Paul Greenberg says the decline of local fish markets, and the resulting sequestration of seafood to a corner of our supermarkets, has contributed to “the facelessness and comodification of seafood.” Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

What’s the most popular seafood in the U.S.? Shrimp. The average American eats more shrimp per capita than tuna and salmon combined. Most of that shrimp comes from Asia, and most of the salmon we eat is also imported. In fact, 91 percent of the seafood Americans eat comes from abroad, but one-third of the seafood Americans catch gets sold to other countries.

Shrimp and salmon are two case studies in the unraveling of America’s seafood economy, according to Paul Greenberg, author of the new book American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood. Greenberg tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross about what’s driving the changes in America’s seafood economy and why you should buy wild salmon frozen when its out of season.

Interview Highlights

On what Greenberg calls “The Great Fish Swap”

What I think we’re doing is we’re low-grading our seafood supply. In effect what we’re doing is we’re sending the really great, wild stuff that we harvest here on our shores abroad, and in exchange, we’re importing farm stuff that, frankly, is of an increasingly dubious nature.

We export millions of tons of wild, mostly Alaska salmon abroad and import mostly farmed salmon from abroad. So salmon for salmon, we’re trading wild for farmed. Another great example of this fish swap is the swapping of Alaska pollack for tilapia and pangasius [catfish]. Alaska pollack is the thing in [McDonald's] Filet-O-Fish sandwich; it’s the thing in that fake crab that you find in your California roll. We use a lot of pollack ourselves, but we send 600 million pounds of it abroad every year. And in the other direction, we get a similarly white flaky fish — tilapia or pangasius — coming to us mostly from China and Vietnam. They fill a similar fish niche, but they’re very different.

On why the U.S. exports the best-quality fish

We only eat about 15 pounds of seafood per year per capita. That’s half of the global average, so there’s that. The other thing is that other countries really are hip to seafood. The Chinese love seafood; the Japanese, the Koreans — they love seafood. They’re willing to pay top dollar for it. We just aren’t willing to do so. We want our food cheap and easy.

All of this fast-food commodification of seafood protein — because that’s kind of what it is at this point — adds to that general preference for cheap stuff. Kind of in tandem and in league with that is the American tendency to avoid taste. … Foodies [talk] about flavor and texture and the food movement and that kind of thing, and that’s true of about 5 percent of Americans, but 95 percent of Americans really are not so into flavor. … If we don’t like the flavorsome fish — like bluefish, mackerel, things like oysters, things that really taste of the sea — if we don’t like that, then we’re going to go for these generic, homogenized, industrialized products.

On sending American salmon to China and back for cheap labor

A certain amount of Alaska salmon gets caught by Americans in Alaska, sent to China, defrosted, filleted, boned, refrozen and sent back to us. How’s that for food miles? We don’t want to pay the labor involved in boning fish and more and more of that fish that used to go make that round trip is actually staying in China because the Chinese are realizing how good it is, much to our detriment. …

The labor is so much cheaper that it makes the shipping cost-effective. When you ship things via freighter, frozen, the cost per mile is relatively low compared to, say, air freighting or train travel or truck freighting.

On why you should buy wild salmon frozen, not fresh, if it’s out of season

It’s going to be frozen anyway. I sometimes will go to a supermarket in January and I’ll see fresh, wild Alaska salmon sitting out there on ice and I just shake my head at it because I know that if it’s January, there’s a very little chance that that fish is fresh.

Nearly all of the salmon, when it comes into the processing plants in Alaska, gets immediately frozen. And that’s great because if you freeze a fish right out of the water it will be of the highest quality that you can get out of a frozen product. So when you go to the supermarket in January, don’t go to the fresh seafood counter for your salmon; go to the frozen bins and get those nice vacuum-packed Alaska salmon things. They’re just going to be of higher quality.

On slave labor and the Thai shrimp industry

The largest shrimp producer for us right now is Thailand. … It turns out, a certain amount of the shrimp that come to us from Thailand seems to be coming to us in part as the result of slave labor.

Shrimp are fed wild fish ground up and turned into meal — trash fish, they’re called, just random fish that are trolled up in the South China Sea. It turns out, a large amount of that fish is being caught by boats in which the labor onboard are slaves and that fish gets ground up and sold to Thai shrimp farms.

On the decline of local fish markets

We don’t want fish markets in our view shed. We don’t want to smell them. We don’t want to look at them. So they really have been banished from the center of our cities and sequestered to a corner of our supermarkets.

This is a process that aids all of the facelessness and commodification of seafood. … Seafood has been taken out of the hands of the experts and put into the hands of the traders, so people really cannot identify the specificity of fish anymore. Because supermarkets rely on mass distribution systems, often frozen product, it means that the relationship between coastal producers of seafood is broken and so it’s much easier for them to deal with the Syscos of the world, or these large purveyors that use these massive shrimp operations in Thailand or China, than it is for them to deal with the kind of knotty nature of local fishermen.

Links:
Can A Fish Farm Be Organic? That’s Up For Debate
Can Farmed Fish Feed The World Without Destroying The Environment?
Sushi’s Secret: Why We Get Hooked On Raw Fish
Paul Greenberg: The Future Of ‘Wild Fish’
Red Fish, Blue Fish: Where The Fish Flesh Rainbow Comes From

Lazy and luxurious: Raw salmon and tuna have soft, creamy textures because the fishes’ muscles don’t work as hard as those in land animals. Photo: Moonsushi/Flickr

By Michaleen Doucleff | NPR’s The Salt - 

Raw fish is sizzling hot right now.

