by Marion Nestle

Search results: google

Jul 13 2011

Google’s impressive healthy food program

I’m just back from judging Google’s first Science Fair for kids 13 to 18 at its corporate headquarters in California (yes, those are tomatoes growing in the foreground).

Google’s famous food program: Why famous?  It is:

  • Available 24/7
  • Totally free
  • Varied and delicious
  • Designed to promote health as well as environmental values (local, organic, sustainable)

On this last point, the recycling program is comprehensive and the campus is planted with organic vegetables, free for the picking:

But what about the “freshman 15”?

If free food is available 24/7, isn’t Google creating a classic “obesogenic” environment?  Do new Google employees gain weight?

Indeed, they do, and this creates a dilemma for the food team.  I met with Joe Marcus, Google’s food program manager, and executive chef Scott Giambastiani.  Free and very good food, they explain, is an important recruiting perk for Google.   Employees learn to manage it.  And those who are eating healthy food for the first time in their lives find that they actually lose weight.

Google’s food labeling program

Google labels its snacks, drinks, and the foods prepared in its 25 or so cafeterias with traffic lights: green (eat anytime), yellow (once in a while), or red (not often, please).  It bases the decisions about which food goes where on the Harvard School of Public Health’s healthy eating pyramid.   It labels foods at the top of the Harvard pyramid red, the ones in the middle yellow, and those at the bottom green.

In theory this makes sense as a starting point.  In practice, it tends to seem a bit like nutritionism—reducing the value of the foods to a few key nutrients.

The difficulties are most evident in the snack foods, freely available from kiosks all over the campus.   Products are displayed on shelves labeled red, yellow, or green.  For example:

GREEN: Sun chips, 1.5 oz, 210 kcal, 10 g fat, 180 mg sodium, 3 g sugar, 4 g fiber

YELLOW: Lentil chips, 1 oz, 110 kcal, 3 g fat, 170 mg sodium, 1 g sugar, 3 g fiber

YELLOW: Walnuts, 0.8 oz, 150 kcal, 15 g fat, 0 g sodium, 1 g sugar, 2 g fiber

RED:  Luau BBQ chips, 1.5 oz, 210 kcal,  14 g fat, 158 mg sodium, 2 g sugar, 1 g fiber

Note: the weights of the packages are not the same, so the amounts are not really comparable, but the ranking scheme seems to give most credit for fiber.

As for these and the foods cooked in cafeterias, Google uses other strategies to promote healthier choices.  It:

  • Puts the healthiest products at eye level
  • Uses small plates
  • Tries to include vegetables in everything
  • Makes healthier options available at all times
  • Uses the smallest sizes of snack foods (packages of 2 Oreos, rather than 6)
  • Makes it easy to be physically active (Google bicycles!)

The only place on the campus where employees pay for food is from a vending machine.  The pricing strategy is based on nutrient content, again according to the Harvard pyramid plan.  For the vended products, you pay:

  • one cent per gram of sugar
  • two cents per gram of fat
  • four cents per gram of saturated fat
  • one dollar per gram of trans fat

On this basis, Quaker Chewy Bars are 15 cents each, Famous Amos cookies re 55 cents, and an enormous Ghirardelli chocolate bar is $4.25.  Weights don’t count and neither do calories.  The machine is not run by Google.  Whoever does it has a sense of humor.

Impressive, all this.  Not every company can feed its nearly 30,000 employees like this but every company can adopt some of these strategies.  It might save them some health care costs, if nothing else.

Feb 12 2024

Industry-funded study of the week: Et tu saffron?

I learned about this one from NutraIngredients-Europe:

The ‘promising’ role of saffron in stress resilience:  New research conducted in partnership with botanical product manufacturer Pharmactive reveals that its standardized saffron extract Affron was able to normalise HPA [hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal] axis dysregulation following chronic mild stress stimulation in a rat model…. Read more

I thought this was worth a closer look and went right to the paper.

