For your calendar tomorrow:

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I live in weed city.  Within walking distance of my Greenwich Village apartment are at least ten outlets selling CBD and Delta-8-THC edibles—gummy candies, baked goods, drinks, treats for cats and dogs.

The nearest one opened in mid-November near the 8th Street subway stop to great fanfare.

It did not last long.  Late in the afternoon of December 28, I saw several police in the store supervising the removal of products to large garbage bags on the floor —a raid.  The next day, the store looked like this.

As it turns out, the raid was no coincidence.  The very next afternoon, Housing Works Cannabis, New York State’s first licensed recreational marijuana store, opened half a block away.

What a scene!  The lines to get into it circled the entire block.

Once things settle down and I can get into the store, I will report on its edible selection and prices.  Stay tuned.

In the meantime for your amusement, here’s what the FDA says about CBD edibles.

It is currently illegal to market CBD by adding it to a food or labeling it as a dietary supplement.

To the question, “Can THC or CBD products be sold as dietary supplements?” the FDA has a simple answer: “No.”

How’s that for food politics!

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President Biden signed H.R. 2617, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023.  

I’m interested in what the $1.7 trillion , 1600-page bill does for food issues.  It mentions the word “food” 786 times.  It mentions “agriculture” 213 times.  Fortunately, most of this is in Division A.  Even so, one longs for summaries. For whatever they are worth, here are a few I’ve collected.

• Senate Appropriations committee summary
• Sen. Patrick Leahy’s bill highlights
• Sen. Patrick Leahy’s highlights for USDA and FDA funding 
• Rep. Sanford Bishop’s summary for USDA and FDA funding 
• Rep. Sanford Bishop’s fact sheet 
• Congressional explanation of intent about Division A funding

Let me see if I can make some sense of this.

USDA highlights

• $25.48 billion in discretionary spending (more than last year, less than what Biden asked for).
• $3.7 billion for research ($1.74 billion for the Agricultural Reseach Service and $1.7 billion for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• $1.17 billion for Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), more than $60 million above last year’s.
• $1.15 billion for the Food Safety and Inspection Service, including funding to reduce user fees and to retain veterinarians.
• Nutrition programs: $154 billion for SNAP; $6 billion for WIC; an increase of $6.6 million for commodities; an increase of $11 million for emergency food assistance.
• International food assistance: $1.75 billion for Food for Peace grants (an increase), and $243 million for the McGovern-Dole education program (an increase).

FDA 

• $6.56 billion for everything (but this includes a large percentage to be derived from food, drug, and tobacco user fee revenues).  These include increases for food safety and  some core functions.

The bill does some other things worth mentioning.  It includes: funds to:

• Expand the Summer EBT program and makes it permanent as of 2024.
• Addresses SNAP EBT skimming (stealing benefits across state lines).
• Test for testing for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS—forever chemicals)
• Make sure lobster and crab fisheries are in compliance with rules about whales.

It takes a lot of expertise to analyze all of this.  Here are two reactions.

Heritage Action: This omnibus package represents the very worst of Washington: back-room deals, $1.85 trillion dollar spending bills full of pet projects and partisan priorities, and an Establishment more interested in their own power than the wellbeing of the American people. The GOP must stand united in their opposition to this bill.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: The biggest disappointment of the year-end bill by far is the failure to expand the Child Tax Credit. The American Rescue Plan’s expanded credit and other relief measures drove the child poverty rate to a record low of 5.2 percent in 2021. But with the expansion’s expiration, that record progress in reducing child poverty in 2021 has sharply reversed.

There are lots of other criticisms of this bill floating around, mainly having to do with what the Biden Administration asked for but did not get, and concerns about inadequate funding of FDA for food safety.

On this last point, let me again say that the perennially underfunded FDA gets its appropriations from agriculture committees, even though it is an agency of the public health service.  Agriculture subcommittees could not care less about FDA.  FDA needs a mandated home in Congress and much better support than it now gets.

Happy new year.

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Happy new year to all.!

And now, back to my Monday postings of industry-funded studies.  Today’s is about the popular herbal supplement, ashwagandha.   This is typically taken to reduce stress and improve a wide variety of health problems, but little science backs up those contentions.  Hence, this study, which I learned about from reading an account of it: Single ashwagandha dose may exert cognitive performance: Study.  That headline was all it took to get me to ask my usual question: Who paid for this?

The study: Effects of Acute Ashwagandha Ingestion on Cognitive Function. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(19), 11852; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191911852

Methods: The study assessed performance on the Berg–Wisconsin Card Sorting (BCST), Go/No-Go (GNG), Sternberg Task (STT), and Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVTT) tests.   Participants took a placebo or ashwagandha (ASH) extract (NooGandha^®, Specnova Inc., Boca Raton, FL, USA).

