Beef Checkoffs are USDA-sponsored programs that require producers to pay fees per cattle weight (the checkoff) into a common fund for research and promotion.  Here are three examples of the kinds of studies on beef and health that checkoff money pays for.  Note that all produce results favoring eating beef (what a coincidence).

I.  Eating beef protects against heart disease, cancer, and overall mortality

Ellen Fried sent me this headline from the New York Post: Eating meat not linked to higher risk of death — and may even protect against cancer-related mortality: study

Eating more meat could be beneficial for the body, a new study suggests [the study is here].

Recent research from Canada’s McMaster University revealed that animal-sourced foods are not linked to a higher risk of death.

The study discovered that animal proteins could also offer protective benefits against cancer-related mortality, according to a press release from the university.

If you scroll down far enough, the Post account, to its credit, ends with:

This research was funded by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), although the researchers noted that NCBA was “not involved in the study design, data collection and analysis or publication of the findings.”

II.  Beef has no effect on weight gain, obesity, or related metabolic conditions.

Effect of unprocessed red meat on obesity and related factors: A systematic review and meta-analysis.  Md Akheruzzaman, Marleigh Hefner, Daniel Baller, Shane Clark, Zahra Feizy, Diana M. Thomas, Nikhil V. Dhurandhar.  Obesity.  2025. 25 July 2025.  https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.24322

Results: We found no significant effect of URM [unprcessed red meat] for BMI, body weight, or percent body fat based on unfiltered pooled effect sizes. Filtered pooled effect size analysis showed a slight adverse effect of URM for total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol.

Conclusions: Studies did not show an effect of URM on weight gain, obesity, or related metabolic conditions.

Funding: This study received funding from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Beef Checkoff.

Conflict of interest: [The lead author] received grant support from the Beef Checkoff for conducting the systematic review and meta-analysis. The sponsor did not have any role regarding the study design, data extraction, analysis, or reporting.

III.  Vitamins and race are more important for health than beef intake.

“Shaking the ladder” reveals how analytic choices can influence associations in nutrition epidemiology: beef intake and coronary heart disease as a case study  Vorland, C. J., O’Connor, L. E., Henschel, B., Huo, C., Shikany, J. M., Serrano, C. A., … Brown, A. WCritical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 2025:1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2025.2525459

We explored the impact of analytical decisions on conclusions in nutrition epidemiology using self-reported beef intake and incident coronary heart disease as a case study….The finding of few statistically significant models does not prove, but may suggest, minimal association between beef and CHD. A qualitative inspection of our figures suggested that two variables had the greatest influence on results: years of multivitamin use and race…Not adjusting for these particular covariates, which indirectly capture concepts related to health consciousness and SES, may produce more extreme results because of confounding.

Funding: Funded by the Beef Checkoff….

