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For years, food safety advocates have been petitioning USDA to declare Salmonella in poultry as an adulterant.  Chicken that is adulterated is not allowed to be sold.

This, of course, would be a problem because supermarket chicken can easily be contaminated with Salmonella, which is why USDA wants you to take responsibility for keeping your kitchen safe by handling and cooking it properly.

USDA has now addressed this problem—but only in breaded, stuffed raw chicken products.

Why these?

Since 1998, breaded and stuffed raw chicken products have been associated with up to 14 outbreaks and approximately 200 illnesses. Products in this category are found in the freezer section and include some chicken cordon bleu or chicken Kiev products. These products appear cooked, but they are heat-treated only to set the batter or breading and the product contains raw poultry. Continual efforts to improve the product labeling have not been effective at reducing consumer illnesses.

OK.  It’s a step.

Q.  Why hasn’t the USDA acted sooner?  Why isn’t it doing more?

A.  Because the chicken industry does not want to have to be responsible for keeping chicken safe.  It would rather leave that responsibility to you.

You don’t believe me?  Here is the chicken industry’s response to the USDA’s action, as reported in Food Safety News: National Chicken Council objects to USDA plan to name Salmonella as adulterant in some chicken products

USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) decision to declare Salmonella as an adulterant in breaded and stuffed raw chicken products is not welcomed by the regulated industry. “NCC (National Chicken Council) is concerned about the precedent set by this abrupt shift in longstanding policy, made without supporting data, for a product category that has only been associated with one outbreak since 2015. It has the potential to shutter processing plants, cost jobs, and take safe food and convenient products off shelves,” according to a statement from the industry group.

Ahem.  Not quite.

The FSIS reported that since 1998, breaded and stuffed raw chicken products have been associated with up to 14 outbreaks and approximately 200 illnesses.

Two readers, Cory Brooks and Yme Dolmans, sent me this gem.

They learned about it from a story in The Guardian: “Jarlsberg cheese may help stave off osteoporosis, small study suggests.”

The Guardian picked this up from the BMJ, which published the study and sent out a press release: “Small daily portion of Jarlsberg cheese may help to stave off bone thinning.”

A small (57 g) daily portion of Jarlsberg cheese may help to stave off bone thinning (osteopenia/osteoporosis) without boosting harmful low density cholesterol, suggest the results of a small comparative clinical trial, published in the open access journal BMJ Nutrition Prevention & Health.

The effects seem to be specific to this type of cheese, the findings indicate.

Jarlsberg is a mild and semi-soft, nutty flavoured cheese made from cow’s milk, with regular holes. It originates from Jarlsberg in eastern Norway.

Eat Jarlsberg cheese and prevent osteoporosis?  A miracle!

As with any other study claiming that a single food produces health miracles, my first question: Who paid for this?

The paper:  Effect on bone anabolic markers of daily cheese intake with and without vitamin K₂: a randomised clinical trial.  

Conclusion.  The effect of daily Jarlsberg intake on increased s-osteocalcin level is not a general cheese effect. Jarlsberg contain vitamin K₂ and DHNA which increases PINP, tOC, cOC and R_O and decreases Ca⁺⁺, Mg⁺⁺ and HbA1c. These effects reflect increased bone anabolism and a possible reduced risk of adverse metabolic outcomes.

Funding:  Norwegian Research Council; project number 310059, TINE SA, and Meddoc Research Unit funded this project.

Contributors: TINE SA provided Jarlsberg and Camembert cheese, along with financial support, but did not play any role in the design, implementation, analysis, interpretation or manuscript writing.

Comment:  This study is the result of a private-public partnership between the Norwegian government and its dairy industry.  The Norwegian Research Council provides research funding for industry: “We promote competitiveness and growth in Norwegian trade and industry by providing financial support and advice for research and innovation projects.”

As for TINE SA, it  “is Norway’s largest producer, distributor and exporter of dairy products with 11,400 members (owners) and 9,000 cooperative farms.”

