IF patience is a virtue, then AquaBounty, a Massachusetts biotech company, might be the most virtuous entity on the planet.
In 1993, the company approached the Food and Drug Administration about selling a genetically modified salmon that grew faster than normal fish. In 1995, AquaBounty formally applied for approval. Last month, more than 17 years later, the public comment period, one of the last steps in the approval process, was finally supposed to conclude. But the F.D.A. has extended the deadline — members of the public now have until late April to submit their thoughts on the AquAdvantage salmon. It's just one more delay in a process that's dragged on far too long.
The AquAdvantage fish is an Atlantic salmon that carries two foreign bits of DNA: a growth hormone gene from the Chinook salmon that is under the control of a genetic "switch" from the ocean pout, an eel-like fish that lives in the chilly deep. Normally, Atlantic salmon produce growth hormone only in the warm summer months, but these genetic adjustments let the fish churn it out year round. As a result, the AquAdvantage salmon typically reach their adult size in a year and a half, rather than three years.
If the modified fish is approved, which could still happen later this year, it will be the first transgenic animal to officially enter the human food supply. Appropriately, it has been subjected to rigorous reviews, with scientists all over the country weighing in on whether it is fit for human consumption and what might happen if it was to make its way into the wild. Some environmentalists fear that the modified salmon might wriggle free from fish farms, start reproducing, and ultimately drive wild salmon populations to extinction.
But scientists, including the F.D.A.'s experts, have concluded that the fish is just as safe to eat as conventional salmon and that, raised in isolated tanks, it poses little risk to wild populations.
This decision isn't meant to be made quickly; due scientific diligence requires time. But some suspect that political considerations have played a role in drawing the approval process out to tortuous lengths. Many of the members of Congress who oppose the modified fish represent states with strong salmon industries. And some nonprofit groups seem to be opposing the modified salmon reflexively, as part of an agenda to oppose all animal biotechnology, regardless of its safety or potential benefits.
Even the White House might be playing politics with the salmon. One step in the approval process is the preparation of an environmental assessment on the fish's potential risks. In May of last year, the F.D.A. commissioner said that a draft would be released "very soon." Months passed.
In December, Jon Entine, the executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit group that promotes education about biotechnology issues, wrote an article in Slate suggesting that the holdup wasn't with the F.D.A., which had completed the report, but with the Obama administration, which had just finished a re-election campaign. He wrote, "The delay, sources within the government say, came after meetings with the White House, which was debating the political implications of approving the GM salmon, a move likely to infuriate a portion of its base." A few days after the article appeared, the F.D.A. published its assessment. The date on the report — May 4, 2012 — seemed to confirm Mr. Entine's account that it had been ready for months.
The publication of that assessment initiated the public comment period, now extended to April. After reviewing the comments — more than 30,000, so far — the F.D.A. will be free to issue its final ruling.
WE should all be rooting for the agency to do the right thing and approve the AquAdvantage salmon. It's a healthy and relatively cheap food source that, as global demand for fish increases, can take some pressure off our wild fish stocks. But most important, a rejection will have a chilling effect on biotechnological innovation in this country.
Some scientists may move abroad, to China, Argentina, India or another nation where the political climate is more favorable. (Indeed, some have already done so — researchers at the University of California, Davis, who have developed goats whose modified milk could be used to treat and prevent childhood diarrhea, are moving much of their operation to Brazil.) Others may decide not to pursue such research at all. If a company that has done everything right can't get its product approved, who else will be foolish enough to embark upon this kind of research? Who will finance it?
Of course, all this would be just fine with some anti-biotech groups, which traffic in scare tactics rather than science. But it shouldn't be fine with the rest of us.
Genetically engineered animals could do real good for the world. Scientists at Cambridge University and Scotland's Roslin Institute — the facility that created Dolly, the cloned sheep, in 1996 — have been working to genetically engineer chickens that are resistant to bird flu. They haven't pulled that feat off yet, but they have managed to engineer birds that can't spread the flu to others in their flock, which is a good start. Given how hard it is to develop vaccines to combat the rapidly evolving flu virus, this genetic modification could end up saving the lives of many birds, and perhaps humans.
Then there's the Enviropig, a swine that has been genetically modified to excrete less phosphorus. Phosphorus in animal waste is a major cause of water pollution, and as the world's appetite for meat increases, it's becoming a more urgent problem. The first Enviropig, created by scientists at the University of Guelph, in Canada, was born in 1999, and researchers applied to both the F.D.A. and Health Canada for permission to sell the pigs as food.
But last spring, while the applications were still pending, the scientists lost their funding from Ontario Pork, an association of Canadian hog farmers, and couldn't find another industry partner. (It's hard to blame investors for their reluctance, given the public sentiment in Canada and the United States, as well as the uncertain regulatory landscape.) The pigs were euthanized in May.
The F.D.A. must make sure that other promising genetically modified animals don't come to the same end. Of course every application needs to be painstakingly evaluated, and not every modified animal should be approved. But in cases like AquaBounty's, where all the available evidence indicates that the animals are safe, we shouldn't let political calculations or unfounded fears keep these products off the market. If we do that, we'll be closing the door on innovations that could help us face the public health and environmental threats of the future, saving countless animals — and perhaps ourselves.
Showing posts with label Labeling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labeling. Show all posts
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Friday, August 17, 2012
Mark Bittman: Let's Make Him Do It
Mark Bittman, The New York Times, August 16, 2012
For positive change in the issues that affect our daily lives — not only food but also jobs, income, housing — we need active political leadership. But until President Obama is pushed more strongly by the left, the coming presidential election represents a choice between a full-fledged attack on government services and a continuing slide into the gloomy and depressing world of austerity economics. That’s a real choice, but it’s not a happy one.
When Obama has been pressured on issues, like gay rights, immigration and the Keystone XL pipeline, he’s responded positively. But he hasn’t been pushed on food, and as a result has not followed up on campaign promises like his vow to label foods containing genetically modified ingredients, nor has he used his bully pulpit to try to protect SNAP (food stamps) from the ravages of Congress. Since there isn’t a real food movement — yet! — progressives haven’t made Obama do much.
At least he won’t dismantle government, as Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would. Ryan’s anti-stimulus plan is an unemployment-boosting scheme that would finance the military at a high level, the social safety net at the lowest possible level (Ryan is calling for a 17 percent cut in food stamps, enough to elicit criticisms from a pair of high-ranking Catholic bishops, for example) and just about nothing else. It benefits no one but the superrich and their representatives.
Not that that’s anything new. Most people — call them working class, middle class or the 99 percent — have less money than they did a generation ago; the superrich have scads more. A vast majority of Americans are on the losing side of the class war, as evidenced by lower pay scales, eviscerated unions, fewer benefits, later retirement, shortened or eliminated vacations, starved municipalities and of course the quality of our food and the impact it has on us and the environment.
Obama has seen more power and money arrayed against him than perhaps any Democrat ever. But his lack of a workable plan for economic recovery and his right-leaning stances on fiscal responsibility and debt reduction remind us that the basic problem is not one of “progressive” Democrats versus “conservative” Republicans.
This isn’t new either: in the last 40 years we’ve witnessed a long, steady move to the right, which Democrats occasionally whine about, protest and even fight, but in which they’ve been mostly complicit. Unless you reduce defense budgets — practically unheard of — whenever you cut taxes, you starve social programs and infrastructure, thus undermining the legitimate and beneficial role of government. (Even “progressive” Democrats are onboard with some cuts to food stamps in the as-yet-unpassed farm bill.) With government providing fewer services, it becomes easy to persuade people that it’s an albatross, so why not cut taxes further? Enter Paul Ryan.
Candidate Obama led us to believe that he was a different kind of Democrat, and he stirred new and even skeptical old voters. Yet he’s disappointed many supporters. You can argue that his hands have been tied: money is power — Citizens United has made this even more so — and until there’s meaningful electoral and campaign-finance reform, along with real limits on lobbying, there’s no chance for real progress.
President Obama didn’t create this system; he’s a product of it. A fundamental problem now is that the right has devised both a strategy and a movement, and the left has done neither. “All the bold answers are only from one side,” Van Jones, author of “Rebuild the Dream,” told me. “But we have to stop acting like there’s one person with agency in America, whose name is Obama. It’s not what he should do — it’s what we should do.”
That’s right. Only by building real movements around food and other important issues can we pressure Obama (or even Romney; just look at the inroads the right made with a Democrat in office) to act in the interests of the great majority. A strategy for this is neatly outlined in the just-published paper “Prosperity Economics” by Jacob Hacker and Nate Loewentheil, which counters the nonsense of austerity economics and lays out a credible plan for public investments and economic security, a plan that could help revive jobs and growth and ensure “that gains are broadly shared.” Their agenda improves on most economic plans by adding demands for dramatic political reform. “The best ideas are of little use without political movements, and those movements can only succeed in a political regime in which votes count more than money,” Hacker said to me.
It’s worth voting for progressives, but it’s equally important to recognize that until there is real pressure from the left, the money and influence of the right will continue to pull any president in that direction.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Food Politics » The Lancet on nudging and nagging vs. environmental change
Marion Nestle, Food Politics, March 9, 2012
I’m getting caught up on my journal reading and just ran across an editorial from The Lancet, January 21. It takes on the UK government’s “personal responsibility” approach to health promotion based on the idea that
I’m getting caught up on my journal reading and just ran across an editorial from The Lancet, January 21. It takes on the UK government’s “personal responsibility” approach to health promotion based on the idea that
gently ‘nudging’ people to change their unhealthy behaviours was the key to public health.
Even the UK government has to admit that the nudge approach isn’t working. Now it is telling physicians in the National Health Service (NHS) to nag:
use every contact with patients and the public to help them maintain and improve their physical and mental health and wellbeing.
