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If you thought yesterday’s post about blueberries as a means to reduce hypertension in menopausal women seemed far-fetched, you are missing the point.

The food industry views menopause as a marketing opportunity.

‘We need the food industry to recognise this opportunity and step up to the plate’: Campaigner urges more NPD to embrace the menopause: The menopause represents a significant untapped opportunity for food and beverage brands, FoodNavigator’s Positive Nutrition Summit hears…. Read more

The menopause hits at a life stage when many women are particularly busy and time-poor and it is, at best, an inconvenience…This audience is now demanding more from brands – they don’t want to have to struggle and search to find items that support their symptoms. GenM research shows that 78% of women would be happy to shop for products labelled as menopause-friendly, while a further 90% of menopausal women want brands to be more inclusive to menopause. We need the food industry to recognise this opportunity and step up to the plate.

And then there’s this one:

Marketing sports nutrition products for menopausal women:  A variety of products are geared toward youth and seniors, but where do women in their 50s fit?… Watch now

Alexis Collins, director of product and brand strategy, Stratum, said one ingredient stands out to her most: NEM, the company’s flagship, branded eggshell membrane. Our ingredient is natural eggshell membrane also known as NEM and NEM is a joint health ingredient that has been specifically clinically researched in postmenopausal women to show fast exercise recovery.

Eggshell membrane.  Why didn’t I think of that?

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Every now and then the USDA puts out a collection of its latest charts.

These provide lots of information at a glance.  Here are three quick examples:

1.  What’s happened to farms in the US over the past 200 years.  The number of farms has gone way down; the size has gone way up.

2. This one is about sweeteners in the food supply (not amounts actually eaten).The peak year was around 2000. The overall trend tracks with corn sweeteners.

3. More than half of food expenditures are now on food eaten in restaurants or institutions—where meals are higher in calories.

Enjoy!

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The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service sent out one of the saddest emailed notices I have ever received, announcing the end of relief measures enacted during the COVID-19 emergency.

The FNS says it is working closely with participants, States, retailers, other federal agencies, and the White House to help with the transition.

This will not be easy.  The COVID-induced increases in benefits did much to reduce family and child poverty as well as food insecurity.

What follows is slightly edited, mainly to reduce repetitive statements.

End of the National COVID-19 Public Health Emergency – Impact on FNS Programs. 

The national public health emergency (PHE) put in place at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to expire on May 11, 2023. The end of the public health emergency…will trigger changes that impact low-income individuals and families.

• SNAP Emergency Allotments: The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, required that pandemic-related SNAP Emergency Allotments (EA) be terminated after the issuance of February 2023 benefits.  See: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
• SNAP ABAWD Time Limit: Beginning July 1, 2023, able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) participating in SNAP will once again be required to meet the ABAWD work requirements or could risk losing benefits as soon as October 2023.
• Temporary Student Exemptions:  Beginning July 1, 2023, the temporary student exemptions – which allowed college students who wouldn’t typically be eligible for SNAP to receive benefits during the public health emergency – will begin to be phased out, impacting students as they are due for recertification.
• SNAP Administrative Adjustments and Waivers:  FNS is working very closely with States to help them successfully transition back to normal operations, including offering four certification-related waivers specifically designed to support the transition to post-pandemic program operations.
• Child Nutrition Programs: FNS offered States and child nutrition program operators extensive flexibilities during COVID to ensure they could continue to serve kids the nutrition they needed. Two of the flexibilities currently offered – CACFP benefits for young adults in shelters and offsite monitoring – are tied to the PHE and, therefore, will be coming to an end. See: Child Nutrition Programs
• Pandemic EBT: Since March 2020, Pandemic EBT, also known as P-EBT, has been helping eligible families cover food costs for kids who typically received free and reduced-priced school meals or were eligible through their child care facilities. These benefits will continue through the end of summer 2023 for school children, but will end when the PHE ends on May 11, 2023, for children in child care. The new nationwide Summer EBT program recently passed into law will be available starting in summer 2024, and will help families in need continue to put food on the table during the summer when children aren’t receiving meals in schools. See: Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT)  
• WIC: After the end of the public health emergency, most of the flexibilities FNS provided to WIC participants during the pandemic will continue to be available under a separate authority Congress provided FNS in the American Rescue Plan Act. With this authority, WIC state agencies can continue to offer – and build and improve upon – remote services after the PHE ends. Infant formula waivers, which are not tied to the PHE, will be phased out on a different timeline through the end of June 2023.  See:  Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

Additional information is available on the FNS website, here.

Comment: I consider this a national tragedy, and a huge mistake.  If COVID-19 proved anything, it was that these measures were highly effective in reducing child poverty in the United States.  Now what.  We go back to higher levels?  As I said, a national tragedy.

Congress will have much to answer for when the results of this shameful decision become to be apparent.

If you want to understand why it is politically impossible to transform the Farm Bill into legislation that promotes health, sustainability, and regenerative farming, take a look at the Environmental Working Group’s  Website and Farm Subsidy Database.

