Currently browsing posts about: Vegetables

Michael T Compton, MD, MPH.  Veggie Smarts: A Doctor and Farmer Grows and Savors Eight Families of Vegetables.  Regalo Press, 2025.  

This one was sent to me for a blurb.  Here’s what I said:

This endearingly quirky book describes Compton’s love affair with eight families of vegetables for their growing habits, diversity, nutritional value, flavor, texture, and deliciousness, and he offers science, experience, charm, and recipes to prove it.  His dietary advice?  Eat your veggies!

And here are a couple of excerpts, this one about his thwarted love affair with cabbage.

I figured that we could somehow eat 20 heads of cabbage between the weekends in the Hudson Valley and the work weeks in the city.  They grew beautifully….Then it happened.  It was Friday evening, we had just arrived home from the city, and before even going into the house I was off to the two gardens…They were gone.  All 20 of them, gone.  Just 20 solitary cabbage stems standing, all heads and all leaves gone.  I knew it was a groundhog, and I immediately felt tears welling up in my eyes…Building the groundhog fence took me 20 hours one weekend, as I was determined to outsmart these New York woodchucks by burying wire at least eight inches underground around the entire garden.  They never tasted my cabbage again.

And this about his spinach failure.

This is hard for me to admit publicly, but I’ve never been able to grow spinach.  I’ve tried year after year and it never works.  It’s an embarrassment.  My two green thumbs work for everything else but the spinach is always a flop….I think my failure is driven by: one, my little, diverse farm grows about 90 cultivars across the 60 or so vegetables…two, each cultivar requires its own ongoing attention; three, spinach evidently requires a little more attention than average; and four, I have only been giving it average attention  This is despite the fact that spinach is one of the several vegetables that I’m addicted to…My condition even meets some of the psychiatric diagnostic criteria for addiction, except that it doesn’t impair my life.  Cravings.  Finding that once I start using (eating) it, I end up using (eating) more of it than I had intended to.  Having a strong desire or urge to use (eat) it (even when out of season).  And having withdrawals (necessitating highly disguished grocery store visits) when it is available neither on my farm (always) nor at the farmers markets (in the heat of summer).

The publisher says:

A nerdy farmer—and doctor with expertise in nutrition—explains how the vast majority of our vegetables come from just eight families of plants, which can guide how we eat them (“eight on my plate”), while recounting his journey of trading in city life to build a thriving organic vegetable farm.

The eight veggie families:  Brassicas, Alliums, Legumes, Chenopods, Aster Greens, Umbellifers, Cucurbits, Nightshades (hint: look at the pictures on the cover).

He says: eat some of each of them every day.

He’s a doctor who also runs a farm.

Quirky indeed, but fun and full of interesting facts about these families.

By the time the FDA posted this outbreak alert, the cucumbers had all been picked, shipped, and done their damage.

The outbreak

Total Illnesses: 449
Hospitalizations: 125
Deaths: 0
Last Illness Onset: June 4, 2024
States with Cases: AL, AR, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, KY, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, VT, WA, WI [31 states]

The CDC investigation:  Of 188 people interviewed (69%) reported eating cucumbers.

The product

cucumbers distributed by Fresh Start Produce Sales, Inc. and grown by Bedner Growers, Inc., of Boynton Beach, FL. Recalled cucumbers are beyond shelf life and should no longer be available for sale to consumers in stores.  Bedner Growers, Inc.’s growing and harvesting seasons are over. There is no product from this farm on the market and likely no ongoing risk to the public.

The self-protective reaction

According to Food Safety News,

the Florida Department of Agriculture (FDOA) called the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) tracing of a Salmonella outbreak to a local cucumber grower “at best inaccurate, and at worst misleading.” Apparently, the head of food safety at the FDOA, who told the FDA in an email “We find the science inaccurate, unsubstantiated and unnecessarily damaging to the firm implicated.”

Comment

This outbreak is worth special attention, not least because so many people were affected in so many states, and the cucumbers were gone by the time investigators knew they were the most likely cause.

• Half the cases were due to a new kind of Salmonella, S. Braenderup.
• The FDA idenified S. Braenderup in untreated canal water used for irrigation.

