Real Food Blog

The Creepy History Of Margarine

September 17th, 2011

Where did the name “margarine” originate?

In a chemist’s lab. French scientist Michel Eugene Chevreul discovered a new fatty acid in 1813 that he dubbed acide margarique. Chevreul’s discovery contained lustrous, pearly deposits, so he named it after the Greek word margarites, for “pearly.”

Did Chevreul take his margaric acid and head straight for the toaster?

Not quite. If you enjoy margarine, tip your cap to Emperor Napoleon III. Napoleon III saw that both his poorer subjects and his navy would benefit from having easy access to a cheap butter substitute, so he offered a prize for anyone who could create an adequate replacement. Enter French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès. In 1869, Mège-Mouriès perfected and patented a process for churning beef tallow with milk to create an acceptable butter substitute, thereby winning the Emperor’s prize.

So Mège-Mouriès became the first margarine tycoon?

Far from it. Despite Napoleon III’s high hopes for Mège-Mouriès’ product, which the scientist had dubbed “oleomargarine,” the market didn’t really take off. In 1871, Mège-Mouriès showed his process to a Dutch company that improved on his methods and helped build an international market for margarine. The Dutch entrepreneurs realized that if margarine were going to become a substitute for butter, it needed to look like butter, so they began dyeing margarine, which is naturally white, a buttery yellow. Mège-Mouriès didn’t get a princely sum for his invention; he actually died a pauper in 1880. The Dutch company that improved upon his recipe did pretty well for itself, though. The company, Jurgens, eventually became a world-renowned maker of margarines and soaps and later became a part of Unilever.

How did the dairy world react to margarine’s sudden popularity?

They were predictably more than a little irked. Butter was big business, and the notion that a cheaper substitute, even one made in part with milk, might storm the market terrified dairy farmers. They didn’t take the threat lying down, though, and convinced legislators to tax margarine at a rate of two cents per pound—no small sum in the late 19th century. Dairy farmers also successfully lobbied for restrictions that banned the use of yellow dyes to make margarine look more appetizing. By 1900, artificially colored butter was contraband in 30 U.S. states. Several states took even more extreme measures to turn consumers away from margarine—they required the product to be dyed an unappealing pink color.

Wow, that’s pretty stringent. Did other countries enact similar restrictions?

If you think taxes and dyes are tough, then the Canadian government’s anti-margarine campaign seems downright draconian. From 1886 until 1948, Canadian law banned any and all margarine. The only exception to this rule came between 1917 and 1923, when World War I and its aftermath left butter in short supply and the government temporarily gave margarine the thumbs up. Margarine didn’t necessarily have an easier time after the ban was relaxed, either. Quebec’s strong dairy lobby ensured that rules against dyeing remained in place in the province until 2008.

Was there any way around these color restrictions?

Sure. It sounds almost laughable now, but if you wanted to eat margarine on your toast without having to stare at its natural white color, there was a solution. As the coloring restrictions became widespread around the turn of the 20th century, margarine producers accepted that they couldn’t dye their wares yellow. There was no reason why they couldn’t simultaneously sell consumers margarine and yellow dye, though. When you bought a block or tube of margarine, you also got a packet of food coloring that could be kneaded into the margarine by hand.

What helped margarine stay competitive with butter in the face of these restrictions?

More restrictions, of course. Paradoxically, the pure foods movement of the 1920s helped undermine natural butter and elevate the status of margarine. In 1923 Congress passed a law that made it illegal to add any other ingredients to butter, even additives that would help make the butter more spreadable. As any toast aficionado knows, margarine is a heck of a lot easier to spread than butter. Suddenly, butter makers couldn’t tweak their products to make it easier to slather on breakfast, but margarine manufacturers could. Margarine’s popularity skyrocketed. Margarine also got a bit bump from World War II. When wartime butter scarcity forced consumers to switch to margarine, lots of margarine holdouts realized that the improved product wasn’t so bad after all. In 1950, the U.S. government repealed the heavy margarine tax, and the market continued to grow as individual states reversed their bans on colored margarine. The last state to repeal the ban on dyes? You guessed it: Wisconsin. America’s Dairyland didn’t allow dyed margarine until 1967. Source: MentalFloss.com

