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I received a press release announcing a June conference to be held by the Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences.

I had never heard of it.  It says it “is a non-profit organization that catalyzes science for the benefit of public health” and that it “drives, funds, and leads actionable research and elevates food safety and nutritional sciences—all with the ultimate goal of advancing public health.”

That seemed pleasant, if vague, but I was still puzzled.  Nothing on the Institute’s website helped.

This took some digging, but I soon found a news release announcing its formation in February 2021: Leading Scientists Launch Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences to Promote Collaborative Research:

Today marks the establishment of the Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences (IAFNS), a 501(c)(3) organization focused on catalyzing science for the benefit of public health.

Previously known as the International Life Sciences Institute, North America, IAFNS is building on a proud heritage with a focus on actionable science that promotes nutrition, food safety and public health.

Aha!  ILSI,  The classic industry front group.

ILSI, you may recall, was formed by Coca-Cola.

Within the last few years, lots of articles have appeared describing its lobbying efforts on behalf of the food industry.  Some of these were so blatant that Mars withdrew from in in 2018 and Coca-Cola withdrew in 2021.

I’ve written about ILSI often over the years.  See, for example, this post about IlSI’s effort in China.  Or see this article about scientific integrity (or the lack thereof).

Could all the bad press have anything to do with the name change?

A leopard cannot change its spots, alas.

Published October 4, 2022.

Ordering options: Amazon,  Barnes & Noble   Bookshop   IndieBound   Powell’s   UC Press

Overview:  Marion Nestle reflects on her late-in-life career as a world-renowned food politics expert, public health advocate, and founder of the field of food studies following decades of low expectations.

Description:  In this engrossing memoir, Marion Nestle reflects on how she achieved late-in-life success as a leading advocate for healthier and more sustainable diets.  Slow Cooked tells the story of how she built an unparalleled career at a time when few women worked in the sciences, and came to recognize and reveal the enormous influence of the food industry on our dietary choices.

By the time Marion obtained her doctorate in molecular biology, she had been married since the age of nineteen, dropped out of college, worked as a lab technician, divorced, and become a stay-at-home mom with two children.  That’s when she got started.  Slow Cooked charts Marion’s astonishing rise from bench scientist to the pinnacles of academia, how she overcame the barriers and biases women of her generation faced, and how she found her life’s purpose after age fifty. Slow Cooked tells her personal story—one that is deeply relevant to everyone who eats and to anyone who thinks it might be too late to follow a passion.

The blurbs

• “Marion Nestle is one of my heroes. After reading her riveting memoir, I admire her more than ever. She is one of the most important voices in the food world, and in this book she gets personal for the first time.”—Ruth Reichl, former editor of Gourmet Magazine 
• “Marion Nestle is a national treasure, and now you can learn how she came to be. Just like Nestle herself, this beautiful memoir is thoughtful, generous, unstinting, and deeply committed to learning from the past to build a better world.”—Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System 
• “I have always had such admiration for Marion Nestle: she is one of our nation’s shrewdest thinkers and has transformed the way all of us think about public health, the industrial food industry, nutrition, and the future of food. With this extraordinary book, I see for the first time how she became the clear-eyed, indefatigable warrior that she is. Her radical self-reflection and honesty is deeply moving—and in telling her life’’s story, Marion is forging a path for the next generation of food activists.”—Alice Waters, chef, author, food activist, and founder of Chez Panisse restaurant 
• “Marion Nestle is a brilliant, courageous champion of healthy food, social justice, and scientific integrity. This poignant and inspiring book tells us how she came to be that way.”—Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal 
• “Extraordinary! Nestle’s story moves me, heart and soul. I have long admired her leadership in awakening us to the crisis of our corporate-corrupted food system. In this work, however, she offers hope in the capacity of humans to transform obstacles and denigration into opportunity and dignity. She shares a gripping, very personal story that will help us discover our own courage. Just what’s needed now more than ever.”—Frances Moore Lappé, cofounder of Small Planet Institute

Media

2022

Aug 15  Kirkus Reviews: (p. 154) “An impassioned reminder to never stop pursuing your interests.”

