by Marion Nestle

Search results: public health strategies

Sep 23 2020

Hunger in America: The landscape in 2020

Before getting into the statistics, let’s start with the on-the-ground reality: real people, often with small children, are too poor to feed themselves and their families properly.  For the human impact of pandemic poverty, see:

Prior to the pandemic, poverty and food insecurity were declining in America.

But now we have pandemic-induced illness, job losses, school closures, business closures.

The USDA won’t report on food insecurity for another year, so it’s difficult to know what’s happening right now.  USDA data on SNAP are available only through April.

Even then, early signs were alarming.

We badly need effective policies to protect people against hunger.

Additional USDA resources

  • Food Security in the U.S.  Food security—access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life—is one requirement for a healthy, well-nourished population. ERS plays a leading role in Federal research on food security in U.S. households and communities.
  • Food Security in the United States: This product provides information about publicly available data from national surveys that include the U.S. Food Security Survey Module. Technical information is provided to facilitate appropriate use of the data, and links are provided to access data online or to order the data files on CD-ROM.
  • Statistical Supplement to Household Food Security in the United States in 2019: This supplement to Household Food Security in the United States in 2019 describes food insecurity and how it is assessed.

 

 

 

Jun 29 2020

Industry-funded research, Australia style

A reader in Australia writes that she “just came upon a doozy of an industry-funded paper.”

Title: Sales of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages in Australia: A Trend Analysis from 1997 to 2018, by William S. Shrapnel and Belinda E. Butcher.  Nutrients 2020, 12, 1016; doi:10.3390/nu12041016.

Conclusion: Major, long-term shifts are occurring in the market for non-alcoholic, water-based beverages in Australia, notably a fall in per capita volume sales of SSBs and an increase in volume sales of water. Both trends are consistent with public health nutrition strategies for obesity prevention and suggest that the downward trend in the percentage of dietary energy from added sugars in the Australian diet may be continuing.

Funding and Conflicts of Interest: This analysis was funded by an unrestricted grant from The Australian Beverages Council Ltd. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

So what’s the problem here (besides the usual questions about the accuracy of the “no role” statement)?

The clue comes from an article in Food Navigator Asia: “Not a taxing question: Australian sugar sweetened beverage consumption slumps as obesity rates continue to soar.”

The article quotes a representative of the Beverage Council:

Obesity is multi-factorial, the reason why people become overweight and then obese, is because of the lack of physical activity, a sedentary lifestyle, and also poor diet…a sugar tax alone would not reduce the obesity rates in the country, and was a complex challenge for the government to overcome.  The beverage industry is against a sugar tax, and SSB tax.  The evidence and science behind the effectiveness of a sugar tax is weak.

Comment: The point of this study is to produce evidence against the value of soda or sugar taxes, even though sodas are still the largest source of sugars in Australian diets, and taxes have been shown to reduce consumption in other countries.  When it comes to sugary drinks, less is better.

Just for fun, here’s Healthy Food America’s 2019 map of countries with soda taxes.

 

May 8 2020

Weekend reading: Bite Back!

Saru Jayaraman and Kathryn De Master, eds.  Bite Back: People Taking On Corporate Food and Winning.  University of California Press, 2020.

Bite Back by Saru Jayaraman, Kathryn De Master - Paperback ...

It is a heartbreak that this book is being released at a time when book tours have to be virtual.

If the Coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is about the basic inadequacies and inequities of our food system, and how badly we need to do something about them.  Just one example: slaughterhouses as viral epicenters forced to stay open by presidential decree.

What can be done?

Start here.  Buy this book.  Read it.  Act.

This book has been a long time coming.  I wrote its Foreword.  Here’s what I said (the version as published was edited slightly).

Our food system—how we produce, process, distribute, and consume food—is broken, and badly.  We know this because roughly a billion people in the world go hungry every day for lack of a reliable food supply while, perversely, about two billion are overweight and at increased risk for chronic diseases.  All of us bear the consequences of atmospheric warming due, in part, to greenhouse gases released from industrial production of food animals.

It is true that a great many factors have contributed to the breaking of our food system, but one in particular stands out as a cause: the companies that produce our food put profits above public health. They have to.  Capitalism demands this priority.

Yes, food companies make and sell products we love to eat, but they are not social service agencies.  They are businesses with primary fiduciary responsibilities to stockholders.  Like all corporations, they must put profits above public health.

If we want to reverse this priority, we are going to have to get organized, mobilize, and act.  Bite Back, a truly extraordinary book, tells us how.

