Just before the Christmas holidays, Senator Bernie Sanders (Ind-VT), who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee , held a hearing: What is Fueling the Diabetes Epidemic? 

The Senator’s Tweet:

Some of the quotes from the Senator’s remarks are amazing.  They need to be said, loud and clear:

• Why is the number of children in America today who have Type 2 diabetes estimated to skyrocket by nearly 700% over the next four decades?
• For decades, in my view, we have allowed large corporations in the food and beverage industry to entice children to eat foods and beverages loaded up with sugar, salt, and saturated fat, purposely designed to be over-eaten,
• The situation has gotten so bad that most of what children in America eat today consists of unhealthy, ultra-processed foods that doctors have told us lead to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
• While diabetes and obesity rates in America soar, the food and beverage industry spends billions on advertising to get consumers, including young children, hooked on their unhealthy products.
• This has got to stop. A good place to start? Banning junk food ads targeted at kids.
• This is not a radical idea.
• We must have the courage to take on the greed of the food and beverage industry which, every day, is undermining the health and well-being of our children by pushing extremely unhealthy products which far too often cause obesity and type-2 diabetes.

The hearing began with:

• Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., prepared remarks  
• Ranking member Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., prepared remarks

Witness testimony

• Ashley Gearhardt — Professor of psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
• Lindsey Smith Taillie — Associate professor, Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C.
• Kasia Lipska — Associate professor of medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn. 
• Natalie Stanback — Volunteer and parent of a child with type 1 diabetes, JDRF, Lewisville, Texas   
• Aaron Kowalski — CEO, JDRF, New York

Senator Sanders also wrote an op-ed in USA Today: “We can’t allow the food and beverage industry to destroy our kids’ health.

Helena Bottemiller Evich, writing in Food Fix “Bernie Sanders vs. Big Food,” asks why Sanders is doing this now?  She has no answer, but I think its fabulous that he is taking this on and joining Senator Cory Booker in this endeavor.

Diet-related chronic diseases are a big problem for kids as well as adults.

It’s way past time to take on the food industry’s manipulative marketing practices.

Cheers to Senators Sanders and Booker.  We need more of you in Congress.

Conclusions and Relevance  In this randomized clinical trial, we observed cardiometabolic advantages for the healthy vegan vs the healthy omnivorous diet among healthy, adult identical twins. Clinicians may consider recommending plant-based diets to reduce cardiometabolic risk factors, as well as aligning with environmental benefits.

The study has its share of detractors, American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), for example: Stanford Medicine Releases Confirmation Bias Study; Media Takes The Bait.  Its chief criticisms

• The improvements were in biomarkers, not health.
• Both diets were healthy,
• Obviously, diets without cholesterol will reduce cholesterol.
• Vitamin B12 levels were ldeficient on the vegan diet.

Comment: The ACSH is an industry-funded front group.  Low B12 is an easy problem to solve, and vegans, who by definition eat no foods of animal origin, have to make sure they complensate for its absence.

The twin idea is clever and adorable—and the reason for the press attention and for the Netflix documentary.  The study shows that vegan diets improve cardiovascular risk biomarkers in healthy people.  Why not?  This is further evidence for the benefits of largely plant-based diets.

I want to start off the new year with a week of cheery postings.  IHow’s this for an irresistable beginning!

The study:  Could sharing chocolate cake increase engagement with research on intermittent fasting?   BMJ2023; 383 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.p2585 (Published 20 December 2023).

Rationale: “Food and the festive season are heavily intertwined, and for us one sweet treat stands out: the chocolate brownie. Whether it’s the fudgy centre or the crinkled crust, brownies’ irresistibly rich deliciousness evokes comfort and delight. And isn’t chocolate good for you?…We wanted to know whether offering brownies affects how recipients respond to research findings on intermittent or short-term fasting.”

Method: “We completed two multicentre studies—a randomised controlled trial and a cross-sectional study—to seek understanding of the effects of offering brownies on healthcare professionals’ engagement with, and perception of, research findings on fasting.”

Results: “Preliminary results indicate that brownies did not influence their views—but many saw value in short term fasting to improve wellbeing.”

Conclusion: “Sharing brownies may not affect perceptions of presented evidence, but we remain convinced that they are the best treat to offer while discussing calorie restriction.”

Conflicts of interest:  “We have,,,no relevant interests to declare.”

Comment: This study produced a negative result, but who cares?  I’ll bet participants had a great time.  Check out the recipe; it is designed to produce enough brownies for one research meeting.

No, I am not making this up.

Happy new year!

I said I was taking this week off, but this item is too good not to share (thanks to Bill Nesheim for sending).

Association of health benefits and harms of Christmas dessert ingredients in recipes from The Great British Bake Off: umbrella review of umbrella reviews of meta-analyses of observational studies.  MJ 2023; 383 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2023-077166 (Published 20 December 2023)

Abstract

Objective To determine the health benefits and harms of various ingredients in Christmas desserts from The Great British Bake Off.

Design Umbrella review of umbrella reviews of meta-analyses of observational studies.

Data sources The Great British Bake Off website, Embase, Medline, and Scopus.

Inclusion criteria Umbrella reviews of meta-analyses of observational studies evaluating the associations between Christmas dessert ingredients and the risk of death or disease.

Main outcome measures Proportion of protective and harmful summary associations between ingredient groups from The Great British Bake Off Christmas dessert recipes and the risk of death or disease.