This situation is analogous to USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service’s research partnerships with food trade associations; these also produce studies with results that the press loves to extol and funders can use for marketing.

The purpose of this study is to support a Norwegian industry by promoting sales of Jarlsberg.

Is it likely that eating a couple of ounces of Jarlsberg would have much of an effect on osteoporosis?

The operative word here is “may.”   This could also mean “may not.”

The bottom line:  If you like Jarlsberg cheese, enjoy!

The FDA’s food operations are under siege over problems with infant formula, the Fresh Harvest recall, and all its other food safety and regulatory problems.

As you saw yesterday, it has plenty of time for educational initiatives.

This one is called “Supplement Your Knowledge.”  Its purpose is to help inform health care professionals, consumers, and educators about the hazards of dietary supplements.

How is the FDA helping with this?

• For consumers: Public education videos and fact sheets.
• For educators: Curriculum guide, Science and Our Food Supply: Examining Dietary Supplements (2021 Edition).
• For healthcare professionals: In collaboration with the American Medical Association (AMA), a continuing medical education (CME) program, free.  This includes three videos and companion education materials available on the FDA’s Healthcare Professionals website.  Physicians should go to the AMA Ed Hub^TM

The FDA is worried about harm from thousands of products that are largely unregulated, thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA).  This act took the FDA out of the business of regulating supplements, allowed supplement manufacturers to claim pretty much anything they want about supplements (regardless of evidence), and left ghe matter of what’s actually in the bottles as a matter of faith.

More than half of American adults take supplements of one kind or another, despite lack of evidence that they do any good at all for reasonably healthy people.  Fortunately, most are harmless.

The FDA wants to encourage supplement users to report adverse effects from the ones that aren’t.

I’m guessing the AMA wants to discourage physicians from inappropriately suggesting supplements and encourage them to recognize adverse events when they see them.

Congress passed DSHEA.  It will take another act of Congress to  protect the public from supplements that contain what they shouldn’t, don’t contain what they should, and otherwise mislead the public about what they can do.

Related Information

• To report a problem: the Safety Reporting Portal.
• Dietary Supplements Social Media Toolkit
• Additional information on dietary supplements:  www.fda.gov/dietarysupplements.
• Constituent Update 
• Dietary Supplements Education Initiative  
• Information for Consumers on Using Dietary Supplements
• Dietary Supplements

You would think the beleaguered FDA would have better things to do.

It sent out a press release announcing new “Feed Your Mind” materials to increase public and professional understanding of GMOs, in partnershipwith USDA and EPA.

My first question: Who paid for this?

The answer:

Funding for the “Feed Your Mind” initiative was provided by Congress in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017 to conduct “consumer outreach and education regarding agricultural biotechnology and biotechnology derived food products and animal feed, including through publication and distribution of science-based educational information on the environmental, nutritional, food safety, economic, and humanitarian impacts of such biotechnology, food products, and feed.”  More funds were provided through 2018 and 2019 Appropriations bills.

How’s that for effective lobbying by the food biotechnology industry!

Why do I think this is pro-GMO propaganda?

I started with the Discussion Guide for Health Educators.  It has just a few questions and answers.  For example:

Q.  Are GMO’s safe to eat?

A.  Yes…they are just as safe to eat as non-GMO foods.

Q.  Is here a link between GMOs and cancer?

A.  No.  GMO crops are not changed in ways that would increase the risk of cancer for humans or animals.

I don’t think these answers are necessarily wrong.  They just don’t tell the whole story.

These materials have nothing to say about:

• Consolidation in the biotechnology industry
• Corporate control of commodity agriculture
• Glyphosate, the herbicide used with GMOs and considered carcinogenic by international health agencies and US courts
• How GMO crops have taken over, driving out everyone else
• How pesticides used on GMO crops contaminate organic production
• The ways GMO companies harrass independent farmers by enforcing intellectual property rights
• How the Farm Bill subsidizes GMO corn and soybeans, causing them to be overproduced and corn to be used for ethanol
• Congress’s absurd Bioengineered labeling, widely ignored.
• The consequent lack of transparency in the supermarket

No wonder so many people look for Non-GMO labels on food products.

