Vital Strategies has just released two of its Canary platform reports based on use of AI.  Here’s its webinar.

• From Stadiums to Screens: Coca-Cola’s Sportswashing at the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup
• Exposing Alcohol’s Advertising Playbook: Digital Marketing in RESET Alcohol Initiative Countries

The findings:

• During the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup (June 14-July 13), Coca-Cola branding appeared in 795 social media posts, generating an estimated 6 billion impressions globally.
• In March 2025 alone, digital alcohol marketing appeared in nearly 4,000 posts generating close to 2 billion impressions.
•  79% of Coca-Cola-linked posts came from sports broadcasters, with branding visible in match highlights, celebrations and interviews, including those featuring child athletes such as the Powerade Ball Crew.
• Alcohol brands amplified reach through influencers and major cultural moments like Carnival, partnering with celebrities such as Luísa Sonza and Anitta to reach tens of millions of followers via their social channels.

Why should we care?

Research shows that such marketing influences consumption. Children exposed to high volumes of digital marketing for unhealthy food and sweetened beverages may develop unhealthy habits for life. Alcohol advertising is linked to earlier initiation, binge drinking and increased consumption.

Two examples

• In the Philippines, Red Horse Beer ads deployed cartoon imagery reminiscent of tobacco’s Joe Camel to appeal to younger audiences—despite carrying small-print “For 18 years old and above only” warnings.   Source: Red Horse Beer on Facebook
•  San Miguel Flavored Beer—available in sweet flavors like apple and chocolate designed to mask the taste of alcohol—markets itself around music festivals through the language of friendship and self-expression, embedding the brand into youth identity and inviting attendees to make “#Sweeeet memories” with their “beshies.” Source: @sanmiguelbeerph on Instagram  

Bottom line: These reports provide further evidence for the need for marketing regulation and policies such as taxes on unhealthy products.

While we are on the topic of labels, here’s the USDA’s newest:

“Tastes like freedom?”  You have to love the Orwellian rhetoric.

“Our great patriot ranchers and producers grow, raise, and harvest the world’s safest, most affordable, and abundant food supply. American consumers want to support America by buying American and this label will strengthen our food supply chain through transparency, fairness, and trust,” said USDA Secretary Rollins. “This new standard policy ensures producers who invest in a fully American supply chain can compete fairly, and it gives consumers the confidence they deserve about the food they bring home.”

Here’s what this is about:

Under this standard, the “Product of USA” label is reserved exclusively for meat, poultry, and egg products from animals that were born, raised, harvested, and processed in the United States. The claim is voluntary, but companies using it must meet this transparent and verifiable requirement.

It is part of the USDA Plan to Fortify the American Beef Industry.  This “focuses on rebuilding domestic capacity, improving transparency across the supply chain, and ensuring U.S. ranchers can compete on a level playing field.”

And, you can “Learn more at productofusa.gov,”

RFK Jr has promised that we will soon ahve a new front-of-package label..  As soon as they define ultra-processed foods,

Every food in your grocery store will have a label on it,” Kennedy told [Joe] Rogan. “It’ll have, maybe, a green light, a red light, or a yellow light telling you whether or not it’s going to be good for you.”

This has been in the works for a long time, as I’ve written previously.  The FDA’s original version did not have colors so we don’t know yet what this might look like.

But which of the many possible designs is likely to be most effective?  We now have the answer to that question: Efficacy of front-of-package nutrient labels designed for mandatory implementation in the USA: an online randomised controlled trial.

The study asked particicpants to identify products with the most and least healthful nutrition profiles from among these designs.

The clear winner: The last column (“multi-high-in-label), which greatly outperformed the ones like what the FDA is proposing.

The winning label helped participants

• Identify healthy products
• Avoid interpreting unhealthy foods as healthy
• Recall label contents

The obvious interpretation: Use the winners.

These, by the way, are much like those used in Chile, Mexico, and other Latin American countries, with much evidence for effectiveness.

Resources

• Open-access Article: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS2468-2667(26)00027-7/fulltext 
• Link to article and Appendix
• Press release: https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/new-research-suggests-fda-should-consider-redesign-proposed-nutrition-labels
• Lancet PH Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1793453/episode_players/18876284

I can hardly believe that infant formula, one of the most tightly regulated products on the market, is in the news, but it sure is.  Let’s start with RFK Jr.

Amazing.  I thought infant formula companies were already doing that.  Without question, millions of Americans were raised on the existing infant formulas and have done pretty well on them.

RFK Jr does not like high fructose corn syrup (most formulas don’t use this) or seed oils.  I will be interested to see what his FDA proposes as replacements.

But now we have a new formula company, Little Spoon, putting full-page ads in the New York Times.  “Parents,” it says, “deserve to trust the food that fules their family.”  It says it uses better ingredients and tests for banned chemicals.

And why is this a step forward?  Alas, we have the ByHeart example—a “better-for-you” formula unfortunately—and tragically—contaminated with toxic bacteria.

What’s especially troubling about the ByHeart tragedy is that its products are still on shelves.

• State officials still finding recalled ByHeart infant formula on store shelves
• South Carolina warns Botulism Contaminated Infant Formula Still on Market

Food safety lawyer Bill Marler has plenty to say about this: To Safer Infant Formulas and doing away with Botulism, Cronobacter sakazakii, Salmonella and Bacillus cereus

And then there are Consumer Reports’ investigations of heavy metals in formulas, lead and arsenic, among them.