Results 48 recipes for Christmas desserts (ie, cakes, biscuits, pastries, and puddings and desserts) were provided on The Great British Bake Off website with 178 unique ingredients that were collapsed into 17 overarching ingredient groups. A literature search identified 7008 titles and abstracts, of which 46 eligible umbrella reviews reported 363 unique summary associations between the ingredient groups and risk of death or disease. Of these summary associations, 149 (41%) were significant, including 110 (74%) that estimated that the ingredient groups reduced the risk of death or disease and 39 (26%) that increased the risk. The most common ingredient groups associated with a reduced risk of death or disease were fruit (44/110, 40%), coffee (17/110, 16%), and nuts (14/110, 13%), whereas alcohol (20/39, 51%) and sugar (5/39, 13%) were the most common ingredient groups associated with increased risk of death or disease.

Conclusions Recipes for Christmas desserts from The Great British Bake Off often use ingredient groups that are associated with reductions, rather than increases, in the risk of death or disease. This Christmas, if concerns about the limitations of observational nutrition research are set aside, you can have your cake and eat it too.

Food Politics is offline until January 2 (if you want to catch up with it, go to foodpolitics.com).

Enjoy the break. Enjoy the holidays.

May the new year bring you peace and joy (let’s hope).

Some of the most thoughtful writing about food and climate change comes from IPES  Food–The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.

IPES Food recently published From Plate to Planet, a report on how local governments are trying to do something about preventing further climate change by “promoting healthy and sustainable diets, reducing food waste, shortening food chains, training organic farmers, and ensuring all residents can access healthy and sustainable food.”

The report receommends that national governmebts follow their example.

To that I say good luck.

The big triumph of COP-28 was the mention of fossil fuels in its final recommendations, not that anyone intends to do anything about them.

Preventing climate change is going to have to be a local effort.  IPES Food points the way.

• Read the report ( EN | FR | ES )
• Read the summary ( EN | FR | ES )
• Read the press release (EN)

Avian influenza of the highly pathogenic kind (HPAI, H5N1) is now everywhere.

The CDC says bird flu, caused by avian influenza viruses,

naturally spread among wild aquatic birds worldwide and can infect domestic poultry and other bird and animal species. Bird flu viruses do not normally infect humans. However, sporadic human infections with  bird flu viruses have occurred.

The CDC also has much to say about the current status of H5N1: it has infected 72.5 million poultry so far this year.  These had to be destroyed.

One egg producer, Michael Foods, said it “lost” 4.2 million laying hens to HPAI.

“Lost?”

According to Vox, 

The 2022-2023 spread of bird flu has been the most catastrophic on record in the US. In less than two years, it’s hit hundreds of poultry factory farms across nearly every state in the country, costing the federal government $757 million and counting to manage, and the poultry industry more than $1 billion in lost revenue and other costs (experts also fear that the disease could spark an outbreak in humans).

To help stamp out the disease’s spread, all of the more than 72 million chickens, turkeys, and other birds raised for meat and eggs on affected farms have been killed and disposed of, whether or not they actually had the virus, which can spread rapidly and has a very high mortality rate for poultry birds.

Vox explains the killing method (consider what killing millions of chickens entails): basically shutting down the ventilation.

This seems catastrophic, even though 72 million is just a small fraction of the 1.2 billion chicken alive at any time.

Surely, industrially crowded housing has something to do with the rapid spread of H5N1.  Another downside of industrial egg production.

Expect egg prices to rise.

Happy new year.

A few weeks ago,  the FDA announced  volunary recalls of  3 brands of baby pouches containing apple sauce with cinnamon, because they contained excess lead.

Lead is poisonous to children’s nervous systems and brain development; there is no safe level of lead intake.

DO NOT LET YOUR KIDS EAT THESE PRODUCTS!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The FDA inspected the plant in Ecuador where cinnamon apple sauce is made; the amounts of lead were shockingly high.  Food Safety News reports:

The applesauce, sold in pouches packaged for children, has been found to have a lead content of 5110 parts per million (ppm) and 2270 ppm. The international Codex body is considering adopting a maximum level of 2.5 ppm for lead in bark spices, including cinnamon.

What is even more shocking about this situation is how the FDA found out about the lead—not by testing but because

…a developing investigation by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services [found] about four children with elevated blood lead levels, indicating potential acute lead toxicity.

The state investigation identified WanaBana apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches as a potential shared source of exposure. As part of their investigation, the department of health and human services analyzed multiple lots of WanaBana apple cinnamon fruit puree, detecting extremely high concentrations of lead.

The FDA then announced it was investigating cinnamon as a source of the lead.

It traced the cinnamon to a supplier in Ecuador.

The FDA suspects that somewhere along the supply chain, someone deliberately added lead to the cinnamon to maintain its color and increase its weight.

This reminds me of the addition of Chinese melamine to pet food and infant formula in 2006 and 2007 (I wrote about the pet food scandal in Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine).

This also points to the need for strengthening the FDA.  It is not required to test products for lead and neither are manufacturers.

The FDA has proposed action levels for lead in foods, but these are neither final nor implemented.

The New York Times quoted Tom Neltner, safety expert at the Environmental Defense Fund:

That the levels of lead in children’s blood tends to be the first line of detection for lead in food is “effectively using kids as canaries…What this shows is a breakdown in the agency, and an industry that needs to be fixed.”

By industry, I’m assuming he means baby food and I could not agree more.

Pouches may be convenient for parents, but they promote sweet tastes and don’t teach kids how to eat real foods.  One study concluded:

Squeeze pouch products available in Australia are nutritionally poor, high in sugars, not fortified with iron, and there is a clear risk of harm tothe health of infant and young children if these products are fed regularly. The marketing messages and labelling on squeeze pouches are misleading and do not support WHO or Australian NHMRC recommendations for breastfeeding or appropriate introduction of complementary foods and labelling of products. There is an urgent need for improved regulation of product composition, serving sizes and labelling to protect infants and young children aged 0–36 months and better inform parents.

That goes for U.S. products too.

Caveat emptor.