As people streamed out of the Kara Walker installation “A Subtlety” on a recent Sunday afternoon to buy an ice cream cone from one of the trucks idling outside the old Domino Sugar Factory on the Williamsburg waterfront, I wondered how many thought about the jarring contradiction: paying homage to the bodily harms involved in the harsh industrial process inherent in refining sugar, then consuming the industrial concoction that is a Mister Softee-type ice cream cone.

Since so much of Ms. Walker’s work relies on the inherent contradictions that exist in contemporary American culture, especially as they relate to our brutal history, were the trucks, perhaps, even part of the exhibition? In a way, it felt like the perfect ending, punctuating her point.

In a similar vein, as (the mostly white) people posed in front of her giant sugar sphinx and took selfies with the statue behind them, something felt deeply wrong. People standing and smiling in front of this 35-foot-high and 75-foot-long sugar depiction of a black “mammy” — which renders the black female body in pure white and was made of 160,000 pounds of sugar — as if it were just another New York City tourist attraction added to the sense that something about the entire experience was seriously amiss.

And this feeling was enhanced by the smell that hits you upon entering the old Domino factory. At first, it’s just overly sweet, but the sweetness quickly deteriorates into a sickly, oppressive smell, making it difficult to stay in the space for long. That, combined with the molasses-coated sculptures of black children carrying oversized baskets that were in various states of decay or destruction (some smashed into pieces on the floor), and the factory walls stained with large swaths of dark reddish-brown drippings, created an overwhelming presence to the great violence that still laces sugar production, as it has for centuries.

This very sugar refinery was long notorious for its terrible working conditions, even well into recent history. Beginning in 2000, the plant was the site of one of the longest labor strikes ever in New York City: 286 workers protested wages and working conditions for 20 months. The owners of the Domino sugar empire — the world’s largest refiner of cane sugar that imports sugar from the Dominican Republic and elsewhere — have been accused repeatedly of labor exploitation. The United States Department of Labor lists Dominican sugar as being produced by children or forced labor, bringing into focus the fact that the legacy of unfree labor, exploitation and violence is at once part of our past and our present.

Sugar has a long and sordid history. Sugar plantations in the Caribbean and southern United States were the first large-scale monocultures for producing a highly profitable product — the prototype for our current industrial agriculture system. As the author and anthropologist Sidney Mintz puts it, even before capitalism had arrived as the dominant economic structure, the early plantation systems were “agro-industrial” due to “the combination of agriculture and processing under one authority…This was because neither mill nor field could be separately (independently) productive.” Mintz adds that “the combination of field and factory, of skilled workers with unskilled, and the strictness of scheduling together gave an industrial cast to plantation enterprises.”

The sugar plantation/factory also separated production from consumption and the worker from his tools, which helps to define the lives of these mostly unfree workers between the 16^th and late 19^th centuries in the New World. And while slave laborers were the first to produce sugar en masse for worldwide consumption, the working class found comfort in sugar, which became less a symbol of power and more a symbol of profit as it was transformed from an upper-class luxury into a mainstay and even necessity of the working-class diet. “The introduction of foods like sucrose made it possible to raise the caloric content of the proletarian diet without increasing proportionately the quantities of meat, fish, poultry and other dairy products,” writes Mintz.

Which brings us to today, when the people suffering most from diet-related illness brought on in large part by the overconsumption of sugar are poor people of color. Corporations which provide cheap calories that fill the belly while also providing pleasure effectively profit off populations with limited means. Diabetes (almost all of which is Type 2) is 66 percent higher among Hispanic Americans and 77 percent higher among African-Americans as compared to their white peers. African-American women suffer more from the disease than any other group: One in four women older than 55 has diabetes, and African-American women have the highest rates of two of the worst complications resulting from diabetes — amputation and kidney failure.

Sugar is particularly toxic for those with diabetes, and many Americans are eating tremendous amounts of it; the most recent estimate is three pounds of sugar per week, or 156 pounds per year. At this rate of consumption, sugar does previously unimaginable things to our bodies at increasingly younger ages, prompting the name-change of adult-onset diabetes to Type 2 diabetes — one in three children born in 2000 will develop the disease, and many children in this generation will not outlive their parents.

For most Americans, sugar is close to impossible to avoid — it laces the bulk of the processed foods that we rely on for nearly every meal. And we continue to import more than 200,000 tons of sugar a year from the Dominican Republic, despite the known labor violations.

This was the very sugar that Ms. Walker used for the exhibit. Domino donated 80 tons of it (she “only” used 40), highlighting the grotesque waste of resources in which we all partake. Beyond the human rights violations are the environmentally costly processes of production itself, from the chemical fertilizers and pesticides used to grow the sugar to the pollutants spewed into the environment as it is refined.

And so Ms. Walker’s “A Subtlety,” which closed this past Sunday, connected in so many critical ways the issues of racial and sexual oppression with the industrial processes that go into much of our food supply. Indeed, we are all increasingly made of sugar, and our consumption of it makes us complicit in the violence and destruction that Ms. Walker rendered visible in her sugar sphinx — yet at the same time we are victims of this damage, borne out in our own bodies.

This also appeared in The New York Times

Last week my piece "Bad Eating Habits Start in the Womb" appeared in TheNew York Times and generated a lot of interest and  commentary — it was the number one most emailed story on the entire site for over a day. I find this to be an encouraging sign that people are really concerned about the food they eat, and especially about the health of their babies and children. Click here to listen to an interview I did for New Hampshire Public Radio discussing my piece. Below is a description from NHPR's website.

You may be familiar with the ordeal of introducing children to broccoli and spinach.  Two new studies suggest that finicky eaters might have picked up their discriminating habit in the womb. Forget genetics, personal responsibility, and discipline. Your taste for junk food and soda may have a lot to do with how your mother satisfied her cravings.

Kristin Wartman, is a food, politics and health journalist. She recently wrote about the new science of food choices for the New York Times.

Photo: Rafael Viana Araujo via Flickr Creative Commons

While Congress battles it out over health care reform, the resulting government shutdown will have far-reaching impacts on food safety, environmental protections, food production and farming. It also has serious implications for the health and nutrition of many Americans. Depending on the duration of the shut down, it could be nothing less than catastrophic for a great number of people.

For those same Americans to whom the Republicans are so opposed to providing adequate health care, the shutdown will also affect their already limited ability to access healthy foods, further harming their health. This will be especially true for those most in need -- namely the nine million pregnant women and new mothers who rely on the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says that states will be able to fund WIC for a week and beyond that additional funds may be available through October, however, the USDA warns that state agencies "may still face funding shortfalls associated with FY 2014 obligations during the shutdown."

WIC is a critically important program that provides healthier food options for pregnant women and new mothers who are poor, have medical problems, or are considered to be at "nutrition risk." WIC also provides important health referrals to the nine million people who currently rely on the program. And when considering the negative long-term effects that poor nutrition has in utero and in young children, the true costs of cutting funding for WIC have not been accounted for.

Which brings us back to health care. Many politicians fail to see that the state of the economy depends in large part on the state of health among all Americans. American health is on a downward trend and by cutting crucial food funding for the poor, especially pregnant women and new mothers, we will only exacerbate this trend.

The shut down also means that the USDA's communications offices are now closed. So, if important information about food safety comes to light, we probably won't know.

USDA databases that provide import market information for farmers will also be closed. Modern Farmer reports that, "Markets rely on reports from the USDA to set the price of soy, wheat, corn, beef, etc. Without an October report traders would be adjusting prices in the dark and farmers would be selling without knowing the real value of their crops."

Small family farmers will also be affected since many are dependent on loans from the USDA and delays on loans will likely cost many their farms -- as many as 1,400 small farmers are likely to lose their farms as a result of the shutdown, according to Rural Foundation Advancement International.

Other agency shutdowns that will affect our food system include:

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is essentially completely shut down except for current work on Superfund sites. This means the EPA will stop monitoring air pollution and pesticide use.
• The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which will eliminate much of its food-safety checks, including "routine establishment inspections...monitoring of imports, notification programs (e.g., food contact substances, infant formula), and the majority of the laboratory research necessary to inform public health decision-making."
• The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has stopped taking new patients for clinical research and its hotline for medical questions is closed.
• The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which has stopped its flu program and says that it will have a "significantly reduced capacity to respond to outbreak investigations." The CDC has also stopped providing "support to state and local partners for infectious disease surveillance."

And while the USDA will continue to inspect meat, dairy, eggs and food imports with 87 percent of its employees still working, the agency has also said that if a violation is indeed found it may not have the resources to fully investigate. The USDA plan also warns that, "A lengthy hiatus would affect the safety of human life and have serious adverse effects on the industry, the consumer and the Agency."

The FDA, which is responsible for inspecting the majority of the food industry, will not be functioning in this capacity during the shutdown. Typically, the FDA inspects 80 food facilities a day and files reports on those in violation of health codes. This means an end to important investigations and reports, like the one that brought a peanut facility to a close last year after a salmonella outbreak.

It's beginning to look like what Republicans have wanted all along: To eliminate social programs to help the poor and scale back on regulations particularly when it comes to the environment and our food supply. But what kind of country would that look like? Currently four out of five Americans live in danger of falling into poverty and are struggling with joblessness.

These Americans are reliant on social programs like WIC or food stamps (which will continue to be funded at least through October) and without this help many will be forced to decide between medications, rent, or food.

Every American would be best served by understanding that the health of Americans comes first and defunding social programs, regulatory agencies, and independent research will only further undermine America's deteriorating health, which in the end, will cost us a lot more than a failing economy.

Last week I did two interviews both relating to how the industrial food system loves to tell us how its products will help us lose weight and be healthier. Tuesday, I was on Chef Erica Wides' show Let's Get Real on the Heritage Radio Network to talk about vegan and vegetarian "foodiness" products, as she calls them. Wides defines foodiness as fake food, made to look like real food that often makes some kind of (false) health claim. When it comes to vegan and vegetarian foods, people often think they are eating better simply because they don't eat meat. The trouble is, people often resort to the packaged and processed versions of vegan or vegetarian food. As an example of how these foodiness products are worse than the read thing, take a look at the ingredients for two products we discussed on the show:

Toffutti Pizza:

WHEAT FLOUR (UNBLEACHED), CRUSHED TOMATOES, WATER, SOYBEAN OIL, SUGAR, SALT, YEAST, FOOD STARCH-MODIFIED (CORN), OREGANO, BLACK PEPPER, GARLIC. The dairy-free cheese contains the following: WATER, EXPELLER PRESSED PALM OIL, MALTODEXTRIN, NON-GMO (TOFU, SOY PROTEIN) NON-DAIRY LACTIC ACID BLEND OF NATURAL GUMS (LOCUST BEAN, GUAR, CELLULOSE, XANTHAN AND CARRAGEENAN), ORGANIC SUGAR, POTATO FLAKES, VEGETABLE MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, SALT.

Veja-Links:

Click here to listen to the full half hour episode.

On Friday I went on Huff Post Live for a segment called "Myths and Facts about Weight Loss." I am sometimes reluctant to do these types of interviews because the focus on weight loss and obesity is a bit misguided. I think we need to focus on the consolidation of the food supply and the way in which the industrial food system is at the root of our collective health and weight problems. Which is why I always emphasize that the solution to weight loss is to eliminate industrial foods from your diet as much as possible. This perspective shifts the blame from the people stuck in an industrial food paradigm to the horribly skewed food system pumping out terrible products. The best way to do this is to emphasize the important of eating real, whole foods. So, what are real, whole foods?

• Fresh vegetables and fruits (preferably organically grown)
• Fresh meats like beef, poultry, pork (preferably pasture-raised, if possible)
• Dairy products like milk, yogurt, cheese, butter (preferably from grass-fed animals)
• Beans and legumes
• Nuts and seeds
• Whole grains
• Herbs and spices
• Plenty of filtered water

What's the rest of what you see on grocery store shelves, in fast-food restaurants, and on TV? Packaged and processed foods. If you eliminate these foods from your diet, I guarantee you will lose weight. But even more importantly, you are refusing to participate in an industrial food system that has proven to make people sick, devastate the environment, and exploit people, animals, and natural resources. Once you commit to taking a stand against that, the weight loss seems like an added bonus. For more, you can watch the whole interview here and the two minute version here.

