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PepsiCo, yesterday, announced that it had launched its sustainability report with an agenda for 2025. 

The sustainability promises look good, but reporters called me for comments only on the first goal in its Products agenda:

1. At least two-thirds of Pepsi’s global beverage portfolio volume will have 100 calories or fewer from added sugars per 12-ounce serving.

For the record, the other Product goals are:

2. At least three-quarters of its global foods portfolio volume will not exceed 1.1 grams of saturated fat per 100 calories.

3. At least three-quarters of its global foods portfolio volume will not exceed 1.3 milligrams of sodium per calorie.

The reporters’ questions assumed that Pepsi plans to reduce the sugar in its full-sugar beverages.

Maybe, but that’s not clear from the press release or the report.

Here’s what I want to know:

1. The baseline: What proportion of Pepsi drinks already have fewer than 100 calories per 12 ounces?  Pepsi makes loads of beverages that meet that target—Gatorade, bottled waters, diet sodas.
2. The marketing plan: Will the marketing dollars shift from full-sugar to lower-sugar options?

I ask, because Pepsi’s track record on sugar reduction is not encouraging.  In 2009, Pepsi set a goal to reduce the average amount of added sugars in its drinks by 25% by 2020.

The result?  An increase in average sugars of 4% so far (Pepsi got into trouble with investors who wanted marketing focused on full-sugar beverages).

Pepsi’s sustainability report says the company is working hard to find ways to reduce sugars and “these efforts could yield significant progress.”   Let’s hope they do.

The report also explains how the company plans to reach its lower-sugar goal:

• Reformulating
• Creating new low-and no-calorie drinks
• Making smaller sizes
• Boosting promotion of lower-calorie drinks

I hope the company does these things, despite its unfortunate record on sugar promises.  We need to wait and see whether the company delivers on this one.

But I’m thinking: Surely this announcement must be designed to head off the ongoing soda tax initiatives.  Pepsi is pouring millions of dollars into fighting the taxes directly and through its membership in the American Beverage Association.

Pepsi wants to have things both ways: to appear to promote healthier beverages while it is fighting public health measures to reduce soda intake.

Let’s give the company the benefit of the doubt and hope it delivers on its promises—while doing everything we can to get those taxes passed.

Here’s one of the articles that quotes me:

The last time Pepsi tried to position itself as doing something for health, its investors got very upset,” Marion Nestle, a professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies & Public Health at New York University, said in an email. In 2012, investors got mad at PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi for focusing on getting revenue from healthy products, Business Insider reported.

“[PepsiCo] will continue to do everything it can to promote its most profitable products,” Nestle said. “These, alas, tend to be the ones with full sugar.”

Paul Freedman.  Ten Restaurants that Changed America.  Liveright/WW Norton, 2016.

I was happy to be asked for a blurb for this fascinating, entertaining, and beautifully produced (color illustrations!) volume.  Here’s what I said:

Is it even remotely possible that ten restaurants—from Delmonico’s to Howard Johnson, Sylvia’s, and Chez Panisse—could change the way America eats?  Paul Freedman draws on deep historical research, analysis of contemporary sources, and interviews with surviving players to give us an elegantly written, fascinating, and, dare I suggest, gossipy account of the individuals and social trends that made these restaurants famous.   Whether or not you’ve ever eaten in any of these restaurants, you will have a wonderful time reading this book and will gain unexpectedly delightful insights into modern American life.

I particularly enjoy Freeman’s writing.  Here is an excerpt from his chapter on Le Pavillion (page 336) on what it’s like to get into a high-end restaurant these days:

[I]t is hardly as if American high-end restaurants have become that much more democratic.  Although it is customary to begin any account of the modern restaurant boom by conjuring up the bad old days of damask tablecloths, dress code, leather-covered menus and haughty maîtres-d’-hôtel, restaurants today impose distinctions that would never have occurred to Henri Soulé: near-impossible reservations, no reservations, the speakeasy restaurant type with no visible sign, special telephone lines for favored customers, or forcing clients to pay in advance of their meal.  The model is no longer the nightclub of the Copacabana or El Morocco type, but the culinary version of a dance club complete with velvet rope and line of suppliants, lacking only a bouncer.

Freedman sprinkles wonderfully gossipy digressions throughout.  Here’s one from his chapter on the Four Seasons (page 372):

President John F. Kennedy’s forty-fifth birthday on May 19, 1962, was celebrated there.  Guests, who contributed $1,000, had a rather modest meal of baked crab, chicken broth with spring wheat, beef medallions and birthday cake.  Kennedy had spent so much time chatting with each table, had time only for cream of asparagus soup and a beer before going off to Madison Square Garden where Marilyn Monroe sang him a rather suggestive version of “Happy Birthday.

That comment ought to take you right to YouTube, where you can the “suggestive version” for yourself.

