective weakening of the Clean Water Act:
Thousands of the nation's largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act's reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.
As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.
Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.
The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation's largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.
"We are, in essence, shutting down our Clean Water programs in some states," said Douglas F. Mundrick, an E.P.A. lawyer in Atlanta. "This is a huge step backward. When companies figure out the cops can’t operate, they start remembering how much cheaper it is to just dump stuff in a nearby creek."
"This is a huge deal," James M. Tierney, the New York State assistant commissioner for water resources, said of the new constraints. "There are whole watersheds that feed into New York's drinking water supply that are, as of now, unprotected."
All this despite the dangerous rise in pollutants in our drinking water. Meanwhile, Congress has been trying to engineer a fix in the form of the Clean Water Restoration Act, specifically by removing the word "navigable" from a description of waterways subject to regulation under the CWA. But guess who is among the lobbying groups leading the charge against reform? Our good friends in industrial agriculture, the American Farm Bureau. They are lobbying directly and through corporate front groups like the perniciously named Waters Advocacy Coalition. And here's what an AFB spokesman had to say to the New York Times:
"If you erase the word 'navigable' from the law, it erases any limitation on the federal government's reach," said Mr. Parrish of the American Farm Bureau Federation. "It could be a gutter, a roadside ditch or a rain puddle. But under the new law, the government gets control over it."
The article also suggests that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson could issue a ruling that would clear up some of the confusion regarding the EPA's jurisdiction. She has so far refused, preferring to wait for Congress to act. But with the GOP doing an awesome impersonation of a brick wall, it's hard to see the legislation moving forward any time soon. Perhaps Ms. Jackson might reconsider. It's only our water, after all.
This is wrong on so many levels. The NYT reports on the latest doings in the robotics lab:
With Dr. Rybski looking on like a proud parent, a bearded graduate student clacked away at a laptop on a roving service cart, and the robot rolled forward to fulfill its primary function: the delivery of one foil-wrapped Nature Valley trail-mix flavor granola bar.
"Hello, I'm the Snackbot," it said in a voice not unlike that of HAL 9000, from "2001: A Space Odyssey," as its rectangular LED "mouth" pulsated to form the words. "I've come to deliver snacks to Ian. Is Ian here?"
Now, Snackbot exists to help gather data on human/robot interactions. Although a careful review of the relevant data contained within such works as Battlestar Galactica, Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey or even the lackluster I, Robot will give a discerning viewer all the information he or she needs to understand the dangers robots pose to humankind.
But it gets worse:
The Snackbot is but one soldier in a veritable army of new robots designed to serve and cook food and, in the process, act as good-will ambassadors, and salesmen, for a more automated future.
The article then proceeds to describe some of these "soldiers" culminating in the shocking robot-human hybrid that is the innocuously named Motoman SDA-10:
First they make our sushi. Then they enslave us.
The scientists involved with these efforts readily admit that the whole idea is meant to counteract the important lessons we've learned from Terminator and BSG and acclimate us to the idea of a future populated with robot servers. We all know how that story ends, don't we?
My suggestion: boil your own pot of water and leave the robots out of the equation entirely.
The industry talks a good game, but keeps churning out the same old junk. It's no mystery that Michelle Obama's Let's Move anti-obesity campaign is built on industry cooperation. It's also true that many experts are skeptical of the wisdom behind it; nutritionist Marion Nestle has been particularly critical both of the government's food industry "health" partnerships as well as of the administration's unwillingness to fight the industry's relentless media advertising.
I tend to agree. While the Let's Move initiative is full of worthy proposals, especially in the area of addressing food deserts and promoting farm-to-city initiatives, the idea of leaving restrictions on junk food television advertising -- not to mention junk food taxes -- out of the equation seems to base the pitch just a bit too much as an appeal to our better angels. It's hard to see public service announcements and educational campaigns counteracting those hundreds of millions of dollars work of junk food ads Americans of all ages submit to every time they turn on their televisions.
And it certainly doesn't help when star athletes, some of whom will no doubt participate in Let's Move, continue to flack for junk food (from Petyon and Eli Manning and Oreos to Derek Jeter and Gatorade). Meanwhile, anyone who's been watching the Olympics knows that NBC's coverage of this ultimate athletic event has been awash in ads for soda and other junk food. Even the Olympians themselves are in on the act -- Alternet noted that snowboarder Brad Martin is featured prominently in a McDonald's ad shown repeatedly during the Olympics.
If you've been watching the Olympics, you might have seen an ad for Sun Chips that features its "compostable bag." The plastic in the bag is derived from GMO corn and made by Cargill. The ad neglects to mention those inconvenient truths, though it does claim that its bag will break down in home compost "under ideal conditions."
Even worse, with the possible exception of the Sun Chips bag, corn plastic generally will not break down in home compost, even under ideal conditions -- it's only compostable in "industrial-scale" composting systems. So for those of you who live in San Francisco, which actually has municipal composting, that's all well and good, I guess. But for the rest of us, this stuff is still plain, old [genetically engineered] garbage.
But now researchers in the UK may have just fixed all that:
Scientists at Imperial College London are working on bioplastic packaging - made from trees and grass - that can break down in home composting bins.
The polymer developed by the scientists is made from sugars that come from the breakdown of fast-growing trees and grasses, or agricultural and food waste.
The scientists from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council purposely focused on non-food crops - many common bioplastics come from corn or sugar cane waste - and using low-energy and low-water processes.
Very cool. Keep an eye on this stuff. It could really be the packaging of the future.
...The Nutter Administration is considering a tax on soda to help close the city's massive deficit. But the mayor himself claims that the real goal of such a tax would be to improve your health.
"What we're focused on primarily is obesity."
Mayor Nutter insists that his consideration of levying a tax on all sodas and sweetened drinks has a noble goal that goes beyond solving an economic crisis. He wants to encourage people to avoid sodas:
"It's something that we're taking a look at it, because we care very deeply about the issue of obesity, not only for children, type-2 diabetes, but also adults as well."
It's still unclear if Nutter will include a soda tax in the budget that he presents to city council in one month. Also unclear -- the rate of the tax, and who would pay directly -- distributors, retailers or consumers.
The Philly Daily News suggests a penny-an-ounce tax on soda and other sugary drinks might be a possibility -- though we won't find out until March 4 when the Mayor unveils his budget. In the unlikely event a Philly city soda tax could survive the vicious and inevitable blowback from the beverage industry, it would -- according to Yale's Rudd Center dead useful soda tax calculator -- generate up to $68 million dollars for the cash-strapped city. I say, go for it, Mike!
