The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine (IOM) has issued the summary from an August 5-6, 2013, workshop titled “Caffeine in Food and Dietary Supplements.” Convened at the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, workshop participants included “scientists with expertise in food safety, nutrition, pharmacology, psychology, toxicology, and related disciplines; medical professionals with pediatric and adult patient experience in cardiology, neurology, and psychiatry; public health professionals; food industry representatives; regulatory experts; and consumer advocates.” They addressed the “changing caffeine landscape” in which new food and dietary supplement products including the substance are entering the marketplace at a rapid pace and may be “targeting populations not normally associated with caffeine consumption.” Among the workshop objectives were (i) “[e]valuate the epidemiological, toxicological, clinical, and other relevant literature to describe important health hazards associated with caffeine consumption”; (ii) “[d]elineate vulnerable populations who may be at risk from caffeine exposure”; (iii) “[d]escribe caffeine…
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As many as 1,700 people in Japan have reportedly become ill after eating frozen food allegedly contaminated with the pesticide malathion, a chemical used to kill aphids in corn and rice fields. The food, which included frozen pizza and chicken nuggets and apparently contained 2.6 million times the permitted level of the pesticide, has been traced to manufacturer Maruha Nichiro Holdings. The company has issued a public apology and recalled some 6.4 million packages of frozen food—1.2 million of which have reportedly been recovered. Authorities say it is unclear how the items became contaminated and will continue to investigate. See BBCNewsAsia.com and YahooNewsCanada.com, January 8, 2014. Issue 509
A group of international health experts has launched a new campaign intended to reduce the amount of sugar in processed foods and beverages sold in the United Kingdom (U.K.). Modeled after the Consensus Action on Salt and Health and chaired by Queen Mary University of London Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine Graham MacGregor, Action on Sugar includes a number of U.K. scientists and academics as well as National Obesity Forum Chair David Haslam and University of California, San Francisco, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics Robert Lustig. The campaigners aim to set gradual sugar reduction targets for the food industry similar to those established for salt content, warning that failure to meet such targets would prompt the group to pursue legislation or a sugar tax. They also seek to (i) educate the public about “the impact of sugar on their health,” (ii) identify children as “a particularly vulnerable group whose health is more…
The American Tort Reform Foundation has published the 2013-2014 issue of its “Judicial Hellholes” report, placing California, in part for the many lawsuits against food and beverage companies filed there, at the top of the list of jurisdictions with “plaintiff-friendly consumer protection laws” and courts purportedly receptive to such lawsuits. According to the report, plaintiffs’ lawyers “have filed a surge of consumer class actions targeting what they have labeled as ‘Big Food’” in California courts. “Some of these claims are brought by veterans of lawsuits against the tobacco industry who are looking for the next deep pocket to sue. About a dozen plaintiffs’ law firms have taken to the courts with gusto, filing about 75 class action lawsuits between them in the past few years. By one count, which includes filings from additional firms, more than 100 consumer class actions were filed against food makers in 2012 alone, five times…
New York University Nutrition Professor Marion Nestle will join other speakers at Cornell University’s “Festschrift in Honor of Per Pinstrup-Andersen: New Directions in the Fight Against Hunger and Malnutrition,” slated for December 13-14, 2013, in Ithaca, New York. She and Cornell’s Malden Nesheim will present their paper, “The Internationalization of the Obesity Epidemic: The Case of Sugar Sweetened Sodas.” Contending that obesity rates have increased in tandem with the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and that “many researchers are confident that the evidence justifies public health efforts to reduce children’s soda intake,” the co-authors report that efforts are underway globally to curtail SSB consumption despite pushback and purportedly aggressive foreign-marketing campaigns by U.S. SSB companies. Those efforts include taxes on SSBs, restrictions on marketing them in schools, advocacy, and education.
A December 2013 Food & Water Watch (FWW) report titled “Grocery Goliaths: How Food Monopolies Impact Consumers” examines consolidation in the food industry and how this affects “every link in the food chain, from farm to fork.” Analyzing 100 types of grocery products from cereals and soft drinks to frozen meals and crackers, the report suggests that the top four or fewer food companies control a “substantial majority of the sales of each item.” It further contends that the largest food manufacturers often offer multiple brands of the same food product, “giving consumers the false impression that they are choosing between competing products when in fact all the sales can go to the same parent company.” Noting that during the past few years as food companies and supermarket chains have consolidated, the illusion of choice has coincided with higher grocery bills, FWW Executive Director Wenonah Hauter said, “you might think…
The New York State Parent Teacher Association (PTA) has reportedly become the first PTA in the country to pass a resolution that calls on Congress and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “to protect human health by prohibiting the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in food animal production.” Representing hundreds of thousands of parents, teachers and students who note that “antibiotic resistance has become a global public health crisis,” the group’s resolution supports legislation that would improve labeling on meat and poultry products and make antibiotic use on the farm more transparent. The resolution also (i) advocates public disclosure on the amount, type and purpose of antibiotic use during food animal production; (ii) encourages schools to serve meat and poultry from farms that use antibiotics only to treat disease; and (iii) supports education for parents and schools on how antibiotic use in livestock production contributes to antibiotic resistance. See Pew…
In response to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s request for comments on its “Draft Guidance for Industry on Arsenic in Apple Juice: Action Level,” the Center for Food Safety (CFS) has asked the agency to “limit the public’s exposure to arsenic through a new regulatory strategy that recognizes the prevalence of arsenic in the food supply.” Stating that although individual foods containing arsenic may be safe to eat in moderation, CFS maintains that they are often consumed in combination, thereby presenting a risk of “cumulative arsenic exposure” that could reach dangerous levels. Calling FDA’s draft guidance “insufficient” to address these health hazards, CFS’s November 12, 2013, letter to FDA asks for the agency to regulate based on “cumulative arsenic exposure” rather than through product specific levels. According to CFS, FDA “must do more” to adequately protect public health. To that end, CFS suggests that, because arsenic is present in…
A recent viewpoint article published in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry (ANZJP) has raised the question of whether food addiction “is a ‘true’ and valid addiction, through the lens of the recently released DSM-5,” the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Nagesh Pai, et al., “Is food addiction a valid phenomenon through the lens of the DSM-5?,” ANZJP, November 2013. In particular, the article notes that DSM-5 for the first time includes “non-substance related, behavioral or process addictions” such as Gambling Disorder and Internet Gaming Disorder, thus setting the foundation “for the potential future inclusion of food addiction.” “Readers of the DSM-5 that are familiar with the food addiction literature, may be left wondering why food addiction was excluded based upon the rationale for the inclusion of Gambling Disorder,” write the article’s authors. “Specifically, that gambling activates the same…
The Yale University Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity has released an updated report on food advertising to children and teens that criticizes the fast-food industry for failing to meet its own marketing standards. Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “Fast Food FACTS 2013” claims that fast-food restaurants spent $4.6 billion on total advertising in 2012, an 8 percent increase over 2009. In particular, the report notes that even as “older children’s total exposure to fast food TV and internet advertising declined,” “fast food marketing via social media and mobile devices—media that are popular with teens—grew exponentially.” According to the Rudd Center, which reportedly surveyed the menus and marketing practices of 18 top fast-food restaurants in the United States, children aged 6-11 saw 10 percent fewer fast-food TV ads in 2012 compared to 2009, while many chains discontinued popular websites geared toward younger audiences. At the same time,…
