Tag: food

Fixing the Organic Label

  • Mark Kastel, director of an industry watchdog group, says some so-called organic cows were being raised on factory farms instead of on pastures. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

They cost more, but sales of organic foods are rising. Even in this down economy, organic food sales are going up 3-times faster than other foods. Julie Grant reports… that’s happening as the government is working to make sure everything that’s labeled organic actually is organic:

Transcript

They cost more, but sales of organic foods are rising. Even in this down economy, organic food sales are going up 3-times faster than other foods. Julie Grant reports… that’s happening as the government is working to make sure everything that’s labeled organic actually is organic.

Near where I live in Ohio, it costs more to buy a half-gallon of organic milk than it does to buy a whole gallon of regular milk. So, that circular green and white seal that says “USDA Organic” better mean something.

Mark Kastel is director of the Cornucopia Institute. It’s an organic industry watchdog group. He says over the past decade, more and more people are buying organic – and the market share has grown. So, big business has moved in to get a piece of the action.

Kastel says some so-called organic cows were being raised on factory farms instead of on pastures.

“You really can’t milk 2-thousand or 5-thousand or 7-thousand cows and move them back and forth every day to pasture to graze them every day as the organic law requires.”

Kastel says part of the problem with milk production was that the rules didn’t specifically state how long cows had to be out on pasture. So, some weren’t getting any time eating grass – and were still being certified organic.

Kastel was among those who complained to the folks at the USDA’s national organic program about this.

“Corporate investments in large factory farms that are gaming the system and creating the illusion of practicing organics.”

That’s one reason why the Cornucopia Institute requested an audit of the National Organic Program.

“We need the force of law to come down and make sure that the organic label still means something.”

The USDA has responded. It started an audit of the organic program last year. At the same time, the program got more money… and hired a new director.

Miles McAvoy has inspected hundreds of organic farms and is now in charge of the national organic program. His first order of business was to help with that audit of the program. It found a lot of problems. But McAvoy is glad it was done.

“Basically, the report to me is a roadmap. It really outlines a lot of the fundamental problems that the national organic program has had and so it enables us to focus on those areas that really need to be addressed right away.”

The audit found that the organic program wasn’t cracking down on producers that labeled their foods organic, even if they violated organic rules. It found that the program wasn’t processing complaints in a timely way, and it wasn’t doing a good job inspecting farms in foreign countries. That meant that products imported from China and elsewhere might have the organic label, but not have been inspected properly.

McAvoy says the program just didn’t have enough money before to do everything it was supposed to do.

“Given the resources that the program had at the time, they did the best job that they could…”

Until recently, the national organic program had only eight people on staff.

McAvoy plans to hire more than 20 this year. And his office has already addressed most of the issues from the audit.

Organic watchdog Mark Kastel is pleased with the direction of the program. He says even the issue of cow pasture has been resolved. Milk labeled organic must now come from cows that are allowed to graze at least 120 days each year.

Kastel says the problems have come from a few bad actors. He says people are willing to pay more for organics because they want to support certain types of farms:

“I think we’re in a position with the current administration in Washington where we’ll be able to make sure those promises are kept.”

So the USDA Certified Organic label does mean something when you’re handing over more money to make sure animals and the land are treated better.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Making Biodiesel Kosher

  • Glycerin is a common ingredient in foods. It's made from fat from animals, or oil from vegetables. So automatically, there's kosher glycerin and non-kosher glycerin. (Photo courtesy of Wakefern CC-2.0)

The next time you’re near your cupboard, check for kosher food items.
The packages have specials symbols, like a “U” or a “K” with a circle around it.
The kosher label shows Jewish people the food was prepared with ingredients that meet religious guidelines.
Shawn Allee learned rabbis had to work overtime to keep kosher food separate from the byproduct of an alternative fuel.