Register Receipts Are [Really] Hazardous to Your Health
Because coating everyday objects in endocrine disrupting chemicals is just plain fun! From HuffPo:
Amazingly, the greatest threat of BPA exposure may be something we handle nearly every day: receipts. According to the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry's John Warner in a Science Newsarticle last year, "The average cash register receipt that's out there and uses the BPA technology will have 60 to 100 milligrams of free BPA." Milligrams? By comparison, the amount deemed worrisome enough by reusable water bottle manufacturer Nalgene to eliminate the chemical from its polycarbonate bottles was measured in nanograms (that's one-millionth of a milligram).
What's especially scary about the receipt scenario is that there's no way to control all the possibilities for exposure -- picture waiters delivering plates of food after handling customers' checks, or shaking hands with someone who just put a receipt in his wallet. What you can control: Decline a receipt if you don't need one (save more trees, too), and wash your hands frequently (good hygiene during flu season, anyway).
Sadly, as far as I know, none of the pending BPA bans on the state or federal level address the use of bisphenol-A in register receipts. And yet that may be how many of us get our largest dose of that nasty chemical (here's more background on BPA). Too bad the FDA thinks its hands are tied when it comes to regulating it.
With all the excitement over fracking -- the process of freeing huge amount of natural gas trapped within rock formations such as the Marcellus Shale by injecting water and chemicals at high pressure -- in Pennsylvania and New York, it's tempting to forget that the environmental cost to getting the gas out of the ground may turn out to be severe. In NY, the concern is radioactive contamination of New York City's upstate water supply. In Pennsylvania, the problem is more mundane -- constant industrial accidents (via Pro Publica):
Earlier this month, Pennsylvania's environmental officials fined Pennsylvania-based Atlas Resources after a series of violations at 13 wells, including spills of fracturing fluids and other contaminants onto the ground around the sites. And just last week the agency fined M.R. Dirt, a company that removes waste from drilling sites, $6,000 for spilling more than seven tons of drilling dirt along a public road.
The reports come on the heels of a string of other incidents that have killed fish in one of the state's most prized recreational lakes and released toxic chemicals into the environment.
The Atlas spills are significant because they are among the latest and because they happened repeatedly during the routine transfer of fluids. Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection fined [1] Atlas Resources $85,000 for the offenses, which took place between May and December of 2009. Many of the spills were discovered by DEP inspectors.
..."If you look at this series of violations -- it's not only that there are multiple violations," said DEP spokeswoman Helen Humphreys, pointing to the fact that the same three violations were turning up at each site. "This is a pattern, and it's a problem."
Newsweek has a nice piece on the dangers of fracking fluids -- the stuff they inject into rock to bust the natural gas out -- and the fact that, despite their highly toxic, often corrosive, nature, such fluids were exempted from clean water regulations by Congress back in 2005. The NYT also covered a series of drilling-related spills in Pennsylvania a month ago.
But no matter the technique, Pennsylvanians should know by now that extractive industries have a tendency to poison the environments they exploit. The state has been actively cheerleading the industry (although given the potential windfall also strangely resistant to taxing it -- Gov. Rendell seems to prefer putting the tax burden on casino gamblers). But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, especially where hydrocholoric acid, benzene and diesel fuel (favorite ingredients for frackers everywhere) are concerned. Like the saying goes, frack around too much and there's sure to be trouble in the end.
And the Winner of the USDA's Food Safety Sweepstakes Is...
Dr. Elizabeth Hagen! No, you're not expected to know who she is. Suffice it to say that, as anticipated, USDA Chief Tom Vilsack turned to an under-the-radar choice for Under Secretary of Food Safety. Hagen, currently the USDA's Chief Medical Officer, will, if confirmed, take charge of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which is responsible for the safety of meat and poultry products.
The interesting aspect of this pick is that she is an infectious disease doc and public health specialist who has been working at USDA for several years -- and thus should have a good grounding in food safety methods. It also means both the Under Secretary of Food Safety as well as the administrator of FSIS itself, Dr. Jerold Mande, will be medical doctors. One can hope we will on longer hear things like "I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health," coming from top FSIS administrators.
Hagen joined the USDA during the Bush administration so she's neither a fresh face nor someone who is untainted by the food safety failings of the last few years. But neither does she appear to be an industry flunky. While I would have preferred an outsider who might come in and shake up the ossified USDA food safety culture, that was clearly too much to ask. It's also true that no one outside of USDA seems to have had many dealings with Hagen, but hope abounds (via Food Safety News):
Carol Tucker-Foreman, a distinguished fellow at The Food Policy Institute at Consumer Federation of America, responded to the announcement with guarded optimism.
"Consumer advocates who work closely with the FSIS on policy issues have had limited direct experience with Dr. Hagen. We have been told, however, that she has been a strong advocate for improved food safety policies and has urged the agency to be more aggressive in asking companies to initiate recalls."
Better recalls are certainly a start (if for no other reason than to give bloggers a break). Yet it strikes me that nothing in the pick undermines the argument that the FDA's newly minted deputy commissioner for foods Michael Taylor is the true "national" head of food safety right now. That's neither a good nor a bad thing, just political reality. And with the top jobs now filled, there's no further excuse for inaction.
At some point soon, in the course of fixing our broken system, Hagen and Taylor will have to take a stand: Is the future of meat safety in this country one of decontamination and post-hoc treatments for routinely infected products (aka "Zap the Crap")? Or will the USDA attack the root causes of pathogens in our meat -- an unrelenting focus on low quality, high quantity production methods. Dr. Hagen, please surprise us.
Reporter Ed Bruske spent a week working in a Washington, D.C. public school lunchroom. His series of articles (1, 2, 3) that resulted are fantastic reading for anyone following the ongoing debate regarding school lunches and the challenges for enacting real reform. Today's entry looked at how sugar is used in school food.
Bruske lists the multiple ways schools find to sugar up our kids -- Pop-Tarts, sugar cereal, canned fruit in syrup, flavored milk, cookies and other desserts and even juice. Yes, juice is part of the problem, too. By weight, it has just as much sugar as Coke. Bruske observes that a 4 oz cup of apple juice has the equivalent of 3 tsp of sugar. As for flavored milk, an 8 oz carton of the brand served in the DC school contains 6 tsp of sugar. It's the same percentage of sugar as juice but at twice the service size, it's almost the same amount of sugar as a can of Coke -- and handed out to many of our kids for free. Got diabetes?
I recommend an experiment. Take a cup measure and put in 4 oz (1/2 cup) of water. Then add 3 tsp of sugar. If you’re feeling saucy, double the amount of both. Now drink. That’s what we serve to our kids at school? Yuck.