The World Health Organization took two actions yesterday to encourage people to cut down on consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.

It issued a report urging national governments to consider taxes: “Taxes on sugary drinks: Why do it?  

Governments can take a number of actions to improve availability and access to healthy foods and have a positive influence on the food people choose to consume. A major action for comprehensive programmes aimed at reducing consumption of sugars is taxation of sugary drinks. Just as taxing tobacco helps to reduce tobacco use, taxing sugary drinks can help reduce consumption of sugars.

It defines sugar drinks as products that contain added sugar, corn or fruit-juice concentrates and include carbonates, fruit drinks, sports drinks, energy and vitamin water drinks, sweetened iced tea, and lemonade.

It also took immediate action to remove sugary drinks from its Geneva headquarters

The agency explained this action:

The move signifies how seriously WHO is taking its leadership role in implementing policies to improve public health…By implementing this policy WHO is setting a positive example for Member States, other organizations and visitors…WHO vending machines, restaurants and coffee shops will continue to sell water, fizzy water, and unflavoured milks with different fat contents, teas and coffees, and beverages with non-sugar sweeteners (such as diet and zero calorie drinks). Sugar packets for use with tea and coffee will continue to be served.

These actions are getting plenty of attention.

The Guardian pointed out that:

Battle lines are being drawn in Colombia, where a consumer movement is pressing the case for a sugary drinks tax and the industry is fighting back…Last month, the Asociación Educar Consumidores – the consumer organisation which, like its Mexican equivalent, has backing from Bloomberg Philanthropies in the US – produced an educational video to be broadcast on television, warning that drinking too many sugary drinks can lead to diabetes and other diseases.

But after a complaint from Postobón, the Colombian beverage giant, the government’s regulatory agency charged with consumer protection banned any showing of the video on TV, saying it was inaccurate and could confuse the public.

Michael Bloomberg, now a global ambassador for WHO issued a statement.

A growing number of cities and countries – including Mexico – are showing that taxes on sugary drinks are effective at driving down consumption. The World Health Organization report released today can help these effective policies spread to more places around the world, and that will help save many lives.

The International Council of Beverages Associations (ICBA) issued a statement:

ICBA is disappointed that this technical committee’s report advocates the discriminatory taxation solely of certain beverages as a ‘solution’ to the very real and complex challenge of obesity. We strongly disagree with the committee’s recommendation to tax beverages, as it is an unproven idea that has not been shown to improve public health based on global experiences to date.

Healthy Food America says the soda industry has spent $30 million to fight soda taxes, just this year.

WHO has just given its blessing to soda taxes.  Will countries respond?  How much more is the soda industry willing to spend to stop taxes?

Stay tuned.

Other accounts:

• Time Magazine
• Reuters
• NPR
• Los Angeles Times
• Christian Science Monitor
• BBC

The New York Time published its annual food issue on Sunday, this one with the theme, “Can Big Food Change?”

In the circles in which I travel, Michael Pollan’s “Big food strikes back: Why did the Obamas fail to take on corporate agriculture?” caused the biggest stir.  Here’s what set people off:

On “Outlobbied and Outgunned:”  The word I’ve been using to describe food industry lobbying against Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign is ferocious.

I’ve always thought that Mrs. Obama must have picked the goal of Let’s Move!—“Ending childhood obesity in a generation“—as a safe, bipartisan issue that Republicans and Democrats could all get behind.  Doesn’t everyone want kids to be healthy?

I can’t imagine that she could have predicted how controversial matters like healthy school lunches or nutrition standards for food advertising to kids would become.

Whatever.  The food industry’s response to everything Let’s Move! tried to do was ferocious.

Despite all that, as I’ve said, Let’s Move! managed to accomplish some important gains: healthier school meals, more informative food and menu labels, the White House garden, and—most important—getting food issues on the national agenda.

On “the food movement barely exists:” I once taught a course on food as a social movement with Troy Duster, a sociologist then at NYU, who had much experience teaching about social movements.

He made one point repeatedly: those who are in the middle of a social movement cannot possibly judge its effectiveness.  You can only know when a movement has succeeded or failed when it is over.

This one is not over yet.

This movement, fragmented in issues and groups as it most definitely is, may not have clout in Washington, DC, but it is having an enormous effect on supermarkets, food product manufacturers, fast food chains, the producers of meat, eggs, and poultry, and young people in this country.

How else to explain:

• The vast improvement in the quality of foods sold in supermarkets
• The rush of food product makers to remove artificial colors, flavors, trans-fats. and other potentially harmful food additives, including sugars and salt
• The insistence of fast food chains on sourcing meat from animals raised without hormones or antibiotics
• The actions of meat, egg, and poultry producers to care for their animals more humanely
• Soda tax initiatives in so many cities

And my personal favorite,

• The enormous numbers of college students clamoring for courses about food systems and the role of food in matters as diverse as global resource inequities and climate change.