Transcript

The next time you’re near your cupboard, check for kosher food items.
The packages have specials symbols, like a “U” or a “K” with a circle around it.
The kosher label shows Jewish people the food was prepared with ingredients that meet religious guidelines.
Shawn Allee learned rabbis had to work overtime to keep kosher food separate from the byproduct of an alternative fuel.

The world of futuristic alternative fuels got tangled up in ancient Hebrew food laws.
To understand how, I talk with a rabbi in the know … Sholem Fishbane of Chicago’s Rabbinical Council.

To start, I admit I don’t understand the key word: ‘Kashrut’ in Hebrew … or ‘kosher’ in English.

“How about your Yiddish?”

“Not so good.”

“Not so good, OK.”

“The word kosher means straight, correct. So when it comes to consumer items, and especially food, how does this play out?”

“The basic concept is that you are what you eat. You become the character of what you’re consuming.”

For example, in the Hebrew Bible, pigs are unclean, so pork’s not kosher.
But even some ‘clean’ foods are not kosher if you mix ’em …

“A very big thing in kosher is not to eat, uh … milk and meat together. meat representing death. milk representing life. Those are things that shouldn’t be coming together.”

So, you separate kosher food foods from non-kosher foods and even each other at times.

Well, Rabbi Fishbane’s job is to keep all this straight at big food factories.
He inspects food equipment and ingredients.

If everything’s kosher, he lets factories use the little “K” character on packages.

So, a few years ago, Rabbi Fishbane was at this factory, inspecting paperwork.

“All of a sudden you see an increase amount of glycerin receipts and hey, what’s going on? You usually have X amount a month and now it’s tripled.”

Glycerin is a common food ingredient, so Rabbi Fishbane thought, ‘no big deal.’
Until … he saw glycerin prices plummet, and his factories substituted it for more expensive ingredients.

“This is now a pattern. When we see a pattern, that’s when we get nervous.”

So, Rabbi Fishbane dialed up a teleconference with other rabbis.

They noticed the same thing … loads of cheap glycerin hitting the market.
The rabbis started sweating.

“glycerin has always been a kosher-sensitive item.”

This is one of the other rabbis on that conference call – Abraham Juravel of the Orthodox Union.

Glycerin keeps food sweet or moist.

It’s a clear, slick goo … and it’s made from oil or fat.

“The fat can be from animal or that fat can be from vegetable. and so automatically, there’s kosher glycerin and non-kosher glycerin. As a food ingredient it’s very common in all kinds of products. They actually use glycerin as a sweetener in certain candies.”

Rabbi Juravel started tracking down the source for all this new glycerin.
After some detective work, he found it was coming from factories that make biodiesel.

Biodiesel is an alternative fuel made from oil or fat.

You chemically process the fat … and you get fuel for cars and trucks, but …

“What you’ll also get is very crude glycerine, which is the waste product.”

Several years ago, new biodiesel factories were popping up and they looked for whatever fat they could find … kosher or otherwise.

“So, they buy used oil that you fried french fries in, and who knows what else you fried in there. if you made french fries and then you also made southern fried chicken in that oil, then that oil’s not kosher.”

Again, if the oil’s not kosher … neither is the glycerin and whatever food glycerin goes into.

There is a happy ending here.

Rabbis worked overtime to keep non-kosher glycerin out of the kosher food supply, but they actually made biodiesel operations part of the solution.

Some factories switched to all-kosher oils, so now their waste guarantees a steady supply of religiously pure, kosher glycerin.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Is Radical Homemaking the New Feminism?

  • Author Shannon Hayes says raising chickens and growing veggies is a new route for women who consider themselves feminists. (Photo courtesy of Nathan & Jenny CC-2.0)

Women who consider themselves feminists might be shocked to hear what some are calling the new wave of feminism: women heading back to the kitchen – and the garden. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Women who consider themselves feminists might be shocked to hear what some are calling the new wave of feminism: women heading back to the kitchen – and the garden. Julie Grant reports:

When Shannon Hayes was finishing her PhD, she made a list of all the female professors she’d ever had. There wasn’t one who had tenure who was also married with children. Hayes wanted a husband and family, and realized that if she wanted a big university job…

“I was not going to have these things. And they were as important to me as having a career. In fact, in truth they were more important to me.”

