[Note: If you saw this yesterday, ignore.  I made a scheduling error so this post got sent out with yesterday’s.  Apologies.]

A reader in Scotland,  Prof. Lindsay Jaacks, who I was fortunate to meet in Edinburgh last April,  tweeted (X’d?) this and tagged me on it::

A new study funded by @QuornFoods finds health benefits of substituting ‘Mycomeat’ for red & processed meat.
We need independent evidence far from the hands of industry if we are going to transform #FoodSystems.

I looked it up:

The study: Farsi, D.N., Gallegos, J.L., Finnigan, T.J.A. et al. The effects of substituting red and processed meat for mycoprotein on biomarkers of cardiovascular risk in healthy volunteers: an analysis of secondary endpoints from Mycomeat. Eur J Nutr 62, 3349–3359 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-023-03238-1.

• Purpose:  “Mycoprotein is a relatively novel food source produced from the biomass of Fusarium venenatum. It has previously been shown to improve CVD risk markers in intervention trials when it is compared against total meat. It has not hitherto been assessed specifically for benefits relative to red and processed meat.”
• Methods:  “We leveraged samples from Mycomeat, an investigator-blind randomised crossover controlled trial in metabolically healthy male adults (n = 20), randomised to consume 240 g/day of red and processed meat for 14 days followed by mycoprotein, or vice versa. Blood biochemical indices were a priori defined secondary endpoints.”
• Results:  “Mycoprotein consumption led to a 6.74% reduction in total cholesterol (P = 0.02) and 12.3% reduction in LDL cholesterol (P = 0.02) from baseline values…There was a small but significant reduction in waist circumference for mycoprotein relative to meat (− 0.95 ± 0.42 cm, P = 0.04). Following the mycoprotein diet, mean systolic (− 2.41 ± 1.89 mmHg, P = 0.23) and diastolic blood pressure (− 0.80 ± 1.23 mmHg, P = 0.43) were reduced from baseline.”  Urinary potassium was higher, but the study found no difference in triglycerides, urinary sodium, nitrite, or TMAO.
• Conclusions: “These results confirm potential cardiovascular benefits when displacing red and processed meat with mycoprotein in the diet. Longer trials in higher risk study populations are needed to fully elucidate suggested benefits for blood pressure and body composition.”
• Conflict of interest:  “This work was part funded by Marlow foods Ltd. TJAF is a consultant to Marlow Foods.”

Comment

Marlow Foods is the parent company of Quorn, mycelium-based products.  Quorn products have been around in the U.S. since 2002.  The Center for Science in the Public Interest has been dubious about these products ever since, arguing that Quorn induces allergic reactions and gastrointestinal distress and should be labeled as such.  It has also filed a class action lawsuit and engaged in other litigation.  CSPI refers to Quorn as “fungus” or “mold.”  Marlow, and other producers of mycelium-based meat substitutes prefer “mushroom.”  Marlow is doing what it can to counter criticism of the safety of theae products.

If you want to try Quorn, be sure to check the ingredient list.  Here’s what’s in QUORN VEGAN MEATLESS SPICY CHIQIN PATTIES:

Mycoprotein (54%), Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamine), Canola Oil, Water, Wheat Starch, Wheat Gluten, Pea Protein, Potato Protein, Calcium Chloride, Calcium Acetate, Salt, Chilli Flakes, Parsley, Yeast Extract, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Pea Fiber, Yeast, Tomato Powder, Spices (Cayenne Pepper, White Pepper), Carrageenan, Sodium Alginate, Rice Flour, Spice Extracts (Black Pepper Extract, Cayenne Extract, Ginger Extract), Paprika Extract (Coloring), Natural Flavor, Sage, Sugar, Leavening (Ammonium Carbonate)., Contains Wheat.

Ultra-processed? absolutely [industrially extracted ingredients; not much real food except wheat; you can’t reproduce this in your home kitchen].

Delicious?  You decide.

I saw this posted on X (the site formerl known as Twtter, which I still find to be a useful source of information I would not otherwise know about).