The Lancet asks:
Is this a realistic, sensible, and effective recommendation? We would say not.
Effective, evidenced-based public health measures do not include nudging people into healthy behaviours or getting NHS staff to lecture patients on healthy lifestyles.They include measures such as raising taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, fatty foods, and sugary drinks, reducing junk food and drink advertising to children, and restricting hours on sale of alcoholic drinks….Focusing on other approaches is foolish.The nudge and nag approaches need one thing: the firm elbow.
I do enjoy reading The Lancet. Its editors are so clear about the need for environmental changes to make it easier for people eat better diets and be more active.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Healthy Labels, Not Stealthy Labels
Ezekiel J. Emanuel, The New York Times, March 5, 2012
Research suggests that consumers spend only about one second looking at nutrition information when making myriad choices. A parent dashing through the grocery store aisles with kids in tow has to decide, in that one second, which is better: Triscuit vs. Saltines vs. Wheat Thins vs. Ritz? This is why Americans need a simple, standardized and truthful label on the front of all packaged foods.
For a minute, it looked as if we were a step closer to getting it.
In January 2011, the Grocery Manufacturers Association pledged that food manufacturers would start adding nutrition information — on calories, saturated fats, sodium and sugars, as well as nutrients like Vitamin C and calcium — to the front of their packages “within a few months.” This label would be easy to understand, and would help shoppers determine whether a food was healthy or not. Not much happened until September, when the G.M.A. announced that “Facts Up Front” would be the theme for the initiative, and began a second public relations blitz about the forthcoming labels.
Strolling down the aisles of my local supermarket, I saw only a few front-of-the-package labels.
But months later, as I stroll down the aisles of my local supermarket, I see front-of-the-package labels only on a few cereal boxes. The ones on soda cans have information only on calories, and nothing on added sugars. There’s no label on the front of the Chips Ahoy. Can’t find it on the Häagen-Dazs ice cream carton. And there’s nothing on Lay’s potato chip bags.
What we have is a failure to launch. What happened?
In the fall and early winter of 2010, the Food and Drug Administration and the Obama administration were talking with the G.M.A. about developing a voluntary front-of-pack label. At the time I was an adviser to the administration working on Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative to reduce childhood obesity, and so took part in the negotiations. The F.D.A. and administration wanted information on calories, salt, sugars and saturated fats. The G.M.A. was willing to agree, but because it worried that this would make some packaged foods look really bad, it also wanted to include positive information on vitamins and minerals. The government balked at that, and instead of coming to an agreement, the G.M.A. canceled the negotiations.
But it knew it had to do something, or risk a more stringent label rule in the future. So it announced its own voluntary label. Once the G.M.A. got the government off its back, though, it seemed to be in no hurry to follow through with the labels. And even when or if it does, the labels will be flawed. There is no reason to include positive information on Vitamin C or fiber along with the crucial information on fats, salt and calories. A lack of fiber doesn’t lead to the same health crisis as an overdose of salt. And including so many facts results in information overload, diluting the label’s impact. A cynic might say that is precisely what the G.M.A. wants.
Others in the industry are moving forward independent of the G.M.A. Last month, Walmart released an interpretative symbol system called “Great for You,” which uses icons to convey a value judgment about the product’s nutrition and allows consumers to make quick choices about healthier foods. This is a step in the right direction. But if every company and grocer goes the independent Walmart way, we could end up with many different, confusing icons.
What we need are simple, standardized icons that can be understood by a shopper in a second or less, located in a consistent place on all packages. No higher math or advanced nutrition knowledge should be required to grasp the icons’ meaning. The information should reflect real serving sizes (canned soup labels regularly give the amount of salt for just half the can, trying to disguise that a whole can contain almost an entire day’s intake of salt). And we should have interpretive symbols telling shoppers simply whether an item is healthy or unhealthy.
This will help consumers make better choices, but even more important, it will encourage food manufacturers to make healthier packaged foods in the first place. In the end, the data we have suggests it is the production of healthier foods, rather than consumers’ making better choices, that will be most effective in combating obesity and promoting health.
After waiting a year, it seems pretty clear that we can’t trust the G.M.A. to do the right thing by the American consumer. When industry fails to voluntarily police itself, then it may just be time for regulation. But regulations require extensive research as well as hard-to-come-by agreement on the effectiveness of interpretive symbols, on the design of the symbols themselves and on the formula to be used to define how healthy each item is. All that will take at least two years, and will most likely be harder on the industry over all. A voluntary government-industry agreement is the better path.
So I’m still hoping that the G.M.A. can come back and negotiate in good faith. We should scrap the current labels, get rid of nutrition information that is not useful, and move forward on improved labels as soon as possible.
I want my Häagen-Dazs to tell me how many calories I am consuming — up front.
Ezekiel J. Emanuel on health policy and other topics.
Research suggests that consumers spend only about one second looking at nutrition information when making myriad choices. A parent dashing through the grocery store aisles with kids in tow has to decide, in that one second, which is better: Triscuit vs. Saltines vs. Wheat Thins vs. Ritz? This is why Americans need a simple, standardized and truthful label on the front of all packaged foods.
For a minute, it looked as if we were a step closer to getting it.
In January 2011, the Grocery Manufacturers Association pledged that food manufacturers would start adding nutrition information — on calories, saturated fats, sodium and sugars, as well as nutrients like Vitamin C and calcium — to the front of their packages “within a few months.” This label would be easy to understand, and would help shoppers determine whether a food was healthy or not. Not much happened until September, when the G.M.A. announced that “Facts Up Front” would be the theme for the initiative, and began a second public relations blitz about the forthcoming labels.
Strolling down the aisles of my local supermarket, I saw only a few front-of-the-package labels.
But months later, as I stroll down the aisles of my local supermarket, I see front-of-the-package labels only on a few cereal boxes. The ones on soda cans have information only on calories, and nothing on added sugars. There’s no label on the front of the Chips Ahoy. Can’t find it on the Häagen-Dazs ice cream carton. And there’s nothing on Lay’s potato chip bags.
What we have is a failure to launch. What happened?
In the fall and early winter of 2010, the Food and Drug Administration and the Obama administration were talking with the G.M.A. about developing a voluntary front-of-pack label. At the time I was an adviser to the administration working on Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative to reduce childhood obesity, and so took part in the negotiations. The F.D.A. and administration wanted information on calories, salt, sugars and saturated fats. The G.M.A. was willing to agree, but because it worried that this would make some packaged foods look really bad, it also wanted to include positive information on vitamins and minerals. The government balked at that, and instead of coming to an agreement, the G.M.A. canceled the negotiations.
But it knew it had to do something, or risk a more stringent label rule in the future. So it announced its own voluntary label. Once the G.M.A. got the government off its back, though, it seemed to be in no hurry to follow through with the labels. And even when or if it does, the labels will be flawed. There is no reason to include positive information on Vitamin C or fiber along with the crucial information on fats, salt and calories. A lack of fiber doesn’t lead to the same health crisis as an overdose of salt. And including so many facts results in information overload, diluting the label’s impact. A cynic might say that is precisely what the G.M.A. wants.
Others in the industry are moving forward independent of the G.M.A. Last month, Walmart released an interpretative symbol system called “Great for You,” which uses icons to convey a value judgment about the product’s nutrition and allows consumers to make quick choices about healthier foods. This is a step in the right direction. But if every company and grocer goes the independent Walmart way, we could end up with many different, confusing icons.
What we need are simple, standardized icons that can be understood by a shopper in a second or less, located in a consistent place on all packages. No higher math or advanced nutrition knowledge should be required to grasp the icons’ meaning. The information should reflect real serving sizes (canned soup labels regularly give the amount of salt for just half the can, trying to disguise that a whole can contain almost an entire day’s intake of salt). And we should have interpretive symbols telling shoppers simply whether an item is healthy or unhealthy.
This will help consumers make better choices, but even more important, it will encourage food manufacturers to make healthier packaged foods in the first place. In the end, the data we have suggests it is the production of healthier foods, rather than consumers’ making better choices, that will be most effective in combating obesity and promoting health.
After waiting a year, it seems pretty clear that we can’t trust the G.M.A. to do the right thing by the American consumer. When industry fails to voluntarily police itself, then it may just be time for regulation. But regulations require extensive research as well as hard-to-come-by agreement on the effectiveness of interpretive symbols, on the design of the symbols themselves and on the formula to be used to define how healthy each item is. All that will take at least two years, and will most likely be harder on the industry over all. A voluntary government-industry agreement is the better path.
So I’m still hoping that the G.M.A. can come back and negotiate in good faith. We should scrap the current labels, get rid of nutrition information that is not useful, and move forward on improved labels as soon as possible.
I want my Häagen-Dazs to tell me how many calories I am consuming — up front.
Ezekiel J. Emanuel on health policy and other topics.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
EU Parliament veto on nutrition claims is 'bitter pill' for industry to swallow, FDE
Jane Byrne , Food navigator, February 2, 2012
The European Parliament has blocked a proposal to amend food labelling laws that would have allowed new 'percentage less' claims on nutrition content, such as sugar, salt and fat - a move the food industry says is a bitter pill for the food sector to swallow.
MEPs, voting in the Parliament’s plenary session this morning, vetoed the European Commission’s bid to revise Annex of EC Regulation 1924/2006 which was aimed at encouraging food makers to make incremental reformulation efforts.
The politician opposed to the proposal concluded that the new food labeling could have confused or misled consumers. Today’s vote mirrors the resolution of MEPs involved in Tuesday’s Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) committee’s poll on the same topic.
"The European Parliament has defended the interests of health-conscious consumers, who need to be able to make clear comparisons when shopping for food", said Matthias Groote, chair of the ENVI Committee, in reaction to today’s plenary vote.
