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I’ve long been mystified by why the Chinese government promotes milk consumption so strongly and why Chinese grocery stores, like this one I saw in Beijing, devote so much space to selling dairy foods, when they can’t comfortably digest the lactose in milk.

Asian and many other populations stop making the enzyme that digests lactose sugar a few years after early childhood and become intolerant to that sugar.  So why continue to consume dairy products?

Nature has a new article shedding some light on the question of whether lactose tolerance is inducible.  Do people who eat dairy products develop tolerance?  Or is it just that people who can eat dairy do eat dairy?

• Dairying, diseases and the evolution of lactase persistence in Europe:  Here we provide detailed distributions of milk exploitation across Europe over the past 9,000 years using around 7,000 pottery fat residues from more than 550 archaeological sites. European milk use was widespread from the Neolithic period onwards but varied spatially and temporally in intensity…In the UK Biobank cohort of 500,000 contemporary Europeans, LP [lactose persistence] genotype was only weakly associated with milk consumption and did not show consistent associations with improved fitness or health indicators.

The authors propose:

• Lactose intolerant people drank milk when it became available.
• Under conditions of famine or exposure to diarrhea-inducing pathogens, consuming lactose made the diarrhea worse.
• This acted as a selection pressure for continuing production of the lactase enzyme.
• But population fluctuations, settlement density and wild animal exploitation are better explanations for the persistence of the enzyme than the extent of milk usage.

An editorial expands on these ideas.

• The mystery of early milk consumption in Europe:  The authors propose instead two alternative evolutionary avenues to explain the rise in prevalence of alleles for LP, related to [1] shortages of food or [2] the consequences of increased exposure to disease-causing agents (in relation to animals, crops or from living in close proximity to others without proper sanitation). In either situation, or in a combination of both scenarios, an individual’s ability to diversify their diet away from crops and meat, which might be affected by shortages, and to take advantage of the hydration and calories afforded by dairy products, could be extremely beneficial.

Or you can listen to a podcast:

• How humans adapted to digest lactose — after thousands of years of milk drinking:  Humans have been drinking milk for thousands of years, but it seems that they were doing so long before the ability to digest it became prevalent. Then, around 2,000 years ago, this ability became common in Europe, presenting a mystery to researchers — why then? Now, by analysing health data, ancient DNA and fats residues from thousands of ancient pots, scientists have worked out what caused this trait to suddenly spread throughout Europe.

And take a look at a Nature article from 2019:

• Early Europeans bottle-fed babies with animal milk: Writing in Nature, Dunne et al. describe an analysis of spouted vessels found in ancient graves of infants in Germany that indicates that these artefacts contained animal milk. This evidence suggests that such vessels were used to feed animal milk to children, providing crucial insight into the diet of developing infants in prehistoric human populations.

The dairy industry says a little lactose is harmless to people who are lactose intolerant, and milk’s nutritional benefits outweigh its risks.  Early Europeans—and today’s Chinese—must think so too.

And sorry, but I can’t resist:

Q.  Why do cows have hooves?

A.  Because they lactose.

I’m getting caught up on reports this week.  Here’s one from the US Agency for International Development:  COVID-19 and Nutrition Analytical Framework

The purpose of the Framework:

• Allow policymakers and implementers to better track the interaction of the COVID-19 pandemic and nutrition
• Provide a tool for planning policies, programs, and interventions
• Help identify data gaps
• Support a systems approach to addressing problems “caused, increased, or intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic”

The Framework:

What I like about this Framework is how it so clearly identifies the upstream system levels of intervention: food, health, social, education, and infrastructure.

It’s also interactive, but for that you have to go to its source and click on each section.

Thanks to Lisa Young and three other readers for sending along this one.

The press release: New Research Finds Consumption of Peanuts Supports Weight Loss, Lowers Blood Pressure and Improves Glucose Levels

The Study: Petersen, K.S.; Murphy, J.; Whitbread, J.; Clifton, P.M.; Keogh, J.B. The Effect of a Peanut-Enriched Weight Loss Diet Compared to a Low-Fat Weight Loss Diet on Body Weight, Blood Pressure, and Glycemic Control: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Nutrients 2022, 14, 2986. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14142986.