Sept 6   A review on Twitter from Parke Wilde (US Food Policy): “delightful, personable, and fearlessly open about parents, husbands, university politics, sexism, racism, famous and ordinary people, all before we even get to the influential career in food politics.”

Sept 21  MOFAD Launch event, announcement in the New York Times (at bottom)

Sept 21  Civil Eats interview about Slow Cooked

Sept 27  Review in Forbes: ” “Slow Cooked” is a delight. It’s safe to say that contemporary food studies would probably not exist without the efforts of Nestle, or it if it did, it would resemble the shallow pop culture dreck of the Food Network.”

Oct 9  Excerpt published by Blue Zones: The birth of Food Politics.

Oct 13  Interview with Sam Reiss, GQ: How Marion Nestle changed the way we talk about food

Oct 27  NYU press announcement

Nov 7  Forbes’ The 30 Best Food And Sustainability Gifts Of 2022

Nov 10  Zibby Mag’s Best Books for those Closest to You

Dec 4  Review in New York Times Book Review’s Shortlist

Dec 23  Deborah Grayon’s review in Worth

2023

Jan 1  Jennifer Wilkins’ review of Slow Cooked. J Nutr Educ Behavior. 2023;55(1):81-82. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2022.11.001

Jan 3  De memoires van ‘voedselstrijder’ Marion Nestle.  FoodLog (in Dutch)

Feb 15  A Tweet from UC Press on my six books with them for International Day for Women and Girls in Science

April 7  Review by Serge Hercberg in the American Journal of Public Health

 

I’ve been collecting items on food waste.  Here are four recent ones.

I.  EPA: From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of Food Waste.   The Infographic Summary:

II.  WWF: Driven to Waste: The Global Impact of Food Loss and Waste on Farms.

Driven to Waste: Global Food Loss on Farms, a new report from WWF and Tesco, reveals an estimated 2.5 billion tonnes of food goes uneaten around the world each year. That is an increase of approximately 1.2 billion tonnes on the established estimates of 1.3 billion tonnes wasted each year. These new estimates indicate that of all the food grown, approximately 40 per cent goes uneaten, which is higher than the previously estimated figure of 33 per cent.

III.  Washington State Department of Ecology: Use Food Well Washington: A roadmap to a more resilient food system through food waste reduction].

Food waste is one of the greatest challenges of our time, with significant environmental, social, and economic impacts. Thankfully, our research shows the potential benefits to addressing food waste in Washington are just as enormous (Fig. 1).
Our calculations indicate Washington generates more than one million tons of food waste annually, with a large portion (about 35 percent) being edible food going into landfills.

IV.  How are food manufacturers tackling waste management?  As 2022 gets underway, waste management has moved from arguably to inarguably never more important…. Read more

Pet food, as I am fond of repeating, is an essential part of the human food supply because it uses the waste from human food production.

Also, whatever is happening with pet food indicates what could well be happening with human food.

That’s why I was fascinated to read this account in Pet Food Industry of finding DNA from endangered sharks in any number of pet food brands.

Researchers identified shark genetic material in cat foods purchased in Singapore, including Fancy Feast, Sheba, Whiskas, Kit Cat and Aixia Yaizu. The scientists suggested that endangered silky sharks and other species ended up in pet foods. However, the study’s authors couldn’t determine the route by which the shark meat made its way into the pet food supply chain. Likewise, they didn’t have easy solutions for how pet food companies could avoid inadvertently allowing endangered sharks into their products.

The evidence comes from a report of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Pet Food Industry further explains:

The silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis), listed as CITES Appendix II, was the second most frequently encountered species in the pet foods. Silky sharks face tremendous hunting pressure for their fins. The researchers speculated that the presence of the silky sharks may reflect the use of the rest of their carcasses in pet food.