So, much to the dismay of her PhD committee members, she headed back to the northern foothills of the Appalachian mountains near the family farm where she grew up. She bought a teeny house with her husband. People whispered. What had gone wrong?

Once there, Hayes couldn’t even get a job interview. To make things worse, her husband lost his job two weeks after buying the house. So, they fell back on their domestic skills.

“Well, if something broke, we fixed it. If something ripped, we mended it. I was very good at canning, so any food we didn’t grow on the farm or didn’t grow in our gardens I wold go to the local farmers when it was in peak season and I would can it, freeze it, lacto-ferment it.”

Hayes says her idea of success changed. Spending time with her parents and children, cooking family meals – those are her successes.

And she’s found that more people are realizing the power of homemaking.

Hayes has now written a book called Radical Homemakers – which profiles twenty families that are saying “no” to regular jobs, and are instead raising chickens and growing veggies.

Hayes says homemaking is a new route for women who consider themselves feminists.

“I think that a lot of feminists are realizing that the family home life is extremely important. I do think that this is part of the next wave of feminism.”

One feminist blogger asked with disgust:
Are you telling women to get back in the kitchen?

Traditional feminists don’t like the sound of this one bit.

Brittany Shoot is another feminist blogger. She’s concerned with calling homemaking feminism. Shoot writes about eco-feminist issues for Bitch Media and The Women’s International Perspective. She says just because some women are doing it, does NOT make it feminism. She says Hayes’ message could be considered a step backward for women.

“I can’t imagine saying to my grandmother, ‘I’m going to stay home and just hang out.'”

Shoot says her grandmother struggled to attend university, and didn’t have nearly the choices Brittany has for a career. She would want Brittany to make the most of her opportunities.

“We’ve come so far. Why would you make this decision when you have the ability to have a career that may not only be lucrative, but fulfilling.”

But Shannon Hayes says we’ve been conditioned to want the money and status of a big job and that’s proving to be as empty for many women as it is for many men.

Hayes says being a housewife in the ‘50s and 60s was limiting. Back then, when Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, women were depressed by their role as homemakers. Women were losing their own identities to serve their husbands and children. But Hayes says women today are losing their identities to the workplace. She also says corporations have largely taken over in the home.
She says when women left the kitchen to join the workforce, that’s when everyone started eating processed, unhealthy foods.

“I think everybody should get back in the kitchen, not just women. But that’s because I don’t think you should be buying processed foods, and I don’t think you should be supporting industrial agriculture, and don’t think that you should be supporting food traveling thousands of miles.”

Hayes says becoming a homemaker isn’t abandoning feminism, it’s redefining it on her own terms. She’s sharing homemaking with her husband… and both are finding more balance between home life and work.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Consumer Concerns Over Corn Syrup

  • The 'Sweet Scam Lineup' ad produced by the Center for Consumer Freedom is one of many run by corn syrup manufacturers and food companies. They're running to combat what these industries see as myths about high fructose corn syrup. (Center for Consumer Freedom - screenshot)

High fructose corn syrup and sugar sweeten lots of food.

They’re in sweet stuff like soda-pop, but they’re also added to pasta sauce, gravy, bread, and other foods that don’t seem sweet.

Scientists are debating whether high fructose corn syrup is worse than sugar when it comes to making us fat.

But Shawn Allee reports high fructose corn syrup is losing ground before that science is finished.

Transcript

High fructose corn syrup and sugar sweeten lots of food.

They’re in sweet stuff like soda-pop, but they’re also added to pasta sauce, gravy, bread, and other foods that don’t seem sweet.

Scientists are debating whether high fructose corn syrup is worse than sugar when it comes to making us fat.

But Shawn Allee reports high fructose corn syrup is losing ground before that science is finished.

