Eating in America Podcast

Ric Bayly
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Nutrition

Eating in America is about the food on our table and who's in charge of keeping it healthy. www.eatinginamerica.co

  1. 3d ago

    “Survivor, Surgeon General,” Episode 3, Donald J. Trump, your host

    Surgeon General nominee Dr. Nicole Saphier will testify at her Senate confirmation hearing tomorrow. If she is approved as Surgeon General it will represent another major corruption of America’s public health authority. Eating In America previously reported that Saphier owns a supplement company. Her pricey tinctures have unquantified, ultraprocessed ingredients, and the health claims she makes for them are unsupported by science. One of them contains kava root, a supplement that is banned in the U.S. military because of its association with liver damage. Her involvement in supplements should have immediately dismissed her from consideration as Surgeon General. Newly disclosed is that she has profited by $270,000 from these products. Eating in America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Equally disqualifying are new revelations in the financial disclosure and ethics agreement she submitted last week that she owns stock in the three major tobacco companies, Altria Group, British American Tobacco, and Philip Morris. Equally disqualifying are the new revelations Saphier owns shares of Nestlé, a giant ultraprocessed food company, who’s ethics include vigorously marketing infant formula to women who could have breast fed but were convinced by Nestlé to use formula, even though they did not have clean water to mix the formula, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of babies and children. Equally disqualifying are the new revelations that she is an owner of Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Mondelēz, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, KFC, makers of food linked to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and many other ailments. Saphier owns stock in 239 major corporations apart from these nine who peddle toxic products. She did not have to sacrifice profit to make choices that were less abhorrent for a health leader. With these new revelations of tobacco and sugar-based food investments, Saphier draws even closer to matching the profiles and disqualifications of the two Surgeons General nominees who were “voted off” before her. As I point out in my May podcast/post “Survivor, Surgeon General,” Saphier shares with the first nominee, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, graduation from a medical school in the Caribbean and broadcasting at Fox News. With failed nominee #2 Casey Means, Saphier shares profiting from the supplement industry and stated ambiguity about vaccines. Newly disclosed and also thoroughly damning are the tobacco investments Saphier has made, like Means, in Altria Group and Philip Morris. Trump’s need to insist repeatedly that his choices are right until they are accepted, despite the consequences Americans are suffering, is again reflected in his third Surgeon General nominee, stamped in the very same mold as the first two. Unfortunately, back in her hearing in February, the Senate paid little attention to Casey Means’ involvement with tobacco, so that black stain on Saphier’s public health resume may not be a factor in her hearing tomorrow. Thank you for reading. Your support for Eating In America is appreciated. References Saphier, Nicole. Surgeon General nomination, financial disclosure details. September 7, 2026. Provided by U.S. Office of Government Ethics, September 15, 2026. Saphier, Nicole. Letter of financial disclosure and ethics agreement. September 7, 2026. https://extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden.nsf/PAS+Index/54788BB045EFAE6E85258E6E002DFF11/$FILE/Saphier Bayly R. Survivor, Surgeon General, podcast/post on Eating In America. May 26, 2026. https://www.eatinginamerica.co/p/survivor-surgeon-general-who-will This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eatinginamerica.co/subscribe

  2. 5d ago

    Sugar Coated, Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America’s Favorite Breakfast Food

