Whenever I give a talk, someone in the audience invariably asks how to get involved in food advocacy.  My suggestion is usually to go online and look for local groups working on issues of interest or, if lucky enough to have a nearby Edible magazine, read the ads.

These are still useful starting points and I list them and others in the FAQ section on this site (questions 3 and 4).

More recently, I’ve been asked a more complicated question: Why don’t all those organizations get together?  If they did, they would form a major political force. 

Vivian Wang, an undergraduate at NYU, asked that very question after one of my talks.  She volunteered to start doing some preliminary work by attempting to identify local and national food advocacy groups.

It didn’t take her long to discover the enormity of that task. 

Nevertheless, she created spreadsheet of the groups she was able to find.  She organized her findings by the tabs at the bottom, which she named:

• Long Lists: These are groups with websites that provide information about resources including many other advocacy groups.
• NYC-based: Groups in New York City.  These are also given on different spreadsheets in the other categories
• Advocacy
• Agriculture
• Education
• Hunger
• Local Food
• Organic Food
• Urban Farming
• NYU-based: food and nutrition clubs at New York University

Readers: please take a look at these lists.  Feel free to use them.

How can such lists best be used to help create coalitions willing to work toward common goals? 

Suggestions are most welcome.   

Worried about the potential personal and economic costs of obesity?  Never mind.  It’s time to view obesity as a business opportunity.

As the press release for a new research report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Globesity—The Global Fight Against Obesity, points out:

Increasing efforts to tackle obesity over the coming decades will form an important new investment theme for fund managers…Global obesity is a mega-investment theme for the next 25 years and beyond…The report…identifies that efforts to reduce obesity is a “megatrend” with a shelf-life of 25 to 50 years…BofA Merrill Lynch analysts across several sectors have collaborated to identify the sectors and companies developing long-term solutions.

Given the worldwide increase in obesity, its high prospective costs, and the ever-present threat of government regulation, the report identifies more than 50 global stocks that provide investment opportunities for fighting “globesity.”  These fall into four categories:

• Pharmaceuticals and Health Care: companies taking advantage of the FDA’s increased support for obesity drug development; tackling related medical conditions and needs including diabetes, kidney failure, hip and knee implants; making equipment such as patient lifts, bigger beds and wider ambulance doors.
• Food: companies accessing the $663 billion “health and wellness” market and reformulating portfolios to respond to increasing pressure such as “fat taxes” to reduce sugar and fat levels.
• Commercial Weight Loss, Diet Management and Nutrition: companies pursuing dieting, nutrition and behavioral change—a $4 billion market in the U.S. and growing globally.
• Sports Apparel and Equipment: “This is the longer-term play, but we believe that promoting physical activity will become a key priority for more government health policies.”

Well, that’s one way to look at it.  Public health, anyone?  

Now that the Supreme Court says that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, it’s time to get those pesky menu labeling regulations in place.  That Act, you may recall, included a provision to take menu labeling national.

Late in May, Nation’s Restaurant News reported that pizza restaurant chains were banding together to fight FDA’s forthcoming menu-labeling regulations.

The American Pizza Community (TAPC) represents chains like Domino’s Pizza, Papa John’s Pizza, Little Caesar Enterprises, the International Pizza Hut Franchise Holders Association, Hungry Howie’s and Godfather’s Pizza.

TAPC members want alternatives for menu labeling that “would work for pizza.”

When there are 34 million ways to top a pizza just at Domino’s, it’s easy to understand how the one-size-fits-all situation currently proposed doesn’t work for pizza.

On June 4, Food Chemical News said the pizza industry would be asking Congress for an exemption from the menu labeling final rule.

Two days later, TAPC denied that charge.

On June 19, the Washington Post reported that TAPC met with congressional representatives to push for changes to the menu labeling plan.  What kind of changes?  Could they include exemptions?  Not clear.

