U.S. Food Policy

POM Wonderful claims are false and misleading

2012-05-24T12:36:00.001-04:00

An administrative judge for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) concluded (.pdf) last week that POM Wonderful marketing claims about health benefits were "false and misleading."

For example, POM Wonderful advertisements imply that the juice protects against prostate cancer. Could this be true? POM Wonderful cited a study with some evidence that "PSA doubling time" -- a measure of prostate cancer's progress -- is slowed by drinking POM Wonderful. Yet, truthfulness requires more than selective quotation from a favorable study. In the FTC hearing, the balance of scientific evidence failed to support POM Wonderful's implied prostate cancer claim.

POM Wonderful argued that some of its claims were merely puffery, not intended actually to convince grown-up consumers that the juice protects against cancer. Yet, truthfulness does not permit the kindergarten defense: "Okay, I implied it, but I didn't really say it, so it's not a lie."

The administrative judge is correct to tar the claims as false and misleading.

What is the policy implication? Some reasonable people would say the FTC should crack down on misleading health claims. Other reasonable people would say "buyer beware," while maintaining that regulation will do little good. In either case, let us all acknowledge that the claims are false and misleading. There can be no defense of the claims themselves.

Or, so I thought.

POM Wonderful's response to the ruling this week has a breathtaking audacity. I see today on the NYT website, POM Wonderful advertisements boasting of the FTC judge's ruling. For the prostate issue above, here is the key quote in the POM Wonderful ad today:

“Competent and reliable scientific evidence supports the conclusion that the consumption of pomegranate juice and pomegranate extract supports prostate health, including by prolonging PSA doubling time in men with rising PSA after primary treatment for prostate cancer.”

– Judge Chappell, Chief Administrative Law Judge, FTC
In the Matter of POM Wonderful LLC, Initial Decision (5/17/2012), page 282

How is this possible? Did the judge really endorse the very cancer-protective claim that POM Wonderful had implied? Here is the full passage from page 282 of the judgment, with the sentences not quoted by POM Wonderful underlined.

Competent and reliable scientific evidence supports the conclusion that the consumption of pomegranate juice and pomegranate extract supports prostate health, including by prolonging PSA doubling time in men with rising PSA after primary treatment for prostate cancer. However, the greater weight of the persuasive expert testimony shows that the evidence relied upon by Respondents is not adequate to substantiate claims that the POM Products treat, prevent, or reduce the risk of prostate cancer or that they are clinically proven to do so. Indeed, the authors of the Pantuck Study and the Carducci Study each testified that their study did not conclude that POM Juice treats, prevents, or reduces the risk of prostate cancer.

Let anybody who was tempted to criticize the FTC or defend POM Wonderful read these two passages and evaluate for themselves the company's standard of honesty.

In my view, POM Wonderful is truly a bold titan of the dubious claims industry.

Update (1:45 pm): I just noticed that Marion Nestle also covered the NYT ads. Soon perhaps POM Wonderful will quote Marion's sentence: "Fruit juices are healthy and especially delicious when fresh." Of course, Marion goes on to say she doubts the cancer claims too.

SNAP benefits surpass 10% of all grocery spending

2012-05-18T18:09:00.000-04:00

In 2010, for the first time, SNAP benefits appear to have surpassed 10% of all grocery spending.

This seems to me like a significant threshold. The program formerly known as food stamps is not just an important part of the safety net. It plays a big role in the U.S. retail economy more generally. It should be a national priority to seek economic growth of the sort that reaches all the way to the low-wage labor market. The last time we had that type of poverty-reducing economic growth for a sustained period was the late 1990s.

I provide more detail about recent program trends in "The New Normal: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (gated)," published this week in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics (AJAE). The paper came out of a lively conference session, organized by Benjamin Senauer and including papers by himself and Mark Rosegrant, Mike Boehlje, Brent Gloy, Jason Henderson, and Tim Beatty.

This figure compares administrative data on SNAP benefits to USDA's two data series on aggregate food spending. Depending on the measure of food spending used, SNAP now represents 10% to 17% of the food retail economy.

Figure 4.

Total SNAP benefits, as a percentage of food at-home sales in food stores and in total, 1981–2010

Author's computation based on USDA/FNS annual SNAP data (converted from fiscal year to calendar year by interpolation) and USDA/ERS annual national food spending data by calendar year.

Healthy food not more expensive

2012-05-17T13:00:00.002-04:00

In contrast with the conventional wisdom that healthy food costs too much, USDA's Economic Research Service this week reports:

For all metrics except the price of food energy, the authors find that healthy foods cost less than less healthy foods (defined for this study as foods that are high in saturated fat, added sugar, and/or sodium, or that contribute little to meeting dietary recommendations).

