The Food Babe

I first ran across the Food Babe several months ago when I came across her ridiculous assertion that everyone should avoid "Monsanto Butter."

The Food Babe appears, in the intervening time, to have gained ever more followers and media attention.  But, her most recent campaign against an ingredient in beer, by drawing the attention of actual experts on the topic, may turn one of her greatest successes (getting Anheuser-Busch to disclose ingredients and alter their production process) into a credibility stumbling block that she is likely to have trouble overcoming.   

Indeed, it's been a bad few days for the Food Babe.  Her latest campaign has even spawned several new phrases from the blogosphere.

• From Trevor Butterworth at Forbes: "quackmail" - as in using quack-science to blackmail food companies 
• From David Gorski at Science Based Medicine: The "Jenny McCarthy of the food industry" 
• From Tom Cizauskas at Yours for Good Fermentables:  "Food McCarthyism"
• From Jay Brooks at the Beer Bulletin:  "Yellow journalism", which is “a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism.”

Each of the above links roundly criticize and debunk the fear-mongering and pseudo-scientific approach taken by the Food Babe.  To those I'll also add posts by Hank Campbell at Science 2.0 and Maureen Ogle,  author of Ambitious Brew.  There really isn't much left to add to these critiques.

While there has been some positive discussion of the Food Babe's activities (e.g., see this article in Business Insider), mainly focusing on the power of social media to force food company change, one must ultimately ask whether the change is good or bad, and whether the methods used to obtain such change are justifiable.  And, when we see the Food Babe's other writings against GMOs or against the flu vaccine, there is cause for concern (those efforts have also been criticized, for example, see here and here).    

New FDA Nutritional Facts Panel Explained

Adding to their already fantastic farmdocdaily blog, the department of agricultural and consumer economics at the University of Illinois has just launched a new policy blog.  

The most recent post is on proposed changes to the nutrition facts panel by Brenna Ellison, one of my former students at Oklahoma State.  In the link at the bottom her post (which jumps to a brief survey), Brenna created the best visual illustration I've seen to date of the proposed changes.  I've reproduced it here with Brenna's permission. 

I should also note that the results from our Food Demand Survey (FooDS) suggest most people prefer the new label to the old.  

Do USDA Quality Grades Mislead Consumers?

If you've ever seen the words "Choice" or "Prime" advertising a cut of beef, then you've been influenced by the federal beef quality grading system, which is administered by the Agricultural Marketing Service of the USDA.  From "best" to "worst" the grades are Prime, Choice, Select, and Standard.  

In a paper forthcoming the Journal of Animal Science, Eric and Megan Devuyst and I report the results of a study revealing that the USDA beef quality grading system likely sends confusing and misleading signals to final consumers (which is exactly the opposite of the purpose of the grading system).

The key determinant of quality in current grading system is "intramuscular fat" - the amount of fat inside the muscle of the steak.  Steaks with more fat get higher grades, primarily because of the large amount of research showing that consumers prefer the taste of steaks with more intramuscular fat.

But, do consumers know this?  And do they understand the information communicated by the grade names? Based on results of two nationwide surveys (both with over 1,000 people), we believe the answers are clearly: "No".

Most people thought the grade name "Prime" was the leannest, while also expecting it to be juiciest.  When looking just at the pictures (the same ones shown above but without the names), most people thought the picture of the Prime steak would be the cheapest, and they were most likely to associate the picture of the Prime steak with the name "Select."  

Only 14% of respondents correctly ranked the grade names according to leanness, and only 14% correctly matched the pictures with the respective grade names.  That's worse than random guessing (16.67% would be correct just by pure chance given that people had to match three items).   

We conclude the paper with the following:

if the current grading system fails to adequately inform consumers of the relative quality of grades, there remains the likelihood that consumers’ expectations will be unmet. There are three potential methods for addressing this lack of understanding. First, the current quality grading system could be dropped in lieu of private or third-party systems. . . .Second, an educational program could be  developed to promote knowledge of the link between higher marbled beef and taste. . . . The costs of such an effort, however, are likely to be large, and it is unclear what effects they may have particularly when one realizes the existence of many prior educational efforts that have been undertaken in the 70 year existence of the Prime-Choice quality grade nomenclature. . . . Finally, consumers could likely benefit from more descriptive nomenclature. . . . for example, “USDA Prime—Higher Fat, Most Juicy,” “USDA Choice—Juicy,” and “USDA Select—Less Fat, Less Juicy.” 

You can read the whole thing here.

What do consumers think of the FDA's new nutritional labels?

We've known for a few months now that the FDA has been planning to revise and update the nutritional labels appearing on packaged foods.  

There has been a lot of discussion in the news about the merits (and demerits) of the label.  But, what do consumers think?

In the most recent issue of my monthly Food Demand Survey (FooDS), we directly asked consumers what they thought.  Here is a screenshot of the question we asked (note: the order of the labels was randomly varied across surveys).

The images were taken from an FDA website showing an example of the new, proposed label along with an example of the current label.

We have data from 1,016 respondents (data was collected last week); results are weighted to be demographically representative of the US population with a sampling error of +/- 3%.

We found 26% said they preferred the current label, 57% preferred the new, proposed label, and the remaining 18% said they were indifferent.  

What we think about a label may be as important as the label itself

What believe about a food's ingredients may have a biological effect on our bodies above and beyond the actual nutrient content.

That is the conclusion from a study published in the journal Health Psychology, which was recently covered by Alix Spiegel at the NPR Health blog.

The authors conducted an experiment in which they fed the same 380 calorie milk shake to two different groups of subjects.  The first group was lied to, and were told (via a label) that the shake was a "sensible" 140 calories.  The second group was also lied to, but in the opposite manner: they were told (via a label) that the shake was an "indulgent" 620 calories.  

The researchers measured the levels of a hormone, ghrelin, before during and after the label experiment.  Ghrelin levels are particularly interesting to monitor because they regulate metabolism and help signal hunger or satiety.  After eating a big meal, ghrelin levels fall, signalling us to stop eating.  Eat a light meal, and ghrelin levels remain high, signaling us to eat more.

The authors found that people consuming the "indulgent" labeled shake experienced a significant increase in ghrelin just before consumption (in anticipation) and then a significant decline in ghrelin after consumption.  The change, the authors argue, is consistent with that typically observed after eating a big meal.  By contrast, the level of ghrelin was flat before and after eating the "sensible" shake.   All this is in spite of the fact that the two shakes were exactly the same in every way except for the labels!  

The authors were quoted as saying:

Labels are not just labels; they evoke a set of beliefs

and that labels might

actually affect the body's physiological processing of the nutrients that are consumed.

One way to interpret the results is to place them in the category with other "behavioral biases" in the behavioral economics literature: another piece of evidence that people do not behave rationally.  I see it a bit differently.  The results suggest a kind of "extra" rationality.  Mind over matter.  What we think might well trigger how our body responds.  Marketers might influence what we think about foods, but we have some control over the process too.  

Now, if I can just fool myself into believing that small lunch salad is actually one of the Carl's Jr. "Indulgent Salads", I'll feel fuller and lose more weight! 

The study's sample size was small (N=46), probably because to measure ghrelin they had to insert an intravenous catheter to draw blood at repeated intervals.  So one proceed with caution until more work of this sort is done.  Still, very interesting nonetheless.