As Troy Duster kept telling us, it’s not over until it’s over.

While waiting for enlightenment, let’s celebrate the proliferation of food organizations.  They are all working on important issues and doing plenty of good.

And yes, let’s encourage all of them to move beyond the local, engage in national politics, and put some pressure on Washington to come up with better food policies.

Here are the other articles in the magazine, all of them well worth reading.

• George Steinmetz, SuperSize: The dizzying grandeur of 21st century agriculture (photos)
• Corby Kummer, Pie in the sky: Is it possible to make a more healthful frozen pizza? (I’m quoted)
• Ten Genoways, Close to the Bone: The fight over transparency in the meat industry
• Malia Wollan, Brand new hue: the quest to make a true blue M&M

Marta Zaraska.  Meathooked: The History and Science of Our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat.  Basic Books, 2016.

If this were just another diatribe against meat-eating, I would not have bothered to read it but this book is much more interesting than that.  The Polish-Canadian journalist Marta Zaraska describes herself as a “sloppy vegetarian,” someone who doesn’t eat much meat but

can’t seem to completely let go of meat either.  There is something in it—in its cultural, historic, and social appeal, or maybe in its chemical composition—that keeps luring me back.

And that’s what this book is about: the cultural, historic, and social (and maybe even the chemical) appeal of eating meat.  Zaraska identifies the reasons—the hooks—of this appeal, linked as they are to genetics, culture, history, and the politics of the meat industry and government.

Although Zaraska clearly thinks eating less meat would be good for health, animal welfare, and the environment, that’s not really the book’s goal.  Instead, it’s to understand why most people don’t want to be vegetarian, let alone vegan, and why even small steps in that direction are worth taking.

What’s impressive about this book is the friendliness, human understanding, and charm of its writing, and the global scope of the interviews on which it draws (full disclosure: it briefly quotes my work).

A couple of scientific points didn’t ring right (beans do have methionine, just not as much as is needed), and I’m not sure that mock meats, meat substitutes, and edible insects will satisfy the “hooks” she describes so well, but these are minor quibbles.

FoodNavigator-USA.com has a Special Edition on alternative proteins, meaning plant proteins that can substitute for the proteins in meat and other animal products.  These are not only useful for vegetarians, but cost less, and are much kinder to the environment.

As interest in them has grown, food companies have taken notice.  FoodNavigator says:

According to Lux Research , ‘alternative proteins’ such as soy, algae, pea, rice and canola, will account for up to a third of the protein market by 2054. But which ones have the most potential, and will new market entrants from duckweed and sacha inchi to cricket powder gain any real traction in the marketplace?

• Plant proteins in focus: Pea protein surging ahead, hemp on the cusp of greatness and sacha inchi still niche: With 40 institutional investors this week urging the world’s biggest food companies to shift their emphasis from animal- to plant-based protein, we spoke to a couple of key players in the protein powders category – AIDP and Axiom Foods – to get their take on current market dynamics… Read
• Plant-based proteins: Has soy fallen out of fashion?  Products plastering a ‘free from soy’ claim as a virtue on their packages are more ubiquitous today. What does this mean to soy-based protein products?.. Read
• Algae protein’s limited interaction with other ingredients a ‘key competitive advantage,’ says TerraVia: It’s still a new player in the burgeoning ‘alternative protein’ category, but algae could give rivals a run for their money as formulators learn about its unique properties that enable fortification in challenging applications from low pH beverages to dressings and crackers, claims TerraVia.  .. Read
• Green machines: Hinoman to open commercial facilities in Israel & the US, in 2017 as demand for plant-based protein rises: Hinoman – an Israeli start-up developing a novel source of vegetable protein that promises to give rivals a run for their money in the nutrition and sustainability stakes – aims to open its first commercial scale production facility in Israel in the first half of 2017 and a second facility in the US in the second half of the year… Read
• Duckweed: A promising new source of plant-based protein?  Researchers in Germany and India analyzed the nutritional value of duckweeds for human consumption, and found that “owing to the amino acid composition, the total protein of duckweeds qualifies as a high quality protein source for human nutrition.”.. Read
• Edible insects: Beyond the novelty factor: If the edible insects market is heating up, and big name retailers from Publix to Sprouts are now stocking cricket bars, snacks and protein powders, why is Whole Foods – which has reportedly temporarily dropped all bug-based products – apparently cooling down?  .. Read
• Our ‘invisible’ isolates can boldly go where no plant protein has been before, says Burcon: ADM will go into full commercial production of ‘invisible’ soy protein isolate CLARISOY this year in Decatur IL, using technology developed by Canadian partner Burcon Nutrascience, which has developed techniques to extract proteins from plants that enable them to be used in applications that were previously off limits… Read
• Don’t have a cow? Perfect Day animal-free milk bids for slice of multibillion-dollar global dairy market: The word ‘disruptive’ is bandied around with wearying regularity in relation to food startups these days, but if anyone warrants this moniker, it’s Perfect Day (formerly Muufri). Unlike the purveyors of nut- or legume-based ‘plant milks’, Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi are actually making the real thing… dairy milk without any cows, and it’s coming to a store near you by late 2017… Read
• Protein-packed Brami beans go up against roasted chickpeas and edamame in the snack aisle: Move over roasted chickpeas and salted edamame, there is a new protein-packed, on-the-go snacking bean in town: Brami’s lupini beans… Read
• ProTings closes $1.2m financing round, changes name to Protes after spat with Original Tings: Brooklyn-based pea protein chip pioneer Proformance Foods has closed a $1.2m financing round led by a leading CPG company, and changed its brand name from ProTings to Protes following a trademark dispute with B&G Foods, which owns the Original Tings brand… Read
• Lightlife advances mission to “change the culture of meat” with launch of plant-based Smart Jerky: Vegetarians and vegans can now participate in the quickly growing jerky craze that continues to sweep the US thanks to the launch of Lightlife’s plant-based Smart Jerky. .. Read
• Pea protein: a trendy plant-protein alternative: While vegetarianism and flexitarism are spreading, a growing number of plant protein have appeared on the market, pea protein among them. It is not in itself a “new” protein, as it has been launched on the market 26 years ago by Cosucra. What makes pea protein so interesting?…   Click Here

