Shane Hamilton.  Supermarket USA: Food and Power in the Cold War Farms Race.  Yale University Press, 2018.

I did a blurb for this one:

Who knew that supermarkets, of all things, were key elements of U.S. free-enterprise, anti-Soviet, Cold War propaganda.  Hamilton fully explains how “farm wars” led directly to today’s international industrial agribusinesses.   This superb book is a must-read.

I’ve started taking note of foods and ingredients still in the research phase or soon to come to a supermarket near lucky you.

Some recent examples:

• Fat replacer made from wood cellulose.  This is designed to be used to make mayonnaise, sauces, dressings, and ice cream, among other foods.  Why?  This won’t have much in the way of calories or saturated fatty acids.
• Blue salad dressing made from Spirulina.  Why?  It’s “Instagrammable.”
• Crickets for breakfast.  Investigators fed muffins made with dried cricket powder to 20 courageous volunteers.  Why?  “These data suggest that eating crickets may improve gut health and reduce systemic inflammation.”  But note the disclaimer: “more research is needed to understand these effects and underlying mechanisms.”
• Salmon skin chips.  “The skins are washed and boiled before cooking which rmoves any ‘overly fishy’ taste, and are available in three flavours: lightly salted; salt & vinegar and lime and vinegar.”
• Insect-based protein supplements for athletes, vanilla flavored: Why?  “Opportunities in sports nutrition, and particularly in bulk powders, are greater than those in bars right now—especially given existing competition in the insect bar space.”
• Danish insect buffalo worm bar: Denmark-based Wholifoods has developed a buffalo worm energy bar rich in iron, zinc and magnesium to plug deficiencies and provide holistic sport nutrition stretching beyond protein which is ‘very hyped’, its co-founder says. Read more
• Danish protein juice: crickets, coffee & mushrooms: Another month, another insect start-up? Maybe, but Danish firm Insekt KBH’s apple, ginger and cricket juice is different: it’s sustainable not only thanks to its ingredients but because it’s produced in Copenhagen’s self-sustaining urban food loop. Read more
• Wilde Chicken Chips: Wilde Chicken Chips – thinly-sliced premium cuts of chicken tossed in tapioca flour, fried in coconut oil, and seasoned in various spices – reached nationwide availability at Whole Foods and Sprouts stores last month and will be debuting a new flavor early next year that founder Jason Wright believes will make chips a breakfast snack item. Read more
• Walkers Chips flavored with brussels sprouts or Iceland chips flavored with pine needles:  “We know the sprout debate is one that divides the nation, so we wanted to offer product solutions for both sides of the debate, and ask people to decide whether they are a #SproutLover or #SproutHater,” said Andrew Hawkswell, marketing manager of brand owner PepsiCo.”

Yum.  Can’t wait.

I never cease to be amazed by how angry some people get about organic foods.

• They complain about its higher prices (organics cost more to produce).
• They complain about its implicit—no, explicit—critique of conventional farming methods (organics use fewer toxic pesticides, are kinder to soil, and are more sustainable).
• They complain that organics exclude GMOs (this is bad for the GMO business).
• They complain about research showing the benefits of organics.

This last complaint brings me to the study on organic food and cancer just published in JAMA Internal Medicine. 

This is an observational study of nearly 70,000 people who were asked to report their level of consumption of organic foods and were then monitored for cancer for 7 years.

The results: those who reported consuming the highest levels of organic foods had the lowest risk of developing cancer during that period.

For non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the cancer most associated with exposure to herbicides and pesticides used in conventional agriculture and GMO production, the observed reduction in risk was a whopping 86%.

An accompanying editorial lists the limitations of the study; the dietary intake data were self-reported, the questionnaire wasn’t validated, blood levels of pesticides and herbicides were not measured.

So yes, more research—perhaps much more research—is needed to confirm these observations before anything can be said about whether organics are really protective against cancer.

But in the meantime, there’s no harm in eating organic foods and these foods have demonstrable environmental benefits.

