I’m always interested to know how food and beverage companies spend money on candidates.  The Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets database is the best source that I know of for this information, but it takes work to find what you are looking for.

Food Dive has a summary of donations from ten leading food and beverage companies.

Food Dive’s explanation for why donations have dropped since 2016, especially to Republican candidates?  The companies think it works better for them to stay out of today’s polarized politics.

Or maybe they think the Deomocrats will win this time?

Stevia Beverage Consumption prior to Lunch Reduces Appetite and Total Energy Intake without Affecting Glycemia or Attentional Bias to Food Cues: A Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial in Healthy Adults.  Nikoleta S Stamataki, Nikoleta S Stamataki, Corey Scott, Rebecca Elliott, Shane McKie, Douwina Bosscher, John T McLaughlin. The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 150, Issue 5, May 2020, Pages 1126–1134.

Method: This randomized, controlled, double-blind crossover study gave 20 healthy participants water or beverages with various sweeteners before lunch.  The investigators measured how much participants ate after consuming each drink.

Conclusion:  “This study found a beneficial and specific effect of a stevia beverage consumed prior to a meal on appetite and energy intake in healthy adults.”

Conflict of interest statement: “This study was supported by funding from the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) through a BBSRC Case Studentship awarded to NSS. Cargill prepared and provided the test products free of charge.  Author disclosures: DB and CS were employed by Cargill during the preparation of this manuscript, and Cargill produces stevia. The other authors report no conflicts of interest.”

Comment:  The artificial sweetener Stevia is manufactured by Cargill.  Two of the authors work for Cargill.  Cargill has a vested interest in demonstrating that consumption of Stevia helps people lose weight.  Whether artificial sweeteners help with weight loss is a question much debated.  Industry-funded studies like his one tend to find benefits.  Some independently funded studies do too but others do not.

My guess: artificial sweeteners might help some people, but their overall benefits, if any, are small.

My take: one of my food rules is not to eat anything artificial, so Stevia is off my dietary radar from the get-go.

The Mexican state of Oaxaca became the first to ban the sales of junk foods to children under the age of 18.

The state of Tabasco did the same.

A dozen other Mexican states are considering similar actions.  The rationale is clear: the health consequences of obesity in general and with Covid-19 in particular.

One-third of Mexicans aged 6 to 19 are overweight or obese, according to UNICEF. They may not be disproportionately affected by COVID-19 now, but they can suffer myriad health issues, especially in adulthood.

And Mexico’s new warning labels are now in effect and will be required for all packaged foods by the end of the year.

Mexico has been able to implement these measures despite overwhelming food industry opposition.

How?  I credit the outstanding advocacy work of the Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health and the consumer coalition, Alianza por la Salud Alimentaria.

Berkeley, California, ever at the cutting edge of public health nutrition policy, is banning junk food from checkout counters and aisles.

The new policy will require retailers larger than 2,500 square feet to stock healthy food at the register and in areas where customers wait in line, instead of items like chips, soda and candy. It forbids food items with 5 grams of added sugars and 200 milligrams of sodium, chewing gum and mints with added sugars, and beverages with added sugars or artificial sweeteners. In Berkeley, the policy will affect stores like Safeway, Monterey Market, Whole Foods and Berkeley Bowl.

As a result of efforts like these—public health campaigns, soda taxes, and other initiatives—heavy consumption of sugary drinks (more than 500 calories/day) is declining.

According to a recent study, the percentage of children who drink more than 500 calories worth of soft drinks a day declined from 11% to 3%  from 2003 to 2016, and the percentage of adult heavy consumers declined from 13% to 9%.

This trend is in the right direction.

Some parts of government are still functioning the way they are supposed to.

The U.S. Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) says USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue has violated the Hatch Act and has to repay the US Treasury.

In letters to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics and to Representative Marcia Fudge,  the OSC says

Secretary Sonny Perdue violated the Hatch Act on August 24, 2020, when he spoke in his official capacity at an event in Mills River, North Carolina (the “August 24 event”)…The event generally related to USDA’s Farmers to Families Food Box Program…Because he was on taxpayer-funded travel when he engaged in the political activity at issue, the U.S. Treasury must be reimbursed for the costs associated with his political activity.  Provided that immediate corrective action is taken and the U.S. Treasury is reimbursed for such costs, OSC will decline to pursue disciplinary action and instead consider this file closed with the issuance of the cure letter.

