How Credible is Whole Foods?

Think you’re always buying organic food if it says so on the label? You might want to think again. The leading organic retailer in the United States, Whole Foods Market, was recently caught with its proverbial pants down.

ABC Channel 7 (WJLA) in Washington, D.C. aired a report showing that many of Whole Foods’ frozen organic products under the “365 Organic” label actually came from China, even one product labeled “California Blend Vegetables.” The video, available on YouTube, does say that since the story was first reported, Whole Foods now gets its California Blend Vegetables from California. And if the buyer looks closely enough at the back of the package, “Made in China” can be found in small print.

Food sold in the U.S. as organic must be approved by the USDA before displaying the “organic” label. Whole Foods said it relies on a third-party certifier Quality Assurance International (QAI) to certify its products from China, but when QAI was asked, they admitted that they, in turn, use yet another third-party certifier in China. Whole Foods refused to give the name of that company. Experts say that it is difficult, if not impossible, to confirm that organic standards are being met in China.

The TV station managed to obtain a confidential document listing the country of origin for many of Whole Foods’ products, including organics. It shows that dozens of these products come from China. That document is available on the station’s website at the bottom of the story.

Since the beginning of 2010, the Food and Drug Administration has stopped at least 260 shipments of foods from China, the station reported, including strawberries contaminated with pesticides, bacteria or filth. An earlier ABC story by a station in Atlanta, Georgia, revealed that the majority of seafood consumed in this country is imported from developing countries. Up to 60 percent of seafood imported through Alabama has been rejected by that states’ agriculture inspectors for contamination.

Yet another set of reasons to always read labels closely.

Why is Whole Foods Pulling Krill Oil from Its Shelves?

Recently Whole Foods Market, a major retailer of natural and organic products, announced that it was removing krill-oil products from its stores. The official statement said, in part: “Declines of some predator populations in the areas where the krill fishery operates suggest that fishery management needs to better understand how to evaluate the prey requirements of other marine species in order to set sustainable catch levels for krill.”

I hope my readers realize that it can be tough to find factual, science-based information about krill oil, or just about any other supplement on the Internet. Krill oil is rich in omega-3s, phospholipids, asatxanthin and choline, all of which have lots of science-backed health benefits.

Most everything in cyberspace is marketing hype, some marketer’s attempt to sell his krill-oil product, or his competitor’s desire to sell a competing omega-3 product. Krill oil has suffered this image problem ever since coming onto the market, and this problem owes far more to endlessly repeated rumor and innuendo than to fact, as well as the fact that no one wants to take the food out of the mouths of whales and penguins.

I spoke with a PR company that represents Whole Foods in Colorado about the decision, but all I was told is that the “issue is under review.” I would hope so. I’m sure that whoever made the decision did so out of sincere motives and legitimate concerns for the Antarctic marine ecosystem. But it appears he or she did so without even an elementary knowledge of the rigorous management system in place to protect krill.

The truth about krill in the Antarctic
However, the truth is out there if one digs deeply enough … or asks the right person.
To find out, I turned to Dr. Simeon Hill, a senior scientific officer of at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) at Cambridge, England. BAS is one of the world's leading environmental research centers and is responsible for the UK's national scientific activities in Antarctica. It is an active participant in the international treaty organization called the Commission for Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) that formed back in 1982 specifically to manage Antarctic fisheries, protect the predators that depend on fished species, and protect the Antarctic krill fishery.

Dr. Hill said, "It seems likely that Whole Foods' decision is based on an appeal to emotions. However, they don't seem to be applying the same strict criteria on sustainability across their whole range of products. I would argue that sustainability is a far greater issue in many other fisheries than in the krill fishery.”

Well now, that certainly is a different perspective.

The “strict criteria” he may be referring to here is the fact that 95 percent or more of Antarctic krill is harvested for fish farms, including those for salmon. If Whole Foods was knowledgeable about this, it might more appropriately be concerned about selling farmed salmon rather than krill oil, which accounts for less than two percent of the harvest.

