I liked this approach: “How to Have a Festive Fourth of July Menu For Kids With Little Sugar.”

Enjoy the Fourth!

As readers know, I am not convinced anyone needs to worry about protein intake; most of us get more than enough from our usual diets, even if vegetarian and vegan.

Consequently, I do not know what to make of high-protein products like this one.  No, especially this one.

Beyond sugar reduction: Protein Candy adds function and fun to better-for-you sweet set:  With 14 grams of protein and only 4 grams of sugar, Protein Candy promises better performance for consumers and retailers… Watch now

This is candy with whey protein added, specifically designed to “appeal to consumers seeking satiety “as quickly as possible,” which has emerged as a top priority alongside deepening interest in weight loss and the use of GLP-1 medications.”

I will say it again: hardly anyone needs more protein.

If you want protein with your candy, how about milk chocolate with almonds, or plain old peanut brittle.

Happy fourth of July weekend.

I was delighted to see this opinion piece in Forbes by Hank Cardello, who writes very much from the food industry’s point of view: The One Big Beautiful Bill To MAHA: Drop Dead.

The so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” now moving through the Senate proposes sharp cuts to SNAP (food stamps), WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) and Medicaid—programs that are lifelines for low-income families. The contradiction is glaring: How can one branch of government promote healthier eating while another branch strips away the supports that make that possible?

“The bill handicaps MAHA’s goals,” he says, pointing out that reducing benefits for these programs can only “increase food insecurity, making it more difficult for people to afford nutritious food and sustain their health.”

This, he says, is

a political blunder…affordable food has more power to sway voters than tariffs or slogans. Cut these programs, and we widen the gap between what families should eat and what they can eat….Medicaid and SNAP aren’t just social programs—they’re long-term investments in public health and economic stability.

He suggests three ways to make MAHA a reality:

• Expand SNAP eligibility to include struggling working families just above the poverty line.
• Recognize food policy as a voter issue, not just a health issue.
• Lawmakers should stop pretending nutrition policy can succeed without social policy alignment.

COMMENT

Wow.  I could not have said this better myself.  What this tells me is that at least some segments of the food industry fully understand that making people too poor to buy their products is not good for business, let alone for society.  Cardullo always has intelligent things to say about food issues, even when I don’t always agree with them.  On this one, we are completely aligned.  Thanks Hank.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed a bill authorizing warning labels on food products containing one or more of a long list of chemical additives (see way below).

WARNING: This product contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada, the European Union, or the United  Kingdom.

What’s stunning about the list is the number of food products likely to be affected.  The list includes the usual color additives, but also bleached and brominated flour, BHA and BHT, DATEM, Olestra, partially hydrogenated oil, and potassium bromate and iodate.  Lots of foods contain these additives.

What’s also stunning is how far this law goes beyond California’s law prohibiting red dye No. 3, and West Virginia’s law restricting seven dyes in schools.

Food companies cannot formulate products for individual states.  They will have to get rid of these chemicals to sell in Texas.

Or they will have to lobby for a less restrictive federal law preempting state laws.

Companies promising to get rid of food dyes

JM Smucker                     Kraft Heinz                          Danone North America

Nestlé USA                        General Mills                      Treehouse Foods

Conagra Brands, Inc        PepsiCo                                Tyson Foods

What others say about this

Washington Post 

 The new mandate will set off a scramble within the food industry, which must decide whether to reformulate its products to avoid warning labels, add the newly mandated language, stop selling certain products in Texas or file lawsuits against the measure.

Stat News

There are, however, a couple of important caveats. The requirement applies only to food product labels developed or copyrighted in or after 2027. The rule would also be preempted if the federal government introduces its own regulations about labeling ultra-processed foods.

Researcher Kevin Klatt

Much of the bill builds on the personal empowerment /individual failing approach to health without really doing any serious analysis of systemic issues. No policies or funding to increase fruit/veg/whole grains etc in school lunch, no review of ingredient safety assessment systems to ensure additives are safer, no addressing lack of insurance coverage for nutrition counseling by trained providers like RDs, etc etc.

The study: Maher, C. , Alcorn M., Childress A., Dawson J. A., and Galyean S.. 2025. “Increasing Vegetable Intake Using Monosodium Glutamate in a Randomized Controlled Trial: A Culinary Medicine Intervention.” Food Science & Nutrition 13, no. 6: e70441. 10.1002/fsn3.70441.

Purpose: “This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of monosodium glutamate (MSG) as a flavor enhancer in increasing vegetable intake compared to sodium chloride (NaCl) alone combined with a digital culinary medicine education program.”

Results: “The 50/50 NaCl/MSG group showed a mean increase in vegetable intake from 1.46 to 1.55 cups/day, while the NaCl group showed a decrease from 1.33 to 0.95 cups/day.”

Conclusion: “Although the differences in vegetable intake were not statistically significant, the findings suggest that MSG could enhance vegetable palatability and intake, aligning with the principles of culinary medicine.”

