New York Times op-ed writer Mark Bittman, in a column titled “Parasites, Killing Their Host,” considers how “‘Big Food’ is unwittingly destroying its own market. Diet-related Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease disable and kill people, and undoubtedly we’ll be hearing more about nonalcoholic steatophepatitis, or NASH, an increasingly prevalent fatty liver disease that’s brought on by diet and may lead to liver failure.” He refers to recently published research by a George Washington University associate professor of sociology discussing how corporations have adopted a strategy to increase their legitimacy in the “community” effort to address the obesity epidemic and thus continue to sell products that promote ill health. Bittman concludes, “government’s rightful role is not to form partnerships with industry so that the latter can voluntarily ‘solve’ the problem, but to oversee and regulate industry. Its mandate is to protect public health, and one good step toward fulfilling that…
Category Archives Issue 527
A consortium of more than 400 food manufacturers and retailers, the Consumer Goods Forum, has built on a 2011 pledge to clarify nutrition labeling and to advertise only those products fulfilling specific nutritional criteria to children younger than 12. The new pledge further defined the goals by setting deadlines; both reforms are to be completed by 2018, and by 2016, each member company will make its internal policies on nutrition and product formulation available to the public. The forum’s board of directors also established an independent scientific advisory council that will conduct a comprehensive survey of members’ progress toward the forum’s goals. See Consumer Goods Forum, June 18, 2014.
The sale of hot dogs described as “Kosher Style” by Five Guys Enterprises LLC may violate a Washington state law that describes what food products may be labeled kosher, according to a blogger for George Washington Law Professor Jonathan Turley’s blog. Darren Smith, a former deputy sheriff in Washington, writes that Five Guys advertises one of its products as a “Kosher Style” hot dog because, according to the company’s website, “the dogs are cooked on the same grill as our burgers,” even though “the way we cook them and serve them is not [kosher].” This label may violate Washington’s RCW 69.90.020(1), which states, “No person may knowingly sell or offer for sale any food product represented as ‘kosher’ or ‘kosher style’ when that person knows that the food product is not kosher and when the representation is likely to cause a prospective purchaser to believe that it is kosher,” with…
Public Health attorney and author Michele Simon has issued a report titled “Whitewashed: How Industry and Government Promote Dairy Junk Foods.” According to Simon, dairy foods have gotten “a pass” as the public health community focuses on “obvious culprits such as soft drinks and fast food” to address the nation’s “public health epidemic due to poor diet.” The report explains how plain liquid milk consumption has fallen in the United States and been replaced by its consumption as flavored milk, with cereal or in a drink. Simon claims that today half of the milk supply makes 9 billion pounds of cheese and 1.5 billion gallons of frozen desserts, such as ice cream, and 11 percent of all sugar is used in dairy product production. She refers to these products as “dairy junk foods” loaded with saturated fat, sugar and salt. The report focuses on the government’s collection of industry fees…
During the second National Soda Summit held in Washington, D.C., in early June 2014, ChangeLab Solutions, which has been active in tobacco control, presented a “Sugar-Sweetened Beverages [SSB] Playbook” calling for a public information campaign that would include telling consumers “you’re drinking 16 packs of sugar in that cola.” Other “playbook strategies” include a progression of activities: limiting SSBs on government property and in workplaces and schools, prohibiting SSBs in childcare and afterschool programs, restricting SSB marketing in schools, eliminating SSBs from children’s meals, licensing SSB retailers, taxing SSBs, and limiting SSB portion sizes. Each recommended action is accompanied by examples and model policies and ordinances. Issue 527
Monthly magazine Consumer Reports has started a campaign to rid food labels of the word “natural” following a survey that found significant confusion over the term’s meaning. The Consumer Reports National Research Center, which conducts the research published in the magazine, conducted a phone survey of 1,000 people and asked them about their understanding of the use of “natural” on a food label and what they think it should mean. The center reportedly found that “[a]bout two-thirds believe [“natural”] means a processed food has no artificial ingredients, pesticides, or genetically modified organisms, and more than 80 percent believe that it should mean those things.” U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines suggest that manufacturers can use the term if nothing artificial or synthetic has been added to their products, but the definitions are vague and flexible, Consumer Reports argues. “We want to clean up the green noise in the food label marketplace…
A federal court in the District of Columbia has denied the request of the Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association, Inc. to intervene in lawsuits brought by female and Hispanic farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) alleging gender and race bias in the administration of farm loan and disaster benefit programs. Love v. Vilsack, No. 00-2502 (D.D.C., decided June 13, 2014). Additional information about the gender discrimination claims appears in Issue 374 of this Update. The association was not a member of the settlement class established to resolve the claims of African-American farmers who failed to file claims for administrative adjudication before the deadline expired in Pigford v. Glickman (Pigford I). Those missing the deadline saw their claims revived under the 2008 Farm Bill and consolidated in litigation collectively known as Pigford II. Details about that litigation appear in Issue 395 of this Update. The association sought (i) a declaration…
In advance of the July 14-18, 2014, 37th Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission in Geneva, Switzerland, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has published a notice soliciting public comments to inform U.S. positions on various proposed commission standard-setting actions. No deadline for submitting comments has been specified. FSIS is responsible for keeping the public informed of the activities of international standard-setting organizations, including the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which was created in 1963 by two U.N. organizations—the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO)— to establish food standards that are often adopted and implemented by governments around the world, including the United States. Codex committees discussed in the FSIS notice include those focusing on residues of veterinary drugs in foods, contaminants in foods, food additives, pesticide residues, methods of analysis and sampling, food labeling, food hygiene, fresh fruits and vegetables, nutrition and…
