USDA Guidelines Questioned

  • Professor Paul Marantz says even a small error in the federal food guidelines can have a big public health impact. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Some people say the government is partly to blame for America’s obesity problem – because of the federal dietary guidelines. Julie Grant reports on efforts to improve how the government offers nutritional advise to Americans.

Transcript

Some people say the government is partly to blame for America’s obesity problem – because of the federal dietary guidelines. Julie Grant reports on efforts to improve how the government offers nutritional advise to Americans.

You’ve probably seen those colorful food pyramids they put out, the ones that tell you how many servings to have of each kind of food each day. Those recommendations are used by schools, nursing homes, and the federal food stamp program to design menus.

Robert Post works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which puts out the food pyramid.

“IT’S THE CORNERSTONE FOR BUILDING HEALTHY EATING PATTERNS. CHOOSING THE RIGHT AMOUNTS OF FRUITS, VEGETABLES, GRAINS, MILK PRODUCTS, AS WELL AS PROTEIN SOURCES SUCH AS MEAT AND BEANS.”

Post says people need to know how to get all the nutrients they need, without over-indulging in foods they don’t need.
That’s why the guidelines also set specific limits on things like salt and fat.

But some researchers think the guidelines actually have the potential to cause harm.

Paul Marantz is professor of epidemiology and population health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
He doesn’t think the guidelines should give specific recommendations about how much fat and salt people should eat.

“THOSE SEEM TO CARRY PRECISION THAT IMPLIES THAT WE HAVE A GREATER DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE THAN WE ACTUALLY DO, SO PICKING THESE NUMBERS AND REQUIRING THAT PEOPLE HUE TO THESE GUIDELINES IS A PROBLEM.”

Marantz says even a little bit of error in the food guidelines can have a big public health effects.

He and his colleagues wanted to find out the potential impact of past dietary guidelines.

They looked at 1995, when the nutritionists were telling people to avoid fat.

“MOST OF US REMEMBER IN THE OLD FOOD PYRAMID THAT MADE IT QUITE CLEAR THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO AVOID WAS FAT AND ONE COULD EAT GRAINS AND PASTA AND BREAT AND THE LIKE WITHOUT CONCERN.”

Marantz says Americans did eat more pasta and bread – that added lots of calories, and lots of weight.

His research, which was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, found what Marantz calls a ‘strong correlation’ between the dietary guidelines against fat and obesity in Americans:

“CORRELATION IS BY NO MEANS CAUSATION. WE CANNOT INFER FROM THIS THAT IT WAS BECAUSE OF DIETARY GUIDELINES THAT WE ARE EXPERIENCING THE EPIDEMIC OF OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY. BUT THE CONNECTION IS STRONG.”

Marantz wants the government to give general advice for healthy eating, but not specific guidelines. He gives the example of sodium. Marantz says no one really knows how much salt is appropriate for each person. But there’s a push to put specific limits on sodium in the new guidelines.

Robert Post of the USDA says anything that gets into the 2010 recommendations will be based on what he calls the Gold Standard of scientific evidence. He says a committee of nutritional experts has been meeting for two years to create the new guidelines…

“WE CAN BE ASSURED THROUGH THIS VERY INTENSIVE REVIEW OF SCIENCE AND THE WEIGHT OF THE EVIDENCE IT PROVIDES THAT THE CURRENT ADVISE ON CARBOHYDRATES FOR EXAMPLE IS BASED ON THE LATEST RESEARCH.”

Post says any recommendations for fat and sodium will also be based on the preponderance of current science. The committee is expected to make its recommendations this summer, and new dietary guidelines should be published by the end of the year.

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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Stripping Politics Out of Science

  • The Union of Concerned Scientists says the explicit written policies Obama promised last year are crucial to ensure scientific integrity in government. (Photo courtesy of Planar Energy Devices, Inc.)

