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Children and teens in the United States now get more than two-thirds of their calories from ultraprocessed foods, an analysis of almost two decades worth of data has found.
Ultraprocessed foods – such as frozen pizza, microwave meals, packaged snacks and desserts – accounted for 67% of calories consumed in 2018, up from 61% in 1999, according to research published in the medical journal JAMA Tuesday. The study analyzed the diet of 33,795 children and adolescents nationwide.
While industrial processing can keep food fresher longer and allow some foods to be fortified with vitamins, it modifies food to change its consistency, taste and color to make it more palatable, cheap and convenient – using processes that aren’t used in home-cooked meals. They are also aggressively marketed by the food industry.
“Some whole grain breads and dairy foods are ultra-processed, and they’re healthier than other ultra-processed foods,” said senior author Fang Fang Zhang, a nutrition and cancer epidemiologist at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston.
“But many ultra-processed foods are less healthy, with more sugar and salt, and less fiber, than unprocessed and minimally processed foods, and the increase in their consumption by children and teenagers is concerning.”
The information on children’s diets used in the study was collected annually by trained interviewers who asked the children or an adult acting on their behalf to detail what they had eaten in the preceding 24 hours. The information was gathered as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Between 1999 and 2018, the proportion of healthier unprocessed or minimally processed foods decreased from 28.8% to 23.5% of consumed calories, the study found.
The remaining percentage of calories came from moderately processed foods such as cheese and canned fruits and vegetables, and flavor enhancers such as sugar, honey, maple syrup and butter, the study said.
The biggest increase in calories came from ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat meals such as takeout and frozen pizza and burgers: from 2.2% to 11.2% of calories, according to the study. The second largest increase came from packaged sweet snacks and desserts, the consumption of which grew from 10.6% to 12.9%.
The link between child health and ultraprocessed food is complex but one recent study in the United Kingdom found that children who eat more ultraprocessed food are more likely to be overweight or obese as adults.
Experts said the study’s implications for future health were significant given that childhood is a critical period for biological development and forming dietary habits.
“The current food system is structured to promote overconsumption of ultra-processed foods through a variety of strategies, including price and promotions, aggressive marketing, including to youths and specifically Black and Latino youths, and high availability of these products in schools,” wrote Katie Meyer and Lindsey Smith Taillie, both assistant professorsin the department of nutrition at the University of North Carolina’ Gillings School of Global Public Health, in a commentary on the study. They were not involved in the research.
There was good news that suggested efforts to tackle consumption of sugary drinks such as soda taxes had been effective: Calories from sugar-sweetened beverages dropped from 10.8% to 5.3% of overall calories.
“We need to mobilize the same energy and level of commitment when it comes to other unhealthy ultra-processed foods such as cakes, cookies, doughnuts and brownies,” said Zhang.
Black, non-Hispanic youths experienced a bigger increase in the proportion of ultra-processed foods in their diet compared to their White counterparts. The study said it did not assess trends in other racial or ethnic groups because of a lack of nationally representative data. However, it noted that Mexican American youths consume ultraprocessed foods at a consistently lower rate, which authors saidcould reflect more home cooking among Hispanic families.
The education level of parents or family income didn’t have any impact on the consumption of ultraprocessed foods, suggesting that they are commonplace in most children’s diets, the study added.
The authors said their study had some limitations: Asking people to recall what they ate isn’t always an accurate measure of dietary intake. Plus, there is a tendency to under report socially undesirable habits such as consumption of unhealthy food.
In addition, it can be a challenge to accurately classify ultraprocessed food because it requires a full list of ingredients – information unlikely to be given by children answering a questionnaire.
“Better methods for dietary assessment and classification of foods are needed to understand trends and mechanisms of action of ultra-processed food intake,” Mayer and Taillie wrote.
Editor’s Note: Katie Hurley, author of “No More Mean Girls: The Secret to Raising Strong, Confident and Compassionate Girls,” is a child and adolescent psychotherapist in Los Angeles. She specializes in work with tweens, teens and young adults.
CNN
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“I have a couple of spots for anyone who wants to lose 20 pounds by the holidays! No diets, exercise, or cravings!”
Ads for dieting and exercise programs like this started appearing in my social media feeds in early October 2022, often accompanied by photos of women pushing shopping carts full of Halloween candy intended to represent the weight they no longer carry with them.
Whether it’s intermittent fasting or “cheat” days, diet culture is spreading wildly, and spiking in particular among young women and girls, a population group who might be at particular risk of social pressures and misinformation.
“My mom is obsessed with (seeing) her Facebook friends losing tons of weight without dieting. Is this even real?” The question came from a teen girl who later revealed she was considering hiring a health coach to help her eat ‘healthier’ after watching her mom overhaul her diet. Sadly, the coaching she was falling victim to is part of a multilevel marketing brand that promotes quick weight loss through caloric restriction and buying costly meal replacements.
Is it real? Yes. Is it healthy? Not likely, especially for a growing teen.
Later that week, a different teen client asked about a clean eating movement she follows on Pinterest. She had read that a strict clean vegan diet is better for both her and the environment, and assumed this was true because the pinned article took her to a health coaching blog. It seemed legitimate. But a deep dive into the blogger’s credentials, however, showed that the clean eating practices they shared were not actually developed by a nutritionist.
And another teen, fresh off a week of engaging in the “what I eat in a day” challenge — a video trend across TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms where users document the food they consume in a particular timeframe — told me she decided to temporarily mute her social media accounts. Why? Because the time she’d spent limited her eating while pretending to feel full left her exhausted and unhappy. She had found the trend on TikTok and thought it might help her create healthier eating habits, but ended up becoming fixated on caloric intake instead. Still, she didn’t want her friends to see that the challenge actually made her feel terrible when she had spent a whole week promoting it.
During any given week, I field numerous questions from tweens and teens about the diet culture they encounter online, out in the world, and sometimes even in their own homes. But as we enter the winter holiday season, shame-based diet culture pressure, often wrapped up with toxic positivity to appear encouraging, increases.
“As we approach the holidays, diet culture is in the air as much as lights and music, and it’s certainly on social media,” said Dr. Hina Talib, an adolescent medicine specialist and associate professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx, New York. “It’s so pervasive that even if it’s not targeted (at) teens, they are absorbing it by scrolling through it or hearing parents talk about it.”
Social media isn’t the only place young people encounter harmful messaging about body image and weight loss. Teens are inundated with so-called ‘healthy eating’ content on TV and in popular culture, at school and while engaged in extracurricular or social activities, at home and in public spaces like malls or grocery stores — and even in restaurants.
Instead of learning how to eat to fuel their bodies and their brains, today’s teens are getting the message that “clean eating,” to give just one example of a potentially problematic dietary trend, results in a better body — and, by extension, increased happiness. Diets cutting out all carbohydrates, dairy products, gluten, and meat-based proteins are popular among teens. Yet this mindset can trigger food anxiety, obsessive checking of food labels and dangerous calorie restriction.
An obsessive focus on weight loss, toning muscles and improving overall looks actually runs contrary to what teens need to grow at a healthy pace.
“Teens and tweens are growing into their adult bodies, and that growth requires weight gain,” said Oona Hanson, a parent coach based in Los Angeles. “Weight gain is not only normal but essential for health during adolescence.”
The good news in all of this is that parents can take an active role in helping teens craft an emotionally healthier narrative around their eating habits. “Parents are often made to feel helpless in the face of TikTokers, peer pressure or wider diet culture, but it’s important to remember this: parents are influencers, too,” said Hanson. What we say and do matters to our teens.
Parents and caregivers can model a healthy relationship with food by enjoying a wide variety of foods and trying new recipes for family meals. During the holiday season, when many celebrations can involve gathering around the table, take the opportunity to model shared connections. “Holidays are a great time to remember that foods nourish us in ways that could never be captured on a nutrition label,” Hanson said.
Practice confronting unhealthy body talk
The holiday season is full of opportunities to gather with friends and loved ones to celebrate and make memories, but these moments can be anxiety-producing when nutrition shaming occurs.
When extended families gather for holiday celebrations, it’s common for people to comment on how others look or have changed since the last gathering. While this is usually done with good intentions, it can be awkward or upsetting to tweens and teens.
“For young people going through puberty or body changes, it’s normal to be self-conscious or self-critical. To have someone say, ‘you’ve developed’ isn’t a welcome part of conversations,” cautioned Talib.
Talib suggests practicing comebacks and topic changes ahead of time. Role play responses like, “We don’t talk about bodies,” or “We prefer to focus on all the things we’ve accomplished this year.” And be sure to check in and make space for your tween or teen to share and feelings of hurt and resentment over any such comments at an appropriate time.
Open and honest communication is always the gold standard in helping tweens and teens work through the messaging and behaviors they internalize. When families talk about what they see and hear online, on podcasts, on TV, and in print, they normalize the process of engaging in critical thinking — and it can be a really great shared connection between parents and teens.
“Teaching media literacy skills is a helpful way to frame the conversation,” says Talib. “Talk openly about it.”
She suggests asking the following questions when discussing people’s messaging around diet culture:
● Who are they?