The Commisson had sought to introduces two new nutrition claims into the Annex - namely, the ‘Now contains X% less’ claim as well as the ‘No added salt /sodium’ claim.
Back to square one
But Parliament's veto - 393 votes in favour, 161 against and 21 abstentions - sends the Commission’s proposal back to the drawing board.
The amendments, if passed, would have allowed, for example, a "15% less sugar" claim, which would be based on a previous formulation of the same product.
But MEPs said this would be hard to compare - or could misleadingly appear healthier - than a ‘reduced sugar’ label, which must contain 30% less than other similar products, under existing EU legislation on health and nutrition claims.
Lack of informed choice?
"It means that consumers will not be informed of important reformulations to foods so that they can make an informed food choice thus driving positive changes in dietary habits. Secondly, it serves a ‘bitter pill’ to food operators who have strived to voluntarily reformulate their products in line with consumer taste and public health expectations over the years.
It is difficult to comprehend how member states who agreed on the merits of informing consumers about these claims, and which were taken up within the EU High Level Group on Nutrition and under the EU Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, yet, members of the European Parliament have failed to understand that reasoning."
The UK food and drink industry also expressed disappointment and concerns about the potential impact on industry’s reformulation work.
Barbara Gallani, director of food safety and science at the Food and Drink Federation, commented: “Today’s result is a blow for consumers and industry alike. ‘X% less’ and ‘no added salt’ claims would have supported the food industry’s drive to gradually reformulate products."
Public health impact
DG Sanco, the Health and Consumer Policy directorate at the Commission, claimed an incremental approach to food and drink reformulation such as proposed under the ‘percentage less" claim was in line with the viewpoint of the EU platform for action on diet, physical activity and health.
A spokesperson for DG Sanco said last week that modest reductions are more feasible and achievable by “more operators”. and, he argued: “A wider range of reformulated products with such modest improvements but acceptable by more consumers could become available and therefore lead to a bigger impact in term of public health, compared with the 'light' products which are consumed by a limited [number of] consumers.”
The European Parliament has blocked a proposal to amend food labelling laws that would have allowed new 'percentage less' claims on nutrition content, such as sugar, salt and fat - a move the food industry says is a bitter pill for the food sector to swallow.
MEPs, voting in the Parliament’s plenary session this morning, vetoed the European Commission’s bid to revise Annex of EC Regulation 1924/2006 which was aimed at encouraging food makers to make incremental reformulation efforts.
The politician opposed to the proposal concluded that the new food labeling could have confused or misled consumers. Today’s vote mirrors the resolution of MEPs involved in Tuesday’s Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) committee’s poll on the same topic.
"The European Parliament has defended the interests of health-conscious consumers, who need to be able to make clear comparisons when shopping for food", said Matthias Groote, chair of the ENVI Committee, in reaction to today’s plenary vote.
The Commisson had sought to introduces two new nutrition claims into the Annex - namely, the ‘Now contains X% less’ claim as well as the ‘No added salt /sodium’ claim.
Back to square one
But Parliament's veto - 393 votes in favour, 161 against and 21 abstentions - sends the Commission’s proposal back to the drawing board.
The amendments, if passed, would have allowed, for example, a "15% less sugar" claim, which would be based on a previous formulation of the same product.
But MEPs said this would be hard to compare - or could misleadingly appear healthier - than a ‘reduced sugar’ label, which must contain 30% less than other similar products, under existing EU legislation on health and nutrition claims.
Lack of informed choice?
"It means that consumers will not be informed of important reformulations to foods so that they can make an informed food choice thus driving positive changes in dietary habits. Secondly, it serves a ‘bitter pill’ to food operators who have strived to voluntarily reformulate their products in line with consumer taste and public health expectations over the years.
It is difficult to comprehend how member states who agreed on the merits of informing consumers about these claims, and which were taken up within the EU High Level Group on Nutrition and under the EU Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, yet, members of the European Parliament have failed to understand that reasoning."
The UK food and drink industry also expressed disappointment and concerns about the potential impact on industry’s reformulation work.
Barbara Gallani, director of food safety and science at the Food and Drink Federation, commented: “Today’s result is a blow for consumers and industry alike. ‘X% less’ and ‘no added salt’ claims would have supported the food industry’s drive to gradually reformulate products."
Public health impact
DG Sanco, the Health and Consumer Policy directorate at the Commission, claimed an incremental approach to food and drink reformulation such as proposed under the ‘percentage less" claim was in line with the viewpoint of the EU platform for action on diet, physical activity and health.
A spokesperson for DG Sanco said last week that modest reductions are more feasible and achievable by “more operators”. and, he argued: “A wider range of reformulated products with such modest improvements but acceptable by more consumers could become available and therefore lead to a bigger impact in term of public health, compared with the 'light' products which are consumed by a limited [number of] consumers.”
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
New Video: Just Label It (GMO)
93% of Americans want the FDA to label genetically engineered foods.
Watch the new video from Food, Inc. Filmmaker Robert Kenner to hear why we have the right to know what’s in our food.
Will you join these individuals — and over half a million Americans — in contacting the FDA to require the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods?
Watch the new video from Food, Inc. Filmmaker Robert Kenner to hear why we have the right to know what’s in our food.
Will you join these individuals — and over half a million Americans — in contacting the FDA to require the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods?
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
New nutrition facts label
FDA cooking up helpful new nutrition facts label
Updated 9/5/2011 11:22 AM, The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES – Uncle Sam wants you to know more about what you're eating.
The Food and Drug Administration wants to revise the nutrition facts label — that breakdown of fats, salts, sugars and nutrients on packaging — to give consumers more useful information and help fight the national obesity epidemic.
A proposal is in the works to change several parts of the label, including more accurate serving sizes, a greater emphasis on calories and a diminished role in the daily percent values for substances like fat, sodium and carbohydrates.
It's the latest attempt to improve the way Americans view food and make choices about what they eat, and comes in the wake of major advances in nutrition regulations by the Obama administration.
Calorie counts are popping up on menus of chain restaurants across the country and the longstanding food pyramid was toppled this year by the U.S. government in favor of a plate that gives a picture of what a healthy daily diet looks like.
The struggle to redesign the labels on every box, can and carton has been in the works since 2003, and some of the changes could be proposed as soon as this year.FDA Deputy Commissioner Michael Taylor cautions not to expect a grand overhaul, but the revamped label does mark a shift to create a more useful nutritional snapshot of foods millions of Americans consume every day.
"There's no question obesity is a central public health concern that the nutrition facts panel can play a role in. It's obviously not a magic wand but it can be an informative tool," said Taylor.
For two decades, the black and white label has offered a glance of nutritional information about what's inside each package, including calories and grams of fats, cholesterol, protein and carbohydrates. Critics have complained it's confusing and doesn't offer a simpler way to make a choice about whether it's good for them — a judgment the industry wants to leave to consumers.
The proposed label is likely to produce several changes, said Taylor.
For starters, portion sizes should better reflect reality. The 2.5 servings listed on a 20-ounce soda bottle are typically slurped up by an individual in one sitting rather than split between a couple and their child. The same goes for a can of soup, where one serving is often listed as two-fifths of a can.
The FDA is also likely to find a way to emphasize calories, which many people rely on for weight control. Other items likely to disappear or change because they haven't proven useful include calories from fat and the daily percent value numbers that show how much what an average diet should include.
Still, some wish the revisions would go further to list information about the amount of preservatives in a food and the degree of processing it has undergone. Health activists say such changes could help trim waistlines in America.
The food industry wouldn't like to see many major changes. The current label is easily recognizable and adaptable to food packages of different sizes because it's simple, said Regina Hildwine, director for science, policy, labeling and standards at the Grocery Manufacturers Association.
Hildwine says her Washington-based group, which represents 300 top food, beverage companies — including Nestle, General Mills Inc., and Coca-Cola Co. — has provided extensive feedback to the FDA in the run-up to their proposed rule.
"I personally talk with FDA on a regular basis to share views and get information and sometimes they call me," said Hildwine.
Advocates believe that the government and industry are too cozy, and that food companies are reluctant to overhaul food labels for fear of their profits being hurt.
"It's against the industry's interest to help the consumer make better choices because then they'll sell less food," said Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. "If the population is going to lose weight, it's going to eat less food, so that means less business for them."
There's no shortage of ideas on how to improve the label. A recent contest by theUniversity of California, Berkeley and Good Magazine yielded 60 colorful new designs.
A familiar theme popped up: red, yellow and green colors of a traffic light to indicate whether a food is good or bad. Another offered thumbs up and thumbs down on nutrients, depending on how much.
Manufacturers don't think a stoplight system would work because most foods have a mix of nutrients and diets are not the same for everyone, Hildwine said.
"A color-coded scheme would not be as helpful to consumers as a fact-based approach," she said.
The winning design was created by Renee Walker, whose label is topped by a large blocks of color above the nutrient listing, with each block representing an ingredient. For example, a jar of peanut butter would typically have a big box for peanuts, a smaller box for sugar, and other blocks for other ingredients.
The FDA has long avoided putting qualitative judgments about food on labels in favor of a simple listing of macronutrients, said contest judge and Center for Science in the Public Interest executive director Michael Jacobson.
Before the FDA first introduced the nutrition facts label in 1992, choosy Americans puzzled over a tiny printed listing of ingredients on packages to help determine what to feed their families.
As a result, Americans often relied on gut feelings to choose their diets at a time when the obesity epidemic was taking root.
Dr. David Kessler served as FDA commissioner during what he called a "battle royale" over the first label.
"Every change is a battle with the food industry," said Kessler. "The food label that we implemented — did it harm the food industry in any way? No. In fact, I'm sure they profited from it."
