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Have we figured out what is causing honeybee colony collapse disorder?

The New York Times recently reported on a new discovery in understanding the devastating phenomenon of bee colony collapse disorder (CCD). Apparently a cocktail of a rare fungus and a virus have been teaming up to decimate bee populations. From the article:

A unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two. […] Research at the University of California, San Francisco, had already identified the fungus as part of the problem. And several RNA-based viruses had been detected as well. But the Army/Montana team, using a new software system developed by the military for analyzing proteins, uncovered a new DNA-based virus, and established a linkage to the fungus, called N. ceranae.

The honeybee, credit: emrank, flickr

The big breakthrough here was identifying the virus using the Army’s new software. In combination with the fungus, the new virus – dubbed IIV – was able to wipe out bee hives with 100% efficacy. Scientists are still not completely sure the sequence of events or even why this started happening to American honeybees and not Australian variants, for example. But this research is a major breakthrough for an industry that is responsible for pollinating most of the food plants we eat.

Some background on CCD: This issue has now been with us for a number of years. Starting in the winter of 2006-2007, beehive keepers started to notice an increasing number of bees simply fly away from their hives and die. The problem has continued through the 2009 season with little success in identifying what was happening.

We have seen theories ranging from an increase in electromagnetic pollution affecting the bee’s navigational abilities, to increased pesticide exposure for the bees, exposure to GMO flower nectar that was supposedly interfering with their biological system (somehow) and some argued it was a milieu of all these factors. The virus + fungus research we have here is by far the most convincing argument to date.

The Science

This latest study was published in the open access journal PLoS ONE, which means we get to read what the findings say!

Inoculation of Bees: A Comparison

The scientists used bee proteins from the initial 2007 outbreak, an additional 2009 outbreak in Florida, unaffected Australian bees, and even had a control group of bees from Montana which showed no CCD characteristics.

The findings show IIV in over 75% of all the bees but that it didn’t cause a major problem unless it was mixed with the fungi from the genus Nosema.

The researchers then took young bees whose fed was inoculated with IIV + Nosema fungus, just IIV and just the fungus and watched them. They found the combination of the two was a complete knockout, taking down 100% of the newly emerged bees tested. Researchers also showed that bees could still be able to survive a Nosema infection and survive but with IIV, they are overcome.

How all of this comes together in nature is a still a mystery to be unraveled in future studies but it is clear from this study that IIV discovery is a huge step forward in turning the corner on this problem.

13 October 2010
Why the SOLE Food Movement is Failing

friend of mine sent me an article from a publication called Zocalo that reviews American Terroir: Savoring the Flavors of Our Woods, Waters, and Fields by Rowan Jacobsen.

A good book but it only makes things harder

I’m not going to review this title (you can read the one from the Zocalo here) nor am I going to pick on Jacobsen. I’m sure his book is an interesting take on terroir foods as he calls them, picking up where Pollan’s Botany of Desire left off. What I am going to do is explain why I think this book represents another step backwards in gaining wider acceptance of SOLE foods.

The Issue

You may not even know what SOLE food stands for (its Sustainable, Organic, Local and Ethical Food) but that’s not even the problem. See, in the US and most of the developed world now, we have crushing obesity and diabetes epidemics going on. The latest obesity numbers released by the CDC should give everyone pause: the US obesity rate is over 30% now, with some states climbing to almost 35%. Stop and take that in for a moment. Just about every third person in the US is now more than 30 pounds over their ideal weight.

In the face of this monumental health crisis, related directly to food, a group of young, mostly urban dwelling Americans has taken it upon themselves to do something about it and change the food system. This fractious group is composed of some well-meaning professors, chefs, environmental activists, food writers, farmers and maybe even a nutrition blogger or two. As with any movement, it has many sides. Unfortunately, the side that usually shows with the food movement is one of striking elitism, often so detached from why this issue exists in the first place that I’m often surprised at the amount of progress that has been made.

Now, I don’t mean to pick on Jacobsen or the reviewer Christine C. Chen; this Zocalo piece is just one I have read out of literally hundreds that strike this exact same chord of elitism that needs to be addressed. The tone these articles create is similar to commenting on how nice the paint on the Titanic looks as the ship was sinking. I think it would instructive to take a look at the people on the ship for a change.