The argument turns largely on three different methods of measuring the cost of food:

price per unit of weight ($ / 100g of edible weight)
price per serving ($ per cup or ounce equivalent)
price per unit of food energy (cents per Calorie)

Based on the third method, people frequently say healthy food is too expensive. Based mainly on the first two methods, USDA argues instead that healthy food is reasonably inexpensive.

You might think this is a delightfully arcane and nerdy point of contention. Yet, the new study has major news coverage today, including a surprisingly complete explanation of this whole units issue. The Wall Street Journal quotes one of the report's authors, my colleague Andi Carlson:

Often, less-healthy food options are made up of empty calories, prompting people to eat even more, said Andrea Carlson, lead researcher of the report.

"Take a chocolate glazed donut which is 240 calories," she said. "You can easily eat one, if not two or three without any trouble at all. However, a banana, which has a lot of nutrients in it and will make you feel quite full, has only 105 calories. You will feel fuller if you eat the banana versus the donut."

I can think of reasons to like each measurement method in certain circumstances. Beverages provide an example of a comparison where it seems the per-serving approach is sensible. If we compare the cost of milk to sugary soda, a per-Calorie comparison makes soda look cheaper when it really just has more Calories. The per-serving comparison better captures the choice consumers really face.

On the other hand, if you think of the cost of a day's food supply, consumers' bodies generally regulate total food energy intake. For such comparisons, perhaps price per unit of food energy does make some sense.

For those who want more detail, here is a summary graphic from the USDA report. It is a bit complex. Generally, the high-carbohydrate category is fairly inexpensive, which corroborates the conventional wisdom. But, the fruit and vegetable categories are less expensive than meat by the preferred second and third measurement methods, which is USDA's main point.

Reuters: Washington soft on childhood obesity

2012-04-28T08:00:00.000-04:00

From yesterday's long report by Duff Wilson and Janet Roberts at Reuters:

At every level of government, the food and beverage industries won fight after fight during the last decade. They have never lost a significant political battle in the United States despite mounting scientific evidence of the role of unhealthy food and children's marketing in obesity.

Lobbying records analyzed by Reuters reveal that the industries more than doubled their spending in Washington during the past three years. In the process, they largely dominated policymaking -- pledging voluntary action while defeating government proposals aimed at changing the nation's diet, dozens of interviews show.

How to read organic agriculture debates

2012-04-27T09:54:00.000-04:00

The journal Nature (link may be gated) recently had an interesting meta-analysis -- or quantitative literature review -- about yields from organic agriculture.

The accompanying summary says, "conventional agriculture gives higher yields under most situations." This is probably true.

Yet, even environmentalists are overreacting to the study. A recent article by Bryan Walsh at Time Magazine's Ecocentric blog is titled, "Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable."

The evidence Walsh presents fails to support the headline, though the article does begin with two good points:

Organic agriculture commonly has a yield penalty per unit of land (see the Nature article above).
Environmentalists should care about efficiency. Getting more output for lower resource cost is good environmentalism.

Mostly, though, Walsh repeats common overstatements of the advantages of conventional agriculture.

Conventional industrial agriculture has become incredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis. Thanks to fertilizers, mechanization and irrigation, the each American farmer feeds over 155 people worldwide.

Environmentalists discussing conventional agriculture should remember several key themes:

Not all productive technology improves the environment. Many technologies used in conventional agriculture are designed to save labor, not to save land. In Walsh's quote above, huge mechanized combines elevate the number of people fed per American farmer, but they make little difference to yields per unit of land (the key environmental issue addressed by the Nature study). From one sentence to the next, Walsh conflates food per American farmer with efficiency "on a simple land to food basis."
Yield is not the same as efficiency. Organic agriculture commonly requires a tradeoff, giving up some yield and undertaking some additional labor and management cost in order to gain something of value for the producer and for the environment. Advocates for organic agriculture say the tradeoff is efficient -- getting the most output for the lowest resource cost when all environmental costs are accounted. Walsh's first sentence boasts of the "efficiency" of industrial agriculture, but the following argument fails to support the boast.
Producing more grain is not the same as feeding the world. Any time the high yields of U.S. corn production are mentioned, it should be noted that most U.S. corn goes to ethanol and animal feed. Walsh seems to think that Iowa corn farmers do well at feeding the most people possible for the least land, which is false. If the goal is to feed the world, then most of the calories produced in Iowa corn fields are squandered already, and this loss matters more than the organic yield penalty matters.

Most hard-headed well-grounded advocates for organic agriculture already understand the yield tradeoffs, and they already value efficiency. For example, Rodale studies over the years have always claimed that lower chemical input costs offset modest yield penalties -- a claim that may be nearly consistent the new Nature study.

One sometimes meets beginning organic farmers who are dismissive of yields and efficiency. But one never meets an organic farmer who has been in business for five years and remains dismissive of yields and efficiency.