● What do you think their angle is?
● What do you think their message is?
● Are they a medical professional or are they trying to sell you something?
● Are they promoting a fitness program or a supplement that they are marketing?
Talking to tweens and teens about this throughout the season — and at any time — brings a taboo topic to the forefront and makes it easier for your kids to share their inner thoughts with you.
Micromanaging how your child eats candy this Halloween might be more of a trick than a treat, experts say.
Once you’re a grown-up raising kids, that bag full of candy might be the scariest part of Halloween — whether it’s concern about a potential sugar rush, worries of parenting perfectionism or diet culture anxiety.
“It makes sense to be scared, because we’ve been taught to be scared,” said Oona Hanson, a parent coach based in Los Angeles. “Sugar is sort of the boogeyman in our current cultural conversation.”
But micromanaging your child’s candy supply can backfire, leading to an overvaluing of sweets, binge behavior or unhealthy restriction in your child, said Natalie Mokari, a registered dietitian nutritionist in Charlotte, North Carolina.
As stressful as it may be to see your child faced with more candy in one night than they would eat in an entire year, the best approach may be to lean into the joy, she added.
“They are only in that age where they want to trick or treat for just a small glimpse of time — it’s so short-lived,” Mokari said. “Let them enjoy that day.”
Experts aren’t suggesting kids have sugar all day every day. The American Heart Association and the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee — groups charged with providing science-based recommendations every five years — have recommended lower daily levels of sugar. Too much added sugar has been associated with cardiovascular disease and lack of essential nutrients.
But a healthy relationship with food has balance, and you can keep your kids’ diets full of nutrients while allowing them to eat sweets, Mokari said.
She and Hanson shared some tips on how to relieve candy-eating stress this Halloween.
Some stress over limiting children’s Halloween candy may reflect the adults’ relationship with food.
If you look at the candy in your child’s bag and worry that you will binge on it or get anxiety about weight, it may be a good idea to talk to a mental health professional or dietitian about reworking your own relationship with food, Mokari said.
It is especially important because what we say about food in front of children can make a big impact on the relationship they have with it and their bodies, Hanson said.
A passing comment of “I really need to work out after all that sugar” or “I can’t have that in the house — I’m going to get so fat” can have long-lasting impacts of overeating or under eating, she said.
Should you trade out the candy?
Many communities have their own traditions to encourage kids to give up their Halloween loot. Maybe it’s making a “donation” to dentists for a reward or switching candy with the Switch Witch for a toy instead.
There is a place for weeding out candy after Halloween for some children, Hanson said.
If your children just aren’t excited by the candy, they may ask to trade it for toys, Mokari said. Or if they have allergies or aversions to certain candies, they may welcome an opportunity to get rid of what they can’t or don’t want to eat, Hanson said.
But if your child looks at the full candy bag with glee, enforcing a reduction could turn the sweets even more valuable in their minds and heighten a fixation that may not have been there initially, Mokari said.
Should Halloween be a candy free-for-all? Maybe, Mokari said.
Just as adults find themselves craving whatever they have outlawed for themselves on a restrictive diet, kids who have their candy highly managed may start to value it more than they would have otherwise, she said.
“The forbidden Twix tastes the sweetest,” Hanson said.
Enjoying different foods on different occasions is part of a healthy relationship with food — so try to relax and lean into the holiday, Mokari said. And remember that though they may be breaking into a lot of candy on Halloween, that isn’t how they always eat, she added.
If you are worried about a candy binge in the days following, make a plan with your child to divvy up the treats in ways that are exciting, Mokari said. Maybe that means packing a few pieces up with lunch or adding them to an afternoon snack with a few more food groups, she added.
It can be difficult to relax around a pound of chocolate, however, when you are worried about the negative impact that candy might have on your child.
Maybe it’s a stomachache from eating too much. It isn’t the worst outcome, Hanson said. That upset stomach can be an important lesson in how to listen to what their body needs and know when they’ve had too much of something that tastes good, she added.
Maybe you worry about a sugar rush. Well, sugar affects everyone differently, and some kids might seem to get a boost, while others grow irritable, Mokari said. But both will likely end in a crash.
And either way, kids will likely be extra enthusiastic on Halloween, Hanson said. Even without all the sugar, she said to remember it’s exciting for them.
There are countless things about our homeland that Australians miss after moving abroad: the magnificent landscape, the laid-back lifestyle and that endless blue sky, to name a few.
But something as simple as a trip to the supermarket can leave us expats – according to some reports there are an estimated one million of us – feeling desperately homesick.
While some foods are the result of cultural influencessuch as the Chiko Roll,others are uniquely Aussie, like Golden Gaytime ice cream.
And who could forget the most famous of them all, Vegemite, which turns 100 on October 25.
According to the National Museum of Australia, it was invented by chemist CP Callister in Melbourne in 1923 when Australian food manufacturer Fred Walker asked him to create a product similar to British Marmite.
“During the Second World War, Vegemite captured the Australian market. Marmite was unobtainable and the Australian Army supplied Vegemite to its troops,” says the museum in a post highlighting defining symbols of Australia.
“In the 1950s and 60s, despite acquisition by the American company Kraft, Vegemite became a distinctively ‘Australian’ food. It featured in songs, on souvenirs and other popular culture ephemera. Vegemite returned to Australian ownership in 2017 when purchased by dairy company Bega.”
More on this famed brown spread below as we round up the A-Z of Aussie favorites:
Introduced in 1927, this simple dessert is an Australian classic.
Every Australian child grew up singing the famous 1930s jingle: “I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me!”
The brand’s “Bertie the Aeroplane” mascot was named after inventor Bert Appleroth – a Sydney tram driver who is said to have made the first batch in his bathtub.
Although now owned by an American company, Aeroplane Jelly has hardly changed since grandma was a girl.
Sure, there are plenty of brands of jelly available worldwide, but when it comes time to make a trifle or treat for the kids, Aussie parents can’t resist this familiar favorite.
An Australian variety of mango that isn’t grown anywhere else in the world, the Bowen is considered the best of the best.
It was first discovered in the northern Queensland town of Bowen, hence the name, but is also known as Kensington Pride.
Bigger and juicer than other varieties, Bowen mangoes account for 80% of mangoes produced in Australia. Some are exported but arguably not enough for the huge number of mango-loving expats.
To Aussies, mangoes are the taste of summer. No matter where we are in the world, the craving for a Bowen mango usually kicks in around Christmas.
This strange little deep-fried snack has been an Australian icon since 1950 when it was first sold by an enterprising boilermaker at football games.
Inspired by Chinese spring rolls, the exact recipe is a little unclear but the combination of meat, veg and some unknown spices hits the spot.
Best consumed with a couple of potato scallops and a soft drink, the Chiko Roll is the go-to for tradieson their lunch break or those 3 a.m. munchies on your way home from the pub.
And the only place to get them is a typical Aussie takeaway joint.
Dukkah – a humble blend of crushed Middle Eastern spices, herbs and nuts from Egypt – has been embraced by Australian foodies.
Its versatility is one of the reasons this condiment is so popular. Dukkah can be used as a garnish, a coating on a piece of meat or mixed with olive oil as a dip for bread.
A number of producers have given the basic dukkah recipe an Australian twist by adding native ingredients, such as lemon myrtle, macadamia nuts, wattleseed, saltbush and pepperleaf.
Expats can find many variations in Australian supermarkets and, fortunately, they’re often sold in packets small enough to sneak into a suitcase.
Australia is one of the few countries where it is considered perfectly acceptable to eat the coat of arms.
Exceptionally lean and gamey, emu and kangaroo tend to be popular among adventurous chefs in Australia.
But when living abroad, neither is easy to get your hands on.
A number of restaurants and specialty butchers offer native meats, but the expense involved in raising emus, in particular, means it’s harder to come by.
Thanks to the influx of Greek and Italian immigrants who brought “proper coffee” to Australia post WWII, we have become a nation of coffee snobs.
The flat white is almost Aussie enough to be called the national drink.
All over the world, café goers and baristas have been confounded as Aussie expats seek out their favorite brew abroad.
With less milk than a latte and without the froth of a cappuccino, the flat white requires special attention (it’s all in the pouring).
One of the first questions asked on expat forums: “Where can I get a decent flat white in this town?”
And it’s usually the first thing ordered at the airport café when back on home soil.
Ice creams feature highly on the most-wanted lists of expats, so it’s only natural we highlight them here.
Milky Paddle Pops and fruity Splice have been popular summer treats since the 1960s.
Likewise, Weis Bars have also been around for more than 60 years, and the mango and cream concoctions invoke memories of lazy summer afternoons.
But the number one, the crème de la crème, is the Golden Gaytime – a vanilla and toffee ice cream coated in chocolate and dipped in crunchy biscuit pieces that has inspired many a replica over the years.
While the burger itself is not an Australian invention, we have added some unconventional ingredients that make the Aussie version truly memorable.
Take the essentials – a beef patty, cheese, tomato, lettuce, grilled onions, tomato sauce (ketchup) – and add beetroot, pineapple, a fried egg and bacon, and you have yourself a massive mouthful.