Tomorrow afternoon, First Lady Michelle Obama will be talking about the impact of her Let’s Move! initiative to end childhood obesity in a generation.  She is expected to say something there about the future of the White House kitchen garden.

In the meantime, two reporters wrote accounts of her legacy yesterday (both quote me).

VOX

Julia Belluz talks about “how Michelle Obama quietly changed what Americans eat.”

I spoke with a dozen people who worked closely on her campaign, as well as the health and food policy researchers who studied it…I learned that some of the very things that made Michelle Obama sometimes appear soft — the industry collaborations, the emphasis on exercise — were part of the shrewd strategy that made her effective. Through her leadership, the Obama administration seized on a moment when America started paying attention to food, and made fighting obesity a top priority — both symbolically and legislatively.

Obama planted a garden, waged snappy social media campaigns, and worked behind the scenes with researchers, lawmakers, heads of government departments, schools, and food giants to quietly change what Americans eat.

Even observers who previously worried about Obama’s food industry partnerships now called her advocacy “brilliant,” “unprecedented,” and a “godsend.”

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Sarah Fritsche writes about “how the Obama administration led an American food movement” and provides an extraordinarily impressive timeline of accomplishments from 2009 on.

These are impressive stats, but as the Obamas enter their final months in the White House, one is left to wonder what exactly will be the lasting impact and legacy of the administration.

In an increasingly divisive political scene, and with the November election up for grabs, it may be too soon to tell. While childhood obesity rates appear to be leveling off, says Nestle, it takes a long time to gather data and track results. And, although the food industry is on alert, if the incoming administration takes less of a watchdog approach, these strides in food policy and awareness run the risk of losing momentum.

“Will it be undone is the big question,” says Nestle. “It depends a lot on who gets elected.”

Ellen K. Silbergeld. : How Industrial Meat Production Endangers Workers, Animals, and Consumers.  Johns Hopkins Press, 2016.

Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health sciences, epidemiology, and health policy at Hopkins, has long been a strong advocate for getting toxic substances out of our food supply.  Here, she takes on our system of industrial farm animal production in a plea for better treatment of everyone and everything involved in it.

Big issue #1: the use of antibiotics as growth promoters.  This not only induces bacteria to become resistant to those drugs, but also is unnecessary.

Big issue #2: the failure of HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point—the method for preventing food safety problems) to prevent harmful, antibiotic-resistant bacteria from reaching the public.

Overall, she says:

The inextricable relationship between industrial food animal production and the environment challenges us in two ways.  First, we are all at risk–not just those of us who consume the products of industrially raised animals–and second, decontaminating food products will not contain the public health problems of this industry.  It is time to think about industrial food animal production as an industry in terms of environmental pollution, and it is long overdue to recognize that its pollution footprint, like its production, is industrial in scale (p. 127).

As for the remedy, “agriculture is an industry, and as such it carries certain obligations.”  These include, among others:

• Industries must abide by laws that prevent monopolization, price fixing, and overconcentration.
• Industries must bear full liability for unsafe products.
• Industries must obey the labor laws of the country.

She has plenty more to say about government’s role in all this.

Our role is to insist that industry and government follow and apply laws.  We had best get busy.