Search Results

In the realm of wellness, the gut microbiome has emerged as a hot topic, and for a good reason. This bustling community of microorganisms that resides in our digestive tract plays a pivotal role in our overall health, influencing everything from digestion to immunity and even mental well-being. If you're looking to nurture your gut microbiome and promote a thriving internal ecosystem, there's a simple dietary strategy that stands out a great place to start: focus on fiber. The Gut Microbiome: A Crucial Player in Health Before we delve into the fiber connection, let's take a moment to appreciate the importance of the gut microbiome. This intricate ecosystem is composed of trillions of microorganisms, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and archaea, collectively known as the gut microbiota. These tiny inhabitants work tirelessly to break down food, produce essential nutrients, regulate immune function, and even communicate with the brain via the gut-brain axis. Enter Fiber: A Microbiome's Best Friend So, how does fiber come into play? Fiber, found exclusively in plant-based foods, serves as fuel for our gut microbiota. While our bodies lack the enzymes needed to digest fiber, our gut bacteria feast on it, fermenting it into beneficial compounds like short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). These SCFAs not only provide energy for the cells lining our colon but also exert a myriad of health benefits, including reducing inflammation, supporting immune function, and maintaining gut barrier integrity. The Fiber-Gut Microbiome Connection Research has shown that a fiber-rich diet is associated with a more diverse and resilient gut microbiome, characterized by a greater abundance of beneficial bacteria and a reduced risk of dysbiosis, or microbial imbalance. Conversely, diets low in fiber - like that of the Standard American Diet, high in ultraprocessed foods and meat-centric meals - have been linked to a less diverse microbiome and an increased risk of various health issues. In the quest for optimal health, nurturing your gut microbiome is rightfully becoming a trendy topic, and fiber is the secret weapon. By focusing on fiber-rich, plant-based foods, we can support a diverse and resilient gut microbiome, promoting digestive health, immune function, and overall well-being. So, next time you're planning your meals, remember to prioritize fiber – your gut will thank you for it.

When we talk about nutrition, fiber often takes center stage for its role in digestive health - specifically bowel regularity. However, focusing on fiber in your diet offers a wealth of additional benefits beyond the bathroom. Fiber-rich foods offer an array of essential nutrients that boost our overall health and well-being. More Than Just Digestion While fiber is renowned for its digestive benefits, because fiber-rich diets are packed with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes, adding more to your plate means you're also getting a plethora of other vital nutrients. Here's a closer look at some of the additional nutrients you'll find when you prioritize fiber in your diet: Vitamins and Minerals Many fiber-rich foods are naturally rich in essential vitamins and minerals that support various bodily functions. Fruits and vegetables, in particular, are abundant sources of vitamins A, C, and K, as well as minerals like potassium, magnesium, and folate. Antioxidants Fiber-rich foods are often loaded with antioxidants, which help protect your cells from damage caused by harmful molecules called free radicals. Berries, nuts, seeds, and leafy greens are excellent sources of antioxidants like vitamin C, vitamin E, and flavonoids. Healthy Fats Certain fiber-rich foods, such as avocados, nuts, and seeds, are also rich in healthy fats, including monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. These fats are essential for brain health, hormone production, and overall heart health. Protein While fiber itself is not a significant source of protein, many fiber-rich plant foods, such as beans, lentils, and whole grains, also contain protein. Including these foods in your diet ensures you're getting an adequate amount of this essential macronutrient for muscle repair and growth. Phytonutrients Fiber-rich plant foods contain a diverse array of phytonutrients, naturally occurring compounds that have been shown to have numerous health benefits. These include flavonoids, carotenoids, and polyphenols, which have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and immune-boosting properties. Unlocking the Benefits: How to Incorporate Fiber-Rich Foods Now that we understand the additional nutrients found in fiber-rich foods, let's explore some practical tips for incorporating them into your diet: Load Up on Fruits and Vegetables Aim to fill half your plate with colorful fruits and vegetables at each meal. Not only are they rich in fiber, but they also provide a wide range of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Choose Whole Grains Opt for whole grains like quinoa, brown rice, oats, and barley instead of refined grains. Whole grains retain their fiber content along with other nutrients like B vitamins, iron, and magnesium. Snack on Nuts and Seeds Enjoy a handful of nuts or seeds as a snack or add them to salads, yogurt, or oatmeal for an extra boost of healthy fats, protein, and fiber. Incorporate Beans and Legumes Beans, lentils, and chickpeas are excellent sources of both fiber and protein. Add them to soups, stews, salads, or tacos for a nutritious and satisfying meal. Don't Forget About Plant-Based Fats Include sources of healthy fats like avocados, nuts, and seeds in your diet to reap their benefits for heart health, brain function, and overall well-being. While fiber is undoubtedly essential for digestive health, it's clear that focusing on fiber in your diet offers a wealth of additional nutrients that contribute to overall health and well-being. By incorporating a variety of fiber-rich foods into your meals and snacks, you can unlock the full spectrum of benefits that these nutrient-dense foods have to offer. So, load up on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, beans, and legumes, and reap the rewards of a nutrient-rich diet that nourishes your body from the inside out. Audrey Lawson-Sanchez is founder and Executive Director of Balanced. Balanced is a nutrition security and public health advocacy organization focused on transforming the healthfulness of institutional food environments. You can contact Audrey or the team at Balanced here.

Hello! My name is Nancy Zhang, and I’m a senior in high school currently interning at Balanced. I’m passionate about nutrition and improving food systems to create a more equitable and sustainable future. I recently had the opportunity to attend the Reducetarian Summit in Denver with Balanced. I was beyond excited to go—this was my first time attending a conference dedicated to promoting and welcoming plant-forward diets. But first, you may be wondering what a reducetarian diet is? You’ve likely heard of vegetarian diets, but reducetarian isn’t as mainstream of a term yet. Simply put, the movement seeks to unite vegetarians, vegans, and meat-eaters in a common goal: reducing meat and dairy consumption to better our health, the environment, and animal welfare. As an advocate who’s been in the plant-based advocacy space for the past few years, I was extremely grateful to find a gathering that emphasized a more pragmatic approach to plant-based lifestyles. In the past, I’ve found some in the vegan community can take an “all-or-nothing” mentality which can result in hesitancy for those who are plant-curious from learning more about the benefits of plant-based or plant-forward diets. Attending my first group networking session, it was inspiring to hear all of the different perspectives everyone contributed. I met incredible advocates working on global veg* documentaries, founding startups to help businesses be more sustainable, as well as people who just wanted to learn more about topics on health and factory farming. Throughout the conference, I attended a variety of speaker sessions from mass-producing alternative proteins to hearing perspectives from local farmers. I especially loved the emphasis on factory farming that the conference took—it encompassed a lot of the reasons why people start eating plant-based: health (antibiotics, processed meats), environment (carbon emissions, pollutants), and animal welfare (living conditions). Additionally, I had the opportunity to table with Balanced—I was super excited to spread our mission of cultivating healthier menus and engage more people in our work (as well as pass out the best merch and stickers). I especially loved explaining the amazing work Balanced has helped me accomplish in my own community. Sharing my experiences hosting educational events and adding a new plant-based grill to my school cafeteria really demonstrated the importance of uplifting youth in creating institutional change—a need that is currently highly necessary and overlooked in this movement. Though the Reducetarian Summit has taken important steps to involve more youth in their mission (through their fellowship program for NYC undergrads), I didn’t meet any other students who were there independently. Within this movement aiming to create a more sustainable and healthful future, I’ve found that youth voices are underrepresented; this should be the opposite when current youth will be most affected by climate change & our food systems in the future. As the conference grows, I’d love to see more outreach with youth involvement! Overall, the Reducetarian Summit was fantastic—everything from the quality of the connections I made to the amazing presentations (and the delicious plant-based meals). I highly encourage all who are plant-curious/already plant-based (especially youth) to attend their summit next year! You can learn more about the work of the Reducetarian Foundation and next year's Summit ot the Reducetarian Foundation's website. Follow Balanced on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay up to date on our work.