Bite Back is a manifesto.  It is a call to action to reverse the harm caused by corporate takeover of our food system.  It is an advocacy manual for, as the editors put it, “disrupting corporate power through food democracy.”  It is a guidebook for empowering all of us to resist corporate power and to collectively gain the power to make our own decisions about how to create a food system that best prevents hunger, improves health, and reverses climate change.

The operative phrase here is “food democracy.”  This book embeds democracy in its very structure.  The first part of each of its sections—Labor, Seeds, Pesticides, Energy, Health, Hunger, Trade–reviews how the requirement that corporations focus on profits has harmed workers, undermined small farmers, imperiled health, damaged the environment, and imposed highly processed “junk” foods on world populations.

But the second parts are about democracy in action.  Each highlights the work of individuals or groups who have resisted corporate power—and succeeded in doing so.  Here, we see how community organizing, grassroots advocacy, and bottom-up leadership can stop or reverse some of the more egregious corporate damage.  These chapters make it clear that advocacy can succeed.  They demonstrate that resistance to corporate power is not only necessary; it is also possible.

            The food movement in the United States has been criticized for its focus on personal food access rather than putting its energy into mobilizing forces to gain real political power.  Why, for example, do we not see a grassroots political movement emerging among participants in federal food assistance programs to demand better-paying jobs, safer communities, and better schools?  I’m guessing that the power imbalance seems too discouraging.  This book aims to redress that imbalance.

Bite Back presents voices from the food movement, all deeply passionate about their causes.  Read here about the importance of grassroots organizing, why advocates must stay eternally vigilant to maintain the gains they have won, and why uniting advocacy organizations into strong coalitions is essential for gaining power.

A particular gift is the Afterword, which is anything but an afterthought.  Subtitled “Taking Action to Create Change,” it is a superb summary of the principal elements of successful advocacy.  It explains the basic tools of community organizing—setting goals, building organizations and coalitions, identifying the people who can make desired changes, developing strategies and tactics, and gaining real power—and how to obtain and use those tools.

Together, these elements make Bite Back essential reading for anyone who longs for a food system healthier for people and the environment.  This book is an inspiration for food advocates and potential advocates.  Join organizations!  Vote!  Run for office!   Whatever you do, get busy and act!   Our food system and the world will be better—much better—as a result.

                •                                                                                     –Marion Nestle, New York City, March 2019

 

 

May 7 2020

Uh oh. Foodborne illnesses are rising

The CDC’s latest report on foodborne illness does not have good news.

Of eight pathogens tracked by CDC’s FoodNet system, illnesses caused by five have increased since last year and three are about the same.

During 2019, FoodNet identified 25,866 cases of infection, 6,164 hospitalizations, and 122 deaths …In 2019, compared with the previous 3 years, the incidence of infections caused by pathogens transmitted commonly through food increased (for CampylobacterCyclospora, STEC, VibrioYersinia) or remained unchanged (for Listeria, Salmonella, Shigella). These data indicate that Healthy People 2020 targets for reducing foodborne illness will not be met.

The CDC’s conclusion?

FoodNet surveillance data indicate that progress in controlling major foodborne pathogens in the United States has stalled. To better protect the public and achieve forthcoming Healthy People 2030 foodborne disease reduction goals, more widespread implementation of known prevention measures and new strategies that target particular pathogens and serotypes are needed.

Note that Coronavirus is not a cause of foodborne illness, and has never been shown to do so.  Coronavirus affects the food system in other ways: closing restaurants, schools, and other institutions; sickening farm workers, slaughterhouse workers, grocery store workers–and food inspectors.

Now more than ever is time for diligent attention to food safety procedures.

Jan 24 2020

Weekend reading: Nature Food

It’s pretty exciting when a major international science journal starts a satellite journal devoted to food issues.  Welcome to Nature Food.

Volume 1 Issue 1Silos and systems: The image of a corn processing plant with storage silos represents an early stage of the food supply chain and entry point to a complex, increasingly globalized food system with broad health, economic, social and environmental interactions. The journey from silo to system starts here.

