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Hundreds of reports of illness from eating Lucky Charms cereal have intrigued food safety experts.

The FDA is investigating, but being really cagey about it.

Everybody seems to know that reference number 1064 refers to Lucky Charms cereal.

The FDA has received 529 reports of adverse effects.

Food safety lawyer Bill Marler has been following the situation.

Since late 2021, the crowd sourcing website iwaspoisoned.com has received 6,400 reports from people complaining of classic food poisoning symptoms of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea after eating Lucky Charms cereal. General Mills, the maker of the cereal, has said that is has investigated the situation and there is no apparent link between the reported illnesses and Lucky Charms.

The Washington Post quotes experts calling for a recall, Bill Marler among them.

Although, there has been no scientific proven link, be it chemical or an allergen, between the several thousand illnesses and Lucky Charms,” Marler said, “my advice to General Mills is to recall the product and reset its trust with the consuming public until more is known.

Is there a link?  Or is this just a matter of people getting sick, remembering they ate this cereal, and putting the two together—even though no cause-and-effect exists.

I am not much of a fan of dietary supplements and have to admit to confirmation bias; I collect studies that provide evidence for skepticism about how well they work.

So when a reader, Arya Afrashteh, sent this study, I gave it some attention.

The study:  Dietary Supplements as Source of Unintentional Doping.  Vanya Rangelov Kozhuharov, Kalin Ivanov, and Stanislava Ivanova.  Biomed Res Int. 2022; 2022: 8387271. Published online 2022 Apr 22. doi: 10.1155/2022/8387271

The rationale:  Athletes are not supposed to take performance-enhancing drugs but they are permitted to take dietary supplements.  Are these safe?

Method: A review of the literature on unapproved substances found in dietary supplements.

Results: 875 of 3132 supplements contained undeclared substances.

Conclusion: ~28% of the analyzed dietary supplements pose a potential risk of unintentional doping.

Comment:  Between one-quarter and one-third of dietary supplements taken for performance enhancement contained unlabled substances that could test as unapproved drugs.

This is a result of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) that basically deregulated dietary supplements.  It took supplements out from under the control of the FDA.

All the FDA can do is write warning letters, which it occasionally does.

But unless the FDA is checking, you cannot be sure that what is in the supplements is accurately reflected by their labels.  Sports supplements, it seems, are prime examples of why this is a problem.

Caveat emptor.

Darra Goldstein.  The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food.  University of California Press, 2022.

Russia is in the news these days (to say the least) and here is food historian Darra Goldstein’s deeply nostalgic account of how Russians managed to create delicious meals under the worst of circumstances, from tsarist to Soviet times.  Some excerpts:

To explain the title and the cover:

At the heart of any traditional Russian meal lies black bread, a loaf of dense sourdough rye….so ingrained was rye in the Russian diet that by the late nineteenth century, 30 to 60 percent of the country’s arable land was annually planted in this crop, leading to a veritable “kingdom of rye.”  The peasants expressed reverence for their rye bread by holding the loaf close to the chest and slicing it horizontally toward the heart. Wasting breadcrumbs was considered a sin, and even into the late twentieth century, entire cookbooks were devoted to using leftover black bread (p. 9).

On dacha gardens in Soviet times:

The only sure way to guarantee the availability of staples like potatoes was to grow them yourself.  Most of the population, including a great many city dwellers, cultivated their own garden plots, which allowed them to endure periods of food shortages.  These private plots…created a significant second economy–one the government came increasingly to rely on, since the collective and state farms never managed to meet the nation’s demand for fresh produce (p. 89).

On the samovar:

The origins of the samovar’s design are murky, and it is unclear whether this vessel arrived in Russia from the East or the West.  The model may have been the Mongolian hot pot or the elaborate Dutch urns that had taps rather than spouts…Whatever its origin, the Russians adapted a foreign receptacle into a useful object that became not only very much their own, but one that epitomizes Russianness (p. 119).

The book is indeed brief, but enlightening.  It made me think of Anya Von Bremen’s Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing (Broadway Books, 2013).  Both are deeply appreciative of Russian cuisine (if that’s the right word), and ability of Russian cooks to take whatever was available and turn it into something edible and memorable.

Really?  Another peanut butter Salmonella recall?  The last one was a disaster (more than 700 cases of illness and 9 deaths).  Among other things, it resulted in imprisonment for the head of the Peanut Corporation of America.

