Fish, Honey, and Juice are Especially Vulnerable to Food Fraud in the Grocery Store

Gatorade to remove an ingredient in response to a teenager’s online petition

here is the petition Sarah created

http://www.change.org/petitions/gatorade-don-t-put-flame-retardant-chemicals-in-sports-drinks

Changes to General Mills Packaging in 2014

I am always happy to see my friends and family making an effort to buy healthier products at the grocery store (even more excited when they cook from scratch with them), but unless you are particularly interested in health and nutrition, you probably do not have the background or experience to interpret some of the health and nutrition claims on many processed food packagings – that is why consumer protection groups often address what they consider to be misleading advertisements and packaging. To be sure, there is a component of personal responsibility that cannot be ignored, the consumer cannot be protected from itself entirely, he or she should make a reasonable effort to police his or her own purchasing decisions, but I believe that expectation should be in the context of reasonably clear and fair information with which to make those purchasing decisions. I doubt anyone is under the illusion that Krispi Cream Donuts are healthy or contain any nutrtious ingredients, but they taste good to many people and many people buy them, knowing full well what they are eating.

But as the American consumer has become more health conscious, companies sometimes use advertising in ways that are misleading. Not everyone agrees with that assessment, and there is disagreement about the degree to which certain packaging claims are deceptive.

The Federal Trade Commission recently ruled that advertisements from juice maker POM Wonderful contained health claims that were misleading and unsubstantiated. This was not the first confrontation between the regulator and the company. In 2010, the FTC sued POM Wonderful for claiming that its drinks helped prevent heart disease and cancer.

The POM case is just one example of a slew of recent confrontations companies have had with regulators, customers and advocacy groups for false advertising and misleading labeling. Foods labelled as healthy or “all-natural” have been targeted most frequently. Other products at issue have ranged from shoes to cars. Based on recent reports, 24/7 Wall St. has reviewed the most misleading product claims.

Other government agencies, in addition to the FTC, have taken action against companies to protect consumers from misleading advertising. Last November, the Environmental Protection Agency publicly said that Hyundai and Kia, sister South Korean automakers, misrepresented the fuel efficiency of several of their models and required the company to change its advertising.

The majority of the cases on this list are related to food or drink products claiming to have benefits they do not have or, at the very least, that the company does not have the evidence to support. Diamond Foods, for one, was sued after it claimed its walnuts have heart benefits without having supporting evidence. General Mills’ Fruit Roll-Ups had pictures of strawberries and other fruits on the box, yet the product is made with pear concentrate, and with no strawberries of any kind.

One of the public interest groups that has been at the forefront of suits related to food or drink and health is consumer advocacy group the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The CSPI has been involved in several of the lawsuits on this list.

In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Stephen Gardner, the Director of Litigation at CSPI, explained that there has been a major uptick in actions over food and beverage products and their health claims. Gardner explained that a major reason for this increase is a notable lack of clarity in FTC language on some kinds of food labeling. This extends to whether or not a company can label its product as “all-natural,” as well as claims about the healthiness of products.

“Eight years ago” Gardner noted, “there were, four, possibly three private lawsuits. When we showed this was a viable consumer lawsuit, many, many more people got involved.” Gardner added that this growth has been exponential.

Last year, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to volunteer for CSPI and help draft a section of a reply brief submitted by the plaintiff in the General Mills law suit. The law suit ended in a settlement, with General Mills agreeing to packaging changes starting in 2014.

General Mills agreed to improve its labeling for Strawberry Naturally Flavored Fruit Roll-Ups, an agreement that resolved a lawsuit brought against the company by a consumer who represented CSPI. Strawberry Naturally Flavored Fruit Roll-Ups contain no strawberries, but are made with pear concentrate, corn syrup, dried corn syrup, sugar, partially hydrogentated cottonseed oil, and 2% or less of various natural and artificial flavors. Based on the settlement, as long as the product contains no strawberries, the new labels will not depict images of strawberries. And, so long as the product’s label carries the claim “Made with Real Fruit,” such claims will be required to include the actual percentage of fruit in the product. Both of these changes will take effect in 2014. It was a real honor to work with Steve Gardener and Amanda Howell in contributing to the brief.

“By stating the actual percentage of fruit in the product, these labels will be less likely to lead consumers to believe that the product is all or mostly fruit,” said CSPI litigation director Steve Gardner. “A more accurate name for the product would be Pear Naturally Flavored Fruit Roll-Ups, since pear is present and strawberry is absent. But the removal of pictures of strawberries is a step in the right direction. We are pleased to have worked cooperatively with General Mills to reach this agreement.”

ps. Homemade Fruit Roll-Ups are super easy and far more nutritious

check out this recipe from Two Peas and Their Pod, it requires only two ingredients

In the alternative, there are a number of brands making fruit leather with more nutritious ingredients than most conventional brands

Stretch Island Fruit Company sells theirs with no sugar added and is available for only $.87 per ounce on Amazon.com (compared to $.43 per ounce for the General Mills variety that contains Pears From Concentrate, Corn Syrup, Dried Corn Syrup, Sugar, Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Pectin, Distilled Monoglycerides, Malic Acid, Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid), Acetylated Mono And Diglycerides, Natural Flavor, Color (Red 40, Yellows 5&6, Blue 1)

Chocolate Fest 2013

This past weekend, Drew and I went to Chocolate Fest at Fairchild Tropical Gardens. I don’t think either of us have ever tried so much chocolate! There were so many vendors giving samples of their products and so many cooking demonstrations that ended with samples – by the end I could not eat it any more. Drew was kind enough to take my samples so that I would not have to eat them or through them away 🙂

One of my favorite demonstrations was by the Mars Company, they have a division called American Heritage, that researches and educates Americans about the history of chocolate in the Americas, and in particular, in the US during colonial times, Their presentation ended with a sample of hot chocolate from a 1706 recipe! It tasted, amazing, and was completely natural and dairy free. Just pure chocolate, about 8 spices (secret recipe) and a tiny bit of sugar. Sugar was very pricy in the 18th century, so recipes did not call for a lot.

My other favorite part was the cooking demo by Short Chef, a true New Yorker who now lives in Miami and works with schools to educate children on healthy eating and cooking. Due to his own health problems and the loss of several family members from heart disease, he changed his career path as a chef to focus on healthy eating and educating children. He prepared for us a wonderful salad that included a chocolate and papaya dressing…..it was so yummy!

But maybe the best part was that Drew decided to plant a cacao plant in his backyard. It’s really a rain forest plant, so Miami can be a little to cold and windy in the winter and a little too sunny in the summer for it – but it’s worth a try!

Below are some pictures and recipes. Enjoy!

then, after digging through several feet of limestone rock, Drew planted the cacao plant…it will take several years before we get chocolate, but how good will that taste, knowing how much work and time went into it!

Below are also some products that we learned about that are worth mentioning:

Cannot recommend this chocolate enough, it is a 1706 recipe, all natural, no preservatives, low in sugar, dairy free and would make a great gift. Click here to see where you can purchase online

A few of the authors that contributed to this cookbook were at the festival and had samples of some of their recipes, they were all, without exception, outstanding! There is one called ‘Best-Ever Carrot Cake’ – and it just might be, we tried it, trust us. Click here for their Amazon link

Recipes:

Chocolate Spice Bark (serves 36)

16 Ounces of 70% Bitter Sweet Chocolate

1 tsp curry

8 ounces Dried Pineapple

8 ounces Toasted Almonds

1 small Orange Zested

Directions:

1. Coat a 9 by 12.5 inch rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray and line with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on the ends

2. Melt chocolate in a double boiler, add spices

3. Pour into baking sheet and spread in an even layer

4. Immediately sprinkle toppings over chocolate, refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour, peel off paper and break into pieces

Other spice combos: Star Anise, Mango and Macadamia Nuts

Summer Salad with Chocolate and Papaya Dressing

1/4 cup orange juice

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1/4 c olive oil

1/2 tsp dijon mustard

mandarin oranges

6 cups of mixed greens

1/3 cup candied almonds

1 large papaya cleaned and cut into pieces

1 ounce semi sweet chocolate curls (create curls by running a vegetable peeler over the edge of a piece of chocolate

Beyond a Raw Food Diet

I’m blessed to live in a city that has a lot of healthy eating options, though cooking myself or with Drew is still my favorite option. But of all the places in South Florida to eat at, my preferred location is Life Food Gourmet, a local organic restaurant, owned by John Schott that began as a strictly raw vegan establishment. It’s walking distance to my house, so I’ve been going there for quite a while. But over the last few years, they have expanded their menu to include not only some cooked foods, but even some meat, grains, and dairy. But, as you might expect, it is all grass-fed and organic.  I personally like their expanded menu, because it means there are more options for me. Below is a video where John explains why he expanded beyond the raw vegan diet to now include foods such as grass-fed beef.

Speaking of their grass-fed beef, my best friend Dani took me to Life Food Gourmet for my birthday and had one, she liked it, a lot…and she is Uruguayan, they like their beef!

Some of the comments people left to the video show just how divisive this issue can be, I think the best approach is to educate oneself, not to assume the way you have been doing things is always the best, and listen to your body – there are many things that apply across the board, but maybe different diets affect different people in varied ways. A strict raw vegan diet may be best for some people, but perhaps not all. Balance is also key – not that junk food in moderation is a good idea, but within the range of wise eating styles, a little variety is probably a good thing, always taking into account that your individual body may be allergic or intolerant to certain foods that others tolerate very well. Listen to your body.

Interesting Article in US World News and Report About an Unlikely Partnership

Tea Party Libertarians and Small Organic Farmers Make Strange Political Bedfellows – The Unlikely Coalition Between Tea Party Libertarians and Small Organic Farmers By SIMON OWENS January 24, 2013

Laura Bledsoe didn’t set out to join a political movement, she merely wanted to serve what she considered a sustainable meal.

