I received a press release announcing a June conference to be held by the Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences.

I had never heard of it.  It says it “is a non-profit organization that catalyzes science for the benefit of public health” and that it “drives, funds, and leads actionable research and elevates food safety and nutritional sciences—all with the ultimate goal of advancing public health.”

That seemed pleasant, if vague, but I was still puzzled.  Nothing on the Institute’s website helped.

This took some digging, but I soon found a news release announcing its formation in February 2021: Leading Scientists Launch Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences to Promote Collaborative Research:

Today marks the establishment of the Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences (IAFNS), a 501(c)(3) organization focused on catalyzing science for the benefit of public health.

Previously known as the International Life Sciences Institute, North America, IAFNS is building on a proud heritage with a focus on actionable science that promotes nutrition, food safety and public health.

Aha!  ILSI,  The classic industry front group.

ILSI, you may recall, was formed by Coca-Cola.

Within the last few years, lots of articles have appeared describing its lobbying efforts on behalf of the food industry.  Some of these were so blatant that Mars withdrew from in in 2018 and Coca-Cola withdrew in 2021.

I’ve written about ILSI often over the years.  See, for example, this post about IlSI’s effort in China.  Or see this article about scientific integrity (or the lack thereof).

Could all the bad press have anything to do with the name change?

A leopard cannot change its spots, alas.

The USDA tracks food insecurity in the United States.

The percentage closely tracks employment.  The 2008 recession caused an uptick, but then it declined.

Now it’s up again, thanks to the pandemic’s putting so many people out of work and causing food prices to rise.

The 2020 figure is nearly 15%, with 6.8% of children having especially low food security.

The Biden administration is working on this, as well it should.

I like French fries as much as anyone but c’mon; they are hardly a health food.

The Alliance for Potato Research & Education sent me a press release about a new study demonstrating that “adding a daily 300-calorie serving of French fries to one’s typical diet every day for one month does not result in differential short-term weight gain or other biomarker changes associated with impaired blood sugar regulation compared to adding an isocaloric daily serving of almonds.”

The study: French-fried potatoes consumption and energy balance: a randomized controlled trial.  Daniel L Smith, Jr, Rebecca L Hanson, Stephanie L Dickinson, Xiwei Chen, Amy M Goss, John B Cleek, W Timothy Garvey, David B Allison.  The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, nqac045, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqac045

Purpose: “We completed an RCT [randomized controlled trial] testing whether increased daily potato consumption influences energy balance (specifically, fat mass (FM)) compared with calorie-matched almond consumption.”  Participants were given 300 calories a day in either fries (~3 oz) or almonds (~40).

Conclusion: There were no significant differences in FM [fat mass] or in glucoregulatory biomarkers after 30 days of potato consumption versus almonds. Results do not support a causal relationship between increased French fried potato consumption and the negative health outcomes studied.

Funding: This study was supported in part by a grant from the Alliance for Potato Research and Education (APRE) to DBA and DLS, by Core services through NIH grant awards P30DK056336 and P60DK079626 and the donation of study food items by J.R. Simplot Company.

Comment:  I’m not surprised by this result.   Biomarkers depend on everything you eat, not just one food.

The purpose of this study was to take away any guilt you might feel about eating French fries.   The potato alliance got the result it wanted.

I’ve been collecting items on food waste.  Here are four recent ones.

I.  EPA: From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of Food Waste.   The Infographic Summary:

II.  WWF: Driven to Waste: The Global Impact of Food Loss and Waste on Farms.

Driven to Waste: Global Food Loss on Farms, a new report from WWF and Tesco, reveals an estimated 2.5 billion tonnes of food goes uneaten around the world each year. That is an increase of approximately 1.2 billion tonnes on the established estimates of 1.3 billion tonnes wasted each year. These new estimates indicate that of all the food grown, approximately 40 per cent goes uneaten, which is higher than the previously estimated figure of 33 per cent.

III.  Washington State Department of Ecology: Use Food Well Washington: A roadmap to a more resilient food system through food waste reduction].

Food waste is one of the greatest challenges of our time, with significant environmental, social, and economic impacts. Thankfully, our research shows the potential benefits to addressing food waste in Washington are just as enormous (Fig. 1).
Our calculations indicate Washington generates more than one million tons of food waste annually, with a large portion (about 35 percent) being edible food going into landfills.

IV.  How are food manufacturers tackling waste management?  As 2022 gets underway, waste management has moved from arguably to inarguably never more important…. Read more

Pet food, as I am fond of repeating, is an essential part of the human food supply because it uses the waste from human food production.

