The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has a new study with a startling conclusion: “frequent consumption of fried potatoes appears to be associated with an increased mortality risk” (here’s a news report about it).

For lovers of French fries, this is unhappy news.  Or is it?

The study looked at potato intake (fried and unfried) reported by 4440 participants aged 45–79 y at baseline for 8 years, as part of a study on osteoarthritis.  Participants with the highest consumption of potatoes had the same mortality as those consuming the lowest amount.

But when they looked at the subgroup consuming fried potatoes 2–3 times per week, the risk of mortality doubled.

It’s not potatoes that might be a problem; it’s just those that are fried.  Even so,

• The study is based on intake reported in food frequency questionnaires
• The results are not cleanly dose-related; mortality rates were higher among people reporting fried potatoes twice a week than those reporting more
• People who eat lots of fried potatoes are likely to indulge in other unhealthful dietary or lifestyle practices.

But this is not the first study to report health problems among frequent eaters of fried potatoes.  See:

• Potato consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease: 2 prospective cohort studies
• Fried-food consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease: a prospective study in 2 cohorts of US women and men
• Maternal intake of fried foods and risk of gestational diabetes mellitus.
• Potato Consumption and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes
• Adolescent Energy Drink Use Related to Intake of Fried and High-sugar Foods

This is a lot to blame on one food.  I vote for lifestyle confounding.

Put French fries in your once-in-awhile category.  I’m saving my allotment for the Belgian ones.

From the USDA’s partnership with the Ad Council…

I’ve been asked to comment on Amazon’s proposal to buy Whole Foods.  So much has been written about it that it’s hard to add anything new.

My immediate thoughts:

• Monopoly capitalism in action
• Amazon owns everything
• This won’t help feed the poor

The facts: Amazon offered $13.7 billion to buy Whole Foods.  This may seem like a lot of money but it’s just 3% of Amazon’s $470 billion holdings.

How did this happen?

• Whole Foods CEO calls it “love at first sight” and a “whirlwind courtship.”
• But the marriage depends on approval by anti-trust regulators.

What are the implications?

Effect on retailers: Their stocks dropped immediately.  Amazon is serious competition.

Disruption: This may be a major disruption to grocers, but this industry may have had it coming.

Organics: Whole Foods specializes in organics; producers already cannot keep up with demand.  Farmers will have to grow more, but if Amazon imports organics that will open up possibilities for fraud.

E-commerce: this could increase the value of physical stores if done right, as well as online grocery shopping.

Food chains: Amazon on top.

 “Conscious capitalism”: The end

Maybe, feeding the world (says Alice Waters)

Better food for all?  Civil Eats considers this question, but asks will this do what Walmart does—force lower wages for workers and lower prices for farmers. 

Humor: Alexa: tell me some jokes about Whole Foods’s prices, drones, and Amazon’s ruling the world.

The EPA is not doing enough to prevent weed resistance to the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup) says a new report from the EPA’s Inspector General’s Office (OIG) ,which draws in part on a report from the agbiotech company, Pioneer: Weed Management in the Era of Glyphosate Resistance

The EPA OIG report explains that glyphosate (Roundup) is used on crops modified to tolerate this herbicide, which kills surrounding weeds but leaves the GMO crop intact.

If you use enough of it long enough, weeds develop resistance.

US farmers are planting more herbicide-resistant GMO corn and soybeans (this figure is from the Pioneer report):

Here’s how much glyphosate US farmers are using:

• 2002: 110 million pounds
• 2012: 283.5 million pounds

Weeds resistant to herbicides were first reported in 1968.  Weed resistance is now increasing rapidly (this figure is from the OIG report).

Weeds resistant to glyphosate are spreading rapidly throughout the US (this figure is in both reports).

What should government do to stop this?  A quick lesson on GMO regulation:

• USDA regulates these crops.
• EPA regulates herbicides used on these crops.
• FDA regulates their safety.

The EPA Inspector General says EPA is not doing enough to mitigate herbicide resistance:

• It is not communicating with farmers or other stakeholders about managing resistance.
• It is not collecting data on herbicide resistance through its adverse incident reporting database.
• It is not dealing with the need to develop alternatives.
• It is not tracking progress in addressing weed resistance.
• It needs to do better.

What should be done?  Pioneer says:

A truly integrated strategy should incorporate non-chemical control tactics as well. Mechanical weed control and crop rotation are examples of two such tactics available to growers, but the feasibility of their implementation will vary depending on the characteristics of a cropping system.

Non-chemical control tactics?  Sounds like sustainable agriculture, no?

