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My Advice for Brands: Preach What You Practice

By On May 6, 2014 In Blog With No Comments Permanent Link to My Advice for Brands: Preach What You PracticePermalink

I was recently asked to contribute to a well-known business strategy blog, and wrote the following piece titled, “Preach What You Practice”.

Although I don’t see myself as a business strategist, I have had the benefit of working with some extremely talented strategists and highly successful brands over the years. Of the many lessons I’ve learned, there are two in particular that I find most powerful:

  1. Positive messages will always win over negative ones. You need look no further than a political attack campaign to understand this point.
  2. Consumers are drawn to authenticity. Ultimately, they can sense who’s walking the walk and who’s simply spinning a message.

I believe these lessons create the foundation of success in CPG (consumer packaged goods), and are especially crucial in the natural and organic food industry where the Food Movement is quickly approaching a tipping point in our country.

From my piece,

As the strategists and storytellers behind product brands, we are in a fascinating moment in history. And although practicing what you preach will always be the foundation of brand authenticity, we now have a unique opportunity to preach what we practice and help lead conversations and ultimately people and planet health to a better place.

You can read the whole piece here.

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Recipe for Irony: DIY High-Fructose Corn Syrup

By On April 16, 2014 In Blog With No Comments Permanent Link to Recipe for Irony: DIY High-Fructose Corn SyrupPermalink

Finally!  No more need to run to the packaged food isle of your local grocery store to get your high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) fix.  Thanks to a Parsons Design graduate student, you can now make your own!  All you’ll need is some sulfuric acid, latex gloves, protective eye goggles and, of course, Yellow Dent #2 corn.

For her thesis project, Maya Weinstein decided to engineer the secret ingredient to the industrialized food system in a domestic kitchen and film it for the world to see.  Maya’s motivation,

There are a lot of videos and articles on the web that talk about how scary and bad HFCS is for you, but there’s not really any information about what it actually is or how it’s made.  I saw a void there that I wanted to fill.

Bravo, Maya.  Clearly, Parsons is also teaching tenacity, as I can report looking up the recipe to HFCS is not as simple as a quick Google search.

A few years ago a few colleagues and I were tasked with a project to dig into the definition of natural for food.  Instead of taking the typical route of creating an “unacceptable ingredients” list (which is common for most companies and retailers like Whole Foods Market), my part of the investigation quickly navigated into the world of processing.  My reasoning: if you walk back far enough into the processing steps, almost all ingredients are natural…I mean, they must come from the earth at some point, right?  So, focusing on finished ingredients is not really the best way to understand naturalness.  Instead, we should make this determination based on what happens to the ingredient between leaving the ground and ending up in a finished food.

Unfortunately, the steps between ground and finished food are often tightly guarded under the guise of “proprietary information” and “trade secrets”.  This is likely why Weinstein identified a void in the internet ethos.  I cannot tell you the number of flow charts I received from ingredient suppliers in the process of my own research with incredibly vague steps like “washing” and “extraction”.  Trade secrets are all well and good except when the secret information is needed to make determinations of health and safety to people and planet health.

Thanks to its celebrity status, HFCS has not managed to stay behind the veil of industry protection.

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Walmart and Organic: Good, Bad or Ugly?

By On April 15, 2014 In Blog With No Comments Permanent Link to Walmart and Organic: Good, Bad or Ugly?Permalink

Walmart announced last week that they will roll out a massive expansion in organic offerings through the Wild Oats label at prices 25% below those of other national organic brands.

Like many people, I have conflicting emotions when it comes to Walmart (a company so big that if it were a country it would be the 25th largest based on GDP).  They are often in the press for wage disputes with employees and a seeming singular focus for profit at the expense of all else.  On the flip side, as the largest retailer in the world they also have incredible power to change things for the good.  In 2007, when Walmart mandated reductions in packaging materials for brands sold in its stores, it caused a massive reduction in packaging waste seemingly overnight.  Just in laundry detergent alone, reductions saved more than 125 million pounds of cardboard, 95 million pounds of plastics and 400 million gallons of water (and that was in a period of just two years).

At first pass the Wild Oats news sounds amazing.  On a theoretical level, I’ve always been a “Big Organic” supporter.  Yes!  Let’s shift organic from fringe to norm, raise the bar for farming in the US and bring organic to the masses.  If cost is the primary barrier to entry for consumers, who better than Walmart to change the model?