Also, whatever is happening with pet food indicates what could well be happening with human food.

That’s why I was fascinated to read this account in Pet Food Industry of finding DNA from endangered sharks in any number of pet food brands.

Researchers identified shark genetic material in cat foods purchased in Singapore, including Fancy Feast, Sheba, Whiskas, Kit Cat and Aixia Yaizu. The scientists suggested that endangered silky sharks and other species ended up in pet foods. However, the study’s authors couldn’t determine the route by which the shark meat made its way into the pet food supply chain. Likewise, they didn’t have easy solutions for how pet food companies could avoid inadvertently allowing endangered sharks into their products.

The evidence comes from a report of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Pet Food Industry further explains:

The silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis), listed as CITES Appendix II, was the second most frequently encountered species in the pet foods. Silky sharks face tremendous hunting pressure for their fins. The researchers speculated that the presence of the silky sharks may reflect the use of the rest of their carcasses in pet food.

Blue sharks, Prionace glauca, were the most common species in the samples. Blue sharks are not listed in CITES or classified as threatened by the IUCN, but scientists believe it is being overfished and needs regulation.

None of the pet foods’ ingredient decks mentioned sharks. Terms such as “ocean fish,” “white fish” and “white bait” appeared though.

I wrote about the pet food supply chain (particularly as related to melamine contamination) in Pet Food Politics and, with Mal Nesheim, in Feed Your Pet Right.  

The point: If we don’t want to encourage destruction of endangered species, we ought to be checking cans of tuna for people while we are at it.

Yesterday I reported about the COSMOS clinical trial demonstrating reductions in mortality among people taking cocoa flavanol supplements.

That trial had another arm: multivitamin supplements.

The study: Multivitamins in the Prevention of Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease: The COSMOS Randomized Clinical Trial.  Sesso HD et al.  The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, nqac056, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqac056

Conclusion: The supplements did not reduce cardiovascular disease, cancer, or all-cause mortality in older men and women.

Funding: The COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS) is supported by an investigator-initiated grant from Mars Edge, a segment of Mars dedicated to nutrition research and products, which included infrastructure support and the donation of study pills and packaging. Pfizer Consumer Healthcare (now part of GSK Consumer Healthcare) provided support through the partial provision of study pills and packaging.

Conflicts of interest: Drs. Sesso and Manson reported receiving investigatorinitiated grants from Mars Edge, a segment of Mars Incorporated dedicated to nutrition research and products, for infrastructure support and donation of COSMOS study pills and packaging,
Pfizer Consumer Healthcare (now part of GSK Consumer Healthcare) for donation of COSMOS study pills and packaging during the conduct of the study. Dr. Sesso additionally reported receiving investigator-initiated grants from Pure Encapsulations and Pfizer Inc. and honoraria
and/or travel for lectures from the Council for Responsible Nutrition, BASF, NIH, and American Society of Nutrition during the conduct of the study. No other authors reported any conflicts of interest.

Comment: Pfizer, of course, makes Centrum multivitamin supplements aimed at older adults.

I was surprised by this part of the trial because previous studies have also shown no consistently beneficial effect of supplementation of individual vitamins or multivitamins on disease risk.  Pfizer must have hoped to find benefits for Centrum.  This is a rare industry-supported study that showed no benefits and is, therefore, worth attention.

I learned about this one from a PR tweet from @Brigham Research: “Dr. JoAnn Manson…& colleagues report the main findings of the first ever randomized trial of a cocoa flavanol supplement on cardiovascular disease endpoints.”

Its spectacular results:  Supplementation with cocoa flavanols led to a 27% reduction in deaths from cardiovascular disease among all participants taking the supplement, and a 39% reduction in those deaths when they excluded participants who did not take the pills properly.

From taking cocoa flavanol supplements?

Who paid for this?

Bingo.

The study (still in preprint): Effect of Cocoa Flavanol Supplementation for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease Events: The COSMOS Randomized Clinical Trial.  Sesso HD, et al.  American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, nqac055, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqac055

Conclusion: “Cocoa extract supplementation did not significantly reduce total cardiovascular events among older adults but reduced CVD death by 27%….”

Funding: “The Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS) is supported by an investigator-initiated grant from Mars Edge, a segment of Mars dedicated to nutrition research and products, which included infrastructure support and the donation of study pills and packaging…[and other sources].