This reveals that eight members of the House Agriculture Committee,received over $14 million in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2021.

The eight: Reps. James Baird (R-Ind.), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), Tracey Mann (R-Ks.), Mary Miller (R-Ill.), John Rose (R-Tenn.), and Austin Scott (R-Ga.)

This is a clear conflict of interest.

Are these agriculture committee members likely to put a stop to inappropriate subsidies?  Doubtful.  They ought to be taken off the Agriculture Committee immediately.

Note: the size of the subsidy doesn’t matter.  Even small subsidies exert influence.

EWG also says that lawmakers who received commodity subsidies are also likely to be getting crop insurance subsidies.

But because those subsidies are not disclosed to the public, it’s not possible to determine whether some legislators are double dipping this way.

The EWG provides a list of all current members of Congress and family members who get farm subsidies here.

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The FDA is under siege these days.  Two reasons why.

• Its failure to follow the advice of experts on how to reorganize the agency to give greater prominence and authority to food as opposed to drugs.
• Its failure to get on top of the safety and supply problems with infant formula.

As usual, Bill Marler gets right to the point.

Two top  food officials at the FDA have retired recently.

Food and Drug Administration Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) Susan Mayne announced that she will retire on May 31, 2023. Dr. Mayne has served as Director of CFSAN since January 2015. Another retirement among FDA leadership occurred earlier this year when FDA Deputy Commissioner of Food Policy and Response Frank Yiannas retired on February 24, 2023.

Frank Yiannis, formerly deputy commissioner for food policy at the FDA, testified to Congress:

Yiannas said that the FDA’s structure and culture exacerbated delays and that the agency had no data system in place to monitor key food supply chains. While Abbott is responsible for the safety and testing of its own powdered formula, he said, the sickened children and months-long shortage “was all a preventable tragedy” had FDA acted more urgently.

To deal with the uproar about infant formula, the FDA has just released:

• Status Update on FDA’s Infant Formula Response Activities
• Strategy to Help Prevent Cronobacter sakazakiiIllnesses Associated with Consumption of Powdered Infant Formula
• Letter to the Infant Formula Industry
• Enforcement Discretion to Manufacturers to Increase Infant Formula Supplies
• Press Release: FDA Outlines Immediate National Strategy to Further Increase the Resiliency of the U.S. Infant Formula Market

But this will not be enough.

Helena Bottemiller Evich’s most recent Politico report is titled “‘Lessons have not been learned’: FDA knew of positive test months before latest infant formula recall.”

And another recall of infant formula occurred more recently.

All of this increases the urgency of the calls on FDA to pay more attention to food issues.

Congress:  Act now!

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While I’m catching up on items I’ve been wanting to post about I ran across this report from NIH about its nutrition research initiatives. 

Some highlights:

• NIH’s total investment in nutrition-related research was approximately $2.0 billion in FY20 and $2.1 billion in FY21.
• Nutrition research funding increased by approximately $510 million—a 25 percent overall increase—from FY14 to FY21
• Approximately half of the nutritionrelated projects in FY20 and FY21 were related to prevention or obesity.
• NIH sponsored workshops on Precision Nutrition, Food Insecurity, and Conflicting and Controversial Health Information in the Media
• Nutrition research comprises just under 5% of total NIH research obligations.
• NIH sponsored a study in 2021 of  low-fat compared to low-carb diet.
• A future direction will be to address how “food as medicine” can be improved in clinical settings.

I did not know much of this and am happy to have the report.

The documents

• Nutrition Research Report 2020-2021: Executive Summary 
• Nutrition Research Report 2020-2021
• NIH Nutrition Research Reports:  2017-2019

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A report, Science Education in an Age of Misinformation, from Stanford University and written by a distinguished group of scientists addresses a question I get asked all the time: how do you know whom to trust when reading articles about food and nutrition.

It presents a decision tree for evaluating information sources.

Although most of the report is focused on other science topics, it includes one nutrition example (Example 3, pages 34 and 35).

Example 3 presents two websites, one from the Partnership for a Healthier America, the other from ILSI, the International Life Sciences Institute.

The suggested lesson asks students to use the decision tree to evaluate the credibility of the information on the websites.

For this example,

if students search for ‘Partnership for a Healthier America,’ they will find that one of the first links to appear in the search results is from Wikipedia…they may decide to start with the Wikipedia page to get a broad sense of what other information is available about the organization. There students will read that PHA is a nonprofit organization focused on health and nutrition. Its president and CEO is Nancy Roman, who has years of experience working for world food programs, food banks, and nutrition non-profit organizations.

On the other hand, when students apply the same strategy to the ISLI web page, they are also likely to begin with the Wikipedia entry. This tells a very different story. While ISLI is also a nonprofit organization, the Wikipedia entry shows it was funded by a Coca-Cola executive and has numerous ties to food and chemical companies, such as McDonald’s and Pepsi. Such ties represent a clear conflict of interest and would strongly suggest that ISLI is not a credible source of information.

A good start?  I think yes.  Take a look and decide for yourself.

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