I don’t know about you but I’m riveted by what’s in the pipeline for cell cultured meat alternatives.   Here are some recent items I’ve been collecting.

Products under development

• Why the first mass-produced cultured meat product won’t be food: While in the long-term, Czech start-up Bene Meat Technologies plans to develop a cell-based steak product for human consumption, its short-term focus has pivoted to cultured pet food, CEO Roman Kříž tells FoodNavigator…. Read more
• Pork and microalgae cells combined in cultivated meat an ‘industry first’: Czech start-up Mewery claims to have developed the first prototype of cultivated meat based on microalgae. The company is already in talks with the Singapore Food Agency, founder Roman Lauš tells FoodNavigator…. Read more
• UK Scientist produce ‘world’s first’ 100% cultivated steak: UK-based scientists have produced the ‘world’s first’ steak fillet made from 100% cultivated meat. Read more

State of the industry

• Cultivated meat in focus at Tufts cellular ag innovation day: From bioreactor bottlenecks to a ‘global battle cry’ for government funding: It’s becoming increasingly clear that early projections about the speed with which cultivated meat might gain market share now seem pretty optimistic. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and significant progress is being made to build the ecosystem needed to sustain a completely new industry, said key stakeholders at an event run by Tufts University on Thursday…. Read more
• Dissecting cultivated meat regulation part 2: What’s working in the US and Singapore, and what’s not?  Both the US and Singapore have seen cultivated meat products pass through their regulatory processes, yet the two governments approach novel foods in different ways. Which challenges and opportunities exist within these regulatory frameworks, and what impact could they have on Europe?… Read more

State of the techno-food scene

• Soylent acquired by Starco Brands as nutrition company shifts into its ‘natural next stage’: Soylent Nutrition is joining public company Starco Brands as part of an acquisition that will keep the plant-based food technology company operating as a separate unit under its current CEO Demir Vangelov.  As part of the transaction, Vangelov told TechCrunch that he will join Starco’s board and is getting shares in the new company, while himself and Soylent’s shareholders will become the largest single voting block in Starco. Other financial details were not disclosed.

Comment

Cell-based meat, meat-plus-algae, and pet food are not yet on the US market so it’s too early to see what they taste like and how well they will do.  I see these products as mostly about mergers, acquisitions, and generating lots of money for investors, which is why I included the Soylent event (Soylent is a nutrient supplement drink, but I put it in the same category of “techno-food”).

I got sent a mailing from USDA: “FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Delivers on its Promises to Invest in Rural Communities, Nutrition Security, Climate-Smart Agriculture, More and Better Markets and Lower Costs for Families.”

This is a summary of an extraordinarily long list of actions taken by the administration, many of them having to do with food production and consumption.

Food System Transformation: USDA is transforming the food system and improving the resilience and security of the food supply chain through more than 60 programs so that today’s markets work better for family farmers and the families they support. This multi-billion dollar effort …touches all parts of the food supply chain – from food production, food processing, food aggregation and distribution, to consumers.

A great many other sections also deal with food issues.  Here are a few examples of the range.

Food System Transformation: USDA is transforming the food system and improving the resilience and security of the food supply chain through more than 60 programs so that today’s markets work better for family farmers and the families they support. This multi-billion dollar effort is funded largely by ARP with some additional investments from the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (CAA), the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). It touches all parts of the food supply chain – from food production, food processing, food aggregation and distribution, to consumers. Select programs include:

• The Farm and Food Workers Relief Grant Program will make beneficiary payments to reach at least 1 million farmworkers, meatpacking workers, and front-line grocery workers who incurred pandemic-related health and safety costs.
• Organic Transition Initiative: USDA launched a $300 million Organic Transition Initiative including establishing the Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP) in six regions across the U.S. as part of USDA’s Organic Transition Initiative to help transitioning and recently transitioned producers who face technical, cultural, and market shifts during the transition period and the first few years of organic certification.
• A new online tool called FarmerFairness.gov allows farmers and ranchers to report potentially unfair and anticompetitive practices in the livestock and poultry sectors.
• Assistance for Distressed Producers: USDA provided nearly $800 million in financial assistance to more than 13,000 distressed farmers and plans to provide assistance to thousands more in 2023. This work accompanies an ongoing effort to transform USDA’s farm lending programs with a focus on proactive loan service and support to keep farmers farming, rather than requiring farmers to become distressed before assistance is provided.
• In August, USDA announced up to $550 million in funding to support projects that enable underserved producers to access land, capital, and markets, and train the next, diverse generation of agricultural professionals.
• More than 41 million Americans participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and 2022 marked the first full calendar year that participants received a 21% average increase in monthly SNAP benefits due to USDA’s reevaluation of the Thrifty Food Plan – the first permanent increase to the purchasing power of SNAP benefits since the Thrifty Food Plan was introduced 45 years ago.
• USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) launched a new initiative to reduce Salmonella illness linked to poultry through a strong, comprehensive framework to address Salmonella in poultry that is responsive to evolving food safety hazards and embraces the latest science and technology.
• USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service is advancing tribal self-determination and awarded $5.7 million to eight tribes for demonstration projects that gave them more options to directly select and purchase foods for their Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). This is an important step to increasing tribal food sovereignty in the program and support tribal economies, vendors, and producers.