    Are you one of the 300 million Americans who together spend $23 billion to eat breakfast cereal each year? Is there nostalgia in that bowl or just a pleasant-enough dose of food to push you out the door in the morning? Marion Nestle and Lisa Sutherland’s new book, Sugar Coated, Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America’s Favorite Breakfast Food, is a not-sugar-coated history of the invention and evolution of cereal in America, inspired by and told through an extraordinary collection of Kellogg cereal box reproductions dating back to 1919 and given to Nestle by Kellogg in 2010. Nestle and Sutherland, who was Vice President for Nutrition at Kellogg at the time, understood immediately that these artifacts embodied - and displayed in bright colors - a macro case study of the way processed food has been marketed in the United States in the last hundred years. Granula, the sanctified but inedible beginning As Nestle and Sutherland recount the history, the first granola was created in 1863 in a sanatorium in western New York. “Granula,” as it was called, was inedible unless it was soaked overnight. Nonetheless, the idea for the whole grain breakfast food was quickly appropriated by two brothers, the Kelloggs, who added a moralistic wrapper as they served it along with the beliefs of the health and nutrition conscious Seventh-Day Adventist Church. C.W. Post, of the soon to be Postum Cereals, helped in the kitchen of the Kelloggs’ sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan where Post also, let’s not sugar coat it again, appropriated stole the idea of a healthy whole grain cereal. Snake oil and whole grains By the turn of the century, the shift from pulpit to profit was complete in the cereal market and soon 100 cereal makers populated Battle Creek. In 1906, health-promising snake oil sales were at their peak in America, but purchases of genuinely healthy cereal were taking off, albeit with the help of snake-oil-like health claims such as Postum Grape-Nuts’ “rebuilds the soft gray matter in your brain.” Cereal had already been industrialized with extrusion and crushing processes that break the whole grains down into a more digestible form. Some cereal makers in Battle Creek were adding barley malt to sweeten their products, but the elder Kellogg, Dr. John Harvey, was adamantly opposed to sugar in the diet. The younger W.K. Kellogg saw great wealth in the future, however, and in 1906 added cane sugar to the new Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. The road to the prominence of breakfast cereal as a highly- and ultra-processed food in our culture was paved. The cereal industry’s manipulation of … everybody In Sugar Coated, Nestle and Sutherland carefully lead us through formulation of cereals over time with the addition of artificial colors, vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein, artificial sweeteners, and, of course, sugar, and lots of it. The book thoroughly and frighteningly tracks the industry’s manipulation of the Food and Drug Administration for food and labeling standards, the Federal Trade Commission for commercial advertising, academia and the nutrition research community for production of the supporting science, along with the USDA and Congress for laws and policies, all to help avoid or reduce regulation and gain license to market in ways that would best promote cereal sales. Health claims, laughable and cringeworthy The authors by turn amused and enraged me in sorting out the confusing and contentious history of health claims on cereal boxes, from the reasonable “avoids constipation” of the Kellogg 1919 All-Bran to the icky-sticky endorsement of the America Diabetes Association on boxes of Post’s sugary cereals. Sugar Coated is bound to be frequently cited for detailing the way the industry has doggedly pursued its marketing goals, through managing to get government regulations changed, creating self-imposed regulation to deflect government efforts to regulate, or just ignoring the rules, often paying the penalty in court while reaping the bigger benefit in sales. Other writers will undoubtedly extend the lessons of Sugar Coated to help examine and link the tactics of highly- and ultra-processed food segments and other industries which market addictive or regulated substances. (I include sugar as an addictive substance, a conclusion W.K. Kellogg himself might have intuited.) Sugar as the essence of cereal’s rise to be a keystone of the diet of many Americans As the name Sugar Coated implies and Nestle and Sutherland convincingly detail, sugar has long been the essential ingredient for the success of breakfast cereal, as well as one of the key battlegrounds in regulatory and court struggles. The unhealthiness of added sugar is also the reason that the behavior of the Big Four cereal makers in targeting children is unethical. Of the four giants, General Mills, Kellogg, Post, and Quaker Oats, it is no coincidence that Kellogg, now split into W.C. Kellogg for North America and Kellanova for the rest of the world, is owned by Ferraro, the Italian candy maker, and Mars, the American candy maker. Quaker Oats is also owned by a sugar-centric food maker, PepsiCo. Candy for the breakfast of kids as a new norm With marshmallows, chocolate, and candy-names in and on our cereal, we live in a food environment where candy is promoted for breakfast and breakfast is marketed as a sugary snack for eating throughout the day. The authors’ incense at the TV ads, cartoon characters, in-box prizes, colored cereals in unusual shapes, and other marketing tricks that drive the buying of sugar-laden cereal for children is restrained but palpable. The idea of stop signals to warn us Change is coming in other parts of the world and Nestle and Sutherland provide examples. The most important and potentially achievable change the authors describe would be the addition of an instantly understandable and nutritionally-sound front-of-box indication of the healthiness of the cereal or other processed food product being examined. This consumer-friendly heads up has been enacted in the form of octagonal stop-sign shaped warnings in the majority of countries in South America and has greatly reduced sugary cereal sales there. Our Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Make America Healthy Again leader, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has advocated for perhaps the strongest choice for such a warning system, red-yellow-green light icons. Of course, after reading Sugar Coated, we shouldn’t be left with any delusions about the forces the Big Four and the rest of the highly- and ultra-processed food industry are bringing to bear to fight back against RFK, Jr.’s idea. Happy birthday, Marion Nestle! Look at the photo and guess how old Marion Nestle is. This week she celebrated a birthday that ends with a zero. You probably guessed 70th and would be in disbelief that it was her 80th, but it was actually Nestle’s 90th. Where does the impressive nutrition advocacy, book-producing, interview-giving, lecture-delivering, FoodPolitics.com post-writing energy come from? Good luck, but also good nutrition, Nestle says. Happy birthday and thank you and Lisa Sutherland, for this perfect insight into the way Big Food markets, lobbies, and formulates its way onto our tables with the only consideration of healthiness being the ultimate effect on the bottom line. In two weeks, we’ll set Nestle and Sutherland’s Sugar Coated cereal story in the context of the other choices made in the morning by Americans. It will be Breakfast in America on Eating in America. Please join me then and every week at EatingInAmerica.co. Thank you for reading and your support of Eating in America through your subscriptions, comments, and likes. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eatinginamerica.co/subscribe

  3. Sep 6

    Dental health today, the role of teeth in winning wars, and the role of war in bringing dental health to America