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) made two moves in recent days that seemingly address consumer concerns on some hot button issues. First, it banned the use of bisphenol A (BPA) based epoxy resins in coatings for baby formula packaging. Second, it proposed a limit on how much arsenic is allowed in apple juice. Looking more closely at these decisions, however, it seems that FDA is really more interested in appeasing industry, than doing its duty to protect the public.

So what action is the FDA really taking? Due to intense consumer demand, manufacturers of infant formula packaging have already stopped using BPA. And, based on the new standard for arsenic levels, 95 percent of companies that make apple juice are already in compliance.

The FDA’s BPA ban is actually an abandonment petition coming from industry stating that it is now illegal to use BPA for those specific products—but it does not say anything about the safety of BPA.

“It is a ban but it’s a ban that was initiated by the industry,” Dr. Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumer’s Union, said in a recent telephone interview. “They have not taken action on the safety of BPA even though they have been pressured to. But when industry comes in and says, ‘This is no longer being sold,’ that’s an easy out for them because if industry didn’t agree and FDA tried to ban it or take action, maybe the industry would go after them.”

The FDA made a similar move last year when it banned BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups when nearly all U.S. manufacturers had already stopped using BPA for those products. The move was mainly said to be about “boosting consumer’s confidence.”

Both the FDA and the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, have said that the BPA ban is in response to marketplace demands, not due to safety concerns regarding the ubiquitous substance.

And there are an abundance of safety concerns regarding BPA as well as increased public awareness about the potential dangers of BPA. The American Chemistry Council has repeatedly dismissed the hundreds of peer-reviewed studies that link BPA to a wide range of health concerns including various types of cancer, impaired immune function, early onset of puberty, obesity, diabetes, and hyperactivity.

In addition, a recent study published this June in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives changes our understanding of how BPA is absorbed by the body. Researchers found that BPA is absorbed under the tongue and goes directly to the bloodstream, resulting in a much higher exposure to the chemical.

Of further concern is the fact that without clear government regulations, manufacturers can replace BPA with other chemicals that may be just as harmful. (I wrote about this in a previous article for Civil Eats).

“Anything that substitutes for BPA should have to go through a screen for hormonal activity,” Hansen said. “There is a report that looks at 16 different replacements for BPA and I would suspect all of these have the same hormonal activity.”

Hansen was more optimistic about the FDA’s new federal limits on arsenic in apple juice. The new regulation says that apple juice containing more than 10 parts per billion could be removed from the market and companies could face legal action. But the FDA stressed that most companies on the market are already below that threshold.

Much of the concern around apple juice stems from a Consumer Reports finding published last year in which researchers tested 28 different apple juices bought from stores in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. Five samples of apple juice tested and four of grape juice had total arsenic levels exceeding the 10 parts per billion federal limit for bottled and drinking water, according to the report.

Consumer Reports also found high levels of lead in apple juice and grape juice as a result of insecticide use. The report also brought to light the fact that for the past decade, most concentrate has come from China (PDF) and concerns have been raised about the possible continuing use of arsenical pesticides there.

Hansen said the new limit is important because, for the first time, it puts a federal limit on the amount of arsenic in a juice product. But the limits don’t address the arsenic found in grape juice, nor the levels of lead in any juice products. “Yes, that is problematic,” Hansen said. “It’s good that they’ve done it for apple juice but they should be doing it in other juices as well. We found [arsenic] in grape juice and FDA’s own data has found it can show up in pear juice as well.”

While inorganic and organic arsenic are both found in these juices, it was originally thought that inorganic arsenic was of greatest concern, since it is a known carcinogen. According to the FDA, inorganic arsenic has also been associated with skin lesions, developmental effects, cardiovascular disease, neurotoxicity and diabetes.

Organic arsenic was once thought to pass through the body more quickly and not cause harm. However, the FDA now states that organic arsenic may cause harm as well. “Some organic forms can be even more toxic than the inorganic,” Hansen explained.

The arsenic found in apple juice is largely the result of years of arsenical insecticides being applied to apple orchards, Hansen said.  He added that the science on arsenic is evolving so that scientists now believe it is far more toxic than was previously thought.

Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, wanted a limit as low as three parts per billion, but the FDA is putting that limit at 10 parts per billion, a threshold that the vast majority of manufacturers already meet.

According to an Associated Press article, “All of the experts—including the government and the consumer advocates—agree that drinking small amounts of apple juice isn’t harmful. The concern involves the effects of drinking large amounts of juice over long periods of time.” But for the public, that language is vague—especially for an overburdened consumer scanning labels and reading ingredients for products on grocery store shelves.

Furthermore, a new study found that the combined effect of estrogen and arsenic significantly increases the risk of prostate cancer. BPA is one of the many endocrine disrupting chemicals in our food supply that has an estrogen-like effect in the body. Therefore, it is possible, that within that plastic bottle of apple juice is a potent concoction of chemicals that may lead to prostate and other forms of cancer.

Ultimately, the public is left with many questions regarding the safety of foods, beverages, and packaging—all of which the FDA is supposed to screen. According to the FDA’s Web site, its designated role is “protecting the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, quality…of most of our nation’s food supply…”

What will it take for the FDA to do its job and protect the American people? So far it seems that public and consumer pressure haven’t been enough. The FDA has yet to respond to the two million comments on the petition to stop the approval of genetically engineered salmon or the one million comments on labeling genetically modified foods.

As is the case with the latest BPA ban and proposed limits to arsenic in apple juice, the public is left with no clear answers and no real assurance that the agency has its best interest in mind.

Photo: baby drinking formula, by Shutterstock

This article also appeared on Civil Eats

The Bloomberg administration is back in court three months after a state court judge barred New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to create a city-wide ban on sugary beverages over 16 ounces. Reports of the latest court proceedings say that the judges were more sympathetic to lawyers from the American Beverage Association than to those from the Department of Health. Marion Nestle agrees and writes that, “the judges were much tougher on the DOH attorney than on the one from the ABA.”

Perhaps this is because the ABA has swayed public opinion so thoroughly in its opposition of the soda ban with its insidious and seemingly grassroots campaign, “New Yorkers for Beverage Choices.” This organization says it represents New Yorkers, businesses, and community organizers but is in fact a creation of the beverage industry itself. By using the language of “choice” the industry has persuaded many New Yorkers that by defending the billion-dollar beverage industry, they are in fact, standing up to elites like Bloomberg as well as protecting their civil liberties. Last July, paid canvassers hired by the beverage industry stopped New Yorkers on the street to sign petitions. So far, more than half a million people and businesses have signed on to protect New Yorker’s freedom to choose what size sugary beverage to buy.

Public opinion was also swayed back in January, when the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation sided with the beverage industry and opposed Mayor Bloomberg’s ban. This move brought the issues of race, class, choice, and agency to the fore in a debate seemingly about the prevalence of sugary drinks and their connection to the rates of diet-related disease and obesity. The ensuing conversation has shed light on the vast chasms across racial and class lines when it comes to reforming our food system and regulating our food industry.

The proposed soda ban highlights one crucial tenet about Americans: We do not like being told what to do. Rather, we prefer to be seduced by slick marketing and sexy ad campaigns. This way, it’s as if we have chosen one particular product based on a sense of self-identification — the ultimate goal of advertisers and corporations. The most obvious recent example of this is the marketing confluence of Beyoncé and Pepsi. Here we have the glamorous (svelte and healthy) mega pop star hawking a product that we know leads to obesity, diabetes, and a host of other health issues.

Of course, Beyoncé is only one in a long list of celebrities that shill for these beverage corporations: Elton John, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Madonna, LeBron James and Sofía Vergara are among the many others. Our American obsession with fame and wealth is partially why these endorsements work so well; the other part has to do with this concept of choice; after all, Pepsi’s tag line has long been, “The choice of a new generation.”

The question of choice is a sticky one in this soda ban debate since the billion dollar advertising industry has led Americans to believe they have unlimited choices when it comes to food and drink. Most Americans scoff at the idea of their “choices” actually being dictated to them by some outside force; but the reality is that we actually don’t have unlimited choices when it comes to our food. In fact, most options on grocery store shelves boil down to choosing products from roughly a handful of large corporations, often made using the same ingredients — corn and soy. Four companies make 75 percent of breakfast cereals and snacks, 60 percent of cookies, and 50 percent of all ice cream. Four companies slaughter 81 percent of all beef and control 70 percent of all milk sales.

Bloomberg can certainly wield great power with the soda ban, causing critics to cry overreach and nanny-state — but what about these corporations? And the billion dollar advertising industry? The difference is in the presentation: Bloomberg is no Beyoncé. When Beyoncé tells us what to drink we listen; when Bloomberg does, there’s outrage.

It’s worth asking the NAACP and Hispanic Federation why they don’t oppose Beyoncé’s marketing of Pepsi when we know that diabetes rates are 77 percent higher among African Americans and 66 percent higher among Latinos than their white peers. It’s been widely reported that both organizations receive funding from Big Beverage corporations, and thus opposing them has become too risky. As Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in a New York Times article, “Their opposition makes the battles harder. It gives credibility to the industry’s arguments, which are typically self-serving.”

These organizations argue that the ban will unfairly harm bodega or other small business owners, which has validity since the ban seems arbitrary in its application. Why is a 20-ounce Frappuccino from Starbucks, with a whopping 79 grams of sugar, exempt from this ban simply because it contains dairy? By comparison, a 20-ounce bottle of Coke contains 65 grams of sugar and is not exempt. This example highlights two key contradictions: Large corporate stores won’t suffer financially from the ban; and there is an air of class discrimination between the people who typically buy these beverages.

Ben Jealous, NAACP President and CEO, has said that the organization would support a comprehensive ban. “This is the troubling part: this ‘ban’ wouldn’t have been a ban at all, in that it would have stopped it from the mom and pop shops, it wouldn’t have stopped it at 7-Eleven,” Jealous said on the Chris Hayes show. “How are you banning soda if you’re not banning ‘Big Gulps’?”

Bloomberg’s soda ban, while perhaps a step in the right direction, is akin to a band-aid on the big gaping wound that is our inequitable food system. The opposition to the ban by the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation shines a spotlight on that wound.

Public opinion is a powerful tool and the beverage industry is pushing all the right buttons to sway New Yorkers into siding with an industry that causes demonstrable harm to our health. If the judges agree that the ban is encroaching on our “freedom to choose,” then they too are missing the bigger picture.

But perhaps the most salient lesson to come out of this debate is just how limited changes to the food system will be if we do not address class and racial inequality. The claims of paternalism against Bloomberg’s ban are valid — the very concept of the ban implies that certain people are not capable of making good decisions on their own and strips them of agency. The trick is that the corporations are playing the same game. They aren’t giving consumers any more credit than Bloomberg is — they just make it so that when they tell us what to do, it’s a whole lot more sexy.

Tuesday night I went on Let's Get Real on the Heritage Radio Network to discuss my latest article on Civil Eats about the corporate sponsorship of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Listen in for the entertaining conversation I had with Chef Erica Wides. Click here to tune in.

Dieticians are in bed with Foodiness, Incorporated! Erica Wides is once again joined in the studio by nutrition expert Kristin Wartman to talk about her recent article in Civil Eats about big food's influence on The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Hear how companies like Coca-Cola and General Mills fund nutrition studies on sugar and processed food. Doesn't that just seem like a conflict of interest? Kristin spoke with a dietician employed by Sodexo off the record; hear how a food professional deals with the contradictions of health and "foodiness." Later, Erica challenges Kristin to a game of foodiness truth-or-dare!

If there is one topic that Americans are generally confused about it’s nutrition. Although the word simply means the materials necessary in the form of food to support life, our cultural understanding of it has shifted dramatically—with various industries co-opting the word and changing its meaning. Michael Pollan calls this “nutritionism” in his book In Defense of Food. “No idea could be more sympathetic to manufacturers of processed foods,” he writes. “Nutritionism supplies the ultimate justification for processing food by implying that with a judicious application of food science, fake foods can be made even more nutritious than the real thing.”