Here’s what’s in Volume 1, Issue 1, January 2020:  

  • Editorial: From silos to systems.  The global food system needs a radical overhaul to sustainably feed 10 billion people by 2050. Nature Food calls on scientists from the many disciplines of food to contribute their knowledge and experience to a collective dialogue on food system transformation.
  • Comment: Planet-proofing the global food system  Without a great food system transformation, the world will fail to deliver both on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement. There are five grand challenges to be faced, by science and society, to effect that transformation.  Johan Rockström et al.
  • Comment: A national approach for transformation of the UK food system: Transformation of the food system at the national scale requires concerted action from government, business and civil society, based on sound evidence from the research community. A programme for transformation of the United Kingdom’s food system, for healthy people and a healthy environment, is described here.  Riaz Bhunnoo  & Guy M. Poppy.
  • Comment:  A future workforce of food-system analysts:  A programme developed across five UK universities aims to equip graduate professionals with the skills, tools and capabilities to better understand and manage food-system complexity for food security, for the environment and for enterprise.  John Ingram, et al.
  • Q&A:  Where there is political will, there is a way.  Tom Arnold has a wealth of experience in humanitarian and development approaches to combatting hunger. In his roles in food and agriculture, including with Scaling Up Nutrition and Task Force Rural Africa, he advocates for policy consistency and supportive relationships between civil society, business and government.  Anne Mullen.
  • News & Views: Uncertainties in global crop modelling.  A consistent global gridded multi-model assessment of wheat production under climate change points to large uncertainties arising from crop models, particularly in mid and high latitudes.  Ann-Kristin Koehler
  • News & Views:  The changing nature of our food systems.  The wealth of national food supply data, collected over decades by member states of the Food and Agriculture Organization, provides intriguing insights into regional transitions.  Roseline Remans
  • News & Views:  Running AMOC in the farming economy.  Climate tipping points, such as the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), could drive significant structural changes in agriculture, with profound consequences for global food security.  Tim G. Benton
  • News & Views:  From stinkweed to oilseed.  Up to now, creativity, ingenuity, time and more than a little luck have been essential for transforming a wild plant into a new food crop. Building on the understanding of gene function in Arabidopsis, the process of domestication can be rapidly accelerated.  Anne B. Britt
  • News & Views: Mind the (supply) gap.  The gap between global supply and demand of omega-3 fatty acids is twice previous estimates. Opportunities to narrow that gap include increasing use of fishery by-products and reducing food waste.  Brett D. Glencross
  • Perspective:  Nitrogen pollution policy beyond the farm.  This Perspective builds on the concept of full-chain nitrogen use efficiency to propose policy interventions and criteria that target major actors in the agri-food chain.  David R. Kanter et al.
  • Perspective:  The unmapped chemical complexity of our diet.  Advances such as machine learning may enable the full biochemical spectrum of food to be studied systematically. Uncovering the ‘dark matter’ of nutrition could open new avenues for a greater understanding of the composition of what we eat and how it relates to health and disease.  Albert-László Barabási et al.
  • Review Article:  The nexus between international trade, food systems, malnutrition and climate change.  Trade agreements can constrain or enable governments’ ability to implement food system-level actions aimed at improving nutrition and mitigating climate change. The technical and political aspects of trade agreements that interact with food systems are reviewed here, and the coherence between trade policy goals and public interest goals, such as nutrition and climate change, is discussed.  Sharon Friel et al
  • Brief Communication:  Systems approach to quantify the global omega-3 fatty acid cycle.  Omega-3 fatty acids are important for the human diet and for some aqua and animal feeds. This study reports a supply gap, and using quantitative systems analysis identifies targets for increasing efficiency in the global omega-3 cycle.  Helen A. Hamilton et al.
  • Article:  Multidimensional characterization of global food supply from 1961 to 2013.  Food systems are increasingly globalized and interdependent. Using food supply data from over 170 countries, Bentham et al. characterize global patterns of food supply change over five decades, highlighting the decline in the supply of animal source food and sugar in many Western countries, the increase in the supply of such foods in Asian countries and remarkably little change in food supply in the sub-Saharan Africa region.  James Bentham et al.
  • Article: Shifts in national land use and food production in Great Britain after a climate tipping point.  Collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) will impact agricultural land use and its economic value in Great Britain. Ritchie et al. model the impacts of smooth (conventional climate change) and abrupt (tipping point change) AMOC collapse on land use, arable farming and related economic outputs in Britain, as well as the economic feasibility of technological adaptations such as widespread irrigation. Paul D. L. Ritchie et al.
  • Article:  Identification and stacking of crucial traits required for the domestication of pennycress.  Thlaspi arvense (pennycress) has the potential to provide new sources of food and bioproducts when grown as a winter cover crop. Here, Chopra et al. demonstrate that multiple desirable traits can be stacked to rapidly domesticate pennycress. The resulting crop integrates into current crop rotations and produces seeds with improved nutritional qualities, easier harvesting and suitability for human consumption.  Ratan Chopra et al
  • Food for Thought:  The Londoner’s meal.  Globalization transforms societies, economies and cultures. As a subject, food allows us to draw unique narratives on these transformations . The history of pie and mash, also known as the ‘Londoner’s meal’, is such a story of globalization.  Ronald Ranta
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Apr 12 2019

Access to Nutrition Index: the 2018 update

The George Institute in Australia (see clarification below) publishes an annual index holding the ten largest U.S. food and beverage corporations accountable for how they addrss nutrition challenges.