In October 2011 she and her husband Monte decided they wanted to host what they called a “farm to fork” event in their home. They own a small farm 50 miles outside of Las Vegas.

“We advertised it as a zero mile footprint,” she recalls. “It’s been shown that the bulk of our food travels 1,500 miles to get to our plate and we were advertising the fact that this was, for the most part, food prepared directly on our farm.”

The Bledsoes placed advertisements in local newspapers and sent the announcement out to their E-mail list, and within the first day they sold all 100 of their tickets, some at $100 a plate.

Trouble began two days before the event was to take place. They received a call from the Southern Nevada Health District Office, who wanted to know if the farmers had secured a health permit for the event. “We didn’t know we needed to,” Laura says.

[OPINION: Obama and Congress Must Protect Family Farmers]

They did, she was told.

The Bledsoes didn’t panic. Monte immediately dropped what he was doing and traveled 40 miles to Mesquite to apply for a permit. It was here he learned the process required an inspection to take place the day of the event.

“It made us a little nervous, but we talked to our chef who’s used to working with the health district, and he didn’t think there would be any problem. He was very familiar with what [the health inspector] was looking for and didn’t give it another thought,” says Laura

But it soon became apparent that her nervousness wasn’t unfounded.

The health inspector arrived simultaneously with several of the event’s guests. The Bledsoes led her to where the food was being prepared while the guests were guided on a chaperoned tour of the farm by interns.

“She literally came in and started looking for things she could find fault with,” Laura recalls. “That just became apparent in her attitude and demeanor with how she handled things.”

The health inspector raised several concerns, but chief among them was the meat the Bledsoes were preparing to serve. Because the event was advertised as a “zero mile footprint,” the meat hadn’t been sent through a USDA processing plant, as is required for any meat purchased at a grocery store or restaurant, so the inspector deemed it illegal to serve.

“She immediately demanded that we send our guests home and cease the event, and if we didn’t she would call the police and have them personally escorted off the property.”

Increasingly panicked, flustered, and “having a nervous breakdown,” Laura attempted to reason with the inspector without success. In addition to being ordered to send their guests home, the farmers were also told they needed to pour bleach over all the meat to ensure it would never be served.

“It’s one thing when you throw out a piece of food that you have no relationship to,” Laura says. “But we raised these animals. When you raise animals and slaughter them and then prepare them, it’s with great reverence that you eat this food. The total disregard for any of that was just appalling to me.”

In the middle of this disruption, the Bledsoes recalled they had a number for the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit organization that protects the legal rights of family farms and artisan food producers. Though it was a Friday evening, the organization’s lead counsel Gary Cox called them back within 15 minutes. He instructed them to ask if the inspector if she had a search warrant, if she didn’t, Cox told them to tell her to leave the property.

The tactic worked. Though the health inspector threatened to come back with the police, she left, leaving the Bledsoes to explain what had happened to their guests. They had already poured bleach on the meat, but they were still able to serve their vegetable dishes without further disturbance, and of the 100 who signed up for the event, only a handful left because of time constraints, Laura says.

While the Bledsoes didn’t immediately hear back from the health department, they decided to send out an E-mail recounting the experience to shareholders of their local food delivery service, known as a CSA. Soon, the story went viral, traveling the globe and leading to hundreds of E-mails from farmers and activists. Eventually, Laura was contacted by Nevada lawmakers, many of whom were sympathetic to her cause and wanted to reform state laws so that such a fiasco wouldn’t happen again.

Without even meaning to, the Bledsoes found themselves swept up in a political movement that has only accrued momentum in recent years, one in which owners of small local farms and gardens are pitted against government agencies, both local and federal, over the rights of property owners and private citizens in terms of how and where they can prepare their food.

But what is perhaps even more peculiar about this movement is its bipartisan interest. Among its most vocal proponents you’ll find an amalgamation of ardent Tea Party libertarians—concerned over property rights and the over-extended reach of government—and liberal environmentalists who believe the local, organic farm is the ecologically-friendly solution to the nation’s health woes.

“If I had to guess, I would say we were fifty-fifty in terms of extreme liberals and extreme conservatives,” says Laura. But though the fight extends across party lines, little has been done so far to bridge the political gap in pursuance of bipartisan activism for farmer rights.

Lynn Hamilton, a professor of agribusiness at the California Polytechnic State University, argues that this tension between government and farmers stems from structural changes within the industry over the last decade. She points to a U.S. Census of Agriculture report finding that while the number of farms increased between 2002 and 2007, “nearly all that increase came from the smallest segment that produce less than $10,000 in sales.”

“The statistics show that basically that middle ground of what people think of as a traditional farm in America, that’s shrinking,” she says. “The largest segment of commercial farms is growing and the segment of very small lifestyle rural hobby farms is growing. But it’s that middle ground, that traditional agrarian, bucolic vision that a lot of people have of what farming is, that’s shrinking. It seems like you either get small and go niche to a high end market, or you go big.”

The report found that the number of farms with sales of less than $1,000 had increased by 118,000, and those with sales of more than $500,000 grew by 46,000. The only contraction occurred for farms generating between $1,000 and $250,000 in sales.

Jeff Rowes, a lawyer for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm based in Arlington, Virginia has sought out and represents many of these cases. Like Hamilton, he traces the roots of this movement to a decades-long shift in the agricultural industry toward large, commercially-viable institutions built for the mass-production of food. As government regulations have coalesced around this new normal during the past few generations, small farmers have found themselves caught within the confines of laws that weren’t designed for them.

“What that means is that when there’s a grassroots movement like there is now, back toward simplicity, back toward raising your own food in a manner that people have done for thousands of years, including the people who founded this country, suddenly the methods that they want to use on a micro level are all illegal,” said Rowes.

Or, as Hamilton put it: “It’s like hitting a fly with a B-2 bomber.”

Often times, Rowes said, his clients are surprised to find themselves pulled into the movement.

Recently, the New York Times profiled several individuals who had planted vegetable gardens in their front yards, only to be confronted by local authorities who were enforcing county or city zoning codes that forbid such actions. One sustainability director in Orlando ascribed these codes to an era when “the aesthetic was more of a formalized thing. Organic, natural planting was out of vogue.” Many local officials admit that the codes merely protect the property values of homeowners, rather than having any real public utility.

Admissions like these are what make such issues fodder for public outrage, as many can sympathize with the David versus Goliath archetype that’s formed when you see a gardener seemingly bullied by a larger institution.

“Generally what we’re looking for in a case is it has to have simple facts,” says Rowes. “The fact has to be outrageous. There has to be an evil villain, and there has to be a sympathetic plaintiff.”

But perhaps because many who find themselves battling state and local governments aren’t seasoned political activists, they haven’t always done a spectacular job organizing grassroots opposition, at least not across party lines.

“The one thing that I have not found is a lot of bipartisan cooperation, even though it’s a bipartisan issue,” Rowes says. So while the Tea Party libertarians and liberal environmentalists may be on the same side, each isn’t necessarily aware the other exists.

In some cases, attempts to organize these farmers can be met with resistance. Such has been the case for Mark Baker, a 52-year-old Michigan farmer who has been engaged in a year-long battle with his state’s Department of Natural Resources, which recently issued a declaratory rulingplacing wild Russian boars on its invasive species list.

For years, Baker has been raising and slaughtering a hybrid breed of Mangalitsa pig -a European breed with a hairy fleece that has been gradually replaced by domestic breeds. Under Michigan law, an animal only has to meet one of nine characteristics to be labeled invasive (including an incredibly vague catch-all: “Other characteristics not currently known to the MDNR that are identified by the scientific community”). As a result authorities informed him last year that the pigs raised on his farm were illegal and must be put down.

What followed was a vituperative legal war in which Baker not only sued the state (the case is still ongoing), but has also appeared before a Michigan state senate committee to argue his cause. But the more immersed the recalcitrant farmer has become in the political process, the more he has distanced himself from both parties.

“They put on the show for the people, but they never really do what the people want—either side,” he says.

And so when his story began to spread and various political groups approached him, Baker rebuffed their advances.

“We had the Tea Party wanting to come alongside of us and make us their little darling. I didn’t like the spirit of the people I was talking to on the phone. They were going to use our situation and our hardship to prop up whatever their agenda is,” says Baker. Similar inquiries from liberal groups were also rejected.

Not all relationships between these small, local farmers and government agencies are entirely antagonistic, however.

Amy Stewart, one of the writers for Garden Rant, a group blog of “highly opinionated gardeners,” says while many horticulturists get frustrated with the red tape that has accumulated over the past decade, they also maintain a symbiotic rapport with government scientists and researchers.

“You can call your representative at the USDA when you’re having this problem with apple codling moths and say, ‘We’ve tried to get rid of them and it’s not working anymore. Are you guys doing any research?’ And they’ll come and set up a research station on your farm and figure it out,” she says.

And in some instances, both sides can reach a happy agreement.

For the past year, the Bledsoes have worked directly with Nevada lawmakers while the legislature has been out of session to carve out exemptions for farmers like them. Under proposed legislation, the Nevada Department of Agriculture would inspect their facilities and designate them “self inspectors,” which would permit them to sell meat on their own farm without sending it 400 miles to a USDA processing plant. The bill will be introduced to the legislature during the 2013 session that begins in February, and Laura says she’s optimistic it’ll pass.

Hamilton, the agribusiness professor, says there have been several recent cases in which the government has carved out some regulatory room for smaller niche producers.

“For example, the big E. coli outbreak that happened in 2006 was really the catalyst to get the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement put into place,” she explains. “Because the cost of these regulations are so onerous, there are exceptions that are made for producers below a certain size.” The whole purpose of the agreement, after all, was to deal with greens that flow through a large food chain—from the fields in California to the packing and cooling sheds to the grocery store; the more marketing channels there are, the greater risk of a food safety problem. If you’re a small grower, that chain merely extends from the farm to a local farmer’s market, thereby limiting the risk.