Well, here we go again.

The FDA announced the outbreak traced to Smucker’s Jif.

It also announced Smucker’s recall of those products.

And it provided links to further information.

• What is Salmonella
• Food Safety Tips for Consumers & Retailers During an Outbreak
• Who to Contact

The CDC announced its investigation results to date.

• Illnesses: 16
• Hospitalizations: 2
• Deaths: 0
• States: 12
• Recall: Yes
• Investigation status: Active

And it issued a food safety alert. Peanut butter has a long shelf life.  Discard Jif peanut butter with lot code numbers 1274425 through 2140425, with “425” at the end of the first 7 numbers.

But that’s not all.  Companies using Jif peanut butter dip with precut vegetables or in candy were also in trouble (see list at the end).

How does Salmonella get into peanut butter?  Scientific American explained how this happened the last time.

Feces from some animal is a strong possibility. A leak in the roof, for example, caused one of the early outbreaks. How salmonella got into the water that was on the roof, no one knows for sure. Maybe birds, for instance, which accumulate around peanut butter processing plants.  The roasting of peanuts is the only step that will kill the salmonella. If contamination occurs after the roasting process, the game is over and salmonella is going to survive. Studies have shown that salmonella can survive for many months in peanut butter once it’s present.

Preventive controls, anyone?

And here, thanks to Bill Marler and Food Safety News, is the current list of Jif recalls: .

• The JM Smucker Co. – US May 20, 2022
• The JM Smucker Co. – Canada May 21, 2022

The collateral damage:

• Rainbow Asset Limited – Hong Kong:May 23, 2022
• Randy Ltd. – Israel:May 23, 2022
• Albertsons Companies(11 store-prepared items) May 21, 2022
• Bix Produce Company(2 products containing Jif Creamy Peanut Butter To Go 1.5 oz. cup) May 26, 2022
• Cargill(multiple products containing peanut butter, sold at the Wilbur Chocolate Retail Store in Lititz, Pa. and online at Wilburbuds.com.) May 23, 2022
• Coblentz Chocolate Company(multiple peanut butter products) May 24, 2022
• Country Fresh(select fresh-cut fruit snack trays and fruit snack cups) May 24, 2022
• Fresh Del Monte(fresh-cut fruit and vegetable products containing ready-to-eat Jif^® peanut butter dip) May 24, 2022
• Fudgeamentals(several fudge products made with Jif Peanut Butter) May 25, 2022
• Garden Cut, LLC(Garden Cut products containing 0.750z Jif Peanut Butter Cup) May 24, 2022
• Giant(Store Brand Apples, Pretzels & Celery with Peanut Butter) May 23, 2022
• Martin’s(Store Brand Apples, Pretzels & Celery with Peanut Butter) May 23, 2022
• Mary’s Harvest Fresh Foods Inc(Mary’s Harvest Celery Peanut Butter Cup G&G and Apple Peanut Butter Cup G&G) May 24, 2022
• Price Chopper(M32 Apples, Cheese and Pretzels with Peanut Butter Tray) May 23, 2022
• Taher Inc.(“Fresh Seasons Power Packs”) May 24, 2022
• Wawa(two products containing Jif Peanut Butter) May 24, 2022
• Wegmans(Wegmans Snack with Apple, Pretzels, Cheese and Peanut Butter) May 22, 2022

Brian Kateman.  Meat Me Half-Way: How Changing the Way We Eat Can Improve Our Lives and Save Our Planet.  Prometheus Books, 2022. 

I hadn’t expected this book to be so compelling, but it was and I did a blurb for it.

Meat Me Half-Way is an exceptionally thoughtful and well-argued synthesis of the rationale for the “reducetarian” movement to eat less (but not necessarily zero) meat as a means to improve human and planetary health. I especially like the book’s call to unite vegans, vegetarians, proponents of plant-based and cell-based meats, and advocates for regenerative agriculture in this common cause.  Sign me up!

Kateman says

Ultimately, we all want to see the end of factory farming…we must support, or at least not actively oppose, legal approaches toward that end—even when others’ solutions for chipping away at factory farming are not our preferred ones.  This means plant-based meat and cell-cultured meat advocates not actively opposing better meat—even if they don’t think better meat is the ethical, environmental, or nutritional ideal.  This also of course means better-meat advocates not opposing plant-based and cell-cultured meat for not being “the real thing.  (P. 179)

Food companies are madly trying to find plant proteins they can use to make plant-based meat alternatives.  The plant-based scene is hard to keep up with, but I am trying.