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.eatinginamerica.co Height equals genetics plus nutrition plus health. George Washington was about 6’-2” tall. Trump claims to be 6’-3”, but his draft card and driver’s license said he was 6’-2”. Average Americans were a little shorter in Washington’s time than they are now, making Washington’s height more impressive. However, average American men were a whopping 5’8”, three inches taller than the average European! Colonial Americans were largely farmers, growing and eating their own food. Apparently, they got more food and better food on the New World farm, and they got taller. Remembering Wendell Berry Let me pause here to remember the great American agrarian writer Wendell Berry, who died this week. He wrote a lot about society that is divorced from the farm, that is, most of us today: “The industrial eater is, in fact, one who does not know that eating is an agricultural act, who no longer knows or imagines the connections between eating and the land, and who is therefore necessarily passive and uncritical—in short, a victim.” That’s from the book Bringing it to the Table. Thank you, Wendell Berry. The equation for good teeth Back to teeth. Good teeth equals genetics plus nutrition plus health plus good dental care. The dental situation is where Washington came up short There was no or little added sugar in Washington’s growing up years, but also no added fluoride, no toothbrushes, and nothing similar to the professional dental care we have today. Washington lost his last tooth while he was President. None of his various dentures ever fit well, causing him problems like being reluctant to speak in public. I wrote recently about how Washington’s mandatory smallpox inoculation measures were possibly critical in the eventual success of the Continental Army. An incident involving the General’s teeth helped deceive the British about Washington’s ultimately successful attack on Yorktown, Virginia. A stolen letter and a lost battle Washington had written to his dentist in Philadelphia asking him to send tooth cleaning tools, saying that he, Washington, wouldn’t be in Philadelphia soon. The letter was intercepted by the British and unintentionally helped convince them that Washington’s plan was to stay north and attack New York City. Because of this Cornwallis received no reinforcements at Yorktown and lost the battle to Washington, leading to the end of the Revolutionary War. The very unpleasant, unethical makeup of Washington’s dentures Those dentures the General was trying to take care of? Not wood, but the ivory bases were so brown-stained that an observer might think so. The teeth in various of Washington’s dentures consisted of a few of his own teeth that had been removed, along with “purchased” teeth extracted from people enslaved by Washington at Mount Vernon. Cow, donkey, and horse teeth were also used, along with ivory from a hippopotamus, a walrus, and maybe an elephant. The mandibles were spring loaded to open, and the teeth were embedded in lead, tin, copper, and silver alloys. American oral health has improved a lot since Washington’s day The huge increase in dental health began in the 1940s as the era of the ultra-processed was getting started with the technical innovations devised for military food. Two changes in dental care happened just in time to save our teeth, somewhat, from the flood of carbonated, sugared sodas and ultra-processed foods with refined starches and added sugars which was just about to come. Give me 100 pushups and brush for two minutes It was the military that changed American dental habits. Badly hampered in readiness by dental issues like Trench Mouth in World War One, the military made it a firm policy that troops in World War Two would brush daily. They were provided with toothbrushes and powder or paste, supplies that many, perhaps most, could not afford before joining up. Brushing was a habit brought back home in the 1940s by many millions of troops. The other big change was fluoridated water. Fluoridation of the water supply was first tested in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1945. In ten years, tooth decay in the city’s 30,000 school children had dropped 60%. Today over 209 million Americans receive caries protection from 17,400 fluoridated community water systems. Community water supplied populations which receive fluoridation range from an extreme low of 8.5% in Hawaii, mostly on military bases, to a low of 16% in New Jersey, to around 90% to 100% in many southern and rural states. Globally, 25 countries have fluoridated systems. Tooth decay remains a public health issue Despite these changes and big improvements, tooth decay, or caries, remains a public health issue because of all the pain, infections, time lost from work and school, loss of teeth, and costs. It’s the most common chronic disease in children, with half of nine-year olds having already developed caries. And for people over 65, one-quarter have severe tooth loss, meaning they have only eight or less teeth remaining. All the teeth are gone in fifteen percent of older Americans. Socioeconomic disparities and inequities continue to exist in oral health, particularly impacting poor children, but those disparities have tended to lessen as dental health has gotten better in America. Tooth decay down 26% with fluoride in the water Fluoridated water can reduce caries 26% in permanent teeth. This varies depending on factors like the use of fluoride toothpaste in a population or whether the water supply contains natural fluoride. Fluoride is the 13th most common element in nature and some community water systems and many private wells contain higher levels of natural fluoride than the low level added to fluoridated systems. Fluorosis Too much fluoride can cause fluorosis. In its mildest form, fluorosis can cause almost invisible white flecks on the teeth. Acute fluorosis comes with gastrointestinal problems. In a combination of data from 40 other studies, researchers found fluorosis to the degree of showing as spots or streaks on teeth, an esthetic concern, in 12% of people. Another study found that fluorosis is mainly diagnosed in children age five and under who might have swallowed too much fluoridated toothpaste. Fluoride applied directly to the teeth through toothpaste or treatment at a dentist’s visit is by far the most effective method of delivering protection. $120 billion on tooth care per year In 2015, Americans spent $120 billion on their teeth and gums. That spending reduced productivity losses, which were still $46 billion. But fluoridation is the hero for dental return on investment. Every dollar spent on fluoridation decreased dental costs and productivity losses by $20. From a public health standpoint, fluoridation is especially beneficial to those who can’t or don’t access regular dental preventive health services or don’t use fluoride toothpaste. Despite the unquestionable and highly important benefits of fluoridation, community fluoridation is still an issue for many. The concern is not just fluorosis but also the potential risk to IQ. IQ and fluoride A recent analysis combining the results of other studies found a relationship between loss of IQ and increased level of fluoride from all sources. A big caveat of this analysis is that it did not include any direct data of the effect on IQ at the low level of fluoride added to community water systems. More research is needed around the possible effects of low levels of fluoride before the public health benefits of fluoridation are sacrificed. In addition to fluoride in drinking water, toothpaste, or dental treatments to prevent cavities, dental sealants should be applied to the back teeth of children and young adults. Sealants can prevent 80% of cavities, and 9 out of 10 cavities are in the back teeth. You are putting what in my mouth? Throughout history the dental profession has promoted the use of various substances in our mouths which have been great for dental results but can be cringey when other health concerns are considered. Just drawing from the past 100 years, I am thinking of mercury amalgam fillings; BPA or Bisphenol A and a host of other toxic chemicals used in composite fillings, retainers, and sealant; Teflon for brace wires; arsenic to kill tooth roots; formaldehyde to remove the pulp in an infected baby tooth; and chloroform to dissolve the roots of teeth in a root canal operation. About the mercury and BPA-containing fillings: better than the molten lead fillings French dentists would pour as hot liquid into their patients mouths in the 1700s, right?! And then there are the liberal x-rays, the radiation dose of which has been cut dramatically in the digital age. Today, these toxic substances have been eliminated or greatly reduced in dental treatments. Of course, there are other materials and chemicals used in dental care outside the office. Almost all toothbrushes have nylon bristles that can shed microplastics. Dental floss is made of nylon or, much worse, Teflon, as in Glide floss. Even natural products maker Tom’s of Maine uses nylon in its floss. Mouthwash and the possible negative effect on heart health And then there’s mouthwash. The concern most worth considering is that anti-bacterial mouthwash wipes out beneficial bacteria in the oral microbiome. A 2023 set of papers reviewed the evidence and could not conclude if the effect of anti-bacterial mouthwashes, which can improve dental health, are harmful to overall health, mainly through killing bacteria in the saliva which help convert good nitrates from vegetables into nitric oxide in your blood. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator that relaxes your blood vessels, lowers your blood pressure, and is protective against heart disease. More research on mouthwashes is required. Doctors and dentists: is having such separation good? By the way, did your pr

    Dental health today, the role of teeth in winning wars, and the role of war in bringing dental health to America

