by Marion Nestle

Search results: superfood

Nov 16 2020

Industry-funded studies of the week: blueberries—again!

Thanks to Lisa Young for sending this announcement: New Research Examines Blueberries’ Positive Impact in Men with Type 2 Diabetes. 

I am already on record as saying that I love blueberries, but I wish they weren’t marketed as superfoods.  All fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains provide nutrients and fiber.  That makes all of them worth eating for their nutrition-and-health value as well as their taste.  Singling out one or another makes no sense to me, but I’m not in the business of selling one rather than another.  Because similar results would be expected from studies of many other fruits, I put this one in the category of marketing research.

Effect of Blueberry Consumption on Cardiometabolic Health Parameters in Men with Type 2 Diabetes: An 8-Week, Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial.  Kim S Stote, Margaret M Wilson, Deborah Hallenbeck, Krista Thomas, Joanne M Rourke, Marva I Sweeney, Katherine T Gottschall-Pass, Aidar R Gosmanov.  Current Developments in Nutrition, Volume 4, Issue 4, April 2020, nzaa030. 

Conclusion: “Consumption of 22 g freeze-dried blueberries for 8 wk may beneficially affect cardiometabolic health parameters in men with type 2 diabetes.”

Funding:  “Supported by the US Highbush Blueberry Council (to KSS, MMW, and ARG) and by resources and the use of facilities at the Stratton VA Medical Center, Albany, NY, USA.  Author disclosures: KSS, MMW, and ARG received intervention products from the US Highbush Blueberry Council. All other authors report no conflicts of interest.  The US Highbush Blueberry Council supplied the funds to conduct the study but was not involved in the design, implementation, analysis, or interpretation of data.

Comment:  The funder does not have to be involved.  Everyone knows funders are not interested in funding research that might produce results unfavorable to their product.  Freeze-dried blueberries sound like medicine.  I’d rather eat the real things.

Oct 5 2020

Overhyped food of the week: peanuts!

The Peanut Institute is working overtime to convince you to eat more peanuts.

Disclaimer: I love peanuts and think they are great to cook with and make an excellent snack—peanut butter too—but I see no need to overhype them, as this press release does.

Research Reveals Daily Dose of Peanuts Delivers Body and Mind Benefits: Americans Encouraged to Pause for Peanuts…Peanuts are a superfood so just a small amount can fend off mid-morning hunger, help eliminate the afternoon slump and deliver much-needed brainpower.

“Superfood,” I must remind you, is a marketing term.  It has no nutritional meaning.  All fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, and, yes, nuts, have nutritional value.  On that basis, all plant foods are “superfoods.”

The press release makes these claims, and provides references for most of them:

  • Regular peanut consumption has been associated with a reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes and numerous kinds of cancer.
  • An ounce of peanuts packs more protein than any other nut.
  • Peanuts stimulate peptide YY, a hormone that decreases appetite.
  • Peanuts also have a low glycemic index that helps stabilize blood sugar to prevent the feeling of ‘crashing’ in the afternoon.
  •  A single serving of peanuts is packed with 19 vitamins and minerals, including the antioxidant resveratrol, which has been shown to increase blood flow to the brain.
  • Peanuts also contain high levels of niacin and are a good source of vitamin E – two nutrients that support brain health and have long been known to protect against Alzheimer’s disease and age-related cognitive decline
  • Eating peanuts twice a week can reduce the risk of premature death by 12% and reduce the risk for certain cancers, including colorectal, gastric, pancreatic and lung cancers.
  • Regular consumption can also reduce the risk of death due to heart disease by 24%, respiratory disease by 16%, infections by 32% and kidney disease by 48%.

As I read the research on peanuts, it associates eating nuts of all types with good health.   Is there something distinctive about peanuts as compared to other kinds of nuts?

I doubt it—all nuts are worth eating.

A basic prinicple of nutrition is to vary food intake.  You love peanuts (as I do)?  Eat them, but go easy on the salt.

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Aug 27 2020

Odd items I’ve been saving up

For no particular reason other than curiosity, I’ve been hanging on to these items.  This feels like a good time to share them.

Dec 13 2019

Weekend reading: Food (of course)

Fabio Parasecoli.  Food.  MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series. 2019.

