New Zealand food packages are covered with nutrition and health claims just like ours, but the food agency only began allowing them a few years ago. The agency thought it might be interesting to find out whether the packages really contained the levels of vitamins and minerals claimed on the labels. Oops. Turns out that 58% did not. They either had too little (15%) or too much (42%). The excuses: built-in safety margins, hard-to-mix ingredients, unstable vitamins, uncertain analytic methods. The FDA hasn’t done one of these investigations in a long time, as far as I know. I wonder what it would find if it did?
I am honored (hugely) to be the recipient of the 2023 Edinburgh Medal, at which I give a speech as part of the Edinburgh Science Festival. My talk, “Food Politics: Why it Matters Now” is at 7:00 p.m. Information about the Science Festival is here. A Tweet announcing my award is here.