Journalist Merrill Goozner highlights some commentary from an FDA Insider who claims that the FDA is "more pro-industry than any time in 35 Years":
So says Jim Dickinson, editor of FDAWebview, an industry newsletter that closely follows enforcement issues at the agency. After reviewing the deregulatory shifts at the Food and Drug Administration since the Carter administration, he writes:
It has taken almost a generation, but by now, the pro-industry infiltration of FDA's culture is firmly entrenched. Not only is collaboration in product reviews officially encouraged, but good relationships across the regulatory fence hold the prospect of a possible future career in a well-paid industry job - a connection that is less likely to be publicly noticed in news media that now have to line up for information that has been filtered through agency press offices. The arm's-length relationship that formerly ruled every contact between agency and industry has become a fading memory.
He says the shift in culture accelerated after the 1992 passage of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which made the agency dependent on industry funding. He concludes there's nothing that Margaret Hamburg, the new commissioner, and Joshua Sharfstein, her deputy, can do about it. Quoting a former chief of enforcement, he writes:
User fees at FDA are the primary villain, because they "allowed the industry to dictate the changes at the FDA in programs, procedures and practices. It will be impossible for the Obama administration to reverse the trend because as long as the user fees are in place the industry has the upper hand."
Radical stuff from an unexpected source.
It's hard to talk about the creeping takeover of the federal government by corporate interests without sounds like a conspiracy-minded crackpot. And yet, when presented with evidence like this, what other conclusion can you draw? There's no question that the "collaboration" Dickinson refers to continues to this day -- and not just for drugs. It's an established fact that the FDA relied heavily on chemical industry lobbyists to draw up the (hopefully) now infamous 2008 FDA bisphenol-A report that declared the plastics ingredient totally safe, despite all evidence to the contrary. And with concerns over the budget deficit now front and center any attempt to eliminate what is a legitimate funding source (by that I mean those drug company fees) will likely fail. In a word: Ugh.
With Obesity It's Not Just the Calories. It's the Chemicals
Michelle Obama's anti-childhood obesity agenda would have kids a little less round 'round the middle.White House Flickr streamWhile we await Michelle Obama's speech this Wednesday to the United States Conference of Mayors that will likely launch her new campaign against childhood obesity, I thought I'd offer a little perspective as well as a few bits of research that shed light on the enormity and complexity of the obesity epidemic.
First off, let's be clear: The First Lady will, of course, do everything she can to avoid picking a fight with Big Food -- I wouldn't be surprised to see corporate partnerships coming out of her efforts. Indeed, her team's first foray into the food policy arena, which included rumors of a White House embrace of former FDA Commissioner David Kessler's "junk food addiction" model for obesity, the president himself raising the possibility of a soda tax and the somewhat defensive posture of her policy team in an interview with NPR, were overshadowed by industry objections.
Even the most common-sense advice from her (drink water not soda, eat less processed food) prompted howls of outrage from food companies. We'll know for sure next week, but school food will probably be the focus of all her efforts. After all, school food is already the government's responsibility and even in the "reform-proof" Senate there is a fair amount of momentum for reducing access to junk food in the lunchroom and improving the quality of school food.
Unfortunately, the school environment is not the only one at issue for kids...
A story in Politico describes the soul-searching on Capitol Hill prompted by the sad, sudden death of Rep. John Boehner's 46-year-old chief of staff Paula Nowakowski:
"For a lot of us, this was a mortality check," said Justin Harding, 34, who's often on call seven days a week as chief of staff for Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and frequently gets home from work after his kids have gone to sleep. "It's causing us all to reflect and sort of check our own circumstances."
Hill staffers say Nowakowski's lifestyle mirrored much of their own. She smoked, she didn’t always eat well, and she often worked seven days a week.
A toxic combination, to be sure. Stressful jobs that require long hours are certainly unhealthy. But it's only recently that you could add diabetes to the list of job-related illnesses:
After working on George W. Bush's 2000 campaign in Michigan and enduring a lifestyle of horrible food and little sleep, Roe developed Type 1 diabetes [ed note: the reporter meant Type 2 since Type 1 doesn't "develop" in adults]. He knew he was getting ill, but he ignored the signs until he collapsed right after Bush's Inauguration and nearly died. He was hospitalized for a week and barely avoided a diabetic coma.
Other Hill staffers have also developed diabetes and high blood pressure.
And there's more:
One longtime Democratic committee staffer and former staff director, who asked not to be identified, got his wake-up moment when he crashed his car driving back to the Capitol after working until 5 a.m. the night before.
"I must've fallen asleep at the wheel," the staffer said. "I banged the car into a curb and blew both tires."
Soon afterward, he discovered he had developed high blood pressure and was battling diabetes. He later bowed out of his position, taking a lower-key spot on the committee.
Meanwhile, Rep. Joe Barton blamed his heart problems on "eating too many chicken-fried steaks."
"In the long run, I'd say this lifestyle could certainly be detrimental to your health," said Rep. Kathleen Dahlkemper (D-Pa.), a freshman who previously worked as a dietitian and spoke with POLITICO by phone from the Blue Dog retreat on Tuesday. "I'm sitting here watching them bring out trays of snacks: cheeses and sweets. We just ate lunch, which was huge. And before that, we had a very big breakfast. I can't get over how much food they put in front of us."
...Those who worked around the clock on last year's stimulus package and, now, on the health care bill admit to getting the majority of their meals from the Capitol vending machines.
While Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved to upgrade the food choices in the House cafeterias, the value meal in Longworth still includes a fountain drink and choices like chicken wings, burritos and popcorn chicken salad.
The focus in the obesity epidemic is often on low-income communities and their food deserts and swamps. But for many farther up the income chain, the work environment is just as toxic. It's not just Congressional workers who indulge in vending machine lunches, pastry and candy-strewn conference room spreads and bottomless cups of soda.
I can only hope that Capitol Hill denizens realize why addressing obesity and the associated problems in the food system requires going far beyond demands of personal responsibility and virtue. They would, I imagine, agree that they eat what's available. And if it's junk that's available, that's what they eat -- they don't have a choice. And as a result that junk makes them sick.
It's an interesting experiment going on up there -- how much more do they themselves have to suffer before they take steps to clean up their own food environment? And if they do act to protect themselves (or even if they don't), one hopes they now see the value of fixing public school cafeterias if not the rest of American workplaces.
This latest research confirms the worse fears of those who think Americans spend too much time in front of the idiot box:
Couch potatoes beware: every hour of television watched per day may increase the risk of dying earlier from cardiovascular disease, according to research reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Australian researchers tracked the lifestyle habits of 8,800 adults and found that each hour spent in front of the television daily was associated with: > an 11 percent increased risk of death from all causes, > a 9 percent increased risk of cancer death; and > an 18 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD)-related death.
While the study focused specifically on television watching, the findings suggest that any prolonged sedentary behavior, such as sitting at a desk or in front of a computer, may pose a risk to one's health. The human body was designed to move, not sit for extended periods of time, said David Dunstan, Ph.D., the study's lead author and professor and Head of the Physical Activity Laboratory in the Division of Metabolism and Obesity at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Victoria, Australia.