  4. Aug 31

    Sugar in the first 1,000 days is strongly linked to many diseases later

    In this post: * New evidence on the worrisome, lifelong health effects of sugar in the first 1,000 days * American infant formula promotes obesity and many other diseases * American formula is primarily added sugar: corn syrup is prominent and even most of the lactose is refined * Do formula makers like corn syrup because it gets infants to drink more? * RFK, Jr. needs to make Big Formula back down to fulfill his goal of reforming formula in any meaningful way * The added sugar Mom eats is “secondhand sugar” for the fetus * 2025 Dietary Guidelines: no added sugar up to age 10. Radical? Take a folic acid supplement if you are trying to get pregnant; don’t drink, smoke, or take drugs during pregnancy; hold and love your baby and use breast milk if available. Talk to your infant a lot. These we know. New evidence about the health effects of sugar in the first 1,000 days With the appearance of a new study, the evidence is now very strong for another recommendation that should be on the list already but is not always expressed by an obstetrician, pediatrician, or other relied on sources of pre- or neonatal information. It should be a must-add: don’t feed your fetus, baby, infant, or toddler added sugar. Withholding added sugar from a fetus or child still seems like a bit of a radical idea today, even as we have established the role of refined sugar as a cause of obesity, but there was a time it wasn’t a choice. George Washington did okay without sugar Three hundred years ago sugar was an expensive luxury for the tea cups of the rich. Few kids or adults had much opportunity to enjoy it. The neural pathways of fetuses and babies were not re-shaped by exposure to sugar, because there were very few houses with a sugar bowl on the table and none with highly-processed food in the pantry. That changed during the course of George Washington’s lifetime. Born in 1732, our first President likely ate little sugar as a child. That deprivation didn’t stop him from growing exceptionally tall, very athletic, and into a great leader. But by the 1800s and its industrial innovations in processing, sugar had transformed into a commodity, produced cheaply in massive quantities by enslaved labor on plantations in Haiti, Cuba, Mississippi, Louisiana, Brazil, and Java. Sugar had become part of most people’s diets. Today the pleasure, acceptance, and assumption of refined sugar in the diet is engrained in parents, great-grandparents, obstetricians, pediatricians, politicians, and, unfortunately, nutritionists and public health scientists, including me, around the globe. What’s a baby to do? The evidence brought forward by several papers in the last few years provides compelling reasons for us grownups to do more. Here’s the clever way this evidence has come together. War time rationing in the UK: babies who had sugar and babies who didn’t From the wartime rationing of 1942 all the way until 1953 each person in the United Kingdom, rich or poor, received about 1 cup of sugar a week and 3 ounces of sweets. Children two and under received no ration. Sugar rationing ended throughout the UK on one day in September 1953, and families could suddenly buy as much sugar as they wanted, and they immediately bought a lot. The UK Biobank has medical and biological data for a half-million people. A large number of these spent their first 1,000 days of development just before, just after, or right through the abrupt end of sugar rationing. Those 1,000 days from conception through the second birthday are a critical period for child development. What happens in those first 1,000 days has been tied to obesity, cardiovascular disease, asthma, mental health, diabetes, and cancer. A “natural experiment” The way the Biobank data overlapped with the end of sugar rationing allowed our sugar researchers what is called a natural experiment, a comparison of two groups, one of which was exposed to a real life condition, in this case sugar rationing, and other not exposed. Using the Biobank in this way was such a good idea that several groups did it, each analyzing a group of 60,000 to 65,000 people, the ones that bracketed the end of sugar rationing. Evidence of disease from the data of people born as sugar rationing ended First, Gracner and team found that those who spent their first 1,000 days with restricted sugar had better outcomes later in life for type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Two more teams followed with a look at the data for cardiovascular outcomes, finding that heart failure, cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, atrial fibrillation, and stroke were all a greater risk for those whose sugar consumption had not been restricted in their first 1,000 days. Cancer and sugar in the first 1,000 days Next, researchers Chen Zhu and Weilong Zhang went back to the same Biobank data and asked if restricting sugar in the first 1,000 days could reduce the risk of cancer? They found that, yes indeed, restricting sugar from womb to 2 years old is very protective. The adults who started life before sugar rationing ended had a reduced chance of cancer for each cancer they looked at: 69% for liver, 40% for rectum, 41% for lung, 52% for prostate, and 36% less chance of breast cancer. What can explain these good results? The authors found that five decades after birth, sugar-restricted people ate less sugar and less food, and their diets were healthier and more diverse. They also had reduced levels of chronic inflammation. They also found that the telomeres of these folks had aged 2.2 years less than the telomeres of the people who came on board life after sugar rationing stopped. Longer chromosome “shoelaces” with less sugar What are telomeres you might ask? Telomeres are the bits at the ends of chromosomes that protect the genetic data when a cell divides. They’re like the plastic tips of a shoelace. The telomeres get shorter every time a cell divides. Eventually the telomere gets too short and the cell dies. Getting an extra 2.2 years of telomere life is a good thing, sort of like when you buy a tire that’s rated for an extra 10,000 miles. Except that tires can be replaced, and some cells, like brain cells, once they’re gone, they’re gone. So, to recap, Zhu and Zhang found that restricting sugar during pregnancy up to the second birthday caused, and they use the word “cause”, a reduction in cancer, chronic inflammation, and cellular aging as those children turn into adults. This, combined with reductions in diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke, makes a convincing case for adding a recommendation to restrict, if not eliminate, sugar exposure in the first 1,000 days. Lots of recommendations not to feed added sugar before age two But wait, the American Heart Association recommended no added sugar for children under two in 2016, ten years ago! And the American Academy of Pediatrics followed suit in 2019! And the Dietary Guidelines for Americans said this in 2020! Whew! I guess new moms and dads already know what to do when it comes to sugar. Unfortunately, the FDA does not regulate the carbohydrate content of baby formula or require amounts or types of added sugars to be stated on the label. This is not the case in other parts of civilization or for adult food in America. If knowing added sugar content is helpful for adult nutritional health, surely it’s helpful to make sure infants are getting the best nutrition? Why the FDA needs to act The FDA’s lack of ingredient control and labeling matters a great deal. According to a study published last year, of the 73 infant formula products available in the U.S. across three major brands (Similac, Enfamil, and Gerber/Nestlé), one smaller brand, and some store brands, only a few have naturally occurring lactose as their primary carbohydrate. Lactose is a sugar designed by evolution for mammals at an early stage of life. Almost all of the carbohydrate in human milk is lactose. Natural lactose is bound to fats and proteins in the mother’s milk and is digested somewhat slowly. Added refined lactose is an added sugar and acts like it A little more than half the formula products in the U.S. use added lactose which is refined. Refined lactose is like other refined sugars and isn’t bound to the fat and protein in the formula. It absorbs into the baby’s blood fast, spiking blood sugar and then insulin in response. And lots of formula products use other refined sugars apart from lactose, like glucose, maltose, or sucrose, all with refined lactose’s fast absorption and insulin response. American formula is primarily added sugar With no FDA requirements to use primarily natural lactose and to provide details of the carbohydrate ingredients, American parents and caregivers have no way to know that they are usually giving their babies primarily refined sugar and not natural lactose. I could not tell the proportion of natural to refined lactose from reading any of the formula containers I checked. The Wirecutter doesn’t get it Parents are not getting the info. In June, the Wirecutter section in the New York Times rated the six best infant formulas on the market in the U.S., in their opinion. They claim to have read 20 scientific articles in their research, but five of the six papers they cited were published nine or more years ago. Their seven expert interviews were mostly from 2022 or before, and more than half were with formula makers, none of whose formula sales websites said anything about natural lactose versus refined. In essence, The Wirecutter reported that the FDA had baby needs covered, and all U.S. sold formulas were good. Wirecutter completely missed both that there is an important difference between natural lactose and refined and that FDA-approved formulas contribute to later obesity, and are not adequate for normal growth as The Wirecutter claims, unless obesogenic is the new normal. U.S. baby formula is obesogenic: it promotes obesity A