Choosing them means voting for food production systems that are better for the environment—and might be better for health as well.

This makes organics a good bet and worth the premium price if you can afford it.

Here’s what the New York Times says about this study.

Now published: my new book about how food company sponsorship of nutrition research affects public health.  For information about the book—blurbs, reviews, tweets, how to get—click here.

For my public speaking engagements about the book, click here.

If you are in New York, join the launch party at NYU today, 5:00 p.m., Bobst Library 3rd floor.  RSVP here.

And here are some early reviews:

Oct 29  Jane Brody.  Confused by nutrition research?  New York Times.

Oct 28  Hailey Eber. How the food industry fooled us into eating junk.  New York Post, 42-43.

Oct 23  Nestle M.  Superfoods are a marketing ploy (excerpt).  The Atlantic .

Oct 22  Àlex Pérez.  Una verdad desagradable no vende.  ElPiscolabis (Spain).

Oct 18 Nature Magazine (2018;562:334-335): Felicity Lawrence reviews Deborah Blum’s The Poison Squad and Unsavory Truth as “Poisoned Platefuls.”

Oct 2  Science Magazine.  Cyan James, “A nutrition expert aims a critical eye at the research and marketing practices of food companies.”

Tomorrow is the official publication date for Unsavory Truth.  Here’s the launch invitation.

For information about the book, click here.

For my other public speaking engagements about the book, click here.

Enjoy!

Deborah Blum.  The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.  Penguin Press, 2018.  

I already had received my copy of this book when Felicity Lawrence reviewed it in Nature along with my new book, Unsavory Truth.  What I loved about the review was Lawrence’s comment that I “could make a fair claim to [Harvey] Wiley’s mantle today…The book is a remorseless dissection of the corruption of science by industry.”

But enough about me.  Blum’s book is a clear, wonderfully written account of the political opposition faced by Harvey Washington Wiley, the head of the USDA’s Bureau of Chemistry (later, the FDA) who relentlessly lobbied his bosses, presidents, and the public to insist that food companies produce food safely.

If you cannot understand why there are still so many outbreaks of foodborne illness and why so many foods are still having to be recalled, this book is a revelation.

Blum, who directs the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT, is terrific at explaining the complex politics that affected Wiley’s work.

I particularly appreciated her chapter on the food safety laws passed in 1906.  Their passage came about, in part, as a result of Upton Sinclair’s publication of The Jungle, a book that exposed the horribly unsanitary and dangerous conditions of the Chicago stockyards.

Try to imagine something like this happening today: the book came out early in January.  By July, Congress had passed food safety laws.  Blum’s chapter explains how that happened.  Those events were news to me.

Much else in the book will also be news, even to people who follow food safety issues closely—the intensity of the opposition to everything that Wiley was trying to do.

Wiley was watching out for the disenfranchised, and in moral terms:

Wiley added that food quality and safety represented not only good science but also moral decision-making.  The wealthy, he pointed out, could easily afford fresh food and well-made condiments.  The trade in cheap, chemically enhanced imitations catered to the poor.  If the country could work to standardize good food, then it also would be promoting good health for all.  “Whenever a food is debased in order to make it cheap, the laboring man pays more for any given nourishment than the rich man does who buys the pure food,” he pointed out. [p. 195]

We need leadership like that today.

I especially like the way Blum ends the book:

Of we are to continue moving in a direction that preserves what’s best in this country, we need not romanticize the past but we must learn from what it tells us about our earlier mistakes.  The people who fought to correct those long-ago errors still have lessons to share.  The story of Harvey Washington Wiley, at his fierce and fearless best, should remind us that such crusaders are necessary in the fight.  That the fight for consumer protection may never end.  lBut if it does, if that long-awaited final victory is achieved, it will be because we, like Wiley, refused to give up. [p. 291]

Amen to that.

This is a collection of articles from the industry newsletter, FoodNavigator.com, about marketing foods to kids—kids’ food.