President Barack Obama promised to protect scientific research from politics. He wanted guidelines in four months. It’s been a year now and still there are no guidelines. Shawn Allee reports:

Transcript

President Barack Obama promised to protect scientific research from politics.

He wanted guidelines in four months.

But Shawn Allee reports, it’s been a year now and still there are no guidelines.

Francesca Grifo tracks the issue of scientific integrity for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group.

She says the issue can be a matter of life and death.

Grifo has lots of examples.

“Basic things like the way the Clean Air Act is implemented, the way we look at drugs before we put them out for the public, all of these big, government processes that we don’t pay a lot of attention to, if we don’t have them be transparent, we end up with inappropriate influence on those decisions.”

Grifo says Obama has improved the situation at some agencies, but he should finish explicit, written policies on things like protecting scientists who become whistle-blowers.

That way the next president has high standards, too.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy did not return calls for comment.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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New Law for Lead in Toys

  • A lead detector finds over 5000 parts per million of lead in this toy. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

A new federal law is forcing
toy manufacturers to get the lead out
of children’s products. Consumer
advocates are cheering the tougher
guidelines. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

A new federal law is forcing
toy manufacturers to get the lead out
of children’s products. Consumer
advocates are cheering the tougher
guidelines. Julie Grant reports:

Consumer advocate Ed Mierzwinski says despite what
you’d assume, toys have not been tested for safety.

Mierzwinski is with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
He says, until now, the government agency in charge – the
Consumer Products Safety Commission – hasn’t been able
to do that.

“It was a rudderless ship. It had no leadership. It had no
money. It had one person testing toys. A guy named bob.
And in 2007 the whole thing just came to a crisis.”

Mierzwinski says 30-million toys were recalled last year.

This new law requires all children’s products meet tougher
new standards for toxic materials. It also gives the
Consumer Product Safety Commission more money, staff,
and authority.

But the law doesn’t take effect until February – so toys for
sale this holiday season could still be a problem.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Biofuel Blends Fail Tests

In the US, the market for biodiesel was more
than 450 million gallons in 2007. But new research shows
not all biofuels are created equal. Lisa Ann Pinkerton
reports:

Transcript

In the US, the market for biodiesel was more
than 450 million gallons in 2007. But new research shows
not all biofuels are created equal. Lisa Ann Pinkerton
reports:

The American Chemical Society study tested 19 biodiesel samples
from states like California, Massachusetts, and Indiana. It found the
majority, almost 90%, didn’t meet federal requirements for B20 grade
fuel – 20% biodiesel, 80% petroleum. Some samples
contained as little as 2% biodiesel, while others exceeded the
20% limit.

One of the study’s authors is Christopher Reddy. He says biodiesel
above 20% could damage engines, while anything below 20%
reduces the environmental benefits.

“So perhaps the results of my small study will help people take a step back and
reevaluate things and put in some safe guards and such.”

Reddy’s says his study shows the blending inconsistencies found by
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2004, still haven’t been
addressed.

For the Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Related Links

New Tax Credits for Hybrid Owners

People who buy a hybrid car or truck this year could get a bigger tax credit. The IRS has issued new tax credit guidelines for the purchase of hybrids. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:

Transcript

People who buy a hybrid car or truck this year could get a bigger tax credit. The IRS has issued
new tax credit guidelines for the purchase of hybrids. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Celeste Headlee reports:


Beginning this month, hybrid owners will be eligible for a tax credit of up to 3,400 dollars. That
money will be subtracted directly from what the taxpayer owes the IRS. Under previous tax law,
hybrid owners could only claim a 2,000 dollar tax deduction.


Don McKenzie is a Vehicles Engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says the new
law is a step forward because it’s performance based… vehicles with better fuel economy are
eligible for a higher tax credit.


But he says the credit is phased out after a company builds about 60,000 eligible vehicles… and
there’s another important component missing as well.