However, as I have more time to reflect on the announcement, I’m feeling less sure.  From a financial perspective, some of the cost premium associated with organic is due to lack of scale.  However, some of that premium is also due to things where the price can’t (or at least shouldn’t go down), things like labor costs.  So, will the massive expansion of organic production due to Walmart’s announcement create the “Big Ag” I’ve always hoped for, or a version of organic that is shoved into our conventional agriculture model with all its issues (inhumane treatment of animals, poor labor practices, disrespect for the soil) coming along for the ride?  USDA Organic Regulations certainly provide an elevated framework from conventional requirements, however, are organic regs fail safe enough to ensure the right things will be done when a player like Walmart decides to get involved in a massive way?

As usual, Marion Nestle wrote a fabulous piece yesterday that also weighs some of the pros and cons of this announcement.  Like her, I’ll be closely watching Walmart and the industry to see how things unfold.

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Don’t Panic, Go Organic: 4 Ways You + Food Can Slow Climate Change

By On April 8, 2014 In Blog With No Comments Permanent Link to Don’t Panic, Go Organic: 4 Ways You + Food Can Slow Climate ChangePermalink

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released a report and, perhaps this will be no surprise to you fellow Debbie Downers out there, the news is not good.  Melting ice caps and rising sea levels, stressed water supplies, heat waves and heavy rains are just some of the tell-tale signs facing humanity, and predictions for the future are much, much worse.

As it relates to the impact on food supply, IPCC calculates that food demand is rising at a pace of 14 percent per decade. But it estimates that climate change is already reducing wheat yields by 2 percent each decade — compared with where they would be in the absence of climate change — and corn yields by 1 percent.  Basically, crop yields are heading in the wrong direction and a forecast of famine may yet come true.  From a New York Times piece on the IPCC report,

Climate change is a food security issue. It’s not just an environmental issue.

Fortunately, there is some positive news in the story of global warming.  We already have a tested and proven solution for food. We know how to grow food in ways that cuts emissions, creates more resilient landscapes, and ensures ample yields, all while reducing the use of non-renewable resources, fossil fuels, and land. And we know how to get more nutrition from what we’re already producing.  It’s called organic farming!

Writing for Civil Eats, Anna Lappé, outlined the following four climate-smart food strategies:

  1. Reduce food waste. Globally, we’re wasting as much as 30 percent of all food that could be eaten.  Food waste is often the single largest component of municipal solid waste, making it a major source of methane emissions, a greenhouse gas (GHG) with 21 times the heat-trapping capacity of carbon dioxide.
  2. Guard the soil. Across the planet, ecosystems on the land—soils, forests, prairies—absorb about one third of the greenhouse gases humans emit each year.  Industrial agriculture practices now going global destroy soil carbon, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Much of the farmland across our Midwest that had levels of 20 percent carbon as recently as the 1950s, now contain only one or two percent, according to the Pennsylvania-based Rodale Institute.
  3. Protect the oceans. Keeping oceans healthy is key to food security. In a typical season, only 30 to 50 percent of nitrogen applied is absorbed by crops; the rest is lost as leaching or runoff, ending up in rivers and oceans.
  4. Grow (and eat) food, real food. Take a look at all the corn planted in the United States in 2013, 87 million acres of it, and you’ll find only 1.8 percent was eaten, as cereals or food. The rest was grown for feedlots, ethanol plants, or industrial products. We’re wasting farmland—often prime farmland—to grow crops that we don’t consume, or eat directly.

Find Lappé’s complete list of recommendations and article here.

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What’s Wrong with Our Standard American Diet (SAD)? These 11 Things are a Good Starting Place…

By On February 12, 2014 In Blog With No Comments Permanent Link to What’s Wrong with Our Standard American Diet (SAD)? These 11 Things are a Good Starting Place…Permalink

A friend passed this article along to me today and although the information and the concept of SAD aren’t new to me, the data included to back it up still managed to shock and awe.  Here’s the list:

  1. Total sugar intake has skyrocketed in the past 160 years
  2. Consumption of soda and fruit juice has increased dramatically
  3. Calorie intake has increased by around 400 calories per day
  4. People have abandoned traditional fats in favor of processed vegetable oils
  5. People have replaced heart-healthy butter with trans-fat laden margarine
  6. Soybean oil has become a major source of calories
  7. Modern wheat is less nutritious than older varieties of wheat
  8. Egg consumption has decreased
  9. People are eating more processed foods than ever before
  10. Increased vegetable oil consumption has changed the fatty acid composition of our bodies
  11. USDA’s Low-Fat Dietary Guidelines were published around the same time the obesity epidemic started

The irony is that the solution to this seemly complex problem is actually quite simple.  Two Michael Pollan quotes that provide wonderful advice come to mind,

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.

