PepsiCo Developing "Designer Salt" in Effort to Reduce Sodium Content
Sodium content issues continue to be a hotbed of activity in the food industry. Hot on the heels of the New York City-led National Salt Reduction Initiative (which we blogged about here), an article in the Wall Street Journal gives us an indication on how one major brand is responding to the pressure to reduce the sodium content in its products.
PepsiCo Inc., which manufacturers the popular Lay’s brand potato chips, is developing a new “designer salt” with crystals shaped and sized in a way that reduces the amount of sodium consumers ingest while snacking. PepsiCo’s hope is that this innovation will cut sodium in its Lay’s Classic brand by 25%, and perhaps even more in its seasoned chips. This move is also consistent with PepsiCo’s stated goal of reducing the sodium in its snack products by 25% by 2015. PepsiCo anticipates it could take up to two years before the new salt is introduced in the marketplace.
This effort reflects a growing recognition within the food industry of the pressure to reduce salt content. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most Americans consume more than twice their recommended daily limit of sodium. Excessive salt intake has been linked to a litany of health problems, including high blood pressure and heart disease. The challenge for food manufacturers (specifically those who manufacture processed foods, which are the source of most of the sodium Americans consume), as the Wall Street Journal points out, is that any adjustments to sodium content will have an impact on the overall taste profile of the product. Thus, manufacturers must strike a delicate balance between health concerns and the marketability of their products to target consumers. With new U.S. dietary guidelines due to be released this year and rumblings that sodium intake recommendations will be lowered by a significant degree, we will continue to monitor this issue.
Hold the Salt: The Gathering Push for Sodium Reduction in Food Products
By Guest Blogger Tyler Anderson
The issue of sodium content in food has been a hot topic in recent months, as our own Ken Odza has blogged about in reporting on the class action lawsuits filed against Denny’s in New Jersey and Illinois. Now the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is addressing the issue. On January 11, the Department unveiled the National Salt Reduction Initiative, targeted toward reducing the salt levels in products offered by restaurants and food companies.
This initiative reflects a voluntary goal led by New York City to reduce the salt levels in packaged and restaurant foods by 25 percent over five years. According to the initiative, accomplishing this benchmark would reduce the nation’s salt intake by 20 percent and prevent up to 800,000 premature deaths nationwide and 23,000 in New York City alone. According to Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Control Program at the Department, the average American adult consumes 3,400 to 3,500 milligrams of sodium per day, while most individuals need about only 1,500 milligrams to satisfy their health needs. The initiative has gathered a wide range of support from parties including the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, Oregon Department of Human Services, and the Washington State Department of Health.
While the National Salt Reduction Initiative reflects a shot across the bow on the subject of sodium reduction in food products, some industry players have been moving in this direction on their own. However, as a recent Wall Street Journal article points out, many of these food manufacturers have been taking a measured approach with regard to the issue of sodium reduction and the manner in which they communicate such changes to consumers. For example, by next summer ConAgra Foods, Inc.’s Chef Boyardee canned pasta will have decreased its sodium content by roughly 35 percent over the last five years. Campbell Soup Co.’s original flavor of V8 100% Vegetable Juice has dropped its sodium content by 32 percent over eight years. Neither of these brands has made any mention of this decrease in sodium content on its packaging.
The reasoning behind this initially surprising silence is, according to food industry executives quoted in the Wall Street Journal article, that dramatic reductions in sodium content often result in different tastes and consumer dissatisfaction that manifests itself as reduced sales. According to Douglas Balentine, Unilever NV’s North American director of nutrition and health, a gradual reduction in sodium allows consumers to adjust to a less drastic change in taste as sodium content is reduced over time. This allows manufacturers to avoid problems such as those faced by the Kellogg Co. in the early 1980s when the company launched low sodium versions of its popular Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies breakfast cereals. According to Celeste Clark, senior vice president of global nutrition for Kellogg, consumers were not satisfied with the flavor of the products and the new brands were scrapped after four years. This balance between health benchmarks and industry performance will continue to shape the regulation of sodium content as this issue continues to grow in prominence.
