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Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Eating Out in NYC without Salt
New York City has once again
fired the first shot in yet another battle to provide dietary guidelines for their citizens. In 2006, the
NYC Department of Health banned trans-fats in food service establishments. This was followed up in 2008 by requiring that
chains of 15 or more restaurants post calorie counts on their menu. Both these measures were met with stiff opposition from
the restaurant industry, yet both passed the legislature and court challenges to become law.
Now the NYC health officials
have set their sights on sodium chloride. Their newest initiative plans to reduce the average New Yorker’s daily salt
intake by 25% over the next five years and by 50% in the next ten years. Reasoning that people get the
majority of their sodium from prepared meals, officials are again targeting the restaurants and commercial food processors
to reduce the salt they put in their food. The underlying goal is to reduce health care costs associated with high blood pressure
and heart disease.
The NYC program is similar to one started in the United Kingdom in 2003. A
random sample of UK adults (19-64) taken in June 2008 indicate a 9% reduction in daily salt intake, from 9.5 g to 8.6 g since
2000. The FSA has targeted a further reduction to 6.0 g by 2010.
It is important to note that a high sodium diet is just
one of the risk factors believed to contribute to heart disease or high blood pressure. Diets high in fat, obesity, smoking,
lack of physical exercise, and heredity are also said to play a role in the development of coronary disease.
2:02 pm
Thursday, April 16, 2009
FDA and Food Allergens
Should the FDA update their list of common
food allergens? The accepted allergen list for the United States contains the 8 most common allergy inducing foods;
Milk, Eggs, Wheat, Fish, Shellfish, Peanuts, Tree nuts, and Soy. These are often referred to as the “Big 8” because
it is believed they account for approximately 90% of food allergies in this country. But there is ample evidence to
suggest that adverse reactions to sesame / sesame seeds are on the rise.
Ethnic foods are gaining popularity in the U.S., particularly snack foods
marketed toward children. Many of these contain sesame or its byproducts. Some researchers believe it is simply a numbers
game, the more people who eat a particular food, the greater probability of an allergic reaction. This may account for
localized allergen patterns in different countries. Sesame is the 3rd leading cause of food allergies in
the Middle East, after cow’s milk and eggs, whereas it is probably 9th among U.S. foods. The European Union
adds sesame, celery, mustard, and sulfites, to the American list.
I personally don’t think the U.S. is ready to declare mustard and celery
as major allergens, but the addition of sesame and sulfites to our accepted list may make sense at this time or in the near
future.
1:43 pm
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
From Peanuts to Pistachios
First peanuts, now pistachios! Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella [California],
Inc has issued a nationwide recall of up to 2 million pounds of pistachios due to possible contamination with Salmonella.
This appears to be just the first round of recalls because, like the earlier peanut crisis, the pistachios were used
as ingredients in many other foods such as ice cream, cookies, and candy. The increased likelihood for additional product
recalls caused Dr. David Acheson of the FDA to advise against eating pistachios of any kind until the source of contamination
becomes better known.
Salmonella has not historically been a problem with roasted nuts, since proper roasting would
normally kill any bacteria that may be present. These bacteria occur naturally in the intestinal tracts
of animals and birds. So it is quite possible that the pistachios became contaminated through contact with birds or mice after
the roasting occurred, either during processing or in storage.
I wonder how the plant
inspection reports from this California facility will measure up to the state and federal inspections of the Peanut Corporation
of America (PCA) plants. If it comes out that rampant contamination issues existed but were not being reported properly, expect
the outcries of food safety reform in the 111th Congress to intensify. With back-to-back outbreaks like this, I
expect there will be some new regulations dictating probable contaminants in many foods that were previously deemed “safe”.
9:06 am
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