But lest one be lured into a false sense of amicability between farmer and government, the self inspections weren’t the only changes the Bledsoes hoped for when lobbying Nevada representatives.

“The first thing I wanted to include was the option to purchase raw milk,” Laura says. “We were told right off the bat don’t even go there.”

More News:

• Herbicide-Resistant ‘Super Weeds’ Increasingly Plaguing Farmers
• In Search of a Holiday Turkey, Finding a Rural Way of Life
• Opinion: How to Label Genetically Modified Food

• 

  Simon Owens is an assistant managing editor at U.S. News & World Report. You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. He can be reached at sowens@usnews.com.

  Read more stories by Simon Owens

Dr. Mark Hyman’s Article About the Link Between Dairy and Acne

DO MILK AND SUGAR CAUSE ACNE

by Dr Mark Hyman

• February 11th, 2011

IT’S CONFIRMED. DAIRY PRODUCTS AND SUGAR CAUSE ACNE.

As our sugar and dairy consumption has increased over the last 100 years so has the number of people with acne. We now have over 17 million acne sufferers, costing our health care system $1 billion a year. Eighty to ninety percent of teenagers suffer acne to varying degrees.

The pimply millions rely on infomercial products hawked by celebrities or over-the-counter lotions, cleansers, and topical remedies. Recent research suggests that it’s not what we slather on our skin that matters most but what we put in our mouth.

Many have suggested a diet-acne link, but until recently it has not been proven in large clinical studies. Instead dermatologists prescribe long-term antibiotics and Accutane, both of which may cause long-term harmful effects. In 2009, a systematic review of 21 observational studies and six clinical trials found clear links.

Two large controlled trials found that cow’s milk increased both the number of people who got acne and its severity. Other large randomized prospective controlled trials (the gold standard of medical research) found that people who had higher sugar intake and a high glycemic load diet (more bread, rice, cereal, pasta, sugar, and flour products of all kinds) had significantly more acne. The good news is that chocolate (dark chocolate that is) didn’t seem to cause acne.

The dietary pimple producing culprits – diary and sugar (in all its blood sugar raising forms) – both cause spikes in certain pimple producing hormones. Dairy boosts male sex hormones (various forms of testosterone or androgens),  increases insulin levels, just as foods that quickly raise blood sugar, (sugar and starchy carbs) and spikes insulin.

Androgens and insulin both stimulate your skin to make those nasty, embarrassing pimples. One patient recently told me he would give a million dollars for a pill to cure acne. He doesn’t need to. It seems that for many the cure to acne is at the end of their fork, not in a prescription pad.

While pimples are not as simple as too much milk or sugar in your diet, both have a significant impact. Nutritional deficiencies as well as excesses can worsen acne. Correcting common deficiencies including low levels of healthy omega-3 anti-inflammatory fats, low levels of antioxidants such as vitamin E, zinc, and vitamin A, and including an important anti-inflammatory omega-6 fat called evening primrose oil  may all be helpful in preventing and treating unwanted pimples.

I will explain how you can correct and incorporate all of these nutritional elements of your diet and outlines some supplements that will help you fight acne in a moment. But first it is worth taking a deeper look at milk and sugar.

It appears that anabolic or sex hormones in milk contribute to acne …

Stay Away from Dairy and Avoid Acne

One scientist referred to milk as a “complex aqueous, suspended fat, liposomal, suspended protein emulsion”. What we do know is that milk is designed to grow things – namely, babies – and in the case of cow’s milk, calves. It is naturally full of what we call anabolic hormones (the same ones that body builders and A Rod use to grow big muscles, and which cause bad acne).

These are mostly androgens (like testosterone) and growth hormones including insulin like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). There is no such thing as hormone-free milk.

Here’s a short list of the 60-some hormones in your average glass of milk – even the organic, raw, and bovine growth hormone free milk:

• 20α-dihydropregnenolone
• progesterone (from pregnenolone)
• 5α-pregnanedione
• 5α-pregnan-3β-ol-20-one, 20α- and 20β-dihydroprogesterone (from progesterone)
• 5α-androstene-3β17β-diol
• 5α-androstanedione
• 5α-androstan-3β-ol-17-one
• androstenedione
• testosterone
• dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate acyl ester
• insulin like growth factors 1 and 2 (IGF-1 and IGF-2)
• insulin

This is what our government suggests we drink in high doses—at least 3 glasses a day for me, a healthy adult male, according to the mypyramid.gov website. Those guidelines have been strongly criticized by many including leading nutrition scientists from Harvard such as Walter Willett and David Ludwig.

The famous Nurse’s Health Study examining health habits of 47,000 nurses found that those who drank more milk as teenagers had much higher rates of severe acne than those who had little or no milk as teenagers. If you think it is the fat in milk, think again.

It was actually the skim milk that had the strongest risk for acne. In other studies of over 10,000 boys and girls from 9 to 15 years old, there was a direct link between the amount of milk consumed and the severity of acne.

It appears that it is not just the anabolic or sex hormones in milk that causes problem but milk’s ability to stimulate insulin production. It actually may be the lactose or milk sugar in milk that acts more like a soft drink than an egg. Drinking a glass of milk can spike insulin levels 300 percent.

Not only does that cause pimples, but it also may contribute to prediabetes. This is true despite studies funded by the dairy council showing that milk helps with weight loss. The question is compared to WHAT diet – a diet of bagels and Coke, or a healthy phytonutrient, antioxidant-rich, plant-based diet with lean animal protein?

Stay Away from Sugar, Refined Carbs, and Pimples

If a glass of milk causes pimples, that may drive you back to your Pepsi. But not so fast. Recent studies also show that sugar and refined carbs (a high-glycemic diet) cause acne. More importantly, taking kids off sugar and putting them on a healthy, whole foods, low-glycemic load diet resulted in significant improvements in acne compared to a control group eating a regular, high-sugar American diet.

In addition to less pimples, the participants lost weight, became more sensitive to the effects of insulin (resulting in less pimple-producing insulin circulating around the blood). They also had less of the sex hormones floating around their blood that drive pimples. We know that women who have too much sugar and insulin resistance get acne, hair growth on their face, hair loss on the head, and infertility. This is caused by high levels of circulating male hormones and is called polycystic ovarian syndrome but is a nutritional, not gynecologic disease.

But the dietary influences don’t stop there. It is not just sugar, but the bad fats we eat that may also contribute to acne.

Get an Oil Change

Our typical Western diet is full of inflammatory fats – saturated fats, trans fats, too many omega-6, inflammatory, processed vegetable oils like soy and corn oils. These increase IGF-1 and stimulate pimple follicles. Inflammation has been linked to acne, and anti-inflammatory omega-3 fats (from fish oil) may help improve acne and help with many skin disorders.

Balance the Hormones that Cause Skin Problems

The link is clear – hormonal imbalances caused by our diet trigger acne. Our diet influences sex hormones like testosterone, IGF-1, and insulin, which promote acne. The biggest factors affecting your hormones is the glycemic load of your diet (which is determined by how quickly the food you eat increases your blood sugar and insulin levels), and the amount of dairy products you eat. The good news is that eating a healthy diet and taking a few supplements can balance those hormones. Exercise also helps improve insulin function.

How to Prevent and Treat Acne

Eight simple steps to help most overcome their acne problems:

1. Stay away from milk. It is nature’s perfect food – but only if you are a calf.
2. Eat a low glycemic load, low sugar diet. Sugar, liquid calories, and flour products all drive up insulin and cause pimples.
3. Eat more fruits and vegetables. People who eat more veggies (containing more antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds) have less acne. Make sure you get your 5–9 servings of colorful fruits and vegetables every day.
4. Get more healthy anti-inflammatory fats. Make sure to get omega-3 fats (fish oil) and anti-inflammatory omega-6 fats (evening primrose oil). You will need supplements to get adequate amounts (more on that in a moment).
5. Include foods that correct acne problems. Certain foods have been linked to improvements in many of the underlying causes of acne and can help correct it. These include fish oil, turmeric, ginger, green tea, nuts, dark purple and red foods such as berries, green foods like dark green leafy vegetables, and omega 3-eggs.
6. Take acne-fighting supplements.Some supplements are critical for skin health. Antioxidant levels have been shown to be low in acne sufferers. And healthy fats can make a big difference. Here are the supplements I recommend:
   • Evening primrose oil: Take 1,000 to 1,500mg twice a day.
   • Zinc citrate: Take 30 mg a day.
   • Vitamin A: Take 25,000 IU a day. Only do this for three months. Do not do this if you are pregnant.
   • Vitamin E (mixed tocopherols, not alpha tocopherol): Take 400 IU a day.
7. Try probiotics. Probiotics also help reduce inflammation in the gut that may be linked to acne. Taking probiotics (lactobacillus, etc.) can improve acne.
8. Avoid foods you are sensitive to. Delayed food allergies are among the most common causes of acne—foods like gluten, dairy, yeast, and eggs are common culprits and can be a problem if you have a leaky gut.

Following these simple tips will help you eliminate acne and have that glowing skin you have always dreamed of. And it’s much cheaper (and safer) than expensive medications and dermatologist visits. Improve your diet and take acne-fighting supplements and you will watch your pimples disappear.

For more information on how to optimize your nutrition and improve your skin, see www.drhyman.com.

Now I’d like to hear from you.

Have you struggled with an acne or skin problem? Have you noticed any link between your skin? What seems to be a problem for you?

Why do you think we are encouraged to consume so much dairy when the risks to our health (and our skin) are so high?

What other steps have you taken to fight acne? What has worked? What hasn’t?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below – but remember, we can’t offer personal medical advice online, so be sure to limit your comments to those about taking back our health!

