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The Task Force on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health released its comprehensive report yesterday.

The report’s purpose is to inform the upcoming White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.  If so, it’s going to leave the White House in a quandary.

The report has lots of useful information, beautifully presented, and does all it should on adddressing hunger.

But as I read it, the report, titled Ambitious, Actionable Recommendations to End Hunger, Advance Nutrition, and Improve Health in the United States,” is not nearly ambitious enough when it comes to nutrition and health.

It makes far too many recommendations—30.  That’s always a bad sign (too many to do).  .

Really, only 2 recommendations are needed.  These should establish or expand federal agriculture, food, and nutrition policies to ensure:

1.  Adequate, affordable food and nutrition for everyone.
2.  Healthy diets for everyone, meaning those that follow Dietary Guidelines and are largely plant-based, balanced in calories, and low in undesirable fats, sugars, and salt (i.e., ultra-processed foods).

The hunger recommendations do the job: they call for ensuring benefits sufficient to meet households’ basic needs.

But the second?  A mess.

Here is the most obvious example [my comments follow] .

Recommendation #9: “Reduce the marketing of foods that do not align with the latest DGA and increase the marketing of foods that align with the latest DGA to children and populations with disproportionate rates of diet-related chronic conditions” [Good! But not through the recommended voluntary methods by industry.  That won’t work; it requires legislation]

But here’s Recommendation #25: “Increase the ability of food companies to communicate with consumers about the evidence for healthfulness of certain food products and nutrients.”  [Uh oh]

This comes with three action items:

1. FDA should expeditiously update its definition of the word “healthy” [good] and incentivize food companies to use the terminology and/or associated symbol in their food packaging and marketing [Yikes!] and increase the proportion of products on the market that meet the “healthy” definition [OK, as long as they are not gaming the system].
2. Congress and/or FDA should improve and streamline the process for application, review, approval, and use of health claims and qualified health claims on food packages. [No!  If it’s one thing we don’t need, it’s more misleading health claims]. 
3. Congress and/or FDA should create a new process for communicating about foods, nutrients, and other bioactive ingredients that may prevent or treat disease through label claims. [No!  We do not need more claims for the benefits of ultra-processed food products].

What’s missing from this report?

• Anything about ultra-processed foods and their effects on calorie intake and overall health.  The term is mentioned once, but only in the context of ‘more research needed’ (Recommendation #19).
• A clear statement of the benefits of soda taxes in reducing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.  Why isn’t there one?  A box explains: “Task Force members voiced diverse perspectives on this topic.”
• A clear statement about making SNAP align with Dietary Guidelines.  This is mentioned, but only in the context of pilot research (recommendation #2), and therefore contradicts recommendations #3 and #5.  #3:  Increase nutrition security by promoting dietary patterns that align with the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) through federal nutrition programs.  #5:  Leverage the federal nutrition programs’ power in economic stimulus to support food systems that promote foods that align with the latest DGA.”
• Firm calls on Congress to pass legislation to do what is needed.

What happened?  One member of the committee explained to me that its membership included everyone from anti-hunger advocates to food industry representatives, and too many vested interests were at stake.  Members could not agree on anything that would make a real difference to policy.  Anything substantive met strong resistance.

When it comes to public health policy, which this most definitely is, the food industry has no business being at the table.

This was a recommendation of the 2019 Lancet Commission on the Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change.  Read that report.  It explains why including the food industry in policy recommendations that might reduce sales is not a good idea.

If I had been a member of this Task Force, I would have called for a minority report on policies for reducing consumption of sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods.  But that, of course, is why I’m no longer appointed to such committees.

• Read the Executive Summary
• Read the Full Report
• Read the Press Release
• Register here for the Webinar hosted by the co-chairs: Wednesday, Aug. 31 at 2:00 p.m. ET.

Here’s a recent report from WHO: Scope and impact of digital marketing strategies for promoting breastmilk substitutes

The report’s findings:

Why should we care?  Because it is so easy to discourage breastfeeding, and digital marketing does just that.

Here are some comments on this report:

• WHO report urges curbs to ‘aggressive’ code-flouting baby formula marketing:  Parents and pregnant women around the world are exposed to aggressive marketing for baby formula milk, according to a report launched jointly by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF…. Read more
• Second WHO report identifies formula firms’ social media use in targeting mums-to-be:  A World Health Organization (WHO) report claims that pregnant women and mothers are being targeted online by formula milk companies with personalised social media content…. Read more

And here are links to the first WHO report and to other reports on digital marketing.

