by Marion Nestle

Currently browsing posts about: Fats-and-oils

Jan 31 2024

Food question of the week: Why is fruitcake so indestructable?

If you still have fruitcake left over from Christmas, you are undoubtedly wondering why it is still around and whether it is still edible.

Fortunately, we have Scientific American to thank for shedding light on this pressing issue.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, these seemingly indestructible pastries typically stay fresh for six months in the pantry and up to a year when refrigerated. But anecdotally we know that they can last for decades; some of the oldest have been preserved for more than a century. In 2017 a then 106-year-old fruitcake left behind by members of a 1910 Antarctic expedition was unearthed from one of the continent’s first buildings. And in 2019 the Detroit News reported that a Michigan family treasured a then 141-year-old fruitcake as an heirloom. And you could theoretically still eat these century-old cakes without harm—if you can get past the nauseating, rancid smell.

The reasons for fruitcake’s indestructability are because it is made with:

  • Alcohol,
  • Dried fruit
  • Sugar
  • Not much liquid

Bacteria are killed by alcohol and do not reproduce well under conditions of high sugar, low water, and low oxygen (high cake density)—dryness, in a word.

So if yours is still around, you can eat it as long as it smells OK.  If it starts smelling  bad, it’s because the fats are getting rnncid.

Aren’t you glad I asked?

Feb 3 2021

The endless debates about palm oil

Palm oil is on my mind these days because I just did a blurb for a forthcoming book, Jocelyn Zuckerman’s Planet Palm: How Palm Oil Ended Up in Everything—and Endangered the World, which I will say more about when it is published in May.

Palm oil raises so many issues that it’s hard to know where to begin: unhealthy degree of fat saturation, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, child labor, labor exploitation, adulteration, and criminal behavior, with everyone who consumes products made with palm oil complicit in these problems.

Reporters for AP News have done some investigating.  Their most recent report talks about the links between child labor and Girl Scout Cookies. 

Olivia Chaffin, a Girl Scout in rural Tennessee, was a top cookie seller in her troop when she first heard rainforests were being destroyed to make way for ever-expanding palm oil plantations. On one of those plantations a continent away, 10-year-old Ima helped harvest the fruit that makes its way into a dizzying array of products sold by leading Western food and cosmetics brands….The AP’s investigation into child labor is part of a broader in-depth look at the industry that also exposed rape, forced labor, trafficking and slavery. Reporters crisscrossed Malaysia and Indonesia, speaking to more than 130 current and former workers – some two dozen of them child laborers – at nearly 25 companies…The AP found children working on plantations and corroborated accounts of abuse, whenever possible, by reviewing police reports and legal documents. Reporters also interviewed more than 100 activists, teachers, union leaders, government officials, researchers, lawyers and clergy, including some who helped victims of trafficking or sexual assault.

The AP also reports that abuses of labor in the palm oil industry are linked to world’s top brands and banks.

An Associated Press investigation found many like Jum in Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia – an invisible workforce consisting of millions of laborers from some of the poorest corners of Asia, many of them enduring various forms of exploitation, with the most serious abuses including child labor, outright slavery and allegations of rape. Together, the two countries produce about 85% of the world’s estimated $65 billion palm oil supply…The AP used the most recently published data from producers, traders and buyers of the world’s most-consumed vegetable oil, as well as U.S. Customs records, to link the laborers’ palm oil and its derivatives from the mills that process it to the supply chains of top Western companies like the makers of Oreo cookies, Lysol cleaners and Hershey’s chocolate treats.

Cargill, which is involved in this industry, has responded to the AP report; it denies the charges.

Cargill does not tolerate the use of human trafficking, forced labor or child labor in our operations or supply chains. We expect all Cargill employees and our suppliers to adhere to our formal Commitment to Human Rights, which we enhanced in 2019 to detail the principles we embed into our policies and systems to protect human rights around the world. This Commitment applies to our workplace, communities in which we operate, and supply chains….Our efforts on the ground in our palm supply chain in Malaysia, Indonesia, Guatemala and globally focus on health and safety, responsible recruitment, and transparent contract and pay practices to protect and empower our workers, especially women who depend on their work in palm oil to earn a living and support their families.

As for deforestation, the industry argues for shared responsibility: Palm oil: Why shared responsibility is needed to cement sustainability improvements:  There is a disconnect between the reputation and reality of palm oil. Popular media paint palm oil as a primary driver of deforestation…. Read more

All of this suggests: Turbulent times ahead? Malaysia palm oil faces uncertain 2021 with price, production and policy challengesThe palm oil industry in Malaysia needs to prepare itself for an uncertain year ahead with expected price volatility, production decrease and policy changes in the west, with the government attempting to shift to more value-added products in hopes of providing a boost…. Read more

One of the great ironies of all this is that palm oil, which is highly saturated (and, therefore, raises the risk of heart disease), has been promoted and used by the processed food industry as a replacement for trans fats, now mostly gone from the market since required to be listed on Nutrition Facts labels.

Can palm oil be produced fairly and sustainably?  The answer depends on whom you ask.  The Independent has a quick overview of the controversies.

Aug 12 2019

Industry-funded study of the week: Unilever

A low-fat spread with added plant sterols and fish omega-3 fatty acids lowers serum triglyceride and LDL-cholesterol concentrations in individuals with modest hypercholesterolaemia and hypertriglyceridaemia.  Blom AM, et al.  European Journal of Nutrition.  2019;58(4):1615–1624.

Purpose: “to investigate the triglyceride (TG) and LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C) lowering effects of a spread [i.e., margarine] with added plant sterols (PS) and fish oil as compared to a placebo spread.”

Conclusions: “Four-week consumption of the intervention spread led to significant and clinically relevant decreases in serum TG, LDL-C and other blood lipid concentrations.”

