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In ‘Barons,’ Austin Frerick Takes On the Most Powerful Families in the Food System
With his new book, Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, Austin Frerick set out to unravel the tangled history of today’s agriculture industry, while simultaneously pursuing the answer to a very personal question: What happened to the vibrant, diverse Iowa he once called home?
But Barons, which took Frerick five years to write, is not a memoir. It’s a detailed look at seven families that have risen to power within the food industry and, more importantly, the story of the system that has allowed them to concentrate power, reap enormous profits, and shape our political landscape.
He digs into the policies that allowed white farmers to displace farmers of color in the 20th century and contrasts the “New Deal Farm Bill” — his term for the bill as it was originally intended — with today’s “Wall Street Farm Bill.”
Some of the barons, like the Waltons and the Cargill-MacMillan family, may be familiar to his readers. But most — including Driscoll’s “berry barons” J. Miles and Garland Reiter; Joesley and Wesley Batista, the brothers behind the Brazilian beef company JBS; and the Reimanns, the German family behind JAB Holding Company, the fast-growing company that has come to dominate the U.S. coffee industry in a single decade — will likely be new.
Reused Deep-Frying Oil May Cause Neurodegeneration
Deep-fried food is a staple of many American diets. But new research has found that these foods could also be frying our brains. Between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 American adults consumes food from fast food restaurants every single day, the National Institutes of Health reports. And, in most cases, this food is fried. Deep frying is a common method of food preparation around the world and involves completely submerging foods in hot oil.
Due to the amount of oil used in this process (and to reduce food waste) restaurants and food vendors usually reuse their frying oil. However, according to new research, this not only removes many of the oil’s natural antioxidants and health benefits but can also increase its content of harmful compounds such as acrylamide, trans fat and peroxides.
Not only are these harmful compounds thought to increase our risk of various cancers and metabolic disorders, but they may also increase our risk of neurodegeneration.
“Deep-frying at high temperatures has been linked with several metabolic disorders, but there have been no long-term investigations on the influence of deep-fried oil consumption and its detrimental effects on health,” Kathiresan Shanmugam, an associate professor from the Central University of Tamil Nadu in Thiruvarur, India, said in a statement. “To our knowledge, we are first to report long-term deep-fried oil supplementation increases neurodegeneration in the first-generation offspring.”
Of course, these results have only been seen in animals, but the research raises important questions about the health impacts of consuming deep-fried food beyond their calorie content.
Chick-fil-A Will Stop Using Its ‘No Antibiotics Ever’ Label on Chicken
Chick-fil-A is ditching its “no antibiotics ever” promise. Citing diminishing chicken supply, Chick-fil-A will back off its pledge never to serve chicken that was fed antibiotics, and instead, it will embrace a looser industry standard: “no antibiotics important to human medicine.” Chick-fil-A first announced that it would abandon antibiotics in 2014.
The change comes after Tyson, America’s biggest poultry company, last summer ended its eight-year-pledge to keep antibiotics out of its chicken. Like Chick-fil-A, Tyson said it will ensure the chicken it produces is not fed antibiotics that are important to the treatment of humans — a standard recognized by the USDA and the World Health Organization.
Antibiotic use in food production has come under intense scrutiny in recent years as some bacterial infections in humans have become increasingly resistant to treatment as a result of more frequent exposure to the drugs.
Domino and Other U.S. Sugar Companies Accused of Conspiring to Fix Prices in Antitrust Lawsuits
Three antitrust lawsuits filed by food businesses in federal court in Minnesota this week accuse some of the largest U.S. sugar-producing companies of conspiring to fix prices.
The lawsuits name United Sugars, which includes American Crystal Sugar and the Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative; Domino Sugar; Cargill; other producers, and a commodity data company. The plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuits include Great Harvest Bread in Duluth, Morelos Bakery in St. Paul and the Connecticut restaurant group WNT, the Star Tribune reported.
The lawsuits, which make broadly similar claims, seek injunctions barring the sugar companies from engaging in illegal conduct and unspecified damages.
The sugar industry, which is dominated by a handful of large companies, has faced antitrust scrutiny for decades. A 1978 consent decree banned sugar companies from communicating about future prices or coordinating on sugar sales.
With Organic Fields Next Door, Conventional Farms Dial Up the Pesticide Use, Study Finds
Champions of organic farming have long portrayed it as friendlier to humans and the earth. But a new study in a California county found a surprising effect as their acreage grew: Nearby conventional farms applied more pesticides, likely to stay on top of an increased insect threat to their crops, the researchers said.
Ashley Larsen, lead author of the study in this week’s journal Science, said understanding what’s happening could be important to keeping organic and conventional farmers from hurting each other’s operations.
By contrast, the researchers found that when organic farms were surrounded by other organic fields, their pesticide use dropped, which the team thinks may be due to their shared reliance on bugs that are natural enemies of agricultural pests. Organic farms are allowed to use certain approved pesticides but often turn first to “good bugs” that prey on the pests. “It seems that spatially clustering or concentrating organic fields could provide that benefit or that solution,” Larsen said.
Organic farm acreage has been trending upward since 2000, though it still accounts for less than 1% of all farmland, according to the USDA. As that change occurs, Larsen and her team say keeping organic and conventional farms sufficiently separate could benefit both.
Abnormal Levels of Toxins Found in General Mills ‘LOADED’ Cereal: Report
A new report is raising concerns over General Mills’ new cereal line after testing revealed that Trix LOADED cereal is literally loaded with high levels of heavy metals and agrochemicals.
General Mills, Inc. on Feb. 1 launched “LOADED,” a new cereal line with “puffed-up larger-than-life squares” of General Mills’ Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Trix, and Cocoa Puffs cereals filled with artificially flavored vanilla creme. Trix LOADED boasts 17 grams of whole grain per serving and 12 vitamins and minerals.
Yet testing by Moms Across America (MAA), an organization dedicated to educating and empowering others to create healthy communities, found the artificially flavored creme-filled breakfast food also contains measurable levels of aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, lead, glyphosate, and pesticides shown to be harmful to humans.
In test results obtained by MAA, scientists found residues from eight different pesticides in both samples of Trix LOADED cereal. Two pesticides, piperonyl butoxide-1 (PBO) and fluopyram-1, were detected in higher amounts. Fluopyram-1 is a broad-spectrum fungicide that can cause liver problems, endocrine disruption, and thyroid cancer.
Piperonyl butoxide (PBO) is a man-made pesticide synergist that enhances the potency of certain pesticides designed to kill insects. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies PBO as a “possible human carcinogen” as studies in rats show PBO can induce thyroid and liver cancers, as well as noncancerous tumors.
Survey Finds Americans Conflicted About Plant-Based Diets
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Most folks know they’d be healthier if they ate more plant-based foods, but only a quarter are willing to follow through and do it, a new study shows. Surveys reveal that Americans’ beliefs about eating more plants for health are often at odds with their daily dietary choices, researchers say.
For the study, researchers looked at data from more than a decade of nationwide surveys gathered between 2012 and 2022 by the International Food Information Council, analyzing more than 1,000 participants’ responses.
Generation Z (born 1997-2012) and Millennials (1981-1996) were more likely to follow a plant-rich diet than Generation X (born 1965-1980) or Baby Boomers (1946-1964), results show.
But about 25% of Generation Z and Millennials also reported increased red meat consumption, compared to 10% of older adults.