Kessler, now a University of California, San Francisco professor and author, says the label is due for an update.
Like many experts, he'd like to see the new label address how much ingredients are processed.
A pie-chart could, for example, show how much of a jar of tomato sauce is from actual tomatoes, and how much is sugar, fats, sodium, water and whatever else may be in it.
Not that all food processing is bad. Skim milk and lean meat have been skimmed and trimmed of fat. Frozen vegetables are typically captured at peak ripeness without introduction of preservatives or sodium.
But many highly processed foods are stuffed with unpronounceable and nutritionally questionable substances. Add fat, sugar and salt, as processed foods so often do, Kessler said, and you have the perfect recipe for an American-style obesity epidemic.
"Twenty years ago, you would have maybe 20 to 30 chews per bite of food," said Kessler. "Today, food is so highly processed and so stimulating it goes down in a wash (of saliva), like we're eating adult baby food."
Updated 9/5/2011 11:22 AM, The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES – Uncle Sam wants you to know more about what you're eating.
The Food and Drug Administration wants to revise the nutrition facts label — that breakdown of fats, salts, sugars and nutrients on packaging — to give consumers more useful information and help fight the national obesity epidemic.
A proposal is in the works to change several parts of the label, including more accurate serving sizes, a greater emphasis on calories and a diminished role in the daily percent values for substances like fat, sodium and carbohydrates.
It's the latest attempt to improve the way Americans view food and make choices about what they eat, and comes in the wake of major advances in nutrition regulations by the Obama administration.
Calorie counts are popping up on menus of chain restaurants across the country and the longstanding food pyramid was toppled this year by the U.S. government in favor of a plate that gives a picture of what a healthy daily diet looks like.
The struggle to redesign the labels on every box, can and carton has been in the works since 2003, and some of the changes could be proposed as soon as this year.FDA Deputy Commissioner Michael Taylor cautions not to expect a grand overhaul, but the revamped label does mark a shift to create a more useful nutritional snapshot of foods millions of Americans consume every day.
"There's no question obesity is a central public health concern that the nutrition facts panel can play a role in. It's obviously not a magic wand but it can be an informative tool," said Taylor.
For two decades, the black and white label has offered a glance of nutritional information about what's inside each package, including calories and grams of fats, cholesterol, protein and carbohydrates. Critics have complained it's confusing and doesn't offer a simpler way to make a choice about whether it's good for them — a judgment the industry wants to leave to consumers.
The proposed label is likely to produce several changes, said Taylor.
For starters, portion sizes should better reflect reality. The 2.5 servings listed on a 20-ounce soda bottle are typically slurped up by an individual in one sitting rather than split between a couple and their child. The same goes for a can of soup, where one serving is often listed as two-fifths of a can.
The FDA is also likely to find a way to emphasize calories, which many people rely on for weight control. Other items likely to disappear or change because they haven't proven useful include calories from fat and the daily percent value numbers that show how much what an average diet should include.
Still, some wish the revisions would go further to list information about the amount of preservatives in a food and the degree of processing it has undergone. Health activists say such changes could help trim waistlines in America.
The food industry wouldn't like to see many major changes. The current label is easily recognizable and adaptable to food packages of different sizes because it's simple, said Regina Hildwine, director for science, policy, labeling and standards at the Grocery Manufacturers Association.
Hildwine says her Washington-based group, which represents 300 top food, beverage companies — including Nestle, General Mills Inc., and Coca-Cola Co. — has provided extensive feedback to the FDA in the run-up to their proposed rule.
"I personally talk with FDA on a regular basis to share views and get information and sometimes they call me," said Hildwine.
Advocates believe that the government and industry are too cozy, and that food companies are reluctant to overhaul food labels for fear of their profits being hurt.
"It's against the industry's interest to help the consumer make better choices because then they'll sell less food," said Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. "If the population is going to lose weight, it's going to eat less food, so that means less business for them."
There's no shortage of ideas on how to improve the label. A recent contest by theUniversity of California, Berkeley and Good Magazine yielded 60 colorful new designs.
A familiar theme popped up: red, yellow and green colors of a traffic light to indicate whether a food is good or bad. Another offered thumbs up and thumbs down on nutrients, depending on how much.
Manufacturers don't think a stoplight system would work because most foods have a mix of nutrients and diets are not the same for everyone, Hildwine said.
"A color-coded scheme would not be as helpful to consumers as a fact-based approach," she said.
The winning design was created by Renee Walker, whose label is topped by a large blocks of color above the nutrient listing, with each block representing an ingredient. For example, a jar of peanut butter would typically have a big box for peanuts, a smaller box for sugar, and other blocks for other ingredients.
The FDA has long avoided putting qualitative judgments about food on labels in favor of a simple listing of macronutrients, said contest judge and Center for Science in the Public Interest executive director Michael Jacobson.
Before the FDA first introduced the nutrition facts label in 1992, choosy Americans puzzled over a tiny printed listing of ingredients on packages to help determine what to feed their families.
As a result, Americans often relied on gut feelings to choose their diets at a time when the obesity epidemic was taking root.
Dr. David Kessler served as FDA commissioner during what he called a "battle royale" over the first label.
"Every change is a battle with the food industry," said Kessler. "The food label that we implemented — did it harm the food industry in any way? No. In fact, I'm sure they profited from it."
Kessler, now a University of California, San Francisco professor and author, says the label is due for an update.
Like many experts, he'd like to see the new label address how much ingredients are processed.
A pie-chart could, for example, show how much of a jar of tomato sauce is from actual tomatoes, and how much is sugar, fats, sodium, water and whatever else may be in it.
Not that all food processing is bad. Skim milk and lean meat have been skimmed and trimmed of fat. Frozen vegetables are typically captured at peak ripeness without introduction of preservatives or sodium.
But many highly processed foods are stuffed with unpronounceable and nutritionally questionable substances. Add fat, sugar and salt, as processed foods so often do, Kessler said, and you have the perfect recipe for an American-style obesity epidemic.
"Twenty years ago, you would have maybe 20 to 30 chews per bite of food," said Kessler. "Today, food is so highly processed and so stimulating it goes down in a wash (of saliva), like we're eating adult baby food."
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Can Big Food Regulate Itself? Fat Chance
August 2, 2011, 8:10 pm
Can Big Food Regulate Itself? Fat Chance
By MARK BITTMAN
Life would be so much easier if we could only set our own guidelines. You could define the average weight as 10 pounds higher than your own and, voilà , no more obesity! You could raise the speed limit to 90 miles per hour and never worry about a ticket. You could call a cholesterol level of 250 “normal” and celebrate with a bag of fried pork rinds. (You could even claim that cutting government spending would increase employment, but that might be going too far.) You could certainly turn junk food into something “healthy.”
A Happy Meal with a piece of apple is still a box of branded, overpriced junk food.
That’s what the food industry is doing.
Back in May I wrote about the voluntary guidelines for marketing junk food to kids developed by an interagency group headed by the Federal Trade Commission. These non-binding suggestions ask that the industry market real food to kids instead of the junk they so famously favor selling. But the industry argues that the recommendations are effectively mandatory because non-compliance would lead to retaliation and eliminate all food advertising to adolescents, as well as 74,000 jobs.
On the phone last week, Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, told me that even though the guidelines are “without teeth,” the pushback from the industry has been formidable: “We have seen political showmanship, misinformation about the impact of these voluntary guidelines, insistence that the industry has been successful in self-regulation and that these efforts would violate the First Amendment.”
That voluntary guidelines could curb the right to free speech is absurd, but not as wacky as letting the industry set its own standards. Yet that’s what has happened: The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), a group of food manufacturers that includes McDonald’s, Burger King, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods came up with its own guidelines defining foods healthy enough to market to kids. (It’s worth mentioning another group, too — if just to admire its name, The Sensible Food Policy Coalition — led by PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, General Mills and other big companies, evidently created solely to prevent the voluntary guidelines from gaining a foothold.)
CFBAI is a champion of “self-regulation,” which means repeating a series of mantras that include “facts” like “there is no such thing as good food and bad food,” or that Cookie Crisp cereal (or dozens of others) “can be a part of a balanced diet,” all the while micro-adjusting hyper-processed food so that “more fiber” and “less sugar” aren’t outright lies, even though the food itself can hardly be claimed to be “less junky.” With self-regulation, even Kraft Singles can be considered “part of a balanced diet.”
And guess what? In general, the companies fare well in meeting their own standards (which, pathetically, the F.T.C. sees as a “significant advance”): two-thirds of the products they advertise are A-O.K., with the remainder requiring just modest adjustments. See? Mission accomplished! Corn Pops are now healthy!
Another example: last week, McDonald’s promised a minor tweak of its Happy Meal, (which, of course, “can be part of a well-balanced diet for kids”) adding a few apple slices, removing a few French fries and making milk — chocolate or regular — a more prominent option. It still comes with a toy, and soda will remain a choice. (I’m not sure anyone is claiming soda is part of a healthy diet, but stay tuned.) The move received widespread praise, with Michelle Obama leading the cheers.
Self-regulation may be immediate, non-threatening and magical, but it doesn’t work.
But despite the seal of approval of our first lady/self-appointed nutrition expert, a Happy Meal with a piece of apple is still a box of branded, overpriced junk food sold not by its value but by its marketing scheme. (Forty percent of McDonald’s advertising budget is spent on marketing to kids.)
This is not “progress,” but a public relations victory along with — as Michele Simon points out in her blog — an attempt to short-circuit regulations and laws that have some guts, like the one in San Francisco that forbids the inclusion of toys in meals that don’t meet reasonable nutrition standards. The last thing McDonald’s or any like corporation wants to see is a strong, activist government protecting consumers, whether or not they’re capable of adult judgment or are habituated (a harsher word is “addicted”) to self-destructive products.
