Jennifer Grayson.  A Call to Farms: Reconnecting to Nature, Food, and Community in a Modern World.  Countryman Press, 2024.

What a great title! I did a blurb for Jennifer Grayson’s previous book, Unlatched: The Evolution of Breastfeeding and the Making of a Controversy, and was happy to have the chance to blurb this one too, not least because “A Call to Farms” is such a great title.  Grayson, as it happens, is one terrific writer.   

Here’s the new blurb:

In this deeply inspiring book, Jennifer Grayson examines the motives, practices, problems, and successes of a diverse collection of young small-scale farmers growing food sustainably and achieving enormous satisfaction and joy in the process. The farmers described in A Call to Farms, provide abundant reasons for hope in the future of food healthier for people and the planet as well as for its producers.  If you are looking for hope, here it is.

And here is a short excerpt capturing its essence:

A week into my first farm job, I realized it was the most joyful and fulfilling work I had ever experienced.  After two months of being outside all day, nearly every day, I felt the best—both physically and mentally—that I ever had in my life.  But the real transformation occurred as I began to meet and learn bout the new and driven farmers, graziers, and food activists emerging all over the country.  They hadn’t grown up in farming families; they came from backgrounds vastly underrepresented in agriculture; and many of them were far younger than I was, not to mention decades younger than the average American farmer.  I was awestruck by their intention and ingenuity.  They hadn’t turned to this way of life as some back-to-the-land fantasy.  They had chosen sustainable agriculture as a tactile way to effect environmental activism and food justice; for cultural reclamation; to reconnect to nature, food, and community; to live aligned with their values; to do, in the words of one farmer you’ll meet in this book, “something that means something.”

As I said, inspiring.  Get out there and farm!

I saw this on FoodNavigator–Asia, a newsletter to which I subscribe.

Red yeast rice impact: Kobayashi Pharmaceutical records nearly US$25m losses in Q1: Kobayashi Pharmaceutical reported an “extraordinary loss” of nearly US$25m (JPY$3.86bn) in its Q1 results due to the recall of its contaminated red yeast rice products, raw materials, and compensation of medical expenses. Read more

Red yeast rice is a dietary supplement with a statin-like component observed to reduce blood cholesterol levels, although not nearly to the same extent as statin drugs.  Consumer Lab tests show at least half not to contain what they say they do.

Now, on top of that, the supplements were associated with kidney disease (at least 50 cases) and deaths (at least 2) among takers in Japan.

Comment: Dietary supplements are the wild west of the food supply.  Anyone can make and sell them.  Because they are mainly harmless, nobody much bothers to test them, even major pharmaceutical companies.  Problems with red yeast rice supplements have been known for a long time.  As a result, supplements are risky.  How risky?  Nobody knows.  I don’t recommend them.

I subscribe to Pet Food Industry and greatly admire the superb quality of its reporting.

Here’s an example:

Pet obesity 2023: owners oblivious, vets scared to talk: Pet owners may be largely unaware that there is a problem, especially with their own dogs and cats, despite years of warnings.

Several items in this article got my attention.

A.  It is based on a survey by The Association for Pet Obesity (APOP).  Pet obesity is such a widespread problem that it has induced formation of a society to address it.

B.  Pet owners do not recognize that their pets are overweight.

The survey found only 28% of cat owners and 17% of dog owners to say their pets were overweight.  Instead,  84% of dog owners and 70% of cat owners said their pets’ weights were healthy.

Veterinarians say 59% of dogs and 61% of cats are overweight or obese, and percentages are rising.

C.  Veterinarians are reluctant to discuss obesity with pet owners.

Although the survey found 84% of veterinarians to report encountering “pet owners who appeared embarrassed or angry when told their pet was overweight,” only 4% of owners thought their veterinarian would be uncomfortable discussing the issue.

Comment

None of this should be surprising, as I think about it.  Doctors avoid discussing obesity with human patients (embarrassment, stigma, and lack of time, empathy, or satisfactory treatment approaches).  Obesity has become the “O” word.

An astonishing 75% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, and children are also getting there.

We, as a society, need to prevent this kind of weight gain for ourselves, our kids, and our pets.

How to do this requires policies, and lots of them, all at once.  Policies require politics.  Politics requires advocacy.

We need all of these, and right away.

Resources

Sunday’s New York Times has an entire section on pets.

Information about my book with Malden Nesheim on pet food issues, Feed Your Pet Right, is here.