Los Angeles has brand new bars devoted to an Italian style of raw fish, called crudo. President Obama kicked off his visit to Asia last month noshing nigiri at Jiro’s famous sushi bar. And back in December, The New York Times named Sushi Nakawaza as its top restaurant of the year.

But why do so many of us find utter bliss in eating raw sea creatures but aren’t so inclined to chow down on uncooked birds, cows or pigs?

A feast for the eyes and the mouth. Tuna swim long distances, but their muscles are still soft and tender. Photo: Kyodo /Landov

A big part of it is gravity — or the effective lack of it in the ocean, says biophysicist Ole Mouritsen, author of Sushi: Food for the Eye, the Body and the Soul.

“Fish are so soft. You can stick your finger through their muscles,” he says. “Try doing that with a chicken or cow. Fish muscle is very different than that in land animals.”

Why? Because fish can afford to be lazier than terrestrial animals. Fish essentially float all the time. So their muscles don’t work constantly to fight gravity.

“Fish don’t have to support their body weight,” Mouritsen says, “so their muscle fibers are shorter and less tough than those in land animals.” The same goes for the connective tissue holding the muscle fibers together: It’s delicate and weak.

The result? Fish has a silky, smooth texture when it’s raw, and a flaky, light texture when it’s cooked.

By contrast, “Land animals — like ourselves — are always working to keep themselves upright and keep their shape,” Mouritsen says, so our muscle fibers are thicker, tougher and firmer.

One fish, two fish, white fish, red fish: Muscles that depend on oxygen tend to be red, while those that don’t are white. Salmon flesh is orange because of the food the fish eat. Photo: Kake/flickr http://bit.ly/RjIRAT

The result is a ropy, chewy — and less appetizing — texture when the meat is raw. Cooking softens the connective tissue in meat and improves its texture (it also makes it juicy and flavorful).

In general, the more a muscle works, the tougher, more sinuous it gets, Mouritsen writes in his book. This idea explains why the belly of the tuna, known as otoro, is exceptionally soft: The belly of the fish is the laziest muscle of them all.

“In contrast, those muscles that are more active in a tuna, say the ones in its fins and tails, are a bit more chewier than other muscles,” he says.

Under a microscope, fish, chicken and other meat muscles look similar, with long, parallel fibers, like ropes, stretched out and tied together.

But when you zoom in a little closer, the fish muscles look like the Kate Moss of the bunch: Their fibers are slimmer, shorter and more delicate than the others.

The muscle properties of fish also explain the rainbow of colors you see at a sushi bar.

“Fish that are constantly on the move — say, a tuna — have muscles that are always working and burning carbohydrates aerobically,” Mouritsen says.

The muscles need oxygen to make energy. And the molecule that carries oxygen to muscle contains iron. Guess what color iron is in the fish? Red.

In contrast, fish that mostly hang out in one place or on the bottom of the ocean — say, for instance, flounder — have muscles that don’t rely on oxygen to create energy. No oxygen means no iron to carry it, which means the muscles tend to be white. (Of course, most fish have a mixture of these two type of muscles and thus can look red, white or pink.)

So what about the pinkish-orange color of salmon? That’s a special case, Mouritsen says.

“The coloring is due to what salmon eat: shellfish that are enriched with a pigment that’s related to carotene in carrots, called astaxanthin.”

This pigment creates the characteristic bluish-gray or green color of raw shrimp and crabs. The molecule turns bright pink or orange when the salmon eats the shellfish or we cook it.

Sales of gluten-free foods reached $10.5 billion in 2013. But scientists say a lot of our newfound fear of gluten is probably misplaced. Photo: Cams/Flickr

By Eliza Barclay | Npr’s The Salt -

As late-night host Jimmy Kimmel so cleverly captured in a recent segment, some people on the gluten-free bandwagon don’t know much about gluten, or why, precisely, they should avoid it. (For the record, gluten is a protein found in some cereal grains, including wheat and rye.)

Uncertainty about the effects of gluten on people who don’t have celiac disease, a serious autoimmune disease, but who identify as “gluten sensitive” or “gluten intolerant” is rampant among doctors, too. As more and more patients experiment on their own with a gluten-free diet, researchers are struggling to keep up with just how and why cutting out the gluten may be helping or hurting them.

But the gastroenterologists around the world who’ve been trying understand the gluten puzzle say they’re increasingly convinced of two key things: One is that the number of people who are truly non-celiac gluten sensitive is probably very small. Second, they say that the people who say they feel better on a gluten-free diet are more likely sensitive to a specific kind of carbohydrate in the wheat — not the gluten protein.

That carbohydrate, called fructan, is a member of a group of carbs that gastroenterologists say is irritating the guts of a lot of people, causing gas, diarrhea, distention and other uncomfortable symptoms. Altogether, these carbs are called fermentable oligo-di-monosaccharides and polyols, or the ungainly acronym FODMAPs.

If you’re someone with a sensitive stomach and you’ve never heard of FODMAPs, listen up. In addition to fructan in wheat (and garlic and artichokes), FODMAPs include fructose (found in some fruit), lactose (found in some dairy products) and galactans (found in some legumes).