There is one lesson in this whole argument for organic advocates. It is important to speak plainly about yield penalties and about efficiency. Perhaps Walsh was not sufficiently familiar with hard-headed well-grounded research on organic practices, but instead may have been reading some excessively optimistic pro-organic public relations. Then, when the PR message was contradicted by the Nature study, Walsh overreacted. It is best all around to state the relative advantages of environmentally sound production practices plainly and precisely from the start.

Progress for Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)

2012-04-23T11:41:00.000-04:00

Here in Boston this month, during the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' rainy march at the corporate offices for Stop and Shop supermarkets, with the way into the offices blocked by corporate representatives, hopes soared briefly.

And then, just at that moment, a man emerged from the double doors of the towering Stop & Shop headquarters, behind the representatives standing watch, and approached the group. “I'm a systems analyst from floor six—and I support you.” His expression was determined, unflappable. “May I escort you inside for a conversation on floor ten with executives?”

Despite the system analyst's courage, negotiators from the Florida-based farm labor group were unable to proceed further.

Yet, it seems likely that the setback will be only temporary. On a visit to CIW offices in Immokalee this week, my family (including my two children, wife, and parents) enjoyed speaking with labor organizers about their successes since the time of my previous visit in 2009. The biggest victory has been a new relationship with tomato growers, who previously had refused to participate in the CIW's penny-a-pound bonus program, in which leading branded supermarkets and restaurant chains agree to pay workers a better piece rate for tomato harvest.

The CIW's "ask" from branded companies seems profoundly reasonable. Here in New England, I suspect Stop and Shop will give way in the next several months, as have Taco Bell, McDonald's, Burger King, and the tomato growers themselves in previous campaigns. As a regular Stop and Shop customer, let me mention here that customers like me are following this issue closely, and a sensible negotiating position would generate a pile of customer goodwill and loyalty. If Stop and Shop negotiates, I will of course give the news effusive coverage in this space.

Source: CIW.

Supermarket deserts by the numbers

2012-04-22T17:36:00.000-04:00

Gina Kolata in the New York Times this week cast doubt on claims that supermarket deserts contribute to the obesity epidemic. The start of her article cites recent research that finds no association between supermarket deserts and risk of obesity. It notes that residents of low-income urban neighborhoods have as much access to supermarkets as residents of higher-income neighborhoods have.

This fact at first seems counter-intuitive to most people concerned about supermarket deserts, but it is easy to understand with some further reflection. Low-income urban neighborhoods commonly have high population density, and they contain many medium-income residents along with the impoverished residents, so they sometimes offer too big a market for retail chains to overlook.

The NYT article generated some controversy. Conservative pundits, as you might imagine, falsely claimed that food deserts are a "make-believe issue" and an "Obama lie." The liberal website Media Matters debunked the conservative coverage with typical thoroughness. Media Matters also found "food experts" to characterize the NYT article as "misleading," which I think was too harsh a description for reporting that seemed basically sound.

My favorite authoritative statistics about the extent of supermarket deserts put the problem into quantitative perspective, without exaggeration. The key thing to understand is that most Americans, rich and poor, shop in supermarkets and supercenters. Likewise, most Americans, rich or poor, shop by automobile. Supermarkets and supercenters are fundamentally an automobile oriented retail format, and if we pretend that most people walk to the grocery store we will misdiagnose the problem.

USDA's 2009 Report to Congress about supermarket deserts emphasizes statistics showing how many households are far from a supermarket and lack access to a vehicle:

2.3% of U.S. households live more than 1 mile from a supermarket
and lack vehicle access.
5.7% of U.S. households live more than 0.5 miles from a supermarket
and lack vehicle access.

One gets much higher percentages by ignoring vehicle access, but that approach is misleading. One cannot ignore vehicle access, because, even in low-income areas, most grocery trips are by automobile. The USDA report finds (in Table 2.9):

In low-income areas with high access to food retail, about 65.3% of
grocery trips are by automobile.
In low-income areas with poor access to food retail, about 93.3% of
grocery trips are by automobile.

Naturally, neighborhoods with adequate retail have a higher concentration of people without cars. And in rural areas without adequate retail, even most low-income Americans shop by car.

My best summary of the evidence is that perhaps 2 to 6% of U.S. households lack good supermarket access. Food retail access is a serious concern for people without vehicle access. Possible remedies to improve local food retail have some merit, but should be carefully targeted based on need, and one should not expect these remedies to carry much of the burden of solving the obesity epidemic for the population as a whole.

Some low-income neighborhoods are supermarket deserts and some are not.