Let’s face it, most of us did not know high fructose corn syrup sweetened so much food.

We have no excuse now: the food industry sponsors ads like this one.

“sugar cube face forward.”

Here, a policeman lines up suspects.

There’s an ear of corn, a sugar cube, and a plastic honey-bear bottle.

The cop turns to the victim of the crime.

“… Do you see the one responsible for you gaining weight?”

“I’ve seen that high fructose corn syrup guy on the news. maybe it was him.”

“you mean you’re making all this up without any proof?”

At this point … the policeman lets the corn sweetener go.

The sugar cube and the honey bear bumble out, too.

“maybe it’s a sugar-cube. No, no, no. the honey bear!”

There’s a reason we’re seeing ads like this.

One market research survey showed more than half of consumers had “some concern” about corn syrup.

Some feel like the victim in that ad – they have this vague fear corn syrup’s worse for your waistline than sugar.

And they know scientists really are looking at this question.

“this particular study has stirred up extraordinary interest … much more than we expected.”

Dr. Bart Hoebel is from Princeton University.

A while ago his research team fed rats watered-down sugar.

Those rats didn’t get fat, but recently his team looked at what happened when rats drank watered-down corn syrup.

“The ones drinking fructose gained more weight … even though they’re taking in fewer calories there was something special or different about the high fructose corn syrup in that group.”

Hoebel says there’re several studies like his moving through the scientific pipeline.

They all look at whether eating high fructose corn syrup is worse than eating sugar … but he worries the public’s missing a big point.

Nearly all scientists agree we get too many calories from both corn syrup and sugar.

But … market research shows people miss the caveats and mixed results behind the science.

They’ve made up their minds.

“They’re looking for an ingredient that they know and sugar is a more recognizable ingredient.”

That’s Dr. Helen Jensen.

She studies food economics at Iowa State University.

She says some food companies don’t care if customers have the science right or wrong.

“so from the manufacturer’s point of view, they’re looking to make more product mixes that offer consumers the choice of having a sugar-based product.”

That’s why you’re seeing products that say sweetened with real sugar.

For example, the Pepsi company is pitching a sugar-version of Mountain-Dew while its regular version is still sweetened with corn syrup.

Other companies are switching, too.

Jensen says this is a big change.

“Tariffs raise the price of sugar. And subsidies for corn used to make corn syrup cheap.”

today it’s a little different. While sugar is still more expensive, it’s not as expensive as it used to be.

So, Jensen says if consumers are pushing a company to switch from corn syrup to sugar, the company just might pay more for ingredients to keep more customers.

But Jensen has a word of caution for people who hope sugar wins the battle over our sweet tooths.

She says countries like Australia sweeten a lot of food, too.

But they use almost no corn syrup … they use sugar, and Australians have gotten more and more obese, just like we have in the U-S.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Chicken Feces in Cattle Feed

  • Author David Kirby says cattle eating cattle by-product could risk another outbreak of mad cow disease. The FDA says there’s no measurable risk. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

The hamburger you put on the grill this weekend could be from cattle raised on feed that includes chicken feces. Lester Graham reports…a year-old Food and Drug Administration rule says it’s safe:

Transcript

The hamburger you put on the grill this weekend could be from cattle raised on feed that includes chicken feces. Lester Graham reports…a year-old Food and Drug Administration rule says it’s safe.

The rule came about after the mad cow disease outbreak. It made some changes, but still allows putting chicken litter – that’s the straw, feathers, chicken manure and scattered food left after raising chickens in a building– into cattle feed.

David Kirby wrote a book entitled “Animal Factory.” He says the government buckled to the chicken industry because the industry didn’t have a place to go with all the chicken litter.

“There’s too much to spread on local farmland, so they very often put it into cattle feed. It contains urea which cows can convert into protein.”