Blue sharks, Prionace glauca, were the most common species in the samples. Blue sharks are not listed in CITES or classified as threatened by the IUCN, but scientists believe it is being overfished and needs regulation.

None of the pet foods’ ingredient decks mentioned sharks. Terms such as “ocean fish,” “white fish” and “white bait” appeared though.

I wrote about the pet food supply chain (particularly as related to melamine contamination) in Pet Food Politics and, with Mal Nesheim, in Feed Your Pet Right.  

The point: If we don’t want to encourage destruction of endangered species, we ought to be checking cans of tuna for people while we are at it.

I learned about this one from a PR tweet from @Brigham Research: “Dr. JoAnn Manson…& colleagues report the main findings of the first ever randomized trial of a cocoa flavanol supplement on cardiovascular disease endpoints.”

Its spectacular results:  Supplementation with cocoa flavanols led to a 27% reduction in deaths from cardiovascular disease among all participants taking the supplement, and a 39% reduction in those deaths when they excluded participants who did not take the pills properly.

From taking cocoa flavanol supplements?

Who paid for this?

Bingo.

The study (still in preprint): Effect of Cocoa Flavanol Supplementation for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease Events: The COSMOS Randomized Clinical Trial.  Sesso HD, et al.  American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, nqac055, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqac055

Conclusion: “Cocoa extract supplementation did not significantly reduce total cardiovascular events among older adults but reduced CVD death by 27%….”

Funding: “The Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS) is supported by an investigator-initiated grant from Mars Edge, a segment of Mars dedicated to nutrition research and products, which included infrastructure support and the donation of study pills and packaging…[and other sources].

Conflicts of interest: Drs. Sesso and Manson reported receiving investigatorinitiated grants from Mars Edge, a segment of Mars Incorporated dedicated to nutrition research and products, for infrastructure support and donation of COSMOS study pills and packaging,
Pfizer Consumer Healthcare (now part of GSK Consumer Healthcare) for donation of COSMOS study pills and packaging during the conduct of the study. Dr. Sesso additionally reported receiving investigator-initiated grants from Pure Encapsulations and Pfizer Inc. and honoraria
and/or travel for lectures from the Council for Responsible Nutrition, BASF, NIH, and American Society of Nutrition during the conduct of the study. No other authors reported any conflicts of interest.

Comment: Déjà vu all over again.

Mars, as I described in detail in Unsavory Truth, has been trying to make you think that chocolate is a health food (M&Ms!) for decades. It created a special brand, CocoaVia, for this purpose.  Here is an excerpt:

In 1982, Mars established a chocolate research center in Brazil.[i]  Its scientists were particularly interested in cocoa flavanols, a category of flavonoids with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and other heart-healthy effects.  Through the 1980s and 1990s, Mars’ scientists produced studies suggesting such benefits.

Alas, cocoa flavanols come with complications.  They taste bitter (dark chocolate contains more of them).  They are present in such small amounts that you would have to eat a quarter to a full pound of chocolate a day to achieve cardiovascular benefits.[ii]  Worse, they are destroyed by traditional chocolate processing.[iii]  The losses may explain why a Hershey-funded clinical trial failed to find neuropsychological or cardiovascular benefits from eating dark chocolate when compared to a placebo.[iv]

But to return to CocoaVia: Mars developed a process to preserve the cocoa flavanols during processing, and combined the rescued flavanols with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols to make chocolate bars and chocolate-covered almonds.  By 2002, the company decided that it had enough research to promote CocoaVia candies as heart-healthy.[v]  As the New York Times put it, Mars was on a “corporate quest to transform chocolate into a healthy indulgence.”[vi]  Mars marketed the candy bars—two a day, no less—as a means to increase blood flow, lower blood pressure, and reduce the risk for heart disease.