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

References

1. F. William Danby, MD, Nutrition and acne, Clinics in Dermatology (2010) 28, 598–604
2. White GM. Recent findings in the epidemiologic evidence, classification, and subtypes of acne vulgaris. J Am Acad Dermatol 39(2 Pt 3):S34-7 (1998 Aug).
3. Lello J, Pearl A, Arroll B, et al. Prevalence of acne vulgaris in Auckland senior high school students. N Z Med J 108(1004):287-9 (1995 Jul 28).
4. Venereol 21(6):806-10 (2007 Jul).
5. Wolf R, Matz H, Orion E. Acne and diet. Clin Dermatol 22(5):387-93 (2004 Sep-Oct).
6. Magin P, Pond D, Smith W, et al. A systematic review of the evidence for myths and misconceptions’ in acne management: diet, face-washing and sunlight. Fam Pract 22(1):62-70 (2005 Feb).
7. Spencer EH, Ferdowsian HR, Barnard ND. Diet and acne: a review of the evidence. Int J Dermatol 48(4):339-47 (2009 Apr).
8. Bendiner E. Disastrous trade-off: Eskimo health for white civilization, Hosp Pract 9:156-89 (1974).
9. Adebamowo CA, Spiegelman D, Danby FW, et al. High school dietary dairy intake and teenage acne. J Am Acad Dermatol 52(2):207-14 (2005 Feb).
10. Adebamowo CA, Spiegelman D, Berkey CS, et al. Milk consumption and acne in adolescent girls. Dermatol Online J 12(4):1 (2006).
11. Adebamowo CA, Spiegelman D, Berkey CS, et al. Milk consumption and acne in teenaged boys. J Am Acad Dermatol 58(5):787-93 (2008 May).
12. Hoyt G, Hickey MS, Cordain L. Dissociation of the glycaemic and insulinaemic responses to whole and skimmed milk. Br J Nutr 93(2):175-7 (2005 Feb).
13. Kaymak Y, Adisen E, Ilter N, et al. Dietary glycemic index and glucose, insulin, insulin-like growth factor-I, insulin-like growth factor binding protein 3, and leptin levels in patients with acne. J Am Acad atol 57(5):819-23 (2007 Nov). Cordain L, Lindeberg S, Hurtado M, et al. Acne vulgaris: a disease of Western civilization. Arch Dermatol 138(12):1584-90 (2002 Dec).
14. Smith RN, Mann NJ, Braue A, et al. A low-glycemic-load diet improves symptoms in acne vulgaris patients: a randomized controlled trial. Am J Clin Nutr 86(1):107-15 (2007 Jul).
15. Smith RN, Mann NJ, Braue A, et al. The effect of a high- protein, low glycemic-load diet versus a conventional, high glycemic-load diet on biochemical parameters associated with acne vulgaris: a randomized, investigator-masked, controlled trial. J Am Acad Dermatol 57(2):247-56 (2007 Aug).
16. Smith RN, Braue A, Varigos GA, et al. The effect of a low glycemic load diet on acne vulgaris and the fatty acid composition of skin surface triglycerides. J Dermatol Sci 50(1):41-52 (2008 Apr).
17. Zouboulis CC. Is acne vulgaris a genuine inflammatory disease? Dermatology 203(4):277-9 (2001).
18. James MJ, Gibson RA, Cleland LG. Dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids and inflammatory mediator production. Am J Clin Nutr 71(1 Suppl):343S-8S (2000 Jan).
19. Simopoulos AP. Essential fatty acids in health and chronic disease. Am J Clin Nutr 70(3 Suppl):560S-9S (1999 Sep). 26. Kaaks R, Bellati C, Venturelli E, et al. Effects of dietary intervention on IGF-I and IGF-binding proteins, and related alterations in sex steroid metabolism: the Diet and Androgens (DIANA) Randomised Trial. Eur J Clin Nutr 57(9):1079-88 (2003 Sep).
20. Fulton JE, Jr., Plewig G, Kligman AM. Effect of chocolate on acne vulgaris. Jama 210(11):2071-4 (1969 Dec 15).
21. Anderson PC. Foods as the cause of acne. Am Fam Physician 3(3):102-3 (1971 Mar).

Why I Avoid Milk

Milk is a controversial topic in health circles. But for me, it is not controversial, I was diagnosed in 2009 with an IgG mediated dairy allergy, and so I try and avoid it as much as possible. My problems with dairy began many years ago, I just did not know dairy was the problem.

For almost as long as I can remember, I had trouble with acne, and not just during my teenage years. My acne began when I was about 9 years old. My dear mom tried everything she could think of, over the counter products, masks, doctors. After my mom passed away when I was 10, my dad and grandma took on the task. They tried everything they could think of, there was no treatment too expensive or too far. They offered me everything possible. I saw many more doctors, and tried many more treatments, oral and topical, prescription and over-the-counter. Nothing worked. And I know it hurt them almost as much as it hurt me, because they could see how it affected my self-esteem. But nothing seemed to work.

Then, one day, when I was a sophomore in college, I was home on break and sitting at my grandma’s kitchen table. I was reading a natural health magazine and saw an article by a naturopath about the link between dairy and acne. She cited no scientific research to back up her claim, but I figured it was worth testing out – after all, I did eat and drink a lot of dairy…a whole lot.

I experimented cutting dairy out of my diet, and for about two weeks, I stuck to a very simple and unprocessed diet, to make sure I was not getting any dairy. Within about a week and a half, my acne disappeared, completely. What had persisted for over 10 years, despite the best doctors and medicines, disappeared by changing my diet. But I was not well-educated on how to detect dairy in processed foods. I knew to avoid drinking milk with my cereal and ice cream, but I did not realize how many processed foods often have dairy (and often times by the name of the specific dairy protein, such as ‘whey’), foods like bread, cookies, salad dressing, chips, cake, marinades, etc. So when I returned to eating processed foods, my acne would flair up again occasionally. I also started acknowledging that I had stomach discomfort after almost every meal, something I thought was normal, until I realized my friends on the Irish Dance team could eat dinner around 6 and be at practice, ready for rigorous exercise, around 7pm.  A few years later, I met a doctor who thought to test me for milk allergy, and sure enough, I tested positive. And he was the one that taught me how to identify dairy in processed foods. It has made such a huge difference to my quality (and maybe even quantity) of life. I still slip up every now and then, especially when I go to someone’s home for dinner, milk is such a popular ingredient in the American diet and kitchen, that it is hard to be a gracious dinner guest and avoid dairy. But on the whole, I avoid dairy, and feel (and look) so much better.

Recently, I learned about a research study that confirmed the link between milk and acne. For more information, click here.

DAIRY ALLERGY VERSUS LACTOSE INTOLERANCE

Sometimes my friends or family suggest I eat something that is ‘lactose free’ or drink Lactaid instead of milk, but for someone with a milk allergy, the ‘lactose’ is not the problem. Those with a dairy allergy are allergic to one or more of the proteins in milk, this is not the same as lactose intolerance. Those who are lactose intolerance are intolerant of the milk sugar ‘lactose’ and therefore milk does not sit well with them. As a remedy, they can either consume lactose-free milk or take enzyme pills that provide the enzyme necessary to break down lactose (lactase), which their body either does not produce, or does not produce in sufficient quantity. A large portion of the population is lactose intolerant.

In humans, lactase stops being produced when the person is between two and five years old. The undigested sugars end up in the colon, where they begin to ferment, producing gas that can cause cramping, bloating, nausea, flatulence and diarrhea. If you’re American or European it’s hard to realize this, but being able to digest milk as an adult is one weird genetic adaptation.

It’s not normal. Somewhat less than 40% of people in the world retain the ability to digest lactose after childhood. The numbers are often given as close to 0% of Native Americans, 5% of Asians, 25% of African and Caribbean peoples, 50% of Mediterranean peoples and 90% of northern Europeans. Sweden has one of the world’s highest percentages of lactase tolerant people.

Being able to digest milk is so strange that scientists say we shouldn’t really call lactose intolerance a disease, because that presumes it’s abnormal. Instead, they call it lactase persistence, indicating what’s really weird is the ability to continue to drink milk.

I suspect I have both lactose intolerance and a dairy allergy, but at the very least, I have a dairy allergy and more importantly, I actually feel a big difference when I consume dairy, and it is not a pleasant feeling. So I avoid dairy as much as possible. But it can be tough, especially since so many processed foods contain dairy, even staples like whole wheat bread, if purchased from a conventional super market, usually have some form of dairy.

But there are other reasons why some argue that dairy is bad for humans, reasons that have nothing to do with allergies or intolerance. These reasons can become controversial because often times they are cited without research to back them up or suggest their validity. I am not a scientist, nor am I a nutritionist, so I will not weigh in on the debate about dairy. But I can tell you some of what I do know, and I encourage you to evaluate this (and other) information, and come to your own conclusion.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST DAIRY

Some (particularly those who follow a Paleo Diet and many alternative health practitioners), argue that dairy is not healthy. Unfortunately, their arguments are often time unsupported. They argue that dairy is only appropriate for the baby animal whose mother produced that type of milk, and that dairy causes mucus in the human digestive track. But these claims are often times stated, without references to back them up.

However, there is at least one source I have been able to find that does provide references to back up the claims against dairy – an article by Dr. Mark Hyman, a medical doctor and family physician who has dedicated his career to identifying and addressing the root causes of chronic illness through the practice of Functional Medicine. He is currently medical editor at the Huffington Post and on the Medical Advisory Board at The Doctor Oz Show.Dr. Hyman has testified before the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and has consulted with the Surgeon General on diabetes prevention. He has testified before the Senate Working Group on Health Care Reform on Functional Medicine, and participated in the White House Forum on Prevention and Wellness in June 2009. Dr. Hyman was nominated by Senator Tom Harkin for the President’s Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion and Integrative and Public Health, a 25-person group to advise the Administration and the new National Council on Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health.With Drs. Dean Ornish and Michael Roizen, Dr. Hyman crafted and helped to introduce the Take Back Your Health Act of 2009 into the United States Senate, to provide for reimbursement of lifestyle treatment of chronic disease. In other words, he is not merely an extremist who voices his opinion without just cause to hold that opinion. Many may disagree with him on certain points, but he is an educated and well-respected medical doctor.