Chickens are messy. They scatter their feed and it gets into the chicken litter that’s put in some cattle feed. Some chicken feed contains beef by-products. Kirby says cattle eating cattle by-product could risk another outbreak of mad cow disease. The FDA says there’s no measurable risk.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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America’s Food Waste

  • It takes 25% of all the fresh water Americans use just to produce food that ends up being wasted. (Photo courtesy of Samara Freemark)

Government researchers recently put out a study that says American’s throw away forty percent of their food. Samara Freemark reports:

Transcript

Americans waste a lot of food – by some estimates, almost half of the total amount in the food supply. Samara Freemark reports that the problem goes way beyond cleaning your plate.

A couple of months ago, government researchers put out a study that said Americans waste 40% of their food.

When I read that figure, it seemed incredibly high. So high that when I sat down with a food policy expert, I was actually a little embarrassed to ask her about it.

“I saw this number, 40%. Is that possible? It seems high to me.”

“I think the wasting of 40% of food, I actually think that could be a low number.”

That’s Jennifer Berg. She’s the director of the graduate program in food studies at New York University, and she spends a lot of time thinking about the food waste problem – in particular, about its huge environmental impacts.

It turns out, it takes 25% of all the fresh water Americans use just to produce food that eventually ends up in the garbage. It takes a lot of fuel to move that food around; packaging it takes plastic and paper, and throwing it away fills up landfills.

“There’s that old, you know ‘an orange peel…’ An orange peel takes years to break down. You know, a banana peel, half a loaf of bread. All that stuff goes into landfills. It doesn’t matter whether it’s organic matter or not. It doesn’t decompose. It doesn’t break down, when it’s all put together like that.”

Berg says Americans get plenty of messages about cleaning their plates.

But they don’t necessarily understand how much food gets wasted before it even makes it to the table.

“If you think about meat. Other countries, they will consume 85% of a cow. We will consume 30%. 20%. We only eat very specific cuts. We want our food totally filleted, we want it boned. We just eat very very specific food.”

I wanted to see what a waste-free meal looked like, so I took a trip to EN Japanese brasserie in Manhattan.

For the past couple of months, EN Brasserie has hosted special dinners where customers pay good money to eat the kinds of things most Americans throw away.

Reika Alexander owns the restaurant. She came up with the idea for the dinners when she moved to New York and saw how much food people in the city threw out.

“I realized that New Yorkers create so much garbage. When I saw that my heart was really aching. We have to do something about that.”

Alexander showed me some of the food she’d be serving that night. The first thing she handed me was a plate of fried eel backbones.

“We import live eels. So we get the whole thing. So we deep fry the bone part. It’s like a really flavorful rice cracker. Want to try. You just eat it? Like the bone? The whole bone? It’s good, right? It’s really good. The bones just fall apart in your mouth.”

There was a platter of rice topped with scraps of fish and vegetable trimmings. A salad made from salmon skin. And a cauldron of soup with whole fish heads bobbing in the broth.

“The eye, it’s so flavorful and delicious. The fish eyes have so much flavor. It makes a beautiful fish stock.”

At the dinner that night I asked college student Cordelia Blanchard what she was eating.

“I don’t know. I think the idea is that what’s left over the chefs just throw in a pot, and that’s what we have the pleasure of eating tonight. It makes me want to be more creative about how I combine what’s left in the kitchen sink.”

Which is the kind of attitude that restaurant owner Reika Alexander likes. Still, she says, she doesn’t expect the average American to sit down to a dinner of eel bones and fish eyes any time soon.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark

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Food Safety on the Farm

  • The government isn't requiring farms comply with its safety rules yet, but some grocery chains and food distributors are. (Photo courtesy of These Days in French Life CC-2.0)

More than year ago peanut butter made in the southern U.S. sickened hundreds of people and killed as many as nine.
The outbreak set off a scramble to make food safer and the impacts are starting to be felt on the farm.
But it’s not clear how much the push for “food safety” will change anything.
Peter Payette reports.

Transcript

More than year ago peanut butter made in the southern U.S. sickened hundreds of people and killed as many as nine.
The outbreak set off a scramble to make food safer and the impacts are starting to be felt on the farm.