The Wall Street Journal on "Bagel-Related Injuries"
Where I grew up, there was a bagel bakery, or "bagel factory" as we called them, in every strip mall. One of them was owned by the husband of my high school English teacher, and one day in class she demonstrated to us proper bagel sliciing technique. It must have made an impression, because I remember it--and use it--to this day. What you do is to slice halfway into the bagel toward you, and then turn the bagel around to slice outward from the middle. I don't recall ever cutting myself while cutting a bagel.
According to the Wall Street Journal, I'm in the minority, and "bagel-related injuries" are a prime source of danger, with 1,979 people showing up in emergency rooms in 2008 because of improper bagel slicing technique. This obviously does not include those who cut themselves but did not require a visit to the emergency room.
There is a small industry of bagel-slicing devices intended to help you avoid bagel-related injuries. The Journal article has a whole video on them. Because I make my own bagels, I've been given many of them as gifts over the years, including the Brooklyn Bagel Slicer featured in the article. I still just prefer to slice the bagel with a knife however.
According to the article, there are more "chicken-related injuries" than any other food injuries. These are compiled by the National Electronic Injury Survey System, an arm of the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission. As far as I can tell, the chicken-related injuries must have been injuries from the use of some kind of tool when cooking chicken, not, say, getting a bone caught in one's throat, because the NEISS Coding Manual says not to code injuries from food.
From Onions to Chicken Soup: The Wall Street Journal Weighs in On Home Flu Remedies
Melinda Beck has a terrific article in today's Wall Street Journal about home remedies for the H1N1 virus and (as we have previously blogged) the FDA's efforts to reign in those making unsupported marketing claims for their remedies.
One remedy sweeping the blogosphere like wildfire is the use of onions to soak up flu bugs. I did a Google search on the topic "onion flu remedy" and while a couple of articles came up debunking the idea (including Ms. Beck's), far more were articles claiming that the home remedy was in fact effective.
I turned then to Snopes.com, the great arbiter of urban legends, and it's verdict was unequivocal: false. The article did a nice job of tracing the history of onion/flu fetishism well into the nineteenth century, though I suspect one can go further, perhaps to ancient Rome and Greece.
Unlike most quack claims made for flu remedies, the onion cure at least has the advantage of being inexpensive and, particuiarly if you're using raw, unpeeled onion, completely benign.
Ms. Beck was, however, quite positive on my own family's way of dealing with any form of illness, chicken soup. Her article even includes a chicken soup recipe, which is not too far from the recipe my family has used for generations (although the key to ours is a kosher chicken). Chicken soup may not cure anything (though the title of an abstract listed at the bottom of recipe suggests it might), but it sure feels good on a sore throat.
Macaroni Grill Changes Its Menu for the Right Reasons
While Denny's appears to be subject to a growing trend of people suing it to change its menu, Romano's Macaroni Grill is lowering the calories in its menu for another reason: to stem losses in sales. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Macaroni Grill is increasing sales while at the same time lowering food costs, prep time and the calories in its menu items. Criticism on The Today Show of a menu item with 1270 calories has caused it to be trimmed down to just 390 calories and 4 grams of fat.
As the debate over labeling caloric and other information in restaurants continues, this is an example of the market making its own correction without intervention from the legal system. According to Macaroni Grill, the new cherry tomatoes and small leaf basil in their tomato bruschetta makes the food taste better, too.
FDA Warning to General Mills: Cheerios is a Drug
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is taking issue with claims that Cheerios cereal can lower cholesterol.
In a letter to General Mills, the FDA says that statements made on Cheerios packaging like the claim that the cereal is “clinically proven to help lower cholesterol” make the product a drug under federal law. The agency suggests that General Mills should file a new drug application with the FDA if it wants to keep making these claims on Cheerios boxes. The FDA also noted concerns with statements made on a General Mills-sponsored website regarding the benefits of eating whole grains.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a General Mills spokesperson said the company will work with the FDA to reach a resolution regarding Cheerios labeling.