As seems always the case with USDA, there are so many small programs (“trees”) under discussion that the big picture (“forest”) gets lost.

The forest is the need to support food system transformation to focus agricultural policy on the health of humans and the planet.  Will trees get us there one by one?

Only if there are enough of them.

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At long last, the FDA revealed its proposed decision about whether plant-based milks can be called milk.

• FDA’s draft guidance.
• The Federal Register notice
• For comment, post here 

As the FDA puts it:

This draft guidance, when finalized, will represent the current thinking of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA or we) on this topic. It does not establish any rights for any person and is not binding on FDA or the public. You can use an alternative approach if it satisfies the requirements of the applicable statutes and regulations.

What this is about

Simple.  The dairy industry does not like concoctions made from soy, almonds, cashews, macadamias, oats, peas, or other such plants to get to be called “milk.”  It argues that they are not as nutritious as milk and will confuse consumers into thinking they are the same.  Most surveys show that the public understands the difference quite well and has reasons for choosing plant-based alternatives that may or may not have anything to do with nutrient contents (think: animal welfare, dairy fat, environmental protection, industrial production, or what have you).

This puts the FDA in the awkward position of trying to please the public and the dairy industry at the same time.  Its solution to this dilemma is to invoke nutritionism (the use of nutrients to stand for the whole food):

• Plant-based milks can use the word “milk” (the dairy industry doesn’t like this)
• But they have to say which nutrients they don’t have as much of (producers of plant-based milks don’t like this).

What this will look like

The FDA says this is a voluntary, non-binding recommendation.

In case that’s too small to see:

Really, people who buy plant-based dairy alternatives are not at nutritional risk and don’t need to be told about single nutrients in products that have a great many.  This is an out-and-out caving in to the dairy industry’s fears that plant-based alternatives will further cut into milk sales at a time when milk sales are declining.

It puts plant-based milk manufacturers at risk of lawsuits if they use Milk without confessing nutritional weaknesses (for an excellent discussion of this liklihood, see Elaine Watson’s account in AgFunderNews.  She quotes lawyer Rebecca Cross:

the draft guidance, “is actually quite shocking, as it treats plant-based milks unlike any other food product.  If finalized, the guidance should not survive a First Amendment challenge.”

She added: “Although the recommended nutrient statements are not mandatory—or finalized—the draft guidance here may, unfortunately, result in frivolous class actions [plaintiffs would claim brands are misleading reasonable consumers if they choose not to make the nutrient statements recommended in the guidance]. The FDA should recognize this as well, but it seems they have unfortunately succumbed to dairy industry pressure.

So it seems.

My opinion, for whatever it’s worth: The FDA should permit plant-based milks to be called milks.  They are what they are and most people should have no trouble telling the difference between them and dairy milk.

For the record, I like dairy products.  But the dairy industry is a mess (overproduced, increasingly consolidated, fighting public health and animal welfare concerns) and needs to get its act together.  The FDA is not helping it get there with this decision.

The study: The Effect of Watermelon Juice Supplementation on Heart Rate Variability and Metabolic Response during an Oral Glucose Challenge: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Crossover Trial.

Methods:  This was a two-week controlled clinical trial to measure the effects of watermelon juice on responses to oral glucose challenge tests in healthy young adults.  These usually decrease heart rate variability (not good).

Results: Watermelon juice countered the reduction in heart rate variability.

Funding: “This research was funded by the National Watermelon Promotional Board.”

Comment: I learned about this study from an article in NutraIngredients-USA: “Watermelon juice may decrease dysfunctsion linked to hyperglycemic episodes.” That headline made me ask my usual question: Who paid for this?  Bingo.

I give NutraIngredients much credit for the funding reveal right after the first paragraph, and for its clear explanation of a complicated study rationale and design.

The authors say they have no conflicts of interest to declare.  I continue to believe that the funding source establishes an automatic conflict of interest.

Once again, as I discuss in detail in my book, Unsavory Truth, the key point about industry-funded studies is that funding recipients do not recognize the influence or the conflict.