Self-regulation may be immediate, non-threatening and magical, but it doesn’t work. A study published earlier this week in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine by Dr. Lisa Powell and other researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago tracked changes in exposure for all food, beverage and restaurant TV ads seen by kids from 2 to 11 years old, from 2003 to 2009. It found that, overall, daily exposure to the ads declined but the percentage among companies that had pledged to self-regulate was higher than those that didn’t. And in 2009, 86 percent of these ads still featured unhealthy foods.
What’s worse? Self-serving self-regulation or toothless guidelines set by an agency that appears to be complicit in maintaining the status quo? Hard to say. What’s better is having grass roots movements that drive agencies toward real regulation.
Can Big Food Regulate Itself? Fat Chance
By MARK BITTMAN
Life would be so much easier if we could only set our own guidelines. You could define the average weight as 10 pounds higher than your own and, voilà , no more obesity! You could raise the speed limit to 90 miles per hour and never worry about a ticket. You could call a cholesterol level of 250 “normal” and celebrate with a bag of fried pork rinds. (You could even claim that cutting government spending would increase employment, but that might be going too far.) You could certainly turn junk food into something “healthy.”
A Happy Meal with a piece of apple is still a box of branded, overpriced junk food.
That’s what the food industry is doing.
Back in May I wrote about the voluntary guidelines for marketing junk food to kids developed by an interagency group headed by the Federal Trade Commission. These non-binding suggestions ask that the industry market real food to kids instead of the junk they so famously favor selling. But the industry argues that the recommendations are effectively mandatory because non-compliance would lead to retaliation and eliminate all food advertising to adolescents, as well as 74,000 jobs.
On the phone last week, Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, told me that even though the guidelines are “without teeth,” the pushback from the industry has been formidable: “We have seen political showmanship, misinformation about the impact of these voluntary guidelines, insistence that the industry has been successful in self-regulation and that these efforts would violate the First Amendment.”
That voluntary guidelines could curb the right to free speech is absurd, but not as wacky as letting the industry set its own standards. Yet that’s what has happened: The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), a group of food manufacturers that includes McDonald’s, Burger King, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods came up with its own guidelines defining foods healthy enough to market to kids. (It’s worth mentioning another group, too — if just to admire its name, The Sensible Food Policy Coalition — led by PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, General Mills and other big companies, evidently created solely to prevent the voluntary guidelines from gaining a foothold.)
CFBAI is a champion of “self-regulation,” which means repeating a series of mantras that include “facts” like “there is no such thing as good food and bad food,” or that Cookie Crisp cereal (or dozens of others) “can be a part of a balanced diet,” all the while micro-adjusting hyper-processed food so that “more fiber” and “less sugar” aren’t outright lies, even though the food itself can hardly be claimed to be “less junky.” With self-regulation, even Kraft Singles can be considered “part of a balanced diet.”
And guess what? In general, the companies fare well in meeting their own standards (which, pathetically, the F.T.C. sees as a “significant advance”): two-thirds of the products they advertise are A-O.K., with the remainder requiring just modest adjustments. See? Mission accomplished! Corn Pops are now healthy!
Another example: last week, McDonald’s promised a minor tweak of its Happy Meal, (which, of course, “can be part of a well-balanced diet for kids”) adding a few apple slices, removing a few French fries and making milk — chocolate or regular — a more prominent option. It still comes with a toy, and soda will remain a choice. (I’m not sure anyone is claiming soda is part of a healthy diet, but stay tuned.) The move received widespread praise, with Michelle Obama leading the cheers.
Self-regulation may be immediate, non-threatening and magical, but it doesn’t work.
But despite the seal of approval of our first lady/self-appointed nutrition expert, a Happy Meal with a piece of apple is still a box of branded, overpriced junk food sold not by its value but by its marketing scheme. (Forty percent of McDonald’s advertising budget is spent on marketing to kids.)
This is not “progress,” but a public relations victory along with — as Michele Simon points out in her blog — an attempt to short-circuit regulations and laws that have some guts, like the one in San Francisco that forbids the inclusion of toys in meals that don’t meet reasonable nutrition standards. The last thing McDonald’s or any like corporation wants to see is a strong, activist government protecting consumers, whether or not they’re capable of adult judgment or are habituated (a harsher word is “addicted”) to self-destructive products.
Self-regulation may be immediate, non-threatening and magical, but it doesn’t work. A study published earlier this week in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine by Dr. Lisa Powell and other researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago tracked changes in exposure for all food, beverage and restaurant TV ads seen by kids from 2 to 11 years old, from 2003 to 2009. It found that, overall, daily exposure to the ads declined but the percentage among companies that had pledged to self-regulate was higher than those that didn’t. And in 2009, 86 percent of these ads still featured unhealthy foods.
What’s worse? Self-serving self-regulation or toothless guidelines set by an agency that appears to be complicit in maintaining the status quo? Hard to say. What’s better is having grass roots movements that drive agencies toward real regulation.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Tomorrow: NEW food pyramid
Goodbye Food Pyramid, Hello Dinner Plate
By WILLIAM NEUMAN NY Times 5/28/2011
Whatever you do, don’t call it a pie chart.
The Obama administration is about to ditch the food pyramid, that symbol of healthy eating for the last two decades. In its place officials are dishing up a simple, plate-shaped symbol, sliced into wedges for the basic food groups and half-filled with fruits and vegetables.
The circular plate, which will be unveiled Thursday, is meant to give consumers a fast, easily grasped reminder of the basics of a healthy diet. It consists of four colored sections, for fruits, vegetables, grains and protein, according to several people who have been briefed on the change. Beside the plate is a smaller circle for dairy, suggesting a glass of low-fat milk or perhaps a yogurt cup.
Few nutritionists will mourn the passing of the pyramid, which, while instantly recognized by millions of American school kids, parents and consumers, was derided by nutritionists as too confusing and deeply flawed because it did not distinguish clearly between healthy foods like whole grains and fish and less healthy choices like white bread and bacon. A version of the pyramid currently appearing on cereal boxes, frozen dinners and other foods has been so streamlined and stripped of information that many people have no idea what it represents.
“It’s going to be hard not to do better than the current pyramid, which basically conveys no useful information,” said Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Willett said he had not seen the new logo.
The new symbol was designed to underscore a central mantra of the federal government’s healthy eating push: make half your plate fruits and vegetables. And it is expected to be a crucial element of the administration’s crusade against obesity, which is being led by the first lady, Michelle Obama.
“We need to get consumers’ attention,” said Robert C. Post, deputy director of the Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. He would not discuss details of the icon in advance of the official unveiling. But he said it was meant to be a “visual cue” that would prompt “consumers to say, ‘I need to be a little more concerned about what I choose to build a healthy day’s diet.’ ”
Some who have seen the logo compared it with a pie chart, though dessert is hardly the association that the administration would like to conjure up. Others likened it to a pizza cut into slices (equally unpalatable for officials). One person said it called to mind a painting by the artist Mark Rothko, who was known for canvases with blocks of color. Those who had seen it would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by the administration to discuss it.
Dr. David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, who said he had heard descriptions of the new plate, suggested that if the symbol succeeded in getting people to eat significantly more fruits and vegetables, that alone would be an achievement.
“The reality is that very few of us eat like what has been suggested” in government guidelines for healthy eating, Dr. Kessler said. “There’s a world of difference between what’s being served and what’s on that plate.”
He called the plate a major improvement over the pyramid. “It conveys the message simply in a way that we all can understand,” he said.
The plate symbol is meant to help educate consumers about the government’s latest dietary guidelines, which were released in January.
Dr. Post said the U.S.D.A. had spent about $2 million to develop and promote the logo, including conducting research and focus groups and creating a Web site. Some of that money will also be used for the first year of a campaign to publicize the image. He said the agency would use the plate to get across several basic nutritional messages, including urging consumers to eat smaller portions, switch to low-fat or fat-free milk and drink water instead of sugary drinks.
The food pyramid has a long and tangled history. Its original version showed a hierarchy of foods, with those that made up the largest portions of a recommended diet, like grains, fruit and vegetables, closest to the wide base. Foods that were to be eaten in smaller quantities, like dairy and meat, were closer to the pyramid’s tapering top.
But the pyramid’s original release was held back over complaints from the meat and dairy industry that their products were being stigmatized. It was released with minor changes in 1992.
A revised pyramid was released in 2005. Called MyPyramid, it turned the old hierarchy on its side, with vertical brightly colored strips standing in for the different food groups. It also showed a stick figure running up the side to emphasize the need for exercise.
But the new pyramid was widely viewed as hard to understand. The Obama administration began talking about getting rid of it as early as last summer. At that time, a group of public health experts, nutritionists, food industry representatives and design professionals were invited to a meeting in Washington where they were asked to discuss possible alternative symbols. One option was a plate.
When several participants at that meeting said it would be better to create an improved version of the already familiar pyramid, an administration official rejected that idea, telling the group, “We can’t go back,” according to one person who attended the meeting. The person, who requested anonymity because the deliberations were intended to be confidential, said it was clear that the “marching orders were obviously to come up with something new.”
That “something new” will be plated up on Thursday.
By WILLIAM NEUMAN NY Times 5/28/2011
Whatever you do, don’t call it a pie chart.
The Obama administration is about to ditch the food pyramid, that symbol of healthy eating for the last two decades. In its place officials are dishing up a simple, plate-shaped symbol, sliced into wedges for the basic food groups and half-filled with fruits and vegetables.