I think it’s time for all of us to go dig out the old family recipes.

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Solid Food Introduction: A Natural Medicine Approach

By On January 27, 2014 In Blog With No Comments Permanent Link to Solid Food Introduction: A Natural Medicine ApproachPermalink

It is at the intersection of babies and food that all my areas of expertise collide into one big ball of science, philosophy and love.  I went to med school to earn a degree in naturopathic medicine and I’m just a few years into a much harder program, mommy school, with two boys, ages three and two.  In the midst of all this I’ve also established a career in the natural products industry as a nutrition and natural health strategist.  As it relates to food introduction, I’ve learned important lessons from each of my areas of training.  Here’s a brief highlight:

From naturopathic medicine: Start with vegetables first, then fruits.  Delay the introduction of grains and dairy and any other food that, based on family history, may be an allergen.  Wait until at least six months to begin solid food introduction.  You do not need to begin at four months, you do not need to begin with rice and, assuming you are nursing or using a quality infant formula, babies’ iron needs will be met following the order of introduction listed below.

From mommy training: Introduce less sweet foods first (once your baby tastes bananas it’s all over).  Make single ingredient food in big batches and freeze in ice cube trays to have single servings ready to quickly re-warm and use.  Purchase the book, Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron, and use it as your bible.  In my copy, pages 123, 130 and 135 are especially coated in baby food puree.

From the food industry: Choose certified organic options whenever possible, read labels and avoid products that add sweeteners and any ingredients you don’t recognize.  Try to avoid foods packaged in plastic – glass jars and foil-lined bags are better.  Do your homework and align yourself with brands that match your priorities for people and planet health.  And remember, packaged is convenient (for travel or to have in your bag “just in case”), but homemade is always best.

The following is a suggested order for food introduction.  Introduce a new solid food every three to four days, using the waiting period between foods to watch for signs of sensitivity such as: diaper rash, gas, fussiness and/or increased spit-up.  If you do notice a reaction, make a note and wait for the symptoms to resolve before introducing additional foods.

  • Six months: Beets, spinach, carrots, yams/sweet potato, squash, prunes, bananas, blackberries, blueberries, applesauce, pears, avocado, tahini, Brewer’s yeast
  • Nine months: Peas, String beans, lima beans, lentils, kale, chard, potatoes, turnips, papaya, oatmeal, white rice, quinoa, egg yolk (not white)
  • 12 months: Broccoli, onion, garlic, cilantro and other fresh spices, blackstrap molasses, brown rice, barley, goat’s milk, yogurt, plums, cherries
  • 18 months: Fish, chicken, turkey, lamb, all beans, sea vegetables
  • 21 months: Soy/tofu, citrus fruits, strawberries, nut butters (except peanut)
  • Two years: peanut butter, corn, beef, egg whites, wheat

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Your Seasonal Guide to Food as Medicine: January Produce

By On January 23, 2014 In Blog With No Comments Permanent Link to Your Seasonal Guide to Food as Medicine: January ProducePermalink

For many, January is a great reminder to activate new goals and start the year with a clean and healthy slate.  From a plant perspective, it’s also a time to initiate plans for the warmer months ahead.  The produce in season this month continues to be hardy, but nutrients in the warm soil below the surface are busy preparing for new growth.  The starchy roots, thick green leaves and fruits protected with rinds to bear cold temperatures will soon give way to the flowers and berries of Spring.  If you haven’t gotten your fill of warm, creamy soups and roasted veggies, then get a move on as they won’t last much longer.  Below is a highlight of fruits and vegetables in season this month.

As a naturopathic doctor, I believe food is one of our most powerful medicines.  Edible plants contain an incredible spectrum of preventative and curative compounds that modern science is just beginning to understand.  Eating seasonally is an excellent way to experience the benefits plants have to offer by selecting fruits and vegetables at their most potent (and often most tasty) peak of ripeness.   If you’d like to start at the beginning of my Food as Medicine series, you can find my first post here.