More from Oxfam on food aid reform

2012-04-12T09:49:00.001-04:00

Following on another recent post, I enjoyed this video from Oxfam America, mocking what seems like the only bi-partisan consensus in Washington. Policy-makers preserve the rules that require most food aid to be purchased domestically and shipped in U.S. vessels, regardless of the aid agencies' own assessment of the most efficient delivery options. Lives are at stake. Food aid should be reformed.

Imidacloprid linked to bee colony collapse

2012-04-12T09:34:00.000-04:00

Harvard scientists recently tested the effects of the pesticide imidacloprid on bee colonies in situ, meaning out in the field instead of in a laboratory. At each site, four hives were treated with four different amounts of the pesticide. Beginning with the hives that received the highest doses, and continuing to the hives that received low doses, the bees died in a fashion symptomatic of colony collapse disorder (CCD).

Reactions: The scientists say their findings show that even low doses of imdacloprid, similar to those used in real agriculture, can cause CCD. The pesticide's manufacturer, Bayer, says the low doses used in the study remained too high to be realistic. The EPA still considers CCD to result from a mix of factors, possibly including pesticide exposure as just one factor. That may still be a reasonable summary of the balance of current evidence, but the new study strengthens the case that pesticides -- imidacloprid in particular -- have a big role.

I follow this issue in part because my father-in-law is a retired scientist and a beekeeper. He tracked the decline and later half-hearted recovery of his hives in lab notebooks. In 2010, when I took a cross-country drive, visiting sites of food and agricultural interest all along the way, my starting point was his hives in Carlisle, MA. After reading the Boston Globe article on the recent Harvard Study, he wrote a letter to the editor, which was published this week:

ONE THING we can all do is to put pressure on our elected leaders to have the Environmental Protection Agency do a better job of regulation (“Study links pesticide to bee deaths; Harvard scientists make case,’’ Metro, April 6).

The EPA does not test for the low-level chronic effects of pesticides such as those addressed in the recent studies. It also does not test for interactions between pesticides and other agricultural chemicals - and yet it is known that there are powerful synergies between some of these chemicals.

Furthermore, the EPA farms out its testing to the very companies that are producing the pesticides - kind of like the fox guarding the chicken coop.

Food aid reforms would be like money back on your grocery bill

2012-04-05T11:47:00.005-04:00

Oxfam America and the American Jewish World Service (AJWS) explain here how much money could be saved -- and how many more hungry people could be fed -- if the United States reformed its food aid programs. Some of the key reforms include eliminating a rule that most food must be sourced from the United States and shipped in U.S. ships.

For more detail on such issues, the best book is Food Aid After Fifty Years, by Chris Barrett at Cornell and my colleague Dan Maxwell here at the Friedman School at Tufts. A good recent report comes from the GAO: Local and Regional Procurement Can Enhance the Efficiency of U.S. Food Aid, but Challenges May Constrain Its Implementation.

USDA's Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Compass

2012-04-05T09:34:00.005-04:00

USDA's Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food website consolidates information from a wide variety of less-well-known programs that support farmers' markets and other local food infrastructure, facilitate local meat and poultry, promote local food sales to institutions such as schools and hospitals, and more.

Rather than duplicate existing work with yet another layer of program authority, the website compiles information from a breadth of USDA agencies with their own separate budgets and chains of command. This simple inexpensive effort makes a powerful impression, articulating a sense of shared purpose for what might otherwise seem like a scattershot collection of tiny stand-alone projects. For a Department that sometimes suffers from accusations of serving only large-scale industrial farmers, the Know Your Farmer program humanizes a large bureaucracy and generates an outsized improvement in public reputation.

For an alternative view, the coverage at Forbes seems to complain simultaneously that the Know Your Farmer program is underfunded and covers the same topics as existing programs. With a churlish spin, Forbes shares the same facts I just described above.

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack and Deputy Secretary Merrigan this year launched the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Compass, with a link-heavy report and an interactive map, publicizing all sorts of local food activities supported by USDA. Because U.S. agricultural politics are local politics, the simple act of collecting small program data points by geography has a big communication impact.

C. Peter Timmer receives Leontief Prize at Tufts

2012-04-03T10:49:00.000-04:00

C. Peter Timmer and Michael Lipton today receive the annual Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought from the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. The 1983 book Food Policy Analysis by Timmer, Walter Falcon, and Scott Pearson influenced a generation of researchers in my field.

Timmer and Lipton will be honored today, April 3, at 3:30 pm on the Tufts Medford Campus. Timmer will give a Friedman School Seminar tomorrow, April 4, at the Jaharis Building on the Tufts Boston Campus.

Cuts to SNAP in the Ryan budget

2012-03-31T17:39:00.001-04:00

For many years, the Food Stamp Program enjoyed reliable bi-partisan political support. Even as the U.S. entitlement program for cash assistance was cut and converted to a block grant in the 1990s, food stamps remained largely unharmed. Leading Republicans such as Senator Bob Dole joined leading Democrats in supporting food assistance for low-income Americans.