According to an article by Dr. Hyman, there is a doctor by the name of Walter Willet, M.D., PhD – who is the second-most-cited scientist in all of clinical medicine and the head of nutrition at Harvard’s School of Public Health, who claims that the USDA’s food pyramid is “udderly ridiculous” including its recommendation for dairy. According to Dr. Hyman, Dr. Willett has done many studies and reviewed the research on dairy and has concluded there are many reasons to pass up milk, including:

1. Milk doesn’t reduce fractures.(i) Contrary to popular belief, eating dairy products has never been shown to reduce fracture risk. In fact, according to a study by the Harvard School of Public Health, known as the Nurses’ Health Study, dairy may increase risk of fractures by 50 percent. The study can be found here: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/calcium-full-story/

2. Less dairy, better bones. Countries with lowest rates of dairy and calcium consumption (like those in Africa and Asia) have the lowest rates of osteoporosis.

3. Calcium isn’t as bone-protective as we thought.(ii) Studies of calcium supplementation have shown no benefit in reducing fracture risk. Vitamin D appears to be much more important than calcium in preventing fractures.

4. Calcium may raise cancer risk. Research shows that higher intakes of both calcium and dairy products may increase a man’s risk of prostate cancer by 30 to 50 percent.(iii) Plus, dairy consumption increases the body’s level of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) — a known cancer promoter.

5. Calcium has benefits that dairy doesn’t. Calcium supplements, but not dairy products, may reduce the risk of colon cancer.(iv)

6. Not everyone can stomach dairy.(v) About 75 percent of the world’s population is genetically unable to properly digest milk and other dairy products — a problem called lactose intolerance.

Based on such findings, Dr. Willet has come to some important conclusions:

• Everybody needs calcium — but probably not as much as our government’s recommended daily allowance (RDA) and calcium from diet, including greens and beans is better utilized by the body with less risk than calcium supplements.

• Calcium probably doesn’t prevent broken bones. Few people in this country are likely to reduce their fracture risk by getting more calcium.

• Men may not want to take calcium supplements. Supplements of calcium and vitamin D may be reasonable for women.

• Dairy may be unhealthy. Advocating dairy consumption may have negative effects on health.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently asked the UDSA to look into the scientific basis of the claims made in the “milk mustache” ads. Their panel of scientists stated the truth clearly: Milk doesn’t benefit sports performance, there’s no evidence that dairy is good for your bones or prevents osteoporosis — in fact, the animal protein it contains may help cause bone loss, dairy is linked to prostate cancer, it’s full of saturated fat and is linked to heart disease, dairy causes digestive problems for the 75 percent of people with lactose intolerance, and dairy aggravates irritable bowel syndrome.

Dr. Hyman says that “due to these concerns, many have begun to consider raw milk an alternative. But that isn’t really a healthy form of dairy either …Yes, raw, whole, organic milk eliminates concerns like pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, and the effects of homogenization and pasteurization — but to Dr. Hyman, these benefits don’t outweigh dairy’s potential risks. He contends that our bodies just weren’t made to digest milk on a regular basis. Instead, most scientists agree that it’s better for us to get calcium, potassium, protein, and fats from other food sources, like whole plant foods — vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and seaweed.

So here is his advice for dealing with dairy.

6 Tips for Dealing with Dairy

• Take your Cow for a Walk. It will do you much more good than drinking milk.

• Don’t rely on dairy for healthy bones. If you want healthy bones, get plenty of exercise and supplement with 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily.

• Get your calcium from food. These include dark green leafy vegetables, sesame tahini, sea vegetables, and sardines or salmon with the bones.

• Try giving up all dairy. That means eliminate milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream for two weeks and see if you feel better. You should notice improvements with yoursinuses, post-nasal drip, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, energy, and weight. Then start eating dairy again and see how you feel. If you feel worse, you should try to give it up for life.

• If you can tolerate dairy, use only raw, organic dairy products. I suggest focusing on fermented products like unsweetened yogurt and kefir, occasionally.

• If you have to feed your child formula from milk, don’t worry. The milk in infant formula is hydrolyzed or broken down and easier to digest (although it can still cause allergies). Once your child is a year old, switch him or her to real food and almond milk.

ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF DAIRY

I am not a scientist, so I do not feel qualified to authoritatively interpret all the data on the subject, but I do think well-educated consumers can make better choices. So here is some information that I find interesting, if not compelling, in favor of moderate dairy consumption. I will preface it however, by saying that even these examples of healthy cultures that eat dairy have something unique to them that dairy consumption in the US does not have, a naturally produced milk supply. These examples of cultures that are healthy and consume dairy consume a different kind of dairy than the average American consumer, they consume one that is often times raw and unpasteurized, from cows that are grass-fed and not routinely fed antibiotics and hormones. Therefore, I will say this, I think that to the extent dairy consumption can be beneficial for some, it is not all dairy that is beneficial, but rather, raw, unpasteurized, grass-fed, organic milk, produced without the use of hormones or routine antibiotics.

One of my favorite sources for nutrition information is the Weston Price Foundation. They advocate dairy for a healthy human diet, in large part because of research on native populations that are extremely healthy, and do consume dairy. However, even their dairy endorsement is only for raw, unpasteurized, grass-fed, organic dairy that is produced without the use of hormones or routine antibiotics. And their advice, as far as I can tell, does not take into account the large portion of the American population that is lactose intolerant. However, if you are not lactose intolerant, and want to include dairy in your diet, I would suggest reading some of their resources on the health and economic benefits of raw milk.

References

(i) Feskanich D, Willett WC, Stampfer MJ, Colditz GA. Milk, dietary calcium, and bone fractures in women: a 12-year prospective study. Am J Public Health. 1997 Jun;87(6):992-7.

(ii) Feskanich D, Willett WC, Colditz GA. Calcium, vitamin D, milk consumption, and hip fractures: a prospective study among postmenopausal women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2003 Feb;77(2):504-11.

(iii) Tseng M, Breslow RA, Graubard BI, Ziegler RG. Dairy, calcium, and vitamin D intakes and prostate cancer risk in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Epidemiologic Follow-up Study cohort. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 May;81(5):1147-54.

(iv) Huncharek M, Muscat J, Kupelnick B. Colorectal cancer risk and dietary intake of calcium, vitamin D, and dairy products: a meta-analysis of 26,335 cases from 60 observational studies. Nutr Cancer. 2009;61(1):47-69.

(v) Brannon PM, Carpenter TO, Fernandez JR, Gilsanz V, Gould JB, Hall KE, Hui SL, Lupton JR, Mennella J, Miller NJ, Osganian SK, Sellmeyer DE, Suchy FJ, Wolf MA. NIH Consensus Development Conference Statement: Lactose Intolerance and Health. NIH Consens State Sci Statements. 2010 Feb 24;27(2).

(vi) Bartley J, McGlashan SR. Does milk increase mucus production? Med Hypotheses. 2010 Apr;74(4):732-4.

(vii) Luopajärvi K, Savilahti E, Virtanen SM, Ilonen J, Knip M, Akerblom HK, Vaarala O. Enhanced levels of cow’s milk antibodies in infancy in children who develop type 1 diabetes later in childhood. Pediatr Diabetes. 2008 Oct;9(5):434-41.

(viii) El-Hodhod MA, Younis NT, Zaitoun YA, Daoud SD. Cow’s milk allergy related pediatric constipation: Appropriate time of milk tolerance. Pediatr Allergy Immunol. 2009 Jun 25.

Many of my friends and family assume that if food is sold in a US grocery store, it is at least safe and free from serious and immediate health risks, but as this Bloomberg Magazine article from October 12, 2012 reveals, we should not take our food safety for granted

Food Sickens Millions as Company-Paid Checks Find It Safe By Stephanie Armour, John Lippert & Michael Smith

October 11, 2012

William Beach loved cantaloupe — so much so that starting in June last year he ate it almost every day. By August, the 87-year-old retired tractor mechanic from Mustang, Oklahoma, was complaining to his family that he was fatigued, with pain everywhere in his body.

On Sept. 1, 2011, Beach got out of bed in the middle of the night, put his clothes on and walked into the living room. His wife, Monette, found him collapsed on the floor in the morning. At the hospital, blood poured from his mouth and nose, splattering sheets, bed rails and physicians.

Food Report: Asian Seafood Raised on Pig Feces Approved for U.S.Consumers

He died that night, a victim of Listeria monocytogenes, a bacterium that can lead to a blood infection and damage to the brain and spinal cord, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue.

• Special Report: Food Poisoning and Safety

Beach was one of 33 people killed by listeria that was later traced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and state officials to contaminated cantaloupes from one Colorado farm. It was the deadliest outbreak of foodborne disease in the U.S. in almost 100 years.

“He died in terror and pain,” says his daughter Debbie Frederick.

About seven weeks after Beach started eating cantaloupes, a private, for-profit inspection company awarded a top safety rating to Jensen Farms, the Granada, Colorado, grower of his toxic fruit. The approval meant retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) and Wegmans Food Markets Inc. could sell Jensen melons.

NO FDA INSPECTION

The FDA, a federal agency nominally responsible for overseeing most food safety, had never inspected Jensen.

During the past two decades, the food industry has taken over much of the FDA’s role in ensuring that what Americans eat is safe. The agency can’t come close to vetting its jurisdiction of $1.2 trillion in annual food sales.

In 2011, the FDA inspected 6 percent of domestic food producers and just 0.4 percent of importers. The FDA has had no rules for how often food producers must be inspected.

The food industry hires for-profit inspection companies — known as third-party auditors — who aren’t required by law to meet any federal standards and have no government supervision. Some of these monitors choose to follow guidelines from trade groups that include ConAgra Foods Inc. (CAG), Kraft Foods Inc. and Wal-Mart.

