“Industry critics compare the intent of fast-food companies to that of cigarette makers, who first came under attack for marketing to children decades ago,” writes BusinessWeek’s Douglas MacMillan in this article detailing the efforts of consumer advocacy groups to outlaw food advertising to children. According to MacMillan, “public criticism and mountains of data linking obesity, diabetes and other health problems to the regular consumption of fast food has [sic] caused the industry to rethink its entrenched practice of marketing to kids.” His overview cites the creation of the Children’s Food & Beverage Initiative under the auspices of the Council for Better Business Bureaus (CBBB), which requires signatories to limit their advertising to children and promote food considered healthy by the Food and Drug Administration. This initiative, however, has apparently failed to deter groups like Corporate Accountability International, which has taken up the banner against fast-food companies. “Both the tobacco and fast-food industries…
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“Relaxation of the federal standards, and an explosion of consumer demand, have helped push the organics market into a $23 billion-a-year business, the fastest segment of the food industry,” claim Washington Post writers Kimberly Kindy and Lyndsey Layton in a July 3, 2009, investigative report alleging that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its officials with the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) have diluted organic regulations in response to “corporate firepower.” The article states that since its inception in 2002, the list of synthetics permitted in organic products has grown to 245 substances from 77, while only one item has ever been removed from the list. “The argument is not whether the non-organics pose a health threat, but whether they weaken the integrity of the federal organic label,” according to the report, which notes that USDA’s Inspector General’s Office is investigating allegations of non-compliance and complaints about the program’s…
“Over the years… I’ve become nostalgic for an occasional bug in my salad, for an apple that feels as if it were designed by God rather than by a committee,” writes New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in this op-ed article promoting Food, Inc., “a terrific new documentary” that purportedly offers “a powerful and largely persuasive diagnosis of American agriculture.” Kristof rehashes several key arguments made in the film, focusing on genetically modified livestock, conditions at “huge confinement operations” and “the massive routine feeling of antibiotics to farm animals.” He also criticizes agribusiness companies for allegedly exerting “huge political influence” and sending industry leaders to fill regulatory posts at the Food and Drug Administration. “We even inflict unhealthy food on children in the school lunch program, and one in three Americans born after 2000 is expected to develop diabetes,” concludes Kristof, who urges consumers to vote with their wallets to change the…
This article examines the global food-security goals of Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust and “intellectual father” of the Svalbard Seed Vault, which opened in February 2008 as a bomb-proof concrete bunker deep inside the sandstone of a remote Norwegian mountain north of the Arctic Circle. The vault, the authors write, was designed to store “copies of seeds currently housed in the more than 1,400 gene banks worldwide, so that should calamity strike any of those gene banks, Svalbard’s seeds would save the collections – and thus humanity – from the jaws of famine.” But Fowler’s Rome-based Diversity Trust has an equally important project aimed at global food security, the authors write. They explain that because many national and international seed banks are vulnerable to floods, fires, earthquakes, and other natural hazards, as well as war, civil strife and “plain old poor maintenance,” the Diversity Trust has…
“Diacetyl-linked jury verdicts of tens of millions of dollars for injured flavoring workers and diagnoses of lung damage in at least three popcorn-loving consumers forced popcorn packers and other food processors to stop using the chemical butter-flavoring two years ago,” writes investigative journalist Andrew Schneider in a May 28, 2009, article examining claims that possible diacetyl replacements– starter distillate and diacetyl trimmer–still include the “lung-destroying chemical.” According to Andrew Schneider Investigates, scientists with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) have published a book, titled Advances in Food and Nutrition Research, that suggests these diacetyl alternatives pose an even greater health risk because they penetrate “the deepest parts of the lung.” Starter distillate is reportedly a product of milk fermentation that contains up to 4 percent diacetyl, while the diacetyl trimmer contains three diacetyl molecules. “The wording here (no added diacetyl) is telling,” said co-author Kathleen Kreiss, who…
This article examines the claim that the production of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has a greater environmental impact than similar processes used to manufacture sucrose from sugar cane or sugar beets. According to Slate columnist Nina Shen Rastogi, “sugar cane seems to be the most efficient producer of sugar and potentially the lightest user of fossil fuels, even though its significant water requirements can’t be ignored.” The article reports that one consulting firm ranked HFCS processing “the most energy-intensive food-manufacturing industry in America, meaning it spent the most on electricity and fuel per dollar-value shipments made,” while “sugar beet processing comes in at No. 2” and “sugar cane mills and refineries, collectively, are No. 3.” Other researchers reportedly concluded that, “on average, greenhouse gas emissions, and the release of acidifying substances seemed highest with corn sugar.” Rastogi notes, however, that each type of processing “returns some useful byproducts that can…
“Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy—most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures—forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible,” writes Earth Policy Institute President Lester Brown in this article about how global food shortages have the potential to disrupt civilization and increase the number of failed states, which in turn become “a source of terrorists, drugs, weapons, and refugees, threatening political stability everywhere.” Combined with depleted water sources, soil erosion and climate change, a “trend-driven” rise in world grain prices has exacerbated food shortages in many developing countries, according to Brown, who notes that “a fourth of this year’s U.S. grain harvest – enough to feed 125 million Americans or half a billion Indians at current consumption levels – will go to fuel cars.” He warns that without drastic intervention, “a dangerous politics of food…
Discussing former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler’s book about overeating, Washington Post staff writer Lyndsey Layton opens with an anecdote about Kessler climbing into dumpsters behind fast-food restaurants to find the ingredient lists for some of the foods they offer. He apparently found high-calorie, fat, sugar, and salt content in many of his favorite foods and contends they are designed in a way to spur the diner to eat faster and eat more. Kessler reports that he was a yo-yo dieter whose weight has ranged from 160 to 230 pounds and back again numerous times. He also claims that he was able to stabilize his weight only by making a shift in the way he thought about food. Layton quotes Kessler as saying, “We did this with cigarettes. It used to be sexy and glamorous but now people look at it and say, ‘That’s not my friend, that’s…
New York University professor and public health nutrition author Marion Nestle wonders “Is Stevia really ‘natural?’” in her April 29, 2009, blog Food Politics. The sweetener, she writes, is isolated from the leaves of the stevia plant and therefore the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lets companies assert that it is natural. “We can debate whether a chemical sweetener isolated from Stevia leaves is really ‘natural’ but here’s another problem: Stevia doesn’t taste like sugar,” Nestle writes. “Companies have to fuss with it to cover up its off taste. And, they must do so ‘without detracting from the perceived benefits of its natural status.’ Flavor companies are working like mad to find substances that block Stevia’s bitter taste, mask its off flavors, and extend its sweetness, while staying within the scope of what the FDA allows as ‘natural.’” See foodpolitics.com, April 29, 2009.
“Like other villainous ingredients – trans fat and artificial food dye come to mind – high-fructose corn syrup [HFCS] is accused of being at once unhealthy, unnatural and unappetizing,” writes Slate contributor Daniel Engber in this article exploring these “three cardinal claims of food politics” against HFCS, which has suffered a consumer backlash “exacerbated by the general view that it’s less ‘natural’ than other forms of sugar.” According to the article, critics of HFCS have implied that the fructose-based sweetener is more harmful than other added sugars refined from cane sugar or beet sugar. This theory apparently spawned several lawsuits contesting the “metaphysical status of corn syrup” in products labeled “all natural.” The legal disputes have reportedly led the Food and Drug Administration to issue guidance declaring that HFCS can be considered a “natural” ingredient if it has not come into physical contact with glutaraldehyde, a synthetic fixing agent used to…