Conclusions: Acute supplementation with 400 mg of ashwagandha improved selected measures of executive function, helped sustain attention, and increased short-term/working memory.

Funding: “This study was funded as a fee-for-service project awarded to the Human Clinical Research Facility at Texas A&M University from Specnova, Inc. (Boca Raton, FL, USA)…Specnova was not involved in any way in data collection, analysis of the data, or the writing of the manuscript.”

Comment: Specnova, you will not be surprised to learn, is a supplier of supplement ingredients.  The company ordered the study to its specifications.  It got the result it wanted, as funders almost invariably do.  Despite booming sales of ashwagandha, so little is known about its properties that the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine does not even have a fact sheet for it among its reviews of herbal supplements.  Industry-sponsored research to the rescue!  And of course it “was not involved in any way…”  It didn’t have to be.  Funding is usually enough to induce unconscious bias on its own.

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FoodPolitics.com will be on vacation until January 2.  All the best for a wonderful holiday season.

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Much is happening in the plant-based food sector.  I love trying to keep up with it.

First, the bad, or somewhat bad, news:

• SPECIAL REPORT: Plant-based dairy and meat by numbers; declining trends continue, but pockets of growth remain: New data from IRI and SPINS shows continued steep declines in sales of refrigerated meat alternatives but pockets of growth in frozen products and some plant-based milk, cheese, and yogurt subcategories, which do not all behave in the same way (spoiler alert: oatmilk is hot, oat yogurt is not)…. Read more
• Meat substitutes contain ‘antinutrients’ that inhibit absorption of iron and zinc: ‘The industry needs to think about the nutritional value of these products’: New research out of Sweden has found that while many meat substitutes are high in micronutrients like iron they are often found in a form that cannot be absorbed by the body…. Read more 
• Business Insider A food fight is raging over what we can and can’t call ‘meat’:  Startups that make plant-based foods are battling the meat lobby for the right to describe their products as bacon, burgers or steak. Read More

Next, the new product launches:

• The latest food and drink plant-based product launches: Food Manufacture looks at some of the latest food and drink product launches in the plant-based and vegan category, including Meatless Farm, Seabloom, Richmond, Innocent and Sheese. Read more
• Voie gras: Nestlé develops plant-based foie gras alternative for European markets: Just six months on from inception, Nestlé’s vegan foie gras alternative is launching into Swiss and Spanish markets under its Garden Gourmet bran. Read more
• Plant-based butter set to revolutionise the art of pastry with low environmental impactBe Better My Friend is a Dutch company set up by chef Marike van Beurden, food scientist Pere Castells and global food strategist Joost Lindeman with a vision to end the bakery sector’s dependency on animal-derived ingredients…. Read more
• Creamy without the cow: ChickP releases plant-based ice cream with ‘a truly rich’ texture: ChickP Protein’s chickpea-based ice cream prototype boasts dairy-like creamy texture and fewer additives…. Read more
• Philadelphia Cream Cheese launches plant-based spread: The product, which is available at select retailers in the Southeastern U.S., is Kraft Heinz’s second non-dairy launch under one of its flagship brands in the last two months.

And where the industry might be headed:

• Food companies invited to collaborate on plant-based research: Plant2Food, a science platform from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, is inviting UK food companies to collaborate on plant and food science and share new knowledge. Read more

Comment: Despite the current drop in sales, I don’t see these products disappearing off the shelves.  There is a demand or them among people who do not want to eat meat or dairy foods for reasons of health, animal welfare, or the environment.  The products need to taste good if they are going to continue to sell.  And they need to become more food-based rather than ingredient-based if they are to overcome concerns about their meeting definitions of ultra-processed.

I will keep following this sector with great interest.  Stay tuned.

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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report complaining about the Biden administration’s update of the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP).

The Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) describes how much it costs to eat a healthy diet on a limited budget, and is the basis for maximum Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reevaluated the Thrifty Food Plan and made decisions that resulted in increased costs and risks for the reevaluated TFP. Specifically, the agency (1) allowed the cost of the TFP—and thus SNAP benefits—to increase beyond inflation for the first time in 45 years, and (2) accelerated the timeline of the reevaluation by 6 months in order to respond to the COVID-19 emergency. The reevaluation resulted in a 21 percent increase in the cost of the TFP and the maximum SNAP benefit.

The complaint, done at the request of Republican members of the House and Senate, says that “USDA began the reevaluation without three key project management elements in place.”

First, without a charter, USDA missed an opportunity to identify ways to measure project success and to set clear expectations for stakeholders.

Second, USDA developed a project schedule but not a comprehensive project management plan that included certain elements, such as a plan for ensuring quality throughout the process.