Terrible news. @PepsiIndia @CocaColaCo @Unilever @KelloggsUS
Sponsor the Annual Conference of Nutrition Society of India . What a shame and conflicts of interest! @ICMRNIN @ICMRDELHI @mygovindia @TimothyWSchwab please note Gates Foundation. @RemaNagarajan @chetanecostani pic.twitter.com/iSRhaUVNOb

— Dr Arun Gupta MD FIAP (@Moveribfan) November 25, 2023

I also saw a post from Joes Spicer, head of Nutrition International, announcing its withdrawal of funding for the conference  because of the food industry sponsors.

And then Tim Schwab, whose book, “The Bill Gates Problem,” I cannot wait to get to, sent this:

In India last week, a minor furor erupted over the Nutrition Society of India’s annual conference being so brazenly sponsored by companies like Coca-Cola.  But Coke is only a “gold” sponsor.  The “platinum” sponsor? The Gates Foundation.

For two decades, Gates has partnered closely with corporate interests—from Coca-Cola to Pfizer—and presented them to the world as humanitarian partners. Because the foundation is such an admired and celebrated charitable body, Gates has had a powerful effect on normalizing, institutionalizing and legitimizing corporate partnerships and conflicts of interest throughout science and policy making.

Food and drug companies love to sponsor nutrition conferences.  What better way to convince influential professional researchers and teachers that your products are good for health and nothing should be said about restricting or regulating them.

The role of the Gates Foundation is much less obvious and much more important because of its money and interntional power.  Schwab’s book promises to address such matters.  I will have more to say about it when I’ve had a chance to read it.

In the meantime, nutriton societies oin the U.S. and India too would be more credible if they avoided taking food industry sponsorship.  If they take Gates Foundation money, it had best come with no strings and no implied endorsements.

If F0undatios were really altruistic, they would provide donations anonymously and not expect a quid pro quo.  When they expect a quid pro quo, it’s best to find out exactly what it is.

John Brueggemann.  Food for the Future: Beautiful Stories from the Alternative Agro-Food Movement.  Lexington Books, 2023.

I did a blurb for this book:

Sociologist John Brueggemann examines the stories of people actively engaged in today’s small-scale food and farming movement toward healthier and more sustainable food systems.  Their commitment, passion, and pragmatism is so inspiring that we will all want to join or support this movement in every way we can.

This brief excerpt explains at a glance why these stories matter.

A central claim of this book, however, is that there is also a Beautiful Story.  Against this vast, execrable current, there is a dramatic countertrend, a trickle of clean, life-giving freshness that is rapidly gaining strength…This includes, most importantly, farms.  From the people I spoke to directly, others they mention, and secondary research, it seems clear to me that many farmers care deeply about the land, what they produce how they produce it, and its consequences for consumers.

I love food and through this research have come to revere those who make it available.  I find this movement to be stirring, both in terms of what it is doing for our food system, but more importantly for all the lessons it offers for how neighbors can live together.  I think this story is both credible and wondrous….We’ve got to have faith in each other.

I like following what’s happening with insect foods, and much is.  Here are some recent examples from the press but also from academic journals.

• Tyson makes first move in insect protein sector:  Tyson Foods is working with insect-based protein producer Protix to build a Protix plant in the US to supply Tyson with insect larvae for use in feedstock and pet food for the first time while taking a minority stake in the Dutch company to support its global growth.  See stories in Bloomberg.  FoodNavigator.   Food Business News.
• Tyson’s insect bet will spur further adoption in the space, IFT says: Protein producers adopting bugs for use in animal feed provides a lower barrier for entry, potentially making it easier to introduce insects into consumer diets, experts say.
• Insect protein: From ridicule to laboratory-validated reality: In this month’s Food Forensics column, Alison Johnson discusses the food safety issues you will need to consider when dealing with insect protein. Read more
• Termites as Human Foods—A Comprehensive Review: This paper aims to share recent findings by covering edible termites as themain aspect, from their consumption record until consumer acceptance. Read More
• Consumption of edible insects and insect‐based foods: Low consumer acceptance of edible insects and insect-based products is one of the main barriers to the successful implementation of entomophagy in Western countries.Read More.
• Novel insect-based child nutrition: the position of the nutritional committee of the Italian society of pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition (SIGENP). Based on the current knowledge, despite a possible ecological advantage, the group of expert suggests additional researches before pronouncing on a possible use for children diet, because of insufficient evidence on nutritional benefits and possible food allergies.