A quick online search reveals variations that include pickled beetroot and spicy mayo, among others, but the classic Aussie burger celebrates simplicity.
It’s easy enough to replicate at home, but nothing beats the experience of ducking into the local milk-bar (café), or fish and chip shop, to enjoy a burger and a milkshake after a day at the beach.
The Iced VoVo – a biscuit covered in pink fondant, raspberry jam and shredded coconut – is a national treasure.
Produced by Arnott’s since the early 1900s, the iconic treat was mentioned by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in his victory speech after the 2007 election, leading to a spike in sales.
“Friends, tomorrow, the work begins. You can have a strong cup of tea if you want, even an Iced VoVo on the way through. But the celebration stops there,” Rudd said.
Not often found for sale overseas, this sweet treat is one to enjoy with a cup of tea when you’re home visiting mum.
Ask any Australian expat what they miss most about ‘home’ and their list is sure to include at least one type of junk food – the absence of which is felt most keenly at kids’ birthday parties.
Allen’s Lollies (candy) have been around for decades and Minties, Fantales, Jaffas, Snakes and the Classic Party Mix remain as popular as ever.
The Aussie public doesn’t seem to mind that they are all owned by Nestlé, which is headquartered in Switzerland.
Fairy Bread – essentially white bread covered in butter and sprinkles – is another party staple that manages to be devoid of nutrition but highly nostalgic.
On return trips to Australia, expats are known to bulk-buy chocolate bars like Cadbury Cherry Ripes, Caramello Koalas and ever-popular Violet Crumbles.
When it comes to savory junk foods, Smith’s Chips, cheesy Twisties and Nobby’s nuts are synonymous with snacking – and nothing produced overseas comes close.
We tend to lump all Middle Eastern meat-and-pita combos under the heading of “kebab” and be done with it.
Of course, there are subtle differences between doner kebabs, shawarma, souvlaki, and gyros – in both ingredients and quality – depending on the source.
Connoisseurs agree that pork gyros (Greek flatbread filled with rotisserie-roasted meat) found in more legitimate venues around Australia are the best.
Consider the sauce dripping down the front of your shirt an essential part of the experience.
Proving that Aussies love anything with jam and coconut, the lamington is the country’s favorite cake.
Named after Lord Lamington, Queensland’s eighth governor, these delightful squares of sponge cake – dipped in chocolate and coated with coconut – have become nothing short of a culinary icon.
There are entire websites (and an Australian Lamington Appreciation Society) devoted to the origins of the lamington and how to make them. Achieving the right ratio of chocolate, jam and coconut is essential.
There are pies, and then there are Aussie meat pies.
Synonymous with afternoons at the football pitch, brands like Four ‘N Twenty and Vili’s have cornered the market for mass-produced pies.
Small local outfits (like the Bemboka Pie Shop and Harry’s Café de Wheels) are institutions in their own right.
Everyone has a favorite type, whether it’s shepherd’s pie, a floater with peas, cheese and bacon or straight-up meat.
The only requirement? The pie is served piping hot with tomato sauce … and eaten one-handed.
With Four ‘N Twenty now exporting to the United States and parts of Asia, some expats can get their pie fix without venturing too far.
Australia’s love affair with Asian food is no secret, and our northern neighbors strongly influence what we put on our plates.
Even Aussies living in Asia admit to craving “Aussie Chinese” or “Aussie Thai” – dishes that give a nod to the original but are not as authentic as the real thing. In fact, some would say they’re potentially even better.
We’d argue the fresh, high-quality produce and quality meats available in Australia bring out the best in Asian dishes.
It’s fair to say that oysters are an acquired taste, but for those with a penchant for the salty mollusks, Australia produces some of the best in the world.
You’ll find two main species in Aussie waters: rock oysters and Pacific.
As bivalves, oysters filter the water around them and their location dictates their flavor.
The pristine waters along Australia’s coastline provide the perfect conditions for oysters, and they rarely need any accompaniment.
There’s nothing quite like eating these slippery snacks straight off the rocks – export just doesn’t do them justice.
The origins of this meringue-based dessert are hotly contested.
Recent research suggests that the Pav didn’t come from the antipodes at all, but nevertheless it remains a firm favorite.
Meringue, cream and plenty of fruit are the key ingredients, though there are no hard and fast rules about what has to be included.
Expats living in tropical climes often bemoan how challenging it is to get a decent meringue, given humid weather can turn it soft and sticky, so Pavlova is a rare treat.
Q: Quandong and quince
Both the native quandong and the foreign quince lend themselves to some of our favorite condiments and desserts.
Similar to a wild peach, the quandong is incredibly versatile and nutritious and can be made into juice, jam, filling for pies or eaten raw.
The quince is a relative of the apple and pear, and while several varieties are grown commercially in Australia the fruit is best known as the star in Maggie Beer’s quince paste – the only way to eat soft cheese.
Bundaberg Rum, to be more specific. Or just Bundy, as it’s known to locals.
This Australian beverage was created way back in 1888 to deal with an oversupply of molasses in Queensland’s sugarcane region.
Producers believe that it’s the sugar, grown in volcanic soil, that gives Bundy its distinct, rich flavor.
The distillery produces 60,000 bottles a day and the factory was the subject of a National Geographic documentary in 2013.
To say this drop has cult status would be an understatement.
There are so many foods starting with S – smashed avocado, SAO biscuits, sausages – that could represent the land down under.
But Australia’s best produce comes from the sea and expats fondly reminisce about mornings spent at the fish markets picking up the catch of the day before special occasions.
While we’re known to “throw a shrimp on the barbie” there are some creatures that are far more popular.
Barramundi, Balmain or Moreton Bay bugs, abalone, and of course, prawns are just some of the native seafood worth queuing for.
Technically a junk food, Tim Tam biscuits are so famous, so overwhelmingly popular, that they deserve their own spot on this list.
The original Tim Tams are the best: A chocolate-coated sandwich of two malted chocolate biscuits with chocolate cream filling.
Arnott’s, the manufacturers, now export to more than 40 countries around the world, so you can get your fix whether you’re skiing the slopes of Niseko, in Japan, or catching rays on a Tahitian beach.
Uncle Tobys began producing oats way back in 1893. But it wasn’t until the 1970s, when convenience foods started hitting the shelves, that they developed their now famous muesli bars.
The ultimate lunchbox treat or after-school snack, kids had the luxury of choosing not only the flavor, but also the texture.
Many a playground war has been fought over which was best – crunchy or chewy. For the record, we’re firmly in the crunchy camp.
These days the range has grown to include yoghurt and choc-chip toppings. There’s even a lamington flavor.
No round-up of Aussie foods would be complete without this ubiquitous salty brown spread, which turns 100 on October 25.
Twenty million jars of Vegemite are sold each year – that’s one for every Australian citizen.
Now owned by Bega Cheese, there was great joy when the icon returned to Australian ownership several years ago.
No one else quite understands the appeal of our favorite toast topping.
For those living in countries where it’s not yet exported, Vegemite comes in massive 560 gram jars and travel-sized tubes.
While there are similar cereals available around the world, there’s nothing quite like “Australia’s favorite breakfast.”
These small biscuits made from wholegrain wheat are occasionally available in supermarkets overseas, but they generally sell out pretty quickly.
Aussie mums have been known to stock up on them on trips to the motherland.
Best eaten with a little bit of sugar, some chopped banana and a lot of milk, Weet-Bix is promoted as family-friendly health food. But we’d love them even if they weren’t good for us.
Another product of sunny Queensland, XXXX (pronounced four-ex) originated in Victoria in 1878 before moving north, where it is still produced today.
XXXX has endeared itself to Aussies as a great brew and a big supporter of sports and small communities.
It’s not widely available outside of Australia, but if you’re an expat in China or Dubai, you may be able to find it in a bar near you.
Small freshwater crustaceans, yabbies are similar to lobsters – both prized as delicacies.
They’re hardy little creatures, and if you grew up on a farm chances are you spent your summers fishing for yabbies in the local creek.
Yabbies have a lot of meat on them, mostly in the tail and claws, and it tastes sweet and succulent when cooked right.
Expats might find these clawed crustaceans in restaurants, but you’re unlikely to find them in your local supermarket.
The zucchini fritter is yet another delicious byproduct of immigration.
Depending on who you ask, they’re either Turkish and served with yogurt, or Greek, in which case they come with tzatziki.
Either way, olive oil should ooze out when you take a bite.
In some parts of Australia, you can find zucchini fritters at a local takeaway,next to the potato scallops and Chiko Rolls.
These fried pancakes may have more health benefits than your average fried snack, but they are no less delicious.
Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty Tuesday to amended fraud and money laundering charges, appearing in court for the first time since his bail was revoked and he was sent to a Brooklyn jail to await trial.
Lawyers for the former crypto billionaire, who is vegan, said the detention center is not accommodating his diet and failing to regularly dispense his prescription Adderall.
“He’s literally now subsisting on bread and water, which are the only things he’s served that he can eat, and sometimes peanut butter,” his attorney, Mark Cohen, told the court.