Third, the agency did not employ a dedicated project manager to ensure that key practices in project management were generally followed.

USDA gathered external input, but given time constraints, did not fully incorporate this input in its reevaluation.

The GAO agreed, titled its report,  Thrifty Food Plan: Better planning and accountability could help ensure quality of future reevaluations, and said ” GAO found that key decisions did not fully meet standards for economic analysis, primarily due to failure to fully disclose the rationale for decisions, insufficient analysis of the effects of decisions, and lack of documentation.

Comment: The Thrifty Food Plan is the lowest cost of four plans (the other three are the Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost, and Liberal Food Plans) developed by USDA to set standards for a nutritious diet.

These were developed by the USDA in the 1930s to provide “consumers with practical and economic advice on healthful eating.”  The latest figures for a family of four say that the monthly cost of these plans averages about $683, $902, $1121, and $1,362, respectively.

In 2018, the Farm Bill instructed the USDA to re-evaluate the Thrifty Food Plan by 2022 and every five years thereafter.  The most recent revisions was in 2006.

The Thrifty Food Plan has obvious weaknesses:

• It is based on unrealistic amounts and kinds of foods.
• The food list is not consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
• It assumes adequate transportation, equipment, time for food preparation.
• It assumes adequate availability and affordability of the listed foods.
• It costs more than SNAP benefits.

The Plan was long overdue for an update.  The complaints about process are a cover for the real issue: Republican opposition to raising SNAP costs.

No question, SNAP costs have gone up, and by a lot, in billions.

• 2019  $55.6
• 2020  $74.1
• 2021  $108.5
• 2022  $114.5

Food insecurity has decreased accordingly.  And that, after all, is the point.

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It’s a sad sign of the times that the CDC has found it necessary to revise its standard growth charts for boys and girls in order to expand Body Mass Index ranges to include current weights.

The 2000 CDC BMI-for-age growth charts, based on data from 1963-1980 for most children, do not extend beyond the 97th percentile. So, CDC developed new percentiles to monitor very high BMI values. These extended percentiles are based on data for children and adolescents with obesity – including from 1988-2016 – thus increasing the data available in the reference population. See the report on alternative BMI metrics for more information.

Here’s what the comparison looks like (thanks to David Ludwig):

The comparison for girls extends to a BMI of 56.

What are we to make of this?  In revising the growth charts, the CDC is recognizing reality: children weigh more than they used to, and sometimes a lot more.

Why: the quick-and-dirty answer:  junk food (more calories consumed) and electronic media plus imprisonment (fewer calories expended).

The world has changed.  When I was a kid, and when my kids were kids, we didn’t eat a lot of junk food (more politely, ultra-processed), we weren’t allowed to snack all day, and we were free—required!—to walk to school and play outdoors unaccompanied.

Shouldn’t the CDC be engaging in campaigns to promote healthier eating and more activity among children?

One can wish.

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Thanks to Larissa Zimberoff (“Technically Food”) for forwarding this gem of a press release.

Grape Consumption Helps Counter UV Damage to Skin

Recent study reinforces promising role of grapes in photoprotection

A recent human study published in the scientific journal Antioxidants found that consuming grapes protected against ultraviolet (UV) damage to the skin.^[1]  Study subjects showed increased resistance to sunburn after consuming 2 ¼ cups of grapes [sic] every day for two weeks. Additionally, subjects displaying UV resistance also demonstrated unique microbiomic and metabolomic profiles suggesting a correlation between the gut and skin. Natural components found in grapes known as polyphenols are thought to be responsible for these beneficial effects.

The title alone makes me ask: Who paid for this?

Here’s the study: ^[1] Pezzuto, J.M.; Dave, A.; Park, E.-J.; Beyoğlu, D.; Idle, J.R. Short-Term Grape Consumption Diminishes UV-Induced Skin Erythema. Antioxidants 2022, 11, 2372. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox11122372

Funding: “This work was supported in part by the California Table Grape Commission (J.M.P and J.R.I./D.B.).”  The funding statement continues:

The sponsor was not involved in the preparation of the article; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit this article for publication.

Comment: That’s what they all say, despite much overall evidence to the contrary.

Why the sic?  The study was not, in fact, done wtih grapes.,  It was done with “whole grape powder – equivalent to 2.25 cups of grapes per day – for 14 days.”

Are powdered grapes the same as whole grapes?  Would anyone be willing to eat 2.25 cups of whole grapes every day for 14 days?

I like grapes, and grow two kinds on a fence in Ithaca, some for eating, the Concord ones for jam.  Grapes are fruit.  Fruit is good for health.  Eat them if you like them.  They are useful parts of healthy diets.

Are grapes the only fruit that helps counter UV damage to skin?  I doubt it.  But I’m guessing sunscreens work better.

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