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Lierre Keith on The Vegetarian Myth

August 18th, 2011

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Eat Your Garnish – Parsley May Keep Breast Cancer At Bay

May 10th, 2011

Parsley is usually used as a decorative accent to a scrumptious meal, but don’t set it aside just yet. In a new study, a University of Missouri researcher has found that a compound in parsley and other plant products, including fruits and nuts, can stop certain breast cancer tumor cells from multiplying and growing. The study was published recently in Cancer Prevention Research. In his study, Salman Hyder, the Zalk Endowed Professor in Tumor Angiogenesis and professor of biomedical sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine and the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center, exposed rats with a certain type of breast cancer to apigenin, a common compound found in parsley and other plant products. The rats that were exposed to the apigenin developed fewer tumors and experienced significant delays in tumor formation compared to those rats that were not exposed to apigenin. Hyder believes this finding could impact women who are taking certain hormone replacement therapies. “Six to 10 million women in the United States receive hormone replacement therapy (HRT),” Hyder said. “We know that certain synthetic hormones used in HRT accelerate breast tumor development. In our study, we exposed the rats to one of the chemicals used in the most common HRTs received in the United States — a progestin called medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) — which also happens to be the same synthetic hormone that accelerates breast tumor development.” When tumor cells develop in the breast in response to MPA, they encourage new blood vessels to form within tumors. The blood vessels then supply needed nutrients for the tumors to grow and multiply. Hyder found that apigenin blocked new blood vessel formation, thereby delaying, and sometimes stopping, the development of the tumors. Hyder also found that the compound reduced the overall number of tumors. However, while apigenin did delay tumor growth, it did not stop the initial formation of cancer cells within the breast. Apigenin is most prevalent in parsley and celery, but can also be found in apples, oranges, nuts and other plant products. However, apigenin is not absorbed efficiently into the bloodstream, so scientists are unsure of how much can or should be ingested. “We don’t have specific dosage for humans yet,” Hyder said. “However, it appears that keeping a minimal level of apigenin in the bloodstream is important to delay the onset of breast cancer that progresses in response to progestins such as MPA. It’s probably a good idea to eat a little parsley and some fruit every day to ensure the minimal amount. However, you can also find this compound in pill supplements in the health food section of many stores. Of course, you should always check with your doctor before making any major changes to your diet or lifestyle.” The next phrase of studies should include human clinical trials to determine the appropriate dosage amount, Hyder said. He believes further study on humans is necessary to address any health and safety issues that might exist. The research team included Benford Mafuvadze, doctoral student in biomedical sciences, Indira Benakanakere, research scientist Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center; Franklin Lopez, research fellow in the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology; Cynthia Besch-Williford, associate professor of veterinary pathobiology, and Mark Ellersieck, research professor of statistics in the College of Arts and Science. Source:

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Take That Low Sodium Diet Advice With A Grain Of Salt

May 4th, 2011

A new study found that low-salt diets increase the risk of death from heart attacks and strokes and do not prevent high blood pressure, but the research’s limitations mean the debate over the effects of salt in the diet is far from over.

In fact, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention felt so strongly that the study was flawed that they criticized it in an interview, something they normally do not do.

Dr. Peter Briss, a medical director at the centers, said that the study was small; that its subjects were relatively young, with an average age of 40 at the start; and that with few cardiovascular events, it was hard to draw conclusions. And the study, Dr. Briss and others say, flies in the face of a body of evidence indicating that higher sodium consumption can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.

“At the moment, this study might need to be taken with a grain of salt,” he said.

The study is published in the May 4 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. It involved only those without high blood pressure at the start, was observational, considered at best suggestive and not conclusive. It included 3,681 middle-aged Europeans who did not have high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease and followed them for an average of 7.9 years.