This is the third and final installment in a series about how food industry meddling biases nutrition science research to its advantage and at the expense of our health. In this blog post, we’re going to expand a bit more on the topic of good nutrition science—what it looks like in practice and why it matters. In the previous post in this series, we briefly touched on the hallmarks of good nutrition research: large sample size, long study duration, open-ended research questions, no conflicts of interest, and a focus on dietary patterns rather than the benefits of specific foods. Today’s post will expound on this a bit more with a concrete example. But first, a major disclaimer. Even the best, most rigorous nutrition science has its limitations. Dietary patterns’ effects on human health are inherently messy to measure, and there are both benefits and pitfalls to the different methods scientists use to approximate what a given person typically eats. Interventional trials can help fill in the gaps of observational studies, but they are usually of shorter duration, or compliance may be lower in the case of a longer follow-up design. This makes tying a particular diet to a certain health outcome a little more challenging. Add on top of that the genetic heterogeneity throughout the population, as well as lifestyle variability from person to person. Accurate data collection is notoriously difficult in nutrition research, and there are lots of intervening factors to control for on top of that. All that said, the statistical methods nutrition scientists use to minimize so-called confounding variables and other forms of noise are very powerful. So even when the data aren’t perfect, there are still plenty of useful conclusions we can draw from the totality of nutrition research. We know which foods confer more health risks than benefits (like processed meats), and we have a firm grasp on what kinds of dietary patterns are better at supporting our health (more whole plants!). Even still, those generalizations can’t speak to any one person’s risks or benefits while following a given diet or eating a certain food. Every individual must use evidence-based guidelines to judge for oneself what dietary pattern to follow, and working with a dietitian or a general practitioner can help a person make that determination in a more objective way. With these considerations, let’s look at an example of high quality nutrition research. The PREDIMED study, conducted throughout the 2000s and published in 2018, is well known among nutrition scientists for its rigorous methods and impressive results. With just under 7,500 participants, it boasts a large sample size, which is important for adequate statistical power. The study tested two variations on the Mediterranean diet (one with extra olive oil and one with extra nuts) against a control “low fat” diet in adults over 55 who were at a higher risk for cardiovascular events like heart attacks. They made sure the three groups were balanced in terms of baseline risk factors, then measured the rate of cardiovascular events in all three groups over a follow-up period of about five years. The two Mediterranean diet groups were told to adhere to 14 dietary principles, including consuming legumes at least three times a week, having at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day, and restricting red meat intake. All three groups received regular nutrition education sessions with a dietitian respective to their different dietary patterns. There was no control over the calories participants could eat, and there was also no physical activity component to the protocol. Regular contact with the participants helped ensure high adherence to the study diets. After all the data were collected and analyzed, researchers found that both Mediterranean groups had about 30% fewer cardiovascular events than the control group. This summary offers just the highlights of the PREDIMED study, as you’ll see if you read it in its entirety. Even so, it’s clear that this example has most of the attributes of high quality nutrition science we’ve covered: big sample size with thousands of participants, open-ended research questions, no “p-hacking”, decent study duration, sound methods, and a focus on dietary patterns. And while PREDIMED is great, it can’t stand alone. There are plenty of things that could be improved, a fact true of all studies. What’s useful about it, though, is that it tracks with established nutrition research and helps us get clearer on what we’re getting right and what we’re getting wrong about nutrition. So, how can we set a higher standard for nutrition research in the future? There are numerous policies, governmental and institutional, that could help. Perhaps the most obvious is that we need more public investment in nutrition research in academia and agencies like the National Institutes of Health. This would reduce the attractiveness of corporate sponsorship and hopefully stop food industry actors from using the authority of scientists as a cover for their dubious research agendas. Another approach is to weed out bad science further down the pipeline. In the same way all study proposals must be approved by an ethics committee known as an Institutional Review Board, we could also enforce review committees that screen for methodological flaws and poor study design so low quality research is never carried out. Scientific integrity matters for its own sake, but in the end I think what’s most important is that people’s actual lives are on the line. In the United States and across the world, millions are needlessly living with more illness, disability, and pain as a result of poor nutrition. We need more precise nutrition science to be the foundation of medical interventions and governmental assistance programs like SNAP and the National School Lunch Program. Only when we can collectively agree on the facts of—and therefore the solutions to—our personal and public health crises can we hope to restore health to our communities and hold bad actors accountable for the harm they have inflicted. Everything about science is difficult; conducting it, interpreting it, and communicating it each requires an underappreciated amount of expertise and diligence. I should know first-hand. I feel responsible in part for the health of the people who read my articles and always worry that something I say could lead to a bad outcome for someone. That’s why the initial goal of this series was to help inoculate readers against the food industry’s hidden influences in nutrition science—for the sake of their own personal health. Yet I hope joining me on this deep-dive has also galvanized you, our readers, to spread awareness and advocate for healthier food environments in your communities. We all have a right to the full, unadulterated facts today’s science can tell us about the ways food affects our bodies. If you agree, please continue to support our policy work throughout the new year so together we can fight for everyone to have access to better nutrition. Madeline is the Food System and Nutrition Policy Analyst at Balanced. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Nutrition from the Univ. of Texas and Tufts, respectively. As a nutrition expert, she advocates for more plant-based dining options in critical institutions with the aim of building healthier food environments and fostering better public health outcomes. You can reach her here: madelineb@balanced.org To request information about balancing your institution's menu and receive support (FREE!) one-on-one support from Balanced in doing so, please email info@balanced.org or visit our Institutional Support page. From there, you can download a step-by-step guide and get started today! Balanced is a nonprofit organization providing the tools, resources, and supports for everyday people to advocate for healthier menus in their community institutions. Please support Balanced's mission with a donation of any size today.