"What has happened is that a lot of the normal activities of daily living that involved standing up and moving the muscles in the body have been converted to sitting," Dunstan said. "Technological, social, and economic changes mean that people don't move their muscles as much as they used to -- consequently the levels of energy expenditure as people go about their lives continue to shrink. For many people, on a daily basis they simply shift from one chair to another -- from the chair in the car to the chair in the office to the chair in front of the television."
This point was entirely ignored in the LA Times article linked by Drum. But it's a crucial point. Our society privileges and encourages desk work and frowns on activities that smack of manual labor -- you know, like farming. But that may ultimately prove to be a calamitous mistake.
A new study out of Tufts confirms that supermarket and restaurant calorie counts are inaccurate. From the abstract:
Measured energy values of 29 quick-serve and sit-down restaurant foods averaged 18% more than stated values, and measured energy values of 10 frozen meals purchased from supermarkets averaged 8% more than originally stated. These differences substantially exceeded laboratory measurement error but did not achieve statistical significance due to considerable variability in the degree of underreporting. Some individual restaurant items contained up to 200% of stated values and, in addition, free side dishes increased provided energy to an average of 245% of stated values for the entrees they accompanied.
It's easy to simply dismiss this as another case of corporate shenanigans, though the study authors observe that the variation from stated values is within USDA requirements for accuracy. Unfortunately, the authors also point out that the variation matters:
The extra mean measured energy in this study compared to stated information may cause substantial weight gain over time. For example, positive energy balance of only 5% per day for an individual requiring 2,000 kcal/day could lead to a 10-lb weight gain in a single year. It is also notable that free side dishes on average contained more energy than the entrees alone. It is unclear whether consumers are aware of how much energy free side dishes contain, and providing more accessible information on meal energy contents both with and without side dishes could help increase attention to the potential of these casual food items to more than double meal energy intake.
For better or for worse, if you really want to know what's in what you're eating, you need to cook it yourself from scratch. Short of that, you're putting yourself at the mercy of corporate nutritionists and government watchdogs. To date, those two have not exactly shown themselves to be good guardians of our national waistlines, have they? Flickr photo: Ken Yourdon
Yale's Environment360 has a new must-read report by Sonia Shah linking pesticides to the high-profile die-offs among amphibians, bees and bats. What makes this news timely isn't necessarily the toxicity of the pesticides per se, it's the indirect effects on these animals of chronic, low-dose exposure to chemicals:
In the past dozen years, no fewer than three never-before-seen diseases have decimated populations of amphibians, bees, and -- most recently -- bats. A growing body of evidence indicates that pesticide exposure may be playing an important role in the decline of the first two species, and scientists are investigating whether such exposures may be involved in the deaths of more than 1 million bats in the northeastern United States over the past several years.
...The recent spate of widespread die-offs began in amphibians. Scientists discovered the culprit — an aquatic fungus called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, of a class of fungi called “chytrids” — in 1998. Its devastation, says amphibian expert Kevin Zippel, is “unlike anything we’ve seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs.” Over 1,800 species of amphibians currently face extinction.
It may be, as many experts believe, that the chytrid fungus is a novel pathogen, decimating species that have no armor against it, much as Europe’s smallpox and measles decimated Native Americans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But “there is a really good plausible story of chemicals affecting the immune system and making animals more susceptible,” as well, says San Francisco State University conservation biologist Carlos Davidson.
Shah goes on to explain a mechanism whereby pesticides applied to fields in California's Central Valley drift into the Sierra Nevada mountains "where they settle in the air, snow, and surface waters, and inside the tissues of amphibians." A scientist who studied the matter "found a strong correlation between upwind pesticide use... and declining amphibian populations."
Meanwhile, bees and bats have suffered a similar fate -- killed off by powerful pathogens that in theory could be novel but in practice seem to have taken advantage of animal populations immuno-compromised by pesticides.
One of the most interesting aspects of the piece was the description of an Italian scientists unpublished research that suggests the "missing link" between neonicotinoids, a powerful pesticide already banned in Europe but still in use in the US, and bee colony collapse. It relates to the practices of using neonicotinoids-coated seeds planted by machines that kick up clouds of pesticide as they work...
Not to overdo the food safety theme, but I thought it amusing gross to discover that fast food restaurants have contamination issues in more than just their meat. A team of microbiologists from Virginia's Hollins University just published a paper in the International Journal of Food Microbiology that indicates soda fountains harbor coliform bacteria (usually but not always fecal in origin), E coli and other harmful bugs at levels far beyond EPA safe drinking water limits. From the abstract:
More than 11% of the beverages analyzed contained Escherichia coli and over 17% contained Chryseobacterium meningosepticum. Other opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms isolated from the beverages included species of Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia. Most of the identified bacteria showed resistance to one or more of the 11 antibiotics tested. These findings suggest that soda fountain machines may harbor persistent communities of potentially pathogenic microorganisms which may contribute to episodic gastric distress in the general population and could pose a more significant health risk to immunocompromised individuals. These findings have important public health implications and signal the need for regulations enforcing hygienic practices associated with these beverage dispensers.
And antibiotic resistant to boot! The good news, sort of, according to the researchers is that only one outbreak from about ten years ago was linked to a soda fountain. But there's an awful lot of unreported "gastric distress" out there. I guess it's not just the HFCS that soda drinkers have to worry about.
The NYT's latest ground beef revelation involves a substance that some in the meat industry refer to as "pink slime" and is a component in ground beef sold in supermarkets and at fast food restaurants like Burger King and McDonald's and fed to our children at school. At issue in the article is the question of safety. It appears that the disinfection process of injecting ammonia into the stuff in order to kill bacteria like salmonella and E coli isn't nearly as effective as claimed.
But that's not what jumped out at me. What jumped out at me was the description of what "pink slime" actually is:
[A] product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil.
So, it's meat that was previously not considered fit for human consumption. But now it's in every McDonald's hamburger (and most supermarket patties) sold in the US. What changed? Pink slime purveyor Beef Products' "innovative" ammonia treatment supposedly fully disinfected the meat and thus made it safe to eat.
But is that the only definition of what's fit for human consumption? I mean, by that definition we could disinfect all sorts of nasty manufacturing byproducts and stick it in our food. Keep in mind that we're not talking about hunks of meat that got chopped off a side of beef and ground up. This is a highly processed product. Before it can be sold in frozen blocks of beefy mash, it goes through a process of "liquefying the fat and extracting the protein from the trimmings in a centrifuge." Sounds delicious!