The circular plate, which will be unveiled Thursday, is meant to give consumers a fast, easily grasped reminder of the basics of a healthy diet. It consists of four colored sections, for fruits, vegetables, grains and protein, according to several people who have been briefed on the change. Beside the plate is a smaller circle for dairy, suggesting a glass of low-fat milk or perhaps a yogurt cup.
Few nutritionists will mourn the passing of the pyramid, which, while instantly recognized by millions of American school kids, parents and consumers, was derided by nutritionists as too confusing and deeply flawed because it did not distinguish clearly between healthy foods like whole grains and fish and less healthy choices like white bread and bacon. A version of the pyramid currently appearing on cereal boxes, frozen dinners and other foods has been so streamlined and stripped of information that many people have no idea what it represents.
“It’s going to be hard not to do better than the current pyramid, which basically conveys no useful information,” said Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Willett said he had not seen the new logo.
The new symbol was designed to underscore a central mantra of the federal government’s healthy eating push: make half your plate fruits and vegetables. And it is expected to be a crucial element of the administration’s crusade against obesity, which is being led by the first lady, Michelle Obama.
“We need to get consumers’ attention,” said Robert C. Post, deputy director of the Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. He would not discuss details of the icon in advance of the official unveiling. But he said it was meant to be a “visual cue” that would prompt “consumers to say, ‘I need to be a little more concerned about what I choose to build a healthy day’s diet.’ ”
Some who have seen the logo compared it with a pie chart, though dessert is hardly the association that the administration would like to conjure up. Others likened it to a pizza cut into slices (equally unpalatable for officials). One person said it called to mind a painting by the artist Mark Rothko, who was known for canvases with blocks of color. Those who had seen it would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by the administration to discuss it.
Dr. David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, who said he had heard descriptions of the new plate, suggested that if the symbol succeeded in getting people to eat significantly more fruits and vegetables, that alone would be an achievement.
“The reality is that very few of us eat like what has been suggested” in government guidelines for healthy eating, Dr. Kessler said. “There’s a world of difference between what’s being served and what’s on that plate.”
He called the plate a major improvement over the pyramid. “It conveys the message simply in a way that we all can understand,” he said.
The plate symbol is meant to help educate consumers about the government’s latest dietary guidelines, which were released in January.
Dr. Post said the U.S.D.A. had spent about $2 million to develop and promote the logo, including conducting research and focus groups and creating a Web site. Some of that money will also be used for the first year of a campaign to publicize the image. He said the agency would use the plate to get across several basic nutritional messages, including urging consumers to eat smaller portions, switch to low-fat or fat-free milk and drink water instead of sugary drinks.
The food pyramid has a long and tangled history. Its original version showed a hierarchy of foods, with those that made up the largest portions of a recommended diet, like grains, fruit and vegetables, closest to the wide base. Foods that were to be eaten in smaller quantities, like dairy and meat, were closer to the pyramid’s tapering top.
But the pyramid’s original release was held back over complaints from the meat and dairy industry that their products were being stigmatized. It was released with minor changes in 1992.
A revised pyramid was released in 2005. Called MyPyramid, it turned the old hierarchy on its side, with vertical brightly colored strips standing in for the different food groups. It also showed a stick figure running up the side to emphasize the need for exercise.
But the new pyramid was widely viewed as hard to understand. The Obama administration began talking about getting rid of it as early as last summer. At that time, a group of public health experts, nutritionists, food industry representatives and design professionals were invited to a meeting in Washington where they were asked to discuss possible alternative symbols. One option was a plate.
When several participants at that meeting said it would be better to create an improved version of the already familiar pyramid, an administration official rejected that idea, telling the group, “We can’t go back,” according to one person who attended the meeting. The person, who requested anonymity because the deliberations were intended to be confidential, said it was clear that the “marching orders were obviously to come up with something new.”
That “something new” will be plated up on Thursday.
Friday, March 25, 2011
FDA Could Release Rule Next Week for Restaurant Menu Calorie Counts
CQ HEALTHBEAT NEWS, March 25, 2011 – 3:07 p.m.
By Rebecca Adams, CQ HealthBeat Associate Editor
A proposal that will outline the kind of nutritional information that restaurants will have to put on their menus will be revealed soon, a Food and Drug Administration official said Friday.
A proposed rule had been expected to be released by March 23. Lobbyists are now speculating that the rule will be released as early as Monday, a timetable that an FDA spokesman called “possible.”
“We expect only a short delay,” said FDA spokesman Michael Herndon. “It is a reflection of the complexity of this issue but most importantly an indication that the FDA is willing to work with all interested parties to ensure the best policy is presented.”
The rule was called for in the 2010 health care law (PL 111-48, PL 111-52). Under the law, chain restaurants with more than 20 locations have to post calorie counts for almost every item on their menu boards. Businesses will have to disclose the number of calories in each standard menu item, make additional nutrition information available to customers and provide per-item calorie information for self-service items. More than 200,000 eateries are expected to have to comply. (See related story, CQ HealthBeat, Nov. 4, 2010).
The goal behind the rule is to make Americans more aware of the amount of calories in the foods they eat in restaurants. Consumer advocacy groups say that one reason why the average waistline of Americans has expanded in the past few decades is that people don’t realize how much they are overeating when they dine out.
National Restaurant Association (NRA) officials supported the provision because they viewed a uniform, national policy as a better idea than a patchwork of different policies in various areas. However, they have been eager to see the details of what the FDA will require.
One issue that NRA officials and the International Franchise Association are worried about is that some chain restaurant owners have recently updated their menus because of other state or local regulations that may differ from the national requirements. They hope the agency will take that into consideration and give restaurant owners enough time to transition to the new rules. They also note that the restaurant industry is very diverse and want the FDA to write rules that could be seen as one-size-fits-all policies. They are encouraging the FDA to be as flexible as possible.
“We’re anxious to see what’s in the regulations,” said Sue Hensley, senior vice president of public affairs for the restaurant association.
Rebecca Adams can be reached at radams@cq.com.
By Rebecca Adams, CQ HealthBeat Associate Editor
A proposal that will outline the kind of nutritional information that restaurants will have to put on their menus will be revealed soon, a Food and Drug Administration official said Friday.
A proposed rule had been expected to be released by March 23. Lobbyists are now speculating that the rule will be released as early as Monday, a timetable that an FDA spokesman called “possible.”
“We expect only a short delay,” said FDA spokesman Michael Herndon. “It is a reflection of the complexity of this issue but most importantly an indication that the FDA is willing to work with all interested parties to ensure the best policy is presented.”
The rule was called for in the 2010 health care law (PL 111-48, PL 111-52). Under the law, chain restaurants with more than 20 locations have to post calorie counts for almost every item on their menu boards. Businesses will have to disclose the number of calories in each standard menu item, make additional nutrition information available to customers and provide per-item calorie information for self-service items. More than 200,000 eateries are expected to have to comply. (See related story, CQ HealthBeat, Nov. 4, 2010).
The goal behind the rule is to make Americans more aware of the amount of calories in the foods they eat in restaurants. Consumer advocacy groups say that one reason why the average waistline of Americans has expanded in the past few decades is that people don’t realize how much they are overeating when they dine out.
National Restaurant Association (NRA) officials supported the provision because they viewed a uniform, national policy as a better idea than a patchwork of different policies in various areas. However, they have been eager to see the details of what the FDA will require.
One issue that NRA officials and the International Franchise Association are worried about is that some chain restaurant owners have recently updated their menus because of other state or local regulations that may differ from the national requirements. They hope the agency will take that into consideration and give restaurant owners enough time to transition to the new rules. They also note that the restaurant industry is very diverse and want the FDA to write rules that could be seen as one-size-fits-all policies. They are encouraging the FDA to be as flexible as possible.
“We’re anxious to see what’s in the regulations,” said Sue Hensley, senior vice president of public affairs for the restaurant association.
Rebecca Adams can be reached at radams@cq.com.
Friday, February 25, 2011
How to Make Oatmeal . . . Wrong | New York Times
By MARK BITTMAN, February 22, 2011, 8:30pm
There’s a feeling of inevitability in writing about McDonald’s latest offering, their “bowl full of wholesome” — also known as oatmeal. The leadingfast-food multinational, with sales over $16.5 billion a year (just under the GDP of Afghanistan), represents a great deal of what is wrong with American food today. From a marketing perspective, they can do almost nothing wrong; from a nutritional perspective, they can do almost nothing right, as the oatmeal fiasco demonstrates.
One “positive” often raised about McDonald’s is that it sells calories cheap. But since many of these calories are in forms detrimental rather than beneficial to our health and to the environment, they’re actually quite expensive — the costs aren’t seen at the cash register but in the form of high health care bills and environmental degradation.
Oatmeal is on the other end of the food spectrum. Real oatmeal contains no ingredients; rather, it is an ingredient. As such, it’s a promising lifesaver: oats are easy to grow in almost any non-extreme climate and, minimally processed, they’re profoundly nourishing, inexpensive and ridiculously easy to cook. They can even be eaten raw, but more on that in a moment.
Like so many other venerable foods, oatmeal has been roundly abused by food marketers for more than 40 years. Take, for example, Quaker Strawberries and Cream Instant Oatmeal, which contains no strawberries, no cream, 12 times the sugars of Quaker Old Fashioned Oats and only half of the fiber. At least it’s inexpensive, less than 50 cents a packet on average. (A serving of cooked rolled oats will set you back half that at most, plus the cost of condiments; of course, it’ll be much better in every respect.)