• February 16, 2022 WHO report on food marketing
• November 4, 2021  What’s up with digital marketing?  Plenty.
• November 24, 2020  Digital marketing to children: two reports

Carole Bartoletto, who works with dining services at UCLA, sent me two items.

• A toolkit to encourage dining halls to promote choices of meals with lower carbon footprints.
• A research study: Increasing the Selection of Low-Carbon Footprint Entrées through the Addition of New Menu Items and a Social Marketing Campaign in University Dining.

I started with the research study.

Its title requires translation.  Low-carbon footprint means plant-based.  In this case, it means Impossible brand plant-based meat alternatives.

Their intervention succeeded in encouraging substitution of Impossible for beef, but had unintended consequences.

Although the intervention was followed by a decrease in sales of beef entrées and increase in sales of plant-based meat entrées, sales of other vegetarian entrées also decreased.

Students replaced vegetarian choices with Impossible burgers?

To their credit, the authors acknowledge the problem.

It is also worth discussing the nutritional differences between plant-based meat and other low-carbon footprint options. In general, lower-carbon foods (i.e., plant-based and sustainably-raised fish) tend to be healthier, but this is not always the case. Plant-based meat products such as Impossible™ are ultra-processed and relatively high in sodium and saturated fat. Consuming ultra-processed foods has been linked with higher calorie intake and weight gain (Hall et al., 2019).

The toolkit, in contrast, includes Impossible products but does not focus on them.  It presents a variety of vegetarian and vegan options as low-carbon options with many illustrations of ways to present this information.

This could be useful, and maybe more useful, without the Impossible products, especially if the ultra-processed meal alternatives discourage choices of vegetarian options.

Take a look and see what you think.

Note: an educational intervention in Great Britain that also gave participants free plant-based meats found more of them sto be consumed, unsurprisingly.

ADDITION, July 1: I received this message in response to this post from Hannah Malen, at UCLA:

Dear Marion,

As one of your fans and newsletter subscribers, I was excited to see that you covered the low-carbon footprint dining intervention we did at UCLA! I collaborated with the innovative and talented folks at UCLA Dining as part of my dissertation work. It was an awesome experience to design, implement, and study a real-world intervention.

Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed by your summary of the study. I felt your assessment overlooked some of the nuances that make this work challenging and important.

1) Low-carbon footprint does not mean only plant-based in this case. We created low-, medium-, and high-carbon footprint cutoffs based on life cycle analysis data and feasibility of real-world implementation. The criteria were created for the purposes of classifying menu items AND educating students about the relative impacts of different foods. Based on our criteria, low-carbon footprint included vegetarian menu items with < 2 ounces of cheese AND menu items with sustainable fish. I think this is worth noting because low-carbon footprint doesn’t have to mean ONLY plant-based or vegan…it also means some vegetarian items with cheese are NOT low-carbon footprint.

2) The decision to add Impossible plant-based meat alternative products to the menu was strategic and led by our Dining Director. As we know, it can be hard to appeal to meat-eaters, and Impossible-type products have been more successful than many other alternatives. While sales of the new Impossibile products did coincide with decreases in sales of other vegetarian items, I don’t think it’s accurate to say they discouraged choices of vegetarian options. We studied and saw shifts across basically all categories of menu items, which I think is a strength of the research. We also saw that overall, sales of low-carbon footprint items increased, while sales of medium- and high-carbon footprint items decreased. On average, this corresponded with an 8% decrease in the carbon footprint of entrees sold.

All this to say, it’s complicated, and I’m proud that we are among the first to look at the dynamics of introducing Impossible plant-based meat alternatives into food environments. Of course it’s ideal if eaters swap beans or veggies for meat, but the path to get there is certainly not easy.

Thanks for the opportunity to share our work and respond to your coverage. (And thanks to Carole for being a champion of the work and leader in creating the toolkit!)

Kind regards,

Hannah

WHO and UNICEF have issued a new report: “Examining the impact of formula milk marketing on infant feeding decisions and practices.”

The website summarizes the main message: “More than half of parents and pregnant women [are] exposed to aggressive formula milk marketing.

The report finds that industry marketing techniques include unregulated and invasive online targeting; sponsored advice networks and helplines; promotions and free gifts; and practices to influence training and recommendations among health workers. The messages that parents and health workers receive are often misleading, scientifically unsubstantiated, and violate the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (the Code) – a landmark public health agreement passed by the World Health Assembly in 1981 to protect mothers from aggressive marketing practices by the baby food industry.