How Elitism is Counterproductive to Better Food

Say you live in Indiana, are supporting a family of four, your spouse is a nurse and you work construction. You’ve had a couple brushes with unemployment but for the most part you are making ends meet. Both of you are in your mid-40s and easily twenty pounds overweight, prime candidates for slipping into the obese category. Now, you notice your kids are following in your footsteps, heavier than they should be. You start investigating bringing different foods into their both of your diets. (This is a large part of America, by the way.)

You hear about this organic, local food thing from a neighbor and are interested in how it might help your family. You start poking around online and this is what you read (from the Zocalo piece):

As with so many other things in the gastronomic galaxy, the English-speaking world adopted the term [terrior] from the French, who had more than just geography and geology in mind when they coined it. Terroir, from the Latin for “earth,” signifies more than “a taste of place.” It also conveys “a partnership between person, plant, and environment to bring something unique into the world.” Terroir is more than just the soil in which the grapes are grown or the village which lends its name to a wine; it’s the fullest, most concentrated expression of a person’s interaction with the land on which he or she lives.

“Huh? What language is that in?” you might think. So you look around some more. This is from the New York Times 10.10.10 Food Issue this Sunday. Here is Michael Pollan describing a 36 Hour Dinner Party (seriously):

The idea is to make the most efficient use of precious firewood and to keep the heat (and the danger) of the cook fire some distance from everybody’s homes. But what appeals to me about the tradition is how the communal oven also becomes a focus for social life (“focus” is Latin for “hearth”), a place to gather and gossip and escape the solitude of cooking at home. Shared meals have always been about community, about what happens among family and friends — even enemies — when they gather around a table to eat; but once upon a time, before every family had its own kitchen in which Mom labored more or less alone, cooking was itself a social activity, one that fostered community and conversation around the chopping board or cook fire long before the meal was served.

I could post other essays here but the point is already apparent: if you are that guy from Indiana, this party is not yours. The conversation is about becoming one with the soils around you and throwing 36 hour dinner parties of locally sourced food in Napa valley, not about feeding a family of four on a limited budget. Never is any of the food featured in these articles sourced from a grocery store, the one place the majority of the country buys its food.

The priorities of the agenda-setting side of the food movement are so out of step with what people facing these crippling chronic diseases need to hear that the two never even intersect. And, on the oft chance the foodie elite run into the middle class working family, the message is so distant that is might as well not even have been spoken.

In short, local food is a message divorced from its audience.

How Do You Fix This?

The issue facing a broad adoption of the locally sourced, organic foods is mostly related to supply chains and cost, not a deeper understanding of man’s connection to the soil. While having an appreciation for where our food comes from matters, what is far more important is reform of the agricultural subsidies that have created this situation. Further, we need to create more efficient markets that lower the price of these foods. You’ll hear these discussions but much more infrequently (see James McWilliams at the Atlantic, he picks up on some of this).

Instead, when you read these locavores your options seem to be: start a large garden, inherit some money and go on a food quest to get in touch with the earth, throw a 36 hour dinner party or potentially go ‘woofing’ on organic farms. At times it would appear as if the local food movement would like most American to revert back into becoming subsistence farmers, living off the land as did our ancestry hundreds of years ago.

That’s not an option and it shouldn’t have to be. The real issue comes back to money: SOLE food needs to come down in price. That can happen with greater volume and subsidy reform, not 36 hour dinner parties. It will be hard work to get the country back to eating nutritiously again which is why it it is so foolish to drag food into the culture wars by constantly enforcing the idea that eating well is something only rich people can do. It seems there is no better symbol of something that ties everyone together. Maybe it’s time for the food movement to appreciate this fact.