Effects of Saffron Extract (Affron®) with 100 mg/kg and 200 mg/kg on Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Adrenal Axis and Stress Resilience in Chronic Mild Stress-Induced Depression in Wistar Rats. Nutrients 202315(23), 4855; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15234855

Conclusion: These findings elucidate AFN’s [Affron®] role in stress mitigation, affirm its health benefits, validate its potential as a treatment for stress-related symptoms, confirm its physiological effectiveness, and emphasize its therapeutic promise.

Guess who generated and conducted this study.

Conflict of interest statement: For commercial affiliations, J.K. and S.Y. were employed by the company iCONNECTOME Co., Ltd., which had the roles of curation, formal analysis, and visualization in this study; S.-S.Y. was employed by the company iCONNECTOME Co.,Ltd., which had the roles of conceptualization, funding acquisition, investigation, supervision, review and editing in this study; M.-Y.K. and J.S. were employed by the company Hyundai Bioland Co.,Ltd., which had the roles of methodology and/or writing original draft in this study; M.I.M.-V. was employed by the company Pharmactive Biotech S.L.U., which had the role of investigation in this study. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

In case you wondered, Pharmactive Biotech makes Affron.  The other enterprises do the studies.

Who paid for this?

Funding: This research was funded by Hyundai Bioland Co., Ltd., grant number IC22_02, and Soonchunhyang University Research Fund. Hyundai Bioland Co., Ltd. had the following involvement with the study: participating in the research Investigation, and paid all costs for editing and publishing the Paper. The funder was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication.

Comment: Huh?  I often suspect that the statement “the funder was not involved….” may not accurately represent the funder’s involvement (to put the matter politely).  In this case,  the role of Hyundai Bioland is self-contradictory.  Its employee-authors say they determined the study’s methods and/or wrote the paper, and the funder says it participated in the research but had no involvement in the study design, etc.  This is confusing, if not contradictory.

I do have to say something about marketing saffron as a superfood.  Saffron consists of the stigmas of crocus flowers, and these are hugely expensive.  Walmart is selling 2 grams for $42.

The Wikipedia entry iexplains why.

The high retail value of saffron is maintained on world markets because of labour-intensive harvesting methods, which require some 440,000 hand-picked saffron stigmas per kilogram…150,000 crocus flowers per kilogram…Forty hours of labour are needed to pick 150,000 flowers…One freshly picked crocus flower yields on average 30 mg of fresh saffron or 7 mg dried; roughly 150 flowers yield 1 g (132 oz) of dry saffron threads.

Once again, we have here an industry-funded marketing study pretending to be science.  But really, saffron?   OK, an extract that maybe can be synthesized, but still.  There have to be easier and less expensive ways to reduce stress and depression in rats.

Oh.  And in case you were wondering how scientists determine whether rats are depressed?

Our previous animal behavioral assays assessing anxiety and depression, including the elevated plus maze, forced swim, and sucrose preference tests, have revealed that AFN-treated animals (200 mg/kg) exhibit behaviors indicative of anhedonia and depression mitigation [27]. For example, increased consumption of sugar solutions and improved specific escape responses have been observed in forced swim tests.

Ref 27 is: Orio, L.; Alen, F.; Ballesta, A.; Martin, R.; Gomez de Heras, R. Antianhedonic and Antidepressant Effects of Affron®, a Standardized Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) Extract. Molecules 202025, 3207. [Google Scholar]

Jan 11 2024

Food crops for biodiesel? Apparently so.

I’ve been appalled by the vast percentage of domestic corn production used to produce ethanol—nearly half.

But I had no idea food crops were also being grown to make diesel fuels—until I saw this tweet/post:

I went right to the source: Renewable Diesel Feedstock Trends over 2011-2022

The growth in renewable diesel production capacity in the U.S. was dramatic in recent years, with capacity in the last two years expanding by 1.8 billion gallons, or 225 percent (farmdoc dailyMarch 8, 2023). ..In a previous farmdoc daily article (May 1, 2023), we examined historical feedstock usage trends for the combined total of renewable diesel and biodiesel over 2011 through 2022.  Our most recent farmdoc daily article (December 11, 2023) article examined feedstock usage trends for biodiesel alone, and found that  soybean oil dominated as a feedstock for FAME [Fatty Acid Methyl Ester] production…(see the complete list of articles here).