Magistrate Judge Netburn said she would contact the Bureau of Prisons about the accommodations.
Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF, has spent the past 11 days in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, a notoriously overcrowded facility that’s been regularly accused of keeping inmates in inhumane conditions. It’s a far cry from his house arrest, which he spent in the relative luxury of his parents Palo Alto home in California.
On August 11, Judge Lewis Kaplan revoked SBF’s bail and remanded him to the facility, ultimately siding with prosecutors’ argument that he had attempted to intimidate potential witnesses against him, including his former business partner and ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison.
Bankman-Fried, 31, has pleaded not guilty to multiple conspiracy and fraud charges relating to the collapse of his exchange, FTX, in November. He faces a potential life sentence if convicted on all the charges.
Before its collapse, FTX was one of the largest crypto-trading platforms in the world, backed by A-list celebrities and featured in Super Bowl commercials. But the company came unglued in the span of a week as concerns about its financial ties to SBF’s crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, spurred investors and customers to yank their funds. The company filed for bankruptcy and quickly became the center of the federal fraud investigation.
While awaiting his trial, SBF will be granted a window of time, from 8:30 am to 3 pm, on weekdays to meet with his attorneys, according to a court filing released Monday.
As soon as Tracy Area Schools in Minnesota resumed charging for breakfast and lunch last year, students started dropping out of the program. Many of their families simply couldn’t shell out up to $2.65 for a meal each day.
“We have some kids who didn’t eat because Mom and Dad can’t afford it,” said Michele Hawkinson, food service director for the rural district of 700 students. “These kids are hungry. This is maybe the only nutritious, healthy meal they’re getting a day.”
But Hawkinson no longer needs to worry about children in her district skipping meals. Starting this year, Minnesota students at schools that participate in the federal school meals program can eat breakfast and lunch for free, thanks to a law that state legislators passed in March. The initiative will cost about $200 million a year.
Minnesota is one of nine states that are picking up the tab for students’ breakfast and lunch in many of their schools. California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico and Vermont have also approved permanent universal free meals programs, while Nevada launched a two-year effort last year.
Other states have extended free meals to more students. For instance, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are providing free breakfasts this school year. And lawmakers in other states have introduced legislation to establish universal free meal programs.
“There’s been a tremendous momentum for states to move forward on offering free school meals for all,” said Crystal FitzSimons, director of school programs at the Food Research & Action Center. “Offering free meals to all students just changes the culture of the cafeteria. (It) increases participation and makes the cafeteria a really positive environment for all students.”
States are paying for the initiatives in different ways. Massachusetts is using revenue from its new millionaires’ tax to help cover the cost of the $172 million program, while Colorado is raising around $100 million a year by limiting state tax deductions for affluent residents. Other states are drawing from their general budgets.
The states’ actions build upon a federal Covid-19 pandemic relief program that provided free meals to all students, regardless of income, for more than two years.
During that time, around 30 million students were receiving free meals at school, according to the US Department of Agriculture, up from about 20 million children who qualified based on their household income prior to the pandemic.
Allowing all students to eat in the cafeteria at no charge minimized the stigma felt by some kids who received free meals, increasing the likelihood that they would actually partake in breakfast and lunch, school nutrition officials said.
School nutrition staffers, meanwhile, had to once again distribute the forms and convince eligible parents to complete them, while also contending with mounting school meal debt.
Meanwhile, the number of kids getting meals at school dropped. Some 28.3 million students, on average, participated in the lunch program daily in May, down from 30.2 million the same time a year earlier. And 14.6 million kids partook in the breakfast program, down from 16.1 million.
Many schools are taking a more holistic approach to children’s education, focusing on more than just reading, writing and arithmetic, said Chris Derico, president of the School Nutrition Association.
“Research has shown if kids are hungry, they’re not going to be ready to learn,” said Derico, who is also the child nutrition director at Barbour County Schools in West Virginia.
States are also realizing that improving children’s ability to learn could better prepare them to enter the workforce, said Annette Nielsen, executive director of the Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center, which has been tracking the implementation of universal free meals programs nationwide.
“There may be a financial cost, but there’s probably a larger financial benefit to keeping it long term,” she said.
Benefits and challenges for schools
In addition to the benefits for children, free school breakfast and lunch for all means districts don’t have to hound families with meal debt.
The end of the federal free meals program caused debt levels to soar. The median reported debt was $5,164 per district, as of November, compared with $3,400 at the end of the 2017-18 school year, according to the School Nutrition Association.
In Colorado’s Littleton Public Schools, the debt level skyrocketed to $32,000 at the end of last year, said Jessica Gould, director of nutrition services in the affluent suburban Denver district of just over 13,000 students. Prior to the pandemic, it was typically between $4,000 and $6,000 a year.
“Now we don’t have to worry about that. We’re not the debt collectors anymore,” Gould said, noting that last year’s tab was paid by donors. “We’re just able to focus on providing good quality meals to our students.”
However, the universal free meals programs also pose challenges to school districts. They no longer have the ability to increase breakfast and lunch rates when their costs of food, equipment and labor rise. Instead, they must make due with the state reimbursement.
But the even bigger problem is that the state programs rely on districts still getting federal funding to cover the cost of feeding children who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals. And certain state funds for general education also depend on the share of lower-income students in a school district.
That requires getting parents to complete the applications, which can be challenging especially when schools are telling families that everyone can eat for free.
So far, Gould has received forms from about 1,500 eligible families, but she is expecting more than 2,300.
“Our community is confused,” she said, noting that the district created a flyer to explain the new universal free meals program. “It’s been challenging at best to just figure out how to communicate to our families.”
Adults in their 20s and 30s with mental disorders have a higher chance of having a heart attack or stroke, according to a new study.
The study published Monday in the European Journal of PreventiveCardiology looked at the health data of more than 6.5 million people through the Korean National Health Insurance Service database.
The people included in the newstudy ranged in age from 20 to 39 and underwent health examinations between 2009 and 2012. Their health was monitored until December 2018 for new onset heart attacks and stroke.
About 13% of participants had some type of mental disorder — which included insomnia, anxiety, depression, somatoform disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorder, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or a personality disorder, according to the study.
Those people younger than40 with a mental disorder were 58% more likely to have a heart attack and 42% more likely to have a stroke than those with no disorder, the study found.
“We have known for some time that mental health and physical health are linked, but what I find surprising about these findings is that these links were observable at such a young age,” said Dr. Katherine Ehrlich, an associate professor of behavioral and brain sciences at the University of Georgia. Ehrlich was not involved in the research.
Coronary arterial disease and heart attacks are rare before the age of 40, so a study as large as this onewas needed to see the relationship between mental health and such an unusual occurrence in young people, she said.
Ehrlich said she would like to know more about the physical activity and diets of the people involved to understand better if those factors have an influence on the relationship between mental health conditions and heart attack and stroke.
“For example, if you are chronically depressed, you may struggle to maintain a healthy diet and get adequate physical activity, which might in turn increase your risk for cardiac events over time,” she said.
But the increased risk could not be attributed to lifestyle differences alone, as the authors controlled for factors including age, sex, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney disease, smoking, alcohol, physical activity and income, the study said.
That doesn’t mean lifestyle should be ignored, however, said study authorDr. Eue-Keun Choi, a professor of internal medicine at Seoul National University College of Medicine in South Korea.
“While lifestyle behaviours did not explain the excess cardiovascular risk, this does not mean that healthier habits would not improve prognosis,” Choi said in a statement. “Lifestyle modification should therefore be recommended to young adults with mental disorders to boost heart health.”
One in eight people between ages 20 and 39 studied had some sort of mental illness, meaning a substantial number of people could be predisposed to heart attack and stroke, study author Dr. Chan Soon Park, a researcher at Seoul National University Hospital in South Korea said in a statement.
That could point to a greater need for managing psychological conditions and monitoring heart health in those at risk, Park added.
“If we can reduce the number of people living with chronic mental illness, we may find secondary benefits in future years regarding the number of people managing cardiac-related conditions,” Ehrlich said.
It is important to note that the findings do not show that mental illness causes heart attacks or stroke, she added. But the research does indicate a risk factor to watch out for.
There may be benefit in preventive measures to minimize risks, Ehrlich said, which can include maintaining a healthy diet and incorporating physical activity.
Choi recommends that people with mental health conditions receive regular checkups as well.
These findings may also emphasize the importance of addressing loneliness, she added.
“Many individuals with mental illness suffer from social isolation and loneliness, and for years researchers have been sounding the alarm that loneliness is detrimental for physical health,” Ehrlich said.
“Efforts to improve social connectedness among young people may be critical to addressing the rising rates of cardiometabolic conditions in adulthood,” she added.
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—
Gobbling up too many refined wheat and rice products, along with eating too few whole grains, is fueling the growth of new cases of type 2 diabetes worldwide, according to a new study that modelsdata through 2018.
“Our study suggests poor carbohydrate quality is a leading driver of diet-attributable type 2 diabetes globally,” says senior author Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a professor of nutrition at Tufts University and professor of medicine at Tufts School of Medicine in Boston, in a statement.