The private inspectors that companies select often check only those areas their clients ask them to review. That means they can miss deadly pathogens lurking in places they never examined.

3,000 KILLED

Food sickens 48 million Americans a year, with 128,000 hospitalized and 3,000 killed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. The rate of infections linked to foodborne salmonella, which causes the most illnesses and deaths, rose 10 percent from 2006 to 2010.

The U.S. had 37 recalls of fruits and vegetables in 2011, up from two in 2005. Many of the victims of contaminated food are those with under-developed or weakened immune systems, such as children and the elderly.

What for-hire auditors do is cloaked in secrecy; they don’t have to make their findings public. Bloomberg Markets obtained four audit reports and three audit certificates through court cases, congressional investigations and company websites.

Six audits gave sterling marks to the cantaloupe farm, an egg producer, a peanut processor and a ground-turkey plant — either before or right after they supplied toxic food.

‘CERTIFICATES MEANINGLESS’

Collectively, these growers and processors were responsible for tainted food that sickened 2,936 people and killed 43 in 50 states.

“The outbreaks we’re seeing are endless,” says Doug Powell, lead author of an Aug. 30, 2012, study on third-party monitors called “Audits and Inspections Are Never Enough.” Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University, says Americans are at risk whenever they go to a supermarket.

“You need to be in a culture that takes food safety seriously,” Powell says. “Right now, what we have is hidden. The third-party auditor stickers and certificates are meaningless.”

In some cases, for-hire auditors have financial ties to executives at companies they’re reviewing. AIB International Inc., a Manhattan, Kansas, auditor that awarded top marks to producers that sold toxic food, has had board members who are top managers at companies that are clients.

WONDER BREAD

Executives of Flowers Foods Inc. (FLO), which makes Tastykake, and Grupo Bimbo SAB in Mexico City, which makes Entenmann’s pastries, Sara Lee baked goods and Wonder Bread, serve or have served on AIB’s board.

“There’s a fundamental conflict,” says David Kessler, a lawyer and physician who was FDA commissioner from 1990 to 1997. “We all know about third-party audit conflicts. We’ve seen it play out in the financial world. You can’t be tied to your auditors. There has to be independence.”

As flawed as the inspection system is in the U.S., it’s more problematic with imported food, especially coming from countries with lower sanitary standards, says Michael Doyle, director of the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety. In some emerging markets, farms growing food for export to the U.S. aren’t inspected at all.

The U.S. will import half of its food by 2030, up from 20 percent today, Doyle says. Bloomberg Markets visited growers in China, Mexico and Vietnam and found unsanitary conditions for produce, fruit and fish exported to the U.S.

ANOTHER $3 BILLION

The FDA is trying, so far without success, to wrest back control of food inspection from the industry. In 2008, the agency estimated that it would need another $3 billion — quadrupling its $1 billion annual budget for food safety — to conduct inspections on imported and domestic food, the FDA’s former food safety chief David Acheson says.

Instead, the food industry lobbied for, and won, enactment of a law in January 2011 that expanded the role of auditors — and foreign governments — in vetting producers and distributors of food bound for the U.S.

The Food Safety Modernization Act, which passed Congress with bi-partisan support, will allow the FDA to certify private companies to audit producers of imported food on its behalf.

The law mandates that these auditors submit their reports to the agency. These rules don’t apply to domestic inspection companies, which still won’t be approved by the FDA and don’t report their findings.

LIKE BOOKKEEPING

Under the 2011 law, the FDA will require high-risk producers to be inspected every five years starting in 2016, according to the agency’s website.

Sometimes, what passes for inspection in the food industry isn’t inspection at all; it’s more like bookkeeping. In many cases, auditors award top safety ratings without testing production facilities for bacteria, says former auditor Jeffrey Kornacki, who now owns Kornacki Microbiology Solutions, a microbiology consulting company in McFarland, Wisconsin.

Sometimes, auditors don’t set foot in production areas of the companies they report in audits as safe, Kornacki says. Kornacki says he got a lesson on the limits of auditing 15 years ago, when he spent a day and a half studying whether a food factory was following its own safety guidelines.

Kornacki gave the plant, which he declined to identify, a score of 95 out of 100. The manager thanked him and then asked him a question.

‘HELP ME’

“Can you help me find the source of this salmonella in our plant?” the manager asked. Kornacki says he didn’t know there was salmonella at the facility.

“Most companies won’t let third-party auditors look for pathogens,” Kornacki says. “They don’t want your results shutting them down.”

Auditors evaluate their clients using standards selected by the companies that pay them, says Mansour Samadpour, owner of IEH Laboratories & Consulting Group in Lake Forest Park, Washington, which does testing for the FDA. The auditors sometimes follow a checklist that the company they’re inspecting has helped write.

“If you have a program for adding rat poison to a food, the auditor will ask, ‘Did you add as much as you intended?”’ Samadpour says. “Most won’t ask, ‘Why the hell are we adding poison?”’

Not only has the government outsourced auditing to the food industry; the auditors themselves often outsource their vetting to independent contractors — people over whom they don’t have direct management control.

CANTALOUPES APPROVED

It was such a contractor who blessed the cantaloupes at Jensen Farms in Colorado shortly before the melons would sicken 147 Americans and kill 33 others, including William Beach.

On July 25, 2011, Santa Maria, California-based Primus Group Inc. — whose PrimusLabs unit bills itself as the largest produce safety company in the Western Hemisphere — sent a subcontractor to Jensen Farms. The property, 181 miles (291 kilometers) southeast of Denver, was then a mosaic of fields where trucks churned up dust clouds on dirt roads and cantaloupes grew beneath power lines.

The subcontractor, Bio Food Safety Inc. of Rio Hondo, Texas, was represented by James Dilorio, who spent four hours on site. Using a checklist, he documented practices such as the cleaning of cantaloupes, washing of employees’ hands and labeling of detergents, according to his report.

Dilorio scored Jensen 96 out of 100.

“Yes, all food contact surfaces are clean,” his report says. “Yes, all products and food contact packaging were within acceptable tolerances for spoilage or adulteration.”

GETTING SICK

By the time Dilorio gave his stamp of approval to Jensen, William Beach had already been eating cantaloupe from the farm almost every day for seven weeks. In June 2011, his wife began buying the melons at the Homeland grocery in Mustang, Oklahoma.

That same month, at a routine medical checkup, William’s doctor told him he was in good health. By August, though, Beach, a father of six daughters, was in constant pain; he was hospitalized for two days. Doctors didn’t test him for listeria.

Beach died on Sept. 1, just one day before the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment alerted the federal CDC in Atlanta that patients throughout the state were falling ill with listeriosis. Beach’s infection was caused by the listeria-tainted cantaloupe, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health.

Acting on reports from several people who said they got sick after eating Rocky Hill brand cantaloupe — grown in southeastern Colorado — state and FDA inspectors went to Jensen Farms on Sept. 10, 2011. They collected 13 samples from the Jensen processing line and packing area that tested positive for listeria.

POTATO CLEANER

The FDA found that the equipment used to clean the fruit may have spread listeria. Jensen had actually installed that machinery, previously used to clean potatoes, after Bio Food Safety’s president, Jerry Walzel, who had audited the farm in 2010, recommended that the farm change its cleaning equipment.

The FDA says the replaced machinery may have been a cause of the listeria contamination.

“Because the equipment is not easily cleanable and was previously used for handling another raw agricultural commodity with different washing requirements, Listeria monocytogenes could have been introduced,” the FDA said in its report.

On Sept. 14, 2011, Jensen announced a 17-state recall of cantaloupes.

Dilorio and Walzel didn’t return requests seeking comment. Robert Stovicek, chief executive officer of PrimusLabs, declined to talk about the Jensen audit, citing pending civil litigation against his company. Bill Marler, a Seattle food safety attorney, says he has filed 13 lawsuits resulting from the outbreak, including four that name PrimusLabs.

‘VIOLENT DEATH’

The Beach family is suing Jensen and says Jensen’s faulty safety system killed Beach. Brenda Beach Hathaway, one of Beach’s daughters, says the third-party audit system is a sham.

Related: Girl Dies After Kissing Grandfather Made Sick by Burgers

“The auditor just says everything is all right even when it’s not,” she says. “It’s wrong. My daddy wasn’t ready to die, and he died such a violent death.”

While PrimusLabs declined to comment directly for this story, it did supply a response from its law firm, Kaufman Borgeest & Ryan LLP in New York. Auditors, the statement says, serve at the pleasure of their clients and cannot go beyond what they are asked to do.

“Third-party auditing will continue to be as effective as those requiring the audits (buyers/suppliers) and the audited suppliers make them,” the law firm writes. James Markus, a lawyer representing Jensen, didn’t return calls seeking comment.

FALLING INTO VATS

The U.S. government has played a role in food inspection for a little more than a century. In 1905, Upton Sinclair penned “The Jungle,” a scathing book about the Chicago meatpacking industry, with workers falling into vats of boiling beef trimmings and other horrors.

The next year, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, which proved ineffective. In 1938, after more than 100 people died from the antibiotic sulfanilamide, Congress passed the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, strengthening the FDA. For the first time, a federal agency had the power to inspect, approve or reject all food and pharmaceutical products.

From the outset, though, the FDA lacked the resources to inspect all of the country’s food producers.

FILLING VACUUMS

The food industry moved to fill that vacuum with private auditors in the 1990s. Danone SA (BN), Kraft, Wal-Mart and other companies created the Paris-based Global Food Safety Initiative in 2000 to write guidelines for third-party auditors.

The program, whose vice chairman is Frank Yiannas, Wal- Mart’s vice president for safety, requires companies to be audited once a year. It doesn’t mandate testing for pathogens. In 60 manufacturing plants, Wal-Mart suppliers reported a third fewer recalls in the two years after adopting GFSI standards, Yiannas says.