“It doesn’t require an increase in overall fleet fuel economy and it is possible that some
automakers could use increased sales of hybrid vehicles to offset increased sales of gas guzzlers.”


Automakers are responsible for getting their vehicles certified as eligible vehicles. They hope to
have vehicles certified beginning this summer.


For the GLRC, I’m Celeste Headlee.

Related Links

Sewage Blending Stirs Up Debate

  • Many environmentalists fear the practice of sewage blending would become more routine if a new EPA policy is enacted. (Photo by M. Vasquez)

Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering a new policy for sewage treatment plants. Many environmentalists say if the policy is adopted, it will lead to increased water pollution and greater risk to public health. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports on the debate over sewage blending:

Transcript

Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering a new policy for sewage treatment plants. Many environmentalists say if the policy is adopted, it will lead to increased water pollution and greater risk to public health. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports on the debate over sewage blending:


(sound of water in sewer)


Some sanitary sewers are tied in with storm sewers. So when there’s a big rainstorm, or when there’s a fast snowmelt, all that water can inundate some sewage treatment plants. To tackle this problem, some treatment plants have adopted a practice known as “blending.” The excess sewage is re-routed around the slower parts of the treatment plant. The dirty water is then mixed with the water that’s been cleaned. It’s sometimes given a shot of chlorine, and then released into creeks, rivers, and lakes.


Kurt Heise oversees the operation of a sewage treatment plant on the Detroit River. He says the practice of blending is necessary in order to keep the plant from being overwhelmed.


“When you have a wet weather event, an extreme wet weather event, if we were to allow all of that combined water in through the normal process the treatment process would be ruined.”


Sewage blending has been around for a long time. To plant operators, it’s a necessary step in handling large amounts of dirty water. But to some people, blending is not seen as a good option. They want the practice to stop.


Instead, they say, cities should invest in their systems to make sure they can fully treat all the water that comes to the plant. Kurt Heise says, if his plant were required to do this, it wouldn’t make sense economically.


“It would almost result in doubling the size of our plant and spending just untold amounts of dollars for an event only happens a few times a year.”


Sewage treatment plant operators say you have to weigh the costs and the benefits before spending hundreds of millions of dollars on expanding the treatment plants. The decision of whether or not to allow blending has been left up to state and local regulators. But recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has weighed in on the subject. And ever since they suggested new guidelines for allowing blending, environmentalists have been critical of their plan. Mike Shriberg is the Great Lakes advocate for the Public Interest Research Group. It’s an environmental consumer activist organization.


Shriberg says the draft blending policy, the way it’s written now, is too broad. And will allow the practice of blending to become routine.


“Our fear is that when you’ve got a treatment plant that uses blending, they’re never going to upgrade to full treatment sewage. And so if a treatment plant is allowed to blend they’re not going to go up to full treatment capacity they have no incentive to do that anymore. It’s sort of the cheap way out.”


Sewage treatment operators say blending is better than seeing the raw sewage overflow into waterways. And they say it’s better than spending large sums of money to fix a problem that only occurs a few times a year. But critics say the EPA doesn’t have a good handle on how often blending is used, and what kind of health risks are associated with the practice.


Some initial studies have been done on blended sewage and how it might affect public health. Joan Rose is a water microbiologist at Michigan State University. She’s written a report on the health risks associated with blended sewage.


“So what I found was that if people were actually swimming in the water and there was a discharge of a blended sewage upstream, that their risk of getting sick, actually getting sick with a virus or a parasite was about a hundred times greater – when there was a blended discharge as opposed to if the water was fully treated.”


Rose says some of these viruses, such as Hepatitis-A, are highly contagious. At this point, there are no good estimates on how many people get sick from blended sewage each year. It’s never been studied, so the impact of blending on public health is unclear. Ben Grumbles is the Assistant Administrator for water at the EPA. He says the EPA is considering the billions of dollars at stake in expanding the nation’s sewer treatment plants versus the risk to public health.