The press release explains:

The largest ever study of its kind, it draws on surveys with over 8 500 pregnant women and mothers of young children (aged 0-18 months) across eight countries, and more than 300 health professionals. The study…conducted in eight countries…exposes the aggressive marketing practices used by the formula milk industry, and highlights impacts on families’ decisions about how to feed their infants and young children.

The report begins with this prose poem:

The report’s main findings:

1. Formula milk marketing is pervasive, personalized, and powerful.
2. Formula milk companies use manipulative marketing tactics.
3. Formula milk companies distort science and medicine.
4. Industry systematically targets health professionals.
5. Formula milk marketing undermines parents’ confidence in breastfeeding.
6. Counter-measures can be effective.

Videos posted on Twitter.

1.  Images of what you see
2.  Misleading claims from the formula industry

Oreo Thins?  These have 35 calories per cookie instead of the original 50 or so.   The difference is hardly worth fussing about unless you eat a lot of them.

As for wine?  Sorry about this, but alcohol has calories—7 per gram, more than protein or carbohydrate (4 per gram) but less than fat (9 per gram).

Cookies and wine?  Sugars and alcohol?  Not my idea of a great partnership.

Thanks to Jennifer Pomeranz for sending this one.

This ad appeared in yesterday’s New York Times.

The ad is signed jointly by JBS and Pilgrim’s, but JBS owns nearly 80% of Pilgrim’s, so this is JBS’s ad.

At the bottom of this ad, you can read about the company in very small print:

JBS is the second-largest food company in the world, producing high-quality beef, chicken and pork products, alokng with innovative prepared foods and plant-based alternatives that reimagine the future of protein….

The company is based in Brazil, where burning of the rainforest to grow soybeans—to feed cattle–produces massive amounts of greenhouse gases.

In this ad, JBS promises to achieve “net-zero emissions” by 2040.

How?  It’s a bit vague on details.

We’re setting time-bound, science-based targets and backing them up with $1 billion in capital over the next decade.  We’re supporting producers by investing $100 million by 2030 in on-farm research.

We will cut our own emissions by 30% by 2030 and eliminate Amazon deforestation from our supply chain within five years.

For the record, JBS’ annual revenues are nearly 40 times higher than what it plans to spend on this over the next 10 years.

The company’s revenues have been declining.  Does that explain its sudden interest in preventing climate change?

This looks like classic greenwashing to me.

Before believing that this is not greenwashing, I’d like to see those “time-bound, science-based targets” and to know who is holding JBS accountable for meeting them.

Sigh.

According to Business Wire, Kraft Heinz, the company that owns Capri Sun, is donating “5 Million Pouches of CAPRI SUN Filtered Water to School Districts as Schools Turn Off Water Fountains”

Shouldn’t we be happy that the company is donating water, and not the typical Capri Sun sugary drinks?

No.  Why?

• This is marketing aimed at children (children can’t tell the difference between information and marketing, unless taught).
• This is marketing a sugary beverage brand to children (children are highly susceptible to this kind of marketing).
• This is marketing packaged water to children (tap water is drinkable in most places in the U.S.  If not, schools should be providing readily available urns of water).
• The total value of the sweepstakes prizes is $400 spread across five “winners”(pretty cheap)
• Capri Sun markets its products as juice drinks (but typically have 10% or 0% juice)

I was curious to see what the company says about its products, and looked up this one.

Doesn’t this look healthy?  Here’s what’s in it (note: concentrates are a euphemism for sugars):

FILTERED WATER; SUGAR; PEAR AND GRAPE JUICE CONCENTRATES; CITRIC ACID; ORANGE, APPLE, AND PINEAPPLE JUICE CONCENTRATES; NATURAL FLAVOR.

One pouch contains 13 grams of added sugars.

These are ultraprocessed sugary drinks, best avoided or consumed only rarely, and never marketed to children.

According to ABC News:

With so many people feeling cooped up due to restrictions in place because of the coronavirus pandemic, potato chip maker Lay’s has developed four new internationally-inspired flavors to satisfy both food and travel cravings alike.

But here’s the real gimmick:

The new flavors won’t be sold in stores.  Anyone wishing to taste one of the new flavors will have to reply to one of the company’s social media posts and tell them which country you’d like to visit.  A bag from the country they choose will be shipped to the lucky winners.

Lays tried this in 2016.  But you could buy those in stores, although not for long evidently.  The Greek Tzatziki flavor is the only one of that lot to make it into this one.

Frito-Lay, of course, is owned by PepsiCo.  So this is Big Food in marketing action.