Another key factor: People are eating far too much red and processed meats, such as bacon, sausage, salami and the like, the study said. Those three factors — eating too few whole grains and too many processed grains and meats — were the primary drivers of over 14 million new cases of type 2 diabetes in 2018, according to the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.
In fact, the study estimated 7 out of 10 cases of type 2 diabetes worldwide in 2018 were linked to poor food choices.
“These new findings reveal critical areas for national and global focus to improve nutrition and reduce devastating burdens of diabetes,” said Mozaffarian, who is also the editor in chief of the Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter.
Mozaffarian and his team developed a research model of dietary intake between 1990 and 2018 and applied it to 184 countries. Compared with 1990, there were 8.6 million more cases of type 2 diabetes due to poor diet in 2018, the study found.
Researchers found eating too many unhealthy foods was more of a driver of type 2 diabetes on a global level than a lack of eatingwholesome foods, especially for men compared with women, younger compared to older adults, and in urban versus rural residents.
Over 60% of the total global diet-attributable cases of the disease were due to excess intake of just six harmful dietary habits: eating too much refined rice, wheat and potatoes; too many processed and unprocessed red meats; and drinking too many sugar-sweetened beverages and fruit juice.
Inadequate intake of five protective dietary factors — fruits, nonstarchy vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains and yogurt — was responsible for just over 39% of the new cases.
People in Poland and Russia, where diets tend to focus on potatoes and red and processed meat, and other countries in Eastern and Central Europe as well as Central Asia, had the highest percentage of new type 2 diabetes cases linked to diet.
Colombia, Mexico and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean also had high numbers of new cases, which researchers said could be due to a reliance on sugary drinks and processed meat, as well as a low intake of whole grains.
“Our modeling approach does not prove causation, and our findings should be considered as estimates of risk,” the authors wrote.
Advisers to the World Health Organization will consider next month whether to add liraglutide, the active ingredient in certain diabetes and obesity medications, to its list of essential medicines.
The list, which is updated every two years, includes medicines “that satisfy the priority health needs of the population,” WHO says. “They are intended to be available within the context of function health systems at all times, in adequate amounts in the appropriate dosage forms, of assured quality and at prices that individuals and the community can afford.”
The list is “a guide for the development and updating of national and institutional essential medicine lists to support the procurement and supply of medicines in the public sector, medicines reimbursement schemes, medicine donations, and local medicine production.”
The WHO Expert Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines is scheduled to meet April 24-28 to discuss revisions and updates involving dozens of medications. The request to add GLP-1 receptor agonists such as liraglutide came from four researchers at US institutions including Yale University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
These drugs mimic the effects of an appetite-regulating hormone, GLP-1, and stimulate the release of insulin. This helps lower blood sugar and slows the passage of food through the gut. Liraglutide was developed to treat diabetes but approved in the US as a weight-loss treatment in 2014; its more potent cousin, semaglutide, has been approved for diabetes since 2017 and as an obesity treatment in 2021.
The latter use has become well-known thanks to promotions from celebrities and on social media. It’s sold under the name Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss. Studies suggest that semaglutide may help people lose an average of 10% to 15% of their starting weight – significantly more than with other medications. But because of this high demand, some versions of the medication have been in shortage in the US since the middle of last year.
The US patent on liraglutide is set to expire this year, and drugmaker Novo Nordisk says generic versions could be available in June 2024.
The company has not been involved in the application to WHO, it said in a statement, but “we welcome the WHO review and look forward to the readout and decision.”
“At present, there are no medications included in the [Essential Medicines List] that specifically target weight loss for the global burden of obesity,” the researchers wrote in their request to WHO. “At this time, the EML includes mineral supplements for nutritional deficiencies yet it is also described that most of the population live in ‘countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight.’ “
WHO’s advisers will make recommendations on which drugs should be included in this year’s list, expected to come in September.
“This particular drug has a certain history, but the use of it probably has not been long enough to be able to see it on the Essential Medicines List,” Dr. Francesco Blanca, WHO director for nutrition and food safety, said at a briefing Wednesday. “There’s also issues related to the cost of the treatment. At the same time, WHO is looking at the use of drugs to reduce weight excess in the context of a systematic review for guidelines for children and adolescents. So we believe that it is a work in progress, but we’ll see what the Essential Medicines List committee is going to conclude.”
Melting ice in the Antarctic is not just raising sea levels but slowing down the circulation of deep ocean water with vast implications for the global climate and for marine life, a new study warns.
Led by scientists from the University of New South Wales and published Wednesday in the journal Nature, the peer-reviewed study modeled the impact of melting Antarctic ice on deep ocean currents that work to flush nutrients from the sea floor to fish near the surface.
Three years of computer modeling found the Antarctic overturning circulation – also known as abyssal ocean overturning – is on track to slow 42% by 2050 if the world continues to burn fossil fuels and produce high levels of planet-heating pollution.
A slow down is expected to speed up ice melt and potentially end an ocean system that has helped sustain life for thousands of years.
“The projections we have make it look like the Antarctic overturning would collapse this century,” said Matthew England, deputy director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, who coordinated the study.
“In the past, these overturning circulations changed over the course of 1,000 years or so, and we’re talking about changes within a few decades. So it is pretty dramatic,” he said.
Most previous studies have focused on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the system of currents that carry warm water from the tropics into the North Atlantic. The cold, saltier water then sinks and flows south.
Its Southern Ocean equivalent is less studied but does an important job moving nutrient-dense water north from Antarctica, past New Zealand and into the North Pacific Ocean, the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean, the report’s authors said in a briefing.
The circulation of deep ocean water is considered vital for the health of the sea – and plays an important role in sequestering carbon absorbed from the atmosphere.
According to the report, while a slowdown of the AMOC would mean the deep Atlantic Ocean would get colder, the slower circulation of dense water in the Antarctic means the deepest waters of the Southern Ocean will warm up.
“One of the concerning things of this slowdown is that there can be feedback to further ocean warming at the base of the ice shelves around Antarctica. And that would lead to more ice melt, reinforcing or amplifying the original change,” England said.
As global temperatures rise, Antarctic ice is expected to melt faster, but that doesn’t mean the circulation of deep water will increase – in fact the opposite, scientists said.
In a healthy system, the cold and salty – or dense – consistency of melted Antarctic ice allows it to sink to the deepest layer of the ocean. From there it sweeps north, carrying carbon and higher levels of oxygen than might otherwise be present in water around 4,000 meters deep.
As the current moves northward, it agitates deep layers of debris on the ocean floor – remains of decomposing sea life thick with nutrients – that feed the bottom of the food chain, scientists said.
In certain areas, mostly south of Australia in the Southern Ocean and in the tropics, this nutrient-rich cold water moves toward the surface in a process called upwelling, distributing the nutrients to higher layers of the ocean, England said.
However, Wednesday’s study found that as global temperatures warm, melting sea ice “freshens” the water around Antarctica, diluting its saltiness and raising its temperature, meaning it’s less dense and doesn’t sink to the bottom as efficiently as it once did.
The report’s co-author, Steve Rintoul from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, said sea life in waters worldwide rely on nutrients brought back up to the surface, and that the Antarctic overturning is a key component of that upwelling of nutrients.
“We know that nutrients exported from the Southern Ocean in other current systems support about three quarters of global phytoplankton production – the base of the food chain,” he said.
“We’ve shown that the sinking of dense water near Antarctica will decline by 40% by 2050. And it’ll be sometime between 2050 and 2100 that we start to see the impacts of that on surface productivity.”
England added: “People born today are going to be around then. So, it’s certainly stuff that will challenge societies in the future.”
The report’s authors say the slowing of the Antarctic ocean overturning has other knock-on effects for the planet – for example, it could shift rain bands in the tropics by as much as 1,000 kilometers (621 miles).
“Shut it down completely and you get this reduction of rainfall in one band south of the equator and an increase in the band to the north. So we could see impacts on rainfall in the tropics,” said England.
Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in its latest report that the impacts of rising global temperatures were more severe than expected. Without immediate and deep changes, the world is hurtling toward increasingly dangerous and irreversible consequences of climate change, it added.
The IPCC report found that the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels was still possible, but it’s becoming harder to achieve the longer the world fails to cut carbon pollution.
England points out that the IPCC predictions don’t include ice melt from Antarctic ice sheets and shelves.
“That’s a very significant component of change that’s already underway around Antarctica with more to come in the next few decades,” England said.
Rintoul said the study was another urgent warning on top of all the ones that have come before it.
“Even though the direct effect on fisheries through reduced nutrient supply might take decades to play out, we will commit ourselves to that future with the choices we make over the next decade.”
The US Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday its initial strategy to boost and strengthenthe management of thecountry’s supply of infant formula.
The announcement came just ahead of a hearing of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee about what went wrong during last year’s infant formula shortage.
Committee members and experts who testifiedwere critical of formula makers and the FDA’s food safety program, which the agency has pledged to revamp in order to protect the nation’s food supply and promote better nutrition. Many experts are concerned that the formula shortage of 2022 could easily happen again, even with those changes.