12 October 2010
Vitamin B3 Niacin (Niaspan) beats Zetia as Heart Medication

Niacin, Vitamin B3

I know this information is already about a year out of date but I thought it might be worth republishing (as I just ran into this article and study this last weekend.) At the 2009 meeting of the American Heart Association, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that niacin (vitamin B3) treatments worked better than the Merck prescription drug Zetia at reducing the size of arterial blockages in the neck. Quoted from the New York Times who covered the story fairly well:

For patients taking a statin to control high cholesterol, adding an old standby drug, niacin, was superior in reducing buildup in the carotid artery to adding Zetia, a newer drug that reduces bad cholesterol, according to a new study.

The small study, with only 208 patients, has attracted outsize attention because the researchers did a head-to-head comparison of niacin and Zetia, which has been heavily marketed.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Zetia in 2002 to lower bad cholesterol, a risk factor for heart disease. But the drug has not yet proved to have a longer-term clinical benefit in reducing heart attacks and deaths. Merck, the maker of the drug, is conducting a clinical trial on that issue involving up to 18,000 patients.

The headline jumps out because a measly vitamin that has been available since humans existed appears to do more for the cardioprotection than Merck’s newest drug. But lets dig a little deeper here and keep a good head about you as we dig in here:

Carotid Artery (the big one shown)

1) The study showed that niacin was more effective solely at preventing plaques from forming in the carotid artery which runs up from the aorta into your neck. While blockages here matter, this artery is much larger than the the coronary arterials. Blockages in the coronaries cause heart attacks by depriving the heart’s ventricles of blood. It would logically follow that other arteries besides the carotid would remain less clogged based on the study but that was not proven here.

2) Zetia did lower LDL cholesterol a significant amount – about 20%. But this reduction has a very interesting side effect: it made the arterial plaque worse. From the NEJM study:

As compared with ezetimibe, niacin had greater efficacy regarding the change in mean carotid intima–media thickness over 14 months (P=0.003), leading to significant reduction of both mean (P=0.001) and maximal carotid intima–media thickness (P≤0.001 for all comparisons). Paradoxically, greater reductions in the LDL cholesterol level in association with ezetimibe were significantly associated with an increase in the carotid intima–media thickness (R=–0.31, P<0.001)

If we translate that bold part into english: Zetia lowered LDL but that made the artery plaque bigger. The scientists did not go into greater detail here and all the study participants had heart disease, so it is hard to draw conclusions here, but this finding may mean Zetia is doing more harm than good. Even more broadly, it brings into question the idea of blanket lowering LDL cholesterol dogma that is the foundation of most heart disease protocols.

3) This study is flawed because it did not use a placebo group and there was no mention of the study being double blinded (that is where neither the patients nor the scientists know whom is receiving which treatment).

4) The form of niacin used in this study was not the OTC Vitamin B3 Niacin but rather an extended release Rx version called Niaspan. So, of course, the kicker from the Times story hits hard:

Niaspan is made by Abbott Laboratories, which financed the study.

Some final thoughts:

The findings are significant but not terribly meaningful – this was a small study that did not have the proper rigor to demonstrably usher in a new paradigm, not to mention the findings conveniently coincide with the pharmaceutical company who funded the study. But it did show Abbott’s Niacin-based drug beats Merck’s Zetia. It would be interesting to see if, instead of using Abbott’s time release formula, there was a side-by-side comparison of what 2X/day niacin supplement, in all its $4.99/bottle-at-walmart-glory, might do next to the $100+/bottle of miracle drug Zetia, and even Abbott’s Niaspan. Some placebo controls would be nice as well.

The irony to this whole story is that regular old niacin can be found in the very products cardiologists tell you stay away from: beer, pork, fish and -above all – chicken. This situation seems just too convenient to be an accident. Just putting an idea out there – maybe the body evolved to use niacin as a natural cholesterol balance against cholesterol heavy foods like beef and chicken, considering the body would find niacin wherever it would find cholesterol in these meat products.

Any thoughts on that?

11 October 2010
Obesity Rates in America Continue to Rise, Adenovirus May Play Role

The latest examination of obesity rates by the CDC comes to some sobering conclusions about the state of public health in America. Their findings show a block of states, mostly concentrated in the South, now have obesity rates over 30%. Back in 1990, no states were over 20%, making the run-up in the last 20 years remarkable.