Salmonella in the water?  This means there must be some kind of enormous CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) nearby, spilling its cattle, dairy, or poutry waste into local streams.

The regulatory issues

This brings me to law professor Timothy Lytton’s latest paper on precisely this issue:  Lytton, Timothy D., Known Unknowns: Unmeasurable Hazards and the Limits of Risk Regulation (July 02, 2024). Oklahoma Law Review, Vol. 76, No. 4, p. 857, 2024.

This Article develops general principles for addressing known unknowns using a case study of efforts to regulate agricultural water quality. Contaminated water used to cultivate fresh produce is a well-known cause of recurrent foodborne illness outbreaks. Unfortunately, it has, so far, proven impossible to reliably quantify the risk of human illness from any given source of agricultural water.

At least one problem here is the split in regulatory authority between FDA (cucumbers) and USDA (animals).  FDA has no authority over CAFOs.  Its authority stops at the farm.  How is the cucumber farmer supposed to stop toxic forms of Salmonella from getting onto cucumber fields?

That is the insoluble regulatory problem Lytton’s piece addresses.

I learned about this one from a commentary from Yoni Freedhoff, MD: Kimchi: Not Magically Protective Against Weight Gain.

• The study: Association between kimchi consumption and obesity based on BMI and abdominal obesity in Korean adults: a cross-sectional analysis of the Health Examinees study.  BMJ Open.  2024 Jan 30;14(2):e076650.  doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2023-076650.
• Participants: “This study analysed 115 726 participants aged 40-69 years enrolled in the Health Examinees study in Korea.”
• Results: “In men, total kimchi consumption of 1-3 servings/day was related to a lower prevalence of obesity (OR: 0.875 in 1-2 servings/day and OR: 0.893 in 2-3 servings/day) compared with total kimchi consumption of <1 serving/day. Also, men with the highest baechu kimchi (cabbage kimchi) consumption had 10% lower odds of obesity and abdominal obesity. Participants who consumed kkakdugi (radish kimchi) ≥median were inversely associated with 8% in men and 11% in women with lower odds of abdominal obesity compared with non-consumers, respectively.”
• Conclusions:  “This large cross-sectional study described the association between kimchi consumption and obesity. In conclusion, total kimchi consumption of 1–3 servings/day was shown to be reversely associated with obesity in men. Regarding the type of kimchi, baechu kimchi was associated with a lower prevalence of obesity in men, and kkakdugi was associated with a lower prevalence of abdominal obesity in both men and women. However, since all results showed a ‘J-shaped’ association, excessive consumption suggests the potential for an increase in obesity prevalence. As kimchi is one of the major sources of sodium intake, a moderate amount of kimchi should be recommended for the health benefits of its other components. In addition, further investigation and prospective studies are needed to confirm the relationship between kimchi consumption and obesity.”
• Competing interests: “HJ and SS have no conflicts of interest to declare for this study. Y-RY and SWH are members of the staff at the World Institute of Kimchi.”
• Funding: “This research was supported by grants from the World Institute of Kimchi (KE2201-1) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT, Republic of Korea.”

Dr. Freedhoff ‘s analysis of the data:

According to the paper, men who reported eating two to three servings of kimchi per day were found to have lower rates of obesity, whereas men who reported eating three to five servings of kimchi per day were not. But these are overlapping groups! Also found was that men consuming more than five servings of kimchi per day have higher rates of obesity. When taken together, these findings do not demonstrate a statistically significant trend of kimchi intake on obesity in men. Whereas in women, things are worse in that the more kimchi reportedly consumed, the more obesity, in a trend that did (just) reach statistical significance.

Comment: Why anyone would expect kimchi (spicy fermented vegetables such as cabbage) to affect obesity one way or the other is beyond me, but the World Institute of Kimchi must want more people to eat it.  Does anyone need an excuse to eat kimchi?  It’s great on its own without needing this kind of claim.  This study is about marketing, not science.

I ran across a notice about this video: The USDA’s wondrous fruit watercolors.  It’s only 5 minutes and a revelation.