But what a coincidence that industry-funded studies so often come out with results favorable to the sponsor’s commercial interest, which in this case is this: The National Watermelon Promotional Board “operates with a single objective: to increase consumer demand for watermelon through promotion, research, and educational programs.”

New product launches

• Why Kraft Heinz is making Macaroni & Cheese ice cream and Grey Poupon wine:  The launches are part of an effort to build relevance for iconic brands in a way that aims to combine whimsy and consumer interest into items that attract both social media attention and sales.
• A delightful soft drink mashup: Pepsi and Peeps team up for marshmallow-flavored cola, out now:  The Pepsi X Peeps drink, described as having a “pillowy-soft marshmallow cola flavor,” will be available in mini-can multipacks and 20 oz. bottles.
• Upcycling sawdust to make alternative oils and fats:  Estonian start-up ÄIO joins the ranks of those brewing solutions to replace palm oil, coconut oil and animal fats with sustainable and healthier alternatives…. Read more

Chocolate hazards

• BBC News Mars Wrigley factory fined after two workers fall into chocolate vat: Two workers were rescued when a hole was cut in the bottom of a partly-full Mars Wrigley chocolate tank.  Read More
• UK Police force cracks case of 200,000 stolen Cadbury Creme Eggs from lock-up: A chocolate egg-snatcher is facing a jail sentence after being caught red-handed with a trailer load of Cadbury Crème eggs worth more than £31,000 ($37,000)…. Read more

Research breakthroughs

• Review calls for more studies on cinnamon and cognitive function:  Cinnamon and its bioactive compounds may support brain function and slow cognitive impairment associated with neurodegenerative diseases, suggests a new review published in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience…. Read more

Comments

Sigh.

Marshmallows and upcycled sawdust.  Yum?

Chocolate is always in the news for one reason or another.

As for cinnamon and cognitive function, if only.  The authors declare no conflicted interests.

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Scotland

The Food and Drink Federation of Scotland is lobbying the government to stop proposals to restrict promotion of HFSS snacks, ostensibly because of inflation.

The industry would like the government to “help ensure the future success of our vital industry by investing in productivity and supporting food and drink businesses on the journey to Net Zero.”

Spain

Spain’s new dietary guidelines recommend limits on meat consumption: a maximum of 3 servings/week of meat, prioritising poultry and rabbit meat and minimising the consumption of processed meat.”

This is a big deal because Spain currently has the highest consumption of red meat in Europe.

European Union

Scientists and health professionals for Nutri-Score, the front-of-package labeling scheme that originated in France, are trying to get it accepted throughout the EU.

They are collecting signatures on a petition to the Europen Commission. 

In an email, Serge Hercberg, the originator of Nutri-Score, writes

The objective of this Group aims to defend science and public health against lobbies and to remind the EC that Nutri-Score has been the subject of numerous studies following a rigorous scientific process justifying its adoption…The lobbies, totally denying science, have managed in recent months to spread at European level their false arguments through platforms, think tanks, associations, web media, lobbying agencies and events organised by permanent representations of certain states to EU.

He invites experts to support this effort.  Information is on the website here.

You can sign on through the contact page.  The more, the better he says.

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This photo was just sent to me by Murray Carpenter (@Murray_journo).  I don’t know him personally but he is the author of  Caffeinated, which I blurbed and wrote about in 2014.

He wrote that ILSI, a well known front group for the food industry, must have hired someone to track media reception to my 2018 book, Unsavory Truth: How the Food Industry Skews the Science of What We Eat.  ILSI is the International Life Sciences Institute, which has since changed its name to the Institute for the Advancemement of Food and Nutrition Sciences.

Murray said that on January 19, 2019, he was in the audience for the annual ILSI conference  in Clearwater, Florida.  He sent me this account of that occasion [my emphasis in red below]:

As the conference ground on, attendance fell off. So there were plenty of empty seats when Clare Thorp took the podium. Thorp had newly assumed the position of executive director of ILSI North America. She talked about scientific integrity ad nauseam. The emphasis seemed a corrective, an effort to reinforce the message among the membership. Because for an organization that prides itself on independence and integrity, ILSI kept getting caught doing the bidding of its members, over and over again. It just couldn’t seem to rein itself in.

It wasn’t just that ILSI’s Applebaum, Hill, and Sievenpiper had become the public faces of pseudoscience [Note: scientists caught up in conflicts of interest with Coca-Cola]. Thorp also referenced the Mars situation. The corporation had first criticized ILSI-funded science, then left the group entirely.

“Our membership comes with some major challenges and opportunities,” Thorp said. “We’ve lost a major member. It happens. We keep going.”