Take a look at these materials and judge for yourself (I particularly recommend the video for consumers).  It and the rest are quite short.

• A video and infographic for consumers:
  • Video: “GMOs, Farm to Table”
  • Infographic: “Where Can You Find GMOs?”
• A video and discussion guide for health educators:
  • Video: “GMOs and Food Safety: A Guide for Health Educators”
  • Discussion Guide: “A Question of GMOs”
• A video and factsheet developed in partnership with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics for registered dietitians (RDs)/registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs) and nutrition and dietetics technicians, registered (NDTRs). Interested RDs/RDNs and NDTRs can earn free continuing education units through the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ EatRight® Store.
  • Video: “Understanding GMOs”
  • Factsheet: “Understanding GMOs”

For More Information

• Feed Your Mind – Agricultural Biotechnology Initiative
• Resources for Healthcare Professionals
• FDA Releases New “Feed Your Mind” Consumer Education Materials (September 2020)

I’m getting caught up on reports this week.  Here’s one from the US Agency for International Development:  COVID-19 and Nutrition Analytical Framework

The purpose of the Framework:

• Allow policymakers and implementers to better track the interaction of the COVID-19 pandemic and nutrition
• Provide a tool for planning policies, programs, and interventions
• Help identify data gaps
• Support a systems approach to addressing problems “caused, increased, or intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic”

The Framework:

What I like about this Framework is how it so clearly identifies the upstream system levels of intervention: food, health, social, education, and infrastructure.

It’s also interactive, but for that you have to go to its source and click on each section.

Thanks to Lisa Young and three other readers for sending along this one.

The press release: New Research Finds Consumption of Peanuts Supports Weight Loss, Lowers Blood Pressure and Improves Glucose Levels

The Study: Petersen, K.S.; Murphy, J.; Whitbread, J.; Clifton, P.M.; Keogh, J.B. The Effect of a Peanut-Enriched Weight Loss Diet Compared to a Low-Fat Weight Loss Diet on Body Weight, Blood Pressure, and Glycemic Control: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Nutrients 2022, 14, 2986. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14142986.

Conclusion: Intake of 35 g of peanuts prior to two main meals per day, in the context of an energy-restricted diet, resulted in weight loss comparable to a traditional low-fat weight loss diet without preloads. Greater systolic blood pressure reductions were observed with peanut intake, which may lower cardiovascular disease risk.

Funding: This research was funded by The Peanut Institute…The funder had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

Conflicts of Interest: J.B.K., P.M.C. and K.S.P. received a grant from The Peanut Institute to conduct this study. The funder had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

Comment: The funder had no role?  That’s what they all say.  That may be true in this instance, but but much research demonstrates otherwise, and funders are unlikely to pay for studies that might give them unfavorable results.

The underlying purpose of this study was to demonstrate that if you are on a weight-loss diet, you can eat lots of peanuts and still lose weight: “70 g/d of peanuts may be included in an energy-restricted weight loss diet without attenuating weight loss over a 6-month period.”  Of course you can, if you stick to a low-calorie diet.

I’m all for eating nuts.  Substituting them for ultra-processed snack foods is a reasonable approach to dieting, but don’t expect to lose any more weight eating nuts than from any other source of calories.  This is a marketing study, aimed at encouraging you to eat more peanuts.

We have Healthy Food America and the University of Washington, the UCONN Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health, and the Public Health Law Center at Mitchell Hamline School of Law to thank for this guide to tax legislation that will promote health and racial equity.

The report:

• Reviews tax laws proposed and achieved in the US
• Summarizes the experience of advocates and policymakers
• Examines approaches used in alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis taxes
• Recommends how to draft legislation to promote equity

The full report: Investing Sweetened Beverage Tax Revenues to Advance Equity: Recommendations for Drafting Legislation

The brief report is here.

An infographic provides a quick overview.

Other supporting materials are available on the Healthy Food America website.

Want to give this a try?  Here’s how.