But it’s not clear how much the push for “food safety” will change anything.
Peter Payette reports.

The government is not requiring farms comply with its safety rules yet, but some grocery chains and food distributors are.

Chris Alpers runs two farms in northern Michigan that grow both cherries and apples.
He figures he’ll spend $7,000 getting them certified.
When asked if that will make his fruit any safer he pauses.

“That’s a hard one to answer. I don’t think we’ve had any issues in the past, nor would we if we continue the way we are currently doing things. But I guess the possibility is there that something could happen so certain things they are requiring us to do might make the fruit a little safer I suppose.”

In fact, nobody has ever heard of this region’s main crop making anyone sick.
It’s hard to imagine tart cherries being a little safer.
They grow well off the ground. They’re not picked by hand and are soaked in water on the way to be processed.
Nevertheless, growers along the coast of Lake Michigan will line up this summer to pay inspectors ninety-two dollars an hour to make sure they’re following a list of rules.

These include things like making sure workers only water drink in the orchard and that they wash their hands properly.
Nobody complains the rules are unreasonable.
But Dave Edmondson says they’re impractical.

“They want me to sign a piece of paper that this is going to happen every single day. I can’t guarantee that!”

Edmondson says he’s happy to run his farm according to the new rules but there are limits.

“It’s like the Indy 500 come harvest time. You have to focus on the movement of the fruit and taking care of it.”

There’s also concern in this region about what new rules might do to the growing number of small farms.
There’s a trend here of farmers growing food to sell locally rather than for processing or to ship cross-country.
There’s even a distributor that supplies area restaurants, schools and grocers with local food.
That company, Cherry Capital Foods, is not requiring its farms be certified.

The manager Evan Smith says he doesn’t want to see the local food movement killed with new costs and paperwork.
Smith says they visit farms they work with and he thinks small farms selling to neighbors are not the problem.

“That’s not to say it can’t be better but I’m not sure we’re going to see a significant change in the amount of food-borne illnesses or a decrease in those because quite frankly we’re not seeing that occur right now.”

Still the dangers of a tomato or spinach leaf making someone sick are real.

That’s why Don Coe says it will be better if everyone tries show their farms are clean and safe.
Coe owns a winery and is a Michigan agriculture commissioner.
He says one illness caused by a small farm selling locally would smear the movement.

“That’s my concern, is that we have to have an acceptable level of compliance with good food handling systems. We have to back it up with some kind of inspection service. It doesn’t have to be as rigid as foods going into the major food channels.”

The U.S. Congress might soon decide who needs to pass what sort of safety tests.
Under legislation now pending a farmer selling a few bags of spinach at a farmers market could be subject to the same standards as huge processing plant.

For The Environment Report, I’m Peter Payette.

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Trial of Insecticide Used on Food

  • The EPA has been trying to stop the use of the carbofuran for four years,but corn, sunflower and potato farmers say they need the chemical to produce their crops.(Photo courtesy of thebittenword.com cc-2.0)

The future of an insecticide used on food is on trial. The Environmental Protection Agency wants to stop the use of the chemical. Rebecca Williams reports the pesticide company and some growers’ trade groups have been fighting the EPA:

Transcript

The future of an insecticide used on food is on trial. The Environmental Protection Agency wants to stop the use of the chemical. Rebecca Williams reports the pesticide company and some growers’ trade groups have been fighting the EPA:

For four years, the EPA has been trying to stop the use of the insecticide carbofuran.

The EPA says there are a couple problems. First, it’s toxic to birds. Second, the agency says carbofuran residues on food are not safe for us.
FMC Corporation makes the chemical. It’s been fighting the EPA for years. Now it’s before a U-S appeals court.
Corn, sunflower and potato farmers say they need carbofuran.

John Keeling is the CEO of the National Potato Council.