The researchers assessed the participants’ sodium consumption at the study’s start and at its conclusion by measuring the amount of sodium excreted in urine over a 24-hour period.  All the sodium that is consumed is excreted in urine within a day, so this method is the most precise way to determine sodium consumption.

The investigators found that the less salt people ate, the more likely they were to die of heart disease — 50 people in the lowest third of salt consumption (2.5 grams of sodium per day) died during the study as compared with 24 in the medium group (3.9 grams of sodium per day) and 10 in the highest salt consumption group (6.0 grams of sodium per day).  And while those eating the most salt had, on average, a slight increase in systolic blood pressure — a 1.71-millimeter increase in pressure for each 2.5-gram increase in sodium per day — they were no more likely to develop hypertension.

“If the goal is to prevent hypertension” with lower sodium consumption, said the lead author, Dr. Jan A. Staessen, a professor of medicine at the University of Leuven, in Belgium, “this study shows it does not work.”

But among the study’s other problems, Dr. Briss said, its subjects who seemed to consume the smallest amount of sodium also provided less urine than those consuming more, an indication that they might not have collected all of their urine in an 24-hour period.

Dr. Frank Sacks of the Harvard School of Public Health agreed and also said the study was flawed.

“It’s a problematic study,” Dr. Sacks said. “We shouldn’t be guiding any kind of public health decisions on it.”

Dr. Michael Alderman, a blood pressure researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicineand editor of the American Journal of Hypertension, said medical literature on salt and health effects was inconsistent. But, Dr. Alderman said, the new study is not the only one to find adverse effects of low-sodium diets. His own study, with people who had high blood pressure, found that those who ate the least salt were most likely to die.

Dr. Alderman said that he once was an unpaid consultant for the Salt Institute but that he now did no consulting for it or for the food industry and did not receive any support or take any money from industry groups.

Lowering salt consumption, Dr. Alderman said, has consequences beyond blood pressure. It also, for example, increases insulin resistance, which can increase the risk of heart disease.

“Diet is a complicated business,” he said. “There are going to be unintended consequences.”

One problem with the salt debates, Dr. Alderman said, is that all the studies are inadequate. Either they are short-term intervention studies in which people are given huge amounts of salt and then deprived of salt to see effects on blood pressure or they are studies, like this one, that observe populations and ask if those who happen to consume less salt are healthier.

“Observational studies tell you what people will experience if they select a diet,” Dr. Alderman said. “They do not tell you what will happen if you change peoples’ sodium intake.”

What is needed, Dr. Alderman said, is a large study in which people are randomly assigned to follow a low-sodium diet or not and followed for years to see if eating less salt improves health and reduces the death rate from cardiovascular disease.

But that study, others say, will never happen.

“This is one of those really interesting situations,” said Dr. Lawrence Appel, a professor of medicine, epidemiology and international health at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. “You can say, ‘O.K., let’s dismiss the observational studies because they have all these problems.’ ” But, he said, despite the virtues of a randomized controlled clinical trial, such a study “will never ever be done.” It would be impossible to keep people on a low-sodium diet for years with so much sodium added to prepared foods.

Dr. Briss adds that it would not be prudent to defer public health actions while researchers wait for results of a clinical trial that might not even be feasible.

Dr. Alderman disagrees.

“The low-salt advocates suggest that all 300 million Americans be subjected to a low-salt diet. But if they can’t get people on a low-salt diet for a clinical trial, what are they talking about?”

He added: “It will cost money, but that’s why we do science. It will also cost money to change the composition of food.”

Source: New York Times

 

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San Francisco To Allow Commercial Farming In Residential Areas Without Permit

April 25th, 2011

The passage of an urban farming amendment in San Francisco has sparked a wave of joy among backyard farmers from across the Bay Area. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently voted to amend the city’s zoning code in such a way that now allows backyard growers to freely cultivate produce and sell it without having to purchase a conditional use permit (CUP), which can run upwards of $3,000. And the victory could also help spur many other urban areas to take the same route in allowing urban gardens on residential land.