This is the second installment in a series about how food industry meddling biases nutrition science research to its advantage and at the expense of our health. In this blog post, we take a look at the roles popular media and social media play in amplifying bad science, spreading confusion, and doing the food industry’s dirty work. In our previous post in this series, we described the ways in which the food industry interferes with and undermines the scientific process in nutrition research. While these meddling food companies certainly deserve the lion’s share of the blame for nutrition confusion among the general public, the reality is that they get a lot of help, if unintentionally, from popular media outlets, uncritical journalists, and social media platforms whose algorithms give controversies and conspiracies their silent endorsements. It’s bad enough that some of the most powerful food industry actors intentionally disrupt legitimate science by funding poorly designed studies and wheedling their way into academia. It’s another level of deception when ‘news’ outlets and other popular media, who have business relationships with the food industry through paid advertising, betray the fundamentals of good science journalism with uncritical coverage of industry-influenced studies. The danger of sloppy fact-checking, aside from the obvious fact that outlets are publishing misinformation, is that it leaves lay people either helplessly confused or with a false sense of competence about healthy diets. When a person reads an uncritical article explaining the “science” behind the virtues of cholesterol-packed eggs, for example, that person will feel they have gained in-depth knowledge when in fact they have been gravely misled. I don’t believe that popular media outlets do this on purpose. Rather, in these click-bait and ad revenue-driven times, outlets latch onto controversy and ideas that seem to “upend” scientific consensus. Just as academics who receive money from corporate sponsors may be plagued by unconscious bias, so too may science journalists be unconsciously seduced by the rewards of covering a “disruptive” industry-funded study. Oftentimes science journalists don’t even have the training to discern between good and bad nutrition science, even if they do come from a “STEM” or health science background. Case in point: This Atlantic article, which our blog has previously covered, extolling saturated fat was written by a medical doctor and professor at Yale’s school of public health. Medical doctors aren’t nutrition scientists, and most do not regularly follow advances in nutrition science. Yet, the authority of being an M.D. and a professor at an Ivy League institution would give even skeptical lay people a false sense of confidence in the author’s interpretation of the science. To be fair, most of the bad nutrition articles you will come across will not be in the more reputable outlets—with maybe the exception of TIME magazine, which has been consistently problematic—but rather in men’s and women’s lifestyle and fitness magazines, especially in their online content. They likely don’t have dedicated science reporters, so they’re less apt to do their due diligence and are overall less rigorous and balanced in their coverage. An amusing real-world experiment highlights this difference. Scientist and science journalist John Bohannon, along with a few colleagues, ran a completely real randomized controlled trial with human subjects. The goal of the study, which had participants eat (or not eat) chocolate for three weeks while following a ‘low-carb’ diet, wasn’t to make a meaningful contribution to our understanding of nutrition. Rather, the researchers were intentionally fishing for statistically significant (but highly dubious) findings that could be published in a pay-to-play science journal, then covered in popular media outlets. The point of the operation was to expose how easy it is to generate and publish bad nutrition research that makes headlines across the world. So how did Bohannon and his team do it? They kept the sample size low, only 16 participants, and made the study duration uselessly short, just 21 days. They took 18 different measurements, including weight, blood cholesterol, sleep quality, and more. These factors combined made it much more likely that the study would produce ‘statistically significant’ results, even though said results would be totally meaningless. Bohannon writes: "It’s called p-hacking—fiddling with your experimental design and data to push p [a measure of statistical significance] under 0.05—and it’s a big problem. Most scientists are honest and do it unconsciously. They get negative results, convince themselves they goofed, and repeat the experiment until it “works." After writing up their results, the team sent out their manuscript to dozens of illegitimate science journals, many of which accepted the paper. After Bohannon agreed to pay 600 euros to the International Archives of Medicine, the study was published. His team then circulated a press release and promotional videos to different media outlets. The salacious study was covered in popular media around the world, but notably in lower-quality, higher-readership outlets like The Daily Mail, Shape, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, and many others. As egregious as this example is, I still find it less insidious than the way food companies and marketing boards hide behind the perceived legitimacy of academia, whose funding-strapped researchers launder bad research questions and misleading data on behalf of industry. Some of those studies may be perfectly sound, some not—but it’s impossible to know when the funding source is at odds with any adverse findings. Far from just a one-off study here or there like the chocolate study above, powerful food industries commission research on a sustained and widespread basis. According to the National Dairy Council’s own report, the NDC has “administered” nearly 100 nutrition and public health studies between 2014 and 2022 (so far) in conjunction with reputable academic institutions. These studies have titles like “Influence of Chocolate Milk on Intense Cycle Training” and “Effects of Milk Protein Concentrate on Blood Pressure, Inflammation, Muscle Composition, and Metabolic Health During Weight Loss in Overweight/Obese Adults.” Studies like these generate endless headlines in the media, percolating into our minds and influencing what we eat. That said, it’s now more than just the tabloid rags and pop-science magazines spreading “fake news” about nutrition science. Social media platforms help spread false information and controversy like wildfire. (And let’s face it, diet might be one of the most controversial subjects to broach in any social context.) Worse, the ideological bubbles these platforms tend to foster have a way of distorting reality in the minds of millions, maybe even billions, of people. Fad diets become dedicated communities: “keto”, “paleo”, “carnivore”, “raw” vegan, and so on. When different factions clash, anger escalates, in turn garnering more clicks, more engagement, less humility and skepticism, and more ad revenue. (It doesn’t help, either, that food companies curate their own social media personalities, using ironic humor and controversy to gain the public’s favor and interact directly with everyday users of the platforms.) The toxicity of the nutrition science conversation is bad news for the fields of nutrition and public health altogether. When everyone believes him- or herself to be an expert—both despite and because of the industry-mediated confusion in real nutrition science—there can be no shared consensus around the facts and no progress made toward a healthier world. Much of the public disengages from high-quality science, preferring instead the false sense of certainty and connection within niche online communities. The only ones who gain from the current climate are the industries and companies at the root of the problem. That may sound bleak, but we can begin to reverse this downward spiral by becoming more media-savvy, at least when it comes to nutrition science reporting. This goes hand in hand with science literacy, which we touched on in the previous blog post in this series. So, how can we discern good reporting on nutrition science from bad? The first step may sound too obvious: don’t read just the headline. No matter how click-baity it is, the actual article is (hopefully) going to be more nuanced. Second, if the article doesn’t link to an actual scientific study, consider that article of very low credibility. If there are one or more studies linked, read them if they aren’t behind a paywall. Look at funders and the study authors’ affiliations. Association with the food industry isn’t necessarily a disqualifier, but it should raise your level of skepticism. Refer to the principles listed in our previous blog post to evaluate the quality of the science. Third, any popular article making nutrition claims or referencing nutrition science should have quotes from the study authors as well as nutrition scientists not affiliated with the study. Good scientists temper their language and generally don’t frame their findings as 100% definitive. I feel more confident in the veracity of an article when there are quotes from experts and acknowledgements of the study’s limitations. Fourth, if a popular article is focusing on claims or research that purports to “upend” scientific consensus, be highly skeptical. This is sometimes the case when articles talk about saturated fat or cholesterol. These articles will usually make a weakly-justified dismissal of the last seven decades of nutrition research on saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, red meat, or something along those lines. Even when they are penned by medical professionals, the claims in those types of articles are usually poorly substantiated or simply unexplained, speaking to the author’s lack of expertise in nutrition science specifically. This is only a start, and it’s not a perfect antidote to the bigger issue of industry meddling in nutrition science. Perhaps it’s best to end on what we can all agree on: No matter what dietary pattern you follow, we all deserve access to the uncorrupted, un-sensationalized truth, as well as to the means required to eat a healthy, balanced diet. Stay tuned... Part III continues to dig even deeper into the Industry Playbook and what it means for our collective health, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if you have information, thoughts, questions, or research to share, please contact me at madelineb@balanced.org Madeline is the Food System and Nutrition Policy Analyst at Balanced. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Nutrition from the Univ. of Texas and Tufts, respectively. As a nutrition expert, she advocates for more plant-based dining options in critical institutions with the aim of building healthier food environments and fostering better public health outcomes. You can reach her here: madelineb@balanced.org To request information about balancing your institution's menu and receive support (FREE!) one-on-one support from Balanced in doing so, please email info@balanced.org or visit our Institutional Support page. From there, you can download a step-by-step guide and get started today! Balanced is a nonprofit organization providing the tools, resources, and supports for everyday people to advocate for healthier menus in their community institutions. Please support Balanced's mission with a donation of any size today.