Conclusion: Intake of 35 g of peanuts prior to two main meals per day, in the context of an energy-restricted diet, resulted in weight loss comparable to a traditional low-fat weight loss diet without preloads. Greater systolic blood pressure reductions were observed with peanut intake, which may lower cardiovascular disease risk.

Funding: This research was funded by The Peanut Institute…The funder had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

Conflicts of Interest: J.B.K., P.M.C. and K.S.P. received a grant from The Peanut Institute to conduct this study. The funder had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

Comment: The funder had no role?  That’s what they all say.  That may be true in this instance, but but much research demonstrates otherwise, and funders are unlikely to pay for studies that might give them unfavorable results.

The underlying purpose of this study was to demonstrate that if you are on a weight-loss diet, you can eat lots of peanuts and still lose weight: “70 g/d of peanuts may be included in an energy-restricted weight loss diet without attenuating weight loss over a 6-month period.”  Of course you can, if you stick to a low-calorie diet.

I’m all for eating nuts.  Substituting them for ultra-processed snack foods is a reasonable approach to dieting, but don’t expect to lose any more weight eating nuts than from any other source of calories.  This is a marketing study, aimed at encouraging you to eat more peanuts.

R.C. Harris.  Party Food: A Partisan History of Food & Farming in America.  Common Ground, 2021 (147 pages plus an index).

The author, a politics professor at Washington & Lee University, sent me a copy of her book, which I have now read.

I love the cover.

This is a book about the differing views of Farm Bill provisions among Democrats and Republicans.

Harris points out, correctly, that recent books about food policy in the United States, mine among them, say practically nothing about the role of the two political parties in deciding food issues.  Here, she corrects this omission.

She does so using a sports analogy–red and blue teams with one goal: to win.  A brief excerpt:

Setting the Stage: Farmers on Welfare in a Capitalist Society

The main problem in our story is that farm policy is really about giving farmers federal dollars to stay in business—and this idea tends to divide the red team from the blue team.  The history of modern farm policy in the United States is essentially the history of social welfare policy—a policy designed to prop up the incomes of farm families…As a nation of independent, hardworking, self-sufficient citizens and immigrants, America has always been more likely to embrace capitalism and less likely to expect government support than nations with a history of kinds, vassals, and peasants.  This means America is much more centrist and market-oriented in its economic policy, making welfare the exception rather than the rule. (p.53)

I get what she’s saying and her points are worth considering, but I wish she had used a word other than “farmers.”  The ones who get corporate welfare in America are not your small subsistence farmers or even those of medium size.

A more precise term here would be Big Agriculture.

The Farm Bill is welfare for the rich.  That’s why the red team is for it.

But her contention that the food movement needs to pay more attention to party politics demands attention.

Voting really matters to our players on the field.  In fact, we learned that partisan farm policy is really field policy—what will keep the team on the field.  And, interestingly enough, this has a lot to dow with what is in the fields and on the tables (and on the menus, and in the regrigerator, and for sale at the store or local farmers market) where the players are elected.  In other words, political teams want to be re-elected so they can keep making political plays.  (p. 131)

As I keep saying, if you want the food movement to have power, run for office.

Maybe it’s time for a third team?

Since I’ve figured out how to enbed videos, you might want to take a look at this one.

This one is about Nutri-Score, a front-of-package labeling system that started in France but is used in several European countries.  The system balances the healthful and unhealthful aspects of processed foods, and assigns a composite color-coded score, from A (very healthy) to E (oops), and from green to red.

Once you know how the system works, you can easily figure out which ultra-processed foods are best avoided.

The video is in French with English subtitles (but also comes in French without subtitles or with Spanish subtitles).

For more about Nutri-Score go here and here.
For what I’ve written previously about Nutri-Score, go here.

We have Healthy Food America and the University of Washington, the UCONN Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health, and the Public Health Law Center at Mitchell Hamline School of Law to thank for this guide to tax legislation that will promote health and racial equity.

The report:

• Reviews tax laws proposed and achieved in the US
• Summarizes the experience of advocates and policymakers
• Examines approaches used in alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis taxes
• Recommends how to draft legislation to promote equity

The full report: Investing Sweetened Beverage Tax Revenues to Advance Equity: Recommendations for Drafting Legislation

The brief report is here.

