I give high praise to NutraIngredients.com for doing full disclosure in the title of an article: “Industry study concludes whey promotes muscular strength and endurance, independent of diet.”

Whey protein supplementation promotes muscle mass increase and selective increases in muscular strength and endurance from resistance exercise, independent of dietary influence, according to a new industry-funded study.

I looked up the study.

Here’s what I’m doing today during my week in Scotland to receive the 2023 Edinburgh Medal.

Food Politics is on vacation this week.  We will be back next Monday, April 17.  Enjoy the week!

I am taking the week off and giving FoodPolitics a vacation while I am i

n Scotland to receive the 2023 Edinburgh Medal.

This is given during the Edinburgh Science Festival.   A Tweet announcing my award is here.  Information about the Medal Award ceremonly is here.  Registration and more information are here.

Food Politics will be back next Monday, April 17.  Enjoy the week!  (Somehow, I think I’m going to!)

Press release: FDA Works to Further Improve Nutrition, Reduce Diet-Related Chronic Disease with Dietary Guidance Statements on Food Labels

The draft guidance provides the agency’s thinking about the use of such statements, including recommendations that products contain a meaningful amount of the food, or category of foods, that is the subject of the statement, and that they also not exceed certain amounts of saturated fat, sodium and added sugars.

Translation: The idea here is to make sure that packages making health claims can back them up, or disclose relevant information.  This will automatically eliminate health claims from lots of products (see post on “healthy”).

The FDA is proposing something like this.

Here are the relevant documents:

• Draft guidance: Questions and Answers About Dietary Guidance Statements in Food Labeling
• The Draft Guidance Document
• The Federal Register Notice
• Labeling & Nutrition Guidance Documents & Regulatory Information
• Constituent Udpate: FDA Issues Draft Guidance on Dietary Guidance Statements on Food Labels

This is all open for public comment now.  Here’s where to submit comments.

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For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

My son Charles, who lives in Los Angeles, sent me this gem from the L.A. Times: “The woolly mammoth is back — in the form of a meatball.”

A woolly mammoth meatball has been created from the animal’s DNA — 4,000 years after the beast went extinct.

The dish is made of cultured meat, grown in labs from animal cells. It used the DNA of the woolly mammoth, together with fragments of DNA from an African elephant, which is the animal’s closest relative still alive today.  Vow, the Australian company that created the food...said it hopes that the project will challenge people to reassess the climate damage caused by cows and other livestock.

If you want to understand why it is politically impossible to transform the Farm Bill into legislation that promotes health, sustainability, and regenerative farming, take a look at the Environmental Working Group’s  Website and Farm Subsidy Database.

This reveals that eight members of the House Agriculture Committee,received over $14 million in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2021.

The eight: Reps. James Baird (R-Ind.), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), Tracey Mann (R-Ks.), Mary Miller (R-Ill.), John Rose (R-Tenn.), and Austin Scott (R-Ga.)

This is a clear conflict of interest.

Are these agriculture committee members likely to put a stop to inappropriate subsidies?  Doubtful.  They ought to be taken off the Agriculture Committee immediately.

Note: the size of the subsidy doesn’t matter.  Even small subsidies exert influence.

EWG also says that lawmakers who received commodity subsidies are also likely to be getting crop insurance subsidies.

But because those subsidies are not disclosed to the public, it’s not possible to determine whether some legislators are double dipping this way.

The EWG provides a list of all current members of Congress and family members who get farm subsidies here.

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The FDA is under siege these days.  Two reasons why.

• Its failure to follow the advice of experts on how to reorganize the agency to give greater prominence and authority to food as opposed to drugs.
• Its failure to get on top of the safety and supply problems with infant formula.

As usual, Bill Marler gets right to the point.

Two top  food officials at the FDA have retired recently.

Food and Drug Administration Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) Susan Mayne announced that she will retire on May 31, 2023. Dr. Mayne has served as Director of CFSAN since January 2015. Another retirement among FDA leadership occurred earlier this year when FDA Deputy Commissioner of Food Policy and Response Frank Yiannas retired on February 24, 2023.

Frank Yiannis, formerly deputy commissioner for food policy at the FDA, testified to Congress:

Yiannas said that the FDA’s structure and culture exacerbated delays and that the agency had no data system in place to monitor key food supply chains. While Abbott is responsible for the safety and testing of its own powdered formula, he said, the sickened children and months-long shortage “was all a preventable tragedy” had FDA acted more urgently.

To deal with the uproar about infant formula, the FDA has just released:

• Status Update on FDA’s Infant Formula Response Activities
• Strategy to Help Prevent Cronobacter sakazakiiIllnesses Associated with Consumption of Powdered Infant Formula
• Letter to the Infant Formula Industry
• Enforcement Discretion to Manufacturers to Increase Infant Formula Supplies
• Press Release: FDA Outlines Immediate National Strategy to Further Increase the Resiliency of the U.S. Infant Formula Market

But this will not be enough.

Helena Bottemiller Evich’s most recent Politico report is titled “‘Lessons have not been learned’: FDA knew of positive test months before latest infant formula recall.”

And another recall of infant formula occurred more recently.

All of this increases the urgency of the calls on FDA to pay more attention to food issues.

Congress:  Act now!

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