After a team of scientists at Monash University in Australia led by Peter Gibson and Susan Shepherd linked FODMAPs to IBS in 1999, they designed the low-FODMAP diet. According to William Chey, a gastroenterologist and professor of medicine at the University of Michigan, the diet was swiftly embraced by doctors and dieticians as a treatment for IBS because it’s as effective as the drugs on the market. (In most trials, 70 percent of patients see improvement in their IBS symptoms when they go on the low-FODMAP diet.)

Yet the gluten-free diet is still way more popular and well-known than the low-FODMAP diet. And that’s led researchers to want to try to separate the effects of the gluten protein from the FODMAPs in foods like wheat where both are found.

Back around 2010, Jessica Biesiekierski, who’s now a post-doctoral research fellow at the Translational Research Center for Gastrointestinal Disorders in Belgium, heard that a lot of people with IBS in Melbourne, Australia, were saying they experienced benefits from the gluten-free diet. That gave her the idea, while she was a grad student at Monash, to do a trial to test gluten sensitivity in these people who didn’t have celiac disease.

In a study published in 2011, Biesiekierski and a team of researchers at Monash (who were also involved with the FODMAP research) showed evidence of the existence of non-celiac gluten sensitivity in a randomized controlled trial of 34 people, some of whom got gluten and some of whom got placebo.

“Everybody was jumping up and down since that was the first study to show gluten could induce symptoms in patients that did not have celiac disease,” Biesiekierski tells The Salt. It also helped fuel the explosion of gluten-free food: The number of people with celiac disease is small — less than 1 percent of the population — but suddenly it seemed possible that a lot more people were sensitive to gluten and should avoid it.

Given the response to the study, the team decided to try to reproduce its results. This time, 37 subjects with non-celiac gluten sensitivity and IBS were randomly assigned to groups given a two-week diet of reduced FODMAPs, and then placed on high-gluten, low-gluten or control diets for one week.

The results, published in 2013 in the journal Gastroenterology, were intriguing. Only 8 percent of the participants had gluten-specific effects from the gluten diets, while all participants has significantly improved symptoms on the low-FODMAP diet. The researchers concluded that gluten had no specific or dose-dependent effects on patients who claimed to be gluten sensitive but were not diagnosed with celiac disase.

“We believe non-celiac gluten sensitivity probably does exist, but it’s not very common and we have a lot more to do until we fully understand [gluten],” Biesiekierski says.

And, Biesiekierski says, for the majority of the people with IBS, FODMAPs like fructan are more likely to be the trigger than gluten. “That means we really have to understand the differences between gluten sources and FODMAP sources,” she says, to help people figure out what’s upsetting their stomachs and how to avoid the triggers.

What’s more, in a survey published in April, Biesiekierski found that some people who put themselves on a gluten-free diet still had some symptoms, which suggests they could be sensitive to FODMAPs other than the ones in wheat.

Chey, the gastroenterologist at the University of Michigan, agrees that fructans in wheat are more likely to be triggering IBS in most patients than the gluten. “But we still need to understand which symptoms are related to gluten, and [which ones are] related to fructans,” he says.

And it’s exceedingly difficult for scientists to answer these questions.

“It’s really hard to design and execute studies that really separate out constituent effects of food,” says Chey. “We’ve still got a long ways to go.”

Regardless, Chey says, “a number of people, including me, now feel that non-celiac gluten sensitivity is a misnomer. We should be saying wheat intolerance.”

Another critical determinant of gut health that scientists are scrambling to understand is the community of microbes in the digestive tract, as we’ve reported. Chey notes that what you eat influences your microbiome, and your microbiome influences how you ferment carbs like FODMAPs that reach your colon.

While many people say they feel better when they cut out the gluten, there’s also a question as to how many of them are experiencing the nocebo effect — when believing that something makes you sick causes it to do so.

Despite the confusion — or perhaps because of it — gluten-free food is spreading through the market like wildfire. According to Mintel, a market research company, sales of gluten-free products reached about $10.5 billion in 2013. And the company expects them to rise to $15 billion annually by 2016. The gluten-free diet isn’t just trendy in the U.S. It’s also taking off in Europe and Australia.

Related stories on NPR:
Doctors Say Changes In Wheat Do Not Explain Rise Of Celiac Disease
FDA Approves Gluten-Free Label

Migrant workers harvest corn on Uesugi Farms in Gilroy, Calif., in 2013. Photo courtesy of USDA

 

By Peggy Lowe | NPR’s The Salt

Farm work has always been one of the most dangerous jobs in America. Government statistics show it clearly, and the people doing the work can attest, too.

But new research from the University of California-Davis suggests that it’s a much bigger problem than the federal government recognizes. The health problems faced by agricultural workers are the most undercounted of any industry in the U.S., they say.

Federal agencies responsible for tracking farm injuries and illnesses fail to report 77 percent of the physical calamities that befall farmers and their workers, according to a study published in April in the Annals of Epidemiology.

While the study confirms what watchdogs and researchers have long maintained about a lack of accuracy in government statistics on nonfatal occupational hazards, the difference between what’s happening in the fields and what the government reports was still very surprising, says lead researcher Paul Leigh, a UC-Davis professor of public health sciences.