The oatmeal and McDonald’s story broke late last year, when Mickey D’s, in its ongoing effort to tell us that it’s offering “a selection of balanced choices” (and to keep in step with arch-rival Starbucks) began to sell the cereal. Yet in typical McDonald’s fashion, the company is doing everything it can to turn oatmeal into yet another bad choice. (Not only that, they’ve made it more expensive than a double-cheeseburger: $2.38 per serving in New York.) “Cream” (which contains seven ingredients, two of them actual dairy) is automatically added; brown sugar is ostensibly optional, but it’s also added routinely unless a customer specifically requests otherwise. There are also diced apples, dried cranberries and raisins, the least processed of the ingredients (even the oatmeal contains seven ingredients, including “natural flavor”).
A more accurate description than “100% natural whole-grain oats,” “plump raisins,” “sweet cranberries” and “crisp fresh apples” would be “oats, sugar, sweetened dried fruit, cream and 11 weird ingredients you would never keep in your kitchen.”
Since we know there are barely any rules governing promotion of foods, one might wonder how this compares to real oatmeal, besides being 10 times as expensive. Some will say that it tastes better, but that’s because they’re addicted to sickly sweet foods, which is what this bowlful of wholesome is.
Others will argue that the McDonald’s version is more “convenient.” This is nonsense; in the time it takes to go into a McDonald’s, stand in line, order, wait, pay and leave, you could make oatmeal for four while taking your vitamins, brushing your teeth and half-unloading the dishwasher. (If you’re too busy to eat it before you leave the house, you could throw it in a container and microwave it at work. If you prefer so-called instant, flavored oatmeal, see this link, which will describe how to make your own).
If you don’t want to bother with the stove at all, you could put some rolled oats (instant not necessary) in a glass or bowl, along with a teeny pinch of salt, sugar or maple syrup or honey, maybe some dried fruit. Add milk and let stand for a minute (or 10). Eat. Eat while you’re walking around getting dressed. And then talk to me about convenience.
The aspect one cannot argue is nutrition: Incredibly, the McDonald’s product contains more sugar than a Snickers bar and only 10 fewer calories than a McDonald’s cheeseburger or Egg McMuffin. (Even without the brown sugar it has more calories than a McDonald’s hamburger.)
The bottom-line question is, “Why?” Why would McDonald’s, which appears every now and then to try to persuade us that it is adding “healthier” foods to its menu, take a venerable ingredient like oatmeal and turn it into expensive junk food? Why create a hideous concoction of 21 ingredients, many of them chemical and/or unnecessary? Why not try, for once, to keep it honest?
I asked them this, via e-mail: “Why could you not make oatmeal with nothing more than real oats and plain water, and offer customers a sweetener or two (honey, the only food on earth that doesn’t spoil, would seem a natural fit for this purpose), a packet of mixed dried fruit, and half-and-half or — even better — skim milk?”
Their answer, via e-mail and through a spokesperson (FMO is “fruit and maple oatmeal”): “Customers can order FMO with or without the light cream, brown sugar and the fruit. Our menu is entirely customizable by request with our ‘Made for You’ platform that has been in place since the late 90s.”
Oh, please. Here’s the thing: McDonald’s wants to get people in the store. Once a day, once a week, once a month, the more the better, of course, but routinely. And if you buy oatmeal, they’re o.k. with that. But they know that, once inside, you’ll probably opt for a sausage biscuit anyway.
And you won’t be much worse off.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
GAO Report on Food Labeling
“To ensure that the health-related claims on food labels are not false or misleading to consumers, we recommend that the Secretary of Health and Human Services direct the Commissioner of FDA to take the following three actions:
identify and request from Congress the authorities needed to access evidence from food companies regarding potentially false or misleading structure/function or other claims on food that would allow the agency to establish whether there is scientific support for the claims;
provide guidance to industry on the type and strength of scientific evidence needed to prevent false or misleading information in a structure/function claim; and
amend the Compliance Program Guidance Manual instructions to FDA inspectors for reviewing food labels during inspections of food facilities, to include steps for identifying potentially false or misleading structure/function claims for further review. “
Full report at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11102.pdf
identify and request from Congress the authorities needed to access evidence from food companies regarding potentially false or misleading structure/function or other claims on food that would allow the agency to establish whether there is scientific support for the claims;
provide guidance to industry on the type and strength of scientific evidence needed to prevent false or misleading information in a structure/function claim; and
amend the Compliance Program Guidance Manual instructions to FDA inspectors for reviewing food labels during inspections of food facilities, to include steps for identifying potentially false or misleading structure/function claims for further review. “
Full report at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11102.pdf
Friday, December 17, 2010
Limiting Front-Of-Food Packaging Labels and the First Amendment
Timothy D. Lytton, Albany Law School, Banning Front-of-Package Food Labels: First Amendment Constraints on Public Health Policy, in Public Health Nutrition.
Abstract:
Abstract:
In recent months, the FDA has begun a crackdown on misleading nutrition and health claims on the front of food packages by issuing warning letters to manufacturers and promising to develop stricter regulatory standards. Leading nutrition policy experts Marion Nestle and David Ludwig have called for an even tougher approach: a ban on all nutrition and health claims on the front of food packages.
Nestle and Ludwig argue that most of these claims are scientifically unsound and misleading to consumers and that eliminating them would ‘aid educational efforts to encourage the public to eat whole or minimally processed foods and to read the ingredients list on processed foods’.
Nestle and Ludwig are right to raise concerns about consumer protection and public health when it comes to front-of-package food labels, but an outright ban on front-of-package nutrition and health claims would violate the First Amendment. As nutrition policy experts develop efforts to regulate front-of-package nutrition and health claims, they should be mindful of First Amendment constraints on government regulation of commercial speech.
Nestle and Ludwig argue that most of these claims are scientifically unsound and misleading to consumers and that eliminating them would ‘aid educational efforts to encourage the public to eat whole or minimally processed foods and to read the ingredients list on processed foods’.
Nestle and Ludwig are right to raise concerns about consumer protection and public health when it comes to front-of-package food labels, but an outright ban on front-of-package nutrition and health claims would violate the First Amendment. As nutrition policy experts develop efforts to regulate front-of-package nutrition and health claims, they should be mindful of First Amendment constraints on government regulation of commercial speech.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Consumer Group Sues McDonald's Over Happy Meal Toys
Dear Child In The Back Seat:
Your days of whining for the Strawberry Shortcake Happy Meal toy you saw on TV may be numbered. At least in California.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest filed a lawsuit today against McDonald's in state court in California to stop the company from advertising toys with Happy Meals. It's no sure thing that the consumer group will get its way in court, of course, but the lawsuit ups the pressure on the fast-food chain over the combination of food and toys that appeal to kids. McDonald's defends the meals.
The group filed the class action suit on behalf of parents, including plaintiff Monet Parham, a 41-year-old mother of two from Sacramento who says she's fed up with the pestering.
"Happy meals are among the those things frequently requested, and the first thing they ask me to do is open the toy," Parham said in a press conference today. "I'm really concerned about the health of my children, and I don't think its OK to entice children to get Happy Meals with a toy," she added. McDonald's didn't immediately return requests for comment about the lawsuit, although it has known that CSPI intended to file a suit since June.
The lawsuit asserts that under California's consumer protection laws, McDonald's toy advertising is deceptive. It targets children under 8 years old who don't have the ability to understand advertising. "Little kids don't know the difference between a program and a commercial," says CSPI's Executive Director Michael Jacobson. The Institute of Medicine and the Supreme Court have said as much.
But the real concern for the group, and for parents, CSPI says, is that McDonald's advertising makes kids beg their parents to buy food that's high in calories, sugar, fat and salt, which contributes to obesity.
Marketing to kids is an end-run around parental control," says Stephen Gardner, CSPI's director of litigation.But CSPI is not asking for damages, just for McDonald's to stop advertising toys. "This is about the change, not the money," Gardner says.
For its part, McDonald's has added healthier items to its menu in recent years, like apple slices, low-fat milk. But french fries still go into Happy Meals more than 90 percent of the time, Jacobson notes. McDonald's and other fast food companies spend over half a billion dollars a year on advertising and marketing kids meals — most of it on toys.
Separately, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors overrode a mayoral veto last month to push ahead with an ordinance that would effectively ban toys from most Happy Meals starting in December 2011.
UPDATE: 12:48pm. McDonald's spokesperson Bridget Coffing issued the following statement. It addresses neither toys nor advertising:
We are proud of our Happy Meals and intend to vigorously defend our brand, our reputation and our food.
We stand on our 30 year track record of providing a fun experience for kids and families at McDonald’s.
We listen to our customers, and parents consistently tell us they approve of our Happy Meals.
We are confident that parents understand and appreciate that Happy Meals are a fun treat, with quality, right-sized food choices for their children that can fit into a balanced diet.
Blog
Your days of whining for the Strawberry Shortcake Happy Meal toy you saw on TV may be numbered. At least in California.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest filed a lawsuit today against McDonald's in state court in California to stop the company from advertising toys with Happy Meals. It's no sure thing that the consumer group will get its way in court, of course, but the lawsuit ups the pressure on the fast-food chain over the combination of food and toys that appeal to kids. McDonald's defends the meals.
The group filed the class action suit on behalf of parents, including plaintiff Monet Parham, a 41-year-old mother of two from Sacramento who says she's fed up with the pestering.
"Happy meals are among the those things frequently requested, and the first thing they ask me to do is open the toy," Parham said in a press conference today. "I'm really concerned about the health of my children, and I don't think its OK to entice children to get Happy Meals with a toy," she added. McDonald's didn't immediately return requests for comment about the lawsuit, although it has known that CSPI intended to file a suit since June.
The lawsuit asserts that under California's consumer protection laws, McDonald's toy advertising is deceptive. It targets children under 8 years old who don't have the ability to understand advertising. "Little kids don't know the difference between a program and a commercial," says CSPI's Executive Director Michael Jacobson. The Institute of Medicine and the Supreme Court have said as much.