“Would there be potato production next year in the U.S. without carbofuran? Absolutely. Will it make decisions much more difficult for a lot of growers? Yes.”

The trial for the use of the insecticide is expected to last for months.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Salt in the American Diet (Part 2)

  • Health professionals often work to reduce their patients salt intake to reduce high blood pressure. Should the government get involved too? (Photo by James Gathany for the US CDC)

New research shows that Americans’ health
would benefit dramatically if we ate less
salt. But some people say it’s not the
salt in the saltshaker that’s the
problem. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

New research shows that Americans health would benefit dramatically if we ate less salt. But some people say it’s not the salt in the saltshaker that’s the problem. Julie Grant reports:

Darryl Bosshardt comes from a salt family. His grandfather started mining salt on their farm in central Utah. When Bosshardt hears about a new study that shows 100-thousand American lives could be saved each year if everyone reduced their salt intake by just a half teaspoon – he cringes.
He says salt is being given a bad name.

“And the challenge is, how we define salt.”

Most of the salt today all looks the same – perfectly pour-able, uniform bright white grains. It’s pure sodium and chloride, but Bosshardt, whose family owns the Real Salt Company, says it’s not the same as naturally occurring sea salt.

“Sea water occurs with many trace minerals. Over 50 to 60 trace minerals. It doesn’t occur, the salt in sea water doesn’t occur, as pure sodium and chloride.”

Bosshardt says those trace minerals help the body to process sodium, but most salt today looks perfect because the trace minerals have been taken out. He says when our bodies lack the minerals needed to process sodium; it raises blood pressure, which can lead to heart problems.

There are some books by holistic doctors that make these kinds of claims,but there’s not much science to prove this.

Most doctors today say salt is salt; sodium chloride. Our bodies need it, but not as much as much as most Americans are eating.

Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo is a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California in San Francisco. She’s lead author of that new study on salt – the one that finds Americans could reduce deaths from heart disease by 100-thousand just by slightly reducing salt consumption:

“I don’t think we’re saying salt is bad and one of these other types of salt would be good. I think the newer types of salt that are on the market might have a lower sodium content for the taste that they have and so that would certainly be potentially beneficial.”

But Bibbins-Domingo says most Americans only get 6-percent of their sodium from their own saltshakers. The rest comes from processed foods and restaurants. So buying expensive sea salts with those trace minerals isn’t going to make much difference to most people. She says the problem is that salt is ubiquitous – people don’t even realize they’re eating it:

“If you start out with a healthy bowl of cereal with some milk, you’ve already consumed quite a bit of salt right there. If you have that healthy turkey sandwich or tuna sandwich, you have a bit of salt right there. If you have the marinara sauce with the pasta, you have salt there. So you realize that there are so many different ways, without you choosing items that we might clearly associate with a high sodium content, that there are a lot of places that we’re all consuming salt.”

Bibbins-Domingo supports efforts like the one in New York City. There Mayor Michael Bloomburg is urging food manufacturers to reduce the salt in their foods by 25% over the next five years.

Mark Kurlansky thinks it’s a terrible idea. He wrote a book called “Salt.” When laws curb smoking – that’s one thing. But salt is something different:

“You have to deal with the fact that people like salt. There isn’t the moral imperative of cigarettes because there isn’t a problem of second hand salt. If you don’t want to eat salt and the guy at the next table wants to eat it, it’s not going to affect you. It becomes an issue of government messing around with individual choice.”

But most people don’t realize they’re making that choice – there’s just so much salt in all the foods they buy. Other countries, such Finland and England, have worked with food manufacturers to lower salt content. In the UK, they cut sodium in foods by 10-percent. And researchers say the public didn’t even notice. They’re still studying to see if it’s actually improved health.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Salt in the American Diet (Part 1)

  • Dr. Bibbins-Domingo says the health savings of reducing salt are comparable to cutting the number of smokers in half. (Photo by Paul Goyette)

If you read nutrition labels on food packages, you might be surprised by how much sodium there is in a lot of foods.
Some researchers say all that salt is causing a plethora of health problems – and they want the government to force food manufacturers to lower the salt content. Julie Grant reports.

