Search results: the corporation not me

The prolific International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems has produced another must-see report:

Here’s what it’s about:

Corporate influence over food system governance has become the new normal: the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit exposed the ability of multinational agri-food corporations to influence food system decision-making and dominate seemingly inclusive ‘multi-stakeholder’ processes…corporations have
succeeded in convincing governments that they must be central in any discussion on the future of food systems. Public-private partnerships and ‘multi-stakeholder’ roundtables…have normalized a prominent role for corporations and given them an inside track to decision-making.

Here’s where it’s headed:

To meet the needs of those impacted by  worsening hunger and malnutrition, it will be necessary to address the influence of corporations at all levels, including through a UN-wide Corporate Accountability Framework and robust conflict of interest policies, taking inspiration from World Health Organization frameworks for tobacco control and engagement with non-state actors.

IPES Food is doing great work.  Read their reports!

I’ve had so many requests to comment on Michelle Obama’s new PLEZi food business—reduced sugar but ultraprocessed artificially sweetened drinks for kids—that I feel obliged to write about them, unhappy as I am as having to consider this enterprise so ill advised.

In case you missed it, the former First Lady—a public health hero of mine for her efforts to improve school food and feed kids more healthfully—announced these drinks as having 75% less sugar than Coke and Pepsi.

The press materials say PLEZi’s mission is:

to create higher standards for how the U.S. makes and markets food and beverages for kids, leading with nutrition, taste, and truth…PLEZi Nutrition was created to give parents a helping hand by offering healthier, great-tasting products that parents can feel good about giving their kids and that kids actually want. The company is focused on lowering sugar content and lowering sweetness to help adjust kids’ palates to crave less sweetness overall. In addition to reducing the sugar and sweetness, they are adding in nutrients kids need, all with the aim to replace sugary drinks and snacks.

Here’s what’s good about all this.

• Michelle Obama is eloquent on the need for kids to eat more healthfully.
• PLEZi is established as a benefit corporation meaning that its stockholders have agreed to have social values as part of its mission, not just profits (although those count too, evidently).
• It has donated $1 million to Food Corps, which teaches school kids about food—a cause well worth supporting.
• It has a distinguished “kitchen cabinet” advisory committee of people who care about kids’ health.

Why my dismay? 

Take a look at the PLEZi Blueberry Blast drink’s nutrition information and ingredient list.

This product has a lot less sugar than Coke or Pepsi and contains zero added sugars, but it has five sweeteners:

• Apple juice concentrate (Translation: sugar derived from apples)
• Watermelon juice concentrate (ditto from watermelons)
• Blueberry juice concentrate (ditto from blueberries)
• Stevia leaf extract
• Monk fruit extract

These, plus “natural flavors” (don’t get me started) and some of the other ingredients put this squarely in the category of ultraprocessed products, now strongly associated with poor health and promotion of excessive calorie intake.

These drinks do not meet my idea of a “higher standard,” alas.

Instead, I see PLEZi as a direct competitor of existing drinks—Kraft’s Capri Sun and Kool-Aid Jammers among them—both with less sugar than Coke or Pepsi, and neither what I would consider a health food.

I found PLEZi shelved right with other sweetened drinks aimed at kids  at the Target in Ithaca, New York.

PLEZi’s cost

Target has PLEZi,on special sale at for $3.50 for 32 ounces (four 8-ounce bottles).  This makes it almost twice as expensive as Capri Sun ($3.19 for 60 ounces—ten 6-ounce pouches).

The competition

PLEZi’s nutritional profile isn’t all that different from that of “half the sugar” Capri Sun.  Here’s Capri Sun Strawberry Kiwi:

Capri Sun has the same kinds of ingredients as PLEZi, but less fruit juice, and a little more overall sugar.  To me, they don’t look all that different.

What about taste?

I bought packages of PLEZi Blueberry Blast, Orange Smash, and Capri Sun ‘s “half the sugar” Strawberry Kiwi.

OK, I  am not these products’ core customer.   They are not aimed at me.  I thought the PLEZi drinks were oddly colored and watery, and had undistinguishable flavors and the slight off-taste of monk fruit sweetener.

Capri Sun is noticably sweeter, which is not surprising: it has 7 grams of sugar in 6 ounces, whereas PLEZi has 6 grams of sugar in 8 ounces.

But all of these drinks raise the same question: Is a somewhat less sugary, sweetened, “better-for-you” drink necessarily a good choice?

Many healthier drinks are available for kids.

I would like to know:

• Why anyone would think kids need another drink like this.
• Why someone didn’t identify PLEZi drinks as ultraprocessed.
• Why someone didn’t intervene to protect Mrs. Obama from getting involved in this dubious enterprise.

My business and health questions:

• Will PLEZi sell?
• Will it cut into sales of Kool-Aid Jammers and Capri Sun, let alone Coke and Pepsi?
• Will it accustom kids to less sweet tastes?
• Will it encourage kids to eat more healthfully?

I sure hope the Kitchen Cabinet insists on a serious evaluation.