This is the first installment in a series about how food industry meddling biases nutrition science research to its advantage and at the expense of our health. In this dispatch, we lift the veil on food manufacturers’ corruption of scientific authority, and we show you how to tell good research from bad. In December of 2019, researchers from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine published a study in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine that was sensational enough to be picked up by the Washington Post. They found that, since 2010, more than half of the research on eggs and blood cholesterol levels had been sponsored by the egg industry itself. I consider myself fairly hardened to the egregiousness of food and agricultural industries, but the PCRM study nonetheless shocked me. The sheer extent of the egg industry’s influence over the cholesterol research agenda is hard to fathom, and the results are fairly predictable: fewer egg industry-funded studies reported that eggs significantly raise cholesterol compared to studies funded independently. And even though 86% of the industry-funded studies did find that eggs raise blood cholesterol, half of that 86% drew conclusions denying the connection between cholesterol levels and egg intake. Sadly, this example is emblematic of a larger trend toward nutrition studies being designed with the purpose of producing outcomes that support a particular industry’s or company’s marketing goals. It’s just one part of the “industry playbook” that Dr. Marion Nestle, professor emerita at New York University, describes in her book Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat. According to Nestle, the playbook consists of seven main strategies: casting doubt on independent and rigorous nutrition science (in other words, the very basis of our knowledge on healthy diets) commissioning studies to counteract inconvenient truths about industrial foods courting and schmoozing academics and other scientists with gifts or consulting gigs using front groups (like the International Life Sciences Institute) to give their talking points an air on legitimacy lobbying against profit-threatening regulation pushing a “personal responsibility” narrative to shift blame away from industry machinations weaponizing the legal system to challenge critics and regulators And, though we opened with an example from the egg industry, it is far from only animal agricultural industries following this script. We all know that eating a diet rich in whole plant foods is critical to our health, but producers of individual crops want you to consume more of their product over just-as-healthy alternatives. It’s not uncommon to see a study on, say, the benefits of raisins from the California Marketing Raisin Board—or the benefits of a particular sugary breakfast cereal from General Mills. You can frequently guess which studies are industry-funded just based on the way they are designed. Usually they’ll consist of an interventional design following a small number of participants over short periods of time (weeks to a few months). The study will be focused on determining the specific health effects of one particular food (like almonds, yogurt, beef, pomegranate juice), and the conclusion section of the paper will, rightly or wrongly, spin the findings in the most positive light possible. The rationale behind this formula is that companies and food marketing boards are fishing for findings that can become the basis of health-centered marketing claims. Or, In the case of meat, eggs, and dairy products, just a neutral health outcome is all it takes to cast doubt upon and contradict a larger body of research pointing to the negative effects of diets rich in animal-source foods. In the end, it boils down to the bottom line. The food industry wants to craft research questions and protocols that will produce positive results that can in turn be wielded to boost more sales. You likely won’t see food companies funding long-term, thoughtfully designed studies; the payoff is too delayed and too uncertain. It’s not mysterious why companies act as they do. But you may be wondering why any self-respecting nutrition scientist or academic would agree to run food industry-sponsored research. The reasons are a bit complicated. For starters, federal funding for food and nutrition research has been declining since 2008. Federal appropriations for funding such research is contingent upon legislation, particularly the FARM bill, which is only reauthorized on a sporadic basis. Research is often the least of the priorities in the omnibus. This creates both a funding gap and an opportunity for the food and agriculture industries to impose their own research agendas. The effect is a blurring of the line between science and marketing. Many researchers are therefore happy to take on industry-crafted research proposals and believe fervently in their ability to remain impartial, as long as they are given some assurance of independence from their corporate sponsor. But there’s still a problem: much of the bias in these cases is either built into the research questions themselves or simply operates at a subconscious level. There is an unspoken expectation that the results of an industry-funded study will either reflect well on that industry or challenge claims of negative health effects. Researchers know and act on this on a gut level, not necessarily a conscious one. New peer-reviewed investigations into industry funding and bias in nutrition research are beginning to paint a clearer picture of the effects of conscious and unconscious bias. Take this example from the PLOS Medicine article in which researchers looked at funding and bias in studies on sugary beverages. A study was five times more likely to not find a link between sugary drinks and weight gain when there were financial conflicts of interest present. In yet another PLOS Medicine article on funding sources in nutrition studies, researchers found that, among over 100 studies, zero industry-funded studies reported unfavorable conclusions. Compare that to 37% of studies with no industry funded reporting conclusions unfavorable to the food industry. Nutrition science journals and professional organizations have also been called out for their uncritical acceptance of food industry involvement in science and policy. In a PLOS ONE article looking at nutrition journals’ practices, authors concluded that in studies with “food industry involvement, 55.6% reported findings favorable to relevant food industry interests, compared to 9.7% of articles without food industry involvement.” And industry-backed studies aren’t rare: over 13% of studies published in the top ten nutrition science journals were affiliated with the food industry. The Journal of Nutrition may be the worst offender with roughly 30% of its published studies in 2018 having been funded by food manufacturers. A Scientific American reporter reached out to the journal’s editor-in-chief who commented that it’s “not appropriate” to “discriminate [...] based on funding source,” especially since government funding has dropped off in recent decades. If the buck doesn’t stop with peer-reviewed journals, where does it stop? Apparently not with professional associations like the American Society for Nutrition, which publishes the Journal of Nutrition, and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND)—which are deeply entrenched in corporate money. In the case of AND, an investigation found that the organization “has invested funds in corporations such as Nestlé, PepsiCo and pharmaceutical companies, has discussed internal policies to fit industry needs and has had public positions favouring corporations.” Despite mounting evidence that corporate money biases study outcomes, far too many academic institutions continue to turn blind eyes to the biasing effects of funding source. It seems many prominent researchers are willing to jeopardize their reputations and those of their institutions in taking corporate money. Reporting on this issue by the Associated Press even dares to name a few names of professors and schools. On the industry side, familiar suspects like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, the American Egg Board, and The National Confectioners Association play starring roles. In my own experience in academia, I have witnessed certain professors express blasé acceptance—even naive optimism—about their personal relationships with corporate sponsors. I distinctly remember one researcher arguing that the leadership at PepsiCo really does want to help solve child obesity (minus the part of the solution that requires the company to lose money). In another instance, I heard one of the most prominent figures from my alma mater say there’s no use trying to exclude corporations from the conversation on nutrition policy. I find this tragic, but the federal government may be the biggest disappointment of all. As Nestle describes in Unsavory Truth, Departments of Agriculture actively abet industry-funded research through what’s known as checkoff programs. These are USDA programs meant to facilitate the marketing of and research on commodities like meat and dairy with the aim of boosting demand. Examples of checkoffs include the National Pork Board and the Cattlemen’s Beef Board. In association with other industry partners, these boards put out feelers for research proposals designed to fish for any health benefits of their products. These efforts have been especially important as of late since the World Health Organization formally recognized red and processed meats as carcinogens. Unsurprisingly, beef industry-sponsored research, enabled in part by the USDA, has found no link between meat intake and cancer. Although this summary captures just a glimpse of the corporate influence in nutrition science and policy, I do not want to cast an entirely negative light on the state of nutrition research. The majority of the science is free from industry bias, and a high standard for rigor and integrity remains the norm. How, then, can we tell the good from the bad in nutrition science? Some distinguishing characteristics of good nutrition science include a very large sample size (e.g., tens of thousands of participants), a focus on dietary patterns rather than single foods or products, and a longer study duration. While good nutrition science doesn’t necessarily have to have all of these elements, they make for a useful reference. Always check for disclosures of conflicts of interest. Sometimes this requires verification through an internet search, since oftentimes relevant disclosures aren’t listed. And if a study is focused on a single food or nutrient, make sure the study is appropriately randomized, blinded, and has a comparison group that wasn’t picked just to make the food or nutrient look better than it really is. All this to say, both skepticism and open-mindedness are needed in balance when evaluating nutrition studies. When in doubt, reach out to a nutrition scientist you trust. Stay tuned... Part II and Part III dig even deeper into the Industry Playbook and what it means for our collective health, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if you have information, thoughts, questions, or research to share, please contact me at madelineb@balanced.org Madeline is the Food System and Nutrition Policy Analyst at Balanced. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Nutrition from the Univ. of Texas and Tufts, respectively. As a nutrition expert, she advocates for more plant-based dining options in critical institutions with the aim of building healthier food environments and fostering better public health outcomes. You can reach her here: madelineb@balanced.org To request information about balancing your institution's menu and receive support (FREE!) one-on-one support from Balanced in doing so, please email info@balanced.org or visit our Institutional Support page. From there, you can download a step-by-step guide and get started today! Balanced is a nonprofit organization providing the tools, resources, and supports for everyday people to advocate for healthier menus in their community institutions. Please support Balanced's mission with a donation of any size today.