Now, at a time when U.S. household food insecurity is near record levels, the nation's largest food assistance program -- under its newer name the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) -- is targeted for the most severe cuts ever in its 50-year history. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, GOP Congressman Paul Ryan's proposed budget plan for 2013-2022, approved by the House of Representatives Thursday in a partisan vote, would cut SNAP by $133.5 billion, or 17 percent, over ten years.

In reaction to this proposed budget plan, GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, "It's an excellent piece of work."

Second-place GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, according to the New York Times, said the budget didn't go far enough.

The New York Times editorial yesterday disagreed. The Times said the proposed cuts "would mean a loss of $90 worth of food a month" for the average household. If you read the Center on Budget's analysis carefully, clearly the Times should have said "a loss of $90 worth of food stamps in a month" (the distinction arises because SNAP benefits are effectively food support only in part and effectively income support for the remainder). An economist colleague called me up to criticize this oversight in the Times editorial and to encourage me to post on this topic, saying of the Times: "It's an attempt to be inflammatory. They wanted a big number."

I see the point, but I might add that the budget cut correctly described, $133.5 billion from SNAP, also is a big number, and perhaps also in this election season an attempt to be inflammatory.

Update (4/1/2012): My colleague encourages me to explain the economic flaw in the Times editorial even more clearly. The issue has to do with the effect on food spending from an additional dollar of SNAP benefits. A good rough estimate is that an additional dollar of SNAP benefits generates about 30 cents of additional food spending. The rest of the additional SNAP benefit substitutes for cash income that the household otherwise would have spent on food, freeing up resources for other household needs such as housing or transportation. The economic lesson is that a targeted benefit such as SNAP is in part a food subsidy and in part a general income subsidy. The Times editorial should not have said the Ryan budget would generate a loss of $90 in food, but rather that the budget would generate a loss of $27 in food and $63 in other household needs.

With this correction in mind, my friend writes: "What you did not do in your blog post was tell your reader the nature of the NYT mistake and what the right concept is.... So finally, if I object, it is that you did not take this opportunity to teach a little economics and encourage accuracy. You came very close to saying, lying is okay as long as the political cause is GOOD. I do not think you really believe that."

Jim Moseley on AGree

2012-03-23T14:05:00.000-04:00

The best moment in this video is former Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Jim Moseley's personal story about his two sons, both young farmers, one traditional and one organic. Currently, Moseley is one of four co-chairs of a foundation-funded agricultural policy initiative called AGree. The other co-chairs -- also each with their own videos -- are former USAID executive Emmy Simmons, Stonyfield Farm's Gary Hirschberg, and former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman. I am serving on an affiliated Research Committee, which has been difficult and highly educational work. AGree also has an excellent news feed.

The most distinctive feature about AGree is the Advisory Committee, with representatives from all walks of life in U.S. agriculture and the food system. The purpose of the initiative is to improve the tenor of U.S. farm and food policy debate. That's a difficult task, and the initiative is by no means ensured of success. If it does have any success, it will be largely attributable to the courage, tolerance, and hard work of this remarkable Advisory Committee.

Why Calories Count

2012-03-23T13:37:00.002-04:00

Why Calories Count, the new book by Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim, nicely bridges the world of food policy commentary and nutrition science. It offers a great counterpoint to the loud and untrustworthy bazaar of diet books, each blaming some simple villain for the obesity epidemic (too much carbs, too much fat, too little calcium, whatever). Why Calories Count teaches a wealth of detail about how calories are measured and how their effects are studied. It also tells great stories, from the history of nutrition science to the poignant service of wartime conscientious objectors who participated in a clinical study of human starvation. If I were a graduate student in nutrition or public health, I would find this book inspiring as an eloquent and engaging secondary reading alongside a nutrition science textbook. Strongly recommended.

Links: Jane Brody, Mark Bittman.

Bon Me lunch truck in Boston

2012-03-23T13:15:00.000-04:00

Today for the first time I had lunch at the Bon Me Truck at Dewey Square Plaza in Boston, operated by Friedman School alum Asta Schuette and partners. It is Boston's contribution to a trend toward high-quality food trucks around the country. Terrific real wholesome food. I should have visited much earlier.

Three views of ractopamine in pigs

2012-01-27T08:53:00.004-05:00

Helena Bottemiller this week writes a thorough summary of the international trade controversies over U.S. exports of pork from pigs that have been treated with the growth promoter ractopamine hydrochloride. This animal drug is allowed under U.S. rules, but banned in many other countries, so U.S. trade negotiators have been pressing hard to get other countries to relent and allow small residues of the drug in imported pork.