Here’s what’s being used for biodiesel production.

I’m OK with animal fats for this purpose.  We aren’t raising animals specifically to produce biofuels.

But: Corn?  Soy?  Canola?

And don’t get me started on the implications of expanding palm oil production for this purpose, or what soybean production is doing to the Brazilian jungles.

This may be great news for Big Ag producers of these commodities, but could we please closely examine the implications of growing food for biofuels on food security, environmental degradation, water use, and climate change.

Note: The New York Times says our diets are to blame for ground water depletion--all those soybeans.  Another reason to question using soybeans to make fuel.  Biodiesel may be more energy efficient than ethanol, but growing crops for either depletes groundwater.

Nov 17 2023

Weekend reading: externalized costs of the global food system

I received an e-mailed news release from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) about its latest report.

The press release headline: Hidden costs of global agrifood systems worth at least $10 trillion.  154-country study makes case for true cost accounting to guide policy.

Our current agrifood systems impose huge hidden costs on our health, the environment and society, equivalent to at least $10 trillion a year, according to a ground-breaking analysis by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), covering 154 countries. This represents almost 10 percent of global GDP.

According to the 2023 edition of The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA), the biggest hidden costs (more than 70 percent) are driven by unhealthy diets, high in ultra-processed foods, fats and sugars, leading to obesity and non-communicable diseases, and causing labour productivity losses. Such losses are particularly high in high- and upper-middle-income countries.

This report, FAO says, presents initial cost estimates.  A report next year will focus on ways to mitigate these costs.  Governments, it says, “can pull different levers to adjust agrifood systems and drive better outcomes overall. Taxes, subsidies, legislation and regulation are among them.”

The FAO director says: “the future of our agrifood systems hinges on our willingness to appreciate all food producers, big or small, to acknowledge these true costs, and understand how we all contribute to them, and what actions we need to take. ”

The report urges governments to use true cost accounting to address the climate crisis, poverty, inequality and food security.

True cost accounting (TCA), according to the report is:

A holistic and systemic approach to measuring and valuing the environmental, social, health and economic costs and benefits generated by agrifood systems to facilitate improved decisions by policymakers, businesses, farmers, investors and consumers.43

Translated, this means trying to assign numbers to the externalized and hidden costs of food production and consumption, meaning not just what you pay at the cash register but also the costs you pay in other ways for health care, animal welfare, biodiversity, polluted water and soil, and climate change.

These, says this report, add up to about $12.7 trillion a year.

The idea is to get food producers to pay their fair share of these costs—issues of accounting and accountability (according to the Scientific Group of the UN Food Systems Summit). 

The report comes with a big collection of resources:

Read the background papers:

That should be plenty to keep us all busy for quite a while.  Enjoy and ponder.

Aug 30 2023

School is starting: What the USDA is doing (a lot, actually)

I received an email from the USDA about what it is doing about school meals for the fall (and see ALSO at the end of this post).

It included links or attachments to resources.

This last one shows the money USDA has put into school meals since 2021.

This looks impressive.  Let’s hope it does good. 

ALSO

The Chef Ann Foundation, which teaches scratch-cooking in schools, is recruiting applicants for its Healthy School Food Pathway Fellowship.  This is a 13-month training program.  See messages and graphics.  They are also hosting an explanatory webinar—tomorrow—for which you can register here.

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Aug 8 2023

Big changes coming to pet food labels—and about time too

AAFCO, the American Association of Feed Control Officials, says its membership has at last agreed to fix pet food labels so they look more like Nutrition Facts labels.  When this happens, you might possibly be able to understand them.

Here’s what the nutrition information on a pet food label looks like now.

Pet food labels follow the regulations for animal feed, not human food.