But the real concern for the group, and for parents, CSPI says, is that McDonald's advertising makes kids beg their parents to buy food that's high in calories, sugar, fat and salt, which contributes to obesity.
Marketing to kids is an end-run around parental control," says Stephen Gardner, CSPI's director of litigation.But CSPI is not asking for damages, just for McDonald's to stop advertising toys. "This is about the change, not the money," Gardner says.
For its part, McDonald's has added healthier items to its menu in recent years, like apple slices, low-fat milk. But french fries still go into Happy Meals more than 90 percent of the time, Jacobson notes. McDonald's and other fast food companies spend over half a billion dollars a year on advertising and marketing kids meals — most of it on toys.
Separately, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors overrode a mayoral veto last month to push ahead with an ordinance that would effectively ban toys from most Happy Meals starting in December 2011.
UPDATE: 12:48pm. McDonald's spokesperson Bridget Coffing issued the following statement. It addresses neither toys nor advertising:
We are proud of our Happy Meals and intend to vigorously defend our brand, our reputation and our food.
We stand on our 30 year track record of providing a fun experience for kids and families at McDonald’s.
We listen to our customers, and parents consistently tell us they approve of our Happy Meals.
We are confident that parents understand and appreciate that Happy Meals are a fun treat, with quality, right-sized food choices for their children that can fit into a balanced diet.
Blog
Margaret Hamburg on Food, Health, and Medicine : The New Yorker
Currents: Margaret Hamburg on Food, Health, and Medicine : The New Yorker, Dec. 6, 2010
Michael Specter talks with Margaret Hamburg, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, about the job of regulating one-third of the economy, truth in labelling and packaging, and the potential benefits and dangers of genomics.
Michael Specter talks with Margaret Hamburg, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, about the job of regulating one-third of the economy, truth in labelling and packaging, and the potential benefits and dangers of genomics.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Food Traceability
This is the fifth and final post in a series of articles on traceability. Written by Springwise, and supported by IBM. Check out our previous posts on informing consumers about child labour, milk tracking by a Swedish dairy, a registration service for product recalls and supermarkets offering increased food traceability, or read more about building a smarter planet.
For today's post, we've collected examples of ten food brands that give consumers access to information on the origins of their products' ingredients. While these efforts are baby steps toward true traceability — and critics are somewhat justified in their assertion that images of verdant fields and smiling farmers are little more than marketing tools — smart brands are nonetheless moving in the direction of increased transparency.
1. Stone-Buhr — Buyers of Stone-Buhr's All Purpose Flour can type in a lot code on the company's website to see which family farms grew the grain. Stone-Buhr's emphasis is on spotlighting the family-owned farms in the Northwest who supply it with certified sustainable wheat. Website: www.findthefarmer.com
2. Coca-Cola — In the UK, Coca-Cola launched a web app that allows consumers to trace the origin of their can or bottle of Coke. Instead of divulging the sources of ingredients, Coca-Cola focuses on manufacturing locations, distribution and environmental impact. It estimates the carbon footprint of a drink, and shows the address of the factory it was made in.
Website: www.coca-cola.co.uk/environment/trace-your-coke.html
3. Askinosie — Missouri-based chocolate maker Askinosie invites customers to enter a 'Choc-O-Lot' number to view the chocolate's geographical origin, as well as information about the farmers who grew the cocoa beans. The tool highlights the company's commitment both to quality and to a fair deal for farmers. Askinosie buys directly from farmers in Mexico, Phillipines, Tanzania and Ecuador, and doesn't purchase beans until they've met the farmers in person.
Website: www.askinosie.com
4. Dole Organic — Dole lets consumers “travel to the origin of each organic product”. By typing in a fruit sticker's three-digit code on Dole Organic's website, customers can find the story behind their banana or pineapple. Each farm's section on the website includes background info, shows photos of the crops and workers and tells consumers more about the origin of Dole's organic products.
Website: www.doleorganic.com
5. Chippindale Foods — Chippindale Foods supplies free range eggs to supermarkets in northern England. The company created wheresyoursfrom.com to allow consumers to find out where their eggs were laid. After entering the code printed on an egg carton, people can view pictures of 'their' farmer and hens, and read a history of the farm.
Website: www.wheresyoursfrom.com
6. Frito-Lay — Another big brand that's embracing traceability is Frito-Lay. Its Chip Tracker lets consumers trace where a particular bag of chips was made, by entering their ZIP code along with the first three digits of the bag's product code. The site returns a specific location along with its annual output. An associated map, meanwhile, highlights both growing and production facilities.
Website: www.fritolay.com/lays/chip-tracker.html
7. Fresh Express — A subsidiary of Chiquita Brands and purveyor of washed and packaged salad greens, Fresh Express allows consumers to find the origin of their salad through a 'Leaf Locator' on the company's website. Fresh Express sources leafy greens from five US states and Mexico, and includes details on a location's climate, growing season and agricultural history.
Website: www.freshexpress.com
8. Crop to Cup — Through Crop to Cup's website, consumers can trace their coffee back to the farmers who produced it. Drinkers of Uganda Bugisu coffee, for example, can read a profile of Peter Guimuii, who is married, has six children and approximately 5,000 coffee trees. The detailed personal information provided underscores Crop to Cup's goal of improving farmers' livelihoods.
Website: www.croptocup.com
9. Domino's Pizza — Pizza lovers don't enter product codes on 'Behind the Pizza', which was created by Domino's to give consumers more information on how their pizza ingredients are made. While the site does show manufacturing plants and farms it works with, the focus here is more on edutainment than targeted transparency.
Website: more.dominos.com/behindthepizza
10. Iglo — First featured on Springwise in 2008, 'Woher kommt Ihr Spinat' is still going strong. Created by Iglo, a European market leader in the frozen foods segment, the program gives consumers access to details on where their spinach came from. Offsetting its Big Brand reputation, Iglo displays pictures of the spinach grower and his or her family, alongside information about the farm.
Website: www.iglo.de
For today's post, we've collected examples of ten food brands that give consumers access to information on the origins of their products' ingredients. While these efforts are baby steps toward true traceability — and critics are somewhat justified in their assertion that images of verdant fields and smiling farmers are little more than marketing tools — smart brands are nonetheless moving in the direction of increased transparency.
1. Stone-Buhr — Buyers of Stone-Buhr's All Purpose Flour can type in a lot code on the company's website to see which family farms grew the grain. Stone-Buhr's emphasis is on spotlighting the family-owned farms in the Northwest who supply it with certified sustainable wheat. Website: www.findthefarmer.com
2. Coca-Cola — In the UK, Coca-Cola launched a web app that allows consumers to trace the origin of their can or bottle of Coke. Instead of divulging the sources of ingredients, Coca-Cola focuses on manufacturing locations, distribution and environmental impact. It estimates the carbon footprint of a drink, and shows the address of the factory it was made in.
Website: www.coca-cola.co.uk/environment/trace-your-coke.html
3. Askinosie — Missouri-based chocolate maker Askinosie invites customers to enter a 'Choc-O-Lot' number to view the chocolate's geographical origin, as well as information about the farmers who grew the cocoa beans. The tool highlights the company's commitment both to quality and to a fair deal for farmers. Askinosie buys directly from farmers in Mexico, Phillipines, Tanzania and Ecuador, and doesn't purchase beans until they've met the farmers in person.
Website: www.askinosie.com
4. Dole Organic — Dole lets consumers “travel to the origin of each organic product”. By typing in a fruit sticker's three-digit code on Dole Organic's website, customers can find the story behind their banana or pineapple. Each farm's section on the website includes background info, shows photos of the crops and workers and tells consumers more about the origin of Dole's organic products.
Website: www.doleorganic.com
5. Chippindale Foods — Chippindale Foods supplies free range eggs to supermarkets in northern England. The company created wheresyoursfrom.com to allow consumers to find out where their eggs were laid. After entering the code printed on an egg carton, people can view pictures of 'their' farmer and hens, and read a history of the farm.
Website: www.wheresyoursfrom.com
6. Frito-Lay — Another big brand that's embracing traceability is Frito-Lay. Its Chip Tracker lets consumers trace where a particular bag of chips was made, by entering their ZIP code along with the first three digits of the bag's product code. The site returns a specific location along with its annual output. An associated map, meanwhile, highlights both growing and production facilities.
Website: www.fritolay.com/lays/chip-tracker.html
7. Fresh Express — A subsidiary of Chiquita Brands and purveyor of washed and packaged salad greens, Fresh Express allows consumers to find the origin of their salad through a 'Leaf Locator' on the company's website. Fresh Express sources leafy greens from five US states and Mexico, and includes details on a location's climate, growing season and agricultural history.
Website: www.freshexpress.com
8. Crop to Cup — Through Crop to Cup's website, consumers can trace their coffee back to the farmers who produced it. Drinkers of Uganda Bugisu coffee, for example, can read a profile of Peter Guimuii, who is married, has six children and approximately 5,000 coffee trees. The detailed personal information provided underscores Crop to Cup's goal of improving farmers' livelihoods.
Website: www.croptocup.com
9. Domino's Pizza — Pizza lovers don't enter product codes on 'Behind the Pizza', which was created by Domino's to give consumers more information on how their pizza ingredients are made. While the site does show manufacturing plants and farms it works with, the focus here is more on edutainment than targeted transparency.
Website: more.dominos.com/behindthepizza
10. Iglo — First featured on Springwise in 2008, 'Woher kommt Ihr Spinat' is still going strong. Created by Iglo, a European market leader in the frozen foods segment, the program gives consumers access to details on where their spinach came from. Offsetting its Big Brand reputation, Iglo displays pictures of the spinach grower and his or her family, alongside information about the farm.
Website: www.iglo.de
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