My son-in-law, Michael Suenkel, sent me a link to this video clip from Rachel Maddow, with a note:

This is from  Rachel Maddow last night.  Trump on fruits and vegetables.  Either hilarious, terrifying, or deeply embarrassing depending on whether you’re a half full or half empty person, I suppose.  Start at 4:35.

I went right to 4:35.

And then I saw Emily Heil’s account of this incident in the Washington Post: Trump’s killer tomatoes and the history of food as protest projectile.  She summarizes the former President’s testimony:

Trump, we learned on Wednesday, actually feared for his life at the other end of a major food group, or at least claimed to…Death by fruit? “I think that they have to be aggressive in stopping that from happening,” Trump said, in a deposition whose transcript was reported this week, about the approach his security detail took in 2015 to threats that protesters at a 2015 campaign rally might launch a vegetal attack. “Because if that happens, you can be killed if that happens. … To stop somebody from throwing pineapples, tomatoes, bananas, stuff like that, yeah, it’s dangerous stuff.”

Heil, clearly a serious scholar, goes deeper.  Not only are tomatoes thrown at politicians, but also other foods: eggs, pies, milkshakes, spaghetti.

Pies?  I was there!  I was in the audience at the National Nutrition Summit in Washington, DC, when a protester threw a pie at USDA Secretary Dan Glickman.  You can see this for yourself in this short clip introduced by Jon Stewart.  Here’s a screenshot.

Glickman ducked and avoided the worst of it.  He discussed the incident in a 2021 Tweet.

Scholars: I see a doctoral dissertation in food projectiles.  Get to work!

The Government Accountability Office has just issued this report:  Evidence-Based Policy Making: USDA’s Decision to Relocate Research Agencies to Kansas City Was Not Fully Consistent with an Evidence-Based Approach

You may recall that in October 2019, USDA relocated most Economic Research Service staff positions from Washington DC to Kansas City, MO.  At the time, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue said the move would save taxpayers more than $300 million over ten years.

This defied credulity.  The real reason had to be that politically appointed USDA officials wanted to destroy the ERS.  Its economists produce reports that tell truths inconvenient for political expediency.

An easy way to destroy an agency is to move it half way across the country.  That way three-quarters of the professional staff would quit or retire.

I considered this move a national tragedy, and said so repeatedly.

• September 21, 2018  USDA’s double-speak proposal to “improve” the ERS: brute-force politics
• May 28, 2019 USDA’s destruction of the Economic Research Service: A National Tragedy
• June 18, 2019 The tragic destruction of the Economic Research Service, continued
• July 10, 2019 One more time: the Economic Research Service tragedy  
• August 6, 2019 The true purpose of moving the ERS out of DC: “Drain the Swamp”
• May 28, 2019  USDA’s destruction of the Economic Research Service: A National Tragedy
• June 18, 2019 The tragic destruction of the Economic Research Service, continued
• September 30, 2020 The Counter investigates: the Economic Research Service’s shameful downfall
• February 17, 2021  We now have a chance to repair the damage done to the Economic Research Service

The GAO is more polite than I am.  Here is a summary excerpt from the report’s Highlights.

USDA’s stated objectives for relocation were to improve its ability to attract and retain highly-qualified staff; place its resources closer to stakeholders and consumers; and reduce costs to taxpayers.

However, GAO found that the economic analysis did not fully align with those objectives. ..USDA omitted critical costs and economic effects from its analysis of taxpayer savings, such as costs related to potential attrition or disruption of activities for a period of time, which may have contributed to an unreliable estimate of savings from relocation.

Overall, GAO found that USDA’s development and usage of evidence had significant limitations… As a result of the weaknesses GAO found, USDA leadership may have made a relocation decision that was not the best choice to accomplish its stated objectives.

But it did achieve its unstated objective: to weaken, if not destroy, ERS.   This agency is still publishing reports, but most of them are uncontroversial estimates of food production and use.  Occasionally I see glimmers of the kinds of reports the agency used to produce.  Let’s hope more of them are on their way.

The New York Times’ obituary for the late Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, “Orrin Hatch, Seven-Term Senator and a Republican Force, Dies at 88,” filled an entire page of the newspaper.  That’s how important he was.