Bottemiller describes the history of testing by the drug's manufacturer, Elanco, in terms that could leave a reader quite concerned:

The FDA ruled that ractopamine was safe and approved it for pigs in 1999, for cattle in 2003 and turkeys in 2008. As with many drugs, the approval process relied on safety studies conducted by the drug-maker — studies that lie at the heart of the current trade dispute.

Elanco mainly tested animals — mice, rats, monkeys and dogs — to judge how much ractopamine could be safely consumed. Only one human study was used in the safety assessment by Elanco, and among the six healthy young men who participated, one was removed because his heart began racing and pounding abnormally, according to a detailed evaluation of the study by European food safety officials.

When Elanco studied the drug in pigs for its effectiveness, it reported that “no adverse effects were observed for any treatments.” But within a few years of Paylean’s approval, the company received hundreds of reports of sickened pigs from farmers and veterinarians, according to records from the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine.

USDA meat inspectors also reported an increase in the number of “downer pigs” — lame animals unable to walk — in slaughter plants. As a result of the high number of adverse reactions, the FDA requested Elanco add a warning label to the drug, and it did so in 2002.

The company also received a warning letter from the FDA that year for failing to disclose all data about the safety and effectiveness of the drug.

Some of the research literature is available on the USDA website, including this 2003 article by Marchant and colleagues, which indicates why there might be concern.

We found that there were differences in 24h behavioral time budgets, with the ractopamine-fed pigs being more active and alert and taking longer to lie down after being disturbed. However, these differences were only apparent during the first 2 weeks. In contrast, ractopamine pigs remained more difficult to handle over the entire 4-week period. At the end of the 4-week period, they also had higher heart rates than control-fed pigs and higher levels of circulating stress hormones.

We conclude therefore, that feeding ractopamine to pigs does affect behavior and physiology. Pigs that are more difficult to move are more likely to be subjected to rough handling and increased stress during transportation, implying reduced welfare, increased workload for the handlers and, potentially, poorer meat quality. However, for this conclusion to be applicable to the finishing pig population in general, other genetic lines should be tested.

I have been spending some time recently thinking about what makes many Wikipedia articles excellent, and also about the limitations of the free encyclopedia approach. Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on ractopamine is highly technical, as if written by an animal science expert, and generally downplays the safety concern. Although the Wikipedia article includes the Bottemiller article as one recent reference, its summary of the animal safety issue seems to contrast both with her article and with the Marchant article cited above. Here is the section in full:

Target animal safety

Ractopamine is safe for finishing pigs heavier than 240 pounds when administered in the diet at concentrations up to 10 ppm and fed for up to 35 days. However, there was an increase in the number of ractopamine hydrochloride-treated animals exhibiting signs of injury during the final drive to slaughter. (FDA)

I suppose the second sentence captures the animal health issues sufficiently? Of course, the great thing about Wikipedia is that articles are constantly changing and commonly improving.

South Side Chicago

2012-01-24T14:08:00.001-05:00

While in Chicago this month for an AAEA-sponsored session of the main annual meeting of economists, I took a long walk through the South Side neighborhoods from 35th Street/Bronzeville to 51st Street, learning especially about food retail access, housing, and other topics. Here are some photographs.

For advance preparation, I read Mari Gallagher's reports on food deserts in Chicago.

My past walks on the same theme include Skid Row, Anacostia, Harlem, Roxbury, and the Hill District.

Is reducing childhood obesity a reasonable goal?

2012-01-24T09:41:00.002-05:00

Under the headline "Obama's Government vs. Your Family," John Hinderaker of the conservative blog Powerline this week links to our coverage of the interagency working group that proposed voluntary guidelines for marketing food to children. Hinderaker is upset that Michelle Obama considers reducing childhood obesity to be a public policy objective.

So the future weight of your minor children is a “goal” of the federal government. Of course, that is just one example out of many. For example, do you think it is a “private family matter” whether you feed your children Cheerios and corn flakes for breakfast? Think again.

I am tempted to speculate that Hinderaker read some parts of my post more closely than others. He probably best liked the part where I investigated some of the arcane details showing that Cheerios would not meet the long-run guidelines, which suggests that the details of the guidelines might deserve further tweaking. Perhaps he focused less on some of the other good links in my post, which supported the interagency working group proposal and emphasized that this approach really is moderate, reasonable, and market-oriented.

Food stamp politics

2012-01-22T14:16:00.001-05:00

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last week responded to GOP presidential candidate New Gingrich's description of President Obama as the "food stamp President."Alan Bjerga and Jennifer Oldham at Bloomberg report:

Those who get the federal assistance “are playing by the rules,” Vilsack, whose department administers food stamps, said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg News. “There are misconceptions about this program and confusion” about recipients caused by negative portrayals by some Obama opponents, he said.