“I was expecting … maybe 50 percent, maybe 60 percent at the outside. But to have the median estimate as 77 percent — I about fell off my chair,” he says. “Quite the eye-popping number.”

 The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 19,700 injuries and illnesses among those working in crop production in 2011, compared to the 74,932 found by the UC-Davis research, a 74 percent difference. In livestock work, the government reported 12,300 in 2011, while the UC-Davis team said 68,504 were hurt in that line of work, an 82 percent difference.

So what explains the difference in the numbers? The government relies solely on one dataset — the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses. The researchers, meanwhile, also looked at several other agencies’ surveys, including the National Agricultural Workers Survey and the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Leigh says. The government’s numbers were also lower because it focuses on larger farms and excludes small, family-owned operations, and because of the part-time and migratory nature of ag workers, Leigh says.

The other two problems in under-counting are negligence by employers who fail to send in the reports and the large number of undocumented ag workers. One recent governmentsurvey found that about half of the hired workers employed in U.S. crop agriculture were undocumented, with the overwhelming majority of these workers coming from Mexico.

Deportation is the chief fear of immigrants who fail to report their injuries to a government agency. But another concern is losing every connection to their livelihood, says Suzanne Gladney, founder of the Migrant Farmworkers Project, a group located an hour east of Kansas City, Mo.

The apple and peach pickers who get assistance from the project are often brought to the area either by a family member or a crew leader, who set them up with their job, housing and transportation, Gladney says.

But if they report an eye injury or a fall from a ladder — the most common hazards for the fruit pickers — everyone in the network could lose their jobs, she says.

“If you do something that irritates somebody, your whole system starts to fall apart,” Gladney says. “So you’re really encouraged against being a troublemaker or wave-maker of any kind.”

Injuries are as varied as the work — from using a machine or stooping in a field to cut crops. Leigh says the researchers used conservative figures, much like the government, so estimates for job-related cancers, chronic pulmonary disease or circulatory diseases, which may be prevalent, were not included.

Other conditions that weren’t counted are asthma from grain dust or neurological problems from long-term exposure to pesticides and chemicals. That’s because they won’t be diagnosed for 10 or 20 years, he says.

Ultimately, the discrepancy in counting injuries can hinder agriculture as a driver of the economy, Leigh says, by passing costs on to government social programs and charity care, while also limiting the focus on safety and prevention efforts.

“[Agriculture] could be an even more powerful economic force if we accurately counted and addressed the causes of harm to agricultural workers and farmers,” he says.

Peggy Lowe is a reporter for Harvest Public Media.

Previous related stories in NPR’s ‘The Salt’:
Why Picking Your Berries For $8,000 A Year Hurts A Lot - March 7, 2013
Children Face Dangers On Farms, But Not From Farmwork - March 9, 2012

A customer shops for produce at the Hunger Mountain Co-op in April 2013 in Montpelier, Vt. More than a dozen food cooperatives supported the bill that would require the labeling of genetically modified foods. Photo: Toby Talbot/AP

By Eliza Barclay and Jeremy Bernfeld | NPR’s The Salt -

The Green Mountain State is poised to become the first to require food companies to label products containing genetically modified ingredients.

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin tweeted he will sign a bill state lawmakers passed Wednesday mandating that foods with GMOs be labeled as having been produced with “genetic engineering.” The bill would also make it illegal for foods with GMOs to be labeled “all natural” or “natural.”

While Maine and Connecticut have already passed GMO labeling bills, those bills contain clauses that keep them from going into effect until surrounding states pass similar rules. Vermont’s bill would go into effect on July 1, 2016.

For the past few years, consumer advocates have been ratcheting up the pressure on states and the federal government to require labeling, arguing that information about GMOs is essential if we’re to make informed decisions about what food to buy.

Meanwhile, the food industry has resisted the idea of labeling, arguing that GMOs are safe and that labeling costs would be passed onto consumers.

But recently, they changed their tune a bit. As we reported in February, a food industry coalition representing farmers, seed companies and other food producers who rely heavily on GMO ingredients said they support voluntary labeling standards. And they asked the Food and Drug Administration to outline what they might look like.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, which led that coalition, responded sternly to the passage of the Vermont bill. “It sets the nation on a costly and misguided path toward a 50-state patchwork of GMO labeling policies that will do nothing to advance the safety of consumers,” the association said in a statement.

The state attorney general, Bill Sorrell, is anticipating a legal challenge.

“I’ll be very surprised if we are not sued if the legislature goes ahead and enacts a mandatory GMO labeling statute,” Sorrell told Vermont Public Radio on April 14. “A lot of people might not realize that this is arguably a free speech issue.”

In anticipation of a legal battle, state lawmakers included in the bill a fund for legal defense.

Foods containing GMO ingredients are common in the U.S. Some 90 percent of America’s corn and soybeans are genetically modified, and egg, milk and meat producers feed their animals with those crops. But they are not required to be labeled because the FDA says they do not raise safety issues.

Once a rather niche issue, there are signs now that concerns about GMOs have gone mainstream: Federal lawmakers are weighing in.

Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., recently introduced a bill that would create a federal voluntary GMO labeling plan, but it would also outlaw state rules like Vermont’s that require GMO labels.

Labeling advocates lamented the failure of 2013 ballot initiatives to require labeling in California and Washington state, but they welcomed the news from Vermont.