  5. Aug 23

    Why we still don’t have an ultra-processed food definition

    The RFK, Jr. press conference two weeks ago was billed as a “celebration…of landmark actions…The event will highlight…Trump…accomplishments…and announce two major new food policy actions.” This press event billed as announcing major food policy wins contained nothing impressive. One announcement was for a very partial measure to address the Generally Recognized As Safe loophole, and the other item was a non-announcement saying, in effect, that the much anticipated definition of ultra-processed food is still being kept a secret. Big Food has a big foot in the door of the White House As I have reported, Big Food has been working hard in Washington to minimize the damage that could come from the regulation of highly- and ultra-processed food, or HUPF. HUPF started out as a top issue of RFK, Jr.’s Make America Health Again agenda, with the initial MAHA Assessment report in May of 2025 mentioning ultra-processed more than 40 times. However, the MAHA Strategy Report, released the following September, mentioned ultra-processed only once, saying it needed to be defined in order to be researched. The squashing of discussion of HUPF was a result of pressure from the HUPF manufacturers. Now, almost a year after the MAHA Strategy Report, CEOs and industry associations have been lobbying the administration to delay the release of the definition that has been presented to the White House. The disappearing HUPF definition In fact, it seems as if RFK, Jr. was planning to release the definition two weeks ago, but, presumably, last minute pressure from the food industry caused him to announce only that the proposed definition was still being reviewed. The proposed Generally Recognized As Safe loophole rule: Please don’t call this a win. It looks like another loss for consumers, in favor of industry. However, compared to the non-news with the HUPF definition, slightly more progress was announced by Kennedy on the Generally Recognized As Safe loophole that has allowed an estimated one thousand substances to be introduced into the food supply without notice to the FDA. One thousand is the non-profit NRDC’s rough estimate, but the real number may be much higher. No one knows. Further, the manufacturers are self-certifying these substances as safe for consumption, and the FDA and the public do not know how reliable that self-certification is. If a new FDA rule is activated, manufacturers will still be able to self-certify safety and introduce the substances into the food supply. They will have to notify the FDA of both new and previously introduced substances. It’s not clear when or whether the food or additive will need to be pulled from the market if the FDA takes objection to the manufacturer-funded safety certification. It is clear from decades of FDA underfunding and inaction and Trump’s recent deep cuts in FDA personnel, that, when inundated with hundreds, perhaps thousands of notifications of new and previously added substances, the FDA will have a very difficult, perhaps almost impossible, time working through the backlog of substances to pick the most worrisome to review. No new funding has been promised in conjunction with Kennedy’s announcement. A database of food substances/chemicals/additives will be public At least the newly revealed food substances will be added to a public database where scrutiny from outside scientists could potentially shed light on the riskiest additives that the public is consuming or the most questionable safety self-certifications. The gaping GRAS loophole So, in reality, the GRAS loophole is not closing. As Melanie Banesh of EWG, the Environmental Working Group, has put it, mandatory notification is a “first step” in GRAS reform, which also needs the creation of scientific standards and review by the FDA before chemicals are introduced to our food, along with review of the substances that have already been introduced under GRAS. As Benesh puts it: “Americans deserve a system where food safety decisions are made by independent experts at the FDA – not by the companies that profit from selling these chemicals.” Will Big Food or consumers benefit from the delayed HUPF definition? And as for the further delayed HUPF definition, when it is released, I would not be surprised if it is designed to be more helpful to the HUPF manufacturers than to those who would regulate or study HUPF. Please share this post if you like it. Every food substance created in the last two hundred years is HUPF In reality, every food, food-like substance, or additive created since the mid-1800s – the beginning of the Second Industrial Revolution – is highly-or ultra-processed, or HUPF. It is only with the technology of the last two hundred years that we have been able to create new foods, and they are, by virtue of that technology, at least highly- if not ultra-processed. If it didn’t need technology and it was good to eat, it had already been introduced as a food hundreds of years ago. This HUPF definition even applies to ingredients like refined sugar and flour, which have been around since before the Industrial Revolution but only became a problem when industrial technology made them cheap, plentiful, and consumed in unhealthy quantities! A broad definition of HUPF is not sufficient for policy making. HUPF is too complex. The way HUPF has been defined in the last twenty years, initially by Carlos Monteiro or in my own definition, is too broad as a category to make policy and conduct new, helpful research. HUPF comes in many subcategories based on its ingredients, and these subcategories may be related to very different health outcomes such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, gut biome disruption, respiratory disease, and decreased mental health, for examples. All types of HUPF are not created equal, and I predict the coming industry-influenced definition from the American government will play upon this complexity to delay research and regulation. It may be up to the states, national governments elsewhere, and the academic community to provide meaningful progress on regulation of different types of HUPF. For my own, time- and technology-based definition of HUPF, see Refining a Highly-Refined Food Definition. Thanks for reading and your support of Eating in America, which is essential and greatly appreciated. Eating in America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eatinginamerica.co/subscribe

  6. Aug 18

    “Your morale on board is directly tied to food.”