This year is a big one for nutrition advocacy in the United States. The Biden Administration has been steadily gearing up to convene a White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health—the second of its kind in our nation’s history. The first conference was held in 1969 under President Richard Nixon, and it famously established many of the federal nutrition assistance programs millions of Americans continue to rely on today. The White House Conference of 2022, which convenes this September, will focus on five major pillars: Improving food access and affordability Prioritizing nutrition’s role in health and disease prevention Fostering healthier food environments Supporting physical activity for all Improving food and nutrition security research In an effort to understand all perspectives, the White House is soliciting feedback from everyday Americans, nutrition advocates, public health experts, and anyone else invested in creating a food system that promotes good health. Anyone wishing to weigh in on the five pillars can do so by submitting a written comment. Balanced strongly supports the White House Conference’s aims, and we have some thoughts to share on how it can be executed most effectively. How should we gauge the success of the Conference? The goal of the Conference is to generate and enact new policies and programs that will combat hunger, improve nutritional outcomes, and reduce the burden of diet-related disease, disability, and premature death. The most meaningful measures of success should therefore involve (1) tracking rates of hunger and other metrics of household food insecurity across vulnerable groups, (2) tracking shifts in dietary patterns in a nationally representative way, and (3) following changes in the incidence of, prevalence of, and deaths from major diet-related diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. However, it’s not enough simply to monitor changes for signs of progress. The Conference should establish time-bound targets for each metric and each year following 2022 until the desired endpoints (like zero hunger!) are reached. This way, we’ll know if we’re reaching our goals—or we’ll know how far behind we are. There should also be a clear, evidence-based roadmap outlining how we plan to hit our targets, and all the involved federal and state agencies should have well-defined roles. If progress isn’t going according to plan, we can jump to investigate why that’s the case, then work to remedy the situation or tweak the policy strategy as necessary. Whatever endpoints the Conference recommends, there should be legal commitment and accountability to those targets. Of course, the point of the Conference’s people-centered process is to be able to anticipate (and avoid) stumbling blocks. For example, it won’t necessarily help to build supermarkets in food deserts if healthy foods are still unaffordable and unfamiliar, or if the supermarket is stocked entirely with ultra-processed foods, or if fast-food restaurants dot every block, or if nearby residents have no time to prepare healthy foods at home, and so on. All of these barriers (and more) must be addressed together. The success of the Conference depends upon this strategy. What kinds of policies should the Conference prescribe? There are hundreds of large and small policies and programs that we could and should implement across all levels of government. Such was the result of the fruitful 1969 conference, and we should demand similarly sweeping changes. Many nutrition organizations and engaged citizens have indeed been floating bold ideas to fix our food system. Balanced echoes much of what has already been stated by anti-hunger groups, healthcare professionals, and nutrition assistance beneficiaries. To summarize, if we as a nation hope to end hunger and drastically reduce the diet-related disease burden, we’ll need the following, at a minimum: More robust anti-poverty and nutrition assistance measures to tackle food affordability Convenient physical access to diverse, health-promoting whole foods and the elimination of food deserts Regulations limiting the advertising of ultra-processed foods and fast food Other regulations on the processed food industry, like mandatory sodium standards Public education on healthy dietary patterns and meal planning, such as in school curricula or through public service announcements Construction of more walkable, bikeable, and play-friendly neighborhoods and cities Free or low-cost preventive healthcare and lifestyle intervention programs for all Policies that give caregivers more time to shop for and prepare healthy meals, like free or low-cost childcare and eldercare Subsidies for domestic production of vegetables and fruits, which could be diverted away from factory-farmed animal products Policies that fortify regional, national, and international supply chains and break up agribusiness monopolies This list is hardly comprehensive. Each of these bullet points could entail dozens of policy options, and not all those options will be equally effective across regions or demographics. Local and state authorities must do what is best for each community, bearing in mind long-term health and sustainability. Complicating matters is the need to balance structural solutions with the piecemeal programs that deal with the problems of today but don’t necessarily prevent those of tomorrow. We need to address the structural nutrition and hunger issues with an even greater sense of commitment in order to rely less on means-tested programs that are too easily weaponized against the poor and marginalized. Can we trust the government to deliver on its promises? There are many legitimate concerns and due skepticism surrounding the White House Conference. Foremost: it isn’t clear how tough the White House is willing to be on industry, and failing to regulate Big Food and Ag’s influence in the political, regulatory, and scientific processes would derail most efforts to meaningfully reduce diet-related diseases in the United States. And in the policy world, a decade’s worth of progress can easily be wiped out by an antagonistic administration. We need reassurance that there will be legal mechanisms in place ensuring legislators adhere to the health and hunger goals—if not to the exact policy roadmap the Conference prescribes. Unfortunately, not all lawmakers care about public health, or they simply care more about short-term political gain and courting the agribusiness elite. We’ll not only need safeguards to protect the public interest but also to remain vigilant and galvanized in the decade that follows. Yet another concern is the hysteria that can sometimes arise in response to perceived “culture wars.” Is it possible to legislate food culture—and if so, should it be done? Should the government tell us what we can or can’t eat, or limit our choices? Personally, I think this is the wrong question to be asking. A better one is: Should we allow unelected, profit-driven entities, who engineer addictive foods linked with our national health crises, to go unchallenged in manipulating us with advertisements, grooming our children’s palates in publicly-funded school cafeterias, and crowding out the local food cultures we once enjoyed in this country? Regardless of how we choose to answer those questions, we need to get sober about our untenable crisis of diet-related disease. There are always winners and losers, and Americans’ physical health has been losing to industry executives’ wins, decade after decade. But moving forward, we can level the playing field so that the food system we mutually rely upon creates opportunity and supports health and good nutrition for all. The White House Conference may be the only reckoning we get to make that ideal a reality. How to not squander this opportunity As a nutrition security-focused organization, we know one thing for certain: Without a big push to include more whole grains, plant proteins, and fruits and vegetables in our diets, our burden of diet-related disease is unlikely to improve. Hunger is of course hugely important to solve, but its solutions are more social-economic than they are alimentary. While a noble cause, ending hunger alone without transforming our disease-promoting food environments and our resource-depleting food system is still far less than what the American people need and deserve. Each of us, especially our political leaders, needs to accept these facts in order to not squander the rare opportunity of the White House Conference. If you agree, make your voice heard before July 15, 2022, and stay engaged with Balanced’s work as we continue to advocate for nutritious food for all. ______________ Madeline is the Food System and Nutrition Policy Analyst at Balanced. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Nutrition Science and Food Policy. She works to advance policies that foster healthier food environments and better public health outcomes. You can reach her here: madelineb@balanced.org To request information about balancing your institution's menu and receive support (FREE!) one-on-one support from Maddy in doing so, please email Maddy directly or visit our Institutional Support page. From there, you can download a step-by-step guide and get started today! Balanced is a nonprofit organization providing the tools, resources, and supports for everyday people to advocate for healthier menus in their community institutions. Please support Balanced's mission with a donation of any size today.