Convincing people of the healthfulness of these new foods—processed foods that have been refined, stripped, and altered, with synthetic vitamins, added whole grains, or antioxidants put back in—requires experts to help convey this message. In addition to the billions of dollars spent on advertising directly for food products, Big Food companies also recruit America’s nutrition professionals to spread their gospel. This is the topic of public health lawyer, Michele Simon’s new report which details “the food industry’s deep infiltration of the nation’s top nutrition organization.” Simon is referring to The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND), the world’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals. All Registered Dietitians (RDs) must follow a curriculum designed by AND, they are then credentialed by AND, and all continuing education for RDs must be approved by AND.

According to AND’s website, its current corporate sponsors include: Abbot Nutrition, Aramark, Coca-Cola, The Hershey Center for Health and Nutrition, National Dairy Council, General Mills, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, and Unilever. In response to Simon’s report, Ryan O’Malley, media relations manager for AND wrote in an email, “In its relations with corporate organizations, the Academy is mindful of the need to avoid a perception of conflict of interest and to act at all times in ways that will only enhance the credibility and professional recognition of the Academy and its members.”

In Simon’s report (the New York Times broke the story yesterday) she describes a first person account of her attendance at AND’s Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo (FNCE). “Junk food expo is really the best descriptor. As you walk in, all you can see are the massive booths of companies like Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo,” she writes. She describes booth after booth of industry created nutrition information, without even a hint of impartiality.

“The food companies are being very strategic,” Simon told me in an interview. “They know that RDs are the vehicles through which information is carried to the consumers, so they want to make sure that their message gets out loud and clear to these professionals.”

Simon writes of her visit to the McDonald’s booth where smoothies and oatmeal were on offer during the morning hours of the conference. “To visit the McDonald’s booth, you’d think the fast food giant only sold oatmeal and smoothies,” she writes. “I asked a few RDs why they were there and they said they were hungry. Fair enough, but it was clear that McDonald’s had succeeded in positioning itself as a purveyor of healthy food while feeding RDs breakfast.”

Simon points out that food companies are normalizing their products at these conferences. “The message is: It’s perfectly fine to promote processed food as your everyday diet, as long as it has whole grains sprinkled on it or has fewer calories.”

It’s no surprise then that Americans are confused about nutrition and have trouble discerning which foods are actually healthful. “If you look at what comes out of that trade group for generalized nutrition messages, it is not: Don’t eat junk food, don’t eat soda,” Simon said. “It’s these namby-pamby messages that are not getting us anywhere, like ‘everything in moderation,’ ‘no such thing as a good food, or a bad food’ all these clichés come from the spokespeople and the official positions of that trade group—it absolutely keeps America confused.”

Andy Bellatti, RD, agrees and says that he is appalled by the choice of industry sponsorships that AND has chosen to align itself with. “I think it does a huge disservice to the field and the credential,” he said in a phone interview. “I think these kinds of partnerships drag the credential through the mud because they make the entire profession seem like it’s at the mercy of these food companies.”

One typically encounters RDs in a hospital or doctor’s office and are therefore considered the most legitimate and qualified bearers of nutrition information. “It’s very troublesome when you have the food industry co-opting health professionals and that’s exactly what’s happening,” Bellatti said. “Who creates the curriculum for RDs? AND does, and no matter what college you go to, if you want to be an RD, it’s an AND curriculum.”

Bellatti went on to describe his experiences at FNCE, where he says, the industry is presenting biased studies about their products as the hard, indisputable science. “It’s extremely problematic because you have industry presenting science,” he told me. “And many RDs are a very captive audience—not everybody is going into it with a critical mind. If a doctor or another RD is presenting, obviously on industry payroll, a lot of RDs go back to their practice and they just repeat what they’ve heard.”

Bellatti said he saw this happen at a session given by Coca-Cola at FNCE. “RDs will attend a session by Coca-Cola and come away saying that, actually, the research shows that artificial sweeteners are completely safe,” he said. “And the RDs were completely satisfied with that presentation—that is very troubling.”

Aaron Flores, an RD who works in Los Angeles remembers a similar experience. “One specific education program that I went to a few years ago was a talk on artificial sweeteners sponsored by Diet Coke,” he wrote to me in an email. “The message was that artificial sweeteners are safe—but there is a lot of conflicting research out there. I would have preferred to hear a more balanced presentation, but of course that would not happen at a presentation paid for by Diet Coke.”

Various RDs told me what’s often perceived to be conventional wisdom regarding healthy foods is actually the industry speaking through nutrition professionals, which makes its way into the popular culture. For example, despite the fact that studies show consuming diet soda leads to increased waist circumference in humans and that aspartame raises the fasting levels of blood sugar in mice, potentially leading to weight gain and diabetes, the conventional wisdom claims that diet sodas are a good weight loss strategy.

RDs range in their position on the corporate sponsorship of AND. Indeed, Simon reports mixed responses at the conference but she did find it troubling that the majority of RDs surveyed supported corporate sponsors. “An overwhelming majority [of RDs] found the National Dairy Council, Kellogg, General Mills, and the maker of Splenda acceptable… it’s a sign of how well these companies have succeeded in becoming a normal part of the American food experience.”

Digna Cassens, MHA, RD, a practicing dietitian for 50 years, said AND’s corporate sponsors present a “huge conflict.” “But unfortunately no on really wants to speak out,” she said in an interview. “It’s sounds disloyal—so speaking badly about my professional organization, which has given me the opportunity to practice professionally for 50 years, I find it disloyal.”

Bellatti completely disagreed with this sentiment. He said he always voices his concerns at the end of sessions at FNCE conferences. “In every single case, I had RDs approach me and say they support me but were afraid to speak up,” he said. “But voicing a concern is not violating anything. I have heard people say they are afraid of having their credential taken away, but I don’t see that actually happening.”

Further complicating the matter is the fact that many RDs are actually employed by large food service companies like Sodexo or Aramark, which often have contracts with hospitals and typically employ all the RDs on staff. According to Sodexo’s website, it is the nation’s largest corporate employer of registered dietitians.

One RD employed by Sodexo as the clinical manager of a major academic hospital refused to speak on the record. I asked her if it was difficult to convey the nutrition information she wanted to given that her employer makes many unhealthful foods, which comprise the fare in the hospital. She was hesitant to answer but seemed to acknowledge the conflict by saying, “All of our nutrition materials and guidelines come from the Academy [AND].”

Bellatti said in addition to hiring RDs, Sodexo also has a dietetic internship. “That is a major conflict because it’s very hard for an RD to improve food offerings if they are employed by the very company that is putting out unhealthy food choices.”

Some RDs have chosen not to renew their membership to AND based on its corporate sponsors. “As a former member of AND, I feel that by accepting money from corporate sponsors like Coke, PepsiCo, Hershey’s, General Mills, etc., we compromise our credibility as a professional organization,” Flores, the RD in Los Angeles said. “So I decided that I would vote with my wallet and I did not renew my membership.”

Americans are bombarded with claims about nutrition and healthy eating for food and beverage products but many of these messages are exactly what Pollan describes as nutritionism. “The food industry does a great job of keeping consumers confused about nutrition,” Simon told me. “Most Americans don’t realize the extent to which the nutrition advice they hear is influenced by these powerful economic interests. If people can’t even trust the advice coming from nutrition professionals, who can they trust?”

This post appeared on Civil Eats and the Huffington Post

There was good news this week with several cities reporting declining rates of childhood obesity. While modest, any decline in this alarming trend is promising: New York City reports a five and a half percent decrease; Philadelphia, five percent; and Los Angeles, a three percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.

But this came on the heels of some other rather disturbing news -- mega pop star Beyoncé signed a $50 million deal with Pepsi. While advertising deals for celebrities endorsing junk foods are nothing new, this one marks a shift in its insidious nature. In a recent New York Times article the president of PepsiCo's global beverage group said, "Consumers are seeking a much greater authenticity in marketing from the brands they love. It's caused a shift in the way we think about deals with artists, from a transactional deal to a mutually beneficial collaboration."

Not only will Beyoncé be featured in ads that will premiere after her performance at the Super Bowl half-time show (sponsored by Pepsi, naturally), but her face will be featured on limited edition Pepsi cans, and she will be given money for her own "creative projects." The Times reports: "The less conventional aspects of the deal are meant as collaborative projects that indulge Beyoncé's creative whims, and might well have no explicit connection to Pepsi products."

This is a marked change for advertisers who seek to completely merge their product's image with that of a big name celebrity -- and it doesn't get much bigger than Beyoncé, who pulled in $40 million last year alone and has vast international fame.

The multi-year contract with Pepsi -- with substantial funds for Beyoncé to work on her own creative projects with "no explicit connection to Pepsi" -- shows Pepsi is confident that branding its products with her image will continue to invoke a desired response in consumers. In a method reminiscent of Pavlov's dog, Pepsi expects to see this outcome without the Pepsi logo even being present.

Pepsi will so thoroughly attach itself to her and blur the lines between product and spokesperson that everything she does, including her "creative whims" will be linked to Pepsi. Even if these creative whims have nothing to do with Pepsi, she will conjure the brand. This brings to mind the patronage of wealthy families for artists in the middle ages -- a kind of artist-indentured servitude.

Beyoncé doesn't see it that way, at least according to her statement in The Times: "Pepsi embraces creativity and understands that artists evolve. As a businesswoman, this allows me to work with a lifestyle brand with no compromise and without sacrificing my creativity."

This sounds shockingly naive; especially from a woman who has mastered the art of her brand and become one of the biggest pop stars in the world. And let's not forget, that one year ago, a video of Beyoncé dancing in a high school cafeteria on behalf of the First Lady's 'Let's Move!' campaign went viral, indicating what seemed to be her commitment to fighting childhood obesity. Now that she is a new mother, Beyoncé signs on with the one of the biggest soda vendors in the world?

But then again, there are other aspects of this new ad campaign to make one question her logic. The ad that has been revealed features her dressed in tights, high-heels, a suit jacket, and what appears to be matching underwear, while making a pout with her lips -- all the while pushing a large grocery cart overflowing with cases of Pepsi. These images will be made into life size cut outs for grocery stores.

This means millions of shoppers across the country will see a hyper-sexualized woman of color, literally pushing a product that is known to contribute to obesity and its related health problems like diabetes and heart disease.

It is especially significant that the populations most affected by these health issues are people of color, and particularly women of color. According to the Centers for Disease Control, one in two African-Americans born in the year 2000 is expected to develop type II diabetes; four out of every ten African-American men and women have high blood pressure; and blacks are 30 percent more likely to die young from heart disease than whites.

Part of Beyoncé's deal includes the limited edition Pepsi can, which has a picture of her face, open-mouthed and seductive. There's no doubt that these Pepsi ad executives know what they're doing, they've taken one of the biggest pop stars and sex symbols in the world, and conflated her talent and success with their product -- it is marketing genius. But who suffers as a result?

Unfortunately, we know the answer to that question: It's the people that always suffer from predatory ad campaigns. Youth and minority groups are routinely targeted with more ads and for less healthy products, according to the Yale Rudd Center. Researchers found that African American youth saw at least 50 percent more fast food ads on TV in 2009 than their white peers. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of obesity for African Americans is 51 percent higher than for white Americans, and the prevalence of obesity amongst the nation's Hispanic American population is 21 percent higher than their white peers.

While there are certainly many factors that contribute to these shocking statistics, there's no doubt that carefully targeted marketing on the part of Big Food corporations play a large role. Beyoncé should think twice before playing right into the hands of Pepsi's insidious branding -- but even more importantly, Americans should start demanding that our government regulate Big Food. In many European countries celebrities are forbidden from advertising for junk foods; not coincidentally, these countries have lower rates of obesity and diabetes, especially among children. If we hope to see more good news in the form of declining childhood obesity rates in this country, we need to work to make sure this Pepsi and Beyoncé "mutually beneficial collaboration" doesn't portend a new trend.

Originally published on The Huffington Post

If we knew that there was epidemic among our children that would cause them to die at increasingly younger ages and if we also knew that this disease was entirely preventable, wouldn't we do everything in our power to eradicate it?

In fact, we do have an epidemic and it's largely driven by our reliance on highly processed, cheap convenience foods. The United States is hardly alone on this front, but our food culture is distinct from most other industrialized nations in a crucially important way -- we have virtually no regulation for advertising food and drink and we require very little in the way of labeling.

In a few weeks, Californians will decide if genetically modified foods (GMOs) should be labeled. Labeling GMOs will force greater transparency on the part of food producers and it represents a potential shift for consumers to regain a measure of control over their own food. But the US will still lag far behind many European countries, which not only have been labeling GMO foods for years but in some cases, also require warning labels for junk foods and have strict regulations on the types of foods and beverages advertised, particularly to children.