I’m always interested in the latest updates on progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.

17 Goals to Transform Our World: The Sustainable Development Goals are a call for action by all countries – poor, rich and middle-income – to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. They recognize that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and address a range of social needs including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities, while tackling climate change and environmental protection.

Thid new progress report is just out: Sachs, J.D., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G. (2024). Sustainable Development Report 2024: The SDGs and the UN Summit of the Future. Dublin University Press. 500 pages (!).

Its first key finding:

On average, globally, only 16% of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved by 2030, with the remaining 84% demonstrating limited or a reversal of progress.

• Off track: SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG14 (Life Below Water), SDG15 (Life on Land) and SDG16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions).
• Reversal of progress: obesity rate (under SDG 2), press freedom (under SDG 16), the red list index (under SDG 15), sustainable nitrogen management (under SDG 2), life expectancy at birth (under SDG 3).

Its key finding specifically related to food:

SDG targets related to food and land systems are particularly off-track: Globally, 600 million people will still suffer from hunger by 2030, obesity is increasing globally, and greenhouse gas emissions from Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) represent almost a quarter of annual global GHG emissions.

What needs to be done:

The recommendations:

Significant progress is possible but requires several dramatic changes:

1) avoid overconsumption beyond recommended levels and limit animal-based protein consumption with dietary shifts compatible with cultural preferences;

2) invest to foster productivity, particularly for products and areas with strong demand growth; and

3) implement inclusive, robust, and transparent monitoring systems to halt deforestation.

And how, exactly, are we to do this?  This, the report does not, and cannot, specify.

Report resources

• Website
• Data Visualization

A reader who wishes to remain anonymous forwarded this email she received from Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RDN, LDN, FAND , Director of Human Nutrition·National Pork Board.

Growing Strong: Animal-Source Foods’ Role in Childhood Development and Sustainable Food Systems

Childhood and adolescence are critically important periods for growth and development. These periods are also key for establishing healthy dietary patterns that can influence eating behaviors and health into adulthood.

During these stages, animal-source foods provide critical nutrients — such as high-quality protein, iron, zinc, choline, and B vitamins — that are not easily replaced from other sources.

In this webinar, Dr. Adegbola Adesogan will:

– Present evidence on the role of animal-source foods in childhood development and impact on future health outcomes

– Review how animal-source foods are a source of key nutrients that support health in children and adolescents

The CPE activity application for this webinar is pending review by the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR) and approval for 1.0 CPEU.

Comment

Presumably, the CDR will approve this for continuing education credits required for dietetic licensing.  Also presumably, participants will not learn about the polluting effects of Pork CAFOs or the community lawsuits against them for obnoxious odors and other offenses.  Or the way the pork industry fights back against such complaints.  Or the welfare issues about farrowing crates.  Or complaints about Pork Checkoff programs.

As I’ve noted previously, dietitians are able to fulfill all requirements for continuing education credits from industry-funded courses like this one.

Conflict of interest, anyone?

Jennifer E. Gaddis and Sarah A. Robert.  Transforming School Food Politics Around the World.  MIT Press, 2024 (322 pages)

This is an edited volume describing programs and policies to improve school food in the United Sttates, but also Japan, Canada, Peru, Finland, India, Brazil, and South Korea.

Every country does school food its own way.  Only three countries—India, Brazil, and South Korea—have universal school meals, although some U.S. states do too (one chapter explains how states managed it).

Overall, the chapters explain what school food advocates are doing and what works.

If you are interested in school food advocacy, this book is your Bible.

It is especially so because it is Open Access.  You don’t believe this?  Here is a link to a pdf of the entire book.

Even more, the authors wrote a guide to the book with chapter-by-chapter discussion questions, activities, and other resources useful for college classes and practitioner book clubs.  This too is Open Access: here is the link to the study guide.

Enjoy!  And use!

By the time the FDA posted this outbreak alert, the cucumbers had all been picked, shipped, and done their damage.

The outbreak

Total Illnesses: 449
Hospitalizations: 125
Deaths: 0
Last Illness Onset: June 4, 2024
States with Cases: AL, AR, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, KY, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, VT, WA, WI [31 states]

The CDC investigation:  Of 188 people interviewed (69%) reported eating cucumbers.