If there’s one thing I can count on, it’s that popular media will continue to circulate feel-good distortions of the nutrition science literature. This time, we have ‘The Vindication of Cheese, Butter, and Full-Fat Milk’ written by medical doctor and Yale lecturer James Hamblin for The Atlantic. To his credit, Dr. Hamblin offers a rather timid endorsement of saturated fat, in contrast to the bravado of the click-baity title. Still, I fear even a more nuanced piece like this one will simply be taken as a carte blanche to gorge on high-fat dairy. But before jumping on this bandwagon, consumers should seriously question the evidence presented in the Atlantic article. Let’s take a look. The crux of the author’s arguments is that blood levels of certain saturated and trans fatty acids found in milk are not correlated with harmful cardiovascular disease outcomes. Right off the bat, the premise is somewhat flawed. It’s true that dairy fat contains the saturated fatty acids pentadecanoic acid and heptadecanoic acid, the supposed biomarkers of dairy fat intake. But it’s wrong to assume that blood levels of these fatty acids correlate with dairy consumption per se. Quite to the contrary, these fatty acids are present in the blood of vegans who abstain from dairy entirely. In fact, these fatty acids are also associated with fiber—that is, plant—consumption. Perhaps that is why these alleged markers of dairy fat intake weren’t associated with cardiovascular disease. Knowing this, we certainly can’t conclude that eating full-fat dairy products are neutral for our health from this one study. We can’t even conclude that these saturated fatty acids in the blood are well correlated with dairy intake at all, considering some dairy products are fat-free. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t even begin to cover all the potential pitfalls of this particular study and the flaws with Dr. Hamblin’s interpretation of the findings. The Atlantic piece also points to a meta-analysis of observational studies and randomized controlled trials, which appear to confirm the trends we already know: With respect to cardiovascular diseases, consuming more polyunsaturated fats tends to produce better health outcomes in comparison to consuming more saturated and trans fats. Many of the trends failed to reach statistical significance, but I would venture to argue that’s more an artifact of both poor study design and data collection. Oftentimes, observational studies simply lack the statistical power to fully tease apart the true effects of different nutrients on our health. I could keep going, spending another several hours meticulously documenting all the problematic elements of the studies cited and Dr. Hamblin’’s interpretations of the findings. I could painstakingly craft arguments and support them with high quality research. I could, but I have a more important point to make: Individuals with medical degrees—who lecture at Ivy League institutions, who benefit from the prestige of their disciplines, whom everyday people turn to for sound health advice, who have the privilege of a highly read media platform like The Atlantic—should not be wasting their efforts trying to convince Americans it’s okay to eat a well-established disease-promoting nutrient that is wildly over-consumed. As a nation, we eat a lot of saturated fat. We’re also very sick; this is not a coincidence. Rather, public figures of authority like Dr. Hamblin should look at what is sorely lacking in the Western diet—fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes—and help consumers understand and attain the benefits of a balanced diet centered around minimally processed plants. With that in mind, let’s keep our eyes on the ball and focus on how we can leverage policy and institutional power to improve nutrition security and save lives this new year. Madeline is the Food System and Nutrition Policy Analyst at Balanced. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Nutrition from the Univ. of Texas and Tufts, respectively. As a nutrition expert, she advocates for more plant-based dining options in critical institutions with the aim of building healthier food environments and fostering better public health outcomes. You can reach her here: madelineb@balanced.org To request information about balancing your institution's menu and receive support (FREE!) one-on-one support from Balanced in doing so, please email info@balanced.org or visit our Institutional Support page. From there, you can download a step-by-step guide and get started today! Balanced is a nonprofit organization providing the tools, resources, and supports for everyday people to advocate for healthier menus in their community institutions. Please support Balanced's mission with a donation of any size today.

In an effort to curtail the pandemic-caused spike in child hunger and malnutrition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture made school breakfast and lunch free for all public school students through the 2022-23 school year. States like California and Maine are already planning to continue the policy beyond 2023. Universal school meals will help to eliminate child hunger in America, and we should celebrate the mainstreaming of the policy. At the same time, the policy on its own does not adequately address the equally serious crisis of preventable, diet-related diseases among children and adolescents. With kids’ diets and health having markedly declined during the pandemic, it has never been more urgent to name the problem and demand action from our elected officials. A necessary starting point is to acknowledge that the food industry’s ubiquity within and influence over the school food landscape is leaving children nutritionally short-changed in the name of profit and convenience. Food industry lobbyists have successfully manipulated school nutrition regulations against kids’ best interests while food service management companies pump out cheaply manufactured heat-and-serve entrees for schools. For instance, many school cafeterias routinely serve an industry formulated ‘beef sausage breakfast sandwich’ containing nearly 500 milligrams of sodium, virtually no fiber or antioxidants, and only 214 calories. This is a disease-promoting level of salt with a greater sodium-to-calorie ratio than even a MacDonald’s Big Mac. And indeed, with regular school lunch options like chicken nuggets, hot dogs, and pepperoni pizza, school menus too often resemble those of fast food restaurants. Take a first-of-its-kind study in the journal Nutrients which found that, although schools should strive to limit added sugars to less than ten percent of total calories per meal in accordance with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, added sugars made up 17 percent of total calories in school breakfast, on average. Moreover, more than two-thirds of schools served lunches exceeding the ten percent limit. These realities leave many advocates questioning whether the nation’s school meals consistently meet any of the federal nutrition recommendations. Indeed, under a privatized school food regime, there is concern that the crucial universal school meals policy will function simply as a corporate handout without delivering balanced nutrition to students. That’s why we must take bigger, bolder action against child malnutrition just as we did with child hunger—leveraging critical institutions like schools as targets of reform. Just as before, advocates must pressure our elected officials and regulators to do at least the following two things. First, modify the school nutrition standards to require more whole, fiber-rich foods; this would shift the balance away from the highly processed convenience items that currently dominate school menus. Second, provide schools with resources, equipment, and training for the preparation of more scratch-made meals; building up their capacity for on-site cooking would give schools far more control over the nutritional content of the meals they serve. Policymakers made the right call on universal school meals, but stopping there leaves the job half done. Combating chronic, diet-related diseases among young people is an urgent cause. Let's continue to take advantage of our essential school meals programs to fight that battle, too, by helping schools overcome their privatization problem. Madeline is the Food System and Nutrition Policy Analyst at Balanced. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Nutrition from the Univ. of Texas and Tufts, respectively. As a nutrition expert, she advocates for more plant-based dining options in critical institutions with the aim of building healthier food environments and fostering better public health outcomes. You can reach her here: madelineb@balanced.org To request information about balancing your institution's menu and receive support (FREE!) one-on-one support from Balanced in doing so, please email info@balanced.org or visit our Institutional Support page. From there, you can download a step-by-step guide and get started today! Balanced is a nonprofit organization providing the tools, resources, and supports for everyday people to advocate for healthier menus in their community institutions. Please support Balanced's mission with a donation of any size today.