Disclosure statement: In the 36 months prior to the initial submission, Dr. Vorland has received honoraria from The Obesity Society and The Alliance for Potato Research and Education. In the 36 months prior to the initial submission, Dr. Allison has received personal payments or promises for same from: Amin Talati Wasserman for KSF Acquisition Corp (Glanbia); Clark Hill PLC; General Mills; Kaleido Biosciences; Law Offices of Ronald Marron; Medpace/Gelesis; Novo Nordisk Fonden; Sports Research Corp.; USDA; and Zero Longevity Science (as stock options). Donations to a foundation have been made on his behalf by the Northarvest Bean Growers Association. The institution of Dr. Vorland, Ms. Henschel, Mr. Serrano, Ms. Dickinson, and Dr. Allison, Indiana University, and the Indiana University Foundation have received funds or donations to support their research or educational activities from: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Alliance for Potato Research and Education; American Egg Board; Arnold Ventures; Eli Lilly and Company; Mars, Inc.; National Cattlemen’s Beef Association; Pfizer, Inc.; National Pork Board; USDA; Soleno Therapeutics; WW (formerly Weight Watchers); and numerous other for-profit and nonprofit organizations to support the work of the School of Public Health and the university more broadly. Dr. O’Connor’s research is funded by internal funds at the Agricultural Research Service, USDA and the National Cancer Institute, NIH as well as external funds from the National Institute of Agricultural, USDA and the Beef Checkoff. Dr. O’Connor also served unpaid on the National Pork Board – Real Pork Research Advisory 2nd Advisory Council. In the past 36 months, Dr. Brown has received travel expenses from Alliance for Potato Research and Education, International Food Information Council, and Soy Nutrition Institute Global; speaking honoraria from Alliance for Potato Research and Education, Calorie Control Council, Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society, International Food Information Council Foundation, Potatoes USA, Purchaser Business Group on Health, The Obesity Society, and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences; consulting payments from National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and Soy Nutrition Institute Global; and grants through his institution from Alliance for Potato Research & Education, American Egg Board, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, NIH/NHLBI, NIH/NIDDK, NIH/NIGMS, and NSF/NIH. He has been involved in research for which his institution or colleagues have received grants or contracts from ACRI, Alliance for Potato Research & Education, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Hass Avocado Board, Indiana CTSI, NIH/NCATS, NIH/NCI, NIH/NIA, NIH/NIGMS, NIH/NLM, and UAMS. His wife is employed by Reckitt. Other authors report no disclosures in the last 36 months prior to the initial submission.

Never mind the effects of anti-obesity drugs on the health and well-being of people taking them.  From the food industry’s standpoint, what counts is what they are doing to sales of food and drink.  Ouch.

Here is my most recent collection of items from industry newsletters.  These make it clear that GLP-1 drugs are a real threat to food industry profits.

• The snackdown: Are GLP-1s really killing snacks or is it just all hype?  Weight-loss drugs are billed as a $150bn threat to bakery and snacks, but so far the impact looks more hype than reality…. Read more
• Food industry scrambles to respond to GLP-1 craze:  The drugs have already been predicted to change the way we eat… Read more
• How food brands can stay ahead of GLP-1 craze:  Don’t underestimate the GLP-1 trend. It’s going to hit, hard… Read more
• Sweet speculation: GLP-1s could already be nibbling at confectionery sales.  As enthusiasm for the confectionary sector declines, could weight-loss drugs have a role to play?… Read more
• How is GLP-1 changing eating habits in Europe?  As GLP-1s begin to make themselves known on the continent, consumers’ habits are starting to change… Read more

As to what food companies are trying to do to respond:

• GLP-1 is changing taste: How can food makers reignite flavour?  When GLP-1 drugs make food taste dull, exciting taste buds will be the aim of the game… Read more
• What makes a GLP-1-friendly yogurt drink? Danone tells all: By formulating a dairy drink that specifically caters for weight loss medication users, Danone has set a new standard with Oikos Fusion… Read more
• 4 natural food ingredients that boost GLP-1:  It’s not only drugs that induce the satiety-causing hormone… Read more
• Food’s answer to Ozempic? New ingredients mimic GLP-1 without the pharma price tag.  Once everyone’s had enough of injections, side effects, and the vast expense of GLP-1 drugs, it could be natural alternatives’ time to shine… Read more
• GLP-1 users are undernourished: why F&B needs to fill the gapNutrient gaps in GLP-1 diets present a challenge and an opportunity for the food industry… Read more

Fascinating, no?  I’m paying close attention to all this.

I’ve been collecting graphs on the likely effects of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (shades of Orwell’s 1984) on income distribution in the United States.  Here are two examples to ponder.

From the Congressional Budget Office:

From The Budget Lab at Yale and Paul Krugman’s Substack

From Tax Policy Center and Penn-Wharton Budget Model (also via Paul Krugman)

These make the effects of the bill crystal clear.  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The losers?  Everyone else, but especially those at the very bottom of the income distribution.

This is what Americans voted for?