Conflicts of interest: Drs. Sesso and Manson reported receiving investigatorinitiated grants from Mars Edge, a segment of Mars Incorporated dedicated to nutrition research and products, for infrastructure support and donation of COSMOS study pills and packaging,
Pfizer Consumer Healthcare (now part of GSK Consumer Healthcare) for donation of COSMOS study pills and packaging during the conduct of the study. Dr. Sesso additionally reported receiving investigator-initiated grants from Pure Encapsulations and Pfizer Inc. and honoraria
and/or travel for lectures from the Council for Responsible Nutrition, BASF, NIH, and American Society of Nutrition during the conduct of the study. No other authors reported any conflicts of interest.

Comment: Déjà vu all over again.

Mars, as I described in detail in Unsavory Truth, has been trying to make you think that chocolate is a health food (M&Ms!) for decades. It created a special brand, CocoaVia, for this purpose.  Here is an excerpt:

In 1982, Mars established a chocolate research center in Brazil.[i]  Its scientists were particularly interested in cocoa flavanols, a category of flavonoids with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and other heart-healthy effects.  Through the 1980s and 1990s, Mars’ scientists produced studies suggesting such benefits.

Alas, cocoa flavanols come with complications.  They taste bitter (dark chocolate contains more of them).  They are present in such small amounts that you would have to eat a quarter to a full pound of chocolate a day to achieve cardiovascular benefits.[ii]  Worse, they are destroyed by traditional chocolate processing.[iii]  The losses may explain why a Hershey-funded clinical trial failed to find neuropsychological or cardiovascular benefits from eating dark chocolate when compared to a placebo.[iv]

But to return to CocoaVia: Mars developed a process to preserve the cocoa flavanols during processing, and combined the rescued flavanols with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols to make chocolate bars and chocolate-covered almonds.  By 2002, the company decided that it had enough research to promote CocoaVia candies as heart-healthy.[v]  As the New York Times put it, Mars was on a “corporate quest to transform chocolate into a healthy indulgence.”[vi]  Mars marketed the candy bars—two a day, no less—as a means to increase blood flow, lower blood pressure, and reduce the risk for heart disease.

The FDA takes a dim view of unproven claims like “chocolate prevents heart disease.”  In 2006, the agency sent Mars a warning letter complaining that claims like “promotes a healthy heart” and “now you can have real chocolate pleasure with real heart health benefits,” were false, misleading, and easily misinterpreted…Chocolate, the FDA pointed out, is high in saturated fat (it didn’t mention sugar).   Furthermore, the claim “Cocoa Via Chocolate Bars contain natural plant extracts that have been proven to reduce bad cholesterol (LDL) by up to 8%,” meant that Mars was advertising chocolate as a drug.  If Mars wanted to make drug claims, it would need to conduct clinical trials to prove that eating CocoaVia chocolate bars prevented heart disease.[vii]

Rather than run the financial and scientific risk of doing that, Mars gave up on candy bars and began marketing CocoaVia in pills and powder as a “daily cocoa extract supplement.”  In doing this, Mars could take advantage of the more lenient marketing claims allowed by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994. This act permits “structure/function” claims, those proposing that a supplement is good for some structure or function of the body.  Under DSHEA, the labels of CocoaVia are allowed to say that these supplements “promote a healthy heart by supporting healthy blood flow.”

To convince people to take CocoaVia supplements, Mars funds research.  In 2015, it funded studies demonstrating that cocoa flavanols are well tolerated in healthy men and women,[viii] support healthy cognitive function in aging,[ix] can reverse cardiovascular risk in the healthy elderly,[x] and improve biomarkers of cardiovascular risk.[xi]

Lest the “eat more chocolate” implications of these studies be missed, Mars issued a press release: “Cocoa flavanols lower blood pressure and increase blood vessel function in healthy people.”[xii]  The company followed this announcement with a full-page ad in the New York Times quoting a dietitian: flavanols “support healthy blood flow…which allows oxygen and nutrients to get to your heart more easily.”  …The ad directed readers to more information on a paid ad on the Times’ Website.  You have to look hard in these ads to discover that Mars owns CocoaVia; the company’s name only appears in barely legible print as part of the trademark.[xiii]

But Mars, which already has funded “more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers and [has] approximately 100 patents globally in the field of cocoa flavanols”[xiv] has more ambitious research plans.  In 2014, the company announced that in partnership with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute it would provide “financial infrastructure support “ for an ambitious placebo-controlled, randomized trial of the effects of cocoa flavanols alone or in combination with vitamin supplements, on heart disease and cancer risk in 18,000 men and women over the age of 60.[xv]  The five-year trial, called the Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS), has evolved somewhat since then.  It now lists Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston as the sponsor, and Mars as a “collaborator” along with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and Pfizer. NIH seems no longer to be involved.[xvi]

We now have the result of this trial.  Even though cocoa flavanol supplements did not reduce cardiovascular events, Mars got its money’s worth from what must have been a very expensive study.