Back in 2019, Balanced conducted a simple analysis of 24 random lunch menus pulled from 15 of the largest school districts across different regions of the country. For this analysis, we recorded simple counts of various meat-based menu items, including those containing beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and fish, as well as different categories of processed meats, such as deli slices, bacon, and hotdogs. What we found was pretty interesting. Across 20 days of lunches from each of the menus, we recorded a total of 807 meat-centered menu items, of which 87% contained red and/or processed meats. In other words, the overwhelming majority of meat dishes offered contained the most unhealthy forms of meat we have, with only 13% of those items consisting of minimally processed poultry or fish. But that was before COVID-19 flipped our lives (and school food service) upside-down. How, then, has the pandemic affected what’s being fed the nation’s children? To find out, we repeated our meat item menu analysis and used another 24 menus (matched for grade-level to keep things consistent) from the exact same districts. As you can imagine, having a second point in time yielded even more illuminating results. The table below shows us the meat item counts in 2019 and 2021, the simple difference between the two, and the percent change. Here are some of the most notable findings: The number of less-processed beef items declined by nearly 30% during the pandemic. Minimally processed chicken items nearly doubled while chicken nuggets and tenders dropped by 70%. Similarly, minimally processed turkey items increased by 70%, but deli turkey items also increased by 60%. There were substantial drops in most other categories of processed meat items, with sausage and ham being nearly eliminated from menus entirely. While fish stick items declined by 70%, minimally processed fish nearly sextupled. The sum total of all meat items declined from 807 in 2019 to 653 in 2021 (a 19% drop). Overall, it appears that, over the last two years, there’s been a big shift away from more processed meat items and toward less-processed poultry and fish. It’s unclear whether this is a result of pandemic constraints (e.g., commodity price and availability challenges) or other factors. However, we can safely say that, at least thanks in part to stay-at-home orders, the diversity of options available decreased. This might explain most of the declines we see in total meat items offered. In other words, these declines could simply be pandemic artifacts, but regardless, could these changes be permanent and result in kids eating less meat? For now, we can’t deduce from these data if kids are consuming and being served less meat this year. However, to account for the overall reduction in items offered, let’s investigate how the proportions of various meat categories changed from 2019 to 2021 to help us determine whether any of the noted changes are meaningful. See the table below. From these numbers, we can see that beef items comprised about 30% of the total meat-based lunches in 2019, whereas in 2021, it’s almost four percentage points lower. While it’s nice to see a modest downtick, this is far less impressive than the 28% decline in the simple count of beef items we saw in the first table. Notably, even accounting for the drop in overall total meat items offered, the share of red and processed meats declined by nearly 20%. Now that is interesting and unexpected. The figures also seem to confirm that, despite the large drop in chicken nugget and tender items as seen in the first table, poultry items have increased in number overall due to gains among minimally processed chicken and turkey items, chicken patties, and deli turkey items. Comparing the 2019 and 2021 values between matched menus, we can see that the reductions in meat items were not uniform across districts (and sometimes not even within districts). Of the 24 menus analyzed, 14 (or 58%) showed an overall decline in total meat items between timepoints while 10 menus showed an increase in total meat items. In total, 10 (or 67%) of the 15 districts sampled had reduced the number of meat items offered. In other words, clearly not all districts reported meat item reductions, and some districts showed an increase in meat items in one menu and a decrease in another. Among the “decrease” group of menus, the average reduction was by 23 items, or an average percent change of -46%. Among the “increase” group of menus, the average bump was by 17 items, which translates to an average percent change of +81%. These increases were largely driven by three districts—Houston ISD, Seattle Public Schools, and Orange County Public Schools—which more than doubled their offerings of meat items. There were only two other districts reporting overall increases in meat offerings—Omaha Public Schools and Miami-Dade Public Schools—and their increases were more marginal. Looking more closely at each school district, we see that just a handful of districts drove the trends described in the bulleted list above. For example, the apparent shift toward minimally processed chicken was driven in large part by Houston ISD and Seattle Public Schools. Similarly, Fairfax County, St. Louis Public Schools, Shelby County, San Diego USD, and Cy-Fair ISD drove the overall decrease in beef items (though Orange County bucked this trend with large increases in beef items). What’s clear is that there is much heterogeneity from district to district. Nonetheless, there appear to be (1) fewer meat-based options to choose from, (2) a shift away from red and processed meats, and (3) a heavier reliance on poultry, in the aggregate. The first observation is to be expected given the constraints of meal distributions during the pandemic. The second and third findings were less obvious but may also be a result of ongoing pandemic-related price changes or pragmatic changes related to meal distribution logistics. Only time will tell if these changes are here to stay, but perhaps the disruptions of the pandemic present advocates an opportunity to ask food service operators to continue limiting the number of red meat and processed meat items they serve as students return to the classroom. In future analyses, it would be helpful to collect numbers of meat-based, vegetarian, and plant-based entrees and their percentages of total entrees offered to determine if plant proteins are gaining ground over animal proteins in the cafeteria. This would provide another dimension of analysis to help us paint a fuller and more accurate picture of the school food dynamics. ______________ Madeline is the Institutional Outreach and Support Manager at Balanced. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Nutrition from the Univ. of Texas and Tufts, respectively. As a nutrition expert, she advocates for more plant-based dining options in critical institutions with the aim of building healthier food environments and fostering better public health outcomes. You can reach her here: madelineb@balanced.org To request information about balancing your institution's menu and receive support (FREE!) one-on-one support from Maddy in doing so, please email Maddy directly or visit our Institutional Support page. From there, you can download a step-by-step guide and get started today! Balanced is a nonprofit organization providing the tools, resources, and supports for everyday people to advocate for healthier menus in their community institutions. Please support Balanced's mission with a donation of any size today.