The San Francisco ruling permits urban farmers with land plots measuring one acre or less to grow produce for commercial purposes, as long as they purchase an urban agriculture permit for $300. While still somewhat costly, the price is only a small fraction of what a CUP would be, and the process of obtaining one involves far less bureaucratic red tape than a CUP does.

Besides simply being able to sell fresh produce, backyard growers will also be able to sell “value-added” items like jellies, herb salts, salsas, and other prepared items. Both for-profit and not-for-profit groups are included as well, and many believe that the new freedom will further expand the scope of community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs that provide regular assortments of fresh produce to local communities.

“Should for-benefit (non-profit) farm projects seek to raise some of their operating funds through sales, including of value-added products, this will now be allowed,” wrote Antonio Roman-Alcala in a recent piece at Civil Eats. “This could also open the door for social justice-minded urban farms to create truly green jobs without requiring so much grant funding.”

Source: Natural News

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Half Of Americans Taking Nutritional Supplements

April 16th, 2011

As more than half of U.S. adults are popping vitamins and supplements, the question remains — has it made Americans healthier?

That depends on whom you ask.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that more of half of U.S. adults use dietary supplements — including multivitamins, minerals and herbs.

That rise, from 42% in 1988 to 53% in 2006, has fueled the growth of the supplement industry to a $27 billion behemoth, according to Consumer Reports.

Dietary supplements are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the same way as drugs. The makers do not have to prove safety or effectiveness.

“There’s a false perception that supplements fall under the same regulatory umbrella as prescription drugs,” said Dr. Orly Avitzur, medical adviser for Consumer Reports. “That’s not the case.”

“We really don’t know what’s inside.”

The most popular supplements are multivitamins, used by 39% of U.S. adults in 2006.

Some consumers mistakenly view supplements as a way to make up for a poor diet.

“It’s a Band-Aid approach to think you can eat poorly and just take a vitamin and you’ll be equal to another person who eats well and exercises and takes care of their health and gets regular checkups,” Avitzur said. “There’s no substitute for a healthy lifestyle.”

While some are helpful, supplements can’t entirely replace proper nutrition, said Roberta Anding, an American Dietetic Association spokesperson.

“I will always say the reason to eat fruits and vegetables — it’s not vitamin C, it’s because of the colors, it’s the words you can’t pronounce,” she said, referring to nutrients like lycopene, quercetin or indoles. “That’s the reason you eat fruits and vegetables. To just throw vitamin C at it, it doesn’t do nutrition justice.”

Multivitamins can be an insurance policy if you don’t get enough of specific vitamins, but it can’t replace a healthy diet, she said.

Depending on the supplement, the money on supplements can be better off spent on food,” she said, suggesting wholesome fruits and vegetables that pack vitamins, minerals and nutrients.

Over two decades, researchers have seen increased use of calcium, vitamin D and folic acid.

About 61% of women over the age of 60 take calcium, compared with only 28% in 1988-1994. Also, 56% of women in that age group take vitamin D supplements, compared with only 30% in 1988-1994.

Scientific evidence shows that vitamin D and calcium help to treat bone loss. Folic acid can help pregnant women prevent major birth defects.

Jaime Gahche, main author of the CDC report, and her co-authors analyzed responses from a sample size of 37,596, using National Health and Nutrition Examination surveys. Participants were asked what supplements they had taken in the past 30 days and submitted the product label to National Center for Health Statistics nutritionists.

Gahche said it was unclear from the data whether increased supplement use has made Americans healthier.

“With this data, we couldn’t answer that,” she said. “We can’t make any causal relationships — this is providing the estimates. I don’t think we have any answers whether it’s made us healthier or not.”

Several epidemiological studies showed there was no significant difference between people who take supplements and those who do not, said Anding, a registered dietitian and director of sports nutrition at Texas Children’s Hospital.

Just because it might not make a difference in public health, “it doesn’t mean it’s universally true for everyone,” she said. Supplements could make a big difference for individuals who have certain vitamin deficiencies or food allergies.

Gladys Block, professor Emerita of public health nutrition at University of California Berkeley said, “I really believe that essentially everybody can benefit from a multivitamin.”