It’s just what we need this week—something lovely at a dark time.

I had never heard of the USDA’s collection of 7500 hand -illustrated fruits and vegetables, most of them contributed by women.

I’m happy to know about them.  The illustrations are available online at the National Agricultural Library.

You can search for images here.

They are in the public domain.

Overwhelmed as I am with an overabundance of Concord grapes this year, I searched for them.

They look good enough to eat, no?

This collection is a national treasure and I am thrilled to know about it.

The study:  A 12-Week Randomized Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial, Evaluating the Effect of Supplementation with a Spinach Extract on Skeletal Muscle Fitness in Adults Older Than 50 Years of Age. Pérez-Piñero, S.; Ávila-Gandía, V.; Rubio Arias, J.A.; Muñoz-Carrillo, J.C.; Losada-Zafrilla, P.; López-Román, F.J. Nutrients 2021, 13, 4373. https:// doi.org/10.3390/nu13124373

Purpose: to assess the effect of daily supplementation with a natural extract of Spinacia oleracea L. (4 × 500 mg capsules/day; total 2 g per day) combined with a moderate-intensity training program (1 h session/3 times a week) on skeletal muscle fitness in adults over 50 years of age.

Conclusion: In subjects over 50 years of age, moderate-intensity strength training combined with daily supplementation for 12 weeks with a natural extract of Spinacia oleracea L. improved muscle-related variables and muscle quality. Maintaining muscle health is a key component of healthy aging

Comment: Muscle function improved significantly at the end of the study as compared with baseline both in the experimental and the placebo groups, but the magnitude of improvements was higher in the experimental group.

Really?  The paper doesn’t even mention Popeye.  I consider this an egregious oversight.

According to a Popeye fan site (yes, such things exist)

In most media featuring Popeye, it is used as a last-minute device in which the hero, in danger, pulls out a can of spinach from his shirt or otherwise acquires the vegetable and eats it. This gives his already extraordinary strength a tremendous boost, helping him withstand his enemies’ attacks and all kinds of adverse situations.

Eat your spinach, everyone.

I saw this is a tweet from @WesternGrowers, the trade association that represents “local and regional family farmers growing fresh produce in Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico…We grow the best medicine in the world.®”

High marks to the Western Growers Association for producing this ad.

• It has interesting facts.  I did not know all this.
• It does not have misleading health claims about superfoods.

My one quibble: the confusing denominator.  The percentages can’t be of all of the vegetables consumed in the US; they have to be the percentages of US grown vegetables.

Take garlic, for example.  According to the USDA, we imported $19 million worth of dried garlic in 2020, and $185 million worth of fresh or chilled garlic.  Much of imported garlic comes from China.

According to Rural Migration News, the US imports almost two-thirds of its fresh fruit and one-third of its fresh vegetables.

Even so, I like the ad.

Leafy greens pose a seemingly intractable food safety problem.

• They are responsible for many harmful and deadly outbreaks of toxic E. coli (lawyer Bill Marler has a handy table listing outbreaks from 1995 to 2019).
• They are mostly eaten raw.
• They are often grown on land adjacent to dairy farms or cattle grazing or irrigated with water containing waste from animal agriculture.

The FDA is now taking on this last point.  It is is proposing standards for water use on produce for human consumption:  FDA.  Standards for the Growing, Harvesting, Packing, and Holding of Produce for Human Consumption Relating to Agricultural Water: Notice of proposed rulemaking.  The key provisions:

This proposal would replace the microbial criteria and testing requirements for pre-harvest agricultural water for covered produce (other than sprouts) with provisions for systems-based agricultural water assessments that are designed to be more feasible to implement across the wide variety of agricultural water systems, uses, and practices, while also being adaptable to future advancements in agricultural water quality science and achieving improved public health protections. Additionally, we are proposing to require
expedited mitigation for hazards related to certain activities associated with adjacent and nearby lands, in light of findings from several recent produce outbreak investigations.

Translation: Farms would have to assess where contamination of irrigation water might occur and take steps to prevent it, but will not have to test the water.