I was surprised that the obituary said not one word about Senator’s Hatch’s responsibility for the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA, pronounced d’shay).  The purpose of this act was to boost the supplement industry, which is well represented in Utah, by taking it out from under the regulatory authority of the FDA.

As a reminder, DSHEA:

• Assumed that dietary supplements were safe.
• Essentially deregulated them by weakening the FDA’s regulatory power.
• Permitted structure/function health claims on supplements, (e.g., supports a healthy immune system), regardless of level of scientific substantiation.
• Labeled supplements with Supplement Facts rather than Nutrition Facts.
• Forced the FDA to take manufacturers to court if agency regulators had concerns about safety, misleading claims, or inconsistent contents.
• Caused the FDA to lose court cases on First Amendment grounds.

The results:

• The supplement industry expanded rapidly, achieving DSHEA’s purpose.
• You cannot be sure that what you are buying is actually waht the label says you are buying.
• You cannot be sure that claimed benefits have any science behind them.
• Food manufacturers demanded the right to make struture/function claims.
• Use of the First Amendment to protect commercial (rather than personal, political, or religious) speech has gotten stronger.

We have Orrin Hatch to thank for turning the supplement industry into one based on faith, not science.

Why would he do this?

The obituary suggests one possibility:

During the opioid crisis in 2015, he introduced a bill to narrow the authority of government regulators to halt the marketing of drugs by predatory pharmaceutical companies. It later emerged that he had received $2.3 million in donations from the drug industry over 25 years.

For a more direct explanation, check out this article about Senator Hatch from the New York Times in 2011, “Support Is Mutual for Senator and Utah Industry.“

“Senator Hatch — he’s our natural ally,” said Marc S. Ullman, a lawyer for several supplement companies. Mr. Hatch, who credits a daily regimen of nutritional supplements for his vigor at 77, has spent his career in Washington helping the $25-billion-a-year industry thrive….Mr. Hatch has been rewarded with hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, political loyalty and corporate sponsorship of his favorite causes back home.  His family and friends have benefited, too, from links to the supplement industry.

Hatch’s efforts to deregulate supplements did no good for public health or trust in science.  As the obituary said,

But there were no political repercussions. The senator was re-elected in 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000, 2006 and 2012, averaging nearly 65 percent of the vote.

Requiescat in pace.

Thanks to a reader in Israel, Yehuda Ben-Hur, for sending this one.

The study: The effect of a high-polyphenol Mediterranean diet (Green-MED) combined with physical activity on age-related brain atrophy: the Dietary Intervention Randomized Controlled Trial Polyphenols Unprocessed Study (DIRECT PLUS) .  Alon Kaplan, Hila Zelicha, Anat Yaskolka Meir, Ehud Rinott, Gal Tsaban, Gidon Levakov, Ofer Prager, Moti Salti, Yoram Yovell, Jonathan Ofer, Sebastian Huhn, Frauke Beyer, Veronica Witte, Arno Villringer, Nachshon Meiran, Tamar B Emesh, Peter Kovacs, Martin von Bergen, Uta Ceglarek, Matthias Blüher, Michael Stumvoll, Frank B Hu, Meir J Stampfer, Alon Friedman, Ilan Shelef, Galia Avidan, Iris Shai.  The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, nqac001, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqac001 Published: 11 January 2022.

Objectives: We aimed to explore the effect of a Mediterranean diet (MED) higher in polyphenols and lower in red/processed meat (Green-MED diet) on age-related brain atrophy.

Methods:  Abdominally obese  participants were randomly assigned to follow one of three diets: (1) healthy dietary guidelines (HDG), (2) MED, or (3) Green-MED diet.  The two MED groups consumed 28 g walnuts/d.  The Green-MED group consumed green tea , mankai (100 g frozen cubes/d as a green shake).  After 18 months, participants got MRI scans.

Results: Indicators of brain atrophy were attenuated in both MED groups, with the best outcomes among Green-MED diet participants.  Therefore, greater Mankai, green tea, and walnut intake and less red and processed meat were significantly and independently associated with reduced atrophy decline .

Conclusions: A Green-MED (high-polyphenol) diet, rich in Mankai, green tea, and walnuts and low in red/processed meat, is potentially neuroprotective for age-related brain atrophy.