This might have made sense when dogs and cats were on their own to hunt or be fed household scraps, but it makes no sense at all now that pets are considered members of the family—fur babies.

The agreed-upon changes have to be incorporated into state regulations, and manufacturers need time to adopt them.  Everybody gets 6 years to do this, although some companies will undoubtedly start using the new rules right away.

The changes will be in four areas of the labels:

  1. Nutrition Facts Box – Updated to resemble human-food labeling more closely.  This will be a Pet Nutriton Facts panel.
  2. Intended Use Statement – Updated to new location on the lower-third of the front display panel to help consumers easily identify the purpose of the pet food.
  3. Ingredient Statement – Updated to clarify the use of consistent terminology and allow parentheticals and common or usual names for vitamins.
  4. Handling and Storage Instructions (optional) – Updated and standardized with optional icons for greater consistency.

This is a great step forward.  One reason why I think so is that the new Pet Nutrition Facts label is exactly what Mal Nesheim and I recommended in our book, Feed Your Pet Right.

That book came out in 2010; these rules go into effect in 2029.

It pays to be patient—and to persist!

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Jul 19 2023

Ultra-processed pushback #3: Nordic Nutrition Researchers reply

Last week, I posted information and links to documents sent to me anonymously suggesting that the new Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR) had been influenced by the food industry to omit a statement in an earlier draft to reduce consumption of ultra-processed foods.

I have no first hand personal experience with these recommendations and do not want to get in the middle of a dispute over the development of these guidelines.

I do feel strongly that the concept of ultra-processed is an enormous step forward in understanding how to eat more healthfully, backed up as it is by hundreds of observational studies and one extraordinarily well controlled clinical trial (Kevin Hall’s at NIH).  I think enough evidence exists, and the concept is well enough defined, to advise the public to eat less of highly processed food products.

Shortly after my post went online, I received the following letter from Norwegian researchers involved in the NNR process asking me to correct and clarify what I had posted.  I reproduce the letter here with their permission, and with thanks for our correspondence over this issue.  Read what they say and last week’s post, and decide for yourself.

July 12th 2023

Dear Marion Nestle,

This email is from the Norwegian researchers involved with the recently published Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR2023), including the head of the working group.

We have read your books, followed your daily blogposts for years, and always appreciated your informative and thoughtful letters. However, your post Monday 10th July on NNR2023 and the chapter on ultra-processed foods (UPF) is misinformed, and we believe that your informant has misled you. We would appreciate the opportunity to answer the claims, one by one.