“This is a huge victory for consumers across the country … Vermont’s law will establish a precedent that other states are sure to follow,” Gary Hirshberg, chairman of Stonyfield Organic and the Just Label It campaign, said in a statement.

Jeremy Bernfeld is a reporter for Harvest Public Media.

Nutrition researchers are reaching a new consensus: Cut back on all those refined carbs. And remember that some fat is good. Photo: Stacy Spensley/Flickr

 
By Allison Aubrey | NPR’s The Salt

Remember the fat-free boom that swept the country in the 1990s? Yes, we know from the Salt readers who took our informal survey that lots of you tried to follow it. And gave up.

“I definitely remember eating fat–free cookies, fat–free pudding, fat-free cheese, which was awful,” Elizabeth Stafford, an attorney from North Carolina, told us in the survey.

Back then, she avoided all kinds of foods with fat: cheese, eggs, meat, even nuts and avocados. Most of the experts were recommending a low-fat diet to prevent heart disease.

And, as a result, her diet was full of sugar (lots of fat-free, sugary yogurt) and carbohydrates, like bagels.

“Fat was really the villain,” says Walter Willett, who is chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. And, by default, people “had to load up on carbohydrates.”

RELATED STORY: Why We Got Fatter During The Fat-Free Food Boom

But, by the mid-1990s, Willett says, there were already signs that the high-carb, low-fat approach might not lead to fewer heart attacks and strokes. He had a long-term study underway that was aimed at evaluating the effects of diet and lifestyle on health.

“We were finding that if people seemed to replace saturated fat — the kind of fat found in cheese, eggs, meat, butter — with carbohydrate, there was no reduction in heart disease,” Willett says.

Willett submitted his data to a top medical journal, but he says the editors would not publish his findings. His paper was turned down.

“There was a lot of resistance to anything that would question the low-fat guidelines,” Willett says, especially the guidelines on saturated fat.

Willett’s paper was eventually published by a British medical journal, the BMJ, in 1996.

Now, nearly two decades later, a more complicated picture has emerged of how fats and carbohydrates contribute to heart disease.

For instance, it’s clearer that some fats, namely plant-based fats found in nuts and olive oil, as well as those found in fatty fish, are beneficial. Willett says there’s strong evidence that they help reduce the risk of heart disease.

But here’s where it gets interesting: “We’ve learned that carbohydrates aren’t neutral,” explains Dariush Mozaffarian, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School.

“[Carbs] were the base of the pyramid,” says Mozaffarian. The message was “eat all carbohydrates you want.”

Americans took this as a green light to eat more refined grains such as breads, processed snack foods and white pasta.

“But carbohydrates worsen glucose and insulin — they have negative effects on blood cholesterol levels,” he says. And so the thinking that it’s OK to swap saturated fats for these refined carbs “has not been useful advice.”

He says it’s clear that saturated fats can raise LDL cholesterol, the bad cholesterol. But that’s only one risk factor for heart disease.

There’s now evidence that — compared with carbs — saturated fat can raise HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol) and lower trigylcerides in the blood, which are both countering effects to heart disease, he says.

“When you put all of this together,” says Mozaffarian, what you see is that saturated fat has a relatively neutral effect compared with carbs. He says it’s “not a beneficial effect but not a harmful effect. And I think that’s what the recent studies show.” He points to a review of studies published in 2010.

He also points to a highly publicized recent meta-analysis that concludes there’s no convincing evidence to support the dietary recommendations to limit saturated fat.

The findings in that paper have created quite a bit of controversy. For instance, the American Heart Association says it stands by its recommendations to limit saturated fat.

“This research simply means that we lack the data from controlled clinical trials that truly test this question of how much saturated fat is acceptable,” writes Linda Van Horn, a spokesperson for the American Heart Association.

But what’s the message that’s getting out?

A few days ago, Mark Bittman, an author and op-ed contributor to the New York Times, wrote a column titled “Butter is Back” based on the findings of the recent meta-analysis. “When you’re looking for a few chunks of pork for a stew, you can resume searching for the best pieces — the ones with the most fat,” he wrote.

This didn’t sit well with Alice Lichtenstein, a nutrition science and policy researcher at Tufts University, who wrote a letter to the editor arguing that green-lighting the return to butter and fatty pork was off.

She pointed to an AHA guideline review supporting the recommendation to limit saturated fats.

So, given the kerfuffle, is there some consensus? Yes, it turns out.

In an email to us, Lichtenstein explained that, “There are strong data to suggest substituting carbohydrate for saturated fat is not associated with a [cardiovascular risk] benefit.”

And like Willett and Mozafarrian, she makes the case that “substituting polyunsaturated fatty acids [which are found in nuts, seeds, fish and leafy greens] for saturated fat is associated with a benefit.”

So, the message here seems to be: Cut back on all those refined carbs. And remember that some fat is good.

After all, the heart-healthy Mediterranean diet, which includes lots of nuts, olive oil, fish, fruits, vegetables and legumes, and small amounts of cheese and meat, turns out to be a pattern of eating that includes 40 percent to 45 percent of calories from fat. That’s hardly low-fat!

Now, of course, in an age when people are avoiding animal products for many reasons, including animal welfare and environmental concerns, new studies that conclude meat is OK, compared with all the refined grains we eat, is bound to raise criticism from vegetarians.