“While we stand here today, more than a year since the recall, it is my view that the state of the infant formula industry today is not much different than it was then,” testified Frank Yiannas, who stepped down from his role as the agency’s deputy commissioner of food policy and response in late February.
“The nation remains one outbreak, one tornado, flood or cyberattack away from finding itself in a similar place to that of February 17, 2022.”
A formula shortage thatstarted in 2021 was exacerbated when the United States’ largest infant formula maker, Abbott Nutrition, recalled multiple products in mid-February and had to pause production after FDA inspectors found potentially dangerous bacteria at its Sturgis, Michigan, plant.
A former Abbott employee filed a whistleblower complaint about the plant with the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in February 2021. The complaint suggested that the plant lacked proper cleaning practices and that workers falsified records and hid information from inspectors.
The complaint was filed February 16, 2021, and was passed on to Abbott and the FDA three days later.
Yiannas testified that because of the siloed nature of the agency, he wasn’t made aware of the complaint until February 2022. It was only then that he learned that children had gotten sick with Cronobacter after consuming powdered formula made at the plant.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated at least four illnesses and two deaths in three states in connection. The agency sequenced bacteria from two of the children to compare against the samples the FDA took at the facility, but it did not find that the samples were closely related.
Cronobacter infections are rare but can be serious and even fatal, especially in newborns. The bacteria lives in the environment, but when these infections are diagnosed in infants, they are often linked to powdered formula.
“Clearly, I really wish, and I should have been notified sooner, so I could have initiated containment steps earlier. Had that happened, I believe we might not be here today,” Yiannas said Tuesday. “Had the agency responded quicker to some of the earlier signals, I believe this crisis could have been averted or at least the magnitude lessened.”
With more demand for other brands after the Abbott recalls, families across the country had to hunt through multiple stores for formula last year. Stock rates of baby formulastayed lower than they were the year before for much of 2022. Even in October, when rates had improved, nearly a third of households with a baby younger than 1 said they had trouble finding formula over the course of one week, according to a survey by the US Census Bureau.
The FDA said Tuesday that its new national strategy helps ensure that the country’s supply of formula will remain constant and safe.
The agency said it will work with the industry on redundancy risk management plans that will help companies identify possible supply chain problems. It will also continue to enhance inspections of infant formula plants by expanding and improving training for agency investigators.
According to the strategy,the FDA will expedite review of premarket submissions for new products to prevent shortages. It will continue to closely monitor the formula supply and has developed a model to forecast any potential disruptions.
It also plans to work closely with the US Department of Agriculture to build in more resiliency with its Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children program, or WIC, the nation’s largest purchaser of infant formula.
The new strategy is just a first step; the long-term strategy is expected to be released in early 2024.
Dr. Susan Mayne, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said in a statement thatthe new strategy aims to incentivize “additional infant formula manufacturers to enter the market.”
Many parts of the strategy are underway, the FDA said.
“Safety and supply go hand-in-hand. We witnessed last year how a safety concern at one facility could be the catalyst for a nationwide shortage. That’s why we are looking to both strengthen and diversify the market, while also ensuring that manufacturers are producing infant formula under the safest conditions possible,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in a news release. “Now, with this strategy, we are looking at how to advance long-term stability in this market and mitigate future shortages, while ensuring formula is safe.”
Formula stock rates are still not where they once were before last year’s crisis, Yiannas said, but the problem can’t be solved overnight. He said it was a good step for Congress to ask for a resiliency report from the industry.
One positive development that came out of the crisis is that manufacturers are reporting formula volume to the FDA on a weekly basis even though there is no legal requirement to do so, he said.
Historically, the FDA has focused on food safety and nutrition, not supply chain availability, but the Covid-19 pandemic opened eyes and served as the “biggest test on the US food system in 100 years,” Yiannas said. Food supply shortages made experts realize that the agency needed more intelligence on how companies’ supply chains worked.
“Progress is being made, but it’s not being made fast enough,” Yiannas said.
The FDA is now tracking sales and stock rates of baby formula. He said he’s talked to formula companies that say they have ramped up production, even though they might have cut back on the number of varieties of product they offer.
The FDA said Tuesday that it has also done a study to better understand what led to the recall of infant formula at the Abbott plant. The agency had conducted a routine surveillance inspection at the plant in September 2021 and even then found problems like standing water and inadequate handwashing among employees.
Abbott is facing additional investigations from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the US Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice as well as lawsuits from customers.
Yiannas told the House committee Tuesday that one strategy to head off similar shutdowns would be to require manufacturers to report Cronobacter bacteria found in its products. Currently, only the Abbott plant in Michigan is required to report the bacteria as part of the consent decree that allowed it to reopen.
The FDA said in November that it would like Cronobacter infections added to the CDC’s list of national notifiable diseases, which would require doctors to report cases to public health officials so the CDC and the FDA could keep better track of infections. Only two states have such a reporting requirement now.
Hershey, which makes Reese’s along with Hershey bars, Kisses and other chocolates and candies, announced two new dairy-free products on Tuesday: Reese’s plant-based peanut butter cups, and a vegan chocolate Hershey bar with almonds and sea salt, each made with oats instead of dairy and designed to taste like milk chocolate. The new Reese’s variety will be available nationally this month, and the new Hershey bar is arriving in April.
The company is the latest to introduce a vegan chocolate in hopes that it will attract more customers. But Hershey is a little late to the game.
Nestlé
(NSRGY)introduced KitKat V, a vegan version of the chocolate bar, in 2021. Mondelez
(MDLZ) acquired Hu, a company which makes vegan chocolate, that year, as well. Hershey also initiated a test of a version of its product in 2021.
In prepared remarks discussing the company’s fourth-quarter results, CEO Michele Buck said that “better for you,” which includes plant-based items, presented an opportunity for the company and will “receive greater levels of support this year.”
“We are excited to introduce these delicious, plant-based options,” Teal Liu, brand manager of Better For You at Hershey
(HSY), said in a statement announcing the launch Tuesday, adding that the new products offer more options for “chocolate lovers looking for plant-based alternatives.”
By focusing on vegan alternatives to milk chocolate, specifically, Hershey may have a better chance of setting its products apart from others in the market.
“As the vegan chocolate space gets more crowded, claims beyond plant-based may be necessary,” Kelsey Olsen, consumer insights analyst for food & drink at market research firm MIntel, told CNN in an email. “While many plant-based items previously launched have been dark chocolate varieties, brands should explore the areas of plant-based milk chocolate and white chocolate.”
Touting oat as an ingredient could also help.
Confectioners “can take advantage of oat milk’s unique properties to appeal to a larger consumer base, whether vegan or not,” Olsen said.
Chocolate as a category has been resilient in the past few years, with people reaching for treats during the stress of the early pandemic and seeing it as a relatively affordable splurge even as prices rise.
But it’s not clear that an oat-based chocolate will do the trick. “The majority of consumers are not focused on added [better for you] components to chocolate,” Olsen noted in a Mintel report last year.
Bempedoic acid may be an alternative for people who need to lower their cholesterol but can’t or won’t take statins, according to a large study published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Statins are the most commonly prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs that help lower what’s known as the “bad” cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in the blood; more than 90% of adults who take a cholesterol-lowering medicine use a statin, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Statins are considered safe and effective, but there are millions of people who cannot or will not take them. For some people it causes intense muscle pain. Past research has shown anywhere between 7% and 29% of patients who need to lower cholesterol do not tolerate statins, according Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist and researcher at the Cleveland Clinic and co-author of the new study.
“I see heart patients that come in with terrible histories, multiple myocardial infarction, sometimes bypass surgery, many stents and they say, ‘Doctor, I’ve tried multiple statins, but whenever I take a statin, my muscles hurt, or they’re weak. I can’t walk upstairs. I just can’t tolerate these drugs,’ ” Nissen said. “We do need alternatives for these patients.”
Doctors have a few options, including ezetimibe and a monoclonal antibody called a proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9, or PCSK9 inhibitors for short.
Bempedoic acid, sold under the name Nexletol, was designed specifically to treat statin-intolerant patients. The FDA approved it for this purpose in 2020, but the effects of the drug on heart health had not been fully assessed until this large trial.The new study was fundedin part by Esperion Therapeutics, the maker of Nexletol.
For the study, which was presented Saturday at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session with the World Congress of Cardiology, Nissen and his colleagues enrolled 13,970 patients from 32 countries.
All of the patients were statin intolerant, typically due to musculoskeletal adverse effects. Patients had to sign an agreement that they couldn’t tolerate statins “even though I know they would reduce my risk of a heart attack or stroke or death,” and providers signed a similar statement.
The patients were then randomized into two groups. One was treated with bempedoic acid, the other was given a placebo, which does nothing. Researchers then followed up with those patients for up to nearly five years. The number of men and women in the trial were mostly evenly divided, and most participants, some 91%, were White, and 17% were Hispanic or Latino.
The drug works in a similar way that statins do, by drawing cholesterol out of a waxy substance called plaque that can build up in the walls of the arteries and interfere with the blood flow to the heart. If there is too much plaque buildup, it can lead to a heart attack or stroke.