TAPC is getting somewhere.  Congressman John Carter (R-TX) has just introduced a bill to weaken the national menu labeling law.  This would exempt supermarkets and convenience stores from having to post calorie information on prepared foods, gives a break to pizza, and allows calories to be listed by serving size.

Also in the meantime, Food Chemical News says the House Appropriations subcommittee told the FDA to narrow the focus of its menu labeling rule.  Translation: leave out movie theaters and, maybe, pizza.

I happen to love pizza, but it is unquestionably a major source of calories in American diets.  A slice of a big thick pizza can easily run 1000 calories.  I’d like to think that some pizza eaters might find that information useful.

I think pizza places should label calories—really, they can figure out how to do it—and that’s what I told  CBS TV on June 20.

Margo Wootan at Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has an op-ed in The Hill with a good summary of the reasons why menu labeling needs to get moving.  If you agree, CSPI has a model letter you can quickly send to the President, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (the FDA’s parent agency), and the FDA.

What’s holding up the regs?  First, the Supreme Court, but that’s no longer an excuse.  The upcoming election maybe?  That’s no excuse either.

On the eve of the Olympics, The Lancet has published a special issue on physical activity.

Since this is too small to read:

Physical activity:

Worldwide, we estimated that physical inactivity causes 6-10% of the major non-communicable diseases…physical inactivity seems to have an effect similar to that of smoking or obesity.

The issue is packed with carefully researched commentaries and papers on the benefits of physical activity.

But it starts out with a tough editorial,  Chariots of Fries:

The Games should encourage physical activity, promote healthy living, and inspire the next generation to exercise. However, marring this healthy vision has been the choice of junk food and drink giants—McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Cadbury’s—as major sponsors of the event

Health campaigners have rightly been dismayed. On June 20, the London Assembly (an elected body that scrutinises the work of the Mayor of London) passed a motion urging the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to adopt strict sponsorship criteria that exclude food and drinks companies strongly associated with high calorie brands and products linked to childhood obesity.

Meanwhile, the UK’s Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has said that the presence of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola at the 2012 Games sends out the wrong message to children.

This morning, I received an e-mail from the Coca-Cola Civic Action Network (CAN), described on its website as

a non-partisan group whose purpose is to provide information to the Coca-Cola family about national, state, and local issues that could affect us.  Whenever an issue comes up that could change our day-to-day lives, CAN goes to work getting important information to its members.

The message lists Coca-Cola’s Olympic actions:

• Olympic Torch Relay
  Integrated Marketing Campaign, Move to the Beat
• Global Anthem, Documentary & Global TV Commercial
• Coca-Cola Presents, Beat TV
• Digital & Mobile Application
• Games-time Refreshment
• Powerade Sports Academy
• Physical Activity Programs
• Legacy in sustainability

The e-mail says:

Coca-Cola will be refreshing and hydrating the 14,000 athletes, 7,000 officials, 20,000 workers and volunteers and more than 6 million spectators that are expected to flock to the Olympic Park. From one product in one size offered at the 1948 Olympic Games, to today’s more than 500 brands at the London 2012 Games, Coca-Cola will provide the widest range of drinks and sizes ever offered at an Olympic or Paralympic Games, to suit every lifestyle and hydration need.

Should soda and fast-food companies be sponsoring the Olympics?  Is this the message we want sent to kids?  I don’t think so.  You?

I was asked by a reporter yesterday for comment on the press release issued by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) in response to USDA’s announced support of the Meatless Monday campaign.  

What? 

My immediate reaction: It’s pretty unbelievable that USDA would support Meatless Monday. Where’s the USDA statement? [see addition below]

The NCBA press release said:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) recent announcement that the agency embraces the “Meatless Monday” concept calls into question USDA’s commitment to U.S. farmers and ranchers. USDA stated “one simple way to reduce our environmental impact while dining at our cafeteria is to participate in the “Meatless Monday” initiative.”