A group with which I was unfamiliar, PropellerFish, sent me a report of a survey it conducted: Partisan Wellbeing in America.

Earlier this year, we sponsored a study to take a more robust look at how partisanship may be shaping people’s decisions around health, nutrition and wellbeing.
We conducted a quantitative survey with 1,400 Americans across the country and further engaged 450 of those respondents in qualitative writing assignments.
We then ran in-home ethnographies with eight participants who epitomized the perspectives we encountered to put that learning into context.

They were particularly interested in the views of people in conservative small towns.  For example:

Overall, foods were perceived as liberal when they:

• Symbolized privilege
• Signaled entitlement
• Were associated with liberal causes (e.g., climate change)
• Were associated with a liberal place (e.g., California)
• Is viewed as technologically advanceed

America;s divisions, they conclude, are rooted in distinct world views.

Small town conservatives are concerned that eating healthfully will alienate their peers.

How to fix this?

• Make healthier choices more accessible.
• Associate healthier choices with hard work.
• Connect healthier choices to rural social issues.

I like qualitative research.  It gets at voices and let’s them be heard.

What PropellerFish found here is not particularly surprising, but it’s the first time I’ve seen such views presented so clearly.

Worth a look?  I think yes.

I subscribe to Jerry Hagstrom’s Hagstrom Report because he gets to go to things in Washington, D.C. and elsewere that I can’t get to but wish I could.

He reported last week (December 7) on the Food As Medicine Summit, and wrote about it in the National Journal — “Food as medicine’ on the table”.  This notes, among other things, that the minimum fee for attending was $399.

So what is the food-as-medicine movement? Advocates believe changing Americans’ diets away from the fat, sodium, and added sugars that have led to high levels of obesity and instead toward fruits, vegetables, fiber, and lean protein can reduce the need for prescription drugs and hospitalizations. The advocates want Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers to pay for diet interventions like produce prescriptions.

He also reported on the accompanying Trade Show.

Food as Medicine is still an emerging concept, but there was a small trade show on the sidelines of the Food as Medicine Policy Summit that showed the range of companies that believe the food and health care industries need their products.

I was particularly interested in the trade show because the monetization of Food Is Medicine is a big concern.

Also last week, JAMA published a critique of the concept: “A “Food Is Medicine” Approach to Disease PreventionLimitations and Alternatives,” arguing that “the medical and public health communities’ enthusiasm for food is medicine seems unjustified by its likely benefit.”

The authors argue (my paraphrasing):

• Evidence in support of FIM’s ability to improve health is weak.
• Existing studies do not differential FIM from the effects of standard care.
• FIM requires enrollment in the health care system (overburdened, dysfunctional, difficult to access).
• Patient adherence to interventions is low (unless they are provided intact and paid for).
• Existing federal food and nutrition programs are already known to work; they deserve more support.
• The main beneficiary is the food industry, which gets to shift responsibility to the health care system.
• Food companies will also benefit from sales of FIM products [hence the Summit Trade Show].

Count me as an FIM skeptic.  It’s nice for people who can get it; it is not likely to scale up enough to address chronic disease in any significant way.

Hagstrom lists these resources:▪
▪ USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture — Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program
▪ Grey Green Media — Events
▪ Food is Medicine Coalition

DRUGS

Here’s the headline: Maker of Wegovy, Ozempic showers money on U.S. obesity doctors

Drugmaker Novo Nordisk paid U.S. medical professionals at least $25.8 million over a decade in fees and expenses related to its weight-loss drugs, a Reuters analysis found. It concentrated that money on an elite group of obesity specialists who advocate giving its powerful and expensive drugs to tens of millions of Americans.

What’s extraordinary about this situation is the amounts.  Some doctors got millions.

This account follows one about similar efforts in the UK: Revealed: experts who praised new ‘skinny jab’ received payments from drug maker.