There's good reason for this. Studies show that Big Food corporations aggressively market unhealthy foods to children and in some cases children exhibit "brand recognition" and brand loyalty before they can even speak. A forthcoming study in the journal Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience, found that toddlers identify the golden arches for McDonald's before they even know the letter M. After looking at more than 100 brands, researchers at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and University of Kansas Medical Center study found that children are more likely to choose foods with familiar logos and that the majority of these foods are high in sugars, fat and sodium. Even more alarming, researchers found that seeing an advertised logo trips the pleasure and reward regions of children's brains -- areas of the brain that are also implicated in obesity and various types of addiction, including drug abuse, researcher Dr. Amanda Bruce said.

Another recent study suggests that highly processed foods are addictive. Researchers in the journal Current Biology report that when they fed M&M candies to hungry rats, their levels of enkephalin (an opiod with similar effects to other drugs in this class) increased. The more the rats' enkephalin went up, the faster they ate the M&Ms. The researchers reported that the rats would not stop eating the M&Ms until the candies were taken away.

But that's not all -- the food industry is actively shaping the palates of our children. While the food industry insists that it only advertises to children "to influence brand preference," a study published in the journal Appetite found that the industry works to "fundamentally change children's taste palates to increase their liking of highly processed and less nutritious foods." This study dovetails with Dr. Bruce's findings since researchers found that the awareness of fast food brands was a significant predictor of what they call the "Sugar-Fat-Salty" palate preference in children.

Data is also surfacing that obese children are less sensitive to taste. Researchers in Germany found that on the intensity scale, obese children rated all flavor concentrations lower than did those in the normal-weight group. They believe this may be due to the fact that leptin, the hormone that regulates appetite and makes us feel full, might also affect the sensitivity of taste buds. It is suspected that people who are obese or overweight are resistant to leptin, making them feel hungrier and driving them to eat more.

Not only does obesity or overweight affect taste, but it also affects memory and learning. A study in Pediatrics found that teenagers with metabolic syndrome (a precursor to diabetes, which includes having high blood levels of glucose, low levels of "good" cholesterol, high triglycerides, abdominal obesity and high blood pressure) had lower scores on tests of mental ability and significantly lower academic performance in reading and arithmetic. MRI scans of these children also showed reduced volume in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in forming and storing memories.

The picture emerging from these recent findings is that children are becoming hooked on highly processed foods at a very young age. This changes their palate preferences for salty, fatty, sweet foods, leads to weight gain and metabolic syndrome, affects brain processes -- and ultimately, perpetuates a vicious cycle.

So what is to be done? European countries, which have lower rates of obesity and diet-related disease, provide some answers. In 2007, the French government ordered all food advertisements to carry warning labels urging consumers to stop snacking, exercise, and eat more fruits and vegetables. The warning label also reads, "Consuming these foods may be harmful to your health." In Sweden and Norway, all food and beverage advertising to children is forbidden. In Ireland, there is a ban on TV ads for candy and fast food and the ban prohibits using celebrities to promote junk food to kids.

It's time for American politicians to address the lack of regulation for Big Food and the advertising industry. We now have the science to prove that the content of highly processed foods coupled with the marketing of them to children and toddlers is amounting to a national health crisis.

Over the past 15 years, the percentage of new cases of Type 2 diabetes, formerly known as adult-onset, has skyrocketed among children -- from three to 50 percent. Approximately 12.5 million of children and adolescents aged two to 9 years are obese and since 1980, obesity prevalence among children and adolescents has almost tripled.

Diabetes, along with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and heart disease are becoming shockingly common in children and adolescents. We know these conditions arise primarily from poor diets and are driven by our consumption of ultra-processed foods.

A startling USDA report from 2006 states that since the percentage of children who are overweight has doubled and the percentage of adolescents who are overweight has more than tripled, "If we do not stem this tide, many children in this generation of children will not outlive their parents." To put that another way: If trends don't change, the surge in diet related disease among children means that many parents will watch their children die. That was the prediction from experts six years ago and we have yet to see any substantive action from Washington.

Our leaders must get tough on these corporations and stop insisting that it comes down to choice and personal responsibility. This is a myth perpetuated by the food and advertising industries so they can continue to harm our children and threaten the health of our nation with impunity. In what other circumstance would we allow an epidemic of such grave proportions debilitate our children unchecked? We've long been looking for the smoking gun — it seems we've found it.

Originally published on The Huffington Post

Image: FastFoodHealth.org via Babble.com

"All natural." "Farm-fresh." "Cage-free." Thanks to phrases such as these, consumer confusion is common when it comes to understanding and buying food. The battle raging in California over the labeling of genetically modified foods illustrates just how much labels do indeed matter -- to consumers as well as to corporations. The recent paper by Stanford researchers claims that organically grown foods are no better for our health than conventionally grown foods, further complicating the debate over which labels can and cannot be trusted. Headlines about the report seek to simplify: A New York Times headline read, "Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce;" CBS News claimed, "Organic food hardly healthier, study suggests."

Others have already pointed out that organic food is about more than just nutrition, but it's worth mentioning that there are many compelling reasons to buy organic that go beyond one's personal health, including:

• minimizing pollution, • reducing harm to farm workers and • reducing the public health risk posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Further, the study did note one major personal health reason for supporting organic: limiting one's ingestion of pesticides. But the paper's key finding -- at least, as reported by the mainstream media -- is that organic foods do not contain significantly higher levels of nutrients than conventional foods, and that's what made the headlines.

While the analysis by the Stanford researchers seems fairly conclusive, the implications of its findings are actually extremely narrow given the infinite variety in agricultural practices. The range of products produced under an organic label range from those produced on an "industrial-organic" scale to those produced by small and mid-scale farmers who go well beyond the USDA's standards with their methods.

At one end of this scale are companies like Horizon Organic, which sells USDA-certified organic milk. Horizon is owned by Dean Foods, the sixth largest food company in North America. Large food corporations of this scale wield immense power to influence organic standards. Walmart, which sells the Horizon brand and is the largest retailer of organic milk in the country, has been involved in multiple lawsuits over the use of the word organic on various product labels and in the case of Horizon's organic milk, whistleblowers found it was actually being produced in large-scale factory farms without adhering to organic standards, like access to pasture. Instead, the Cornucopia Institute found that Dean Foods was confining as many as 10,000 cows to large buildings and feedlots and operating "phony 'organic' feedlot operations."

On the other end of the scale are small-scale, grass-based farms -- some certified organic and some not. In a recent report put out by Compassion in World Farming vast differences in nutrient value were found in animals raised in "higher-welfare" settings (on pasture, with space to graze and forage for their natural grass diets) versus those raised in intensive confined, "lower-welfare" settings (in confined feedlots, eating diets designed to pack on weight as fast as possible, including grain and daily doses of non-therapeutic antibiotics). One key finding was that the proportion of omega-3 fatty acids in milk from pasture-based systems was between 53 and 184 percent higher than the milk from animals raised in confined, intensive settings. The report also found higher amounts of vitamin E and beta-carotene in milk from pasture-based systems versus conventional ones.

In terms of organic versus non-organic meat, the Stanford paper says that there is no difference in nutrition between the two. Again, research has shown that there are significant differences when it comes to pasture-raised meats. A report put out by Animal Welfare Approved states that ruminants raised on pasture alone have milk and meat that contains three to five times the amount of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). Various studies have shown that CLA is protective against cancer, can lower levels of LDL cholesterol, prevents atherosclerosis and reduces blood pressure. The Compassion in World Farming report found that pasture-raised beef has a higher proportion of omega-3 fatty acids and a more favorable (lower) ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids compared with intensively-raised beef. The report also states that pasture-raised beef contains more vitamin E and beta-carotene than conventionally produced beef.

Just as the quality of animal products depends largely on what the animals were fed, the nutrition content of vegetables is dependent on the quality of the soil in which they were grown. Vegetables grown in mineral-rich, healthy soil (that hasn't been depleted by chemical fertilizers, lack of biodiversity and little to no crop rotation) have been found to be far more nutritious than vegetables grown on monocropped, intensive farms. Various studies have shown that the nutrient density of vegetables, including many crucial vitamins and antioxidants, have dramatically decreased over the years with soil depletion due to industrial farming methods. Again, the Stanford paper does not discern between vegetables grown on an industrial-organic scale versus those grown on biodiverse, multi-crop farms.

Eric Herm, an author and cotton farmer in Ackerly, Tex. explained how significant he believes the difference is between produce grown on the industrial organic scale versus produce grown on biodiverse farms. "What I've seen over the years, is that crop rotation is not only the key to healthy soil, it is vital in the long term health of all living creatures. There is far more microbial activity, plants are healthier and more resistant to disease, drought and insect damage," he wrote in an email. "The soil feeds the plants that feeds us. Sick or weak soil will grow weaker plants with less fruit and vitality. The healthier the soil, the more vitality within the plant and the fruit it produces, therefore giving us more vitality. It's common sense really. Organic monocropping will not have the long-term benefits of a diverse farming operation."

Farmer Kira Kinney of Evolutionary Organics farm, a multi-crop farm in New Paltz, N.Y. agrees. "I definitely think there is a difference in what I grow compared with industrial organic. To me these two things are nothing alike. There is no holistic approach to industrial organic -- it is all about yield, yield, yield," she wrote in an email. "They do whatever it takes to get the most out of any given crop. Large scale organic is much the same as conventional agriculture in that it is all numbers -- get the most yield in the fewest days."

Given the wide-range in practices that can be lumped under the term "organic" and the fact that the bulk of organic foods bought and sold in America come from systems that are more accurately described as "industrial organic" the true impact of the Stanford findings becomes less apparent.

Recent events in California's fight over the labeling of genetically modified foods would indicate that the companies that sell industrially-produced organics do not necessarily support the ideals their customers do: the largest organic food brands in the country, including Kashi, Cascadian Farm and Horizon Organic have joined the anti-labeling effort, contributing millions of dollars to defeat the ballot initiative, Proposition 37. The parent companies to these organic brands are Kellogg Company, General Mills and Dean Foods, respectively.

"It's ironic this [Stanford] study is coming out of California, where food companies have spent more than $25 million this year trying to battle Prop 37 and prevent the labeling of GMOs in the state of California," Herm wrote.

Labels do matter -- and what the Stanford analysis brings to the fore is the need for deeper, more comprehensive studies on the infinite shades of gray when it comes to agricultural practices. Are we satisfied to continue lumping foods under two simplistic categories -- organic or conventional? With Big Food corporations now heavily invested in organic foods, what does the organic label actually mean? As producers, consumers and advocates this paper should push us to have conversations that are not so black and white.

Originally published on Ecocentric

Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a ban on the use of bisphenol A, or BPA, in baby bottles and children’s cups. BPA is an estrogen-mimicking chemical that has been used in hard plastics, the linings of cans, food packaging, and dental fillings, among other places, for years. We’ve reported about the dangers of BPA on Civil Eats here, here, and here. This move essentially made official a practice that many manufacturers of baby bottles and cups already follow in response to growing pressure from consumers.

Questions of safety remain when it comes to the use of any plastic products that come in contact with our foods. The FDA ban is raising concern and creating headlines about what manufacturers will substitute in place of the BPA. A 2011 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives found that all plastics contain estrogenic activity (EA) and in some cases, those labeled “BPA free” leached more chemicals with EA than did BPA-containing products. The study’s authors write, “Almost all commercially available plastic products we sampled—independent of the type of resin, product, or retail source—leached chemicals having reliably detectable EA, including those advertised as BPA free.”

EA interferes with our endocrine system, a complex signaling network that is made up of glands (the thyroid) as well as glandular tissue and cells within organs (testes, ovaries, pancreas, etc). Our endocrine systems use hormones that send signals to our various organs and tissues that work over minutes, hours, weeks, and years. The processes these hormones regulate include metabolism, growth and development, and sexual reproduction. As hormones travel in the blood to reach each body part, the specific molecular shape of each hormone fits like a key-in-a-lock into receptors on target tissues. Endocrine disrupting chemicals may interfere with, block, or mimic the action of our hormones. As a result, EA and endocrine disruptors have been linked in hundreds of studies to brain development problems, breast and prostate cancer, birth defects, learning and behavioral problems in children, early onset of puberty, and obesity.