“What we’re trying to do is to clarify what’s legal and what isn’t legal and to recognize the economic realities that sewage teatment plants face across the country in terms of their infrastructure needs, but foremost and above all what leaves the facility has to meet Clean Water Act permit limits.”


But the Clean Water Act permit limits don’t measure all the viruses, bacteria, and parasites found in blended sewage. And so some environmentalists and scientists say meeting the limits doesn’t necessarily mean protecting public health. Grumbles says officials are still reviewing the tens of thousands of comments they received after releasing the draft blending policy.


He says he doesn’t know what the final rule will look like, or if they’ll issue a rule at all. One thing is likely, if the policy is finalized the way it’s written now, it’s expected that environmental groups will take the EPA to court.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.

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Fda to Revise Fish Consumption Advisories

The Food and Drug Administration is going back to square one in its attempt to come up with guidelines for fish consumption. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The Food and Drug Administration is going back to square one in its attempt to come up
with guidelines for fish consumption. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:


A scientific advisory panel indicated the FDA missed the mark in a proposed advisory on
mercury in fish. The agency will try again. Environmentalists are critical of the FDA for
assuming that people regularly eat all kinds of fish when many families usually eat just a few
kinds… with tuna being very popular. Tuna is higher in mercury than some other types of fish.
Gina Solomon is a medical doctor and a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense
Council. She says because fish is healthful food, the FDA should just tell people how much tuna
is safe.


“If you weigh about 140 pounds, you can eat a can of chunk light tuna about every four days and
still be within EPA’s safe level.”


Solomon says because they’re smaller, mercury is a greater problem for kids and unborn children.
She says using the EPA guidelines, it’s clear they should consume even less tuna. Whether new
FDA guidelines make it that clear or simple is yet to be seen.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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The COMPLEXITIES OF ISSUING FISH ADVISORIES (Part I)

  • Fish is healthy food, but contamination from pollution means people should limit the amount of inland lake and river fish they eat. Photo by Lester Graham.

There are three major questions often asked when considering the environmental health of a body of water. Can you drink the water? Can you swim in it? And… can you eat the fish? Often the answer to the last question is very complicated. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has the first report in a two-part series on the fish that ends up on your table:

Transcript

There are three major questions often asked when considering the
environmental health of a body of water. Can you drink the water? Can you
swim in it? And… can you eat the fish? Often the answer to the last
question is very complicated. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham has the first report in a two-part series on the fish that ends up on
your table:


Mark Ford goes fishing almost every weekday. This day, he’s at a small
marina off of Lake Michigan. He’s carrying several rods and reels and a
couple of tackle boxes with him to an old dock…


Lester Graham: “Now, what do you fish for?”


Mark Ford: “Right now, whatever bites on the hook. Basically, I fish for bass,
catfish, walleye.”


This day, he’s just testing some new gear…


“Set my drag. Too loose.”


When Ford got his fishing license, he also got a guide telling him that the fish
he eats is contaminated. All inland lakes have some level of contamination
which could include pesticides, PCBs, and mercury.


Ford has a pretty good idea about what to do to reduce his exposure to the contaminants when he eats the fish..


“Yeah, first thing you want to do is cut off all excess fat to get away from a lot of the chemical
pollutants that’s not in the actual meat of the fish. That’s where most of the chemicals lie, in the fat. So, you cut that off and get to cookin’.”


Ford’s preparation is a good start. Trimming the fat will reduce exposure to PCBs and
similar compounds that are stored in fatty tissue. And just cooking the fish reduces some of the exposure to contaminants. But if a contaminant such as methyl mercury is present in the flesh of the fish, no amount of rinsing, boiling or frying will change that.


Unfortunately, many anglers are not as well informed as Mark Ford. A study in Canada
found a lot fishers don’t understand the contaminants or what to do about them. They judge
whether the fish is safe to eat by how well it fights on the line… by the color of the
flesh… or by the clearness of the eye. None of those things is an indicator of whether a fish is contaminated by toxic chemicals.