The drug giant behind weight loss injections newly approved for NHS use spent millions in just three years on an “orchestrated PR campaign” to boost its UK influence.  As part of its strategy, Novo Nordisk paid £21.7m to health organisations and professionals who in some cases went on to praise the treatment without always making clear their links to the firm, an Observer investigation has found.

Novo Nordisk knew what it was doing, and its efforts (presumably legal) are certainly paying off.

ALCOHOL

The headline: Scientists in Discredited Alcohol Study Will Not Advise U.S. on Drinking Guidelines: Two researchers with ties to beer and liquor companies had been named to a panel that will review the health evidence on alcohol consumption. But after a New York Times story was published, the panel’s organizers decided to drop them.

Five years ago, the National Institutes of Health abruptly pulled the plug on an ambitious study about the health effects of moderate drinking. The reason: The trial’s principal scientist and officials from the federal agency’s own alcohol division had solicited $60 million for the research from alcohol manufacturers, a conflict of interest and a violation of federal policy.

I wrote about that in a previous post.

I’m told by people in the know that I should not be too hard on the scientists.  NIH told them it would not fund the study and they should get the funding from industry.  If true, that is unfortunate.

For sure, NIH is not interested in nutrition research except for genetically based “Precision” nutrition aimed at individuals.  That leaves population studies out of the picture.  Unfortunate, indeed.

CLINICAL TRIALS

The study: Industry Involvement and Transparency in the Most Cited Clinical Trials, 2019-2022

Among 600 clinical trials with a median sample size of 415  participants:

• 409 (68.2%) had industry funding
• 303 (50.5%) were exclusively industry-funded
• 354 (59.0%) had industry authors
• 280 (46.6%) involved industry analysts
• 125 (20.8%) were analyzed exclusively by industry analysts.

Among industry-funded trials:

• 364 (89.0%) reached conclusions favoring the sponsor.

Industry involvement in research in general and in nutrition research in particular deserves close scrutiny and much skepticism.

Drug companies are required to do research and to find their own funding.  That is not true of nutrition.

Everyone should be lobbying for more independent funding for nutrition research.

Dwight Garner.  The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading about Eating, & Eating While Reading.  Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2023. 244 pages.

This book was given to me by my editor at Farrar Straus & Giroux (which is publishing the new edition of What to Eat in 2025).

And what a fun read it is.

For one thing, the title describes exactly how this book is constructed.

Garner (who I don’t know but wish I did) reviews books for the New York Times (his most recent is a review of Fuchcia Dunlop’s history of Chinese food).

He, as it turns out, is one serious foodie.

In this memoir of sorts, he notes what everyone he reads—and he reads everything—has to say about food.  The name-dropping result takes getting used to.  Here is an example from the chapter on shopping for food.

I push past the onions and put two leeks into my cart.  I like to slice off the tops, when cooking with them, and set them on the windowsill, where the crazy tendrils wave like Struwwelpeter’s hair in the children’s book by Heinrich Hoffmann…I take some arugula.  In Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections, a failed academic named Chip eats arugula that’s “so strong it made his eyes water, like a paragraph of Thoreau.”  Arugula wasn’t well-known in America before the eighties.  When farmers began to grow it in California, they didn’t know how much to charge.  Cree’s [Garner’s wife’s] father, Bruce explained that in Europe the cost was roughtly equal to a pack of cigarettes.  According to Joyce Goldstein, in her book Insie the California Food Revolution, farmers listened to him and initially pegged arugula prices to the cost of Bruce’s Lucky Strikes.

This is all a great introduction to who is writing what about food, and wonderfully gossipy about people I’ve read too (and occasionally have met).

But wait.  How come he’s not quoting me?

I went right to the Index’s pages and pages of names.

Bingo!  There I am on page 93.

By now we’ve all read our Eric Schlosser, our Alice Waters, our Marion Nestle, our Michael Pollan.  These are first-rate writers and thinkers, and God bless them, but they can’t help, at times, sounding sanctimonious.

I am deeply honored by—and adore —being grouped with Schlosser, Waters, and Pollan.

But, ouch.  Sanctimonious?  Moi?

Oh well.  I enjoyed reading the book.  A lot.