But bempedoic acid is only activated in the liver, unlike a statin, so it is unlikely to cause muscle aches, Nissen said.
In the trial, investigators found that bempedoic acid was well-tolerated and the percent reduction in the “bad” cholesterol was greater with bempedoic acid than placebo by 21.7%.
The risk of cardiovascular events – including death, stroke, heart attack and coronary revascularization, a procedure or surgery to improve blood flow to the heart – was 13% lower with bempedoic acid than with placebo over a median of 3.4 years.
“The drug worked in primary and secondary prevention patients – that is, patients that had had event and patients who were very high risk for a first event. There were a lot of diabetics. These were very high risk people,” Nissen said. “So the drug met its expectations and probably did a lot better than a lot of people thought it would do.”
In the group that took bempedoic acid, there were a few more cases of gout and gallstones, compared with people who took a placebo.
“The number is small, and weighing that against a heart attack, I think most people would say, ‘OK I’d rather have a little gout attack,’ ” Nissen said.
Bempedoic acid had noobserved effect on mortality, but that may be because the observation period was too short to tell if it had that kind of impact. Earlier trials on statins showed the same; it was only after there were multiple studies on statins that scientists were able to show an impact on mortality.
Dr. Howard Weintraub, a cardiologist at NYU Langone Health who did not work on this study, said that while he knows some people will not consider a medication successful unless it reduces mortality, he thinks that is short-sighted.
“I think there’s more to doing medicine then counting body bags,” Weintraub said.”Preventing things that can be life changing, crippling, and certainly change your quality of life forever going forward, and your cost of doing things going forward, I think is a good thing.”
He was pleased to see the results of this trial, especially since the people in this study are often what he called “forgotten individuals” – the millions who could benefit from lowering their cholesterol, but can’t take statins.
“It’s not like their LDL was 180 or 190 or 230, their LDL was 139. This is about average in our country,” Weintraub said. He said often doctors will just tell those patients to watch their diet, but he thinks this suggests they would benefit from medication.
“Both groups primary and secondary prevention got benefit, which I think is impressive with the modest amount of LDL reduction,” Weintraub said.
There are some limitations to this trial. It was narrowly focused on patients with a known statin intolerance. Nissen said the trial wasnot designed todetermine whether bempedoic acid could be an alternative to statins.
“Statins are the gold standard. They are the cornerstone. The purpose of this study was not to replace statins, but to allow an alternative therapy for people who simply cannot take them,” Nissen said.
Bempedoic acid is a much more expensive drug than a statin. There are generic versions of statins and some cost only a few dollars. Bempedoic acid, on the other hand, has no generic alternative and a 30-day supply can cost more than $400, according to GoodRx.
“I think what insurance companies need to recognize that even though this drug is going to cost more than statins, having a heart attack or a stroke or needing a stent is expensive. A 23% reduction in (myocardial infarctions) is a considerable reduction,” Weintraub said.
In an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine that accompanied the study, Dr. John H. Alexander, who works in the division of cardiology at Duke Clinical Research Institute, Duke Health, Durham said that doctors should take these results into consideration when treating patients with high cholesterol who can’t take statins.
“The benefits of bempedoic acid are now clearer, and it is now our responsibility to translate this information into better primary and secondary prevention for more at-risk patients, who will, as a result, benefit from fewer cardiovascular events,” Alexander wrote.
Dr. Manesh Patel, a cardiologist and volunteer with the American Heart Association who was not a part of the study, said that providers are already prescribing bempedoic acid for some patients, but with this new research, he thinks they will quickly be used with more statin-intolerant patients.
“We continue to see that if we can lower your LDL significantly, we improve people’s cardiovascular health. And so we need as many different arrows in our quiver to try to get that done,” Patel said.
Heart disease is the No. 1 killer for men and women in the world. One person dies every 34 seconds in the US from cardiovascular disease, according to the CDC. About 697,000 people in the US died from heart disease in 2020 alone – about the same number as the population of Oklahoma City.
“Given the number of people that are eligible for statins, which are tens of millions of patients already, the number of people who cannot tolerate statins is in the millions,” Nissen said. “This is a big public health problem and I think we’ve come up with something that directly addresses this.”
Microsoft’s Bing search engine has never made much of a dent in Google’s dominance in the more than 13 years since it launched. Now the company is hoping some buzzy artificial intelligence can win converts.
Microsoft on Tuesday announced an updated version of Bing designed to combine the fun and convenience of OpenAI’s viral ChatGPT tool with the information from a search engine.
Beyond providing a list of relevant links like traditional search engines, the new Bing also creates written summaries of the search results, chats with users to answer additional questions about their query and can write emails or other compositions based on the results. With the new Bing, for example, users can create trip itineraries, compile weekly meal plans and ask the chatbot questions when shopping for a new TV.
This is the new era of search that Microsoft
(MSFT) — which is investing billions of dollars in OpenAI —envisions, one where users are accompanied by a sort of “co-pilot” around the web tohelp them better synthesize information. The company is betting on the new technology to drive users to Bing, which had for years been an also-ran to Google Search. Microsoft
(MSFT) also announced an updated version of its Edge web browser with the new Bing capabilities built in.
The event comes as the race to develop and deploy AI technology heats up in the tech sector. Google on Monday unveiled a new chatbot tool dubbed “Bard” in an apparent bid to keep pace with Microsoft and the success of ChatGPT. Baidu, the Chinese search engine, also said this week it plans to launch its own ChatGPT-style service.
The updated Bing and Edge launched to the public on a limited basis on Tuesday, and are set to roll out to millions of people for unlimited search queries in the coming weeks. I took Bing for a spin at a press event at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters Tuesday.
The tool provides the sort of immediate gratification we now expect from the internet — rather than clicking through a bunch of links to suss out the answer to a question, the new Bing will do that work for you. But it’s still early days for the technology, which Microsoft says is still evolving.
The homepage of the new Bing feels familiar: you can type a query into the search bar and it returns a list of links, images and other results like a typical search engine. But on the left side of the page are written summaries of the results, complete with annotations and links to the original information sources. The search field allows up to 2,000 characters, so users can type the way they’d talk, rather than having to think of the few correct search terms to use.
Users can also click over to a “chat” page on Bing, where a chatbot can answer additional questions about their queries.
I asked Bing to write me a five-day vegetarian meal plan. It returned a list of vegetarian meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner for Monday through Friday, such as oatmeal with fresh berries and lentil curry. I then asked it to write me a grocery list based on that meal plan, and it returned a list of all the items I’d need to buy organized by grocery store section.
Based on my request, the Bing chatbot also wrote me an email that I could send to my partner with that grocery list, complete with a “Hi Babe” greeting and “XOXO” closing. It’s not exactly how I’d normally write, but it could save me time by giving me a draft to edit and then copy and paste into an email, rather than having to start from scratch.
The generated portions of Bing have personality. When you ask the chatbot a question, it responds conversationally and sometimes with emojis, letting you know it’s happy to help or that it hopes you have fun on the trip you’re planning.
With the new Edge browser, I asked the tool to summarize one of my articles, and then turn that into a social media post the length of a short paragraph with a “casual” tone that I could share on Twitter or LinkedIn.
The new Bing is built in partnership with OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT in which Microsoft has invested billions— on a more advanced version of the technology underlying the viral chatbot tool. Still, the new Bing has some of the quirks that the public version of ChatGPT is known for. For example, the same query may return different responses each time it’s run; this is in part just how the tool works, and in part because it’s pulling the most updated search results each time it runs.
It also didn’t cooperate with some of my requests. After the first time it created a meal plan, grocery list and email with the list, I ran the same requests two more times. But the second and third time, it wouldn’t write the email, instead saying something like, “sorry, I can’t do that, but you can do it yourself using the information I provided!” The tool is also sensitive to the wording used in queries — a request to “create a vegetarian meal plan” provided information about how to start eating healthier, whereas “create a 5-day vegetarian meal plan” provided a detailed list of meals to eat each day.
Even next-gen search technology isn’t immune to basic flubs. I can imagine using the tool ahead of an upcoming local election, to learn about who is running for office in my area, what their positions are and how and when to vote. But when I asked the chatbot, “when is the next election in Kings County, NY?” it returned information about the November election last year.
The new Bing may also present some of the same concerns as ChatGPT, including for educators. I asked Bing’s chatbot to write me a 300-word essay about the major themes of the book “Pride and Prejudice” and, within less than a minute, it had pumped out 364 words on three major themes in the novel (although some of the text sounded a bit repetitive or wonky). Per my request, it then revised the essay as if it was written by a fifth grader.
The chatbot tool has feedback buttons so users can indicate whether its answers were helpful or not, and users can also chat directly with the tool to tell it when answers were incorrect or unhelpful, the company says.
“We know we won’t be able to answer every question every single time, … We also know we’ll make our share of mistakes, so we’ve added a quick feedback button at the top of every search, so you can give us feedback and we can learn,” Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s vice president and consumer chief marketing officer, said in a presentation.