Manufacturers are now flaunting their “BPA free” versions of products as though they are safe and free of toxins—but it turns out BPA is possibly just the tip of the iceberg. Bisphenol S, or BPS, is another chemical that manufacturers are using to replace BPA and it may be just as harmful. In a study this year in Environmental Science and Technology, researchers wrote, “As the evidence of the toxic effects of bisphenol A (BPA) grows, its application in commercial products is gradually being replaced with other related compounds, such as bisphenol S (BPS). Nevertheless, very little is known about the occurrence of BPS in the environment.”

In this study, the authors found BPS present in 16 types of paper products, including thermal receipts, paper currencies, flyers, magazines, newspapers, food contact papers, airplane luggage tags, printing paper, paper towels, and toilet paper. The thermal receipt paper samples contained concentrations of BPS that were similar to the concentrations of BPA reported earlier and raised alarm for some scientists. BPS was also detected in 87 percent of currency bill samples. The authors write that several other related compounds are also used to replace BPA: bisphenol B, bisphenol F, and bisphenol AF. BPA and BPS are found in high concentrations in canned foods, BPF has been found in surface water, sewage sludge, and sediments, and BPB was found in human serum in Italy. “Limited studies have shown that BPS, BPB, and BPF possess acute toxicity, genotoxicity, and estrogenic activity, similar to BPA,” the authors write, adding that, “The environmental biodegradation rates of BPS and BPB were similar to or less than those of BPA. Although considerable controversy still surrounds the safety of BPA, the potential for human exposure to alternatives to BPA cannot be ignored.” The researchers also note that people may be absorbing BPS in much larger doses—19 times more than the BPA they absorbed when it was more widely used.

Bruce Blumberg, professor of developmental and cell biology and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of California, Irvine, wrote in an e-mail, “There are emerging data to show that BPS is an estrogen but relatively less on the other chemicals. Therefore, it is hard to say with certainty at the moment whether the BPA replacements lack estrogenic activity. BPA free means simply that—that the product is stated to be BPA free.”

I asked Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women and Families if she was concerned about the substitutes being used in place of BPA. “We are very concerned that BPA could be replaced with products that are just as risky, or even more risky. The federal government is not doing what is needed to protect the American public, either in their regulation of BPA or any of these potential substitutes.”

But the FDA continues to insist that BPA is still safe. In a recent New York Times article, Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods said that the agency, “has been looking hard at BPA for a long time, and based on all the evidence, we continue to support its safe use.”

Zuckerman added that part of the problem lies in the heavy influence that industry has on members of Congress and the FDA. “Whenever the FDA does something to improve patient safeguards, Members of Congress get lobbied by the industry involved and some of those Members pressure [the] FDA to back off,” she wrote in an e-mail. “This has happened for years but the last few years have been even worse than usual.”

At Mother Jones, Tom Philpott points out that the heavily monied interests behind BPA are none other than the chemical giants Dow and Bayer who produce the bulk of BPA. Frederick S. vom Saal, curators’ professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia and BPA researcher told me that BPA represents a $10 billion a year industry. It’s important to note that the recent FDA ban comes at the behest of the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group that denies any negative health effects from BPA. Why would they have done this? “[The American Chemistry Council’s] petition to the FDA puts it plainly: ‘All Major Product Manufacturers Have Abandoned the Use of Polycarbonate’ (BPA). In other words: Go ahead and ban it—it’s already been phased out and a ban gives the appearance of strict oversight,” Philpott writes.

By creating the ban, the FDA at least acknowledges that babies and children should lessen their exposure to BPA. But what about the rest of the population? “BPA remains in millions of food and beverage containers that affect the BPA levels of pregnant women, children of all ages, and all adults,” Zuckerman wrote to me in an e-mail. “The impact on the developing fetus and young children, and on breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, are of particular concern to our Center. One study indicates that BPA may interfere with the effectiveness of chemo for breast cancer patients.”

The FDA should concede that if BPA is a risk for babies and children, it is most likely a risk to all of us. And what about the various substitutes that will be used for BPA and the numerous other toxins lurking in the plastics and other containers that package our foods and drinks? “FDA’s decision is a step in the right direction, but it is a baby step,” Zuckerman said. “They have done the minimum.” Blumberg added that the answers to all of these questions are complex. “We do not know nearly as much as we need to know,” he said. “I think that it is prudent to reduce our consumption of packaged foods of all sorts for a variety of reasons, including reducing exposure to contaminants from the containers.”

There was a time when corpulence was a sign of wealth and luxury. But in modern day Western countries, quite the opposite is true. In fact, a recent study found that fully one third of homeless people living in Boston are obese. “This study suggests that obesity may be the new malnutrition of the homeless in the United States,” wrote the researchers, led by Harvard Medical School student Katherine Koh, whose study is forthcoming in the  Journal of Urban Health.

And it’s not just the U.S. that is reporting these kinds of findings, a New Zealand study of preschoolers found that 82 percent did not get enough dietary fiber and 68 percent did not have enough long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are found in fish and nuts. Despite these nutritional deficiencies, the researchers also found that fully one-third of preschoolers are overweight or obese.

These findings highlight an interesting contradiction—obesity correlates with malnourishment. Research indicates that lack of proper nutrition—even when people over consume calories—is at the root of obesity. Part of the reason this seems contradictory is because nutrition science has long held that all calories are created equal and that with the right amount of caloric intake, it would be difficult to also be malnourished. Coincidentally, this is also what the food industry would have us believe. In a recent interview in USAToday, Katie Bayne, president and general manager at Coca-Cola said in response to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed ban on large size sugary drinks, “A calorie is a calorie. What our drinks offer is hydration. That’s essential to the human body. We offer great taste and benefits whether it’s an uplift or carbohydrates or energy. We don’t believe in empty calories. We believe in hydration.”

I asked senior research scientist at MIT and author of several papers on the subject, Stephanie Seneff, for a response to Bayne’s comments. “I hate this calorie is a calorie message,” Seneff said in a telephone interview. “It’s completely wrong. When you eat a high carbohydrate diet, especially a processed foods diet, you’re getting way too much fuel compared to all those other things you need. And this imbalance is what leads to the obesity profile.”

For comparison’s sake, eight ounces of milk provides about 150 calories, along with calcium, magnesium, vitamins A and D, protein, fatty acids, and many other nutrients (largely dependent on what the cows ate and the quality of the milk with organic and grass-fed being the most nutritious). An eight-ounce can of Coke with 100 calories provides virtually no nutrients (the label reads: Not a significant source of fat calories, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and iron) but it does contain 27 grams of sugar in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

Seneff said that she blames the soda industry in particular because this is where children are consuming large amounts of sugar. “If we did just one simple thing and had school children switch from drinking Coke to drinking whole milk this would have a huge difference,” she said.

Unfortunately, this will never be simple in part because the American Beverage Association lobbies hard to prevent any type of regulation for soda or for marketing it to children. In addition, the USDA’s MyPlate recommends low-fat and fat-free milks, which is what’s served in school cafeterias across the country. Seneff emphasized the importance of whole milk versus low-fat and fat-free milk because she believes the emphasis on low-fat foods in the American diet is largely responsible for our obesity epidemic, among other illnesses. “Children in particular need the fat desperately to develop their brains,” she said. “And this is why we have ADHD and autism. I think these problems are very much a consequence of our obsession with a low fat diet.”

But it’s not just brains that suffer as a result of our low fat diet, Seneff says, and she is not the first to attribute our low fat diet to our increasing obesity rates. The science writer Gary Taubes has been saying so for over a decade. The stigma against fats, particularly saturated fats appears to be waning (I wrote about this last year here on Civil Eats).

Seneff believes the major factors contributing to obesity are a deficiency in consuming fats, particularly animal fats and all of the nutrients that come with those fats; our overly-processed food diet (and specifically our consumption of HFCS); and our lack of exposure to sunlight. What’s more, according to her research, all three of these components amount to the perfect storm of metabolic dysfunction.

Carbohydrates and sugars in our diets compound the problem of our cell’s inability to digest and regulate the amount of sugar in our blood. “The key problem is the highly processed foods Americans eat, which have enormous amounts of carbohydrates, and carbohydrates that are already partially digested so that they move into the blood very quickly as sugar,”  Seneff said.

Seneff is working on a new theory that isolates one nutrient deficiency in particular that manifests as a result of the Standard American Diet. “In my studies, sulfate deficiency is everywhere,” she said. She believes this is at the root of many modern diseases as well as obesity. Where is sulfur found? In foods that are also high in cholesterol, like animal proteins and fish. Certain vegetables, like broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, and onions are also high in sulfate but as Seneff points out, these are often deficient in sulfate and other nutrients as a result of poor soil management and degradation of soil quality.

Finally, Seneff is concerned with our lack of exposure to sunlight, which coincidentally also produces cholesterol sulfate in our bodies. “It’s specifically a deficiency in sunlight exposure to the skin, which is much more than just taking a vitamin D supplement,” she said. “Cholesterol sulfate and vitamin D sulfate are both synthesized in the skin in exposure to sunlight, which is a wonderful way to deliver sulfate and cholesterol to all the tissues. Really, most Americans suffer from a cholesterol deficiency problem rather than a cholesterol excess problem but it’s demonized everywhere and it’s the exact wrong message.”

Another widely disseminated message from the food industry—it’s all about personal responsibility— appears rather faulty when we look at the findings from the study of obese preschoolers. Taylor, the lead researcher in the study, said that regulation had to be part of the answer. “There hasn’t been a massive decrease in the willpower of two year olds,” she said in a recent article. Instead, as the studies have found, it is about the poor quality of highly processed foods.

The study of the homeless in Boston confirms the fact that one can be food insecure while consuming an abundance of calories that lead to obesity. In fact, the term food insecure was coined to indicate that many people now experience access to plenty of calories but a dearth in real nutrition.

If these two studies and Seneff’s new research are any indication, it may not be long before the food industry will be proven wrong: All calories are not created equal, nor is it all about personal responsibility. Until then, pressuring Big Food to properly regulate and label foods might be the only way to curb our nation’s addiction to cheap, nutritionally void products. But time is of the essence—by current estimates one in three Americans will be diabetic by 2050 if things don’t drastically change.

The controversy surrounding New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recent plan to ban sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces ranges from praise for taking on “America’s expanding waistline” to deriding him as a “nanny” for infringing on our personal choices and freedoms. But what’s largely missing from the debate is a real critique of the true villain in this battle—Big Food.

Those who favored the decision heralded Bloomberg: The Washington Post, in an editorial, writes, “The country need [sic] innovative leaders with a similar determination to take on America’s expanding waistline.” Frank Bruni writes in The New York Times, “Cry all you want about a nanny state, but as a city and a nation we’ve gorged and guzzled past the point where a gentle nudge toward roughage suffices. We need a weight watcher willing to mete out some stricter discipline.”

Those who feel our ability to buy a 32-ounce container of Coca-Cola has become the stand-in for civil liberties, such as the Center for Consumer Freedom, placed an ad in New York City newspapers, featuring Bloomberg as a “nanny” with a tagline that reads: “You only thought you lived in the land of the free.” Jon Stewart did a bit last Thursday lamenting the fact that he agreed with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who said Bloomberg was taking away our personal freedoms. And a New York Times editorial claimed the Mayor was overreaching, writing: “[T]oo much nannying with a ban might well cause people to tune out.”

In the meantime, Big Food still has free reign to produce and market harmful products with virtually no regulation or oversight. So far, the government has been incredibly weak on regulating food producers and advertisements. Last year, the Obama administration proposed voluntary guidelines for the types of food advertised to children. The guidelines were extremely modest, allowing for two-thirds of processed foods to remain unchanged and placed mostly insignificant caps on the allowance of sugar, fat, and sodium in products marketed to kids. Even these voluntary guidelines were called “unworkable and unrealistic” by one prominent industry group.