Block wrote a research paper comparing a sample size of 1,000. Those who used dietary supplements had lower blood pressure, better plasma levels, and stress status than those who did not.

“They were healthier, in those respects and so, that’s one piece of evidence,” she said. “It doesn’t tell the whole story. I believe there is evidence that people can be healthier as a result of taking vitamin and mineral supplements.”

“It used to be most of the scientific world was against most types of supplement. That has changed over the last 15 years. A lot of people recognize the benefit of multivitamins. There is increasing support in the science, like folate, like calcium.”

Certain dietary supplements such as vitamin D and fish oil have proven benefits, but others like bitter orange and vitamin B5 lack evidence.

Just because you can purchase it at a health store, it doesn’t mean it’s going to make you healthy, said Avitzur, neurologist and medical adviser at Consumer Reports said.

“By no means do I want to paint the industry with the same brush,” she said. “It’s important to look for sources. It’s important to read up about it.”

She advised consulting with doctors first about taking supplements.

“Consumers will hesitate sometimes when a doctor prescribes medications,” she said. “They want to know about side effects, safety, and they ask good questions. When it comes to supplements, you should ask the same questions. Those things apply — talk to your physician.”

Some supplements can interfere with prescription drugs and too much can cause neuropathy and in severe cases, organ damage.

“Too much of a good thing, even supplements that are safe, can be bad for you,” Avitzur said.

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47% Of Supermarket Meat Has Drug Resistant Staph Bacteria

April 16th, 2011

Meat in the U.S. may be widely contaminated with strains of drug-resistant bacteria, researchers reported Friday after testing 136 samples of beef, chicken, pork and turkey purchased at grocery stores.

Nearly half of the samples — 47% — contained strains of Staphylococcus aureus, the type of bacteria that most commonly causes staph infections. Of those bacteria, 52% were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics, according to a study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

DNA testing suggested the animals were the source of contamination. Environmental health scientist Lance Price, the study’s leader, said the animals most likely harbored these drug-resistant pathogens because antibiotics routinely are fed to livestock to promote growth and prevent disease in crowded pens on large farms.

“These findings really point to serious problems with the way food animals are raised in the U.S. today,” said Price, who directs the Center for Food Microbiology and Environmental Health at the Translational Genomics Research Institute, a nonprofit biomedical research center in Phoenix.

Last summer, the Food and Drug Administration urged the meat industry to cut back on antibiotic use out of concern that the practice breeds drug-resistant bacteria in stockyards and makes antibiotics less effective in humans.

But other scientists said it was premature to conclude that antibiotics in animal feed were to blame. About half of all humans have staph bacteria in their noses or throats, and a food handler with poor hygiene could introduce the pathogen to the food supply, said Beilei Ge, a food scientist at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

The meat and poultry samples tested in the study represented 80 brands and were purchased in Los Angeles, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Flagstaff, Ariz., and Washington, D.C.

Scientists incubated the samples for up to 24 hours in a broth that was kept at human body temperature and used genetic tests to determine whether they contained the staph bacteria. Then they treated them with vancomycin, oxacillin, tetracycline and other antibiotics to determine whether they were resistant to the drugs.

The research was funded by the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming, which opposes the routine use of antibiotics in animal feed.

About 11,000 people die every year from S. aureus infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than half of those deaths are from the hospital “superbug” methicillin-resistant S. aureus, or MRSA.

The direct risk that consumers may acquire a staph infection from meat can be reduced by cooking meat thoroughly and washing all foods and surfaces that come into contact with raw meat, whether or not it is resistant to antibiotics.

However, Caroline DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C., said the study results suggest that consumers might benefit by wearing gloves when they handle raw meat. “It’s making us rethink our advice to the public,” she said.

The American Meat Institute, which represents producers, said Friday that the country’s meat and poultry supply was safe. And data from the CDC show that cases of food-borne illness in the U.S. have declined 20% in the last decade.

William Marler, a leading food safety attorney, said it was helpful to test meat samples available in stores because the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service focused its testing on meat production facilities.