Really, kids would be much better off eating the healthy foods their parents eat.  They don’t need food aimed just at them.  Much of this is about selling products to busy parents.  Here’s how companies do it.

• FOOD FOR KIDS: Why do so many kids have food allergies, and what can we do about it?: The prevalence of food allergies has increased dramatically over the last 25 years, with infants and children most severely affected. But why? Is it changes in gut bacteria? The so-called ‘hygiene hypothesis’? The rising use of antibiotics? Is prevalence, and in some cases severity, increasing? What do we know, what don’t we know (yet), and what are the next steps in addressing the problem?.. Read
• FOOD FOR KIDS Vox Pop: Parents share their take on food for kids: Parents to young kids face many competing demands for their time. So is sitting down to dinner together a realistic option seven days a week? Is it a daily struggle to get kids to eat healthy?.. Watch now
• FOOD FOR KIDS: A chat with child nutritionists: With kids spending so much of their day in school while also being heavily influenced by their parents’ eating habits, how can we get kids to make healthy food and beverage choices?.. Watch now
• FOOD FOR KIDS: Sitting down with Nurture Life: The ideal situation for families with young children is a sit-down dinner seven days a week, but in many cases that’s just not realistic, says co-founder of Nurture Life Jennifer Chow… Watch now
• FOOD FOR KIDS: How can you earn professional recommendations for your healthy food brand?  ‘Influencers’ are increasingly sought after by brands looking to connect with their target audience via a trusted intermediary, and pediatricians are about as trusted as they come if you’re trying to reach parents of young children. So how can you put your brand at the center of conversations between pediatric professionals and millennial moms and dads?.. Read
• FOOD FOR KIDS: What’s the connection between infant gut bacteria and health outcomes later in life? Babies born in the USA today don’t have the same microbiome as those born 100 years ago, a seemingly innocuous discovery that could prove to be a game-changer in pediatrics, claims one California-based company on a mission to rejuvenate the ‘dysbiotic’ American gut… Read
• Square Baby promises a ‘foolproof way to give your baby 100% daily nutrition’:If not everyone is convinced of the viability of the direct to consumer (D2C) meal kit delivery business, the economics of the subscription model for baby food are much more appealing, claims Square Baby, one of a new wave of D2C brands targeting babies, or more accurately, their stressed and exhausted parents… Read
• $6.7M investment will help RETHINK Brands raise awareness of its kids’ water packed in juice boxes: With the help of a $6.7 million investment led by AccelFoods, the founders of boxed water company RETHINK Brands hope to change how more people think about water and the beverages they send with their children to school, sports practice and other events… Read
• GoGo SqueeZ targets tweens with new BlastZ fruit pouches: BlastZ – the latest innovation from GoGo squeeZ – is designed to attract new consumers to the burgeoning fruit squeezers category by appealing to kids that have outgrown apple sauce but are still looking for a convenient fruit snack, says associate brand manager Dennis Katsnelson… Read

In 2014, the soda industry (American Beverage Industry, Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper) and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation (founded by the American Heart Association and the Clinton Foundation) pledged to reduce calories in its beverages as a means to help with weight control.  The pledge was to reduce calories in sugary drinks by 20% by 2025.

At the moment, achievement of this goal seems unlikely according to a report by the American Beverage Association and the Alliance. 

The overall summary: a 3 (!) calorie per person per day reduction since 2014.

Plotting the data this way makes the change seem significant, but this industry has a long way to go.

Why isn’t it doing better?  The simple answer: sugary drinks sell and are highly profitable.

The report explains the trends:

• A decline in consumption of carbonated soft drinks, but an increase in consumption of sugary sports drinks, energy drinks, and ready-to-drink teas and coffees.
• A decline in retail sales of carbonated soft drinks, but an increase in calories from fountain drinks and food service.
• An increase in sales of smaller-size containers, but also an increase in sales of larger containers.

The report does not give advertising figures.

I’d like to know which products are getting the most marketing dollars.   Want to take a guess?