To the surprise of everyone as far as I can tell, the Supreme Court has upheld California’s ban on pork from states that allow pork producers to confine pregnant sows in gestation crates.

California, which consumes 13% of U.S. pork but imports 99% of it, said it would only permit import of pork from producers who give pregnant sows at least 24 square feet of space.

Gestation crates confine pregnant sows so tightly that all they can do is stand up and lie down.

I would not call myself an animal rights advocate, but having been pregnant myself a couple of times, I found myself deeply upset when I saw sows confined like that.

At the time, I was on the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.

We asked why they were doing this.  Answer: To keep the sow from crushing her piglets—and to make it easier to feed and clean the animals.

Fortunately, Bill Niman was also on the commission and whisked us off to one of the Niman Ranch farms where we could see sows, each in her own hoop tent, happily tending to piglets and rolling in mud when she felt like it.

Did the sows crush their piglets?  Not when they had ample room to move around ard were not stressed.  Yes, they didn’t produce quite as many piglets, but the meat tasted a lot better.

So I’m happy to see the pig crates disappear, which they will have to if anyone wants to sell pork in California.

This case is not really about animal rights though.  It is about states’ rights to make laws like this one.

The pork producers challenged California’s law.  But Justice Neil Gorsuch writing for the majority said:

California voters overwhelmingly endorsed the “ethical pork” law in 2018 and have the right to decide what products appear on store shelves…Companies that choose to sell products in various States must normally comply with the laws of those various States, “While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list.”

It’s amazing to have something good come out of this court.  Maybe pig crates will set a precedent.

A committee of the American Heart Association has just published a position paper looking at how well popular weight-loss and other diets meet AHA standards.  The standards are worth a look.

When ranked against these standards, the diets come out in this order:

• Tier 1: Mediterranean, DASH, Pescetarian, Ovo/Lacto Vegetarian
• Tier 2: Vegan, Low-fat
• Tier 3: Very Low-Fat and Low-Carbohydrate
• Tier 4: Paleo and Keto

Proponents of full-fat diets will object that Paleo and Keto diets can be healthy, as well they may be depending on how much and what else their followers are eating.

Nearly any diet can be healthy if it does not include excess calories or too much junk food, but includes plants and is based on a wide variety of foods.

And they can all be delicious, and have no excuse not to be.

Enjoy!

In a strange partnership, the Nutrition Coalition and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) are jointly complaining about the way the USDA and HHS have “disclosed” conflicts of interest among members of the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.

Why strange?  Because the Nutrition Coalition has long urged relaxations on advice about dietary fat, whereas CSPI has long urged restrictions.

Why “disclosed” in quotes?  Because the agencies’ disclosure statement lists the combined conflicts for the entire group, not for individual members of the committee.

Here’s the committee, courtesy of a tweet from Christopher Gardner.

Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee

2nd in person meeting of DGAC this week.
Committee members are a pleasure to work with – thoughtful, critical, informed group.

HHS/USDA staff supporting the effort are an incredible resource! Wow!

2-year process is off to a great start! pic.twitter.com/6Cx5npxJcH

— Christopher Gardner (@GardnerPhD) May 13, 2023

Here is a small part of what the disclosure list looks like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because these are all jumbled together, you have to look hard to pull out the genuine conflicts—-relationships of committee members with food companies with vested interests in the outcome of the guidelines.

The Nutrition Coalition points out that USDA and HHS are failing to:

• Comply with a National Academies of Science report calling for publicly posting financial and nonfinancial biases and conflicts of interest of committee members.
• Fully adopt the National Academies’ 11 recommendations.
• Recognize the significance of the first-ever systematic review of a DGAC’s financial ties. This review found 95% of the 2020 DGAC members had at least one tie with a food or pharmaceutical company and half had 30 such ties or more.

In its statement, CSPI says that it, the Coalition, and 13 other groups are calling on the federal government to disclose potential financial conflicts of interest, including sources of research funding, speakers’ fees, and other relationships.

Press coverage, the statement says, “has already uncovered one 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee member with a conflict of interest that seems relevant to their role.”

Comment:  I agree that the credibility of the committee and the guidelines depends on transparency, but it’s hard to know how much of a problem this is.

I wanted to compare the disclosure list to the research questions set by the agencies for the committee, but I can no longer find them online.

This reminds me that’s it’s hard to know how much influence the committee will have, in any case, now that the agencies set the research questions and write the actual guidelines.

The advisory committee is just that, advisory.  The agencies do not have to take its advice.

I will be following this closely.  Stay tuned.

Additions, May 17 (thanks to Jerry Mande)

• The original list of Proposed Scientific Questions
• The list as posted on the current website: Step 3: Advisory Committee Reviews Scientific Evidence

 

Thanks to reader Maira Bes-Rastrollo at the University of Navarra in Spain (and whose work I greatly admire) for this one.