In its press release, the FDA says:

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a proposed rule that aims to enhance the safety of produce. It proposes to require farms to conduct comprehensive assessments that would help them identify and mitigate hazards in water used to grow produce. This is the latest step in the agency’s implementation of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), and it proposes to replace some of the existing requirements for agricultural water in the Produce Safety Rule (PSR).

This updates the FDA’s previous attempts:

• Food Safety Modernization Act Proposed Rule on Agricultural Water
• Agricultural Water Assessment Fact Sheet  
• FSMA Final Rule on Produce Safety

Food safety lawyer Bill Marler asks: Is FDA creating a HACCP for Produce? Are assessment and mitigation going to create safer produce?

He notes that the FDA is focusing on “pre-harvest risk assessment of water risk as opposed to water testing for pathogens generally.”  This requires produce growers to evaluate local pathogen risks such as cattle operations and/or wild animal populations and then take measures to prevent them from contaminating water supplies.

But without having to test the water, it’s going to be hard to confirm that the assessment of risk actually reduces it.  Marler says:

So, in my view the jury is still out on 1) will eliminating water testing and increasing assessments make for a safer product? and, 2) should there not be a recognition that produce is essentially a “ready-to-eat” product grown outside with the risks inherent by what is directly around it or what may blow or flow to it, and therefore a broader environmental approach will be required to assure produce safety?

Is the FDA backing off of safety requirements?  The link explains how to file comments.  Now is the time to weigh in.

A reader in Norway, Marit Kolby, sent me this one.

First, the press release: “Mushroom consumption may lower risk of depression.”

New research led by Penn State College of Medicine also reveals that these superfoods may benefit a person’s mental health.  Penn State researchers used data on diet and mental health collected from more than 24,000 U.S. adults between 2005 and 2016. They found that people who ate mushrooms had lower odds of having depression.

The study: Mushroom intake and depression: A population-based study using data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2005–2016.  Djibril M.Ba. XiangGao, LailaAl-Shaar, Joshua, E.Muscat, Robert B.Beelman, John P.Richie.  Journal of Affective Disorders, Volume 294, 1 November 2021, Pages 686-692.

Hypothesis: “We hypothesized that mushroom consumption is associated with a lower risk of depression in American adults.”

Method: Analysis of dietary recall data from NHANES vs. self-reported depression.

Conclusion: “Mushroom consumers had a lower odd of depression. However, we did not observe a dose-response relationship.”

Funding: none.

Declaration of competing interest: none.

Comment: Ordinarily, beyond noting the conditional “may be linked” (which also could be “may not”  and the lack of dose-response, I would not bother to comment on this study except that Marit Kolby wrote:

As usual, the health effects (this time from mushrooms) are greatly exaggerated, especially given the study type and the lack of a dose-response relationship.  One compound in mushrooms suggested to explain the association is ergothioneine. The authors list no conflicts of interest.  But look at the patent list of the author Beelman.

This called for a look at the patent list.  Beelman does indeed hold several patents related to ergothioneine from mushrooms, but most of them are assigned to the Penn State Research Foundation.   This is not unusual for universities, but called for a look at Penn’s State’s policy on faculty intellectual property.

Penn State’s policy on patents requires research faculty to negotiate patent income according to a formula.

1. PSRF [the foundation]: 40%
   Inventor(s): 40%
   Administrative Unit of College: 20%
2. The inventors’ portions of the income are divided according to the contribution percentage that the inventors establish. A memo to establish the percentages to be paid to each invention will be sent to the Inventors before making payment .

Without knowing the details of Beelman’s arrangement with the university, it is difficult to be sure that a conflict of interest exists (he might have turned all the proceeds over to the university), but this situation clearly gives the appearance of a conflict, and an undisclosed one at that.

If professor Beelman is entitled to any percentage of profits from the patents, he has a competing interest and should have disclosed it.

Regardless, his declaration should have acknowledged his patent ownerships, as should the university’s press release.

Are mushrooms a “superfood” as the press release maintains?

Marit Kolby thinks it is more likely that mushrooms are an indicator of usual consumption of whole rather than ultra-processed foods, and points out that a couple of studies have linked ultra-processed foods themselves to depression.