As the letter explains,

The Hatch Act restricts certain political activities of federal executive branch employees, except for the President and the Vice President.  As the Secretary of Agriculture,
Secretary Perdue is covered by the Hatch Act and prohibited from, among other things, using his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.  Under this provision, Secretary Perdue may not use his official title while engaging in political activity or his official position to advance or oppose candidates for partisan political office.

In his speech at the event, Perdue congratulated President Trump for authorizing an additional billion dollars to the Farmers to Families Food Box Program

you just authorized another billion dollars for the hungry people of this country and to keep our farmers there. And we’ve never seen an outpouring of compassion like that for people who matter, because people matter to you. And that’s what’s important to me. And that’s what’s going to continue to happen—four more years—if America gets out and votes for this man, Donald J. Trump.

This is a particularly clear violation of the Hatch Act.  The OSC is right to call Perdue on it and insist that he repay taxpayers.

This is also yet another example of how the Farmers to Families food box program, about which I have written repeatedly, is more about politics than feeding the hungry.

The OSC investigation resulted from a complaint from Representative Fudge and several colleagues in Congress.   It’s also good to see them doing their job.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been  awarded to the World Food Programme (WFP), “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”

The WFP is the United Nations agency that distributes international food aid.

Why do I think this is good news?  This prize recognizes:

• The importance of food in maintaining a peaceful world.
• The importance of functioning food systems during the coronavirus pandemic.
• The value of United Nations agencies in maintaining peace and food security.

Why do I even ask this question? 

I am well aware of the inadequacies of food charity as a means to ensure nutrition, health and world peace.  All too often, international food aid:

• Does not reach the people who most need it
• Is siphoned off to benefit corrupt intermediaries
• Undermines local food economies
• Benefits donors more than recipients
• Is used more as a political than a humanitarian tool
• Causes more harm than good

I want to see anti-hunger policies institutionalized, not left as voluntary.

Food matters to world peace more than most people recognize.  If the prize raises recognition of the importance of food in society, it will have done good work.

Thanks to Jerry Hagstrom’s Hagstrom Report for most of these links

• Announcement of the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize (video)
• World Food Program USA 
• United Nations World Food Programme — Statement by WFP Executive Director David Beasley
• WFP History 
• Associated Press — World Food Program wins Nobel Peace Prize as hunger surges 
• WFP fights hunger in food-deprived places, crises, war zones 
• The New York Times — World Food Program Awarded Nobel Peace Prize for Work During Pandemic
• The Washington Post — Nobel Peace Prize goes to World Food Program for efforts to combat hunger 
• CNN — Nobel Peace Prize awarded to World Food Programme

Readers have written me to point out that my posts rarely cover good news, and that they badly need to hear some.

Point taken: I devote this week’s blog to good news items.

Let’s start with Friday’s announcement that the USDA will extend universal school meals through June 30, 2021 (you can read the entire announcement here).

Is this an election-year ploy?  Maybe, but it’s the first thing Trump’s USDA has done that I think is worth doing.

It must have happened as a result of strong advocacy pressure.  I say this because, as The Counter’s Jessica Fu reported in August, the USDA was determined not to extend free meals to school children, arguing that it did not have the authority to do so.

“While we want to provide as much flexibility as local school districts need during this pandemic, the scope of this request is beyond what USDA currently has the authority to implement and would be closer to a universal school meals program which Congress has not authorized or funded,” Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue wrote in a letter last Thursday explaining the decision.

But a week later, the USDA did extend the universal meals program through the end of December this year.

Now it has extended that extension through the end of this school year.

Yes!

This means, as the announcement says, USDA will:

• Allow…meals to be served in all areas and at no cost;
• Permit meals to be served outside of the typically required group settings and meal times;
• Waive meal pattern requirements, as necessary; and
• Allow parents and guardians to pick-up meals for their children.

Universal school meals:

• Ensure food justice for children
• Make sure all children are fed
• Avoid stigma
• Avoid expensive and cumbersome exclusionary paperwork

So this is good news, but there’s more work yet to do.

• Make sure those meals are healthy and do adhere to nutrition standards.
• Make universal school meals permanent.

My go-to reference on this topic:

State voter registration deadlines are here.

Today is the last possible day in New York.  Don’t miss this one.

The cartoon, by the way, was a last-mnute addition to my 2013 book, Eat, Drink, Vote: An Illustrated Guide to Food Politics.  

The story about how the cartoon came to be is here.