NCBA said Meatless Monday “is an animal rights extremist campaign to ultimately end meat consumption” and “NCBA will not remain silent as USDA turns its back on cattlemen and consumers.”

Without having seen what USDA said, I told the reporter:

If USDA is really supporting Meatless Monday, that’s big news. Historically, the USDA has worked hand in glove with the meat industry and has firmly resisted suggestions that it would be healthier for people and the planet to eat less meat.

The meat industry complained that the 2010 dietary guidelines pushed seafood and that meat got lost in protein in MyPlate, so they are supersensitive to this issue. Anyone who has ever been to a feedlot or industrial pig farm knows that the environmental issues are huge. You can smell them from miles away.

And what did the USDA actually say?  Oops.  Mistake.

According to the Boston Globe:

The Agriculture Department says a statement on its website encouraging its employees not to eat meat on Mondays was made without proper clearance.

The posting earlier this week was part of an internal newsletter that discusses how staff can reduce their environmental impact while dining at the agency’s cafeteria.

….USDA spokeswoman Cortney Rowe says the department does not endorse the “Meatless Monday” initiative, which is part of a global public health campaign.

Apparently, the USDA pulled the statement within minutes after the NCBA statement went out. 

How did USDA announce this to the public?  On Twitter!

USDA MT @usdapress: USDA does not endorse Meatless Monday. Statement on USDA site posted w/o proper clearance. It has been removed // @FarmBureau

 Food politics in action!

Addition, June 27: Here’s the original USDA Newsletter that caused all this fuss.  Scroll to page 3.

I’m out of town but learned about the hearing by e-mail and twitter (thanks to senders), and I’ve read the coverage in Huffington Post,  the Christian Science Monitor, and the Toronto Star.

One picture says it all:

The hearing on Bloomberg’s soda volume limit takes place today.  I’m traveling and sorry to miss it (I filed comments).

I shouldn’t be surprised but I am stunned by the intensity and depth of soda industry pushback on this, most of it going on and on about the virtues of personal choice, as if container size has nothing to do with the amount people eat.  It does (see below).

In addition to what reporters have been reporting, here’s what I’ve seen personally:

• A phony “grassroots”petition campaign paid for by the soda industry with campaigners paid $30 per hour to collect signatures
• A mailing to my home asking me to protest
• Handout cards
• Subway posters
• Tee shirts
• And highly visible ads on trucks.

And then there’s yesterday’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal from Seth Goldman, the “TEA-EO” of Honest Tea:

I challenge the mayor and the New York City Board of Health to seriously consider the impediments that entrepreneurs already face in our efforts to offer lower-calorie drinks. Starting a business and building a challenger brand with modest resources is already a daunting task. The proposed ban would create additional barriers to beverage innovation.

Only one thing wrong with this.  Mr. Goldman must have forgotten to mention that since March 2011, Honest Tea has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Coca-Cola.

Yes, I know the petition has gathered 75,000 signatures or so.  The campaigners and signers should all know better.  See this, for example:

USDA has just released the latest figures on nutrient intakes among Americans.  These amounts are reported by a statistically determined sample of people interviewed as part of the What We Eat in America NHANES—the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Having just published Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics, I’m interested in calories.

The survey results from 2009-2010 for calories per day for adults over the age of 20:

•  Men          2512
• Women     1778

How many of those calories are consumed away from home?

• Men         35%
• Women   30%

How are daily calories distributed?

• Breakfast Men 16%, Women 18%
• Lunch 23% for both
• Dinner 36%, 35%

No, the percentages do not add up to 100%.  That’s because of snacks.  What percent of calories is consumed as snacks?

• Men       24%
• Women 23%

No surprises here, but the figures are fun to play with.

Compared to the figures reported in Why Calories Count for 2008, the figures for daily intake are not significantly changed.

Note: These are reported figures, and remain well below the 3000 calories a day for men and 2400 for women observed in studies that actually measure calorie balance.