Weed resistance is a big reason not to use glyphosate.

Another is its suspected carcinogenicity, but I will save that for another time.

I was interviewed by Cindy Kuzma, a reporter for VICE, about research on chocolate.  Her story is here.  Her questions were great (I wish all reporters asked such interesting questions).  Here’s our Q and A:

CK:  I noticed you haven’t written about chocolate for a while—perhaps it has been quiet on that front, or there are just a lot of other things happening! But another study about its health benefits, this time in regards to atrial fibrillation, brought it to my editors’ attention. Rather than just report on those findings they’ve asked me to take a broader view of the issue, which I appreciate.

MN: First let me comment on this study.  It is trying to tell me that 1-3 ounces of chocolate a month produces measurable health benefits?  That seems incredible and probably is, particularly because nothing is said about dose relationships.

CK:  How do you explain briefly to consumers why studies of health benefits linked to a single food are problematic/not terribly useful at best? (You’ve used the term “nutrifluff” before; is that still what might apply here?)

MN: People eat many different kinds of food every day.  The authors of this study say confounding factors might be involved.  That means that people who eat moderate amounts of chocolate (1-3 ounces a month is not much) might eat healthier diets, exercise more, or have other habits that reduce atrial fibrillation.

CK:  When it comes to chocolate specifically—how has industry shaped the public discussion of chocolate’s health benefits? MARS has obviously played quite a crucial role with its whole Center for Cocoa Health Science and its marketing of the CocoaVia supplement … how much influence has that single company had, and how would you advise consumers to view the research/claims tied to that type of industry funding?

MN: Mars is careful to say that cocoa processing into chocolate normally destroys flavonoids, which is why it developed a special preservation process and provides flavonoids in capsules, not chocolate.  But people tend to interpret the studies as “chocolate is really good for me.”  The study at issue here is independently funded.  In general, industry-funded studies come to conclusions favorable to the sponsor.  They require especially cautious interpretation.  But this one does too because it does not seem plausible.

CK: Like much of the research on the purported health benefits of chocolate, the new findings about atrial fibrillation come from an observational study. How do you typically explain the limitations of this type of research, and what the average health news consumer might not understand about the differences between correlation and causation?

MN: This study obtained information about chocolate consumption from food frequency questionnaires in which people tick off the number of times they have eaten a food in a week, month, or year, depending on how the question is asked.  I find these things impossible to fill out because I can’t remember at that level of specificity.  Chocolate shows up as a factor but other foods might too.  That’s why you can’t say chocolate is a cause of reduced atrial fibrillation; that observation could be due to any number of other factors.

CK: Even in randomized controlled trials—what other factors might wise consumers keep in mind when evaluating research? (I’m thinking about how often studies use the types or amounts of chocolate people regularly eat, rather than extracts/purified versions/large quantities, as well as whether they evaluate clinically significant outcomes like disease and mortality vs. isolated biomarkers or other less meaningful endpoints.)

MN: Interpretation of studies always has to be done in the context of everything else that is known about the topic.  One study should not change food choices, especially if it is industry-sponsored.  Anytime I hear “everything you thought you knew about nutrition is wrong,” a red flag goes up.  That’s not how science works.

CK:  Anything else you’d say overall about the role of a food like chocolate in a nutritious diet, and how much these health claims should/shouldn’t influence individuals’ regular habits?

MN: Chocolate is candy, not a health food.  Candy in moderation is just fine.  Every food in moderation is just fine.  Maybe the people in that study practiced moderation pretty easily and that’s why they came out as healthier.

With regret, I asked my site managers at Cre8d to block all future comments to this site.

The GMO trolls—people who post deliberately hostile comments—have defeated me.

Would you believe 870 comments?  These were filed in response to my post of last week  about the GMO propaganda film.

I realize that this sort of thing is a deliberate, if shameful, strategy of the agbiotech industry: “Let Nothing Go.”

As described in a document filed in a lawsuit by US Right to Know:  [Correction: see below at **]

Monsanto even started the aptly-named “Let Nothing Go” program to leave nothing, not even facebook comments, unanswered; through a series of third parties, it employs individuals who appear to have no connection to the industry, who in turn post positive comments on news articles and Facebook posts, defending Monsanto, its chemicals, and GMOs.

This is not about thoughtful discussion of the scientific, social, and political issues raised by GMOs.  This about personal attacks to discredit anyone who raises questions about those issues, as i did.

Trolling is not appropriate on this site.  Hence: no more comments.

I will continue to write about GMOs as new developments occur.