In some cases, companies use their own auditors to check suppliers. In 2002 and 2006, Nestle USA, a subsidiary of Vevey, Switzerland-basedNestle SA (NESN), refused to use Peanut Corp. of America as a supplier. Nestle inspectors found rodent carcasses and pigeons in Peanut Corp.’s Plainview, Texas, plant.

Nestle’s rejection didn’t stop Lynchburg, Virginia-based Peanut Corp. from doing business with other customers or seeking approval from third-party auditors. In 2008, AIB International auditor Eugene Hatfield gave Peanut Corp.’s Blakely, Georgia, plant a “superior” rating.

DIARRHEA AND FEVER

“This operation had established a formalized program for the control of bacteria,” Hatfield wrote on March 27, 2008.

About nine months later, Nellie Napier, an 80-year-old grandmother of 13 living in a long-term-care facility in Medina, Ohio, came down withdiarrhea and a fever. Napier frequently ate peanut butter to help regulate her blood sugar.

On Jan. 9, 2009, she was admitted to Summa Barberton Hospital in nearby Barberton, with salmonella raging in her blood, according to her medical records. Her kidneys shut down, and she suffered a mild stroke.

After it became too difficult to swallow, she refused a feeding tube. With her children grasping each hand, she died on Jan. 26, 2009.

“The deeper we dig, the madder we get,” says Randy Napier, Nellie’s son, a designer in Raleigh, North Carolina. “These inspections should be made public. It’s just dollars and cents to the auditors. My mother wasn’t worth anything to them. I’m just shaking, I’m so angry.”

‘NOBODY ACCUSED ME’

Napier was a victim of an outbreak that sickened 714 people and may have contributed to nine deaths in 46 states, according to the CDC. In January 2009, FDA inspectors visited the Blakely plant and found dead cockroaches in a washroom and water stains from skylights above a packing line.

“Proper precautions to protect food cannot be taken because of deficiencies in plant construction,” the FDA wrote on Jan. 27, 2009. The next day, Peanut Corp. recalled all peanut products the plant had made for nearly two years.

AIB, the Peanut Corp. auditor, says on its website that the Blakely plant lacked an on-site manager for four months after its 2008 audit — enough time for conditions to deteriorate. Maureen Olewnik, AIB’s vice president for auditing, says Peanut Corp. didn’t show it all of its procedures and areas.

Peanut Corp. is now defunct, barraged by dozens of civil lawsuits and a Department of Justice criminal investigation. Its former CEO Stewart Parnell says he never knowingly shipped salmonella-tainted products.

“Nobody accused me of it except some personal injury lawyer trying to drum up business,” he says. He declined to comment further.

‘OH MY GOD’

AIB auditors also gave their stamp of approval to Wright County Egg farms in Iowa. The firm rated the egg producer “superior” twice in 2008 and four times in 2009.

On May 29, 2010, Sarah Lewis, 32, a mother of two in Freedom, California, was attending her sister’s college graduation banquet, where she ate a custard tart. The tart was made with eggs from farms in Iowa.

Two days later, she got diarrhea and began vomiting. She spent 12 hours in the emergency room in Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz and then another three days in intensive care. Two and a half weeks later, she was back in the hospital, so dehydrated that doctors had to put a catheter into her bicep, according to her medical records.

Salmonella came from the custard tart, according to the California Department of Public Health. The bacteria caused her heart to race, a condition known as tachycardia.

“It was scary,” says Lewis, an office manager for a butcher. “My mom was with me the whole time, sitting in the corner like, ‘Oh, my God.”’

MANURE PILES

Less than two weeks after Lewis fell ill, AIB inspected Wright County’s egg farms in Iowa again, and again gave them top marks. The audit cover sheet is titled “Recognition of Achievement.”

It says, “Wright Co., #4, Clarion, Iowa, was inspected by a qualified AIB International Inspector on June 7-8, 2010, and at that time was found to have fulfilled the requirements of the AIB International Consolidated Standards.”

By the time of that sterling review, the CDC was already noticing an uptick in a strain of salmonella infections nationwide; it started in May 2010, and peaked that July. Federal, state and local health officials traced the outbreak to Wright County eggs.

The FDA found 8-foot-high (2.4-meter-high) piles of chicken manure and rodent burrows at Wright County and Quality Egg LLC’s egg operations in Galt, Dows and Clarion, Iowa.

“Live and dead maggots too numerous to count were observed,” the FDA wrote of the henhouses in an Aug. 30, 2010, report.

PREDNISONE FEVER

The outbreak sickened 1,939 people, including Sarah Lewis, and led to a recall of half a billion eggs from Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST), Wal-Mart and other retailers. On its website, AIB says it hadn’t been asked to audit portions of the plant where the FDA found contamination.

Today, Lewis still suffers from gastrointestinal pains caused by her weakened immune system. She takes Humira, a rheumatoid arthritis medicine, and Prednisone, a steroid, to treat inflammation. She expects to be on the drugs for the rest of her life.

HUMAN FECES

Flaws in the U.S. inspection system are magnified when food originates in other countries. In Mexico, some fields contaminated by animal and human feces and dirty water aren’t being monitored by government inspectors or third-party auditors.

Almost half of the vegetables and 26 percent of the fruit imported into the U.S. last year came from Mexico, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service says.

Some farms are breeding grounds for bacteria, says Trevor Suslow, a University of California, Davis, food safety professor who has done field research at farms in Mexico.

At the San Juan farm 30 miles south of Culiacan, Mexico, about 100 men, women and children work in filth to harvest grape tomatoes that grower Agricola Pauher SA says are verified as meeting international farming practices.

On a sweltering hot day in mid-May, wind whips through an open-air latrine, carrying a cloud of dust reeking of human excrement across the field. Flies swarm in a squalid bathroom. Tomas Ramirez, 11, who says he’s worked the whole harvest with his parents in the field, says he uses some bushes instead of the feces-smeared bathroom.

“I’m always dirty because there is nowhere to wash,” he says.

‘WE MAKE DO’

The field foreman, Martin Fuentes, says his crew has nowhere to wash their hands.

“This is all the boss gives us,” he says. “We don’t get anything here, so we just make do.”

Pauher general director Ernesto Padilla declined to comment.

Poor farm worker hygiene can make people sick, Suslow says. “That is one of the key risk factors for transmitting infectious agents to consumers: hand-to-product contamination,” Suslow says.

A few miles from the field, weeds surround Agricola Pauher’s packing plant. Piles of tomatoes rot on the ground. Inside, cardboard shipping boxes display a PrimusLabs logo that reads, “Audited by PrimusLabs.com–When food safety counts.”

PrimusLabs’ outside attorney, Steven Weiner, declined to say whether the company has ever audited Pauher. PrimusLabs’ website names 118 certified clients and Pauher isn’t on the list.

Pauher shipped this year’s harvest to supermarkets in the U.S. and Canada, says Jan Lillywhite, who managed the company’s office in Nogales,Arizona, this year.

‘GARBAGE CHOKED CANAL’

Forty-nine miles south, men pick nira onions for San Bernardino, California-based Lucky Farms Inc. in a field irrigated with garbage-choked canal water. A laborer comes out of the only bathroom — a feces-smeared wooden pallet. He handles onions without washing his hands.

Lucky Farms operations manager Gary Liaou says the onions are grown safely in Mexico.

Mexican food producers aren’t compelled to make their products safe even when local government officials inspect companies on behalf of the FDA. In 2011, 106 Americans in 25 states got salmonella from papayas that the FDA traced to a plantation near Mexico’s border withGuatemala.

The FDA then ordered every Mexican papaya load stopped at the U.S. border and tested for salmonella by a private laboratory. In Tecoman, 940 miles west of the farm that caused the outbreak, grower Parra Agroproductos SA found a way to get around the order.

HEALTH TIME BOMB

In October 2011, the FDA rejected nine Parra loads for salmonella. So, the company joined a Mexican certification program run by the government that is supposed to report findings to the FDA.

The program sent inspector Alberto Romero to Parra, where he found pickers with unwashed hands on Oct. 21, 2011. Packing areas were exposed to a pigsty and chickens, according to his report. Since he has no authority to order improvements or close food facilities, his report led to no immediate changes.

A few months later, in February, the FDA exempted Parra from salmonella testing after Mexico said the grower had joined the certification program.

On a return visit to Parra in mid-May this year, this time accompanied by a reporter, Romero watches workers rinse in filthy water papayas bound for U.S. supermarkets. A pigeon lies dead near the packing line, and a roach scampers under a crate. Romero says Parra hasn’t made the requested changes.

“There is 100 percent risk of infection here,” Romero says. “It’s horrible, like a public health time bomb waiting to go off.”

MASKS AND GLOVES

Across town, papaya exporter Red Starr Spr de R.L.’s enclosed, spotless packing plant is another world. Workers wearing masks and gloves wash papayas in water laden with fungicides and bleach to kill salmonella.

“We operate like a sterile lab,” says Nazario Rodriguez, Red Starr’s co-owner.

Four months later, in September, Romero’s boss, Samuel Barajas, says he found that Parra improved conditions and meets sanitary standards. Marco Antonio Parra, co-owner of the company, says his operation follows U.S. food safety guidelines.

“We have to, because we sell our papayas in supermarkets all over the U.S.,” Parra says. The FDA says it’s trying to make imported food safer by helping exporting countries ensure safe farming practices.

CARGILL GROUND TURKEY

The 2011 food law will help by requiring importers to prove they can match the same safety standards as U.S. producers, the FDA says.

The recurrence of contaminated food outbreaks has hit even the largest agricultural processor in the U.S., privately held Cargill Inc. Two auditors awarded top safety grades to the company’s Springdale, Arkansas, ground-turkey plant after — according to the CDC — 120 people had been sickened by the meat.

Brandon and Melissa Lee say they’ll never forget the first time they fed cooked ground turkey to their baby daughter Ruby. It was in June 2011, and within hours of eating the turkey, Ruby, who was 10 months old, became lethargic. Then she had diarrhea so severe they had to change her diaper almost every hour.