Cabbage – Although I haven’t specifically written about this hardy leafy vegetable before, I have covered off on many of its medicinal qualities through writing about its siblings; broccoli, Brussels Sprouts and kale.  John Bastyr, the namesake of my medical school, was a big fan of fermented cabbage and recommended it to patients for a wide range of disorders.  I love to see this science re-emerging in modern research.

Clementines – We have a tree down the street from where we live in San Diego that is absolutely sagging at the moment under the weight of these luscious fruits.  They make a perfect on-the-go treat for our whole family.  With enough vitamin C to meet the daily needs of most children in one to two pieces of fruit, plus potent antioxidant flavonoid compounds found in the white underside of the rind, they’re a treat to feel good about.

Parsnips – No, it’s not a white carrot but a similarly-shaped vegetable with a taste all its own.  Parsnips are a fabulous addition to any roasted vegetable dish and earn their right to be in the mix with a good source of fiber as well as vitamin C, folate and manganese.  Toss these with a liberal dose of olive oil and salt, throw in some turnips, rutabagas and maybe carrots for color.  Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes and you have a tasty plate of medicine to enjoy.

Turnips – Similar to beets, turnips are a two-in-one crop.  With a little cooking know-how, you can use the greens on the top of this vegetable to add an additional layer of flavor and nutrition to your meal.  Turnip roots contain sulfur compounds that support detoxification pathways in the liver along with a good dose of fiber and potassium.

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The GMO Debate: Does it Really Matter?

By On January 13, 2014 In Blog With No Comments Permanent Link to The GMO Debate: Does it Really Matter?Permalink

If you’ve read any of my posts on GMO, you know that I’ve been following a Grist reporter for the past few months, Nathaniel Johnson, on his deep dive into the science and issues behind GMO.  Over the many years I’ve been tracking this issue, I’ve often wished I could do what Johnson is doing…really pick apart the arguments in search of the un-spun, facts only truth.  It’s a heated topic and finding the straight story through all influencing factors and misguided science is a daunting task.  I think Johnson’s done a fabulous job.  He’s a brave guy.

His article last week, What I learned from six months of GMO research: None of it matters, got my attention.  My initial thought was, “Crap!  He’s giving up.”  Fortunately, that’s not the case, and how he got to his conclusion that none of it matters is pretty compelling.

He argues that the debate isn’t actually about GMO, otherwise, due to the wide-range of differences in modification and application, we’d be debating about individual GM plants.  I couldn’t agree more and have often been frustrated due to the same observation.  Genetic engineering is used in a range of applications: for the creation of medicines, to support the biodegradation of plastics, and others.  It’s not just about creating corn and soy plants that can withstand increasing levels of toxic herbicides.

The real truth is the topic of GMO is important because it’s facilitating a much larger philosophical debate about things that may only be loosely connected to the actual subject of genetic engineering.  As Johnson states,

People care about GMOs because they symbolize corporate control of the food system, or unsustainable agriculture, or the basic unhealthiness of our modern diet. On the other side, people care about GMOs because they symbolize the victory of human ingenuity over hunger and suffering, or the triumph of market forces, or the wonder of science.

This assessment certainly fits the bill for me.  I’ve lost sleep worrying about our country’s unsustainable mono-cropping approach to agriculture (yes, truly).  I feel sick when I think about the subsidization of a select number of crops that creates mass quantities of cheap, un-healthy food and as a result is literally fueling the growing obesity epidemic, not only in the United States, but in all the other developing countries that emulate America.  As I’ve stated before, I think there’s a role for GMO and the best way to move forward is thoughtfully and transparently (i.e. labeling).  Honestly, if I had to choose between getting rid of the current subsidization practices for corn and soy and GMO, I think I’d choose the former.  It’s a silly “either/or” question, but it does confirm to me that Johnson is spot on about GMO not really being about GMO.

So, does it really matter where we net out on GMO?  Johnson thinks not (you should really read his article to understand why).  I’m not sure I’m ready to agree completely.  However, even if GMO isn’t the real issue, maybe using it as a decoy for what we’re really debating is an acceptable if not dysfunctional way to create positive change.  Whatever works, right?

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Dietary Supplements: The Real Wart of St. John’s Wort

By On January 9, 2014 In Blog With No Comments Permanent Link to Dietary Supplements: The Real Wart of St. John’s WortPermalink

I’ve been watching the uptick in negative press about dietary supplements recently with much interest.  Having worked in both the packaged food and dietary supplement industries for the past nine years, I’ve often described dietary supplements as the Wild West.  Especially when compared to food, it’s an industry where, unfortunately, almost anything goes, and that’s certainly proved to be the case in recent months with multiple reports of product contamination…and not just with something benign, but major prescription drugs that carry real risk of side effects and harm.