Tom Philpott has a nice piece on some of the implications of this story. In it, he points to an AP article where fast food companies including McDonald's and Burger King stand by their decision to continue the use of pink slime in their hamburgers (only "a small percentage" of it is in any given burger assures a Burger King spokeswoman).
But the AP reporter missed an opportunity to ask this fundamental question. Why does anyone think it's okay to put this stuff in burgers? I mean, where's the shame? And I'm not the only one who thinks this is gross. From the NYT piece:
Another [USDA] microbiologist, Gerald Zirnstein, called the processed beef "pink slime" in a 2002 e-mail message to colleagues and said, "I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling."
Right on! People simply shouldn't be eating this ammonia-soaked, industrially manufactured beef-like mash -- and I can't imagine they would be happy to find out that brands they trust have been "secretly" feeding it to them in order to save a few bucks. But all this raised another question in my mind. What if no one cares? Put a different way, are there limits for Americans? I'm starting to wonder. People who learn about pink slime and then walk into a McDonald's and order up a Big Mac need to ask themselves what it is they think they're eating. Because I can tell you that pink slime may have fat, calories and protein in it. But that doesn't make it food.
There have indeed been studies that have indicated genetically engineered crops like corn and soy might negatively affect our health. Most of these studies conclude by saying "more study is needed" -- but further study never happens because Monsanto, which owns the patents of most GMO seeds simply won't give them to independent researchers for scientific use without onerous restrictions. The federal government has been no help because under industry pressure the EPA and the FDA ruled back in the 1990s that GMO crops are "substantially equivalent" to their conventional brethren and they have shown no interest in re-opening the GMO can of worms.
This regulatory end-around has been aided in part by the industry's successful campaign to convince the media and our representatives that genetic engineering is just a super-duper cool version of conventional breeding. That is a lie. Genetic engineering involves inserting a new piece of DNA code into a plant's own DNA -- which sounds straightforward except you have no idea where your piece will end up and what disturbances it might cause in the plant. You just have to grow the thing and find out.
What you might get is what's known as "insertional mutagenesis" and it can result in all sorts of bad things happening. One example might be that you engineer a plant to produce some new substance -- like a herbicide, a vitamin or a even a drug -- but it also produces a potent toxin to go along with it. Oops!
Insertional mutagenesis is why pretty much all of Monsanto's promised innovations are five or ten years away and it's also why GMOs can come with all sorts of nasty surprises. And because these are subtle changes to the genome, it shouldn't be surprising that any health effects it would cause in creatures that eat them might be subtle, too.
All of which brings me to the news (via Tom Philpott) that there is increasing evidence that GMOs can and do cause health problems:
And now comes this study by three French university researchers. It's a fascinating piece of work. The researchers analyzed data from tests done on rats by Monsanto and another biotech firm, Covance Laboratories, submitted to European government in 2000 and 2001. The firms conducted the tests to prove that their products were safe to eat; scrutinizing the same data, the researchers arrived at a different conclusion.
The three products in question are still quite relevant: one strain of Roundup Ready corn, engineered to withstand Monsanto's flagship herbicide; and two strands of Bt corn, engineered to contain the insect-killing gene from the BT bacteria. Roundup Ready and Bt products are ubiquitous in the U.S. seed supply, often "stacked" into the same seed.
The researchers also found "clear negative impact" on their livers of rats fed all three kinds of GMO corn.
They added that it's impossible to tell, based on the data, whether the damage was caused by the specific genes introduced to the corn, or -- more troubling still -- if the very process of genetic modification creates a toxic effect.
Firstly, let's be clear -- industry scientists got bad results, fudged the analysis and then figured no one would notice. Well, it took almost a decade, but these enterprising French scientists did notice. And that last bit about a toxic effect of genetic modification: That's got "insertional mutagenesis" written all over it, no? Philpott then explains why, though no one's arguing that GMOs cause "illness" per se, this isn't some kind of crank theory:
Nearly our entire corn and soy crops crops are genetically modified -- and have been for nearly a decade. Corn and soy course through the food system like blood in a body. If GMOs caused harm, wouldn't it be obvious by now?
Moreover, most corn and soy goes into animal feed. Last I checked, pigs, chickens, and cows on factory animal farms haven't been dropping dead en masse before their date with the executioner. Again, if GMOs were dangerous, why aren't factory animal farmers rejecting them?
This thinking, I think, represents educated opinion on GMOs. The logic would be persuasive, if scientists were claiming that GMOs caused spectacular, virulent illnesses, the kind associated with, say, E. coli O157 or salmonella. But instead, the evidence I'm referring to suggests that GMOs cause low-level, chronic damage.
And think of the U.S. diet. People here tend to survive on refined sugars and processed food, and are routinely exposed to toxic chemicals like BPA. Moreover, we have high and growing levels of chronic ailments. To me, it's highly plausible that yet more low-level toxins could enter the food stream without causing immediately identifiable trouble.
Yes, after the fiasco of bisphenol A -- whose safety had been "proven" by industry-conducted research accepted by a gullible FDA -- I think we can conceive of the possibility that GMOs, which have never even gone through a thorough environmental impact review, much less a full safety review, might, just might come with serious long-term risks attached. Maybe someone should ask the FDA what they think about GMOs now?
Remember NYC's anti-soda campaign "Don't Drink Yourself Fat"? Well, prepare yourself. Because the NYC Department of Health has made themselves a YouTube Video. And it's a doozy:
I think I'm going to be sick -- which is, of course, the point. So, what do you think -- will it stop people from drinking soda or is it just a cheap gag? Get it? Gag?
When Thinking about Saving the Future, Don't Forget about Family Planning
McClatchy has a big article on how the Bush administration extended its hostility to family planning to its massive multibillion dollar global anti-AIDS inititative:
On a continent where fewer than one in five married women use modern contraception, an explosion of unplanned pregnancies is threatening to bury Adongo's family and a generation of Africans under a mountain of poverty.
Promoting birth control in Africa faces a host of obstacles — patriarchal customs, religious taboos, ill-equipped public health systems — but experts also blame a powerful, more distant force: the U.S. government.
Under President George W. Bush, the United States withdrew from its decades-long role as a global leader in supporting family planning, driven by a conservative ideology that favored abstinence and shied away from providing contraceptive devices in developing countries, even to married women.
Bush's mammoth global anti-AIDS initiative, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, poured billions of dollars into Africa but prohibited groups from spending any of it on family planning services or counseling programs, whose budgets flat-lined.
The restrictions flew in the face of research by international aid agencies, the U.N. World Health Organization and the U.S. government's own experts, all of whom touted contraception as a crucial method of preventing births of babies being infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The Bush program is widely hailed as a success, having supplied lifesaving anti-retroviral drugs to more than 2 million HIV patients worldwide.