Neal Barnard, a physician and vegetarian activist who leads the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, writes, “Before you fry up that bacon, hold the fork.” His conclusion about the recent meta-analysis is this: “The study had some interesting statistical quirks that made [saturated fat] look safer than it really is.”

The debates about fat will likely go on. And the new studies have been like lighter fluid on the charcoal grill.

So, stay tuned. But what’s clear is this: Gone are the days of experts calling for ultra-low-fat diets.

And, Elizabeth Stafford, who told The Salt about how she struggled with her weight on a low-fat diet, says there’s a good reason why.

“I was always starving, and I never felt satisfied,” she says, thinking back to her low-fat, high-carb days. Eating carbs seems to make you quickly hungrier for more carbs. And ditto for sugar.

“It took me a long time not to be scared of fat,” Stafford says. But, she says, she now enjoys scrambled eggs and the occasional burger.

The proposed Nutrition Facts label (right) has a few subtle differences from the current label, including bolder calorie counts and added sugar information. Image: Food and Drug Administration

By Allison Aubrey | NPR News –

Ready for a reality check about how many calories you’re eating or drinking?

The proposed new nutrition facts panel may help.

The Obama administration Thursday released its proposed tweaks to the iconic black and white panel that we’re all accustomed to seeing on food packages.

The most visible change is that calorie counts are bigger and bolder — to give them greater emphasis.

In addition, serving sizes start to reflect the way most of us really eat. Take, for example, ice cream. The current serving size is a half-cup. But who eats that little?

Under the proposed new label, the serving size would become 1 cup. So, when you scoop a bowl of mint chocolate chip, the calorie count that you see on the label will probably be much closer to what you’re actually eating.

Another example: A 20-ounce bottle of soda would be labeled as one serving. And with that, the calorie count at the top would come closer to reality.

Another significant change: The new panel will include a separate line for added sugars.

This is aimed at helping consumers distinguish between the sugars that are naturally found in foods (such as the sugar in raisins found in cereal) from the refined sugars that food manufacturers add to their products.

The FDA is updating some required serving sizes on nutrition labels to better reflect the amounts people eat. Image: Food and Drug Administration

“I’ve been hoping for years that the FDA would list added sugars,” Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, tells us. “I definitely think it’s helpful.”

As we’ve reported, there’s a solid body of evidence linking excessive sugar consumption to an increased risk of heart disease and other ailments.

And the intent here, senior administration officials say, is to help cue Americans to consume less of it. Despite industry opposition to the listing of added sugars, officials say they’re confident the science is strong enough to justify adding it to the label.

The proposed new label makes a slight tweak to sodium labeling, by making a small downward revision in daily values for sodium. It’s a “step in the right direction,” says Michael Jacobsen of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. He points to the link between excess salt consumption and heart disease.

So why these changes now? “To help address obesity, one of the most important public health problems facing our country, the proposed label would drive attention to calories and serving sizes,” writes Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods, in a release.

And as part of the streamlining efforts, the label would cut out the listing of calories from fat. This is, in part, a reflection of the fact that there are good fats and bad fats. The fat-free thinking that so swept the country in the 1990s, when the original nutrition facts panel was introduced, has given way to much more nuanced thinking about fats.

The FDA is updating some required serving sizes on nutrition labels to better reflect the amounts people eat.

Food and Drug Administration
The first lady is expected to unveil the new label Thursday during a White House ceremony. In a statement, she wrote, “This is a big deal, and it’s going to make a big difference for families all across the country.”

Comments

Lagunitas Brewing Company’s owners are nervous that the Russian River water they currently use to make beer could run out in the drought that’s hammering California. Photo: Courtesy of Lagunitas Brewing Company

By Alastair Bland | NPR’s The Salt -

Brewers around the country boast that their “pure” local water is the key to their beers’ unique flavor. Coors credits the trout streams of the Rockies. Olympia Beer’s slogan is, “It’s the water.” Cold Spring Brewing Co., in Minnesota, is named for a nearby natural spring.

In California’s Sonoma County, Lagunitas Brewing Company, founded in 1993, has grown into one of the largest craft breweries in the nation. Like several other smaller local breweries, Lagunitas makes its beer with water from the Russian River, a 110-mile waterway that provides drinking water for more than half a million people.

But in the wake of 2013, the driest year ever recorded in California, Lagunitas’ owners say they’re nervous about shortages that could mean a switch from the river water to not-as-tasty well water.

“If [the county] shifts us over to groundwater, we’d have to sacrifice our nice water supply — that unique, signature, clean Russian River water,” says Jeremy Marshall, head brewer at Lagunitas.

The problem with groundwater, he says, is that it’s heavy in minerals that don’t go well with beer.

“It would be like brewing with Alka-Seltzer,” Marshall says.

According to Jay Jasperse, chief engineer with the Sonoma County Water Agency, the local well water is, in general, palatable. “But in some [of the region's wells] there are taste and odor issues,” he says. “You have high nitrate concentrations in places, from agricultural industries, and iron and manganese.”

Marshall says any off-flavors in the well water might not show through in a malty, bitter beer. However, the minerals could coax undesirable flavors from grainy and hoppy styles.

“A beer that might normally taste crisp and refreshing could have an astringent taste — kind of planky, like Popsicle stick,” Marshall says.