• Tracking the plant-based protein movement: From plant-based burgers to chick’n nuggets, companies have launched a variety of new products, made acquisitions and forged partnerships to be in the meat alternative space. According to the Good Food Institute, $5.9 billion has been invested in alternative protein companies — plant-based, fermentation and cultivated or cell-based — between 2010 and 2020.

Check out the variety of plants under research.

• Four emerging plant proteins to watch: Pongamia, hemp, barley, and chickpea: Hemp, barley, chickpeas, and Pongamia (a.k.a. ‘vertical soy’) are four plant-based proteins to watch in the next decade, according to panelists at FoodNavigator-USA’s recent ‘Plant-based protein in focus’ webinar, who predicted advances in crop breeding to increase protein content or functionality will also unlock new opportunities in the field…. Read more
• Tate & Lyle bets big on chickpea protein, flour, with deal to acquire Nutriati. Tate & Lyle – a global ingredients company best known for sweeteners, fibers, and texturizing ingredients – has moved into the burgeoning plant-based protein arena with a deal to acquire Virginia-based chickpea protein and flour co Nutriati, six months after striking a deal to distribute its ingredients…. Read more
• New varieties with 75% more protein could catapult chickpea from niche to mainstream player in plant protein arena, says NuCicer: New chickpea varieties with 75% more protein could transform the legume from a niche to a mainstream player in the plant-based protein arena, says San Francisco-based startup NuCicer, which is also developing varieties with specific functional attributes tailored for food applications…. Read more
• Could sunflower protein join the plant-based protein major league? It ‘checks all the boxes’ says Burcon. Sunflower is the world’s third largest oilseed crop behind soy and canola, so why isn’t it a major player in the plant-based protein arena?… Read more
• ‘A highly soluble, complete protein, with functional properties very close to whey protein…’ DSM gears up to launch upcycled canola protein isolate.  DSM is gearing up to launch commercial quantities of upcycled canola protein isolate extracted from Non GMO rapeseed at a new facility in Dieppe, France, later this year, and says it is seeing interest from firms spanning plant-based meat and dairy, to sports nutrition…. Read more
• Beyond soy and pea… Mikuna expands plant protein toolbox with Chocho whole food. It might fit squarely in the ‘niche’ segment of the plant-based protein category right now, but the speed with which Chocho – a protein-packed variety of lupin that grows in the Andes – has gained traction online and in Erewhon stores in southern California, suggests it has the potential to become a much more significant player, argues Mikuna CEO Tara Kriese…. Read more
• Beneo builds new pulse-processing plant for ‘rising star’ ingredient faba bean: The ingredients supplier is investing €50m in the new facility to make protein concentrate, starch rich flour and hulls from faba beans – a crops that comes with ‘convincing sustainable credentials’, Beneo’s Christoph Boettger tells FoodNavigator…. Read more Ingredion has made an equity investment (of an undisclosed sum) in Israeli firm InnovoPro, which has developed a suite of highly functional chickpea ingredients including protein concentrates, textured vegetable proteins, and most recently, egg replacements…. Read more
• ‘Food oasis in the desert’: Locally grown dates fuel production of mushroom protein in Oman: Alt protein supplier MycoTechnology has teamed up with Oman Investment Authority to produce mushroom protein in the desert…. Read more
• Plant protein that behaves like animal protein? Lemna-fueled Plantible Foods raises $21.5m, gears up for 2022 launch: Plantible Foods – a startup producing protein from lemna, a fast-growing aquatic plant that can be harvested all year round, has raised $21.5m in a series A round* led by Astanor Ventures, as it gears up for a commercial launch in 2022…. Read more
• The tech behind ‘single-ingredient’ smoked salmon analogue revealed: ‘Our spirulina can act as a complete replacement for animal-based protein’ An Israeli food tech company has developed a proprietary process leveraging spirulina to mimic ‘virtually any type of fish and animal tissue’. It’s first product: a ‘single-ingredient’ smoked salmon analogue.  Read more

And now we have an FDA-approved ingredient that mimics blood hemoglobin.