Funder: The study was funded by Unilever BCS Research and Development Vlaardingen, the Netherlands.

Conflicts of interest: of the authors, four are employed by Unilever.

Comment: Unilever makes margarines with plant sterols and fish oils.  You might buy them if they control blood lipid risk factors for heart disease.  This is in-house company research aimed at proving the benefits of a Unilever product, which is what so many other companies do.

But Unilever was one of the few Big Food companies that sponsored basic research (and maybe it still does?).  As I describe in my book, Unsavory Truth, Unilever was the sponsor of the basic research that demonstrated the harmful effects of trans-fat on disease risk.

Feb 5 2019

The Iceman’s Last Meal: high in fat from ibex, red deer, and cereal grains

I’ve long argued that the most intellectually challenging issue in the field of nutrition is finding out what people eat.

Here’s what it takes:  Using DNA technology, investigators examined the stomach contents of the “Iceman,” a man who died 5300 years ago but was frozen in the Alps until his body was discovered some years ago.

The result: “a remarkably high proportion of fat in his diet, supplemented with fresh or dried wild meat, cereals, and traces of toxic bracken.”

A recent radiological re-examination of the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old European natural ice mummy, identified his completely filled stomach (Figure 1A) [2]…Previous isotopic analysis (15N/14N) of the Iceman’s hair suggested first a vegetarian lifestyle [1213] which was later, after careful re-examination of the data, changed to a omnivorous diet [14]. Further analyses of lower intestinal tract samples of the Iceman confirmed that he was omnivorous, with a diet consisting of both wild animal and plant material. Among the plant remains, there were cereals, pollen grains of hop-hornbeam, and fragments of bracken and mosses [14151617181920]… In summary, the Iceman’s last meal was a well-balanced mix of carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids, perfectly adjusted to the energetic requirements of his high-altitude trekking.

Nearly half (46%) of the bulk stomach contents consisted of animal fat, much of it saturated.  This, apparently, had consequences:

computed tomography scans of the Iceman showed major calcifications in arteria and the aorta indicating an already advanced atherosclerotic disease state [33].

Fascinating, no?  Now if we could do this kind of analysis on a population basis, think of the questions we could finally answer!

Jan 24 2019

Palm oil politics: corporate effects on health

The World Health Organization is about to publish a report on how the palm oil industry is promoting obesity and chronic disease as well as environmental degradation as integral parts of its business model.

The draft report gets right to the point.

We highlight the industry’s mutually profitable relationship with the processed food industry and its impact on human and planetary health, including detrimental cultivation practices that are linked to respiratory illnesses, deforestation, loss of biodiversity and pollution. This analysis illustrates many parallels to the contested nature of practices adopted by the alcohol and tobacco industries.

The research behind the report supports the analytical framework for examining industry’s effects on health.

The report documents how the palm oil industry, working with the food industry, acts to maximize profits at the expense of health and the environment, through marketing, supply chain management, lobbying, and corporate “citizenship.”

The report calls for

  • More research on the effects of palm oil on health
  • Actions to mitigate industry influences to protect producers and sellers from needed regulations
  • Use of the Sustainable Development Goals to aid these actions

You don’t get why palm oil raises health and environmental concerns?  Read this.  Now.

 

Dec 4 2018

Where are we on dietary fat?

The endless arguments about dietary fats and dietary fat versus carbohydrate make no sense to me, because we mostly eat these as components of food, and foods as components of diets of massive complexity.

But scientists do like to debate such issues so it comes as a breath of fresh air to read a consensus statement from people who do not necessarily agree about such issues.

Looks good to me.  I’m glad they did this.

 

Nov 12 2018

Another industry-funded study for your amusement

As I discuss in my latest book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eatfood industry funding of nutrition research produces highly predictable results and, therefore, is not good for science, public health, or trust.

Industry-funded studies are easily recognizable by their titles.  When I see a title like this one, I immediately wonder why anyone would do a study to example this particular question.  And then I look to see who funded it.

Title: Corn Oil Lowers Plasma Cholesterol Compared with Coconut Oil in Adults with Above-Desirable Levels of Cholesterol in a Randomized Crossover TrialJ Nutr 2018 148(10):1556-63.

Conclusion: “When incorporated into the habitual diet, consumption of foods providing ∼54 g of corn oil/d produced a more favorable plasma lipid profile than did coconut oil in adults with elevated cholesterol.”

Sponsor: “Supported by ACH Food Companies, Inc., Oakbrook Terrace, IL,” and all of the authors either received research funding from ACH Food Companies, Inc., or are employees of that company.

Comment: So what is this about?  ACH is the maker of Mazola oil, which must be losing market share to coconut oil.

Which oil is better for you and does it really matter?

I sure would like some independent researchers to weigh in on this.

Jul 12 2018

Food Navigator’s collection of articles on “healthy fats”

Fat remains in the news.  Which ones are health, and which not?  FoodNavigator-USA collects its articles on the topic.  My thoughts:  Beyond that, food fats are mixtures of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and saturated fatty acids, of the omega-3, -6, and -9 varieties.  And then there are the hydrogenated trans-fats.  These variations make fats complicated.

One attribute of fats is not complicated: fat has 9 calories/gram compared to 4 for protein and carbohydrate.  A tablespoon of oil, butter, lard, or tallow has about 100 calories.  If you are concerned about energy balance, watch out for fat calories (and the other ones count too).

FoodNavigator’s Special Edition: Healthy fats
Fat – we are told – is back. But what kind of fat, and can you have too much of a good thing? Is the science changing on saturated fats? Is whole milk a better choice, or should we stick to low fat dairy? Is coconut oil as healthy as some marketers make out, and is the pressure off to reduce fat now all eyes are on added sugar?  Get the lowdown on fat in this special edition…