But Lagunitas fans needn’t fret — yet — over planky beer. The company is in the midst of opening a new facility in Chicago, and Marshall says brewing could be entirely shifted to this location — at least for a while — if the water supply in Petaluma changes.

The Petaluma brewery, Marshall says, may also install a reverse osmosis system to handle any unsavory groundwater. The process forces water through a filtration membrane.

But the technology has its downsides. For one thing, it’s wasteful: Of the water that goes in, only about 70 percent comes out in usable form. The rest contains concentrated levels of the undesired compounds and must be discarded.

Moreover, the water produced by reverse osmosis may even be too pure.

“It’s just H20 molecules,” says Mitch Steele, brewmaster at Stone Brewing near San Diego, which uses it for some of its water supply. Steele says such water must be refortified with minerals before it can be used for brewing.

Marshall of Lagunitas says he has already had the brewery’s existing water supply analyzed and, if he needs to use reverse osmosis, will “basically rebuild the Russian River water by adding certain minerals back.”

While Lagunitas is working on contingency plans, other breweries may not be as equipped or prepared should well water become a reality for the region’s industries and residents.

Bear Republic Brewing Company is located about 30 miles north of Petaluma in the city of Healdsburg. The brewery receives its water from the Russian River, just like Lagunitas.

“We don’t have the option to switch to another supply,” says Clay Grosskopf, Bear Republic’s marketing manager. “That would be an interesting curve ball for us to deal with.”

Heavy rains fell last week, but the downpour has not offset the effects of the driest year in state history. Reservoirs remain at critically low levels, and rivers flows are likely to plummet again.

A major source of the Russian River is Lake Mendocino, and officials have warned that this reservoir could all but disappear this summer if the months remaining of spring produce little or no more heavy rainfall. “We’re having some serious issues with Lake Mendocino in ensuring that it has a sustainable water supply through the summer,” says Jasperse.

If 2014 is exceptionally dry, water rationing will likely be enforced, though he isn’t sure how this will affect local breweries, Jasperse adds.

Marshall says he is watching the weather forecasts, and he notes that his region’s water resources have historically been generous to farmers, ranchers and urban residents.

“This green area provides us and the people who live here with this delicious, clean water,” he says. “But we’ve been taking it for granted all along.”

Studies suggest cinnamon can help control blood sugar, but if you want to incorporate more of this spice in your diet, consider using the Ceylon variety. Photo: iStockphoto / npr

By Allison Aubrey | NPR’s The Salt

If I say cinnamon, you say … sugar? It’s a popular combination, of course.

But if you’re interested in the health-promoting effects of cinnamon, you may want to think anew about the spice.

For instance, says John Critchley, executive chef at Bourbon Steak Restaurant in Washington, D.C., why not add it to savory dishes? He uses cinnamon to create a spice and herb rub for lamb loin. He also whips up a great spinach salad with raisins, pine nuts and cinnamon.

Critchley is a fan of the intense aromatics in cinnamon, especially in Saigon — a cousin of the cassia varieties of cinnamon most commonly used in the U.S. and Europe. And he says adding cinnamon to spice blends is a great way to layer flavors when you’re cooking.

And when you start to look at the potential health-promoting effects of the spice, there’s even more incentive to experiment with it in the kitchen.

John Critchley, executive chef at Bourbon Steak Restaurant in Washington, D.C., uses cinnamon in many savory dishes, including a spice and herb rub for lamb loin. Photo: Allison Aubrey/NPR

Cinnamon comes from the bark of trees. It has long been considered a medicinal plant. There are several varieties, harvested from southern China to Southeast Asia.

For years, there have been hints that adding cinnamon to your diet can help control blood sugar. And a recent spate of studies adds to the evidence that the effect is real.

“Yes, it does work,” says Paul Davis, a research nutritionist with the University of California, Davis. He authored a recent meta-analysis published in the Journal of Medicinal Food that concluded that cinnamon lowers fasting blood glucose.

“According to our results, it’s a modest effect of about 3 to 5 percent,” Davis says. This is about the level of reduction found in the older generation of diabetes drugs, he says.

That makes the findings of interest not just to the 25 million Americans who already have diabetes, but also to the 80 million other people — nearly 1 in 4 of us — who have elevated fasting blood-glucose levels. Doctors refer to this as pre-diabetes, meaning blood sugar that doesn’t meet the cutoff for a diagnosis of diabetes but that does indicate a high risk of developing the disease.

There’s also a recent meta-analysis concluding that cinnamon can help lower lipid levels, including LDL cholesterol (the unhealthy type) and triglycerides.

What’s not well understood is exactly how much cinnamon is optimal, and whether the effect is transient. It’s hard to tell from the studies whether it leads to a significant, long-term reduction in blood sugar.

For people who already have diabetes, cinnamon is not an alternative to medication. But for people with pre-diabetes who are interested in using diet to manage their blood sugar, it’s one of many strategies worth considering, says diabetes educator Emmy Suhl of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.

“The evidence is still inconclusive,” Suhl notes, but cinnamon “is inexpensive,” “and it tastes good.”

So, is there an ideal variety of cinnamon to be sprinkling into your oatmeal, or blending into your spice rubs and salads?

Well, as we recently reported in The Salt, cassia cinnamon is the variety you are most likely to encounter in a grocery store. But cassia can contain high levels of coumarin, a naturally occurring ingredient that, when eaten in large enough amounts, can cause reversible liver toxicity in a small group of individuals sensitive to it.