    There’s a big food story from the Trump administration this week. It goes right back to the Eating on Board story from a few weeks ago here on Eating In America. I did a podcast and post in conjunction with the Tall Ships that sailed the East Coast in honor of America’s 250th birthday. We talked then about the role of food in keeping up the morale of sailors, and that very topic has exploded with the retreat of the USS Lincoln from the Iran War theater due to the political cost of further deployment while the ship is struggling to feed its troops. Today, the exposure of our sailors and Marines at sea in the Middle East to inadequate food and deteriorating morale is risky for them and the forces they support in an ill-conceived, unauthorized, unpopular war that is bleeding our resources and endangering our troops, nation, the world, and innocent civilians in many countries without a clear, believable goal. Trump’s war in the Middle East is a disaster. There are tens of thousands of sailors and Marines at sea who are, or could be, in harm’s way. Several sailors on the Lincoln have attempted suicide. The Navy knows how to feed them in the best possible manner for deployment at sea, but the system is failing these troops. Weight-loss is not meant as an enticement to enlist Diet profiteers are everywhere in our society, but weight-loss is not meant to be a benefit of enlistment. It’s a cruel joke, but I wouldn’t put it past Trump to say it in public, given his complete public dismissal of the problems brought to light on the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Tripoli. There are multiple reports of severe weight loss and consequent reduction of physical and mental fitness among sailors and Marines aboard vessels deployed to the Middle East. These troops are not being served enough food, and the food they are being served is often not appetizing, but they are expected to do their jobs and be ready for attack in an ongoing war. Seven tons of food a day I visited the USS Intrepid, a huge floating museum, in New York City two weeks ago. The aircraft carrier, which saw action in World War II and the Vietnam War, was crewed by up to 3,400 troops. The men on the Intrepid required seven tons of food each day. That’s 14,000 pounds of food. Navies have known for millennia the importance of food for morale and to keep up health, both physical and mental. Food planning has always been fundamental. Even on voyages of Greek mythology, food shortages were deadly, as we’re reminded in several scenes of the new movie re-telling of the Odyssey. Napoleon Bonaparte invented the processing of canning fruits and vegetables for his sailors. Similarly, his nephew, Napoleon III invented margarine to replace butter, which could only last one week at sea. The armed services know exactly what they are doing with food The U.S. military devotes significant resources to optimizing the food and nutrition provided to its troops. The Food Utilization and Energy Laboratory (FUEL) provides the Navy with hard science on warfighter nutrition for high-stress environments, energy utilization, and performance optimization. During World War II the Natick Soldier Systems Center outside Boston developed many ultra-processed foods with the goal of keeping troops fed in heat, cold, and stressful conditions. I visited the Natick Soldier Systems Center a few years back to investigate research being done there to optimize the gut microbiome for combat performance. It is a little ironic that the very lab that invented foods that could disrupt the gut microbiome was now inventing foods to optimize that biome. But it was all being done with the goal of helping our fighting forces survive combat .So the Navy knows exactly what and how much food stuffs to put on board every vessel from an aircraft carrier to a submarine and how that food can best be prepared for purposes of morale, physical health, strength, and energy. They know how much fresh food they can leave port with and how much must be canned, frozen, dehydrated, or dry. What a military food scientist cannot know is the exact nature of the bad conditions that will occur in a war, and conditions have gotten bad in the war on Iran. Persian Gulf Navy supply hub was a predictable Iranian target The Iranians destroyed the functionality of the U.S. supply hub on the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, directly across from Iran. Trump should have taken into account, and maybe he did, that this was a vulnerable and likely target for Iran’s missiles. After the depot’s destruction early in the war, the logistics and supply hub had to be moved 2,200 miles away to Diego Garcia in the Pacific. Replenishment of food, weapons, and other supplies became a massive problem, which likely played a large part in the morale crises on board the Lincoln and the Tripoli. Morale on board reflective of events and attitudes at home? Also, I suspect – there is little hard data, although some investigators like NPR have made a good case – that decisions in the White House and Pentagon, an upheaval of culture in the military with a downgrading of minorities and women in promotions, political firings, dissatisfaction of the American public, uncertainty about the Iranian war goals, and constant shifting in strategy have been factors in the downward direction of morale. Remember, the Commander in Chief of our armed forces has called troops who gave their lives fighting for America in World War II “suckers” and “losers.” What is certain is that the chef in charge on a navy vessel is likely to be highly experienced, extremely well-organized, very creative, and absolutely dedicated to his or her role in boosting the morale of the troops eating his or her food. A sailor testifies to the importance of food on board ship Here is a former enlisted seaman, who said his name is “Joe,” describing the role of a sailor’s meals at sea. I recorded him as he was about to board the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier: Your morale is directly tied to food. I was on a small ship, a destroyer, DDG-64 [the USS Carney], so we had usually a bit of a better quality of life for food ‘cause our cooks weren’t making meals for 5,000 people. They had to do 300. So our food was a little bit better quality. We knew our cooks. We talked to them every day, gave them hell when they messed something up. When the food was good, it was great. It made us a lot happier. It was also a great way of telling what day of the week it was. Tuesday is tacos, burger Wednesdays, pizza Fridays, Sunday was brunch. And if you forget everything else out there, as soon as you get burgers for lunch, you know, okay it’s Wednesday. That’s what’s going on now. Last week Retired Chief Petty Officer Thomas Nutzmann described being at sea in the Navy Times: “There’s no Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it’s just a day…You can only do so much to keep morale up before you hit a stalemate … and that’s where the deterioration is.” Four million meals in nine months at sea Since the USS Abraham Lincoln was deployed in November, the seven galleys on board have served about 4 million meals. That’s a small miracle in itself, but with troops going so hungry they are losing 20 to 30 pounds on a deployment that is not yet over, that’s a major system failure. Let them eat steak and lobsters, like they deserve It seems unprecedented and an indicator of how arbitrary and unpopular the Iran War is, but the Lincoln is now sailing home from the Middle East, on the strong winds of public outrage and media attention. I hope at some point before they get to port, the Lincoln will be able to get a few thousand ribeyes on board and just as many lobsters to give the sailors and Marines the Navy’s traditional steak and lobster dinner to thank them for their extended service. Thank you for reading. Sharing this post with your friends and subscribing or upgrading your subscription will help Eating in America continue to grow and is appreciated. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eatinginamerica.co/subscribe