With some controversial search topics, it appears the new Bing chatbot simply refuses to engage. For example, I asked it, “Can you tell me why vaccines cause autism?” to seehow it would react to a common medical misinformation claim, and it responded: “My apologies, I don’t know how to discuss this topic. You can try learning more about it on bing.com.” The same query on the main search page returned more standard search results, such as links to the CDC and the Wikipedia page for autism.
Likewise, it would not return a chatbot request for how to build a pipe bomb, instead saying in its answer, “Building a pipe bomb is a dangerous and illegal activity that can cause serious harm to yourself and others. Please do not attempt to do so.” However, one of the links provided in the annotation of its answer brought me to a YouTube video with apparent instructions for building a pipe bomb.
Microsoft says it has developed the tool in keeping with its existing responsible AI principles, and made effortsto avoid its potential misuse. Executives said the new Bing is trained in part by sample conversations mimicking bad actors who might want to exploit the tool.
“With a technology this powerful I also know that we have an even greater responsibility to make sure that it’s developed, deployed and used properly,” said responsible AI lead Sarah Bird.
Trader Joe’s asked its customers a simple question: If you were to spend the rest of your life on a deserted island, which nine Trader Joe’s products would you take with you?
More than 18,000 customers responded to its 14th annual survey ranking the grocery store’s most popular items in nine different categories.
There were some caveats this year: Gone from the running were five products that have won many times in the past (think Mandarin Orange Chicken and dark chocolate peanut butter cups), and instead are featured in its Product Hall of Fame.
The first Trader Joe’s opened in Pasadena, California, in 1967. Its founder Joe Coulombe (yes, Joe was a real guy), was a convenience store owner who wanted to open a grocery chain to appeal to a niche market of well-educated, well-traveled consumers. The idea led him to create a cult-favorite grocery empire.
Here are the products customers voted their favorites, in categories from cheese to entrees.
Chili & Lime Flavored Rolled Tortilla Chips, spicy corn chips, swept the competition this year, taking home the top prize. Runners-up included the hash browns, chicken soup dumplings, Everything but the Bagel sesame seasoning blend, and chocolate croissants.
The chips also won in the poll’s favorite snack category. Customers were also fans of the Organic Elote Corn Chip Dippers, Organic Corn Chip Dippers, World’s Puffiest White Cheddar Corn Puffs and Crunchy Curls, which were all among the top vote-getters.
The Sparkling Honeycrisp Apple Juice was the fans’ favorite beverage, though it is seasonal. The canned drink is a simple three-ingredient blend of apple juice, water and bubbles.
Following is the Triple Ginger Brew, Sparkling Peach Black Tea with peach juice, Sparkling Cranberry & Ginger Beverage and the Non-Dairy Brown Sugar Oat Creamer.
Now that Hall of Famer Unexpected Cheddar is no longer an option in the poll, the store’s cheddar cheese with caramelized onions took home top accolades.
Runners-up included Syrah Soaked Toscano, seasonal Baked Lemon Ricotta, Blueberry & Vanilla Chèvre and its various bries.
Replacing the longtime Mandarin Orange Chicken is Trader Joe’s Butter Chicken – spiced chicken in a tomato and cream sauce with basmati rice.
Indian is popular with Trader Joe’s customers. Second runner-up was Chicken Tikka Masala, followed by Kung Pao Chicken, Butternut Squash Mac & Cheese and BBQ Teriyaki Chicken.
Seasonal candles won out in this category. Its seasonal scents include Peony Blossom, Cedar Balsam, Honeycrisp Apple and Vanilla Pumpkin.
Runners-up: Daily Facial Sunscreen, Ultra-Moisturizing Hand Cream, Tea Tree Tingle Shampoo & Conditioner, and Shea Butter & Coconut Oil Hair Mask.
Unsurprisingly, customers voted bananas as their top choice. The chain is known for its 25-cent organic bananas and 19-cent regular bananas. Following choices were Teeny Tiny Avocados, Honeycrisp Apples, Brussels Sprouts and Organic Carrots of Many Colors.
The tiny and crunchy Hold the Cone! Mini Ice Cream Cones won top dessert, followed by Danish Kringle, Sublime Ice Cream Sandwiches, Chocolate Lava Cakes and Brookie.
Among its many vegan and vegetarian options, the Vegan Kale, Cashew & Basil Pesto came out on top. Vegetable Fried Rice, Beefless Bulgogi, Palak Paneer, Cauliflower Gnocchi followed.
A slew of problems have stalled the growth of Beyond Meat, once a darling of Wall Street whose top product became synonymous with plant-based burgers.
Sales have been declining, sliding 22.5% in the third quarter compared to the previous year, and the company has laid off over 20% of its global staff since August. After an extremely successful market debut in 2019, Beyond Meat
(BYND) has lost favor with investors. The stock dropped about 77% so far this year.
Some of the problems can be attributed to broader industry challenges. In the grocery store, interest in plant-based meats has waned as consumers, faced with inflation, focus on shopping for affordable basics.
The company recently parted ways with three members of its C-suite, one of whom allegedly bit someone’s nose. A recent LA Times report called into question the hygiene of a Beyond Meat facility in Pennsylvania, though the company stands by the cleanliness of the plant, saying that its “food safety protocols go above industry and regulatory standards.”
Also, a promising partnership with McDonald’s
(MCD) has stalled in the United States. And fierce competition is squeezing sales, including in frozen, plant-based chicken, a category that is growing while refrigerated plant-based meat sales falter.
The company’s plan is to focus on cash flow and profitability rather than growth, and become more strategic in its restaurant and marketing initiatives, among other things.
“Despite the current headwinds facing our business and category, we remain confident in our ability to deliver on the long-term growth and impact expected from our global brand,” a Beyond Meat spokesperson told CNN Business in response to a request for comment.
“They’ve got a big task ahead of them,” said Peter Saleh, restaurant analyst atfinancial services firm BTIG. Next year will be about “trying to get their financials in order to a place where they can sustain themselves,” he added. “It’s a tall order.”
Since then, the McPlant has been added to the McDonald’s menu permanently in some European markets.
In the US, McDonald’s
(MCD) tested out the burger in some locations. But it hasn’t added the item to the menu, and it’s not clear if or when that will happen.
“I don’t think it’s totally off the table, but I’m not sure that it’s going to be [Beyond’s] saving grace at this point,” said Saleh.
Beyond still has plenty of partnerships with restaurants, but many of them are limited-time tests.
“In the last 12 months, we have had 25 trials for permanent menu launches with nine distinct products,” said Beyond CEO Ethan Brown during a November analyst call discussing the company’s third-quarter results.
Brown positioned the launches as long-term investments, saying they won’t generate big sales in the short term but should pay off eventually. But getting a permanent menu spot might be challenging, noted Kathryn Fenner, principal at foodservice consulting firm Technomic.
“Even if they sell, say 30 to 40 of these plant-based burgers a day … that still pales in comparison to their traditional proteins,” she said, speaking about plant-based burgers in general. And these days, making a limited-time offer permanent is a tough sell because operators have been slimming down their menus, she noted.
Meanwhile, Burger King continues to sell the Impossible Whopper nationally. “We haven’t been experiencing what Beyond Meat and some of the other brands in the space have reported,” said Impossible foods spokesperson Keely Sulprizio. Impossible is private and is not required to share its sales data publicly.
In the grocery store, Beyond is facing a swell of competition.
Beyond has embraced competition in the past. But now, rivals are interfering with its bottom line.
“We believe that healthy competition within plant-based meat is a good thing as it brings investment in marketing to the category,” said Brown during the November analyst call.
“However, in the current environment, we are not seeing this benefit,” he said. “Instead, more companies are pursuing the same or fewer consumers.” Brown said Beyond is the leader in refrigerated plant-based meat, and that he expects some brands to pull back or consolidate in the future.
It’s true that the plant-based meat pie is smaller these days. Retail sales of meat alternatives fell about 12% in the year through November 6, according to data from IRI. Ground plant-based meat fell about 19%, and patties were down 30% in that period.
But frozen chicken alternatives are growing. Strips and cutlets sales increased about 16% and nuggets jumped nearly 28%.
“Frozen plant-based chicken is the largest single subcategory in all of plant-based meats and continues to grow at a double-digit pace,” said Brown during the analyst call. “So we are pleased to be expanding our presence of additional chicken items.”
Beyond Meat introduced plant-based chicken strips in retail in 2014, but pulled the product in 2019. It launched a retooled version, Beyond Chicken Tenders, in stores in 2021, and has built its plant-based chicken portfolio since then.
But in the few years Beyond’s product was off the market, new entrants rushed into the space.
Nuggs, a plant-based chicken nugget made by startup Simulate, has made a splash online thanks to its bold packaging over the last few years and has been expanding in retail.
Daring, another plant-based chicken company, launched its product in the US in 2020. Daring’s chicken alternative became available at Whole Foods last year. Impossible and other legacy brands have offerings, as well.
“Plant-based chicken is a good growth category,” said Saleh. “I would have liked to have seen [Beyond] double down.”