The 2018 Index ranks corporations on their governance, products, accessability, marketing, lifestyle, labeling, and engagement.  Here’s what it looks like.

 

Here’s how this is explained:

Seven out of ten companies claim to focus on improving health and nutrition (all except Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper Snapple and Kraft Heinz), as expressed in their mission statements or corporate growth strategies, the objectives they defined related to health and wellness are mostly limited to product development, product reformulation and responsible marketing. Only two companies (Nestlé and Unilever) have defined a more comprehensive set of objectives within their nutrition strategy.

To remind you: food corporations are not social service or public health agencies.  They have stockholders to please as their first priority.  The conflicts of interest with public health approaches are obvious.  That’s why none of them does particularly well on this Index.

Clarification from a reader

I believe you are referring to the US Spotlight Index, a product of the Access to Nutrition Foundation, an independent nonprofit in the Netherlands.  (https://www.accesstonutrition.org).  The George Institute provided research support for the US Spotlight index. RWJF [Robert Wood Johnson Foundation] was a major funder.  The Foundation has also published an India Spotlight Index (2016) and a Global Index (latest in 2018).  Shiriki Kumanyika chairs the Expert Group.

Mar 15 2019

Weekend reading: The Grand Food Bargain

Kevin D. Walker.  The Grand Food Bargain and the Mindless Drive for More.  Island Press, 2019. 

I did a blurb for this one:

A former USDA insider’s account of what our Grand Food Bargain—a system focused on ever-increasing production of cheap food—actually costs Americans in poor health, environmental degradation, and loss of agrarian values and community.  Walker’s views are well worth reading for his insights into how our food system needs to be transformed

Some snippets:

  • Early farm bills, sold to the public by promising more food with less uncertainty, were designed to stabilize food prices and increase farm income.  Eight decades later, new farm bills are still being enacted despite average farm income long ago surpassing non-farm income and continuing food surplus.  Each new bill is an increasingly costly grab bag of subsidies and protections, which invariably attracts more interest groups and lobbying.  Other than loose connections to agriculture, no coherent policy direction exists (p. 91).
  • Narrow [scientific and technical] expertise alone, for example, does not address the connections among rising rates of obesity, exhaustion of fossil waters, escalating nitrous oxide in the atmosphere, noxious weeds immune to legacy pesticides, growing antibiotic resistance—all the result of how the modern food system operates and how society now lives (p. 114).
  • As sophisticated financial strategies are grafted onto the modern food system, more mergers and acquisitions by ever-larger multinational companies follow.  Food is no longer valued for its ability to sustain life, but only for its ability to generate profits.  Whether higher returns come from squeezing farmers under contract to grow pigs or poultry, creating a monopoly on seeds that can be doused with chemicals, or selling food laden with cheap calories makes no difference (p. 141).

Walker’s remedy?  Let food be our teacher.  It’s worth reading what he means by this.

Feb 25 2019

Industry-funded study of the week: avocados

I love avocados and think they—like all fruits and vegetables—are just fine to eat.

But avocado trade associations want us to eat more avocados.

A reporter sent me correspondence from an executive from a public relations firm that must represent some such trade association.  Over a period of about a month, the PR person sent the reporter four emails.  Here is message #4:

Subject: New avocado research just in time for American Heart Month

Sorry for the nudge – I just wanted to check in one more time to see if you’re working on any heart health related stories in which avocados could be a fit. If so, I thought your readers may find this research helpful. Either way, please let me know and I will stop bugging you ?

The previous three messages extolled the heart-healthy benefits of eating avocados and offered to connect the reporter to a dietitian (identified by name) “for a phone or email interview to discuss this further and answer any questions.”

None of the messages stated who the PR firm or dietitian were working for.

But take a look at the research article.

The study’s conclusion: “Incorporating fresh Hass avocados in meals can help people achieve dietary recommendations to eat more fruits and vegetables and simple substitution strategies with avocados for carbohydrates can add to the nutrient diversity of the diet and potentially have important cardio-metabolic benefits worthy of investigating further.”

No surprise: “This research was supported by the Hass Avocado Board, Irvine, CA, USA.”  One of the authors “is a member of Avocado Nutrition Science Advisory.”

The reporter’s response to all this, and I quote: “AAAAHGGHGHGH.”

Mine too.