 

IPES—the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems—states the problem:

Over recent decades, corporations have succeeded in convincing governments that they must be central in any discussion
on the future of food systems. [No, they should not.]

Publicprivate partnerships and ‘multi-stakeholder’ roundtables (e.g., on ‘responsible soy’, or ‘sustainable palm oil’) have normalized a prominent role for corporations and given them an inside track to decision-making. [This is wrong.]

Public governance initiatives have also become reliant on private funding. [Also wrong.]

Why wrong?  IPES says:

Behind the scenes, leading corporations have consolidated their grip by ensuring an industry friendly regulatory environment (via lobbying and ‘revolving door’ approaches), shaping trade and investment agreements, putting up barriers to competition, sponsoring research, and making political donations.

What is to be done?  For starters:

• Keep food corporations out of public health policy discussions.
• Hold corporations accountable.

Take a look and see if you agree.

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 A few months ago, I wrote about the FDA’s proposal for allowing the use of the word “Healthy” on food labels.  I said:

If we must have health claims on food packages, the FDA’s proposals are pretty good. They require any product labeled “healthy” to contain some real food (as opposed to a collection of chemical ingredients or, as author Michael Pollan calls them, “food-like objects”), and for the first time they include limits on sugars…These proposed rules would exclude almost all cereals marketed to children.

Now, the Consumer Brands Association (formerly Grocery Manufacturers Association), which represents Big Food, and which objects to the FDA’s proposal, has proposed an alternative framework.

The CBA is clear about its objectives.  It worries that

consumers could second guess or even reject items that might no longer be qualified to bear the “healthy” claim that can bear the claim today…As it stands, the proposed rule would eliminate an inordinate number of packaged products from being considered “healthy.”

That, of course, is its point.

The CBA issued what I read as a clear threat:

FDA’s proposed changes to its “healthy” definition will contradict the current Dietary Guidelines, causing confusion among consumers and potentially inviting legal challenges for the agency.

In other words, if the FDA does not back down on this, CBA intends to go to court over it.

This was also clear from the CBAs 54-page set of comments to the FDA.  As quoted in the Washington Post, the CBA said:

We are particularly concerned by the overly stringent proposed added sugars thresholds. We appreciate FDA’s interest in assessing added sugars intake. We believe, however, that FDA’s restrictive approach to added sugars content in foods described as healthy is unwarranted and outside FDA’s authority given the lack of scientific consensus on the relationship between sugar intake and diet-related disease.

Ted Kyle, who writes the excellent newsletter, ConscienHealth, also quoted the CBA:

Manufacturers have the right to label foods that are objectively ‘healthy’ as such, based on a definition of ‘healthy’ that is truthful, factual, and non-controversial. We are concerned that limiting the truthful and non-misleading use of the word ‘healthy’ in product labeling could harm both the consumer and the manufacturer.

As Kyle put it, “If you did not catch it, this is a freedom of commercial speech argument. Any guesses how the current Supreme Court might rule on that one? Yep, corporations are people too.”

As I am ever saying, food companies are not social service or public health agencies.  They are businesses whose first priority is returns of profits to shareholders, regardless of how their products affect health (or the environment, for that matter).

The pushback on the FDA’s seemingly trivial “Healthy” idea, is enought to make me think it might actually have some impact.

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Astaxanthin is the dye used by growers of farmed salmon to give the fish a pink color.  They do this by matching the desired amount of the dye to this SalmoFan template.

Astaxanthin, claim its makers, is an antioxidant and, therefore, good for you.

First the public relations: Screen shot: Astaxanthin reduces work-induced visual stress in people aged over 40 – BGG trial: Astaxanthin supplementation has been found to reduce visual display terminal (VDT) work-induced visual stress in people aged over 40, according to a new Japan trial sponsored by supplier BGG Japan. Read more

As for the actual research:

The study: Effects of diet containing astaxanthin on visual function in healthy individuals: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel study.  Takahiro Sekikawa, Yuki Kizawa, Yanmei Li, Naoki Miura. J Clin Biochem Nutr.  https://doi.org/10.3164/jcbn.22-65.

Results:  In participants aged ≥40 years, corrected visual acuity of the dominant eye after visual display terminal work at 6 weeks after intake demonstrated a higher protective effect of astaxanthin in the astaxanthin group vs the control group (p<0.05). In participants aged <40 years, no significant difference was seen between the astaxanthin and control groups. Moreover, no significant difference was found in functional visual acuity and pupil constriction rate between the astaxanthin and control groups [my emphasis].

Conclusion: These results suggest astaxanthin reduces oxidative stress caused by visual display terminal work. Age-related reduction in ciliary muscle strength is likely the main detractor of visual acuity. Correspondingly, astaxanthin reduced visual display terminal work-induced visual stress in the middleaged and elderly.

Conflict of interest: This trial was sponsored by BGG Japan Co., Ltd., which provided all costs for the implementation of the trial. TS and YK are employees of BGG Japan Co., Ltd. YL is an employee of Beijing Gingko-Group Biological Technology Co., Ltd., which belongs to the same company group as BGG Japan Co., Ltd. NM received funding from BGG Japan Co., Ltd. to provide medical services to the trial participants.