Conflicts of Interest: “The authors declare a conflict of interest due to Ajinomoto’s involvement in the funding and design of this study. Ajinomoto is a company that manufactures and sells MSG products. Their contribution included financial support and assistance in the study design, which could be perceived as influencing the outcomes of the research.”

Funding: “This study was funded by the American Society for Nutrition and its Foundation, grant number 1195905, and the APC [article processing charge] was funded by Ajinomoto.
Health & Nutrition North America Inc.”

Comment: The idea here is that if you sprinkle MSG rather than salt (NaCl) on your vegetables, they will taste better and you will eat more of them.  The study produced a non-significant result but is given a positive spin (“MSG could enhance…”).  The shocker here is the funding.  The authors say Ajinomoto funded it, but the funding statement mentions the American Society for Nutrition, an organization of nutrition researchers and clinicians to which I belong.  I had no idea ASN was funding research, let alone industry-funded research.  I have long been concerned about ASN’s industry partnerships, which I believe compromise the ability of the organization to issue advice on nutrition.  This is an old issue, but one that it seems time to bring up again.

Gidon Eshel.  Planetary Eating: The Hidden Links between Your Plate and Our Cosmic Neighborhood.  MIT Press, 2025.

I did a blurb for this book:

Planetary Eating gives us a geophysicist’s deep analysis of the environmental cost of beef production and the benefits of replacing meat with plants.  Salads, he argues, are a blueprint for rebellion against corporate-run agricultural systems.

This book is divided into two parts.

• The first is a deep dive into calculating the environmental cost of eating beef.
• The second is how climate affects agriculture.

Eshel has fun with this.  He notes that his comments on meat-eating typically get responses:

roughly evenly split between the blindingly enlightened, zero doubt vegan activists, and angry self-appointed beef and big ag defenders.  And when I publish papers that suggest that in some circumstances beef may have some productive roles to play (it does), the tenor of the comments remains unchanged, but the camps neatly reverse, like Prussian troops in formation.

His main argument: “you cannot understand food and agriculture without invoking basic physics, thermodynamics, biology, and other pertinent sciences.”

He’s not kidding.  There’s a lot of all of that in this book and math calculations and formulas as well.  But what he’s trying to say makes sense.

I loved his analysis of why dairy farms do better in Texas and Arizona, states that would seem to be

Inhospitable to moist- and cool-loving cattle.  To combat cattle’s exceptional heat burden due to their large size, high performance, and large metabolic health output, migrating to where sweat dries fast, thus dripping minimally, is essential.  This requires near-surface air characteristics that strongly favor rapid evaporation.  Because few processes promote these conditions more than subsidence, which outside of the tropics is maximized downstream of mountain ranges that vigorous prevailing winds pass over, modern dairy migrate to those areas…Far from perplexing, locating dairy operations just east of the Rockies or the Coast Range now makes perfect sense, because that is the location of maximum effect of planetary waves the interactions of the prevailing westerly winds with the mountains excite.  And in that most coherent downstream node, the main effect for our purposes is subsidence; more subsidence, more comfortable and productive dairy cows.

It’s taken me a couple of months to get to this but a reader in Montreal wanted to be sure I did not miss this article: Twinkies’ New Owner Courts a Novel Group of Snackers: Stoners

J.M. Smucker is sending a “Munchie Mobile” on a road trip leading up to the unofficial holiday of cannabis on April 20 to promote Hostess brands like Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Donettes…Smucker, which acquired Hostess for $4.6 billion in 2023, wants to revitalize sales of a storied yet dusty portfolio by connecting with a wider breadth of consumers…including 4/20 celebrations…The Munchie Mobile truck over the next few weeks will hand out free snacks outside cannabis dispensaries in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey every day at 4:20 p.m.

Why 4/20?  PBS explains.

Snack sales are down lately (blame GLP-1 drugs), so Smucker has to work hard.

Hostess’s marketing division, meanwhile, is getting better at targeting snackers at the right place and the right time, Hollander said. The company is scheduling its digital ads to pop up around popular snack times, such as after lunch and dinner, as well as using geotargeting technology to serve mobile ads to consumers at times when they might be driving close to a grocery store, or walking near a convenience store, she said.

Note: this marketing is aimed at YOU.  Stoned or not, ask yourself: Do you need Twinkies?  Will eating lots more Twinkies be good for you?

I was struck by this announcement from the USDA: Secretary Rollins Takes Bold Action to Put American Farmers First, Cuts Millions in Woke DEI Funding

It’s the McCarthy-era rhetoric that gets to me:

Putting American Farmers First means cutting the millions of dollars that are being wasted on woke DEI propaganda. Under President Trump’s leadership, I am putting an end to the waste, fraud, and abuse that has diverted resources from American farmers and restoring sanity and fiscal stewardship to the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” said Secretary Rollins.

She then lists the programs being cut for underserved and disadvantaged farmers.

So sad, all this.

The question is how to protest.  If enough people do, it might make a difference.

ADDITION

Here’s what Civil Eats has to say about this,