Funding: Supported by German Research Foundation, Israel Ministry of Health, Israel Ministry of Science and Technology, and the California Walnut Commission (to I Shai, the senior author). “None of the funding providers were involved in any stage of the design, conduct, or analysis of the study, and they had no access to the study results before publication.”

Comment: I hardly know what to make of this study, which involves so many variables: mankai, (duckweed, supposedly a polyphenol-rich “supergreen”), green tea, walnuts, and low red/processed meat.  The MED groups were instructed to consume a calorie-restricted Mediterranean diet “rich in vegetables, with poultry and fish partly replacing beef and lamb.”  Physical activity instructions (and gym memberships) as well nutrition counseling was also part of this mix.

My questions:

• Why not test the Mediterranean diet on its own without all those polyphenol additives?
• Why walnuts as opposed to any other polyphenol-containing food?  Could sponsorship have anything to do with this choice?
• Why Mankai, which is traditionally a component of Asian diets, not Mediterranean?    Why are Israeli scientists so interested in this plant?
• Don’t classic Mediterranean diets provide enough polyphenols to be protective against brain atrophy?

I will be intersted to see further studies along these lines.

IPES-Food, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, has a new report: The politics of protein: Examining claims about livestock, fish, “alternative proteins” and sustainability 

The report contains a deep analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of these eight claims.

The report’s argument is that the focus on protein is overblown.

For decades, the perceived need for more protein has led to distractions and distortions in development programs, flawed marketing and nutritional campaigns, and calls to increase the production and trade of meat, dairy, and protein-enriched foods.

Today, the evidence clearly shows that there is no global ‘protein gap’: protein is only one of many nutrients missing in the diets of those suffering from hunger and malnutrition, and insufficiency of these diets is primarily a result of poverty and access.

The report displays data to back up its arguments in attractive and easily understood charts.  Its conclusions are clearly marked.  Example:  part of the conclusion for Claim #5: Alternative proteins are a win-win.

In conclusion, there are too many uncertainties and data gaps, and too much variation between systems, to make a definitive statement on whether ‘alternative proteins’ are more environmentally sustainable than animal source foods as a whole. Bold and categorical claims about ‘alternative proteins’ being a ‘win-win-win’ are therefore likely to be misleading…The validity of claims about ‘alternative proteins’ (and the purported benefits of these products) ultimately comes down to how foods are produced, what food systems we consider to be desirable and viable, how we weigh up trade-offs ….

Sensibly, the report makes only three recommendations:

Comment:  I think this report is well done, well written, and well presented.   But here’s where this nutritionist gets cranky: Why title it Protein?  Protein is a nutrient, not a food.  Using protein to stand for foods that contain it is an example of “nutritionism,” the reduction of  the benefits of a food to its single components.

I had to search the report for an explanation of what IPES means by protein.  As far as I can tell, its writers assume you know what it means.  But sometimes the report refers to meat and protein, implying that meat means beef, and protein means protein-containing animal foods other than beef.  At other times, the report uses protein to include beef as well as poultry, fish, dairy, and insects.   But what about vegetables and grains?  They have protein too.  Legumes are particularly good sources; grains have nourished entire civilizations.

I realize that protein—a chefs’ term—is widely understood to stand for all foods, particularly from animals, that contain protein, but that’s nutritionally incorrect because basically every naturally occurring food contains some protein (OK, lettuce doeesn’t have much).

I wish everyone would find a better term, one that calls meat meat, if that’s what’s meant.

After all my complaints about nutrition science, every now and then I hear about a study that just seems perfect.

Thanks to my NYU colleague Mitchell Moss for sending this account of the study:  Age-old Oreo mystery solved by MIT scientists: Can the cream be evenly split between both sides?

The study (published in a physics journal, no less): On Oreology, the fracture and flow of “milk’s favorite cookie. Crystal E. Owens, Max R. Fan,, A. John Hart, and  Gareth H. McKinley  Physics of Fluids 34, 043107 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0085362

The mechanical experience of consumption (i.e., feel, softness, and texture) of many foods is intrinsic to their enjoyable consumption, one example being the habit of twisting a sandwich cookie to reveal the cream. Scientifically, sandwich cookies present a paradigmatic model of parallel plate rheometry in which a fluid sample, the cream, is held between two parallel plates, the wafers. When the wafers are counter-rotated, the cream deforms, flows, and ultimately fractures, leading to separation of the cookie into two pieces.