However, researchers, Africa experts and veteran U.S. health officials now think that PEPFAR also contributed to Africa's epidemic population growth by undermining efforts to help women in some of the world's poorest countries exercise greater control over their fertility.
With local economies and governments unable to absorb that kind of growth, this is a disaster in the making. While the article doesn't connect these dots, I'd point out that the debate over agricuture, GMOs, hunger -- over global warming itself -- comes down to various opinions on how to deal with a planetary population of 9 billion people by 2050.
Meanwhile, programs that focus on empowering women, including but not limited to giving them access to real family planning, could go a long way toward reducing that "Peak People" figure, which would make our goals that much more achievable. Those of us who spend a lot of time thinking and writing about food, ag and climate need to focus on the extent to which our future is linked to that of the developing world. Right now, there's a subtext of "better them than us" floating through much of the climate and food-related discourse. As a remedy, I feel compelled to paraphrase one of Bill Clinton's best lines from the 1992 campaign: when we're talking about the health of the plant there is no them -- there's only us.
Still smarting over the industry's shenanigans over the "Smart Choices" label, the FDA has decided to pick up the pace of change. Marion Nestle dug up a set of proposed new front of package nutrition labels that the FDA is studying and one of which may ultimately get the agency's final approval. Here they are:
My faves are the "Nutrition Tips" label with colors and the last one, dubbed "Waitrose," with the stop light label -- they actually present meaningful information. The others just focus on calories, which is not necessarily even the most important piece of nutrition information. If I had to bet, I'd suggest that the industry will push hard against any label that tries to characterize the nutrients levels as too high. But we'll see. What do you all think? Don't just tell me! Click here to write an email to the FDA (with the recipient, subject, and required header for your message all filled out for you -- they want your feedback.
At the same time as they're working on the front of package label, the FDA is also now accepting comments on its initiative to remake the existing side-panel nutrition labels. And the suggestions are starting to roll in. A good example comes from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, shown at right. In some ways, it's got a bit of a behavioral economics, "Nudge"-y style to it -- small changes that alter the way you look at the label and possibly the way you think about the product.
I like how the red text used for nutrients that exceed the recommended daily amount as well as the increased font size for calories draw the eye. Breaking out the amount of added sugars into its own category also represents a helpful improvement. Also, note the idea of classing all the sugars together in the ingredients list, which specifically defeats food companies' technique of using a half dozen forms of sugar to hide the fact that it's often the number one ingredient by weight.
But admiring CSPI's work isn't the end of it. The FDA wants to hear from you. Go here and tell them what you think. If you want a helpful cheat sheet, check out Fooducate's 7 suggestions for labeling improvements.
Will Whole Foods New Initiative Squeeze Small Farmers?
Jennifer Hashley processes a chicken on her Massachusetts farm. Massachusetts poultry farmer Jennifer Hashley has a problem. From the moment she started raising pastured chickens outside Concord, Mass. in 2002, there was, as she put it "nowhere to go to get them processed." While she had the option of slaughtering her chickens in her own backyard, Hashley knew that selling her chickens would be easier if she used a licensed slaughterhouse. Nor is she alone in her troubles. Despite growing demand for local, pasture-raised chickens, small poultry producers throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, and even New York can't or won't expand for lack of processing capacity.
It isn't only small producers who are feeling the pinch -- a widespread lack of processing infrastructure appropriate for small farmers has caused supply chain problems for the big retailers as well. Whole Foods -- the world's largest natural-foods supermarket -- wants to aggressively expand its local meat sourcing, according to its head meat buyer, Theo Weening. But it faces the same limitation as Hashley. Most regions of the country have "lots of agriculture but nowhere to process," Weening told me, adding that the phenomenon is most acute in the northeast.
Whole Foods wants to change all that. In a move that has national implications, the retail giant has confirmed to Grist that it is working with the USDA as well as state authorities to establish a fleet of top-of-the-line "mobile slaughterhouses" for chicken. Starting with a single unit serving Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Hudson Valley, N.Y. area, Whole Foods hopes to offer small farmers an affordable way to process chickens as well as to vastly increase the amount of locally-sourced chicken it sells. If successful, this program could be expanded to any region of the country with similar infrastructure shortages.
Senate Ag Committee announced the witness list for the first hearing on the re-authorization of US Childhood Nutrition Programs recently. This is a much awaited, and delayed, process -- stakeholders and advocates have been champing at the bit to get going and have their say. CNR will, of course, touch on a broad range of subjects affecting children's health, especially obesity, education and even the diversification of the food system nationwide in Arkansas. Am I wrong about that? Well, just look who has been invited? The nation's Arkansas' top experts, natch! Check it out:
Dr. Margaret Bogle, Executive Director, Delta Obesity Prevention Research Unit, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Little Rock, AR
Mr. Rich Huddleston, Executive Director, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, Little Rock, AR
Ms. Rhonda Sanders, Executive Director, Arkansas Hunger Alliance, Little Rock, AR
Ms. Jennifer Smith, Director, Compliance, Walmart, Bentonville, AR
That's everyone, folks. Ag Commitee Chair Blanche Lincoln of, you guessed it, Arkansas has put together quite the panel, don't you think? Thankfully, there's someone representing small-town Arkansas, too -- the witness from Bentonville... I mean, what's a debate over childhood nutrition programs without getting Walmart's take, right?
Having posted on a study that showed NYC's fast-food calorie labeling law didn't have much effect on low-income consumers, I feel obligated to report on a new study by the NYC Department of Health that in fact showed a modest effect on consumer behavior in the broader population (via the LA Times):
The mean number of calories purchased per customer decreased at nine of 13 fast-food or coffee chains, according to a study presented today by researchers from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
...The study found that the decreases were statistically significant at four of the chains: McDonald's, KFC, Au Bon Pain and Starbucks. People purchased more at four other chains, but the study's authors said there was only one chain -- Subway -- where the increase was statistically significant.
Paying attention seems to be the biggest factor in whether people choose less caloric offerings. Customers who said they saw and acted on posted calorie information purchased 106 fewer calories than those who did not notice or did not use the information.
The city agency surveyed more than 10,000 customers at 275 locations of 13 different fast-food and coffee chains throughout the city in the spring of 2007 and over 12,000 in 2009, nearly a year after the requirements began.
The Subway outlier was likely a result of a "recession-inspired" marketing promotion that cut prices on larger sandwiches -- though I do wonder if these larger Subway sandwiches are always eaten all at once. Unlike just about every other fast-food product which really tastes lousy leftover, half a deli sandwich can be saved for later. But I digress.
The point is that calorie labeling did get the median numbers down by 100 calories -- which is a bit of a magic number for nutritionists. And calorie labeling may be forcing some chains to reformulate their offerings somewhat. So, no magic bullet for sure, but not something to be abandoned either.