No wonder parents are concerned.  No wonder there is now a market for better tested formula.

What should parents do while all this is going on?

To avoid pathogens, buy canned and bottled formula that has been Pasteurized.

To avoid toxic metals?  That’s harder to do since most formulas are not tested.

All of this is yet another reason to breastfeed, if at all possible.  And to wean babies off of formula as soon as they are ready.

A reader, Betsy Keller, sent me this one.  Her question: Who funded this?  Take a guess!

The study: The Sweet Tooth Trial: A Parallel Randomized Controlled Trial Investigating the Effects of A 6-Month Low, Regular, or High Dietary Sweet Taste Exposure on Sweet Taste Liking, and Various Outcomes Related to Food Intake and Weight Status. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2026; 123 (1): 101073 DOI: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2025.09.041

Objectives: to assess the effects of a 6-mo low, regular, and high dietary sweet taste exposure on liking for sweet taste.

Take a look at this new report:

I love the report’s quick summary:

Mostly, this report looks at additives.  The authors looked at 800 products.

Their basic finding: the cheaper the price, the greater the number of additives.

The report calls for a collection of policy interventions to improve standards for additives in foods.

I hope RFK Jr reads this report.

Note: Yuka has a vested interest in getting you to use its app to check the additives in the foods you buy.

Plant- and cell-based meats are not doing as well as expected, and the new dietary guidelines, pro-meat and anti-highly processed don’t help this cause much.  Here are some items I’ve collected lately on this topic.

• Does plant-based meat still dominate the meat-free sector? Meat alternatives are in trouble, but traditional plant-based and vegetarian foods will not necessarily replace them… Read more
• Cultivated meat’s casualties: who is failing and why?  Makers of cell-based meat are falling, fast. We round up who’s shutting up shop and why… Read more
• Plant-based meat isn’t dead, but it is in a reset: Plant-based meat faces a slowdown as price, foodservice strategy and manufacturing innovation shape the next phase for the sector… Read more
• What will it take to rebuild plant-based and cultivated meat?  As protein demand rises and consumers grow choosier, Good Food Institute Founder Bruce Friedrich outlines how plant-based and cultivated meat can move beyond hype and become investable, scalable industries… Listen now
• Meat alternatives are too niche – plant-based can do so much more: Meat mimicry shows little sign of broad appeal, yet plant-based foods have opportunities beyond it… Read more
• 5 ways to boost plant-based meat sales: Health claims may be an overlooked lever that could reignite plant-based meat demand, according to consumer research by the Good Food Institute… Read more  
• What’s driving the rise of hybrid meat? Industry is showing keen interest in the hybrid trend… Read more  [Hybrid combines plant-based with real meat]
• Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research: FFAR and GFI seek research to improve flavor of plant-based proteins: A new funding call from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) and the Good Food Institute (GFI) will support precompetitive academic research to reduce off-flavors and improve the sensory quality of plant-based and fermentation-derived protein ingredients.Read More
• Plant-based meat laws aren’t misleading, court rules: Court finds that requiring disclaimers like “does not contain meat” violates free speech, marking another victory for Tofurkey, Plant Based Foods Association and the Animal Legal Defense Fund… Read more

Comment

Alt-meat products comprise their own industry, one hard at work to make these products desirable, accessible, affordable, and acceptable.  Clearly, it has work to do on all counts.

A reader, Jennifer Windh, has done some serious investigation of loopholes in USDA’s school food rules that allow lots of ultra-processed snacks to be sold a la carte (“competitive foods”) outside of the USDA’s school meals program.

USDA’s nutrition tandards also apply to competitive foods: Smart Snacks in Schools.

The final rule for these standards, effective as of 2016, sets requirements or limits for whole grains, saturated and trans fat, sugar, sodium, and calories.

This sounds good, but as Jennifer Windh found out, even though snacks are required to be either 50% whole grain or have as a first ingredient fruit, vegetable, dairy product, or protein, the rules allow for plenty of loopholes.

She summarizes the findings of her investigation in The Smart Snacks Loophole: How Junk Food Companies Target America’s Students in School.

One reason for the loophole is the generous sugar standard: “Acceptable food items must have ≤35% of weight from total sugar as served.”

She points out the irony of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s visit to an elementary school where cooks make healthy meals from scratch (parents protested his visit because of his stance on vaccination, not food).

This school, she notes, offers plenty of loophole snacks.

She is particularly concerned about the loophole for ice cream.  For this, she has analyzed sales in 12 Houston area school districts: Ice Cream at School.

Schools usually sell ice cream at the same time they serve the main meal. There is no adult present who encourages students to eat their lunch before eating dessert. As expected, most children eat their ice cream first! This spoils their appetite for the more nutritious foods on their tray. School lunch periods are short, children eat slowly, and there are many distractions as students socialize with their friends. As a result, some students eat their ice cream first and then throw the rest of their lunch away.

There is so much money to be made from school meals that sellers of ultra-processed foods are happy to reformulate their products to meet USDA nutrition standards and get their products in through the loopholes.

Obviously, the standards could use some tightening.

The big question: Will USDA tighten the loopholes when it issues new school food standards to reflect the new dietary guidelines?  Recall:  These emphasize eat real food and reduce intake of highly processed foods.

Stay tuned.