Pork Producers Feel Effects of Swine Flu
Pork producers are feeling the effects of the swine flu as the number of reported cases of the virus increases. Stock prices for Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork processor, and Arkansas-based Tyson Foods, fell 12 percent and 9 percent today, respectively. The Wall Street Journal reports that the prices of hogs, corn, and soybeans also dropped today. About 16 percent of U.S. pork exports have been shipped to Mexico over the past year – a country where so far 149 people have died from the swine flu.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health officials have emphasized that swine flu viruses are not transmitted by food and people cannot contract the virus by eating pork or pork products. That fact alone does not seem to be enough to quell consumers’ fears. MarketWatch earlier today quoted a pork industry analyst as saying the industry wants to avoid a slip of exports and prices akin to the 2003 avian flu outbreak in Asia. Analyst Heather Jones said she believes the pork industry “needs to undertake an aggressive and widespread informational marketing campaign.”
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that Seattle-based Starbucks Corp. announced today that it is closing 10 of its Mexico City cafes in response to the swine flu outbreak and pursuant to instructions from the Mexican government.
Food-Borne Illness: Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full?
The Centers for Disease Control has issued a study of the incidence of food-borne illness in ten states. The study, by the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, known as "FoodNet", in general concludes that food-borne illness has not significantly either increased or decreased in the United States since 2004, after substantial gains in food safety from 1996 to 2004.
The Associated Press article on this, by Mike Stobbe, is entitled, "CDC: US food poisoning cases held steady in 2008." This is an appropriately neutral headline. What is interesting is how different media outlets have dealt with the story
Reuters, in an article by Julie Steenhuysen, uses the headline, "U.S. making little progress on food safety." She emphasizes in the lede the use in the study of the word "plateaued." Lyndsey Layton's Washington Post article is headed, "CDC Study Finds Some Food-Borne Illnesses Rising in U.S." The article's lede actually says that the rate has "remained stagnant", and nowhere in the article is any mention made of any specific diseases whose rates have risen (the article instead clumps together some where rates have either risen or remained constant, without distinguishing which are which). The UPI headline is "Little Progress in U.S. food safety", similar to the New York Times's "U.S. Food Safety No Longer Improving, Data Show".
On the rosier side, the Wall Street Journal's Jacob Goldstein blogged with the headline, "Reality Check on Foodborne Illness Rate." Goldstein takes the position that the lack of an increase given the wide publicity to certain outbreaks is an indication that things are doing well. It is not clear, however, whether Goldstein understood, as the Washington Post article reported,
The data did not include the ongoing national outbreak of salmonella illness linked to peanut products that began in late 2008 but peaked in the early months of 2009, with nearly 700 people sickened and nine killed.
So what does the report actually say?
Let's start with the report's own discussion of its own limitations. To start with the title of the report is "Preliminary FoodNet Data on the Incidence of Infection with Pathogens Transmitted Commonly Through Food --- 10 States, 2008." The word "Preliminary" is not featured in any of the above headlines. Many of the articles do point out that the report is based on data from ten states, covering about 45 million people. The report itself lists four important limitations to the validity of its data, none of which are discussed sufficiently in any of the media reports:
First, because FoodNet relies on laboratory diagnoses, changing laboratory practices might affect the reported incidence of some pathogens. For example, fewer laboratory-confirmed infections might be reported as a result of increased use of nonculture tests. Second, many foodborne illnesses (e.g., norovirus infection) are not reported to FoodNet because these pathogens are not identified routinely in clinical laboratories. Third, differences in health-care seeking behaviors between age groups might contribute to a much higher incidence of reported illness in certain age groups (e.g., young children and older persons) (10). Finally, although the FoodNet population is similar demographically to the U.S. population, the findings might not be generalizable.