Transcript

If you read nutrition labels on food packages, you might be surprised by how much sodium there is in a lot of foods.
Some researchers say all that salt is causing a plethora of health problems – and they want the government to force food manufacturers to lower the salt content. Julie Grant reports.

When Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo sees patients with high blood pressure, she advises them to cut back the on the salt.

She says they often return to the office – happy to announce that they’ve cut out fast food and processed snacks.

“AND THEN I ASK THEM TO TELL ME WHAT THEY’RE EATING AND I AM AWAYS BLOWN AWAY WHEN THEY COME BACK WITH THESE NICE HEALTHY VEGETABLE SOUPS THAT ARE CHOCKED FULL OF SALT. AND SO ALL THE THINGS THAT THEY DON’T REALIZE ARE HIGH IN SALT ARE ACTUALLY STILL THERE IN THEIR DIET.”

Bibbins Domingo is associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California in San Francisco. She’s also lead author of a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers at Stanford and Columbia University Medical Centers co-authored the study.

They did a computer simulation – to see what would happen if every American reduced their salt intake by a half teaspoon a day. That’s 3 grams.

“WHAT WE FOUND THAT IS IF WE WERE ABLE TO REDUCE SALT IN THE U-S DIET BY 3 GRAMS PER DAY, WE WOULD ANTICIPATE 100-THOUSAND FEWER DEATHS EACH YEAR, 100-THOUSAND FEWER HEART ATTACKS, AND MORE THAN 100-THOUSAND FEWER CASES OF NEW HEART DISEASE.”

Bibbins-Domingo says the health savings of reducing salt are comparable to cutting the number of smokers in half.

But not everybody puts that much stock in the new study.

Michael Alderman is a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He says the government shouldn’t act so quickly based on this new study:

“WELL, IT’S INTERESTING THAT IT’S CALLED A STUDY, WHICH I THINK SORT OF SUGGESTS THAT THERE ARE REAL OUTCOMES AND REAL PEOPLE THAT WERE STUDIED. IN FACT, OF COURSE, WHAT IT IS A SIMULATION, A MATHEMATICAL MODELING.”

Alderman says there are lots of different findings when it comes to sodium consumption. And some show reducing salt intake could have actually have negative health effects:

“WE KNOW THAT REDUCING SODIUM INTAKE, BY AN AMOUNT SUFFICIENT TO REDUCE BLOOD PRESSURE, ALSO INCREASES SYMPATHETIC NERVE ACTIVITY, IT INCREASES RESISTANCE TO INSULIN…”

If we already ate low salt diets, the researchers in this latest salt study say those concerns might be valid. But Dr. Bibbins-Domingo says salt consumption in the U.S. is higher than is recommended, and it’s on the rise.

But she says there are high levels of salt in so many foods, it’s hard to avoid. Cereal. Bread. Lunch meat. Pasta Sauce.

And she says consumers can’t really reduce salt consumption without some changes by food manufacturers.

“RIGHT NOW THERE ARE NO CHOICES THAT ARE REALLY AVAILABLE THAT MIGHT BE LOWER IN SALT. I THINK THAT’S WHERE THE EFFORTS WITH THE FOOD MANUFACTURERS ARE ABOUT REALLY MAKING A RANGE OF CHOICES SO WE CAN EAT LOWER SALT, WHICH IS VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE RIGHT NOW.”

Some governments are responding. New York City has already started urging food manufacturers and restaurant chains to lower the salt in their foods by 25-percent over the next five years. Bibbins-Domingo says California is considering salt limits in foods the state buys for schools, prisons and other public institutions.

She also wants the Food and Drug Administration to require food makers to alert consumers when foods are high in salt.

In the meantime, Bibbins-Domingo advises her patients to look at food labels – and really look at the sodium content – so they know what they’re getting.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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