Melissa took Ruby to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland within days. The baby had a fever of 104.1 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). Doctors told Melissa that Ruby had drug-resistant bacteria swimming through her bloodstream.

“They put her on antibiotics but told us they didn’t know if it would work,” says Melissa, 25, a Home Depot Inc. clerk.

A PERFECT SCORE

Ruby was one of 136 people in 34 states infected with a virulent pathogen strain called Salmonella Heidelberg, according to the CDC. One person died. Ruby survived. Doctors have told her mother the child may suffer from respiratory problems and arthritis later in life.

The CDC traced Ruby’s salmonella to Cargill’s Springdale plant. On Aug. 3, 2011, Cargill recalled 36 million pounds (16 million kilograms) of ground turkey. Even in the midst of this recall, third-party auditors gave the plant high marks.

On Aug. 23, 2011, San Antonio, Texas-based Food Safety Net Services Ltd. awarded Springdale a perfect score for animal welfare and handling. The next day, Food Safety Net, acting as a subcontractor for Netherlands-based ISACert BV, gave Springdale slaughtering and processing an “A” grade using GFSI standards.

USDA FINDS SALMONELLA

After a USDA test found a high level of salmonella, Cargill recalled ground turkey produced on Aug. 23 and Aug. 24, 2011. Cargill says it doesn’t know what caused the outbreak.

“We believe the illnesses reported to the CDC came from a variety of sources, not just our ground turkey,” says Mike Robach, Cargill’s head of food safety.

Salmonella is so common that Wal-Mart accepts ground turkey after tests find 49.9 percent of samples have bacteria. That’s the maximum allowed by law. Costco rejects shipments with any trace of salmonella.

Companies can take steps to prevent foodborne infections — although those measures cost money that producers and retailers aren’t always willing to spend. One company that changed its ways is Earthbound Farm, which sells bagged lettuce and spinach. The company put in a new testing system — after tragedy struck.

In 2006, Kathleen Chrismer and Matthew Tateishi had driven with their daughter Rylee Gustafson to celebrate her ninth birthday at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California when she got diarrhea that soon turned to gushing red blood. They rushed her to San Francisco, where doctors put her in intensive care at the University of California’s Children’s Hospital.

‘LIKE I WAS DYING’

A few days later, her kidneys and pancreas failed.

“I remember not being able to hear or see,” says Rylee, who’s now 15 and lives in Henderson, Nevada. “I felt like I was dying.”

Three weeks after that, the CDC traced the E. coli that had sickened Rylee and 204 others to spinach packed at Earthbound Farm in San Juan Bautista, California. The company, which had been getting high marks from third-party auditors NSF Cook & Thurber and PrimusLabs, announced a recall on Sept. 15, 2006.

Charlie Sweat, Earthbound’s CEO, says that when he learned the outbreak had killed three people, including 2-year-old Kyle Allgood of Chubbuck, Idaho, he fell to his knees and thought he may have to shut down his company.

“If we couldn’t reduce the risk, we said we’d walk away,” Sweat says.

MICROBIAL TESTS

Sweat started doing microbial tests at regular intervals on both incoming lettuce shipments from growers and on packed salads before they were sold to retailers. He now says he won’t allow the shipments to move until test results show they’re free of pathogens. He hasn’t had an outbreak or recall since starting this process in October 2006.

Earthbound’s operations chief Will Daniels says the testing adds 3 cents to the cost of a bag of lettuce. That’s too much for many growers, says IEH Laboratories’ Samadpour, who designed Earthbound’s testing.

“It’s retailers and food service companies who have to say, ‘Here are three pennies for safety,”’ says Samadpour, the lab owner who does testing for the FDA. “Only a few do it. The rest pressure growers to cut costs, and safety is the first victim.”

One big retailer that’s willing to pay for Earthbound’s testing methods is Costco. It pays Earthbound the extra 3 cents per bag.

‘WE NEED REGULATIONS’

“We need regulations saying you can’t ship your product until you have a microbial testing program in place,” says Craig Wilson, vice president of food safety at Costco.

Rylee Gustafson was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in June 2012, a result of her weakened pancreas.

In five food-caused outbreaks in the past six years, private auditors didn’t test for bacteria and failed to stop deadly outbreaks. Federal inspectors later looked in the right places and identified the cause of the illnesses and deaths — including the cantaloupe-borne listeria that killed William Beach.

Two other victims of the Jensen Farms listeria are Michelle Wakley-Paciorek and her daughter, Kendall, of Fishers, Indiana. Michelle, who was 29 weeks pregnant with Kendall, was getting a pedicure on Sept. 21, 2011, when sudden contractions left her doubled over in pain. Her labor was triggered by listeria, according to the county health department. She gave birth that day, three months early.

“At one point, my baby wasn’t breathing,” says Wakley- Paciorek, a retail manager. “She looked wrinkled, red, almost transparent.”

‘WHAT’S BETTER THAN CANTALOUPE?’

Weighing 3 pounds, 11 ounces, Kendall was whisked into a neonatal unit at St. Vincent Carmel Hospital in Carmel, Indiana. She stayed there for three months. Kendall had stomach surgery and started her life with a feeding tube in her belly. She may suffer delays in cognitive development, Wakley-Paciorek says doctors told her.

“The third-party auditor passed Jensen, and they should have stopped it right away,” Wakley-Paciorek says. “I was pregnant and trying to eat right. I thought, ‘What’s better for you than cantaloupe?”’

To contact the reporters on this story: Stephanie Armour in Washington at sarmour@bloomberg.net

John Lippert in Chicago at jlippert@bloomberg.net;

Michael Smith in Santiago at Mssmith@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Neumann at jneumann2@bloomberg.net

original article available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-11/food-sickens-millions-as-industry-paid-inspectors-find-it-safe.html

Shredded Coconut

Drew’s mom makes the best granola I have ever tried, and I’ve tried quite a few. It never lasts very long when she mails Drew a fresh supply of her homemade granola from Indianapolis. The original recipe does not call for shredded coconut, but Kathleen adds some, and Drew loves that part. He likes adding shredded coconut to foods (even ground beef, which tastes real good). So, I try and always have shredded coconut on hand.

Coconut has lately received a lot of attention for all its health properties. And it does have several. However, it should be noted that not all packages of shredded coconut are processed the same way.

Several (sometimes most) varieties found in grocery stores contain added ingredients, ingredients that many consumers may want to avoid, such as added sweeteners, sulfites, or preservatives. Thankfully, as consumers become more discerning and demanding, healthier versions of shredded coconut are becoming more popular in regular grocery stores – you do not always need to shop at a Whole Foods type market to find these healthier versions of shredded coconut.

For example, the ingredient list for one popular brand, Kraft Bakers ,

reads as follows: coconut, sugar, water, propylene glycol (preserves freshness), salt, sodium metabisulfite (retains coconut whiteness). And it is advertised as being “The moistest Coconut on the market! It sells for approximately $3.30 for a 14-ounce bag, or $.23 per ounce on Amazon.com

For other brands, such as Bob’s Red Mill,

the ingredient list reads as follows: Natural, Unsulphured Coconut. It sells for approximately $3.09 for a 12 ounce bag, or $.77 per ounce on Amazon.com.

Now, many may be wondering what is the difference, other than price, between these two options. It all comes down to the ingredients, let’s take a closer look at the conventional brand’s ingredients: coconut, sugar, water, propylene glycol (preserves freshness), salt, sodium metabisulfite (retains coconut whiteness). The coconut in conventional brands may well be very similar to the coconut used in more unprocessed varieties. But the conventional brand also adds sugar, which is most likely conventionally produced and refined sugar (which is typically made white by granular activated carbon [GAC], or ion exchange resin which removes less colour than GAC but also removes some of the inorganics present. The conventional brand also adds propylene glycol, which though it shows a very low acute oral toxicity , and large quantities are required to cause perceptible health damage in humans, it is still an additive that many consumers would rather avoid. The conventional brand also includes salt, which is a generic term to describe one of many different kinds of salt. Most likely, conventional brands of shredded coconut use refined table salt, a form of salt that typically has added anti-caking chemicals, and added iodine. Refined salt is also processed at high temperatures, altering the molecular structure of the salt and removing the beneficial trace minerals. Unrefined salt is approximately 84% sodium chloride and 16% other minerals. Refined salt is approximately 97.5% sodium chloride and 2.5% chemical additives. Lastly, the conventional brand of shredded coconut had added sodium metabisulfite, a popular conserving and antioxidizing agent used in food, drugs, and cosmetics, to which a small portion of the population is allergic.

For consumers trying to avoid food additives and excess sugar and salt, alternatives to conventional shredded coconut brands is probably a good idea.

Here is the granola recipe Kathleen shared with me:

Ingredients

4 1/2 cups old fashioned rolled oats
3/4 cup shelled, raw unsalted sunflower seeds
1 1/2 cups slivered raw almonds
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 1/4 cups pure Grade A dark amber maple syrup
1/3 cup canola oil
Kathleen also adds shredded coconut, barley flakes and flax meal as well (and then a bit more oil and maple syrup to help coat the extra dry ingredients)Directions
1) position rack in center of oven and preheat oven to 325 degrees
2) Place oats, sunflower seeds, almonds and cinnamon in large bowl and stir to combine.  Add the maple syrup and oil and stir until dry ingredients are moistened.
3) Spread granola on 12×17 inch rimmed baking sheet.  Bake granola until it begins to brown about 25 minutes, then stir with a spatula.Continue to bake until light golden brown, dry and fragrant- about 15-20 minutes longer.  Stir once more and watch during final minutes because it can burn quickly.
4) Place on a cooling rack and add raisins- stir to combine.  Let cool completely and transfer to airtight container.  Can be stored at room temperature for 1 month or frozen for 6 months.