• Motif FoodWorks launches HEMAMI heme-binding protein delivering the ‘flavor and aroma of real meat,’ receives GRAS no questions letter from FDA. HEMAMI – a much-anticipated meaty flavor Boston-Based Motif FoodWorks reckons could be a gamechanger in the meat alternatives arena by delivering the flavor and aroma of the real thing – is now commercially available for large-scale distribution to customers…. Read more

Obviously, there is big money in the plant-based space.

• Louis Dreyfus Co plans to enter plant protein market later this year with initial focus on North America: Louis Dreyfus Company – a leading global agricultural commodity trader with interests in grains and oilseeds, coffee, cotton, juice, rice, sugar, and freight – plans to enter the plant-based protein market later this year…. Read more

US food aid to other countries has long been criticized as proving more benefit to us than to whoever we are trying to help.

This is because our laws require at least half of the ships carrying food donations to be owned by Americans.  This rule can be waived in emergencies such as what’s happening in the Ukraine.

Senators Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) have introduced a resolution to waive this rule until early 2025.

What’s amazing about the rule is how much it costs.

USAID says it will cost $388 million to provide $282 million in food aid to Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Yemen.

A big part of the excess cost is due to cargo preference rules (fuel costs also contribute).

In 2015, the Government Accountability Office published an analysis which demonstrated

Cargo preference for food aid (CPFA) requirements increased the overall cost of shipping food aid by an average of 23 percent, or $107 million, over what the cost would have been had CPFA requirements not been applied…differences in the implementation of CPFA requirements by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) contributed to a higher shipping rate for USDA.

Needless to say, the US shipping industry opposes any change to the rules.

The reduction of cargo would only further endanger the jobs of civilian merchant mariners creating the distinct possibility that there will not be enough mariners to meet military surge and sustainment requirements for future military conflicts. When foreign flag shipping companies are currently making record profits amidst global supply chain disruptions, now is not the time to weaken critical policies that would come at the expense of American businesses and working families.

Here’s a report from a House Subcommitteethe on the behavior of the meat packing industry during the Trump Administration.

The key findings:

• The Meatpacking Industry Had Notice of the Acute Risks the Coronavirus Posed to Workers in Meatpacking Plants.
  Meatpacking Companies’ Claims of an Impending Protein Shortage Were Flimsy if Not Outright False.
• Meatpacking Companies Successfully Enlisted Trump USDA Political Appointees to Advocate Against Health Protections for Workers, While Sidelining Career Staff.
• Meatpacking Companies Worked with Trump’s USDA to Force Meatpacking Workers to Stay on the Job Despite Unsafe Conditions.
• Meatpacking Companies Worked with USDA and the White House in an Attempt to Prevent State and Local Health Departments from Regulating Coronavirus Precautions in
  Plants.
• Meatpacking Companies Successfully Lobbied USDA and the White House to Issue an Executive Order Purporting to Insulate Them from State and Local Coronavirus
  Regulations and Liability for Worker Infections and Deaths.

And just to remind you what was at stake, from Leah Douglas’s reporting for the Food and Environment Reporting Network:

Here’s Leah Douglas’s analysis of this report in Reuters, where she now works.

In the meantime, the meat packers deny all of this.

At the end of April, the House Agriculture Committee held hearings on the effects of consolidation in the meat industry.  These were the result of complaints by ranchers that they have been squeezed out by meatpackers and are being forced to sell their animals at prices below their costs.

I’ve written previously about President Biden’s executive order on the meat industry, and about his concerns about lack of competition in that industry.

The hearings followed up on those themes: The CEOs of the four major meat packing companies testified in defense of their practices, and denied colluding on prices.

Should we believe them?

Why does this remind me of the cigarette CEOs denying that their products cause cancer?

If you want more details, here are the links (thanks to Jerry Hagstrom for collecting these at The Hagstrom Report on April 27).  His report is at this link.

• House Agriculture Committee hearing – An examination of price discrepancies, transparency, and alleged unfair practices in cattle markets (video)
• Coy Young, cow/calf producer, Blythedale, Mo.
• Gilles Stockton, cow/calf producer, Grass Range, Mont., on behalf of National Plains Research Council and Western Organization of Research Councils
• Don Schiefelbein, cattle producer and president of National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Kimball, Minn.
• David MacLennan, CEO, Cargill Inc., Wayzata, Minn.
• Tim Schellpeper, CEO, JBS USA Holdings Inc., Greeley, Colo.
• Tim Klein, CEO, National Beef Packing Co. LLC, Kansas City, Mo.
• Donnie King, CEO, Tyson Foods, Springdale, Ark.