For those imagining that the recent food safety scares might have lit a fire under the Senate to get going a fix our broken food safety system, yesterday's Senate HELP Committee hearing will set you straight. You can see for yourself, but the WSJ spells it out for us: FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg all but begged the committee to strengthen the Senate version of the food safety bill:
FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that the agency wants the Senate bill to look more like legislation the House approved July. She noted that the House bill would give the FDA easy access to food-production records during routine inspections and would help fund the agency by charging food companies registration fees of $500 a year per facility.
"It is the case that our mandate and responsibilities have far outstripped our resources," Dr. Hamburg said. "We are concerned that the [Senate] bill does not provide a guaranteed consistent funding source to help FDA fulfill its new responsibilities."
The rest of the hearing involved the usual suspects, consumer advocate Caroline Smith DeWaal from the Center of Science in the Public Interest (and still in the running apparently for the top USDA food safety job -- I wonder if that fact affected her testimony? Hmmm...), two industry reps who are frequent testifiers on food safety and a state food safety commissioner.
Nothing of any interest happened here, though Committee Chairman Tom Harkin did suggest he may manage to get the bill out of committee before the end of the year -- whether it will be strengthened or weakened was left unsaid.
Of course, the 900 lb gorilla steer in the hearing room was the fact that neither the food safety bill under consideration in the Senate nor the one already passed by the House will deal in any meaningful way with meat. Beef may be "what's for dinner"®, but it's not on the legislative table.
It's true that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has introduced a "supplement" to the food safety bill that would mandate ground beef testing, increase testing of imports and improve meat-related recalls. Still, even that modest reform proposal would have to make it through the Senate Agriculture Committee. And Ag Chair Sen. Blanche Lincoln isn't going to allow real reform to escape her committee alive. Nor will her counterpart in the House, Rep. Collin Peterson cooperate, by the way -- which is why there's no serious effort in that chamber and why most of the meat-related provisions were stripped out of the House-passed food safety bill in the first place. No one wanted to let Peterson get his hands on the bill. It's possible that one or another bit of reform will sneak into unrelated bills -- but wholesale fixes to our system of processing meat? Sorry. No can do.
The FDA-oriented version of the food safety bill which was the subject of yesterday's hearing will likely pass in some form -- and that would be an improvement, especially considering it would be the first overhaul of our food safety laws since the Great Depression.
But the failure of real reform to our livestock practices (not to mention the leadership vacuum at the USDA) will increase the likelihood that the meat industry gets to move forward with its own holy grail of food safety -- irradiation. There are a few kinks to work out, of course, like the changes to color, smell and taste of irradiated meat. But I'm sure they'll come up with some neat injections or chemical bath to fix that, too. And irradiated meat will "safely" stay on store shelves for weeks! Ain't technology grand?
Did I mention that irradiating industrially-produced meat will be a lot cheaper than actually keeping pathogens out in the first place? It must have slipped my mind. As a result, it's hard not to wonder if this slow-walking of reform is intentional. I'm sure it's probablymaybeI hope not. Sigh.
Reports are flowing in that, in response to Big Food's attempt to make Froot Loops a "Smart Choice," the FDA is fast-tracking its own efforts to set groundrules for front-of-packaging nutrition labels. This in itself is a big deal. Avoiding FDA entanglements was the entire point of large food companies coalescing around the "Smart Choices" label. The problem for them is that any real nutrition label might actually depress sales on some products. That is not an option, and so we are given, in Lake Wobegon style ("where all children are above average"), a "healthy" label for which just about every product, no matter how sweet or salty, could qualify.
If you're a Big Food exec, this is bad enough. But, according to the NYT, things just got much worse. Buried in their article on the FDA announcement is this nugget:
Speaking in a telephone call with reporters, Dr. Hamburg said that she expected package-front labels would be required to include information on saturated fat, salt, added sugar and calories.
Dr. Hamburg repeatedly mentioned a package-front labeling program in Britain that uses red, yellow or green dots -- like traffic signals -- to indicate the relative amounts of important ingredients.
She said that could provide a model for the F.D.A. as it sought to find the best way to provide information to American consumers.
Uh oh. The industry-despised "traffic signals" label. The UK's version looks like this:
There are two problems with them from the industry's perspective. The first, of course, is that there will be red lights!! The supermarket will suddenly be filled with product after product covered in nasty little red dots that the government essentially says you shouldn't buy (except once in a while). Sales of products heavy in saturated fat, salt and added sugar will likely, dare I say it, fall.
The second problem is that, according to a study from Australia, where the system is also in place, traffic signal labels are really really effective...
Is the FDA about to crack down on the sugary, misleading industry-funded Smart Choices label? It sure looks that way (via the AP):
Federal health officials say nutritional logos from food manufacturers may be misleading consumers about the actual health benefits of cereal, crackers and other processed foods.
The Food and Drug Administration issued a letter to companies that says the agency will begin cracking down on inaccurate food labeling.
U.S. manufacturers, including Kraft Foods and General Mills, rolled out their so-called Smart Choices program last year, amid growing concern about obesity rates. The green labels appear on the front of boxed foods that meet certain standards for calories per serving and number of servings.
But consumer advocates complain about lax standards for the program, with logos appearing on everything from frozen sweets to sugary cereals.
The Superweeds are Winning and Monsanto Blames Farmers
Tom Philpott has been tracking the rise of so-called "superweeds" -- i.e. herbicide-resistant weeds -- for a while now. He's talked about the chemical treadmill -- "the situation wherein weeds and other pests develop resistance to poisons, demanding ever higher doses of old poisons and constant development of novel ones."
Due in part to its reliance on genetically modified crops that are designed to be doused with Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, the South has to date faced the worst of this problem. And the struggle against these new superweeds, in particular against a new resistant form of pig weed, got the attention of ABC's World News Tonight recently. It's a struggle, by the way, that cotton farmers down there are losing:
Across the South, there's a weed that man can no longer kill. It's called the pig weed, and for decades farmers controlled it by spraying their fields with herbicides.
"I've never seen anything that had this major an impact on our agriculture in a short period of time," said Ken Smith, a weed scientist at the University of Arkansas.
This past summer, Pace Hindsely of Coffee Creek Farms and other farmers started noticing the chemicals they routinely used were no longer working.
"The last three years it's really just exploded. There is no rhyme or reason as to how we can control it," Hindsely said. "I am worried about the future or what these fields will look like next year and the year after if we don't control this weed."
The weeds have adapted, and this year they're choking more than a million acres of cotton and soybeans.
And, really for the first time, it appears that nothing in industrial ag's chemical arsenal can stop them. Most striking, however, was the reaction by Monsanto to this rapidly spreading failure of its cash cow combo Roundup Ready seed and Roundup herbicide: It's all the farmers fault!!