The Relationship of Ready-to-eat Cereal Intake and Body Weight in Adults: A Systematic Review of Observational Studies and Controlled Trials.   Lisa M Sanders, Mary R. Dicklin, Yong Zhu, Kevin C. Maki.  Advances in Nutrition https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advnut.2023.05.001

Center for Science in the Public Interest is campaigning for mandatory front-of-package labeling—like these.

Here’s what you need to know about the campaign:

• Comment from CSPI responding, point-by-point, to industry arguments opposing mandatory front-of-package labeling
• Sign-on comment filed in support of CSPI’s front-of-package labeling petition
  • Signatories include American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Public Health Association, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Reports, and more
• Comment filed in response to FDA’s proposal to conduct quantitative research on front-of-package labeling
• Factsheet summarizing the importance of mandatory front-of-package labeling in the U.S. (from January)
• Factsheet summarizing findings of a public opinion poll commissioned by CSPI in March (we found widespread support for mandatory front-of-package labeling)

Guess what!  The food industry opposes this kind of labeling.  A lot.

Why?  Because it might discourage purchase of ultra-processed junk foods.  That, after all, is its point.

I was fascinated to see this article in Ag Funder News (to which I am now subscribing):  FDA warns molecular farming startups of risks if food allergens are not properly managed.  

If companies are putting the genes for animal proteins into crops, they need to be super careful not to introduce proteins known or likely to be allergenic.

The FDA’s  warning letter reminds companies to:

• Consider the food safety risks posed by allergens
• Plan early in development to manage the risks
• Label products properly
• Pay attention to legal requirements and food safety responsibilities

This took me right back to 1996 when I wrote an editorial for the New England Journal of Medicine about one such incident (scroll down to the third editorial in the pdf).

Investigators thought it would be clever to add a Brazil nut protein to soybeans to enrich the beans—used for chicken feed—in sulfur-containing amino acids especially needed by chickens for feather formation.  Unfortunately, some people are allergic to that protein.

The investigators were especially diligent about checking the allergenicity of the transferred protein.  By a truly remarkable coincidence, everything they needed to establish allergenicity was available.  The soybeans were withdrawn from the market, but all of this was somewhat of a miracle.

As I concluded,

This situation illustrates the pressing need to expand basic and clinical research on food allergies. More information about incidence, prevalence, dietary exposure, antigenicity, immune responses, diagnosis, and treatment would help researchers, regulators, and biotechnology companies predict whether transgenic proteins are likely to cause harm. In the special case of transgenic soybeans, the donor species was known to be allergenic, serum samples from persons allergic to the donor species were available for testing, and the product was withdrawn. The next case could be less ideal, and the public less fortunate. It is in everyone’s best interest to develop regulatory policies for transgenic foods that include premarketing notification and labeling. Industry benefits when the public is convinced that transgenic foods are safe, and stronger federal regulations would encourage such public confidence.

That was in 1996.  I could have written it yesterday.  No wonder the FDA is worried.

I’ve had so many requests to comment on Michelle Obama’s new PLEZi food business—reduced sugar but ultraprocessed artificially sweetened drinks for kids—that I feel obliged to write about them, unhappy as I am as having to consider this enterprise so ill advised.

In case you missed it, the former First Lady—a public health hero of mine for her efforts to improve school food and feed kids more healthfully—announced these drinks as having 75% less sugar than Coke and Pepsi.

The press materials say PLEZi’s mission is:

to create higher standards for how the U.S. makes and markets food and beverages for kids, leading with nutrition, taste, and truth…PLEZi Nutrition was created to give parents a helping hand by offering healthier, great-tasting products that parents can feel good about giving their kids and that kids actually want. The company is focused on lowering sugar content and lowering sweetness to help adjust kids’ palates to crave less sweetness overall. In addition to reducing the sugar and sweetness, they are adding in nutrients kids need, all with the aim to replace sugary drinks and snacks.

Here’s what’s good about all this.

• Michelle Obama is eloquent on the need for kids to eat more healthfully.
• PLEZi is established as a benefit corporation meaning that its stockholders have agreed to have social values as part of its mission, not just profits (although those count too, evidently).
• It has donated $1 million to Food Corps, which teaches school kids about food—a cause well worth supporting.
• It has a distinguished “kitchen cabinet” advisory committee of people who care about kids’ health.

Why my dismay? 

Take a look at the PLEZi Blueberry Blast drink’s nutrition information and ingredient list.