Comment: BGG makes astaxanthin products.  This is a company-sponsored study conducted by researchers employed or paid by the company.  It is an excellent example of interpretation bias—putting a positive spin on results that are marginally significant in some groups but not others, or null.

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Chloe Sorvino.  Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat.  Atria Books, 2022.  

This is the first analysis I’ve seen of the meat industry from a business perspective.  Corvino is a business reporter from Forbes and did an amazing research job to do this book, including visiting CAFOs, slaughterhouses (she doesn’t say how she talked her way into it), chicken houses, and alternative meat places.  She also talked to a vast number of experts on all sides of the meat issue.  Full disclosure: she interviewed me and quoted me in the book in a couple of places.

I was happy to do a blurb for it.

Raw Deal is Chloe Sorvino’s deeply reported, first-hand account of how business imperatives drive the meat industry to mistreat workers, pollute the environment, fix prices, bribe, and manipulate the political process, all in the name of shareholder profits.  She argues convincingly for holding this industry accountable and requiring it and other corporations to engage in social as well as fiduciary responsibility.   Raw Deal is a must read for anyone who cares about where our food comes from.

On meat substitutes

I have yet to meet anyone in this industry who says they do not care about climate change.  In fact, many say they are personally driven by their product’s sustainability and environmental potential.  But it’s still all to a certain point.  There’s a reason Impossible Foods is preparing for a potentially $10 billion public listing, and that neither Impossible nor Beyond Meat is registered as public benefit corporations a move that would legally inhibit the companies from putting profit over their environmental mission.  Half of Impossible’s investors come from venture capital firms and the roster even includes a hedge fund, Viking Global Investors. Backers are no doubt ready for an exit, and they want to get Impossible the best deal.  A sustainability halo helps the cause (pp. 169-170).

On support for small local meat producers

Local infrastructure for livestock producers to cook and package products is a key missing link in making local food systems profitable and viable.  Creating lasting impacts wouldn’t cost much.  “We have the information and we have the evidence.  FaWhat we don’t have are the facilities and shared space where multiple people can leverage that at their business’s scale,” Mickie told me.  “It’s just crazy to me to be in a space where we’re trying to meet so many intersecting issues of inequity, and have to prove it one hundred percent, and then in another realm, people are playing with stem cells and getting two hundred million dollars.  We literally feed people and want to do it better )p. 257).

Chloe Sorvino has also published:

• An adapted essay in the Los Angeles Times on universal food access
• An excerpt in Fast Company about whether good meat exists

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TODAY: @Stphn_Lacey will moderate at 1:00 p.m. ET. Register HERE.

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The Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI) has just released this report.

The report documents how marketing of unhealthy food and beverages is linked to complex political, social, historical, cultural and economic forces that make it a key driver of unhealthy food environments:

• Ultra-processed food and beverage product (UPP) marketers…saturate the marketplace with junk products through tactics that are aggressive, insidious and everywhere.
• Consumers are ambushed with food marketing through the sponsorship of their favorite sports teams, the hidden product placements in their children’s educational shows and the free products that they receive at events.
• The dangers are even more apparent when UPPs target children and adolescents who lack the developmental maturity to distinguish advertisements from entertaining or educational content.
• The UPP industry is notorious for failing to take responsibility for its participation in creating an unhealthier planet.
• The industry instead places blame solely on the individual or the guardian of the child.
• UPP corporations exploit consumers through deception and undue influence, and also gain privileged spaces in policymaking tables.
• UPP marketing threatens public health by decreasing state action to regulate food environments.

More evidence for the need to regulate ultra-processed foods and beverages (see my paper on this precise point).

Let’s get to it !

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The study: Health Functions of Egg Protein.  Ryosuke Matsuoka, Michihiro Sugano.  Foods 2022, 11, 2309. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods11152309.

Purpose: “In this review, we have summarized the available information regarding the health benefits of egg proteins based on human studies.”

Conclusion: “This review summarizes the health effects of egg proteins, especially EWP, as reported in human studies. Two major functions have been clearly identified: (1) they improve muscle mass and have muscle-strengthening and antifatigue effects when
consumed during exercise; (2) they can improve lipid metabolism by reducing visceral fat and lowering serum cholesterol levels. The intake of egg protein may, thus, contribute to the prevention of physical frailty and metabolic syndrome.”

Conflicts of Interest: M.S. declares no conflict of interest. R.M. is an employee of Kewpie Corporation. There are no other patents, products in development, or marketed products to declare.

Comment: M.S. declares no conflict but is Chair of the Japan Egg Science Society, Tokyo, respectively.  The purpose of this study was to examine the benefits of egg proteins, not to evaluate them in comparison to any other proteins or to assess the role of eggs in diets.  Studies that look for benefits invariably find them.  The Kewpie Corporation sells products using eggs.  It can now advertise them as health foods.

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