“It’s good to see more people doing retail testing because it shows us that our meat is far less sanitary than most consumers would think,” he said.

But the bigger threat to public health is that widespread antibiotic use in livestock could make the drugs increasingly ineffective in humans, Price said.

The American Medical Assn., the World Health Organization and other medical groups have warned that the misuse of antibiotics in food animal production may be creating a serious problem for human health by fostering development of drug-resistant bacteria.

Studies in Canada and Denmark show that taking antibiotics out of animal feed makes antibiotic-resistant bacteria less prevalent in both animals and people with no ill effects for animals or ranchers, Price said.

“Our lifesaving medications are being used as tools to make animals grow faster,” Price said. “We must do everything we can to protect these antibiotics that protect our health.”

Source: Los Angeles Times

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How The Ancient Romans Made MSG

April 15th, 2011

Monosodium glutamate is a food additive that enhances flavor. Although it’s frowned upon today, the ancient Romans loved it and ate it with almost every meal.

There’s been some debate over what exactly monosodium glutamate does to people. Some people say it gives them severe headaches, numbness, weakness, and even heart palpitations. Scientists could confirm that it does give some people short-lived reactions, but no tests showed that it had long-term health effects. Some say that it’s an addictive substance which causes people to crave it repeatedly if they try it too often. Others say it’s just a flavor enhancer, and people crave it because it makes things taste better.

 

The chemical is listed as ‘safe’ by the FDA, although they do require it to be clearly listed as an additive in any food product that uses it. It’s most often found in canned soups and vegetables. Modern MSG is manufactured using genetically engineered bacteria. They take in nutrients and excrete glutamic acid. The acid is concentrated, and sodium is added to make the final product.

The process sounds very modern, but MSG has been around for a very long time. It was a common food additive during the time of ancient Rome, added to almost all Roman dishes. The Romans had a lot of technology for their time, but they couldn’t genetically engineer bacteria. So how did they come up with MSG? Believe it or not, they used an even more disgusting process than bacteria excretions. The Romans had a fish paste called garum that they exported everywhere. They made it by filling pots with alternating layers of fish – or just fish guts – and salt and letting those pots lie out in the sun for a while.

As the mixture lay out in the sun, the stomach acids for the fish ate through their bodies. They eventually broke down the entire fish, turning the whole thing into a dark brown oily goo. When protein is broken down, the amino acid chains in the protein are freed up. One of these acid chains contains glutamic acid, which meets up with sodium from the salt and forms MSG. The Romans were such fans of the flavor enhancer that they even put it in sweets like custard. They also died off in droves, so anyone who wishes to recreate garum Roman-style — don’t do it. Try organizing gladiator-style games in the back yard as a safer alternative.

Source: io9.com

*Research has shown that, while large doses of MSG given without food may elicit more symptoms than a placebo in individuals who believe that they react adversely to MSG, the frequency of the responses was low and the responses reported were inconsistent, not reproducible, and not observed when MSG was given with food.

No statistical association has been demonstrated under controlled conditions, even in studies with people convinced that they are sensitive to it.

Adequately controlling for experimental bias includes a double-blind placebo-controlled (DBPC) experimental design and the application in capsules because of the strong and unique after-taste of glutamates.

In a study performed by Tarasoff and Kelly (1993) 71 fasting participants were given 5 g of MSG and then administered a standard breakfast. There was only one reaction, and it was to the placebo in a self-identified MSG sensitive individual.

In a different study done by Geha et al. (2000), they tested the reaction of 130 subjects that reported sensitivity to MSG. Multiple DBPC trials were performed and only subjects with at least two symptoms proceeded. Only 2 people out of the whole study responded in all four challenges. Because of this low prevalence, the researchers concluded that the response to MSG was not reproducible

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Is Sugar Toxic?

April 14th, 2011

By Gary Taubes

On May 26, 2009, Robert Lustig gave a lecture called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” which was posted on YouTube the following July. Since then, it has been viewed well over 800,000 times, gaining new viewers at a rate of about 50,000 per month, fairly remarkable numbers for a 90-minute discussion of the nuances of fructose biochemistry and human physiology.