“So the warning is, for cinnamon lovers, is to beware of excessive intake of cassia,” says diabetes educator Angela Ginn.

And Ikhlas Khan, a researcher at the University of Mississippi’s School of Pharmacy who recently looked at the amounts of coumarin in cinnamon-flavored foods in the U.S., recently told The Salt that people who do want to use cinnamon for medicinal purposes should consult their doctor before taking large amounts.

Some experts suggest investing instead in Ceylon cinnamon, a milder — and pricier — variety of the spice that comes from a tree distinct from but related to cassia.

How much cassia is too much? For an adult who is sensitive to coumarin, the limit is about a teaspoon a day, according to the daily tolerable intake set by the European Food Safety Authority.

So if you’re a cinnamon lover and your goal is to increase your daily intake, using Ceylon cinnamon can reduce the risk of consuming too much coumarin.

Another option: cinnamon capsules. In many of the studies evaluating the benefits of cinnamon, researchers have used cinnamon supplements. And as word has spread about the potential health benefits, sales of supplements have grown — about 20 percent over the past few years, totaling $32 million in 2012, according to the Nutrition Business Journal.

Comments

Paige Witherington is the farmer at Serenbe Farms, a 30-acre certified organic and biodynamic farm adjacent to a housing development outside Atlanta. It’s one of more than 200 or so subdivisions with an agricultural twist nationwide. Courtesy of Serenbe

By Luke Runyon | The Salt

When you picture a housing development in the suburbs, you might imagine golf courses, swimming pools, rows of identical houses.

But now, there’s a new model springing up across the country that taps into the local food movement: Farms — complete with livestock, vegetables and fruit trees — are serving as the latest suburban amenity.

It’s called development-supported agriculture, a more intimate version of community-supported agriculture — a farm-share program commonly known as CSA. In planning a new neighborhood, a developer includes some form of food production — a farm, community garden, orchard, livestock operation, edible park — that is meant to draw in new buyers, increase values and stitch neighbors together.

“These projects are becoming more and more mainstream,” says Ed McMahon, a fellow with the Urban Land Institute. He estimates that more than 200 developments with an agricultural twist already exist nationwide.

“Golf courses cost millions to build and maintain, and we’re kind of overbuilt on golf courses already,” he says. “If you put in a farm where we can grow things and make money from the farm, it becomes an even better deal.”

The Bucking Horse subdivision in Fort Collins, Colo., will include a working CSA farm, complete with historic barn, farm house and chicken coop. Photo: Luke Runyon/Harvest Public Media

In Fort Collins, Colo., developers are currently constructing one of the country’s newest development-supported farms. At first blush, the Bucking Horse development looks like your average halfway-constructed subdivision. But look a bit closer and you’ll see a historic rustic red farm house and a big white barn enclosed by the plastic orange construction fencing.

“When we show it, people are either like, ‘You guys are crazy. I don’t see the vision here at all,’ or they come and they’re like, ‘This is going to be amazing,’ ” says Kristin Kirkpatrick, who works for Bellisimo Inc., the developer that purchased the 240-acre plot of land.

When finished, Bucking Horse will support more than 1,000 households. Agriculture and food production are the big draws, Kirkpatrick says. Land has been set aside for vegetables. There will be goats and chickens, too, subsidized by homeowners. Soon they’ll be hiring a farmer for a 3.6-acre CSA farm. There’s also a plaza designed for a farmers market, and an educational center where homeowners can take canning classes.

In short, the neighborhood plan is infused with the quaint, pastoral, even romantic view of farming.

“Our public restrooms are in an old chicken coop, and it’ll be half public restroom and half chicken coop,” Kirkpatrick says.

After World War II, Americans escaping crowded cities flocked to the suburbs. Most suburbanites didn’t want to be right next to a farm, and so restrictive zoning pushed livestock and tractors out of new residential areas. Now, says Lindsay Ex, an environmental planner with the city of Fort Collins, municipalities are being forced to change their codes.

“We used to have residential separated from agriculture, and now we’re seeing those uses combined,” says Ex.

And that can be a great deal for small-time farmers, says Quint Redmond, who runs a company called Agriburbia, which operates farms within suburban developments across the country. In development-supported agriculture projects, he says, the developer, or homeowners association, ends up making the big farm purchases — not the farmer.

“The best possible thing for a farmer is to have the infrastructure ready,” he says. “That is where most farming goes upside down or goes broke.”

Not to mention that the neighborhood is filled with people who already have an interest in local food, so “there’s a real market for that farmer,” Redmond says.

The marketing of these new neighborhoods appears to be working — at least at Bucking Horse, where the developer says 200 single-family lots were snatched up within days of going on the market. Values of existing homes have jumped 25 percent since construction began on the agricultural amenities.

“Once we saw this and the plans they had for it, we were really sold on the lifestyle,” says Lindley Greene, who moved to Bucking Horse in March with her husband and two young sons.

Once the neighborhood farm is up and running, Greene says, she’ll be volunteering to get her hands dirty.

“We love the idea of it,” she says. “To have it right here — not have it in our backyard, but still in our backyard — is awesome.”

This story comes to us via Harvest Public Media, a public radio reporting collaboration that focuses on agriculture and food production.