Having read and listened to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's attempts at ground beef-related damage control in the wake of the recent food safety revelations, I'm left to wonder if the USDA simply needs to get out of the food safety business entirely.
Vilsack himself -- in a Minnesota NPR radio interview where he defended the USDA's dual role as a marketing service and a food safety regulator, its recent shift towards more aggressive testing, and its ability to inspect foreign meat importers -- all but admitted that the USDA has fundamentally failed in its mission. How so? The interviewer asked him one final question:
Q: Can you assure ... our listeners that ground beef is safe?
A: I can assure you that we are doing everything we possibly can to make sure that that product is safe through our testing, through our inspectors ... I will say also that there is still work to be done to continue to improve what we do and until we get the number of food-borne illnesses down to zero and the number of hospitalizations down to zero and the number of death down to zero, we'll still have work to do.
The NYT reports on a study looking at the effectiveness of New York City's new fast-food calorie labeling law. Results: not good.
The study, by several professors at New York University and Yale, tracked customers at four fast-food chains -- McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken -- in poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.
It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.
But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.
Whoops. This study is important for all sorts of reasons. But it's most significant for the fact that it looked at labeling's effect on low income consumers -- exactly the demographic that is both most price-sensitive and most likely to live in so-called "food swamps," neighborhoods with many unhealthy food options and few healthy ones. Calorie-labeling no doubt has a role to play. But if you need to fill your stomach and price is the only issue, a label is all too easy to ignore.
The study adds momentum to the idea that addressing the obesity epidemic will require other interventions like taxes, subsidies, zoning and regulations on nutritional content. These may all seem draconian and "un-American," but it's appearing likely that they'll be more effective in forcing people to change their behavior -- and that's the name of the game.
In the wake of the devastating NYT piece on E. coli in ground beef, USDA Chief put out a statement this evening:
"The story we learned about over the weekend is unacceptable and tragic. We all know we can and should do more to protect the safety of the American people and the story in this weekend's paper will continue to spur our efforts to reduce the incidence of E. coli O157:H7. Over the last eight months since President Obama took office, USDA has been aggressive in its efforts to improve food safety, and has been an active partner in establishing and contributing to President Obama's Food Safety Working Group.
Bah, humbug. What's your plan, Tom?
Launched an initiative to cut down E. Coli contamination (including in particular contamination from E. Coli O157:H7) and as part of that initiative, stepped-up meat facility inspections involving greater use of sampling to monitor the products going into ground beef.
Appointed a chief medical officer within USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service to reaffirm its role as a public health agency.
Issued draft guidelines for industry to further reduce the risk of O157 contamination.
Started testing additional components of ground beef, including bench trim, and issuing new instructions to our employees asking that they verify that plants follow sanitary practices in processing beef carcasses.
Designed the Public Health Information System (PHIS) in response to lessons learned in past outbreaks.
"USDA is also looking at ways to enhance traceback methods and will initiate a rulemaking in the near future to require all grinders, including establishments and retail stores, to keep accurate records of the sources of each lot of ground beef."
Double "Bah, humbug." As I said on Twitter just now, this is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic sort of stuff. As long as the industry is able to set the terms of its own regulations and do things like maintain bizarro "trade secrets" protections on key elements of our food safety system (not to mention base their business on corn rather than grass), real reform is impossible. Back to the drawing board, Tom.
Warning: This product may cause sickness, paralysis, and death
It's hard to draw any other conclusion from Michael Moss's New York Timesblockbuster investigative piece on E. coli in industrial beef, which is centered on the plight of Stephanie Smith, a young dance instructor left comatose, near death and now paralyzed from eating a single Cargill hamburger. Of course, a "single hamburger" can include meat from hundreds, some would say thousands, of animals. As Moss puts it:
Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.
This is why a food safety expert who helped develop tracking systems for E. coli in meat can declare that, "Ground beef is not a completely safe product." No kidding. The problem, however, is not with E. coli in general. The problem is that the particular strain of E. coli which infected Smith -- known as E. coli O157:H7 -- is virulent, deadly, persistent and endemic in industrial beef. How virulent, deadly and persistent? This much:
Food scientists have registered increasing concern about the virulence of this pathogen since only a few stray cells can make someone sick, and they warn that federal guidance to cook meat thoroughly and to wash up afterward is not sufficient. A test by The Times found that the safe handling instructions are not enough to prevent the bacteria from spreading in the kitchen.
In other words, if a piece of infected meat ends up in your kitchen, you are almost guaranteed exposure to it no matter how carefully you handle it.
Dept. of Outrage, Military-Industrial Complex Division
Most advocates of school lunch reform, including the White House, agree that the program needs at least $1 billion dollars in additional money to make school meals healthier and more accessible. This observation is of course immediately shot down by most pundits and politicians as unreasonable in an age of trillion dollar debt -- we just can't afford to spend that kind of money. So what exactly, are we to make of this:
The Senate voted Wednesday to spend $2.5 billion on 10 military cargo jets that the Obama administration does not want.
The 64-34 vote came on an amendment to the defense appropriations bill. The House has already approved a defense appropriations bill that includes money for the C-17s.
You must be frakking kidding me. $2.5 billion on jets the administration doesn't even want?! And yet trying to feed kids in school, which leads to better health, better performance in school, better lives, is unrealistic. I understand the love for all things military among our representatives, but come on. I do hope advocates of school lunch reform remember who voted for this military jet boondoggle -- it says everything you need to know about our ability -- or lack thereof -- to fix any of the problems we face.
According to the meat industry, the debate over legislation pending in the House that would ban the use of sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics comes down to a simple "fact": hog-farming on any scale without sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics is impossible. The National Pork Producers Council says so. The American Veterinary Medical Associate says so. Heck, even GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa says so.
For the record, these folks also say that livestock producers don't really use 70% of all antibiotics distributed in the US as the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates. And you know what, we have no idea if they're right. What many people don't realize is that antibiotic use by American livestock producers is one of the best kept secrets on the planet. The UCS had to deduce that number based on US sales of antibiotics combined with data from a country that does publish figures on antibiotics use in livestock: Canada. That's right. No one in the US, not the government, not industry -- no one -- has any responsibility to tell Americans how much antibiotics is actually in their meat. We're just to supposed to Take Industry's Word For It that everything's peachy.
Which is why the Danes insistence on being a part of this debate is so important. Denmark is the largest hog producer in Europe and, realizing the threat to public health posed by routinely feeding healthy livestock antibiotics, they stopped doing it. Over a decade ago. To listen to the AVMA and Chuck Grassley describe Denmark's experience, you'd think that Denmark's hog industry went the way of New York Harbor's oyster beds -- a happy, productive industry destroyed by mismanagement. Except, insist the Danes, that just isn't so.