This is not the case in Europe. In 2007, the French government ordered all food advertisements to carry warning labels telling consumers to stop snacking, exercise, and eat more fruits and vegetables. These warning labels are found in advertisements on television, radio, billboards, and the Internet for all processed, sweetened or salted food and drinks. Other European countries have taken similar measures. In Sweden and Norway, all food and beverage advertising to children is forbidden. In Ireland, there is a ban on TV ads for candy and fast food and the ban prohibits using celebrities and sports stars to promote junk food to kids. According to Pamela Druckerman, author of Bringing Up Bebe, snacking is generally discouraged in France and children eat three meals a day with one small snack around four in the afternoon.

Regulations like those in Europe are the kind that could help to encourage new cultural norms around food in this country—and they don’t target the consumer by banning or taxing particular foods but rather they force corporations to label their unhealthy products and abide by advertising regulation.

Professor and author of Weighing In, Julie Guthman, had this to say about the ban: “Ultimately, I would prefer to see regulation at the point of production. If we as a polity think that sugary drinks are detrimental to public health, we shouldn’t allow them to be produced,” she said in an e-mail. This would surely be a more radical solution since it would place the burden on the corporations rather than the consumer. Guthman said the ban is a better idea than a soda tax because, “A regressive soda tax punishes those who have the least ability to pay.” But she’s weary of the ban since it still targets consumers and  “focuses on the size of the drink which would seem to suggest that individual consumers can’t make good decisions. That is terribly paternalistic,” Guthman said.

The idea of a super-size soda ban is a broader variation of Bloomberg’s proposed plan last year to disallow the purchase of soda with food stamps. Critics of this initiative felt it was also paternalistic and stigmatized the poor who would not be able shop like other consumers. The difference with the current soda ban is that all New Yorkers would be affected and it is here that the ban may potentially bring benefit by creating new cultural norms around food and beverage choice.

A 2010 study completed by the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found that the barrage of fast food advertising makes kids think processed, junk foods are “normal and expected.” The same can surely be said for the increase in portion sizes. As long it is “normal” and culturally accepted to drink a 20, 32 or 64-ounce soda along with that burger and fries people will continue to do so.

As Ronald Bayer, a professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia put it in The New York Times, “The behaviors that harm our collective health are not, by and large, the result of bad or foolish individual choices. These “bad habits” are shaped by our culture, social arrangements and commercial interests.”

Ultimately, this ban may prove ineffectual since consumers will still be able to buy the equivalent of the larger size sodas in other ways, like buying two bottles or going to restaurants where refills are free. And of course, sodas are not the only problem when it comes to our unhealthful diets.

Mayor Bloomberg is brave to go head-to-head with Big Food by limiting portion size and trying to create a new norm but this tactic might further distract from the underlying problem of our virtually unregulated toxic and super-sized food supply. If nothing else, the proposed ban highlights the deeply complex and troubling conundrum that our current food system presents. Something clearly must be done—it just seems that regulating and curtailing the powers of Big Food would be a better place to focus our attention rather than merely capping the portion size for one of many sugary, addictive, non-nutritious substances at our never-ending disposal.

A version of this post first appeared in The Atlantic

Conventional wisdom says that weight gain or loss is based on the energy balance model of "calories in, calories out," which is often reduced to the simple refrain, "eat less, and exercise more." But new research reveals a far more complex equation that appears to rest on several other important factors affecting weight gain. Researchers in a relatively new field are looking at the role of industrial chemicals and non-caloric aspects of foods -- called obesogens -- in weight gain. Scientists conducting this research believe that these substances that are now prevalent in our food supply may be altering the way our bodies store fat and regulate our metabolism. But not everyone agrees. Many scientists, nutritionists, and doctors are still firm believers in the energy balance model. A debate has ensued, leaving a rather unclear picture as to what's really at work behind our nation's spike in obesity.

Bruce Blumberg, professor of developmental and cell biology and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of California, Irvine, who coined the term "obesogen," studies the effect that organotins -- a class of persistent organic pollutants that are widely used in the manufacture of polyvinylchloride plastics, as fungicides and pesticides on crops, as slimicides in industrial water systems, as wood preservatives, and as marine antifouling agents -- have on the body's metabolism. Organotins, which he considers to be obesogens, "change how your body responds to calories," he says. "So the ones we study, tributyltin and triphenyltin, actually cause exposed animals to have more and bigger fat cells. The animals that we treat with these chemicals don't eat a different diet than the ones who don't get fat. They eat the same diet -- we're not challenging them with a high-fat or a high-carbohydrate diet. They're eating normal food, and they're getting fatter."

A widely reported study that came out in January in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) would seem to dispute this finding: it confirms the belief in the energy balance model, and has been cited as proof by many researchers working in the field. I asked an author of the study, Dr. George Bray, professor of medicine at Louisiana State University, about the myriad of additives and industrial ingredients in our food that were not accounted for in this study. "It doesn't make any difference," he said in a telephone interview. "Calories count. If you can show me that it doesn't work, I'd love to see it. Or anybody else who says it doesn't -- there ain't no data the other way around."

The participants in the AJCN study were given low, normal, and high amounts of protein and 1,000 more calories than needed. The study does not take into account the content and form of calories, how they were processed, or with what additives or industrial chemicals.

Bray doesn't believe that additives or how foods are processed or produced will ultimately affect the outcome of studies. In fact, he completed research in 2007 that he refers to as his "Big Mac study," which fed participants three meals a day for three days giving one group fast-food items like Big Macs and the other group foods made "from scratch." Bray says the results showed that the type of food made no difference: "At least in an acute study measuring glucose tolerance, insulin, and things -- they don't make any difference. Now, if you fed them over a longer time period, it's clearly going to be the quantity that matters, largely."

One study conducted at Princeton University indicates that types of calories do matter. Researchers found that rats drinking high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) gained significantly more weight than rats drinking sugar water, even though the amount of calories consumed was the same. The rats drinking HFCS also exhibited signs of metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, especially visceral fat around the belly, and significant increases in circulating triglycerides.

Miriam Bocarsly, the lead author of the Princeton study and a Ph.D. candidate there, said in a phone interview: "The question of calories in, calories out is a very good one and is highly debated in the field. You have traditional nutritionists who say 'energy in energy out,' but we have this result and at this point all we can really say is that this is what is happening in the rat model. Something is obviously different between HFCS and table sugar, and the next question is, What is that difference?"

Blumberg says that fructose itself is an obesogen. "Crystalline fructose doesn't exist in nature, we're making that," he says. "Fructose is not a food. People think fructose comes from fruit but it doesn't. The fructose that we eat is synthesized. Yes, it's derived from food. But cyanide is derived from food, too. Would you call it a food?"

Robert H. Lustig, a pediatric neuroendocrinologist and a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, also believes that fructose is an obesogen. "I personally do lump fructose in with [obesogens]," he told me in an email. "There are those who don't, because fructose is a nutrient, and they want to think of an obesogen as a foreign chemical. But because fructose tricks the brain into eating more in a free-range situation, it has some properties consistent with an obesogen."

Lustig is another researcher and doctor who finds fault in the calories in, calories out model. "I don't believe in the energy balance model, which is calorie-centric," he says. "I believe in the fat deposition model, which is insulin-centric. The reason is that by altering insulin dynamics, you can alter both caloric consumption and physical activity behavior. This has been my research for the past 16 years." What Lustig means is that by increasing circulating insulin -- often as a result of consuming too much fructose -- people become hungrier and more fatigued, which results in overeating and little motivation to exercise.

Another possible obesogen that has made headlines recently is bisphenol-A (BPA), which is found in an overwhelming number of food items and packaging material. Frederick S. vom Saal, curators' professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, receives funding the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for his research on BPA. "We do animal experiments with chemicals like BPA, and we dramatically alter the way fat is regulated in those animals," vom Saal said in a phone interview. "And they're not changing their food intake."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that "nearly all" Americans tested have BPA in their urine, "which indicates widespread exposure to BPA in the U.S. population." The American Chemistry Council has called for a ban on BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups (which California and several other states have already done), and some food manufacturers are already moving away from using BPA in their packaging. On Monday, Campbell's Soup announced it will stop using BPA in the lining of its cans. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is scheduled to decide by the end of March whether to ban the chemical's use in all food and beverage packaging.

Vom Saal believes that BPA is only the most prominent example of many substances in our food supply and environment that functions as an obesogen. "If people really want to solve the obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease epidemics," he says, "it isn't a wise thing to be ignoring any contributor to this. And we're not obese just because of HFCS, or because of BPA. I also know that nicotine and PCBs and other chemicals are implicated in diabetes and metabolic disease as well."

The energy balance model diverts responsibility back to the consumer because conventional wisdom says the spike in obesity is the result of people consuming more foods than ever before.

Lustig echoes vom Saal's belief that a wide range of substances in our food supply and our environment are likely leading to obesity and metabolic disease based on hosts of studies of various substances. These include soy-based infant formula, phthalates (used in many plastics), PCBs (found in coolant and electrical equipment), DDE (a type of pesticide), fungicides, and atrazine (a common pesticide).

If the obesogen theory comes to be accepted and casts doubt on the energy balance model, the food industry will be in trouble. It would be harder to keep promoting diet and "health" foods that may be low in calories but that also contain an array of substances that may actually prove to contribute to weight gain.

The emphasis that industry places on personal choice puts the onus back on the individual and leaves the consumer with tough decisions to make about industrial food products and additives. The food industry does not disclose what kinds of potential obesogens, like certain organotins or BPA, are in its products, because these substances are not required to be listed on labels and are difficult for the FDA to regulate. With an emerging debate in the scientific community and an absence of information on labels, consumers are left making their best guess on the safety and health of foods.

"People say to me all the time, 'What do I do?'" vom Saal says. "And the answer is, there's not much we can do, because industry has no legal mandate to tell you, and so they refuse to tell you the way they're using these chemicals. How do you avoid something you are blind to?"

The energy balance model also diverts responsibility back to the consumer because conventional wisdom says that the spike in obesity and diet-related disease is the result of people consuming more foods than ever before. But a review of the literature in The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality, and Ideology by Michael Gard and Jan Wright asserts that there is no evidence that food intake levels have increased in industrialized countries, or that activity levels have declined. According to Gard and Wright, some studies even suggest a reduction in energy intake over the past several decades.

Julie Guthman, a professor of community studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, points out in her new book, Weighing In, that the amount of calories consumed across racial lines and income levels varies little, according to a study by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This is despite the fact that obesity and overweight do vary across racial lines and income levels: Poorer people tend to be more obese, and African Americans and Latinos have higher rates of obesity than do whites. This means there must be some other mechanism, Guthman says, besides excess calories, in the varying levels of obesity. In her book, she refers to the possible role of environmental factors like exposure to obesogens and other toxins, stress, and non-nutritional aspects of food.

Guthman would like to see stronger regulation on the part of the government, and a discussion that focuses more on how food is produced and not just on how much is eaten. "I think people would like to say that weight loss is simple and that it's all about changing personal behavior," Guthman says. "So there's an emphasis on trying to make people have better lifestyles or on changing the built environment."

This seems to fit with Marion Nestle's approach to educating people on weight loss. Nestle is the co-author of a new book on the subject, Why Calories Count. "BPA, PCBs, and other such contaminating chemicals can't possibly be good for health," she said in an email. "But it's really hard to prove that they cause demonstrable harm. They might have something to do with obesity -- I suppose it's not impossible -- but why invoke complicated explanations when the evidence for calories is so strong? Let's say obesogens affect a body weight regulatory factor, which they very well might do. But so what? Weight is regulated by more than a hundred biological factors, and these are redundant, which means that if something goes wrong with one of them the others fill in the deficit."

The "so what," Guthman says, is that "We really don't understand the science enough, and there's new evidence in the science that completely re-shifts how we think about these things."

According to Blumberg, the food industry would like to discredit emerging research on obesogens. "What industry typically does is fund studies that produce the opposite conclusions, thereby shedding doubt on the science," he says. "If you take BPA as an example, the vast majority of studies performed by independent government and academic scientists show that it has numerous deleterious effects on health. In contrast, not a single industry-funded or -conducted study has found any hazard associated with BPA."

Can we afford to continue to frame the discussion simply in terms of calories in and calories out? Or by looking only at conventional categories like fat, protein, and carbohydrates and diary, meat, grains, and vegetables? Given the proliferation of industrial pollutants and the ultra-processing of foods in our current food systems, it seems that we can't.

“What new scientific paradigms like this do is shake up the existing science,” Guthman says. “People are resistant to it because so much is embedded in the old paradigm — once you open that up, the science is open to all sorts of other claims.”