This is the latest work of my NYU Food Studies colleague, Fabio Parasecoli, a prolific scholar and writer.  The book is explained as:

A consumer’s guide to the food system, from local to global: our part as citizens in the interconnected networks, institutions, and organizations that enable our food choices.

The book is a short (200 pages or so), small-format set of seven chapters on food systems, health and nutrition, the environment, technology, hunger, and what’s next.

Here’s an quick excerpt from a section in the Health/Nutrition chapter subtitled “Looking for easy solutions.”

Superfoods offer simple–and lucrative–answers to very complex problems: rather than dealing with changes of habits or diets or trying to understand intricate metabolic functions, their consumption assuages the concerns connected with ingestion.  The attractiveness of superfoods and exotic or traditional remedies is also related to the diffusion of an approach to eating and health that has been described as nutritonism, characterized by “a reductive focus on the nutrient composition of foods as the means for understanding their healthfulness, as well as by a reductive interpretation of the focus of these nutrients in bodily health,” with little concern for the level or processing or quality.  Consumers attuned to such approaches shift their attention from foods to individual nutrients: polyphenols in red wine are good antioxidants; lycopene in tomatoes can prevent certain kinds of cancer….Why worry about a balanced diet when you can make up for any deficiencies by consuming vitamins, fiber, or fortified foods? (pages 68-69).

A man after my own heart, obviously.  This is a short, easy introduction to most of the major food system issues under discussion today.  It also comes with a useful glossary.

Full disclosure: I read and commented on an earlier draft of the nutrition chapter and like the way it—and the other chapters—came out.

Dec 6 2019

Weekend reading: the latest on plant-based meat and dairy alternatives

I don’t know about you but I am having a hard time keeping up with what’s happening in the market for plant-based meat and dairy substitutes.

For one thing, they are under attack from meat producers.  Here’s the latest on the politics.

Why the attack.  Just take a look at what I’ve collected on this topic in the past couple of weeks.  You can see at a glance why this trend is taking off.  Everyone wants to get into this act in every way they can.

Oct 17 2019

Plant-based meat and dairy: recent innovations

I’ve been collecting items related to plant-based meat and dairy foods from the various newsletters I read.  I am having a hard time keeping up.  This is a super-hot topic with investors pouring money into these products.

Things are moving so quickly that Food Dive has established a plant-protein tracker to help readers keep up.

Even a quick scan of just the titles of these articles will make clear just how hot this area is.

Let’s start with the in-fighting.

Here’s what he’s talking about.  I’ll bet they don’t agree.

As for what the meat industry thinks of all this…

And the New York Times’ take on Big Meat’s getting in on this action.

Jan 3 2019

FoodNavigator.com on what’s happening in the dairy industry

I think this collection of articles from FoodNavigator on the dairy industry is especially clear in revealing three notable trends: (1) the ongoing decline in milk consumption, (2) a more recent decline in yogurt consumption, and (3) an increase in production, availability, and marketing of dairy products high in fat.  Take a look:

 Special Edition: Dairy innovation

It’s been a challenging year for many dairy brands, with continued weakness in fluid milk and yogurt categories and growing competition from dairy-free alternatives. But there has been no shortage of innovation, spanning everything from ‘intentionally less sweet’ high protein yogurt launches to  whole milk and even ‘triple cream’ offerings as fat roars back in some parts of the category.

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Oct 30 2018

Published today! Unsavory Truth!

Now published: my new book about how food company sponsorship of nutrition research affects public health.  For information about the book—blurbs, reviews, tweets, how to get—click here.

For my public speaking engagements about the book, click here.

If you are in New York, join the launch party at NYU today, 5:00 p.m., Bobst Library 3rd floor.  RSVP here.

And here are some early reviews:

Oct 29  Jane Brody.  Confused by nutrition research?  New York Times.

Oct 28  Hailey Eber. How the food industry fooled us into eating junk.  New York Post, 42-43.

Oct 23  Nestle M.  Superfoods are a marketing ploy (excerpt).  The Atlantic .

Oct 22  Àlex Pérez.  Una verdad desagradable no vende.  ElPiscolabis (Spain).

Oct 18 Nature Magazine (2018;562:334-335): Felicity Lawrence reviews Deborah Blum’s The Poison Squad and Unsavory Truth as “Poisoned Platefuls.”

Oct 2  Science Magazine.  Cyan James, “A nutrition expert aims a critical eye at the research and marketing practices of food companies.”