Alan Hayton is with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. He says how much fish are
contaminated depends on the body of water. A ban on PCBs in manufacturing
has helped, although there are still decades worth of the pollutant in some lake
sediments. Agricultural pesticide restrictions and bans have helped reduce
contaminants in some other lakes.


“Well, if you want – are fish getting better or worse? Certainly over the years,
when you look at the Great Lakes, there’s been a considerable decline in the level of
contaminants in fish. Many of the inland lakes, both in Ontario and elsewhere – not
just around the Great Lakes, but elsewhere – there’s mercury in those fish. Mercury
concentrations don’t appear to be changing. They seem to be quite stable.
So, we find that in quite a high proportion of the inland lakes there are some consumption
restrictions.”


Mercury remains a problem because as coal-fired power plants release mercury
into the air… it’s brought down into watersheds by rain. There the problem is
complicated in some areas by any number of factors, including some bacteria that transform
simple mercury into the more toxic methyl mercury.


So, some bodies of water, such as the Great Lakes, have lower levels of some
pollutants, but some other contaminants are just as bad as ever. To complicate things
even more, some fish are more contaminated than others.


Faith Shottenfeld is with the New York State Department of Health.


“You know, it’s complicated because it’s going to vary from state to state, from body of
water to body of water and from fish species to fish species.”


Shottenfeld says that makes getting the message to anglers all the more difficult.
States are trying to figure out how to get the information to the people who eat
the fish, but there are very few general guidelines.


“So, I think that the best way to work your way through the complexities
is to really have a dialogue with somebody who understands the advisories and can
help you figure out what you need to do.”


But generally speaking, eating smaller fish, and limiting sport fish meals from local lakes to about once a week for men and once a month for women helps.


Angler Mark Ford says he’s not worried. He says to him, the health benefits of
fish offset the health risks of the contaminants.


“A month, I’d say I eat about twelve to 15 pounds of fish. I eat a lot of fish.
I like fish. Fish is healthy for you, too. It’s low in cholesterol if you cut the fat away from
it. It’s good brain food. That’s scientifically proven. And, if you prepare it
right, it tastes good!”


And Ford says he’s healthy. But experts indicate it’s hard to say what long-term
exposure to the contaminants in sport fish from area lakes will mean to human
health. They caution that children and women of child-bearing age should severely
restrict their intake of sport fish because the contaminants can damage the
development of fetuses and children.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

The COMPLEXITIES OF ISSUING FISH ADVISORIES (Short Version)

  • States are struggling with ways to warn people, especially women of childbearing years and children, about the hazards of eating too much sport fish contaminated with toxic chemicals.

Health officials are trying to get the word out about contaminants in sport fish. But the issue is complicated. So, it’s difficult to give people an easy answer on how to reduce the health risk. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Health officials are trying to get the word out about contaminants in sport fish. But the
issue is complicated. So, it’s difficult to give people an easy answer on how to reduce
the health risk. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Sport fish contain contaminants such as PCBs, pesticides, and mercury. But the amount
of contaminants in a fish depends on the body of water, the species of fish, and
even the age of the fish. So, there are very few general guidelines. That makes it difficult for
health officials to tell people what’s best for them.


Faith Shottenfeld is with the New York State Department of Public Health. She says safe
consumption levels vary.


“For some fish, a meal a week, a meal a month. You certainly can talk in general
about eating smaller fish because as you move your way up the food chain, you
know, the bigger fish eat the little fish so they get more and more and more chemicals,
but there are some examples of smaller fish that are highly contaminated.”


Shottenfeld notes that children and women of childbearing age are at more risk
from ill effects of the contaminants in fish than men. She says the best bet is to talk to someone
who’s familiar with your state and area’s fish consumption advisories.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.