The Journal of the American Medical Association gave us the most recent update on obesity earlier this year from the highly respected NHANES data set about the 2007-2008 obesity timeframe. They came to slightly more upbeat conclusions, finding that the incidence of obesity in America was over 32% and still increasing but at a slightly slower rate. They had some other interesting tidbits, especially about how these trends date back to the civil war in the 1860s:

In the United States, a study of data from military recruits, veterans, and national surveys suggests mean BMI has increased over a long period since the Civil War up to recent times, with increases in the last several decades perhaps less steep than those observed earlier.25 Over the period 1960-1980 (covered by the earliest NHANES surveys and the National Health Examination Survey), obesity prevalence was relatively stable, but then it showed striking increases in the 1980s and 1990s. The data presented in our current study using 2007-2008 data suggest that the prevalence may have entered another period of relative stability, perhaps with small increases in obesity, although future large changes cannot be ruled out. Because relatively little is known about the causes of the trends previously observed, it is difficult to predict the future trends in obesity.

The CDC’s latest numbers update us for the 2009 calendar year, finding that the growth is accelerating again, possibly exacerbated by the dire financial situation many people found themselves in because of the recession. As we mentioned earlier, the rate of obesity is significantly over 30% for the entire nation now, and nearly 35% in the south. In certain ethnic groups, especially black and hispanic groups, the rate is bumping up near 40%. Remember, obesity is defined as being more than 30 pounds overweight in this survey – if we were also counting overweight people, which is generally considered more than 10 pounds overweight, we these numbers could be double what is being reported here.

Obesity Rates from 1990 to 2009, the growth is explosive

What is Causing this Surge?

While the usual suspects of diet and exercise are implicated in this rise, other research is coming to light on the subject. Just yesterday a new finding came out that suggests obesity may be related to a virus contracted during childhood. This virus, adenovirus 36, belongs to the larger class of adenoviruses that can cause a host of problems like eye infections, GI tract irritation and respiratory infections. What makes adenovirus 36 unique is that it infects fats, making it the only known virus to do so.

The study in the journal Pediatrics shows a correlation between having adenovirus 36 and being obese but it does NOT show adenovirus 36 causes obesity. This implies that the virus will may be able to attack an obese person due to a suppressed immune system or some other avenue; the researchers do not go into the causation subject in detail so it is hard to say. They emphasize this study is a starting point but it shows interesting promise in understanding childhood obesity.

Where does it go from here?

Given the gravity of this issue and the cost it is putting on the nation (and the world for that matter), major research dollars are being thrown at understanding the issue. I’m just not confident they will find very much here. This is a multifaceted issue – problems such as inactive work lives, the proliferation of car-culture and suburbia, fast food, bad diets and a lack of exercise are all playing a role. It is hard to tease out exactly which factors are the most important to pay attention to in the data sets because this situation is now so widespread. I think the research will get more specific moving forward, as we are seeing with the concentration on the adenovirus angle with children, the genetic dimension with minority groups and lifestyle choices with middle america. But obesity, at the end of the day, is an input/output issue – if you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. Getting people to do that is a whole different story.

Tomorrow, we will reexamine high fructose corn syrup’s role in obesity in light of some new research.

Additional Resources:

CDC’s Obesity Trends, 2009:

21 September 2010
Neurophotonics Coming to a Human Being Near You

Neurophotonics, up close

Researchers at SMU are working with DARPA (the US hyper-advanced military research group that initially developed the internet) to create an artificial fiber optic signaling system that will directly interface with your body’s central nervous system. This technology, called neurophotonics, would allow bidirectional communication to and from the brain, giving amputees with prosthetic arms and legs the ability to feel heat, cold and pain in those artificial extremities. From the article:

The goal of the Neurophotonics Research Center is to develop a link compatible with living tissue that will connect powerful computer technologies to the human nervous system through hundreds or even thousands of sensors embedded in a single fiber.

Unlike experimental electronic nerve interfaces made of metal, fiber optic technology would not be rejected or destroyed by the body’s immune system.