The product

cucumbers distributed by Fresh Start Produce Sales, Inc. and grown by Bedner Growers, Inc., of Boynton Beach, FL. Recalled cucumbers are beyond shelf life and should no longer be available for sale to consumers in stores.  Bedner Growers, Inc.’s growing and harvesting seasons are over. There is no product from this farm on the market and likely no ongoing risk to the public.

The self-protective reaction

According to Food Safety News,

the Florida Department of Agriculture (FDOA) called the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) tracing of a Salmonella outbreak to a local cucumber grower “at best inaccurate, and at worst misleading.” Apparently, the head of food safety at the FDOA, who told the FDA in an email “We find the science inaccurate, unsubstantiated and unnecessarily damaging to the firm implicated.”

Comment

This outbreak is worth special attention, not least because so many people were affected in so many states, and the cucumbers were gone by the time investigators knew they were the most likely cause.

• Half the cases were due to a new kind of Salmonella, S. Braenderup.
• The FDA idenified S. Braenderup in untreated canal water used for irrigation.

Salmonella in the water?  This means there must be some kind of enormous CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) nearby, spilling its cattle, dairy, or poutry waste into local streams.

The regulatory issues

This brings me to law professor Timothy Lytton’s latest paper on precisely this issue:  Lytton, Timothy D., Known Unknowns: Unmeasurable Hazards and the Limits of Risk Regulation (July 02, 2024). Oklahoma Law Review, Vol. 76, No. 4, p. 857, 2024.

This Article develops general principles for addressing known unknowns using a case study of efforts to regulate agricultural water quality. Contaminated water used to cultivate fresh produce is a well-known cause of recurrent foodborne illness outbreaks. Unfortunately, it has, so far, proven impossible to reliably quantify the risk of human illness from any given source of agricultural water.

At least one problem here is the split in regulatory authority between FDA (cucumbers) and USDA (animals).  FDA has no authority over CAFOs.  Its authority stops at the farm.  How is the cucumber farmer supposed to stop toxic forms of Salmonella from getting onto cucumber fields?

That is the insoluble regulatory problem Lytton’s piece addresses.

As I keep saying, eating less is bad for business.

If you need proof, just look at how the food industry is scrambling to figure out what to do in response to the effects of GLP-1 drugs in decreasing appetite and food “noise.”

Here are a few examples.

The threat

Weight loss drugs may be melting US ice cream demand: Demand for frozen dairy products in the US has been declining for decades. Consumers’ growing interest in GLP-1 weight loss products is putting further pressure on demand…. Read more

Ozempic’s Effect on Food Innovation: Anti-obesity drugs have dropped on the food business in the last year like ChatGPT has dropped on the world. And according to experts assembled for a recent Mattson webinar on the topic, the effects of new appetite suppressants including Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound have only begun to be felt among American consumers and the food industry that sells to them.

The promise

Nestlé introduces Vital Pursuit brand to support GLP-1 users in the US: Nestlé is introducing Vital Pursuit, a new line of foods intended to be a companion for GLP-1 weight loss medication users and consumers focused on weight management in the US. The products are high in protein, a good source of fiber, contain essential nutrients, and they are portion-aligned to a weight loss medication user’s appetite. The new line is also well-suited to support a balanced diet for anyone on a weight management journey. Vital Pursuit is the first food brand from Nestlé intended for GLP-1 users with the goal of complementing the eating habits of millions of Americans who are currently prescribed a weight loss medication or actively working to manage their weight.

Food Companies Want a Piece of the Ozempic Pie, Too: Last fall, word of a looming existential threat to the packaged food industry began to bubble up in earnings calls and among analysts. Drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro, experts feared, could be a little too effective at curtailing people’s cravings for snacks and sweets, and if too many people got on the drugs, their changing habits could eventually do the industry real harm. Could buyers begin to forsake Doritos and Oreos and Pizza Bagels?

Danone Targets Health, Nutrition as Food Industry Braces for Ozempic Era: The food company is targeting like-for-like sales growth of 3%-5% for the 2025 to 2028 period, with operating income rising at a faster pace than sales. Danone plans to double down on health and nutrition in the coming years as food companies seek to tackle the effects of Ozempic and other blockbuster weight-loss drugs on eating habits.

Supergut’s Marc Washington on ‘Ozempic era’ opportunity: The IPA World Congress + Probiota Americas 2024 in Salt Lake City highlighted many of the innovations happening in the prebiotics space, including how GLP-1s are impacting the category…. Watch now