An infographic provides a quick overview.

Other supporting materials are available on the Healthy Food America website.

Want to give this a try?  Here’s how.

A review article finds it nontoxic.You may recall that on June 17,  Daily Harvest issued a recall of its frozen vegan Crumbles product  after 500 or so adverse event reports, many of  severe liver damage among the 28,000 customers who ordered it.

Here’s what the front of the package looked like.

This product has lots of ingredients:

organic butternut squash, organic hemp seeds, organic cauliflower rice, organic extra virgin olive oil, organic french lentils, organic red lentils, organic tri-colored quinoa, organic cremini mushrooms, organic tara flour, organic leeks, organic parsley, water, organic cassava root flour, organic flax seeds, organic sacha inchi powder, chia seeds, organic porcini powder, himalayan sea salt, organic apple cider vinegar, organic onion powder, nutritional yeast, organic garlic powder, organic tomato powder, organic white pepper, organic coriander seeds, organic mustard powder, organic thyme.

As food safety lawyer Bill Marler predicted, tara flour has been identified as the ingredient at fault.

• Tara is only in Crumbles and Crumbles is the only product that made people sick.
• Tara is also in another company’s product, Revive smoothies, that made people sick.

I had never heard of tara and had to look it up.  Since then, I’ve gotten curious and did some quick research.

Tara is a legume—a bean plant—grown in Peru and other Latin American countries.

Tara is grown for several purposes:

• Pod tannins for industrial leather, keeping ships free of marine animals, and preparing textiles to accept dyes
• Cosmetics (polysaccharides isolated from the seeds)
• Food additives—protein flours and gums (from the endosperm)

The research literature on tara is remarkably extensive (Who knew?).

On the tannins:

• Anything you want to know about tara tannins (from a doctoral dissertation)
• Use of tara tannins to prevent ship fouling

On cosmetics:

• Tara is safe as used in cosmetics.

On tara as a food ingredient:

• An overview from the International Food Additive Council implies that it’s safe
• A major safety evaluation in 1993 says it’s safe.
• It’s not toxic as used in traditional Peruvian medicine
• Another review article finds it nontoxic.
• It is neither mutagenic nor genotoxic
• It may have anti-cancer properties

From everything previously reported about tara over the past 20 years, there is no reason to think it might be unsafe.

So what’s going on?  How to explain “only” hundreds of cases of severe liver injury when 28,000 Crumbles meals were shipped during the time when cases were reported.

Possibilities:

• Some toxic ingredient accidentally or deliberately got into the tara flour (similar to melamine being substituted for wheat gluten in pet food in 2006 and in infant formula in China in 2008).
• Toxic tannins from other parts of the tara plant got into the endosperm flour.
• Some people have unusual sensitivities to tara proteins or digestive products of tara proteins (similar to what happens when people with coeliac disease eat gluten from wheat or other gluten-containing grains)
• Some people have inborn errors of metabolism that cause acute reactions to tara proteins (similar to what happens when people with deficiency of the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase ingest fava beans)
• Others?  Could be, but I can’t think of any.

To prevent this from happening again, it’s necessary to identify the toxin.  I hope that happens soon.

Several people sent me this one:

Prunes preserve hip bone mineral density in a 12-month randomized controlled trial in postmenopausal women: the Prune Study.  The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,  nqac189, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqac189

Conclusions: A 50g daily dose of prunes can prevent loss of total hip BMD [bone mineral density] in postmenopausal females after six months, which persisted for 12-months…we propose that the 50g dose represents a valuable non-pharmacological treatment strategy that can be used to preserve hip BMD in postmenopausal females and possibly reduce hip fracture risk

Sources of Support: California Prune Board (Award Number: 180215)

Acknowledgments: We thank the California Prune Board for the funding and prunes…The California Prune Board had no role in the data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of manuscript.in this study.

Comment: The California Prune Board did not have to have that kind of role to get the outcome it wanted.  Research on funding effects shows that industry influence is exerted primarily in the ways the research question is framed and the results interpreted.  It also shows that investigators hardly ever recognize how industry funding exerts influence.

Reference:  Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.