The FDA takes a dim view of unproven claims like “chocolate prevents heart disease.”  In 2006, the agency sent Mars a warning letter complaining that claims like “promotes a healthy heart” and “now you can have real chocolate pleasure with real heart health benefits,” were false, misleading, and easily misinterpreted…Chocolate, the FDA pointed out, is high in saturated fat (it didn’t mention sugar).   Furthermore, the claim “Cocoa Via Chocolate Bars contain natural plant extracts that have been proven to reduce bad cholesterol (LDL) by up to 8%,” meant that Mars was advertising chocolate as a drug.  If Mars wanted to make drug claims, it would need to conduct clinical trials to prove that eating CocoaVia chocolate bars prevented heart disease.[vii]

Rather than run the financial and scientific risk of doing that, Mars gave up on candy bars and began marketing CocoaVia in pills and powder as a “daily cocoa extract supplement.”  In doing this, Mars could take advantage of the more lenient marketing claims allowed by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994. This act permits “structure/function” claims, those proposing that a supplement is good for some structure or function of the body.  Under DSHEA, the labels of CocoaVia are allowed to say that these supplements “promote a healthy heart by supporting healthy blood flow.”

To convince people to take CocoaVia supplements, Mars funds research.  In 2015, it funded studies demonstrating that cocoa flavanols are well tolerated in healthy men and women,[viii] support healthy cognitive function in aging,[ix] can reverse cardiovascular risk in the healthy elderly,[x] and improve biomarkers of cardiovascular risk.[xi]

Lest the “eat more chocolate” implications of these studies be missed, Mars issued a press release: “Cocoa flavanols lower blood pressure and increase blood vessel function in healthy people.”[xii]  The company followed this announcement with a full-page ad in the New York Times quoting a dietitian: flavanols “support healthy blood flow…which allows oxygen and nutrients to get to your heart more easily.”  …The ad directed readers to more information on a paid ad on the Times’ Website.  You have to look hard in these ads to discover that Mars owns CocoaVia; the company’s name only appears in barely legible print as part of the trademark.[xiii]

But Mars, which already has funded “more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers and [has] approximately 100 patents globally in the field of cocoa flavanols”[xiv] has more ambitious research plans.  In 2014, the company announced that in partnership with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute it would provide “financial infrastructure support “ for an ambitious placebo-controlled, randomized trial of the effects of cocoa flavanols alone or in combination with vitamin supplements, on heart disease and cancer risk in 18,000 men and women over the age of 60.[xv]  The five-year trial, called the Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS), has evolved somewhat since then.  It now lists Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston as the sponsor, and Mars as a “collaborator” along with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and Pfizer. NIH seems no longer to be involved.[xvi]

We now have the result of this trial.  Even though cocoa flavanol supplements did not reduce cardiovascular events, Mars got its money’s worth from what must have been a very expensive study.

Tomorrow: a second report from this trial, with surprising results.

References

[i] Mars, Inc.  The history of CocoaVia.  CocoaVia.com

https://www.cocoavia.com/how-we-make-it/history-of-cocoavia

[ii] Vlachojannis J, Erne P, Zimmermann B, Chrubasik-Hausmann S.  The impact of cocoa flavanols on cardiovascular health.  Phytother Res.  2016;30(10):1641-57.

[iii] Andres-LaCueva C, Monagas M, Khan N, et al.  Flavanol and flavonol contents of cocoa powder products: influence of the manufacturing process.  J Agric Food Chem. 2008;56:3111-17.

[iv] Crews WD, Harrison DW, Wright JW.  A double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial of the effects of dark chocolate and cocoa on variables associated with neuropsychological functioning and cardiovascular health: clinical findings from a sample of healthy, cognitively intact older adults.  Am J Clin Nutr. 2008;87(4):872-80.

[v] Meek J.  Chocolate is good for you (or how Mars tried to sell us this as health food).  The Guardian, Dec 23, 2002.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/dec/23/research.highereducation

[vi] Barrionuevo A.  An apple a day for health?  Mars recommends two bars of chocolate.  NY Times, Oct 31, 2005.