Tomorrow: a second report from this trial, with surprising results.

References

[i] Mars, Inc.  The history of CocoaVia.  CocoaVia.com

https://www.cocoavia.com/how-we-make-it/history-of-cocoavia

[ii] Vlachojannis J, Erne P, Zimmermann B, Chrubasik-Hausmann S.  The impact of cocoa flavanols on cardiovascular health.  Phytother Res.  2016;30(10):1641-57.

[iii] Andres-LaCueva C, Monagas M, Khan N, et al.  Flavanol and flavonol contents of cocoa powder products: influence of the manufacturing process.  J Agric Food Chem. 2008;56:3111-17.

[iv] Crews WD, Harrison DW, Wright JW.  A double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial of the effects of dark chocolate and cocoa on variables associated with neuropsychological functioning and cardiovascular health: clinical findings from a sample of healthy, cognitively intact older adults.  Am J Clin Nutr. 2008;87(4):872-80.

[v] Meek J.  Chocolate is good for you (or how Mars tried to sell us this as health food).  The Guardian, Dec 23, 2002.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/dec/23/research.highereducation

[vi] Barrionuevo A.  An apple a day for health?  Mars recommends two bars of chocolate.  NY Times, Oct 31, 2005.

The FDA considers candy bars to be foods labeled with Nutrition Facts panels.  Supplements are labeled with Supplement Fact panels.

[vii] FDA.  Inspections, compliance, enforcement, and criminal investigations.  Warning letter to Mr. John Helferich, Masterfoods USA.  FDA, May 31, 2006.  http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/2006/ucm075927.htm

[viii] Ottaviani JI, Balz M, Kimball J, et al. Safety and efficacy of cocoa flavanol intake in healthy adults: a randomized, controlled, double-masked trial.  Am J Clin Nutr. 2015;102(6):1425-35.

[ix] Necozione S, Raffaele A, Pistacchio L, et al.  Cocoa flavanol consumption improves cognitive function, blood pressure control, and metabolic profile in elderly subjects: the Cocoa, Cognition, and Aging (CoCoA) Study—a randomized controlled trial  Am J Clin Nutr. 2015; 101:538-48.

[x] Heiss C, Sansone R, Karimi H, et al.  Impact of cocoa flavanol intake on age-dependent vascular stiffness in healthy men: a randomized, controlled, double-masked trial.  Age. 2015;37:56.

[xi] Sansone R, Rodriguez-Mateos A, Heuel J, et al.  Cocoa flavanol intake improves endothelial function and Framingham Risk Score in healthy men and women: a randomised, controlled, double-masked trial: the Flaviola Health Study.  Brit J Nutr. 2015;114(8):1246-55.

[xii] Mars Center for Cocoa Health Science.  Press release: Cocoa flavanols lower blood pressure and increase blood vessel function in healthy people.  MarsCocoaScience.com, Sep 9, 2015.  http://www.marscocoascience.com/news/cocoa-flavanols-lower-blood-pressure-and-increase-blood-vessel-function-in-healthy-people.

[xiii] CocoaVia.  Cocoa’s past and present: a new era for heart health.  NY Times, Sep 27, 2015.  http://paidpost.nytimes.com/cocoavia/cocoas-past-and-present-a-new-era-for-heart-health.html?_r=0

[xiv] Mars Symbioscience.  Explore Mars Symbioscience.  Mars.com.

http://www.mars.com/global/brands/symbioscience

[xv] Mars.  Largest nutritional intervention trial of cocoa flavanols and hearth (sic) health to be launched.  MarsCocoaScience.com, Mar 17, 2014.

http://www.marscocoascience.com/news/largest-nutritional-intervention-trial

[xvi] The trial is registered at COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS).    ClinicalTrials.gov.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02422745

[xvii] ASRC (Advertising Self-Regulatory Council).  NAD recommends Mars modify certain claims for CocoaVia cocoa extract.  ASRCReviews.org, Aug 11, 2016.

http://www.asrcreviews.org/nad-recommends-mars-modify-certain-claims-for-cocoavia-cocoa-extract/