Paula Deen’s public admission that she has Type 2 diabetes and her follow-up announcement that she is also a paid spokesperson for the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, and its diabetes drug, Victoza, has sparked an interesting debate about the deeper issues surrounding our food system—especially the impact it has on the many people diagnosed with diabetes. And according to Deen’s comments on the Today show, she implies to her millions of fans, that the primary ways to deal with this largely diet-related disease are through personal responsibility and pharmaceuticals.

Indeed, when Al Roker, asks her if she is going to change the way she eats and the foods she cooks, Deen says, “Honey, I’m your cook, I’m not your doctor. You are going to have to be responsible for yourself.” Evading the question, Deen puts the onus back on the individual to decide what foods to eat or not, despite the fact that she promotes unhealthful and processed foods on TV. The one comment she does make about food choice is “moderation,” one of the most meaningless and confusing bits of nutrition advice. In fact, this is what the industry giants often use as their defense for harmful, unhealthful foods.

Personal responsibility and consumer choice are solutions heralded by conservatives and liberals alike—the idea being that ultimately good health comes down to what we choose to buy and eat. But it’s not that simple.

There are three main issues when it comes to the myth of personal responsibility about food choice and they get at the root of our nation’s health crisis: The public’s confusion about nutrition; the lack of time and knowledge about real home cooking; and the promotion of quick fixes like drugs, diet foods, and fads in lieu of addressing underlying causes. The Paula Deen diabetes story manages to hit on every single one of these issues.

Americans suffer from nutrition confusion, thanks to an array of conflicting and often inaccurate public health messages, misleading labels and claims on packaging, and a lack of nutrition knowledge by many doctors, dietitians, and other health care providers.

Deen’s cooking, and now her public diabetes announcement, only adds to this confusion. During the Today show interview she repeatedly mentions the amount of fat in her recipes, as do many in the media reporting on the story. “For 10 years, wielding slabs of cream cheese and mounds of mayonnaise,” a New York Times article begins, “Paula Deen has become television’s self-crowned queen of Southern cuisine.”

But real, unprocessed cream cheese and mayonnaise are not the problem. The issue that mainstream media has largely overlooked is that Deen uses the processed, packaged versions of these foods, which are full of chemicals, additives and trans-fats. Actual home cooking would require whipping these foods up herself in her kitchen using real ingredients. And that is the real story behind Deen’s diabetes diagnosis: Her health problems are largely due to her reliance on packaged, processed foods that are the foundation for many of her recipes.

Even though her cooking show is called Paula’s Home Cooking, there’s a lot going on in her kitchen that is as far removed from home cooking as you can get. Many of her recipes include “ingredients” like Krispy Kreme doughnuts, biscuit mixes, cans of mushroom soup, and sour-cream-and-onion flavored potato chips. This is processed food cooking, not home cooking.

Heaping the blame on all the “fat” she cooks with only serves to confuse the public further. A New York Daily News article also cites fat as one of the main culprits in Deen’s cooking and her diet. But the most recent research indicates that when it comes to diabetes, fat is not the problem. The problem foods are sugar, refined white flour, chemical additives, artificial sweeteners and flavors, trans-fats, and the various other chemicals and additives found in the processed foods that abound in Deen’s recipes.

Now Deen is pushing the idea that taking medicine is the real solution to diabetes. On the Today show, she says, “Here’s what I want to get across to people, I want them to first start by going to their doctor and asking to be tested for diabetes. Get on a program that works for you. I’m amazed at the people out there that are aware they’re diabetic but they’re not taking their medicine.”

According to Deen, the reason she waited three years to go public with her diagnosis was because she didn’t have anything to give her fans. “I could have walked out and said, ‘Hey ya’ll, I have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.’ I had nothing to give to my fellow friends out there. I wanted to bring something to the table when I came forward.” So what is she bringing to the table? A sales pitch for a diabetes drug that costs $500 per month and has some seriously troubling side effects, including thyroid cancer, as Tom Philpott reports.

Just think of the kind of influence she could have wielded had she come out with a new cooking show that focused on using fresh, real food ingredients that cut way back on sugar and refined carbohydrates. In fact, if she had done so and eaten this way for the past three years she might have reversed her own diabetes diagnosis, which is entirely possible given the right diet.

But instead, Deen is getting paid to leave that task to a drug company. This isn’t her first corporate sponsorship (here she peddles Smithfield ham) and I doubt it will be her last. Diabetic and diet foods can’t be far behind in products she’ll attach to her name.

Alas, we can’t fairly discuss personal responsibility without taking into account the under-regulated advertising industry that pushes cheap, convenient, and processed foods on an overworked and cash-strapped population. Add to this the diminishing knowledge on how to shop for, cook, and prepare foods from scratch and we have a serious problem.

As Deen now joins the 25.8 million other Americans suffering with diabetes, she “brings to the table” the ideas of moderation, personal responsibility, and the drug Victoza as the solutions. She could do so much more with all the power she wields.

Anthony Bourdain put it squarely when he said of Deen, “If I were on at seven at night and loved by millions of people at every age, I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us.” And this was before her diabetes announcement. Bourdain has also said that Deen is the “worst, most dangerous person to America.” He might have a point.

If there were any lingering doubts as to whom our elected representatives really work for, they were put to rest Tuesday when Congress announced that frozen pizza was a vegetable. The United States Congress voted to rebuke new USDA guidelines for school lunches that would have increased the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables in school cafeterias and instead declared that the tomato paste on frozen pizza qualified it as a vegetable. For this we can thank large food companies -- in this case ConAgra and Schwan -- which pressured Congress to comply with their financial interests. It simply doesn't suit the makers of frozen pizza, chicken nuggets and tater tots for schools to offer real food in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Many conservative lawmakers are also insisting that the federal government shouldn't tell people what to eat. This is the same argument Sarah Palin used against Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign to the rallying cry, "nanny-state."

But the government clearly does not control the food Americans eat. Corporations do. In this case ConAgra and Schwan are quite literally determining what the vast majority of our school children will be fed in school cafeterias: A veritable chemical concoction made to look like pizza. These are the ingredients for the "traditional 4x6 school pizza" made by ConAgra:

CRUST: (Enriched wheat flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, soybean oil, dextrose, baking powder (sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum sulfate, cornstarch, monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate), yeasts (yeast, starch, sorbitan monostearate, ascorbic acid), salt, dough conditioners (wheat flour, salt, soy oil, L-cysteine, ascorbic acid, fungal enzyme), wheat gluten, soy flour).SAUCE: (water, tomato paste (31 percent NTSS), pizza seasoning (salt, sugar, spices, dehydrated onion, guar and xanthan gum, garlic powder, potassium sorbate, citric acid, tricalcium phophate and soybean oil (prevent caking)), modified food starch). SHREDDED MOZZARELLA

CHEESE: (Pasteurized part skim milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes). SHREDDED MOZZARELLA

CHEESE SUBSTITUTE: (Water, oil (soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil with citric acid), casein, milk protein concentrate, modified food starch, contains 2 percent or less of the following: sodium aluminum phosphate, salt, lactic acid, mozzarella cheese type flavor (cheese (milk, culture, rennet, salt), milk solids, disodium phosphate), disodium phosphate, sorbic acid, nutrient blend (magnesium oxide, zinc oxide, calcium pantothenate, riboflavin and vitamin B-12), vitamin A palmitate).

It's not even pizza, much less a vegetable. (And if you think that's bad take a look at the ingredients for the "Pepperoni, Reduced Fat Pizza").

This vote by Congress makes it abundantly clear who calls the shots when it comes to feeding our nation's children. According to The New York Times food companies have spent $5.6 million lobbying against these new rules.

Meanwhile, writer Ed Bruske brings up an important, related point on The Slow Cook. He writes:

[This] also provides a vivid illustration of what happens when you go after the foods kids most love in the lunch line. Pizza is the all-time favorite school lunch food, followed by potatoes in all their guises. Essentially, the proposed new guidelines would sharply cut back on foods kids really like, and replace them with things they hate: vegetables, beans and whole grains. Turns out there are huge amounts of money at stake behind the foods beloved by the 32 million children who participate in the national school lunch program. Frozen food companies are protecting their share the best way they know how: using their clout with their local congressman.

He goes on:

Other efforts to mess with pizza also have failed. In Berkeley, for instance, elementary school children get a rectangular pizza made with a locally-produced whole wheat crust. Middle schoolers, however, insist on a round pizza, which has to be sourced through a wholesale food distributor ... As I've learned sitting in on meals at my daughter's school the past two years here in the District of Columbia, children will go to great lengths to avoid the foods adults consider "healthy." Vegetables, beans and whole grains -- they typically get dumped in the trash. Kids will spend inordinate time picking the spinach out of fresh-cooked lasagna, for instance, before wolfing down the pasta.

So, the real question is, why do children want pizza, potatoes and pasta while vehemently eschewing green vegetables, beans and whole grains? This hasn't always been the case. Keep in mind that industrial food as it exists today has only been around for roughly 60 years. Much of what we take as the truth about what kinds of food kids love and hate is largely dictated by the food industry itself. The idea that kids won't eat vegetables is a construct invented by the food industry and reinforced by well-meaning parents, school lunch programs and government officials.

Herein lies the brilliance of the food industry -- not only has it created a myriad of products but it also created the idea that children want industrial food products above all else. While most Americans have bought into this notion, it's simply not true. Children 100 years ago couldn't have possibly eaten the industrial foods they are eating today. But listening to parents and children now, you'd be convinced that they will only eat industrial foods. Bruske writes that the middle schoolers in Berkeley "insist" on round industrial pizza.

How was this notion started? The food industry literally shapes and changes the palates of our children. Constantly eating sugary, salty and fatty food products adjusts taste preference to the point that simple, real foods taste bland and unappealing. While the food industry insists that it only advertises to children "to influence brand preference," a study published in the journal Appetite found that the food industry works to, "fundamentally change children's taste palates to increase their liking of highly processed and less nutritious foods."

This makes it all the more outrageous that Congress won't stand up to Big Food to say it will not allow financial interests to trump the health and well-being of America's children. With one out of five four-year-olds now obese, the health of our nation's children is in such a sorry state that the food movement may have some unlikely allies on this front. According to the Associated Press, a group of retired generals criticized the move by Congress, calling the decision a national security issue since obesity has become the leading medical disqualifier for military service. Amy Dawson Taggart, the director of the group called Mission: Readiness said in a letter to members of Congress before the final plan was released, "We are outraged that Congress is seriously considering language that would effectively categorize pizza as a vegetable in the school lunch program."

But this is what Congress has done. It has let the American people down and failed to protect our children. As Michele Simon astutely points out, "Congress has hijacked the USDA regulatory process to do the food industry's bidding." How much longer will we allow Big Food and our government to propagate lies about food and compromise the health of our nation's children for their financial and political gain? Please join the movement and attend Occupy Big Food's rally this Saturday from 1 to 3 in Zuccotti Park.

Erin Fairbanks of the Farm Report interviewed me last Thursday on Heritage Radio Network. We talked about nutrition, food, and the corporate control of the food supply. Here's the link to the full interview and the write up the station wrote: The Farm Report - Episode 98 - Nutrition with Kristin Wartman

Certified Holistic Nutritionist Kristin Wartman joins the Farm Report with Erin Fairbanks today to bust some food myths and expose some of the evils of big industry agriculture and food. Find out what makes a healthy diet and hear about some of the common mistakes people make in trying to get healthy. Hear why Kristin thinks food and democracy go hand in hand and why all concerned foodies should be occupying Wall Street and making their voice heard!

If you are paying attention to Occupy Wall Street--and by now most people are--the anti-corporate message is coming through loud and clear. Most participants at the events now spreading across the country say they are no longer willing to let powerful corporate interests determine the course of their lives. These Americans realize that a participatory democracy is essential. As it stands today, 75 percent of the population are obese or overweight and many are chronically ill with diet-related diseases. They are also largely dependent on an increasingly unhealthful and contaminated food supply that is heavily controlled by corporate interests. It's obvious that this is our moment to drive a very important point home: Upending corporate control of the food supply is a fundamental change that must occur if the "99 percent" are to be healthy participants in a true democracy.