Food-stamp use has increased 46 percent since December 2008, a month before Obama took office and when the economy was shedding jobs. Total spending has more than doubled in four years to an all-time high of $75.3 billion, a level called unsustainable by Republicans including Gingrich, who has labeled Obama “the best food-stamp president in American history.”

Gingrich’s characterization of Obama’s food stamp policies has drawn criticism from groups including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People which issued a statement Jan. 6 calling his comments “inaccurate” and “divisive.”

Gingrich has dismissed the complaints as a smear from “modern liberals” who are “off the deep end.”

In the article, David Greenberg at Rutgers University expresses doubt that Gingrich's talking point reflects bigotry, but notes, "he is no fool and this is going to be seen through a racial prism." Later in the Bloomberg article, I comment about the history of bi-partisan agreement over the basic design of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly called food stamps. On the same theme, Rogers Smith of the University of Pennsylvania agrees that Gingrich's label is reminiscent of Reagan-era GOP rhetoric about "welfare queens," but unusual for food stamp policy discussions.

U.S. Food Policy earlier covered the unusually shrill anti-food stamp memes that have been circulating on the internet, including videos packed with racial stereotypes. In response to that earlier post, we received an anonymous comment, stating that the military contractor KROQUE, which was mentioned in the coverage, disavows connection to or responsibility for the videos.

This issue will see renewed attention and discussion after former House Speaker Gingrich yesterday won the South Carolina GOP primary in a dramatic upset over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

Spinning dairy weight loss claims

2011-11-21T10:56:00.001-05:00

The USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) provides the Nutrition Evidence Library, a clear and transparent source of systematic evidence reviews about all sorts of nutrition and health issues.

For example, here is the evidence review summary for claims about dairy consumption and weight loss:

Conclusion

Strong evidence demonstrates that intake of milk and milk products provide no unique role in weight control.

That seems clear enough: no unique role in weight control.

Meanwhile, the federal government's semi-public dairy checkoff program offers its own distinct review of the evidence. Although many people do not realize it, the National Dairy Council is an arm of this checkoff program. Its review says:

A growing body of research illustrates that enjoying three servings of milk, cheese or yogurt each day as part of a nutrient-rich, balanced diet may help maintain a healthy weight.

The first study mentioned is by Michael Zemel, the researcher who won a patent on dairy weight loss claims, which allows dairy industry organizations to collect royalties from food companies that use such claims.

Buried deep in the subsequent studies, one finds contradictory evidence. For example, a study by Wagner and colleagues in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition finds, "there were no significant differences in weight loss between groups. The milk group showed significantly less reduction of body fat than the placebo group." But you would not know that from the Dairy Council's summary statement.

The National Dairy Council -- whose messages have official status as "government speech" -- seems to be contradicting the more impartial review of USDA's scientists. Why should the federal government be willing to play the role of "enforcer" for the National Dairy Council, collecting the millions of dollars in mandatory assessments that support the Council's industry-friendly spin on the evidence?

USDA posts the 2010 dairy checkoff report

2011-11-17T17:14:00.000-05:00

The federal government's dairy checkoff program just today released the July 2010 Report to Congress, which was the subject of my earlier Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The report, 16 months overdue, says that $108 million were collected in 2009 for fluid milk promotions, and another $283 million were collected for other dairy products (principally cheese). The checkoff programs use the federal government's power of taxation to collect mandatory assessments, essentially taxes, from producers. All the advertising and promotion messages count as "government speech." The expenditures vastly outweigh anything the federal government does to promote healthy eating.

The introduction emphasizes the controversial Domino's campaign:

The Dairy Board continued to develop and implement programs to expand the human consumption of dairy products by focusing on partnerships and innovation, product positioning with consumers, and new places for dairy product consumption. One such endeavor was accomplished through a partnership with Domino’s Pizza and the creation of the American Legends pizza line.

The report later explains in greater detail:

The pizza industry plays an important role in the dairy industry. Twenty–five percent of all cheese manufactured in the U.S. is used on pizza, and Mozzarella comprises 49 percent of all cheese volume in the foodservice industry. Research showed that negative pizza cheese volume trends were having an impact on the dairy industry. As a result, dairy producers partnered with Domino’s to reinvigorate the pizza category and launch American Legends, a line of six specialty pizzas that use up to 40 percent more cheese than a regular Domino’s pizza.

The report shows that a large fraction of affiliated advertising expenditure goes toward cheese.

Professor Harry Kaiser at Cornell University wrote the accompanying economic analysis, showing the great effectiveness of the checkoff program in expanding dairy consumption on both a nonfat and fat basis (increasing intake of milkfat). Professor Kaiser (a good colleague for whom I was a teaching assistant at Cornell) has previously written U.S. food policy to explain his view of the nutritional impact of the checkoff programs:

[W]e continue to believe that the nutritional state of consumers in the United States would be worse without generic food advertising programs.