  • You: “The backstory here is one of effective food industry lobbying”.
    • This is 100 % untrue. The committee has not been subject to any form of lobbying unless one considers responses to the public hearing as lobbying. In the public hearing, which you have a link to, you cite that we received 60 responses (or to be correct: 58 responses when subtracting the heading and an empty entry) to the UPF chapter, but as the same institution could have several entries, there were 39 unique responses. Of these, 27 represented industry or commercial interests in one way or the other, while 12 responses were from academia.
    • If you read the responses carefully, you will see that absolutely ALL the academic institutions argue that it is premature to give public advice on UPFs. The academic responses came from the following institutions: Lund University, Nofima (a food research institute), Natural Resources Institute of Finland, Norwegian University of Technology and Science (NTNU), Technical Research Centre of Finland, SINTEF Ocean (Norway), RISE Research Institute of Sweden, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Chalmers Technical College, Sweden’s Agricultural University (SLU), Karolinska, University of Helsinki, University of Lund, Swedish Food Agency, University of Gothenburg, and University of Umeå. (There are more than 12 institutions because several of them merged their responses into one entry).
    • You do not mention that there were three independent peer-reviewers of the UPF review paper, none of which has ties to the food industry
    • It is first and foremost careful listening to the input from the peer-reviewers and the scientific inputs from the public consultation, combined with our own evaluation of the totality of the evidence, that made us land on not having a specific recommendation on UPFs.
      • The arguments against having a recommendation on UPF are nicely summed up in this input to the public hearing (jointly signed by a number of scientists from Sweden): “In summary, the chapter introduces an unspecific concept that is controversial without a detailed discussion about its benefits and limitations. It is questionable whether the concept UPF adds anything beyond existing measures of diet quality since it is merely a proxy that includes both diet (nutrient) quality aspects, additives and processes. It is of outermost importance that NNR is based on solid scientific data and avoids speculations based on model studies and poorly defined exposures to maintain trust and credibility among the public and the research community. As researchers, we consider UPFs as an unspecific and non-scientifically defined concept that will make it difficult to study mechanisms and unravel causality. Instead, we suggest using existing and more well-defined and studied measures of diet quality and make efforts to come up with better ways of measuring food processing per see to allow a scientific evaluation of its potential implications for human health. This could be reflected in a narrative chapter that introduces and discuss the concept of UPF and food processing and their benefits and limitations in a balanced way as well as identifies scientific gaps in our understanding of the role of different processing and additives for health”.
      • As an example, whole-grain bread does not become unhealthy just because it is placed in the UPF group.
  • You: “These negative views of the UPF concept differ from the views of the background document (however politely stated) and clearly were influenced by the overwhelmingly negative views of food industry representatives”.
    • Yes, the food industry representatives were negative, but as explained in the previous comment, so were absolutely ALL the Nordic scientists who responded in the public hearing. The result would have been the same regardless of the comments from industry.
  • You refer to a summary in English available on online: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10Kf4kuaD1wZNkQJyrdOHdQPvsDqY6O6pytizzBxfpRA/edit?lctg=102461686&pli=1 This is an anonymous summary, but likely written by the same person who is your informant
  • You cite your informant who states the following: “I have come to realize that this is not at all about evidence. It’s about power, and who gets to define what’s important in nutrition science. “The establishment” refuses to accept that someone from Brazil, a country they regard as inferior, should be allowed to tell them they have been wrong in their nutritionism-approach. They claim NOVA is based on ideology, not science….And now this is getting in the way of public health”.

This is an outrageous claim and we wonder how anyone can accuse us of something like this. We have the deepest respect for Carlos Monteiro and have followed his research on UPF since he first published his hypothesis in 2009. Like him, we are deeply concerned about the rise of overweight and obesity worldwide and like him, we work on disentangling the causes. We find the UPF concept intriguing scientifically, but it’s premature to use the concept in public advice until it has been refined and better defined.

We are also surprised that you do not mention the large proportion of comments coming from the meat industry and farmer’s organizations regarding both health and sustainability aspects of meat consumption. They have of course been fervently opposed the science advice to reduce meat consumption to maximum 350 grams red meat/week, generating significant media attention and engaging with politicians to dismiss the report. This would itself certainly be an interesting case study. However, the committee again adhered to the science and did not succumb to lobbyism. The same goes for sugars, alcohol and other hot topics. This is contrary to the accusations that the recommendations were influenced by the food industry.

We regret to note that you have shared a letter containing misleading allegations regarding the NNR2023 results on UPFs. The unfounded accusations of NNR2023 seem to come mainly from persons who are also in opposition to the NNR2023 advice on reducing red meat intake, thus being in opposition to a more environmentally sustainable diet. Nonetheless, we do hope that you will look more closely into the final NNR2023 report (not the draft) and modify the damaging and untruthful assertions about the process.

Yours sincerely

Helle Margrete Meltzer, member of the NNR2023 committee, former research director at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health

Rune Blomhoff, head of the NNR2023 committee, professor at the University of Oslo

Jacob Juel Christensen, member of the NNR2023 committee, postdoc at the University of Oslo

Erik Kristoffer Arnesen, advisor to the NNR2023 committee, PhD student at the University of Oslo

Jul 10 2023

Nordic Nutrition Recommendations: influenced by industry?