The FDA considers candy bars to be foods labeled with Nutrition Facts panels.  Supplements are labeled with Supplement Fact panels.

[vii] FDA.  Inspections, compliance, enforcement, and criminal investigations.  Warning letter to Mr. John Helferich, Masterfoods USA.  FDA, May 31, 2006.  http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/2006/ucm075927.htm

[viii] Ottaviani JI, Balz M, Kimball J, et al. Safety and efficacy of cocoa flavanol intake in healthy adults: a randomized, controlled, double-masked trial.  Am J Clin Nutr. 2015;102(6):1425-35.

[ix] Necozione S, Raffaele A, Pistacchio L, et al.  Cocoa flavanol consumption improves cognitive function, blood pressure control, and metabolic profile in elderly subjects: the Cocoa, Cognition, and Aging (CoCoA) Study—a randomized controlled trial  Am J Clin Nutr. 2015; 101:538-48.

[x] Heiss C, Sansone R, Karimi H, et al.  Impact of cocoa flavanol intake on age-dependent vascular stiffness in healthy men: a randomized, controlled, double-masked trial.  Age. 2015;37:56.

[xi] Sansone R, Rodriguez-Mateos A, Heuel J, et al.  Cocoa flavanol intake improves endothelial function and Framingham Risk Score in healthy men and women: a randomised, controlled, double-masked trial: the Flaviola Health Study.  Brit J Nutr. 2015;114(8):1246-55.

[xii] Mars Center for Cocoa Health Science.  Press release: Cocoa flavanols lower blood pressure and increase blood vessel function in healthy people.  MarsCocoaScience.com, Sep 9, 2015.  http://www.marscocoascience.com/news/cocoa-flavanols-lower-blood-pressure-and-increase-blood-vessel-function-in-healthy-people.

[xiii] CocoaVia.  Cocoa’s past and present: a new era for heart health.  NY Times, Sep 27, 2015.  http://paidpost.nytimes.com/cocoavia/cocoas-past-and-present-a-new-era-for-heart-health.html?_r=0

[xiv] Mars Symbioscience.  Explore Mars Symbioscience.  Mars.com.

http://www.mars.com/global/brands/symbioscience

[xv] Mars.  Largest nutritional intervention trial of cocoa flavanols and hearth (sic) health to be launched.  MarsCocoaScience.com, Mar 17, 2014.

http://www.marscocoascience.com/news/largest-nutritional-intervention-trial

[xvi] The trial is registered at COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS).    ClinicalTrials.gov.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02422745

[xvii] ASRC (Advertising Self-Regulatory Council).  NAD recommends Mars modify certain claims for CocoaVia cocoa extract.  ASRCReviews.org, Aug 11, 2016.

http://www.asrcreviews.org/nad-recommends-mars-modify-certain-claims-for-cocoavia-cocoa-extract/

I haven’t done one of these in a while, so here’s my latest collection of articles on what the plant-based meat and dairy alternative industry is up to.  This seems especially appropriate for St. Patrick’s Day.

I “borrowed” the photo from this site (thanks!).

The plant-based market isn’t doing all that well?

• The terrifying truth: the addressable market at retail for plant-based meat offerings is not that big after all: By now, we are all familiar with the recent topline ‘problem’ in retail plant-based meat. The slow-down is visible in Beyond Meat’s latest earnings call itself. Foodservice and international sales are driving all of the brand’s growth. And it appears to be a velocity, not just revenue, slow-down, which, if true, is never, ever good when your supposed growth sector is far from its rosy market share dream objective of 10% of all meat (retail and foodservice)…. Read more
• As plant-based meat growth stalls, what does it mean for the category?  Earnings reports last week for Beyond Meat and Maple Leaf Foods showed flat or negative growth — and no clear way to jumpstart sales.