This could be a catalyzing moment for the food movement with a real chance for average Americans to see and hear the connection between corporate control of the food supply and our nation's health crisis. Indeed, the declaration of Occupy Wall Street addresses issues the food movement has been working on for years. The declaration states, "They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization."

Author and activist Naomi Klein has been an outspoken advocate and participant in Occupy Wall Street. When asked how it connects to the food movement she said, "The protest is about the corporate takeover of democracy of our lives in every way. The food movement is inherently anti-corporate and it is inherently about rebuilding a real economy." She continued, "The food movement is where a lot of the leadership is. Occupy Wall Street is not just about banking legislation. The food movement is paving the way for what needs to happen in manufacturing and I think it's all connected."

Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University agrees. "Of course Occupy Wall Street connects to the food movement," she said. "If we had a healthier financial system, we might be able to fund better food assistance, universal school meals, a rational and effective food safety system, and production agriculture that promotes sustainability and affordable food that is healthier for people and the planet. The food movement needs to be there and its voices heard."

While powerful players like Goldman Sachs and Fannie Mae were on the lips of nearly every American after the 2008 financial crisis, the names of industrial agriculture corporations remain largely unknown. But consider how much power they wield. Take Monsanto as an example. When Monsanto began selling its genetically modified Roundup Ready soybeans in 1996 only two percent of soybeans in the U.S. contained their patented gene. By 2008, over 90 percent of soybeans in the U.S. contained Monsanto's gene. This is especially alarming given that soybeans account for the largest source of protein feed and the second largest source of vegetable oil in the world. According to the USDA, in 2008-09, the farm value of soybean production was $29.6 billion, the second highest among U.S. produced crops -- and soy is ubiquitous in processed foods. It ends up in the meat, milk, eggs, and farmed fish many Americans consume (as a result of it being in animal feed) as well as thousands upon thousands of packaged foods usually in the form of soy protein isolate, soy isoflavones, textured vegetable protein, and soy oils. Soy accounts for a fifth of the calories in the American diet.

Monsanto has also produced genetically modified seeds for corn, canola, and cotton with many more products being developed including seeds for sugar beets and alfalfa. (To see how ferociously Monsanto protects its patented seeds watch the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc.) As for corn, the highest valued U.S. produced crop, 93 percent of it is genetically engineered. Physicist and internationally renowned activist Dr. Vandana Shiva points out that the notion that genetically engineered food will improve the food supply and improve nutrition is a myth. "These are illusions that are being marketed in order for people to hand over the power to decide what to eat to a handful of corporations," she said in an interview on her Website.

Another corporation with broad reach and control over the foods we eat is Cargill, which rivals Monsanto in its control of the food supply. It is the largest privately held corporation in the nation, owning Cargill Pork and Cargill Beef, the second largest beef producer in North America. According to Anna Lappe's book Diet for a Hot Planet, Cargill also owns dozens of subsidiary businesses, is one of the largest commercial cattle feeders in the U.S., the world's biggest processor, marketer, and distributor of grains, oilseeds, and other agricultural commodities, and controls 80 percent of the European market for soybean crushing with a similar share for animal feed manufacturing.

If you eat any processed or packaged food, or anything from a typical restaurant or café, you can guarantee that Monsanto or Cargill played a role in those foods somewhere along the line. As Dr. Shiva points out in much of her work, these companies contribute to the toxification of our food supply. It's not only the lack of nutritional value in many of these highly processed foods, but also the actual toxins that are added to genetically engineered foods. Bees, butterflies, cattle and other animals have been dying as a result of these crops, so how are they affecting humans? (You can listen to Dr. Shiva discuss this here).

If America's health crisis is any indication, corporate control of the food supply is taking the ultimate toll. American children born in 2000 are the first generation not expected to outlive their parents as one in three is likely to develop diabetes in their lifetime, with those rates even higher for black and Latino children. The corporate monopolies over the food supply and the government's role in facilitating corporate control translates into control over the health of the American population.

Occupy Wall Street illustrates a basic tenet of democracy; we must participate for it to function properly. We must also participate in our food system to develop local food economies that function with our interests in mind. Our first steps must be learning and teaching others about where our food comes from and how to access healthy food. We must also boycott companies like Monsanto and Cargill whose sole interest is profit, not our health or protecting the environment.

Writer, activist, and academic Raj Patel said that while Wall Street is certainly behind many problems with the food system, there is an even deeper connection between the two. "At its best, the food movement is about learning to see the politics in our everyday lives and then to take a stand against injustice," he said. "That's what Occupy Wall Street is doing--creating a space to learn, demand, exchange and organize."

Occupy Wall Street understands that the corporations cannot be allowed to control our political systems. Similarly, when corporations control the food supply we are left with an unsafe and unregulated food supply and a population in the midst of a dire health crisis as a result of corporate carelessness and greed.

Milk is truly one of the oldest, simplest whole foods - and we certainly drink a lot of it. According to the USDA, Americans consumed an average of 1.8 cups of dairy per person, per day in 2005. But is the milk Americans are drinking today the same milk our ancestors drank thousands of years ago? Is it even the same milk our great-grandparents were drinking a hundred years ago? By and large, the answer is no.

Like many other modern foods, most of the milk sold today has been altered, stripped, and reconstituted. Once minimally processed, milk now undergoes a complicated and energy-intensive process before it ends up bottled and shipped to grocery store shelves. There are so many additives and processes involved that buying a gallon of milk or a cup of yogurt at your grocery store essentially guarantees that you'll get a mixture of substances from all over the country -- and possibly the world.  But that's not where it ends; milk by-products also now appear in a wide variety of other processed foods.

Lloyd Metzger, director of the Midwest Dairy Foods Research Center and Alfred Chair of the Dairy Department at South Dakota State, outlined the process: Milk is received at the processing facilities and is tested for off-flavors and antibiotics. Several tanker trunks worth (from multiple different farms) get combined and placed in holding silos. Then the milk goes through a cream separator to create two products: cream and skim milk. At this point, various percentages of cream are added back into the skim milk in order to create whole and low fat milk. Milk is then homogenized, which is the process of passing it at high speeds through very small holes to create a uniform texture and prevent the cream from separating and rising to the top. It's then pasteurized, or heated to at least 145 degrees. In some states, non-fat milk solids are added to the milk in order to thicken it and give it a better mouth feel. Then synthetic vitamins A and D are added.

When all is said and done, the product is a far cry from the milk that actually comes out of a cow. And, depending on whom you ask, each step along the way might carry its own risks.

Homogenization

"Homogenization is not good," says John Bunting, a dairy farmer who researches and writes about dairy for The Milkweed. "The milk is pumped under high pressure which smashes the milk molecules so hard. Homogenization splits and exposes the molecules." The hard science goes like this: A raw milk molecule is surrounded by a membrane, which protects it from oxygen. Homogenization decreases the average diameter of each fat globule and significantly increases the surface area. Because there's now not enough membrane to cover all of this new surface area, the molecules are easily exposed to oxygen, and the fats  become oxidized.

Milk solids

Critics believe that milk solids, which are sometimes added back into the milk, contain oxidized, or damaged, forms of fat and cholesterol. Nonfat milk solids are created through a process of evaporation and high heat drying which removes the moisture from skim milk. Exposure to high heat and oxygen causes fats to oxidize. And oxidized cholesterol has been shown in numerous studies to lead to atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, and to raise LDL, aka "bad" cholesterol. One study from 2004 found that oxidized dietary fats are a "major cause" in the development of atherosclerosis.

This phenomenon worries Nina Planck, author of Real Food. "This damaged cholesterol is much different than what I call "fresh cholesterol," which is found in egg yolks, whole milk, and butter," she said. "We know that fresh cholesterol has one main effect and that is to raise HDL [or ‘good' cholesterol]. On the other hand, oxidized cholesterol raises LDL."

What's more, Planck says that the law does not require manufacturers to tell consumers when milk solids are in food or milk. "It's a [potential] scandal because it's unlabeled," she says. Michael Pollan writes about this as well in In Defense of Food: "In the case of low-fat or skim milk, that usually means adding powdered milk. But powdered milk contains oxidized cholesterol which scientists believe is much worse for your arteries than ordinary cholesterol."

In California, where the industry reports the ingredients on its website, all industrially produced milk contains nonfat milk solids. Even "whole milk" is a product of reconstitution; it contains at least 3.5 percent milk fat and 8.7 percent nonfat milk solids. This is also true for (industrially produced) organic milk.

Nonfat milk solids are also found in low-fat and fat-free yogurt and cheese, infant formula, baked goods, cocoa mix, and candy bars.

Are these milk solids really as big of a problem as Planck and others in her camp believe them to be?  Lloyd Metzger is doubtful. He says there's virtually no fat left in the milk to oxidize. Bunting agrees, "If it's skim milk, there might be small amounts -- but that's not a real concern. If you're worried about oxidized fat, it's homogenization that is the real culprit."

Has Bunting seen evidence of the health impacts associated with oxidized fats in milk? "No," he says. "But who's going to fund it? The USDA is the largest funder of dairy research in this country and they're not going to fund a study they don't want to hear about."

Regardless, says Plank, "[Industrial] milk is transformed by heat. Why would you consume an adulterated product?"

Milk protein concentrates

Yet another product that ends up in industrial dairy products is milk protein concentrates. MPCs, as they're called, are made by ultra-filtration -- milk is forced through a membrane to remove some of the lactose. MPCs have less carbohydrates and more protein than other milk solids and are often used in protein bars and drinks as well as in some processed cheeses, according to Metzger. Nonfat milk solids are approved for food use but MPCs are not considered GRAS, or generally regarded as safe by the FDA.

"MPCs have undergone a change," says Bunting. "They cannot be reconstituted into anything called milk." He suspects that the protein in MPCs is not as digestible as that in milk, but it has never been tested. He says Kraft, in particular, uses a lot of MPCs.

Lorraine Lewandrowski, a fourth-generation dairy farmer in Newport, N.Y., is also concerned about MPCs. "MPCs are derived from milk, but they're not really milk," she said. "There have been a lot of complaints by farmers concerned about MPCs being added to cheese to boost production." She says that typically around 10 pounds of milk yields one pound of cheese. MPCs -- many of which come from overseas -- can increase yields considerably.

Planck is troubled that most MPCs are being imported from countries such as New Zealand, Mexico, and China. "We cannot trust foreign governments with the safety of these ingredients," she says. According to Metzger, MPCs must appear in ingredient lists, but the country of origin doesn't have to be labeled.

An alternative

Milk doesn't have to contain nonfat milk solids, MPCs, or any other additives. Mark McAfee, founder of Organic Pastures, offers an alternative in California. "What is in our bottle comes straight from grass-fed, pasture-grazed cows. All we do is chill it and test it," he said.

In the New York region, where the sale of raw milk is illegal, small dairies leave their milk unhomogenized and pasteurize it at low temperatures to avoid damaging the milk molecules. Unfortunately, most Americans don't have access to real milk from a local dairy farmer whose operations are transparent. "The real issue is trust," Bunting said. "If people could buy from someone they trusted, we wouldn't even need pasteurization. It extends shelf life, but it's not a safer product."

Even when milk is produced regionally, farmers still encounter processing hurdles. Lewandrowski raises 60 cows on pasture and knows them each by name. But since she can't afford her own bottling facility, her grass-fed milk gets mixed with that from farms across the region (many of them large-scale dairies that feed their cattle grain and keep them in confinement) and gets shipped off for use in a myriad of dairy products. "People tell me I should bottle my own milk," she says. "But I don't have the $50,000 it would cost."

Meanwhile, industrial milk production is being shaped to increase profits in counter-intuitive ways. "Americans are drinking more skim milk, while they're consuming more milk fat, in the form of ice cream and half and half," says Bunting. In some areas, he points out, school districts have banned whole milk and are serving students skim milk."Part of the idea is to take that fat and use it somewhere else more profitable," he says.

McAfee agrees, "They have butchered milk into its parts and now make more money because of the low fat craze."

So how can Americans gain access to real, unadulterated milk? This would require a re-localization of dairy production, which would mean more dairy farmers. "Look," Bunting says, "if you don't want industrial processes, then we need more people producing food." Of course, in order to make that work, we'll also need a much more robust support system for dairy farmers, and a larger base of consumers willing to pay more for milk produced on a smaller scale.

This piece was also published on Grist.org