This product has a lot less sugar than Coke or Pepsi and contains zero added sugars, but it has five sweeteners:

• Apple juice concentrate (Translation: sugar derived from apples)
• Watermelon juice concentrate (ditto from watermelons)
• Blueberry juice concentrate (ditto from blueberries)
• Stevia leaf extract
• Monk fruit extract

These, plus “natural flavors” (don’t get me started) and some of the other ingredients put this squarely in the category of ultraprocessed products, now strongly associated with poor health and promotion of excessive calorie intake.

These drinks do not meet my idea of a “higher standard,” alas.

Instead, I see PLEZi as a direct competitor of existing drinks—Kraft’s Capri Sun and Kool-Aid Jammers among them—both with less sugar than Coke or Pepsi, and neither what I would consider a health food.

I found PLEZi shelved right with other sweetened drinks aimed at kids  at the Target in Ithaca, New York.

PLEZi’s cost

Target has PLEZi,on special sale at for $3.50 for 32 ounces (four 8-ounce bottles).  This makes it almost twice as expensive as Capri Sun ($3.19 for 60 ounces—ten 6-ounce pouches).

The competition

PLEZi’s nutritional profile isn’t all that different from that of “half the sugar” Capri Sun.  Here’s Capri Sun Strawberry Kiwi:

Capri Sun has the same kinds of ingredients as PLEZi, but less fruit juice, and a little more overall sugar.  To me, they don’t look all that different.

What about taste?

I bought packages of PLEZi Blueberry Blast, Orange Smash, and Capri Sun ‘s “half the sugar” Strawberry Kiwi.

OK, I  am not these products’ core customer.   They are not aimed at me.  I thought the PLEZi drinks were oddly colored and watery, and had undistinguishable flavors and the slight off-taste of monk fruit sweetener.

Capri Sun is noticably sweeter, which is not surprising: it has 7 grams of sugar in 6 ounces, whereas PLEZi has 6 grams of sugar in 8 ounces.

But all of these drinks raise the same question: Is a somewhat less sugary, sweetened, “better-for-you” drink necessarily a good choice?

Many healthier drinks are available for kids.

I would like to know:

• Why anyone would think kids need another drink like this.
• Why someone didn’t identify PLEZi drinks as ultraprocessed.
• Why someone didn’t intervene to protect Mrs. Obama from getting involved in this dubious enterprise.

My business and health questions:

• Will PLEZi sell?
• Will it cut into sales of Kool-Aid Jammers and Capri Sun, let alone Coke and Pepsi?
• Will it accustom kids to less sweet tastes?
• Will it encourage kids to eat more healthfully?

I sure hope the Kitchen Cabinet insists on a serious evaluation.

Quaint as it may be, I still read the print edition of the New York Times.  That way, I don’t miss things like this (May 7, pages 16 and 17).

My phone security system would not allow me to use the QR link so I went to Oatly’s climate website to find out what this was about.

Oatly’s product climate footprints are expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents (shortened to ‘CO₂e’) per kilogram of packaged food product, calculated based on a life cycle assessment approach from grower to grocer. CO₂e considers the effect of different greenhouse gasses, including, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. The calculation, which is validated through a partnership with a leading climate change organization CarbonCloud, aggregates the emissions into one single unit based on how much of each of those greenhouse gasses is emitted and their global warming potential over a 100-year period.

This required a detour to Carbon Cloud, which, alas, does not give away its algorithm for calculating. CO₂e.

The Oatly explanation continues:

Unlike nutrition labels, there is no common or mandated methodology for CO₂e labeling. Until standardization and a mandate become reality, Oatly wants to encourage other companies in the food industry to put their CO₂e figures on their packaging. If Oatly is only one of a few to make this commitment, it’s difficult for consumers to make informed purchases against other products in the market.

But Oatly: if there is no agreed upon methodology for these calculations, and Carbon Cloud gives no details, how are we supposed to know how seriously to take this challenge?

Cute.  Will it increase Oatly sales?

Oatly, according to Food Business News, lost money in 2022.

While management sees better days ahead, the company struggled in fiscal 2022, ended Dec. 31. Oatly incurred a loss of $393 million, greater than the loss of $212 million the year before.

Maybe two-page ads in the New York Times will help?  We will find out today.

Additions May 10

Oatly posted reduced losses in the first quarter, 2023.

Oatly’s communications director sent further information about its climate calculations:

• Oatly’s Climate Footprint Page (oatly.com/footprint) this page then provides a link to the following from CarbonCloud
• CarbonCloud’s Methodology Page

CarbonCloud’s growth marketer sent this information:

Most of the products we have calculated footprints for – unfortunately not Oatly products – have their own footprint page on our ClimateHub with traceability through ingredients and methodology descriptions. Here’s an example from Dole: https://apps.carboncloud.com/climatehub/product-reports/038900004736/USA

Here’s also a couple of links to our methodology description, if you would rather read up on it on your own.

The short version / The long version

Thanks to both for sending all this.  Most helpful.