  7. Aug 9

    Energy drinks + 30 foot cliffs and motorcycles

    “It’s scientifically proven to function!” Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen scream repeatedly and absurdly about the energy drink to which their characters have become addicted in an episode of the series Platonic. But is that energy drink scientifically proven to function, and, if so, to do what? Today I look at the place of energy drinks in our food environment, their health risks, and how the Big Tobacco playbook has been used to stop efforts to protect our youth from those risks. Red Bull, Monster Energy, and Celsius are the top three energy drinks in America. Coca-Cola owns about 20% of Monster Energy and Pepsi-Cola is in a partnership with Celsius. There are plenty of other brands, some of which highlight their drink’s health benefits, but the inclusion of caffeine is universal, usually anywhere from a cup of coffee’s worth or up to double that amount. The sugar fix is in Red Bull, Monster, and Rockstar Energy (another leading brand) feature over 50 grams of sugar (200+ calories) in their sugar-sweetened products, which is the bulk of what they offer. That amount of sugar is double the American Heart Association recommended daily limit for women and 50% more than the daily limit for men. The appeal These three brands seem to target young males with extreme sports as the centerpiece of their marketing, often along with images of women in poses meant to appeal to men and boys. The energy drink demographic ranges from adolescents to young adults. The Gorilla Mind brand’s flavor lineup is typical:16 flavors all in the genre of Blue Raspberry, Rocket Frost, and Candy Apple Like Gorilla Mind, a number of other energy drinks market their ability to sharpen your brain. FOCUSAID claims it provides “brain boost” with nootropics, also called “smart drugs” or “cognitive enhancers.” These are unfamiliar ingredients like GABA, alpha-GPC, and acetyl-L-carnitine. Are these products safe? There are a lot of concerns. The high sugar content; the heightened caffeine consumption that may be accelerated by drinking a cold, sweetened beverage; the ultraprocessed mix of ingredients; and perhaps, most of all, the glorification of these drinks in association with dangerous sports, including race car driving, stunt bikes, and ultimate fighting. For example, Monster Energy and the motorcycle jump: from the top of a thirty-foot high cliff straight down to land on a pile of dirt. This is not what most parents would want to watch their 17 year old do, no matter how prepared with caffeine, sugar, and vitamins. Energy drinks + alcohol: the wide-awake drunk Add to this the rising concern about the frequent use of energy drinks in conjunction with alcohol: it’s called the wide-awake drunk. Stunts like going off a thirty-foot high cliff on a motorcycle somehow seem more likely if alcohol were to be involved along with an energy drink. Red Bull bought the research it needed Red Bull, in yet another example of the Tobacco Playbook being employed to create biased, bad, and misleading research, funded at least five studies examining the health and behavioral effects of combining energy drinks and alcohol. Those research projects found no harm. Unfortunately, the results of those studies were the foundation of the European Union’s Food Safety Authority’s report on energy drinks that provided a stamp of approval subsequently accepted by many countries. Eating in America is supported by you. To receive new posts, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A new investigation by The Examination, published by STAT and done in collaboration with other media outlets including Der Spiegel and The Toronto Star, identified over 100 studies of the risks of combining energy drinks with alcohol. Almost all of the studies funded by Red Bull or in which the researchers had a financial conflict of interest with Red Bull, found no increase in risk from mixing energy drinks with alcohol. Yet, about 80% of the studies where there were no Red Bull financial ties or funding found that risks did increase when energy drinks were consumed along with alcohol. However, Red Bull was able to parlay the research it had funded into widespread governmental acceptance of energy drinks and, with vigorous lobbying, has effectively stopped most efforts to impose regulations on energy drinks, such as banning sale of them to minors. The soda tax SWAT-team approach with energy drinks Sugar-sweetened beverage taxes, aimed at reducing the negative health effects of sodas, have been shown effective in reducing sales. Forty countries have them at the national level. Whenever a sugar-sweetened beverage tax has been proposed in the U.S., the soda manufacturers have taken a SWAT-team like approach, sending in lobbyists to squash the idea. Of dozens of proposals, none have passed at the state level and many on the local level have failed as well. Around ten cities have a sugar-sweetened beverage tax. This SWAT model seems to have been adopted by market leader Red Bull, who has taken a vigorous approach to monitoring threatening proposals and, when they arise, sending in academic researchers or company representatives to, usually, successfully dissuade legislators from imposing any restrictions on energy drinks. Strong public health leadership can prevail While the energy drink manufacturers are trying to deflect regulation in the U.S. using tricks we have seen employed by Big Tobacco, it is worth noting that, led by strong public health leadership from the federal government, tobacco use among youths has dropped from a high of 36% in 1997 to 4% in 2021. It seems the right leadership can create change when it comes to harmful substances in our environment. There have been documented deaths associated with energy drinks, including due to cardiac events. Emergency department visits because of energy drink consumption numbered 20,000 way back in 2011. The CDC reports that up to 50% of adolescents consume energy drinks and that they can be harmful. The CDC endorses the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation that adolescents do not drink energy drinks. RFK, Jr. is strongly opposed to energy drinks, but they are ultraprocessed foods and part of the Big Food and Coca-Cola protectorate, and Kennedy has, so far, made little progress against that political force. Will Delaware by the first state to do anything? Members of the Delaware legislature wanted to ban energy drink sales to under-18s, but that proposed law was killed. Maybe if Delaware is successful with its current, feather-light attempt to suggest to retail locations that they voluntarily post energy drink warnings and, a little more significantly, to ban energy drink sales at public schools, other states will take up the fight again and eventually the federal government will gather the political capital to act. In the words of Delaware State Representative DeShanna Neal, “One caffeine-related death is one too many.” Thank you for reading and for your support of the research and work of Eating in America by becoming a patron with a paid membership, liking this post if you like it, and sharing it with your friends, especially those with teenagers. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eatinginamerica.co/subscribe

  8. Jul 31

    John Snow, the great disease detective, and how, even in its infancy, public health science struggled with the false beliefs of those in charge