Plenty of companies are still in this arena, domestically as well as internationally:

• Clif expands plant-based product mix as consumers get back to pre-pandemic bustle: New research from Clif Bar & Company found the majority of Americans are returning to their pre-pandemic routine – with 72% admitting to snack even more frequently than they were prior to the outbreak of COVID…. Read more
• Plant-based 3D printing: China and Australia identified as key markets for new Wagyu launch: Hong Kong 3D food printing firm Alt Farm is eyeing China and Australia as its first key target markets, revealing it hopes to launch a prototype plant-based A5 Wagyu Beef product in the next 12 to 18 months…. Read more
• China Focus: Plant-based yoghurt, hybrid meat products, China-based nutrition studies and more feature in our round-up: Plant-based yoghurt, hybrid meat products, China-based nutrition studies and more feature in this edition of China Focus…. Read more

Plant-based ingredients are of great interest:

• Plant-based protein in focus: from Pongamia to chickpeas: Plant-based proteins continue to dominate the so-called ‘alternative protein’ category, but will this still be the case in 10 years’ time? And which emerging plant proteins – from canola, barley and hemp to Pongamia, lupin, and chickpeas – will become the next soy, wheat, and pea?… Read more
• Fat… the final frontier for meat alternatives? Designer fat co Lypid raises $4m to commercialize microencapsulated vegan oils that behave like animal fat:  Plant-based meat alternatives are getting ‘meatier’ by the day as brands reverse engineer animal products and put them back together with plants. But getting plant-based fat to behave like animal fat has been a major stumbling block for the industry, says foodtech startup Lypid, which has just raised $4m in seed funding to help commercialize its ‘PhytoFat’ platform…. Read more 
• Impossible Foods sues Motif FoodWorks over its plant-based heme product: The meat alternative maker says the ingredients manufacturer could get non-public information about the way its key ingredient is made and is infringing on its patent.

Some skepticism seems warranted:

• As Investors Bet on ‘Milk Without Cows,’ Questions About Transparency Loom: Perfect Day and other companies making milk with precision fermentation promise animal-free, lower-carbon products through technology. They may also benefit from a lack of consumer understanding about the science.

Yum?

For those of us who have long argued that it would be good for kids and for society if they were fed meals in school, no questions asked.

Nothing makes more sense to me than universal school meals.

• All kids get fed
• No stigmatizing of poor kids
• No school hassles over which kids qualify
• No lunch shaming
• No administative costs for policing school meal eligibility

I the pandemic did any good at all, it was to make school meals universal well into the second year.

It worked.  Kids got fed.  Schools didn’t have to police.

Yes it would cost money: an estimated $11 billion.

Let’s put that in context; it’s barely a rounding error.   If I’ve done the math right, $11 billion = 0.007% of $1.5 trillion.

Our national priorities are clear from this chart.  Defense is 48%, and all agriculture and food programs together are less than 0.02%.** 

Or, to show what this looked like visually in 2019:

Politico explains the background

Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed in mid-March 2020, the Agriculture Department was first given authority to issue waivers for a slew of regulations….The authority now expires in June. School nutrition program operators have been optimistically assuming that the waivers would get extended one more school year to help them transition

back to normal, as supply chains continue to short schools of basic staples like chicken and whole grain bread, and food costs remain high and staffing is so low it’s approaching crisis levels.

You can read about the politics in the Politico article as well.

This congressional decision is nothing short of disgraceful.  Congress should be ashamed.

What to do?  Scream and shout to your congressional representatives to get this reversed.

• The $1.5 trillion spending package
• The omnibus appropriations bill is here.
• The House Appropriations Committee summary is here.
• The President’s proposed budget is here.

** Added note: Several readers wrote me to say that the Vox figures above refer to discretionary spending but leave out entitlements such as Social Security and SNAP.  Others said the figures underestimate military spending because they do not include veterans benefits and other such items.  Adding in all this would make the percentage for school meals even smaller.