And at a time when the bill cuts funding for federal food assistance programs like SNAP?

Will this Make Americans Healthy Again?

I don’t think so.

I was sent a press release from New York City’s food policy office: NYC Releases Updated Food Standards for Foods and Beverages Served by 11 City Agencies

We are pleased to announce the release of the 2025 updates to the NYC Food Standards for Meals and Snacks Purchased and Served as well as a new Implementation Guide for the NYC Food Standards for Cafeterias and Cafes.

The new standards apply to the nearly 220 million meals and snacks served annually by city agencies and sub-contractors at schools, childcare centers, older adult centers, correction centers, shelters, public hospitals, and parks.

The Food Policy office also released a fully updated implementation guide to help meet the NYC Food Standards for Cafeterias and Cafes that were updated in 2023. These Standards are voluntary for retail food venues in hospitals, universities, and other organizations.

The key updates:

• No artificial sweeteners
• No artificial colors and certain flour additives and preservatives
• No processed meats
• Emphasis on whole or minimally processed plant protein foods
• Improved nutrition quality of snacks

The list of prohibited artificial sweeteners is worth a look:

Includes: acesulfame potassium, advantame, allulose, aspartame, brazzein, monatin, monk fruit (also known as luo han guo), neotame, polydextrose, rebauside, rebaudioside, steviosides, stevia, saccharin, sucralose, and sugar alcohols (glycerol, mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol, erythritol, and Lycasin and Palatinit)

So is the list of prohibited artificial colors:

Artificial Color, FD&C Blue No. 1, FD&C Blue No. 2, caramel color, Citrus Red
No. 2, FD&C Green No. 3, Orange B, FD&C Red No. 40, titanium dioxide, FD&C Yellow
No. 5, and FD&C Yellow No. 6

The Make America Healthy Again crew should be happy about these bans, as they go right along with its agenda.

Here’s how the press is covering this:

Politico: NYC to restrict processed meats, artificial dyes in meal programs

New York Times: New N.Y.C. Food Standards Could Spell Doom for Chicken Nuggets

 

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr has announced that medical schools will now have to teach nutrition.  This is a great idea in theory; in practice, no so much,

First, here’s what RFK Jr is saying:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (@seckennedy)

I can’t believe I’m writing about this again.  

I taught nutrition to medical students at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine from 1976-1986.  The lack of nutrition training in medicine had already been an issue under discussion since the early 1960s.  Not much has changed since then.

Why?

Have you been to a doctor lately?  If so, how much time did you have?

Even if your doctor has a degree in nutrition, she doesn’t have time to take a diet history and work with you to improve your particular diet.  She also will not get reimbursed for that time.

Nutrition can be complicated as applied to specific disease conditions.  Who is going to teach it?

I think doctors only need to know three things about nutrition.

1.  The importance of diet for good health
2.  How to refer patients to a dietitian/nutritionist
3.  How to work with a dietitian/nutrition to improve patient care

Yes, doctors can also write prescriptions for healthy foods, if they are involved with a Food Is Medicine program.

But the single best way to deal with the nutrition issue is to refer patients who need help to a dietitian/nutritionist.

I sure hope that is Number 1 on the required curriculum.

Two previous posts on this topic:

• From 2014: No nutrition in medical education? An old story that might be changing.

   I wrote almost identical articles in the 1980s based on my experience at UCSF (here’s one).

  I asked a former UCSF colleague, Dr. Robert Baron, to co-author the commentary with me: Nutrition in Medical Education:  From Counting Hours to Measuring Competence.

• From 2024: Some thoughts about the current state of nutrition I: Medical Education

  I wrote my first book, Nutrition in Clinical Practice, in which I briefly summarized what all of us at the time thought medical students needed to know.  The book was published in 1985, and is long out of print.  In 2020, a used copy was available on Amazon for $930 (even more surprising, it is no longer on that site).