“Enhancing human performance with modern digital technologies is one of the great frontiers in engineering,” said Christensen. “Providing this kind of port to the nervous system will enable not only realistic prosthetic limbs, but also can be applied to treat spinal cord injuries and an array of neurological disorders.”

This program follows in the footsteps of DARPA’s ‘Revolutionizing Prosthetics’ Program, whose goal was to have neuronal-controlled prosthetic arm to market before 2010. According to their website, those advanced prosthetics are already in testing but they are nowhere near as advanced as this project. A true fiber backbone for the body would act much like our spinal cords currently do, only faster.

The Future

Neurophotonics is an interesting field just in its infancy and it is going head to head with genetic engineering. It will be interesting to see if this neurophotonic method, where structures we engineer are grafted into humans, takes hold or if genetic engineering, where genes are manipulated to bring similar results, will win out. Another research company called Neuralstem is attempting to reconnect spinal cords damaged spinal cords from Lou Gerhig’s Disease with genetically engineered stem cells.

Stem cells have come under intense pressure as they are harvested from fetuses (sometimes). Using them for research purposes was outright banned earlier this year in the US by a court ruling but the ban has since been lifted. This neurophotonic method may win out because it is less controversial but first, both methods have to prove successful in further clinical trials.

20 September 2010
Food Safety Legislation S.510 Stalled by One Senator

Ezra Klein’s excellent blog on the Washington Post website highlights a Politico story today about the status of the long awaited food safety legislation (s.510). It is currently being held up by one senator, Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma. Here is the latest:

Coburn’s office confirmed to POLITICO on Tuesday that the Republican is objecting to moving forward with the bill on the grounds that it will add to the burgeoning federal budget. Coburn has become the GOP champion for demanding that legislation be fully paid for, staging or threatening filibusters this year on legislation ranging from war spending to unemployment benefits.

Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma

Coburn’s analysis of the bill seems a bit off. A lot has been made of how the bill will effect farmers precisely because it puts so much of the cost of the new legislation on those who are being inspected (see our past coverage). In our 2009 analysis of the house bill, we found that the FDA would earn roughly $200 million dollars a year from inspection fees, which would largely offset the cost of the legislation, although not entirely.

Coburn’s stand seems mostly obstructionist ahead of 2010 congressional races. There is a significant groundswell against further deficit spending, especially in rural America, but there is also significant unease about the food supply in the wake of the peanut butter and spinach scares of the last five years. The delicate balance of fees in this food safety bill was ironed out over the course of two years and it doesn’t make sense for Coburn to stand in the way of it now. Except for the fact that he is a junior senator running for his reelection in a couple months…

And remember, this is a bipartisan bill. These are easier to pass.

UPDATE: A just before the weekend note from Senate Majority Leader Henry Reid: Coburn’s position means the bill will likely not be taken up before the election in November. What a coincidence…

17 September 2010
Winds of Change: Antibiotics in Livestock

The New York Times has a really good piece on the coming rules regarding the amount of antibiotics that can be given to confinement livestock.

Now, after decades of debate, the Food and Drug Administration appears poised to issue its strongest guidelines on animal antibiotics yet, intended to reduce what it calls a clear risk to human health. They would end farm uses of the drugs simply to promote faster animal growth and call for tighter oversight by veterinarians.

The agency’s final version is expected within months, and comes at a time when animal confinement methods, safety monitoring and other aspects of so-called factory farming are also under sharp attack. The federal proposal has struck a nerve among major livestock producers, who argue that a direct link between farms and human illness has not been proved. The producers are vigorously opposing it even as many medical and health experts call it too timid.

Scores of scientific groups, including the American Medical Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, are calling for even stronger action that would bar most uses of key antibiotics in healthy animals, including use for disease prevention, as with Mr. Rowles’s piglets. Such a bill is gaining traction in Congress.

What a CAFO looks like

In case you are not familiar with the situation, often pigs, chickens and even cows are put into caged areas much to small for any living creature move around freely. These confinement animal feeding operations (CAFOs) result in large amounts of animal waste that creates an ideal breeding ground for bacterial infection among the animals. Farmers are aware of this and supplement their animal feeds with a range of antibiotics.