In the meantime, I commend the first chapter of Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety to your attention.  It does much to explain why opinions of GMOs are so polarized and why the science of GMOs has become so politicized.

**Correction: The document discussing “Let Nothing Go” was not filed by US Right to Know.  Instead, it was filed by attorneys for plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Monsanto alleging that glyphosate is responsible for cases of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.    US Right to Know is only posting the documents and analyzing them.

Healthy Food America is a relatively new organization.  Based in Seattle, it

Acts on science to drive change in policy and industry practice so that all people can live in places where nutritious food is easy to obtain and exposure to unhealthy products is limited..  We are coordinating with other advocates to energize a national movement to roll back added sugars in food and beverages to healthful levels.​

It runs a blog, publishes a newsletter, and produces useful information.  I was particularly interested in its information on diet drinks.

It’s Policy Brief discusses whether or not artificially sweetened beverages should be included in soda tax initiatives.

Sugary drink taxes were conceived of as a strategy to prevent chronic health conditions by reducing consumption of sugar. Recently, however, some jurisdictions have included artificially sweetened, or “diet”, beverages. There is strong scientific evidence associating sugary drinks with higher rates of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, liver disease and dental disease. The evidence of harm from diet drinks is less certain.  Therefore, we recommend not including diet drinks in beverage taxes.

Its Research Brief summarizes the evidence linking artificially sweetened beverages to disease risk.

This research brief summarizes:

1) reviews or meta-analyses of prospective cohort studies that analyzed the association between ASB consumption and disease risk,

2) randomized trials that studied the metabolic and health effects of ASB consumption, and

3) randomized trials that studied the effect of ASB consumption on weight loss.

Reviews and meta-analyses were restricted to those published in the last 5 years, to ensure that this brief reflected the latest science. All studies were obtained through PubMed searches.

It helps to have all this.

I have asked repeatedly to have my short interview clip removed from this film.  The director refuses.  He believes his film is fair and balanced.  I do not.

I am often interviewed (see Media) and hardly ever quoted incorrectly or out of context.  This film is one of those rare exceptions.

In my 10-second clip, I say that I am unaware of convincing evidence that eating GM foods is unsafe—this is what I said, but it is hugely out of context.

Safety is the industry’s talking point.  In the view of the GMO industry and this film, if GMOs are safe, they ought to be fully acceptable and nothing else is relevant.

I disagree.  I think there are plenty of issues about GMOs in addition to safety that deserve thoughtful consideration:  monoculture; the effects of industrial agriculture on the environment and climate change; the possible carcinogenicity of glyphosate (Roundup); this herbicide’s well documented induction of weed resistance; and the how aggressively this industry protects its self-interest and attacks critics, as this film demonstrates.

Food Evolution focuses exclusively on the safety of GMOs; it dismisses environmental issues out of hand.  It extols the benefits of the virus-resistant Hawaiian papaya and African banana but says next to nothing about corn and soybean monoculture and the resulting weed resistance, and it denies the increase in use of toxic herbicides now needed to deal with resistant weeds.  It says nothing about how this industry spends fortunes on lobbying and in fighting labeling transparency.

Instead, this film hammers hard on three out-of-context points:

1. GMOs are safe.
2. Anyone who thinks otherwise is anti-science, ignorant, and stupid.
3. Organic foods are bad and proponents of organic foods are deceitful.

Its biases are apparent throughout but the bias against organics is particularly striking.

For example, in arguing that proponents of organic agriculture are paid by the organic industry, the film refers to an article on the front page of  the New York Times.  But most of that article was about how the GMO industry recruits and pays academic researchers to front for it.  The film fails to mention that.

The obvious question: Who paid for this film?

The official answer: The Institute for Food Technologists (IFT).

IFT is a professional association for food scientists and technologists involved in the processed food industry.  I have been a member of it for years; its journal, Food Technology is useful for keeping up with what the food industry is doing.

I had no idea that IFT sponsored films, let alone one that must have been very expensive to produce (on location in Hawaii and Uganda, among other places.)

I can’t help but think Monsanto or the Biotechnology Innovation Organization must have given IFT a grant for this purpose, but IFT takes complete responsibility for commissioning the film (if you have any information about this, please let me know).

Food Evolution is opening in New York on Friday this week.  I view it as a slick piece of GMO industry propaganda.

If you want a thoughtful discussion of the real issues raised by food biotechnology, you will need to look elsewhere.

Full disclosure: half of my book Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety deals with GMO issues.  These have not changed much since the book appeared in 2003 and in a revised edition in 2010.  The GMO industry’s defenses and attacks are much the same, just louder and more expensively produced.