I am not convinced. The checkoff programs should rein in the fast food collaborations and bring the promotions in line with the dietary guidelines, or they should let free markets work on their own and let producers contribute voluntarily to the checkoff programs. The status quo, with the federal government promoting Domino's Pizza, is terrible.

The July 2011 report has not yet been released. It is not clear whether USDA simply didn't submit the report to Congress as required, or instead whether USDA submitted that report but is not yet willing to share it with the public.

Making sure schools can serve our children badly

2011-11-16T12:42:00.003-05:00

Although appropriations bills are supposed to be about spending -- not policy-making -- Congress took extra special care this week to make sure child nutrition programs do not have to follow the very reasonable and temperate guidelines recommended by the Institute of Medicine.

The conference committee report for next year's agricultural appropriations overturns key elements of USDA's proposed guidelines for child nutrition programs. The proposed guidelines had included strong support for whole grains, a recommended limit on salt, and a stipulation that not too much of the vegetables served would be white potatoes. Currently, school lunch programs contain far more salt than recommended limits, and many school systems use french fries and other forms of white potatoes as by far the dominant vegetable.

In a step that reminds us all of the Reagan administration's heroically foolish effort to define ketchup as a vegetable, the appropriations committees also intervened to make sure that the tomato puree in pizza counts toward vegetable requirements.

USDA officials were sharply critical, and I imagine that the hard-working staff throughout the department are upset. The Associated Press coverage says:

USDA spokeswoman Courtney Rowe said Tuesday that the department will continue its efforts to make lunches healthier.

"While it's unfortunate that some members of Congress continue to put special interests ahead of the health of America's children, USDA remains committed to practical, science-based standards for school meals," she said in a statement.

It is fun to read the fine print of the conference committee report (.pdf). See sections 743 and 746 on page H7443. Although they have no expertise in meals programs or nutrition, the appropriations committee members were quite willing to do the food industry's bidding on these arcane provisions:

SEC. 743. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to implement an interim final or final rule regarding nutrition programs under the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (42 U.S.C. 1751 et seq.) and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (42 U.S.C. 1771 et seq.) that—
(1) requires crediting of tomato paste and puree based on volume;
(2) implements a sodium reduction target beyond Target I, the 2-year target, specified in Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, ‘‘Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs’’ (FNS–2007–0038, RIN 0584– AD59) until the Secretary certifies that the Department has reviewed and evaluated relevant scientific studies and data relevant to the relationship of sodium reductions to human health; and
(3) establishes any whole grain requirement without defining ‘‘whole grain.’’

A graduate student and I are taking a look at the diversity of comments that were submitted in response to USDA's proposed guidelines. I will do a follow-up post in a couple weeks, noting which organizations suggested the policy reversals that Congress made this week.

In my children's schools, I see the need for well-written and reasonable guidelines. The status quo is not good enough. I believe the IOM and USDA did the best possible job in balancing nutrition and economic considerations. Readers know very well that I will speak up against government overreach. But these guidelines did not look to me like government overreach. They looked judicious.

As a policy researcher, I think the public interest would have been better served by deferring to IOM and USDA. As a parent, I am angry about Congress' intervention. It seems clear that Congress is doing the food industry's bidding at the expense of our children.

National League of Cities passes a farm bill resolution

2011-11-16T09:25:00.000-05:00

Modeled on an earlier proposal from the Seattle City Council, the National League of Cities yesterday passed a resolution (.pdf) encouraging the federal government to adopt a variety of public interest principles for the farm bill.

The resolution includes planks for:

a health-centered food system,
sustainable agricultural practices,
community and regional prosperity and resilience,
equitable access to healthy food,
social justice and equity, and
a systems approach to policy-making.

New political constituencies are taking interest in the farm bill. Paradoxically, this year, it seems farm bill decision-making power may be concentrated in fewer hands than ever.

Tyler Cowen on agriculture policy and corporate bailouts

2011-11-13T17:23:00.000-05:00

Here is the latest NYT column from Tyler Cowen, who I generally think of as a market-oriented libertarian economist. Cowen generally prefers to let the deserving rich be rich, and yet he can see why the demonstrators at Zuccotti Park have "so much resonance."

The first problem is that higher status for the wealthy can easily lead to crony capitalism. In public discourse social status judgments are often crude. Critical differences are lost, like the distinction between earning money through production for consumers, as Apple has done, and earning money through the manipulation of government, which heavily subsidized agribusinesses have done. The relevant question, in my view, is not about how much you have earned but about how you have earned it. To further confuse matters, many right-wing Republican politicians supported corporate bailouts and corporate welfare far beyond what was necessary to stabilize the economy, in doing so further muddying the difference between productive and predatory capitalism.