But the point here is more nuanced. The battle over the line for antibiotic use on the farm center around their use as a growth promotion agent in animals. Many CAFO farmers have learned that antibiotic cocktails cause their chicken to grow faster, their pigs to grow larger, etc. Ag-centric scholarly journals have dubbed these agents ‘antibiotic growth promoters’ (AGPs) and they are subject of the FDA’s scrutiny. Here is a good review of how they have been used:

Public health officials note that antibiotic resistance has grown by this abundant use of antibiotics. The use is so abundant that is far outpaces the amount of antibiotics used by human beings. According the Union of Concerned Scientists – a reputable NGO – non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock represents over 70% of the total amount of antibiotics created in the US. The FDA is listening to those worries, which have been ignored up until now, with new ears.

Imagine if you had to live your life in a subway car with 300 of your closest friends. It wouldn’t take long before somebody got the sniffles and, pretty soon, the whole car would be sick. That’s the basic scenario at the CAFO that farmers are worried about. Public health officials are worried about what happens if those resistant strains of bacteria get out of the CAFO and jump into humans.

This new FDA rule will not be an easy sell. The agriculture and public health industries are extremely well connected on Capitol Hill and I’m not sure who’s dollar bills will look better to elected officials. I see major resistance shaping the end product here.

16 September 2010
Entering the Genetic Age: Enviropig and GMO animals

The October 2010 edition of Popular Science landed in my mailbox today with a brief overview of the genetically modified Enviropig. I would give you a direct link but, for some reason, Popular Science does not publish its magazine articles online. It’s not that big of a deal because the article isn’t even good enough to carry a byline. But it got me thinking. GMO animals are here…so let’s review where we are at.

Building a Better Animal

The picture from Popsci

The story briefly highlights the work of Cecil Forsberg a biologist from the University of Guelph in Ontario, who wanted to spare the environment the impact of pig farming. The problem with swine CAFOs is they produce huge amounts of waste that are stored in so called ‘swine lagoons‘. These open air pig waste ponds have been the subject of much debate, with the EPA studying them for polluting ground water with estrogenic compounds while the hog farming capital of the world, North Carolina, has gone so far as to ban their new construction outright. But the real problem with the pig waste is what happens once it leaves the lagoon.

Too much algae comes from swine effluent

Much of swine effluent is sold as a spray on fertilizer for crops near the hog farms because of it’s high NPK values (ag talk for Nitrogen-Phosphorous-Potassium levels, critical to grow American corn and soy agronomic crops). This concept makes logical sense and could even promote regional foodshed growth as a cheap form of nutrient dense fertilizer that comes from a natural source. The problem is the volume of waste from giant hog farms far outstrips the local farmland’s ability to use it. Most notable, is that phosphorous runoff from the pig waste finds its way into sensitive waterways where it promotes runaway algae growth that chokes off aquatic life from the oxygen it needs to survive, a process known as eutrophication.

Domesticated pigs eat a largely vegetarian diet of grain and soy that contains prodigious amounts of phytate, a complex compound their bodies cannot normally break down, causing these high phosphorous levels in the waste fertilizer. Pigs still need phosphorous to make DNA so farmers solve this issue by buying free phosphorous for their pigs or supplementing with an enzyme called, appropriately enough, phytase. But what if that was all unecessary? What if the pig made phytase itself?

Enter Enviropig.

Forsberg, et al, have genetically engineered these Yorkshire pigs to produce phytase in their salivary glands, which breaks down the phytate into usable phosphorous for the pig. The result? 30-65% reduction in phosphorous excretions. Enviropigs cost more than traditional breeds but, according to the Popsci article, save farmers $1.75 annually in supplementation costs – a big savings in the world of livestock production. In a CAFO with 100K head of swine (which unfortunately aren’t going anywhere anytime soon), this would be a huge win for the marine environment, currently being decimated by many forces. The pig awaits USDA and Health Canada approval as it has now successfully been breed into an 8th generation with no problems.

Ick, Ehh, or Yay?