Lustig’s lecture as posted on YouTube is viewable in its entirety at the bottom of this article.

Lustig is a specialist on pediatric hormone disorders and the leading expert in childhood obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, which is one of the best medical schools in the country. He published his first paper on childhood obesity a dozen years ago, and he has been treating patients and doing research on the disorder ever since.

The viral success of his lecture, though, has little to do with Lustig’s impressive credentials and far more with the persuasive case he makes that sugar is a “toxin” or a “poison,” terms he uses together 13 times through the course of the lecture, in addition to the five references to sugar as merely “evil.” And by “sugar,” Lustig means not only the white granulated stuff that we put in coffee and sprinkle on cereal — technically known as sucrose — but also high-fructose corn syrup, which has already become without Lustig’s help what he calls “the most demonized additive known to man.”

It doesn’t hurt Lustig’s cause that he is a compelling public speaker. His critics argue that what makes him compelling is his practice of taking suggestive evidence and insisting that it’s incontrovertible. Lustig certainly doesn’t dabble in shades of gray. Sugar is not just an empty calorie, he says; its effect on us is much more insidious. “It’s not about the calories,” he says. “It has nothing to do with the calories. It’s a poison by itself.”

If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.

The number of viewers Lustig has attracted suggests that people are paying attention to his argument. When I set out to interview public health authorities and researchers for this article, they would often initiate the interview with some variation of the comment “surely you’ve spoken to Robert Lustig,” not because Lustig has done any of the key research on sugar himself, which he hasn’t, but because he’s willing to insist publicly and unambiguously, when most researchers are not, that sugar is a toxic substance that people abuse. In Lustig’s view, sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that’s killing us.

This brings us to the salient question: Can sugar possibly be as bad as Lustig says it is?

It’s one thing to suggest, as most nutritionists will, that a healthful diet includes more fruits and vegetables, and maybe less fat, red meat and salt, or less of everything. It’s entirely different to claim that one particularly cherished aspect of our diet might not just be an unhealthful indulgence but actually be toxic, that when you bake your children a birthday cake or give them lemonade on a hot summer day, you may be doing them more harm than good, despite all the love that goes with it. Suggesting that sugar might kill us is what zealots do. But Lustig, who has genuine expertise, has accumulated and synthesized a mass of evidence, which he finds compelling enough to convict sugar. His critics consider that evidence insufficient, but there’s no way to know who might be right, or what must be done to find out, without discussing it.

If I didn’t buy this argument myself, I wouldn’t be writing about it here. And I also have a disclaimer to acknowledge. I’ve spent much of the last decade doing journalistic research on diet and chronic disease — some of the more contrarian findings, on dietary fat, appeared in this magazine —– and I have come to conclusions similar to Lustig’s.

The history of the debate over the health effects of sugar has gone on far longer than you might imagine. It is littered with erroneous statements and conclusions because even the supposed authorities had no true understanding of what they were talking about. They didn’t know, quite literally, what they meant by the word “sugar” and therefore what the implications were.

So let’s start by clarifying a few issues, beginning with Lustig’s use of the word “sugar” to mean both sucrose — beet and cane sugar, whether white or brown — and high-fructose corn syrup. This is a critical point, particularly because high-fructose corn syrup has indeed become “the flashpoint for everybody’s distrust of processed foods,” says Marion Nestle, a New York University nutritionist and the author of “Food Politics.”

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Chocolate Milk In Schools Stirs Controversy

April 12th, 2011

It was once a staple of public school cafeterias that blended the indulgent and the nutritious, satisfying parents and children both. But chocolate milk is uncontroversial no more. Dozens of districts have demanded reformulations. Others have banned it outright.

At the center of these battles are complex public health calculations: Is it better to remove sugary chocolate flavorings at the risk that many students will skip milk altogether, missing out on crucial calcium and Vitamin D? Or should schools instead make tweaks — less fat, different sweeteners, fewer calories — that might salvage the benefits while while minimizing the downside?