Method: Using a laboratory rheometer, we measure failure mechanics of the eponymous Oreo’s “creme” and probe the influence of rotation rate, amount of creme, and flavor on the stress–strain curve and postmortem creme distribution.

Results: The results typically show adhesive failure, in which nearly allw (95%) creme remains on one wafer after failure, and we ascribe this to the production process, as we confirm that the creme-heavy side is uniformly oriented within most of the boxes of Oreos…Failure mechanics further classify the creme texture as “mushy.”

Research iInnovations: We introduce Oreology (/ɔriːˈɒlədʒi/), from the Nabisco Oreo for “cookie” and the Greek rheo logia for “flow study,” as the study of the flow and fracture of sandwich cookies…Finally, we introduce and validate the design of an open-source, three-dimensionally printed Oreometer powered by rubber bands and coins for encouraging higher precision home studies to contribute new discoveries to this incipient field of study.

Multimedia: The study comes with a computer-redered animation demonstrating use of the Oreometer (definitely worth a look).

FIG. 11. This computer-rendered animation shows the assembly and use of our Oreometer including inserting the Oreo cookie into the two halves of the clamping fixture, inserting this fixture into the base, and adjusting the base separation, adding “penny castles” to the wings, adding pennies, and finally observing the fractured Oreo.

The press release: MIT engineers introduce the Oreometer

In all, the team went through about 20 boxes of Oreos, including regular, Double Stuf, and Mega Stuf levels of filling, and regular, dark chocolate, and “golden” wafer flavors. Surprisingly, they found that no matter the amount of cream filling or flavor, the cream almost always separated onto one wafer.

Comment:  Who are these people?  I love their study.  I can’t do justice to it in this brief summary.  Read it.  It’s clearly written, elegantly illustrated, and full of delicious tidbits about the construction of Oreos.

But I do have a question: When trans fats were required to be revealed on food labels, Oreo creme was no longer made with hydrogenated oils.  I think the creme in Oreos was firmer with trans fats.  I’m guessing the “mushiness” is due to higher levels of unsaturated fatty acids.  I think a historian needs to get into this.  Is the unfair distribution of creme collateral damage from making its fats healthier?

A reporter sent me this emailed announcement from a publicist for Dole hoping to generate storeis about how bananas can relieve stress.   Your problems are solved!

Hi —

Hope all is well! Following up on the below story. In honor of National Banana Day on April 20 and April’s designation as Stress Awareness Month, Dole Food Company is sharing 10 recipes that celebrate the iconic yellow fruit and the science-backed link between bananas and the alleviation of stress.

Would love your consideration for coverage!

What do bananas do for stress?

 “Bananas contain vitamin B6, which is involved in the creation of feel-good neurotransmitters, and research suggests that they can also reduce inflammation and oxidative stress levels. Another study found that foods like bananas that contain prebiotics may also promote more restful sleep.”

And that’s not all:

Fruit lovers may go bananas for the following recipes as they are not only delicious, but are either vegetarian, vegan and/or gluten-free. The recipes are the latest installment of “Healthier by Dole,” the produce giant’s ongoing monthly healthier recipe series to encourage eating that is good for both the mind and the body.

The press release is here.

Comment: I’m all for eating fruit but are bananas better than any other kind for relieving stress?  None of this is based on studies that compare one fruit to another.  All fruits contain B vitamins and other good things.  Eat the ones you like!

The USDA has produced three reports on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on consumers.

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic led to significant changes in U.S. consumers’ food-spending patterns in early 2020, with a return to pre-pandemic spending patterns that continued through 2021.

While closures of restaurants and nonessential businesses contributed to record unemployment increases during March and April 2020, unemployment fell to below pre-pandemic levels by December 2021.

Although income and employment have improved, some U.S. households continue to face difficulties obtaining adequate food, particularly in the face of increasing food prices.

It has produced data and charts in three areas.

• Food Spending During the Pandemic: 
• Food Prices During the Pandemic
• Food Sufficiency During the Pandemic: The Household Pulse Survey

Here’s one of the charts, this one on prices.

This is the kind of thing the USDA’s Economic Research Service is supposed to be doing.  I’m glad they are back on the job.