Unwittingly, Thorp worked doggedly to prove the aforementioned axiom—the degree to which you have scientific integrity is inversely related to the number of times you claim it.

“I have a passion for sound science…I come from a family of scientists, whether practitioners or academics,” she said. The science statements came out in torrents. “Unbiased and credible research…Scientific integrity is not something we made up overnight, it’s a journey.” She displayed a slide touting the Scientific Integrity Consortium, in partnership with the USDA, which she called “a coalition of the willing.”

“We are not an advocacy or a lobbying organization. But we are actually something entirely different,” she said.

“ILSI is an industry-funded organization where these companies support research that doesn’t directly serve their private interests. They agree to be hands-off…and they bravely commit to publishing the data, no matter what it says. This is very scary. And then, why would they do it?…It’s actually altruistic. They genuinely believe it’s important. They also believe that having a collaborative forum where everyone’s voice can be heard is really necessary.”

But it wasn’t enough to just focus on the science. Thorp also considered the public perception of ILSI. She said she wanted to communicate their work more broadly, to step outside this circle of friends and take a more proactive approach.

“We need to have a better understanding of who ILSI North America is, and what we do, and how we do it.” In response, ILSI was developing more communications materials, she said, and new website graphics.

Then she displayed a slide showing an elaborate, graphically elegant word cloud. Some of the big words in the center of the cloud: “science,” “truth,” “food,” “unsavory,” “industry,” “Nestle,” “Marion.”

It turned out that the nonprofit had chosen to spend some of its money to hire a media tracker to follow the press coverage of Marion Nestle’s recent book Unsavory Truth. The book focused on corporate influence in nutrition policy. The word cloud represented an analysis of the press coverage.

And here, Thorp was actually pleased. “The themes of manipulation, deception, and conspiracy that Nestle is promoting are not coming through as main themes in the media coverage.”

Thorp said that one of ILSI’s challenges was the public perception that it’s an industry front group, and that gets onto the web. “We are working very hard to get our Wikipedia page updated, and then it gets changed again, and then we have to update it again, but it’s important,” she said.

Leading ILSI had become a tough gig. Thorp would not last a year at the helm.

Comment

Of course the word cloud did not include maniputlation, deception, or conspiracy; those words do not appear in Unsavory Truth.  The whole point of conflicts of interest induced by food industry sponsorship—which is what the book is about—is that the conflicts are almost always unintentional, unrecognized, and denied.  Researchers who take industry funding do not believe it influences their science, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary reviewed in my book.

What’s especially interesting to me about this is that from my perspective, Unsavory Truth had little impact.  It generated much less media coverage than most of my books, and led to few speaking invitations.  I thought it had disappeared without a trace.

Apparently not.  I am pleased and honored to learn about this incident.

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Here’s what’s going on.

SNAP costs are high

• SNAP data table, participation and costs: In 2022, 41 million SNAP participants received an average benefit of $230 per month for a total yearly cost of $119.2 billion ($113.7 billion in benefits plus $5.5 billion in administrative costs).
• Congressional Budget Office (DBO) Budget and Economic Outlook: 2023 to 2033: This projects a drop in SNAP costs by $21 billion in 2023 but only because the additional benefits awarded during the pandemic have now been reduced (CBO Baseline projections for USDA farm programs do not cover SNAP).

Even with the reduction, this is an expensive program and it’s no surprise that Republicans want to cut it.

SNAP is under constant criticism and not only because of cost.  Advocates want it to do a better job of promoting nutrition and health, as shown in two recent reports.

Advocacy Report #1.  Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program as a health intervention (by Jerry Mande and Grace Flaherty)

After reviewing the evidence on SNAP’s impacts on food insecurity, dietary quality, and health as well as research on the health impacts of other more successful federal food assistance programs, we provide three policy recommendations to strengthen SNAP’s effectiveness as a health intervention for children and families.

These are:

• Make diet quality a core SNAP objective.
• Srengthen requirements for SNAP-authorized retailers to promote healthier retail food environments.
• Pair incentives for purchasing fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods with restrictions on unhealthy foods and sweetened 2beverages.

Advocacy Report #2.  Making Food and Nutrition Security a SNAP: Recommendations for the 2023 Farm Bill (from the  Bipartisan Policy Center’s Food and Nutrition Security Task Force.

Some of its major recommendations:

• Make sure benefit levels are adequate to achieve healthy diets.
• Make sure eligibility and work requirements do not preent undue barriers to participation.
• Encourage consumption of nutritious foods through existing and demonstration projects.

If I read this right, “demonstration projects” is a euphemism for not permitting sugar-sweetened beverages to be purchased with SNAP benefits.