The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued draft guidance for the food industry titled “Guidance for Industry: Prior Notice of Imported Food Questions and Answers (Edition 3).” Intended to address questions received since publication of the second edition in May 2004, the guidance includes information related to the Food Safety Modernization Act, which requires prior notice indicating whether a food article has been refused entry by any country. FDA will accept comments at any time, but suggests submitting them by May 30, 2014, to ensure consideration before the agency begins work on the final version. See Federal Register, March 31, 2014. Issue 519
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After reportedly receiving more than 2,000 comments criticizing its proposal to tighten regulations concerning the transaction of spent grain between brewers and farmers, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has apparently decided to revise its original plan, stating that it will release an amended version of the proposal this summer. According to news sources, brewers, who for years have donated or sold their spent grain to farmers to use as animal feed, were outraged at the proposed regulation—part of FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act—claiming it would turn an ages-old practice into a heavy burden, requiring them to alter processes and testing requirements and add additional recordkeeping tasks. Brewers also note that under the currently proposed terms, they would either be required to dry and package spent grain before sending it off as animal feed or to discard it entirely, leaving it to sit in landfills. See VoiceofSanDiego. org, April 3, 2014;…
The International Chewing Gum Association (ICGA) recently submitted comments to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about the agency’s proposal to revoke the generally recognized as safe (GRAS) status for partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs). Noting that PHOs are used in some chewing gum products “as softeners or texturizers at levels typically in the range of 0.2 to 2 percent of the finished gum,” ICGA has criticized FDA’s tentative determination as “misguided and overly broad.” In particular, the association has argued that FDA’s blanket revocation violates “the legal and scientific elements of the GRAS standard, which require a safety assessment for intended use by experts in ingredient safety.” According to ICGA, the tentative determination not only represents “a significant departure” from past efforts to reduce trans fat consumption through labeling initiatives, but discards a previous determination that PHOs in amounts less than 0.5 grams per serving “are effectively not present”…
A research abstract presented at the American Heart Association’s (AHA’s) Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism Scientific Sessions 2014 has claimed that “overweight or obese teenagers who eat lots of salty foods may show signs of fast cell aging.” According to a March 20, 2014, AHA press release, researchers with the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University analyzed the telomere-to-single-copygene ratios of 766 participants ages 14-18 who were divided into two groups representing low-sodium intake (an average of 2,388 mg/day) and high sodium intake (an average of 4,142 mg/day). The abstract’s authors noted that overweight and obese teens in the high-intake group had telomeres “that were significantly shorter” than the telomeres of normal weight teens in the same intake group. “Even in these relatively healthy young people, we can already see the effect of high sodium intake, suggesting that high sodium intake and obesity may act synergistically…
The British Medical Journal (BMJ) recently published two research articles related to fast food and obesity, including a study claiming that “individuals who are genetically predisposed to obesity may be more susceptible to the adverse effects of eating fried foods.” Qibin Qi, et al., “Fried food consumption, genetic risk, and body mass index: gene-diet interaction in three US cohort studies,” BMJ, March 2014. Relying on food consumption data from three cohort studies involving 37,000 men and women, researchers with the Harvard School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School also assigned participants “a genetic risk score based on 32 known genetic variants associated with BMI and obesity.” The results evidently showed that “eating fried food more than four times a week had twice the effect on BMI for those in the highest third of genetic risk as those in the lowest third.” “This work provides formal proof…
A recent analysis conducted by University of Liverpool researchers and commissioned by the campaign group Action on Junk Food Marketing has suggested that children in the United Kingdom are “bombarded” with as many as 11 junk-food advertisements during one hour of prime-time, family-oriented TV. Noting that almost one out of four TV ads shown between 8 and 9 p.m. promote unhealthy supermarket products, fast food, candy, and chocolate, the advocacy group, which includes the Children’s Food Campaign and British Heart Foundation, also observed that one-third of the ads conclude by showing a website or a Twitter hashtag—a reportedly popular way of targeting teenagers. Campaigners have asked the government to ban junk-food ads until after 9 p.m. and establish rules to prohibit Internet marketing. See BBC.com, March 20, 2014.
The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business recently interviewed Marketing Professor and Jay H. Baker Retailing Center Director Barbara Kahn about her research on food consumption habits for the March 20, 2014, edition of its Knowledge@Wharton series. Describing how product shape and size affect consumer perception, Kahn noted that individuals will eat more of a particular food item if they perceive it as “incomplete,” that is, if the product is broken into pieces or presented with holes in it. A study co-authored by Kahn and published in the America Marketing Association’s Journal of Marketing Research apparently supported these findings, suggesting that consumers “overweight the completeness” of a product in their decision-making process. “[P]eople are not normative decision-makers,” explained Kahn. “They don’t eat what they think they need to eat to feel full. They eat what they perceive is the right amount, and they use these implicit rules for deciding…
The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College has announced an April 8, 2014, event touting the release of Lethal But Legal: Corporations, Consumption and Protecting Public Health by City University of New York’s School of Public Health Professor Nicholas Freudenberg. Moderated by former New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner Thomas Farley, the conversation with Freudenberg and Brooklyn Food Coalition’s Nancy Romer “will examine the ways in which corporations have affected public health over the last century, and the long-term impact of corporate influence on public health in industrialized countries and now in developing regions.” Additional details about Freudenberg’s new book appear in Issue 515 of this Update. Issue 518
Following up its testing of soft drinks for the caramel-coloring ingredient 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI) by testing for its presence in pancake syrups, Consumer Reports tested several products, including pure maple syrup which had just 0.7 micrograms in a one-quarter cup serving, and found relatively low levels in light of the amount of syrup generally consumed in the United States. Still, because 4 percent of children between the ages of 1 and 5 consume pancake syrup daily, Consumer Reports claims “the [cancer] risk would be 10 times higher than negligible, or one excess case of cancer in 100,000 people who ate that amount daily over a lifetime, that’s the point where risk becomes significant.” Because some syrups tested had little 4-MEI, Consumer Reports concludes that manufacturers that use caramel color can minimize the 4-MEI levels in their products and will urge the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “to set standards for 4-MEI in…
According to New York Attorney General (AG) Eric Schneiderman, Phusion Projects, LLC, the company that makes Four Loko flavored malt beverages, has agreed to settle allegations by 20 attorneys general and the San Francisco city attorney that the company marketed and sold its products in violation of consumer protection and trade practice statutes. In re Investigation by Eric T. Schneiderman, N.Y. AG of Phusion Projects, LLC, No. AOD 14-075 (N.Y. AG, Bureau of Consumer Frauds & Protection, March 25, 2014). Without admitting any liability, the company has agreed not to (i) promote the misuse of alcohol or mixing flavored malt beverages with caffeinated products; (ii) manufacture, market, sell, or distribute any caffeinated alcohol beverages; (iii) provide materials to wholesalers, distributors or retailers promoting mixing flavored malt beverages with caffeinated products; (iv) sell, distribute or promote alcohol beverages to underage persons or hire underage persons to promote these products; (v) use college-related…