Balanced is excited to bring to you our Nutrition Mythbusters series in which we debunk eight major myths about the links between diet and health! We believe that accurate, evidence-based nutrition information should be accessible to everyone. That’s why we created this educational series dispelling some of the most common and persistent misconceptions regarding healthy, balanced eating and diet-related disease. You can find the video episode of today's blog on our YouTube channel. There are many people who continue to believe that animal proteins are not only good for you, but actually essential elements of a healthy diet. And who could blame them? Through food advertising and other media, we are bombarded with the notion that more protein is always better, especially from “high quality” animal sources. But not only are animal proteins not essential, it is their “high quality” nature that makes them problematic for our health. Animal proteins, in the form of red meat, poultry, fish, dairy, and eggs, are very similar in structure and composition to the proteins in our own body. As such, animal proteins tend to fuel growth factor production even at moderate levels of consumption, which for us can spell the promotion of tumors. On the other hand, consuming plant proteins, even at high proportions of total calorie intake, fail to cause this cancer-promoting spike in growth factors. In addition, the structural similarity between animal proteins and our own proteins poses a risk for autoimmune diseases. When we develop allergies to animal proteins that are analogous to our own, our bodies can end up attacking our own tissues. This is one of the proposed mechanisms by which dairy protein consumption among children is thought to trigger type 1 diabetes, where the body attacks the cells of the pancreas that produce insulin. Though the dairy industry often touts the calcium content of its products, the calcium in leafy greens like kale is more readily absorbed by the body. Similarly, animal protein also comes with animal sex hormones, the same or similar to those in humans, including a range of estrogens. High-fat dairy products are particularly chock-full of mammalian estrogens, so much so that regular consumption has been associated with a decline in fertility in men and women, suggesting damage to or aging of testicular and ovarian tissues. But sex hormones aren’t the only chemicals we should worry about in animal products. Dozens of industrial pollutants, including ones that have since been banned, like DDT and PCBs, are present in significant amounts in red meat, poultry, fish, and dairy. Some of these, like PCBs, have endocrine-disrupting or estrogenic properties. Fish, like salmon, is praised for its omega-3 fatty acid content, yet it is precisely within the fat that these fat-soluble pollutants like PCBs and dioxins accumulate. An article published by Harvard Medical School suggests that for those with family histories of cancer, fish consumption should be limited to once or twice per month. Given that the lifetime risk of having cancer in the United States is roughly one in two and the risk of dying from cancer is one in five, I would suggest, regardless of family history, we should all limit our seafood intake. A much safer way to consume more omega-3 fatty acids is through plant-based sources, such as walnuts, ground flax seeds, chia seeds, or an algae-derived supplement. This is especially important advice for pregnant women, who should steer clear of fish altogether. Heavy metals in animal proteins pose yet another serious risk to health. Arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, and other harmful heavy metals tend to accumulate in animals, particularly fish, which live in highly contaminated oceans and waterways. Chicken is especially high in arsenic, as arsenic-containing compounds are added to chicken feed to prevent infection and speed up growth. Mercury, found at high levels in seafood, has deleterious effects on the developing brain and can increase risk of a child being epileptic, and for the consumption of most species of fish, the harms of mercury outweigh potential benefits of omega-3 fatty acid content. On the other hand, consuming more fiber- and phytate-rich plant-based foods, which bind heavy metals, can significantly reduce the absorption of heavy metals from food. If you think industrial contaminants are alarming, then hold onto your hats for the microbiological contaminants of animal proteins. We’ve all witnessed the recalls of various grocery items for contamination with Salmonella, Campylobacter, or E. coli. While these pathogens originate with animal products contaminated with feces, many plant-based products (most recently, onions) can become tainted, too. But the contamination of animal products is so endemic that it begs the question: are these products truly safe? One study, which sampled 316 packages of chicken from 26 states, concluded that these foods “pose a potential health threat to consumers because they are contaminated with extensively antibiotic-resistant and, presumably, virulent E. coli isolates,” (emphasis mine). Cooking-resistant endotoxins from these and other fecal bacteria damage the lining of our blood vessels over time, precipitating atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease—our number one killer. Viruses also pose a significant threat, particularly “polyomaviruses” that are known to cause cancers in both farmed animals and, ultimately, people. For example, bovine leukemia virus, acquired through consumption of meat and dairy, may account for up to 37% of all breast cancer cases in the US. As scary as all of this sounds, it is ultimately the saturated fat, cholesterol, naturally occurring trans fat, and added sodium found in red meat, dairy, fish, eggs, and poultry that contribute to our nation’s top killers—heart disease and stroke. Recent data show that, unfortunately, simply switching from red meat to white meat is not a solution. These proteins must be replaced with plant proteins to meaningfully reduce health risks. To close with some useful advice, it’s a great idea for our health (on many levels, clearly) to opt for plant-based proteins most of the time and to reduce our consumption of animal proteins in both portion size and frequency. In general, Americans are consuming two to four times as much protein as we really need, and when this excess comes from animal sources specifically, it wreaks havoc on our kidneys, colons, hearts, and, well, virtually every organ in our bodies. As far as protein recommendations go, I don’t find it helpful to tell people to eat X grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight. As long as you are consuming enough calories, you are surely getting enough protein. Stick to eating a plethora of legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains, and vegetables, and you’ll be set.

Balanced is excited to bring to you our Nutrition Mythbusters series in which we debunk eight major myths about the links between diet and health! We believe that accurate, evidence-based nutrition information should be accessible to everyone. That’s why we created this educational series dispelling some of the most common and persistent misconceptions regarding healthy, balanced eating and diet-related disease. You can find the video episode of today's blog on our YouTube channel. Back in January 2019, we published a blog post refuting some of the claims made in an article touting the supposed wholesomeness of eggs. Now, in February 2021, I’m sorry to say that regularly consuming eggs is still risky for health. Nonetheless, a Google search with the keywords “eggs healthy” yields a wealth of results—a couple of which are from reputable sources like the American Heart Association and Harvard Health—in support of consuming eggs roughly three to seven times a week for “healthy” individuals. (Already, they’re speaking of a minority of American adults, and it’s unclear how “healthy” is defined.) Interestingly, many of these articles—the ones not written by egg industry-employed dietitians, anyway—take a rather timid, equivocal stance on eggs, something akin to, “Well, we have this conflicting data about eggs and heart disease, but it’s probably fine to eat maybe an egg a day, I guess?” Basically, their words don’t inspire a lot of confidence. It’s true that the data are mixed when it comes to eggs and cardiovascular disease, but as I described in our 2019 blog post, much of the science has been compromised by the egg industry’s strategic meddling, along with major flaws and limitations in study design, analysis, and interpretation. Even still, many studies do show poorer health outcomes for those consuming more eggs, including a 2019 study published in JAMA which found that consuming more than two to three eggs per week conferred a small but significant increased risk for heart disease and death by any cause. Harvard professor Dr. Teresa Fung commented on the study for the Harvard Heart Letter urging the public to set the limit at two eggs per week to play it safe. Moreover, roughly 30% of people are “super-reactors” to dietary cholesterol due to their genetics; for these individuals in particular, consuming cholesterol-rich eggs regularly may be extra risky for heart health. But it’s more than the negative cardiovascular impacts of egg consumption that we should be worried about. You may recall from our Mythbusters installment on saturated fat and cholesterol that the processes of cooking and metabolism oxidize cholesterol into more dangerous forms known as cholesterol oxidation products, or COPs. COPs are involved in both initiation and progression of chronic diseases, such as atherosclerosis, neurodegenerative disease, kidney failure, and diabetes. Indeed, in a Harvard study investigating the link between egg consumption and diabetes, men and women who ate just one egg per day raised their risk of developing type 2 diabetes 58% and 77%, respectively, relative to those consuming less than an egg per week. Similarly, women eating at least one egg daily before and during pregnancy had roughly double the risk of developing gestational diabetes, which can severely harm the health of both mother and baby. There’s also the link between egg and cholesterol intake and cancer. The science is a bit more complex here because there are multiple mechanisms by which egg consumption could mediate the promotion of tumors. For example, blood and urine levels of TMAO generated from the choline and carnitine in eggs (described in our original 2019 blog post) are closely correlated with, and even predict development of, cancers of the gastrointestinal tract. More research needs to be done in this area, but cholesterol intake in general is associated with a wide range of cancers, including stomach, pancreas, colon, rectum, kidney, bladder, breast, and lung cancers and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Nevertheless, eggs can be included in an otherwise healthy diet, just not on the order of an egg per day as some experts have arbitrarily opined. I tend to agree with Dr. Fung—two eggs maximum per week, and preferably fewer than that.