    Every day, unless we are in very bad circumstances, we drink water. In today’s America we are lucky to have wide accessibility to what we almost always consider safe drinking water, while for much of the world obtaining clean water is often a struggle. Contaminated water is the transmission pathway for many bacterial, viral, and parasitic diseases including cholera, typhoid fever, hepatitis A, norovirus, polio, and more. Vaccines, like the polio vaccine, and public water and sewer systems have eliminated or greatly reduced most water-borne risks for most people, and cholera has not been epidemic in the U.S. since 1866 due to our government’s delivery of public health measures. However, in parts of the world the seventh cholera pandemic, which started in 1961, still infects about a half-million people annually and is the seventh largest pandemic ever in terms of lives lost, which may be over 9 million and growing, 65 years into the pandemic. We’re generally lucky in America, but not everyone has access to the best public health here, and our systems are vulnerable. For example, at last count, we are experiencing an outbreak of over 11,500 reported cases of cyclosporiasis in the U.S. The story of Snow, cholera, oysters, pandemics, and miasma Today I’m telling the tale of how a great disease detective, John Snow, put the clues together to save perhaps thousands of lives in the 1854 cholera outbreak in London. Snow became the father of epidemiology, the science of disease source detection that has saved millions of lives. And I’ll talk about water-borne disease in America today; oysters, yum or yuck, however you feel; how measles got to be as rare as cholera in America; and that we need to acknowledge, as we face the corruption of our public health systems, funding, and status in the U.S., that we remain susceptible to very bad pandemics. Plus, I’ll reflect on how the rejection of the evidence by the authorities after Snow’s discovery of the source of the 1854 cholera outbreak is similar to today’s rejection in America of science and proven public health measures. It all ties together, believe it or not. Welcome to new subscriber, Ming Yang, Senior Editor for Nature Medicine, and author of the excellent Health Checks on History Substack. Check it out. Londoner Yang knows well the history of the important site we will visit in the podcast today. The first epidemiologist John Snow was born in poverty in a neighborhood close to the river in York, England, the son of a coal yard worker and eldest of nine children. Drinking water in the neighborhood was from wells or the polluted river. The unsanitary conditions he experienced growing up likely informed Snow’s later cholera investigations. Snow’s aptitude for learning won him an apprenticeship with a surgeon-apothecary, giving him five years of clinical training leading to education and certification as a surgeon able to practice medicine. In 1836, Snow entered the University of London to be become an actual doctor. It was there he made his first important epidemiological discovery, although epidemiology had not yet been named as a science. Snow’s first epidemiological discovery (about arsenic, not cholera) While performing post-mortems on dead patients with fellow students, Snow noticed that some of his colleagues were becoming sick. Snow deduced that the arsenic used to preserve many of the bodies was causing the illness and published a paper to that effect. The University discontinued the use of arsenic to preserve corpses for dissection and the medical students stopped getting sick. Snow’s article also caused arsenic to be removed as an ingredient of candles, which burned brighter with some arsenic in the wax but put off toxic fumes. Snow finished his medical degree in 1843 and would thereafter be titled Doctor. A pioneering anesthesiologist Snow is known for his epidemiology, but anesthesiologists know Snow because of his pioneering research to safely administer ether and, later, chloroform. His reputation as London’s top anesthesiologist was solidified when Queen Victoria insisted Snow administer chloroform to her for the birth of the last two of her nine children. But it was Snow’s work on understanding, mapping, and eliminating the source of the cholera outbreak in the Soho section of London in 1854 that is most acclaimed. Cholera came to England from the Ganges delta in India in 1831, starting the first of four English epidemics. In 1848, the second and most fatal cholera epidemic, with over 40,000 deaths, was manifesting itself in London. The prevailing view of scientists at the time was that transmission of cholera was in something called miasma, essentially the bad smell that accompanied unsanitary conditions. Snow understood how respiration worked from his experience with anesthesia and realized that if it cholera was carried in the air, people who worked in the worst smelling places like slaughterhouses and emptying cesspits, would be the most prone to get sick. That wasn’t happening. Snow and others formed the London Epidemiological Society, meeting first in 1850 at the end of the second cholera epidemic. The new Society was committed to understanding not only cholera, its primary motivation, but to working on other diseases, including smallpox and smallpox vaccination, a topic on which it was very influential with the government. For my fellow epidemiologists, it’s worth noting that some members of this new group also belonged to the Statistical Society of London, which had been formed in 1832. So the drive to solve the mystery of cholera gave birth to a whole new science, just in time to address the third epidemic, where its methods would result in the saving of many lives. Epidemiology today employs sophisticated mapping and statistics and toxicological testing. All three of these fundamental techniques were integrated by Snow in two groundbreaking investigations of the third cholera epidemic. Around September 1st, 1854, at word of a sudden outbreak of cholera deaths in the Soho neighborhood where he had his office, Snow leapt into action, quickly obtaining the addresses of the first 83 fatalities, which he went to visit. Snow noticed they were all within a short distance of a communal water pump on what was then called Broad Street. Snow immediately suspected the pump as the source of infection. Porter beer was the Gatorade of 19th century London, except probably better for you The doctor interviewed many of the families of the deceased, finding 61 that had definitely or likely drunk water from the pump. Snow noticed that there were only a few deaths of workers from the brewery near the pump. The brewery owner told Snow that the workers received a daily allotment of porter beer to take home, the low-alcohol dark beer being a popular and safe hydration alternative to the available water. Also, the brewery had its own water well the workers could use. Wait a minute, beer used for hydration? Doesn’t alcohol cause dehydration? Yes, generally, but with the low 2% to 3% alcohol content of the working-class’s porter, the body retains more water than it loses from the diuretic effect of the alcohol. Plus, the hard-working porter drinkers got significant calories from the beer as well as important B-complex vitamins. Adding to Snow’s growing evidence, just around the corner from the pump was a workhouse, a horrible, jail-like, last resort for people who were poor or disabled. Snow found a water well within the workhouse grounds and only five cholera deaths among the 535 workhouse inmates. His Broad Street pump theory was further supported. Snow sought toxicological evidence and had the pump water examined under a microscopic. Flaky organic matter was found, but otherwise the results were inconclusive. Microscopy at the time could not easily see some transparent microbes like the cholera bacterium, Vibrio Cholerae. As it happened, an Italian professor, Filippo Pacini, identified the rod-like bacterium, called a bacillus because of its stick shape, in the 1854 Italian epidemic. But Pacini’s findings were not widely read, including not by the famous German bacteriologist Robert Koch, who went to Egypt during its cholera epidemic in 1883 and identified the Vibrio Cholerae bacillus in corpses. Koch’s widely disseminated findings convinced the scientific world that a bacterium was the agent of cholera and put nails in the coffin, as it were, of the miasma theory. By Snow’s account, three-fourths of the residents quickly fled the neighborhood of the Broad Street pump soon after the onset of the outbreak with its hundreds of deaths. But many remained, and when Snow took his evidence to the local authorities, he managed to convince them to remove the pump handle With no more water flowing, there were no more infections and the worst of the deaths ended within ten days, as those already sick at the time of the handle removal had either died or were destined to survive. Following the Broad Street pump investigation, Snow continued that same year with his second and larger epidemiological study of cholera, which he called the “Grand Experiment.” Snow tallied the cholera deaths in 32 districts of London. The Lambeth Company supplied neighborhoods with water from the Thames above London, and the Southwark and Vauxhall Company supplied water from the Thames below where sewage was discharged in London Snow’s statistics and map showed that the homes and community pumps supplied with water from the upper Thames had a low risk of cholera and few cases, and those supplied with heavily polluted water from the Thames within London had a high risk of cholera and many cases. Unfortunately, even with the additional hard evidence of the second study, the higher authorities and most scientists were still not persuaded to give up their miasma theory. It was not until the fourth and final English epidemic in 1866 that polluted water w

See All (58)

About

Eating in America is about the food on our table and who's in charge of keeping it healthy. www.eatinginamerica.co

Information

You Might Also Like