GMO animals represent a promising new way to deal with the industrial scale of modern agriculture issues. We say promising because, like always with genetic modification, the ideas are great but the implementation has left something to be desired. It is heartening to see that the Enviropig was developed at the university level and not the corporate level, avoiding such pitfalls as the infamous terminator genes in some Monsanto GMO products.

It still strikes us as counterintuitive to create such a technology when simply lowering the density of swine at CAFOs would achieve the same effect. Better yet, we could require CAFOs to treat swine waste much as we require cities to treat human waste before releasing it back into the environment. Nevertheless, this is just one of many GMO animals to come and its a promising start.

15 September 2010
Corn Sugar: HFCS by a different name?

There was an article in the Cleveland daily today about The Corn Refiners Association, the lobbying arm of corn agribusiness, petitioning the FDA to rename high fructose corn syrup, ‘Corn Sugar’.

From the article (emphasis mine):

The bid to rename the sweetener by the Corn Refiners Association comes as Americans’ concerns about health and obesity have sent consumption of high fructose corn syrup, used in soft drinks but also in bread, cereal and other foods, to a 20-year low.

The group applied Tuesday to the Food and Drug Administration to get the “corn sugar” name approved for use on food labels. They hope a new name will ease confusion about about the sweetener. Some people think it is more harmful or more likely to make them obese than sugar, perceptions for which there is little scientific evidence

Confused by corn syrup? Clarity will come with corn sugar, surely.

The Corn Refiners are in the right to say the science is not settled but there are quite a few problems under investigation. One study links HFCS to fatty liver disease while NHANES data, which is the largest epidemiological evaluation of America undertaken by the NIH every 4-5 years, showed an association between HFCS and kidney disease. And lets not forget, HFCS was found to be laced with mercury last year.

From a biochemical perspective fructose gets routed through a whole different series of tubes in the body, namely the liver. It’s not different than table sugar but the name HFCS implies it is higher in fructose content than other sugars. Maybe that unfair enough for the FDA to grant the name change. I doubt it though.

There are a bevy of corn sugars in the food supply already, HFCS, corn syrup, dextrose, xylitol, crystalline fructose…the list goes on. Why does HFCS get the blanket terminology while the others have to be more specific? Outside of marketing, there is no rationale but that hasn’t stopped the FDA from granting other name changes before.

The Corn Refiners Association already has http://cornsugar.com live online and an ad campaign replete with pretty corn fields.

My favorite line in the article from cleveland.com?

The American Medical Association says there’s not enough evidence yet to restrict the use of high fructose corn syrup, although it wants more research.

I guess diabetes and obesity epidemics are not the AMA’s primary concern…

*Note – this article is a sampling of the style to be featured in the coming news posts of the new Nutrition Wonderland v2.0! Get excited people, its nearly here…

14 September 2010
Nutrition Wonderland moving towards v2.0

Over the next couple months, I will be rolling out a new version of Nutrition Wonderland. This update is substantial and will significantly effect this site – for the better I hope. I have taken into account everyone’s suggestions on how to improve what I started here and think I have come up with an even better formula.

NW 2.0′s major initiative is to create more of a blog-centric portion of the site that better explains what is going on in the medical, nutrition and agricultural worlds. Everyone has repeatedly told me there is such a need for an informed voice that shows the interplay between these issues that it does not make sense to ignore it any longer. Currently, we only do this type of coverage on our Twitter page, but based on it’s substantial following, there appears to be a big need for more of this.

We will continue to offer you our feature stories at their 2-4X/month interval but the newer blog stories will roll at a much faster rate – think 4-5/day – and be much shorter in length. This way we can highlight what’s important and use our feature stories to educate around those issues. There are numerous other enhancements coming but this is the centerpiece of the changes. (If this has you in huff right now, rest assured, we will offer a new set of RSS feeds if you want to opt out of receiving the new information and just stick to the old feature stories.)

My work on this whole project has slowed significantly over the summer as I pursued an interesting opportunity of sorts with the Rodale Institute up in Pennsylvania and as I work towards a masters in nutritional biochemistry. Both opportunities have opened a whole new series of doors that will only serve to strengthen this site going forward.

September will see great progress – I will be sharing it with all of you shortly.

Thanks,
-j

2 September 2010