That's a lot of noise. In particular, the fourth issue, whether it is appropriate to generalize from the data in these ten states to the rest of the country, is critical. FoodNet argues that its data are from states that, other than an underrepresentation of Hispanics, are not significantly different from U.S. census data for the entire country. This misses, however, what I think is the more critical question, which is whether the participation of these ten states in FoodNet indicates something different about the public health organizations of those states compared to the remaining states. It is possible that the other states are putting their funds into inspection and food safety education instead of statistics gathering, but it may be just as likely if not more that the states who participate are the ones whose public health organizations are the most modern and vigilant. What this might mean for trends is quite problematic. The ten states may have plateaued because they're doing all they can while there is progress elsewhere, or there may be worse conditions elsewhere that are not being reported.
The report covers ten enteric pathogens:
- Campylobacter
- Cryptosporidium
- Cyclospora
- Listeria
- Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157
- Salmonella
- Shigella
- Vibrio
- Yersinia
- STEC non-O157
The report indicated only one increase, that for salmonella, which it stated was "not significant." In addition, among salmonella serotypes, one (Saintpaul) increased significantly. We previously reported that saintpaul was the main pathogen found in bad tomatoes in 2008. Of the others, one increased some and one decreased some and the seven others didn't change.
What is significant is not so much that the reports of these diseases among the ten states are increasing or decreasing (they appear to be doing neither) but that we are nearly at 2010, when the national health goals contained in the federal government's "Healthy People 2010" program are supposed to be met. Salmonella incidence is supposed to be at 6.8 per 100,000 people by 2010 and it was at 16.2 in 2008, which is a long way away.
The other critical lesson from the report is that the apparent plateauing has occurred despite a number of important public health measures that have been taken in the period studied. These include the FSIS's salmonella initiative, the FDA's lettuce and spinach irradiation program, and the FDA's and Customs and Border Patrol's efforts relating to screening food imports.
I imagine that the FDA and the CDC and the various state public health agencies are feeling more than a little like Hans Brinker right now. However, I wonder if what is really going on, which the report doesn't talk about at all, is a combination of three things: (1) the low-hanging fruit has been taken care of to a great extent; (2) some of the measures the reports touts were not completely implemented due to funding and other constraints (the importation program would be where I would start in studying this); and (3) pathogens evolve.
Now let me let you in to what wasn't reported: the report doesn't look too different from last year's.
Here is the critical paragraph from this year's report:
Despite numerous activities aimed at preventing foodborne human infections, including the initiation of new control measures after the identification of new vehicles of transmission (e.g., peanut butter--containing products), progress toward the national health objectives has plateaued, suggesting that fundamental problems with bacterial and parasitic contamination are not being resolved. Although significant declines in the incidence of certain pathogens have occurred since establishment of FoodNet, these all occurred before 2004. Of the four pathogens with current Healthy People 2010 targets, Salmonella, with an incidence rate of 16.2 cases per 100,000 in 2008, is farthest from its target for 2010 (6.8). The lack of recent progress toward the national health objective targets and the occurrence of large multistate outbreaks point to gaps in the current food safety system and the need to continue to develop and evaluate food safety practices as food moves from the farm to the table.
Here is the corresponding paragraph from last year's report:
Although significant declines in the incidence of certain foodborne pathogens have occurred since 1996, these declines all occurred before 2004. Comparing 2007 with 2004-2006, the estimated incidence of infections caused by Campylobacter, Listeria, Salmonella, Shigella, STEC O157, Vibrio, and Yersinia did not decline significantly, and the incidence of Cryptosporidium infections increased. The incidence of Salmonella infections in 2007 (14.92 cases per 100,000) was the furthest from the national target for 2010 (6.80 cases), and only infections caused by Salmonella serotypes Typhimurium and Heidelberg declined significantly.
There's really not a lot of news here, and if there is any, it's that the closeness of 2010 is making those goals seem harder to achieve. When you actually look up the meaning of "plateau" in this context, Merriam-Webster's actually has two almost contradictory definitions. Definition 2(b) is "a relatively stable level, period or condition." Definition 3 is, "a level of attainment or achievement." Neither one has a negative connotation. In these times, even stability seems like a wonderful goal. Attainment or achievement sound wonderful.