I’m indebted to Errol Schweizer, Grocery Nerd, for pointing out in response to my post on we need more vegetables, that if we want more vegetables, somebody has to pick them.  Raids by ICE on farmworkers are not helping this situation; they are wrong, morally and legally, and must stop.

Schweizer writes:  RFK Betrays/ICE Terrorizes Food Workers.

The Border Patrol and Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) division continue to kidnap, persecute and traffic hard working, law-abiding essential food supply chain workers for no just cause.

Now is the time for the grocery industry, including retail and CPG executives, essential workers, brand founders and Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) advocates to stand up against these flagrant violations of human rights, due process, civil liberties and just plain decency.

From the New York Times: Wilted Lettuce. Rotten Strawberries. Here’s What Happens When You Round Up Farmworkers. 

Bottom line, it isn’t easy for farmers and ranchers to replace farmworkers if they’re deported or don’t show up. These positions require experience, endurance and specialized knowledge; as anyone who has worked on a farm will tell you, farm work is not unskilled labor.

From FoodPrint: How the current immigration crackdown is impacting food and farmworkers

Around 40 percent of farmworkers in the U.S. are undocumented. The numbers are similar in many other parts of the food system, especially meatpacking, where undocumented immigrants fill an estimated 23 percent of jobs. ..For the most part, farmers supported the Trump administration in the election, with many believing the president’s claims that he would spare farmworkers from promised mass deportations, focusing instead on “dangerous criminals”….[But] ICE agents began aggressively targeting worksites, visiting farms and packing sites in California and a meatpacking plant in Nebraska on June 10. Those raids generated an immediate flurry of complaints from farmers and the food industry.

From Civil Eats: ICE Raids Target Workers on Farms and in Food Production: A Running List

Immigration enforcement actions at workplaces are likely to increase as the agencies attempt to meet new White House goals of 3,000 arrests per day. We are keeping a record of those actions here.

Here is Civil Eats’ list for August, with contact information for Lisa Held, who is keeping track of all this.

August 7, 2025 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – ICE detains 16 workers during raids of two Mexican restaurants

August 8, 2025 – Woodburn, Oregon – ICE detains four immigrant farmworkers on their way to work at a blueberry farm

August 11, 2025 – Anchorage, Alaska – ICE officials arrest an asylum seeker outside sushi restaurant

August 14, 2025 – Kent, New York – ICE raids Lynn-Ette Farms—where United Farm Workers have been organizing— and detains seven workers

Want to send us a tip about immigration enforcement in your community? Email tracker@civileats.com or securely contact Lisa Held on Signal at @lisaelaineh.47. (Link to this post.)

Enjoy the Labor Day holiday, but then do what you can to make this stop.

Michael Jacobson, founder and former president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, is now promoting development of a National Food Museum.  One of its projects is keeping score on administration food policies.

He lists them as positive or negative, like this.

The most recent entry is dated June 26, a negative: the huge cut in SNAP benefits.

Alas, the negatives far outweigh the positives.  Take a look.

Thanks to Food Fix for this collection of tracking sites

• STAT News: Isabella Cueto’s report on MAHA’s minimal progress
• HHS: “MAHA in Action” public health wins (Food Fix says this is more like a campaign site).
• FDA:  Food industry pledges to remove food dyes (promises, but not much action yet)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published this graph of the change in price of fresh vegetables since January 2024.  Prices have gone up a lot this year.

This did not get sent out to subscribers last week, so I’m trying again.

This may be explained not just by inflation, but also by a decline in the availability of vegetables in the food supply (defined as produced in the U.S., less exports, plus imports) as shown in this chart from the USDA.

If we want people to eat more healthfully, we need policies to make vegetables more widely available at lower cost.  Farmers have to make a living.  That’s why we need to rethink which foods get subsidized, and our entire agricultural system for that matter.

How about redesigning the agricultural system to prioritize food for people, instead of feed for animals and fuel for automobiles.

To explain, I’m posting this USDA chart again.