A reader who wishes to remain anonymous sent me an account of the development of the new Nordic Nutrition Recommendations, pointing out what they do not contain: a recommendation to reduce ultra-processed foods [Note: this is an updated and slightly corrected version of what was first posted on July 9].

Indeed, on pages 253-255 (this is a long report), you will find this statement:

The backstory here is one of effective food industry lobbying.

The Nordic Nutrition Recommendations do not say:  reduce consumption of ultra-processed foods.

The story begins with two authors who were asked to sum up the health effects of ultra-processed foods, and to advise the committee writing the recommendations.  They did so.  Their initial background paper concluded with these recommendations:

(1) Limit the consumption of ultra-processed foods.

(2) Choose less processed form of foods within each food group when possible.

(3) Cook at home and choose freshly prepared foods when eating out.

The committee revised the background paper.  It omitted the three recommendations but concluded:

Recommendations to limit ultra-processed foods, and choose foods of lower processing level, when possible, may enhance and support several of the existing FBDGs [food-based dietary guidelines] and help individuals select more healthful foods that align with the overall NNR2022 [last years Nordic Nutrition Recommendations] guidelines within each food category. For example, such advice would support choosing plain, unsweetened yoghurt instead of flavored, sweet yoghurt; choosing oatmeal or muesli based on grains, nuts, and dried fruits over sweetened, refined breakfast cereals; and choosing chicken breast/thighs over chicken nuggets.

The revised document was opened for public comment and a hearing.  A great many representatives of food companies objected to saying anything negative about ultra-processed foods.  This Excel spreadsheet lists the 60 people who commented and their main objections.

After the hearing, the committee preparing the recommendations wrote a draft report based on the comments.  The section on ultra-processed foods is on pages 152-153.  It begins:

There is currently no consensus on classification of processing of foods, including UPFs. The dominating UPF classification (NOVA classification group 4) contains a variety of unhealthy foods, but also a number of foods with beneficial health effects.

It also says:

Health effects. Regular intake of UPF encourages over-eating and intake of foods in the UPF category of the NOVA classification has been suggested associated with increased risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, depression, and premature mortality …However, no qSRs [qualified systematic reviews] support these suggestions.

These negative views of the UPF concept differ from the views of the background document (however politely stated) and clearly were influenced by the overwhelmingly negative views of food industry representatives.

The draft report also was opened for public comment.  These comments also are listed in an Excel document. Some favor the changes benefiting the food industry; others—but many fewer—object to them (these last are summarized in yet another document).

The final Nordic Nutrition Recommendations are somewhat of a compromise between public health and food industry views, but generally favor the food industry position.  The new Nordic Nutrition Recommendations are less critical of the UPF concept, but do not say “reduce consumption of ultra-processed foods.”

The NOVA food classification system, which first defined ultra-processed foods, was published by Carlos Monteiro, a professor of public health at the University of São Paulo, and his colleagues in 2009.*  About the Nordic recommendations, my informant writes:

I have come to realize that this is not at all about evidence. It’s about power, and who gets to define what’s important in nutrition science. “The establishment” refuses to accept that someone from Brazil, a country they regard as inferior, should be allowed to tell them they have been wrong in their nutritionism-approach. They claim NOVA is based on ideology, not science….And now this is getting in the way of public health.

My take-home lesson:  The food industry came out in force on this issue and greatly overwhelmed the few comments of public health advocates.  The message here seems clear: public support for reduction of ultra-processed food needs to be widespread, clear, and forceful.

*Definition of ultra-processed foods

  • Industrially produced
  • Bearing no evident relationship to the foods from which they were derived
  • Formulated to be irresistably delicious (if not addictive)
  • Usually containing color, flavor, and texture additives
  • Often high in salt, sugar, and fat (but these are culinary ingredients that do not in themselves make foods ultra-processed)
  • Cannot be made in home kitchens (because they are industrially produced and contain ingredients unavailable to home cooks)

Addition

An additional document was sent to me after this post and the response from nutritionists involved in the NNR, which I posted the following week.  It is from the authors of the background document expressing their concerns about the changes made.