This major quality flaw is often paired with reports citing research that vitamins and dietary supplements don’t work anyway.  Just last month, an editorial piece in the Annals of Internal Medicine gathered a great deal of attention as its authors seemed to close the book once and for all on the whole discussion, concluding that dietary supplements just aren’t worth the price or the potential risk.

Given the unfortunate string of contamination cases, it’s hard to dispute this conclusion.  However, dismissing vitamins and dietary supplements as worthless is absolutely the wrong decision.  Obviously, the industry needs to get its act together and prioritizing quality and efficacy need to be at the top of the list.  A good PR agency to fix this nightmare of bad press is probably a good immediate next step.

Really, the issue I believe the industry is facing is a pool of poorly designed research.  Poor research provides poor results.  And poor results can be interpreted as a poor (aka worthless) product.  When research is well designed, dietary supplements show incredible benefit at both prevention and treatment of a wide-range of diseases.  Dr. Alan Gaby, a leader in the natural medicine community is a wonderful spokesperson for the benefits of dietary supplements (hint, hint PR agencies) and does a much more eloquent job than I ever could at responding to dietary supplement neigh sayers.  Here’s a piece Gaby did for Huffington Post that responds to the Annals piece.  It’s a great read.

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The Future of Food Labeling

By On December 26, 2013 In Blog With No Comments Permanent Link to The Future of Food LabelingPermalink

Although small in number, the factors most likely to evolve food labeling laws in 2014 and beyond are rapidly increasing tensions among the various stakeholders in the food industry.  From unprecedented levels of litigation at the state level, to coordinated social media campaigns by special interest groups and a food movement built upon a foundation of increased transparency and simplicity, it seems a perfect storm may be brewing and, like it or not, government is going to have to move the evolution of food labeling laws up the priority list.  Here are some of my predictions for what we can expect to see in 2014 and beyond…

There are few housekeeping issues that are likely to be tidied up by government next year.  After many years of waiting, a FDA proposed rule to evolve the Nutrition Facts panel is likely to be released and will address a range of simple improvements such as adjusting serving sizes, daily values and creating space for additional nutrient declarations.  The Food Labeling Modernization Act has also been introduced to the House and, if passed, would establish a front of pack labeling system, require declaration of products containing caffeine and added sugar and institute a definition for natural.  Given the range of issues covered in this Act, I (along with most other experts) have very little confidence that it will pass.  Other minor improvements that I expect to see in 2014 include the removal of GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status from partially hydrogenated oils (which create trans fats) and an evolved whole grain content criteria statement.

I do not believe government will use 2014 to officially weigh in on some of the key issues fueling the current food movement, i.e. GMO and the definition of natural.  Inaction on these issues means the debate will continue to take place through litigation and social media.  Overall, government will continue their Band-Aid approach, tweaking current systems while standing on the sidelines of more fundamental issues.

Making predictions beyond 2014 is a bit trickier, but I have to believe that at some point the tension created from allowing issues to evolve on a state by state level and through increasingly more polarized special interest platforms will become so great that government will have no choice but to step into the fray.  My bets for what this may look like include:

  1. A sweeping overhaul to current nutrition labels. Nutrition labels are given so much real estate on pack and have so much opportunity to communicate, they absolutely have the ability to work harder than they do currently to communicate on issues consumers want information about.
  2. A national labeling standard for GMO.  Whether this will communicate a presence or absence is not as important as the fact that a national standard must be issued.  Similar to the path for organic, starting with state by state standards, a national standard for GMO labeling is inevitable.
  3. A definition of natural.  It is stunning that although “natural” has been one of the most used marketing terms in food for years, current guidance by FDA/USDA on this term is woefully lacking.  Although the term natural and the issue of GMO are not one in the same, they often travel together in debate and as a result we may see clarification of natural simply due to action on GMO.
  4. Increased restrictions around structure/function claims.  Versus continuing to allow the communication of both attributes and benefits, I see government evolving toward regulations seen in other developed countries in Europe and Canada where marketing communications are in large part restricted only to attributes.  In many ways, this change alone would solve many of the issues fueling current litigation and confusion at the consumer level.

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