However schools answer these questions, protest inevitably follows. When Fairfax County and D.C. schools banned chocolate milk last year from elementary lunch lines, officials heard not just from parents and students. They also received letters and petitions from a slew of nutritionists and influential special interest groups.

Most accused the districts of acting rashly, robbing students of a tasty drink and the vitamins and minerals that fuel bone and muscle growth.

“We got 10 to 20 e-mails a day,” said Penny McConnell, director of food and nutrition services for Fairfax. “It was a lot of pressure.”

This month — and partly because of that pressure — Fairfax officials announced that they would reintroduce chocolate milk in school cafeterias. The newer, low-fat version includes sucrose, which is made from sugar cane or beets, instead of high-fructose corn syrup, which some critics say is more heavily processed and, as a result, less healthy.

Such reformulations have satisfied some of chocolate milk’s critics. But most scientists and nutritionists, including those employed by local school districts, say that changing sweeteners makes little dietary difference if the total calorie content stays the same.

This is a view embraced by the Corn Refiners Association, which often finds itself on the losing side of such changes. “Why should school districts pay more for one sweetener when children’s bodies can’t tell the difference?” said Audrae Erickson, the group’s president.

Several other school districts in the Washington area are changing the formulations of their chocolate milk to switch sweeteners and lessen the amount of fat and sugar. But most are continuing to make it available to students. D.C. schools have resisted the push to restore chocolate milk to their cafeterias.

The stakes are high because more than 70 percent of the milk distributed in school cafeterias is flavored, according to the Milk Processor Education Program, an industry group. Fairfax alone serves 62,000 gallons of chocolate milk a year. And the formulations used in many cafeterias across the country have more calories, ounce for ounce, than Coke.

Such statistics have drawn the attention of those lobbying for healthier school lunches at a time of rising obesity among children. Parents in many districts have been vocal.

“If we want to fix childhood obesity, chocolate milk is just one of the things we need to get rid of,” said Jeff Anderson, a parent of three students at Wolftrap Elementary in Vienna and a member of Real Food for Kids, a Fairfax area advocacy group. “It’s a treat, not something you have every day with lunch.”

Nutritionists, meanwhile, have split between those who think chocoloate milk is worth the payoff in nutrients and those who don’t.

“Trying to get students to consume calcium by drinking chocolate milk is like getting them to eat apples by serving them apple pie,” said Ann Cooper, a leading advocate for healthy school lunches.

The catch is that when schools remove flavored milk, students drink less milk. The milk processors’ group puts the number at 37 percent less milk overall.

Based on such statistics, the National Dairy Council has launched its Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk campaign. “Chocolate milk is the most popular milk choice in schools,” according to the campaign’s pitch, “and kids will drink less milk and get fewer nutrients if it’s taken away.”

Sandwiched between concerned parents and vocal industry representatives are school districts such as Fairfax, which must also consider the tastes of their young consumers. In November, when trying to create a chocolate milk formula that satisfied as many parties as possible, the district held a “taste party” at Lane Elementary School in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County.

“Tastes really chocolatey,” one student wrote on the survey distributed to 24 child-testers.

“Really awesome,” wrote another.

Nearly all of the students liked the new milk, but school officials decided it was too much of a good thing. They cut two grams of sugar from the formulation — going from 24 grams per half-pint container to 22 grams — and decided against retesting it.

The new formula, created by Dallas-based Dean Foods, is complete. Fairfax will soon be joined by several other Washington area school districts in introducing the new milk this month.

Dean Foods, one of several chocolate milk suppliers across the country, sells 144 million gallons of chocolate milk in cafeterias across the country. It’s a relatively modest but symbolic part of the company’s sales, said company spokesman Jamaison Schuler. “This is not just a part of our business, it’s a part of our legacy.”

Jostled by the new politics of school lunch, Fairfax officials have vacillated over other staples. This year, for example, they removed salt from pretzels, but weeks later they were coaxed into putting it back.

“All of a sudden, everyone who eats is a nutritionist,” McConnell said. “It makes our job a lot more difficult.”

Source: Washington Post

 

 

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