Science is key to managing the krill fishery

Counting living creatures in the sea is tough, but CCAMLR uses what it calls a “precautionary approach” to minimize the risks to krill and its predators. Firstly, CCAMLR scientists have determined that the total sustainable catch for krill is 3.47 million metric tons per year. Secondly, even further safeguards have been put into place, mandating that when the catch reaches a “trigger level” of just 620,000 metric tons the fishery must close for the season.

CCAMLR scientists determined this “trigger level” from historical records, which show no evidence of the krill fishery harming predators. Thirdly, there are restrictions on where the fishery can operate and how much of the “trigger level” it can catch in each area. Finally, current annual catches are around 200,000 metric tons, a third of the “trigger level” or a mere six percent of the sustainable catch.

Again, Dr. Hill: “The potential effect on predatory species is precisely why we’re taking such precautions in the fishery.”

There are just nine ships currently licensed to fish for krill in the Antarctic, and as of last year half of them are required to have scientific observers on board to ensure that the catch limits are not being surpassed.

“Good management recognizes and minimizes these dangers,” Dr. Hill says. “CCAMLR takes a very precautionary approach. The bottom line is that the fishery is only allowed to take a fifth of the sustainable catch and there are also spatial restrictions designed to protect predators.”

The truth, he says, is that “the krill fishery is managed much better that many other fisheries in the world.”

A Wakeup Call About Our Toxic Environment?

Here’s a statistic that should make you stop and think: Some 80,000 chemicals are in commercial use in the United States, but federal regulators have assessed only about 200 for safety.

This information is from a story in the Washington Post last week about the President’s Cancer Panel report, which warned that Americans are facing “grievous harm” from chemicals in the air, food and water that have largely gone unregulated and ignored.

While in the past the government and investigative agencies have somehow managed to skirt the issue of environmental toxins, blaming the epidemic of cancer in the U.S. mostly on smoking and bad diets, this panel’s pronouncement is a real departure from that position. Let’s hope we can take this as a positive sign that the truth about the chemical assault on our bodies that is part of life in a consumerist society is finally beginning to find its way over the wall of denial erected by lobbyists, congresspersons and PR agencies.

Here is the link to the story (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/06/AR2010050603813.html)

Deadly catch: Contaminated seafood, anyone?

In case you needed one more reason to tout healthy supplemental sources of omega-3s such as krill and fish oil, check out this disturbing ABC News report. Most of our seafood (80 percent) in the U.S. is being imported from developing nations, along with filth, banned chemicals, antibiotics and cheap prices.

Much of the problem resides with farmed fish, apparently. Foreign producers are using things like U.S. banned fungicides (malachite green was the one mentioned in the report) to keep the number of parasites down. Fish in Vietnam are being farmed in sewage water. Loads of antibiotics are being used to stave off the infections that would otherwise kill the fish being farmed in crowded pens.

America’s food-supply chain is a mess. Movies like Food, Inc., King Corn, and The World According to Monsanto have begun to awaken some Americans, but until a lot more of us begin demanding better controls on our food … and stop buying stuff just because it is cheap (in the short run), we’re going to slowly poison ourselves.

Is it time for a food revolution yet?

You can read more food and health-related news at WellWise.org

Will Your Multivitamin Kill You?

Pardon the sensationalistic headline, but I am making a point of how the old formula of “playing the fear card” is still considered effective by mass media, in politics as well as something as basic as food and nutrition. I just watched an MSNBC video from The Today Show titled “The Truth About Supplements.”

The title of the segment itself is crafted to create doubt, and the related link that runs across the bottom of the screen is even more explicit: “5 Truths, Lies about the Vitamins in Your Life.” The guest on the segment is Dr. David Katz, a celebrity physician and a Yale physician who reiterates a Reader’s Digest article (the “related link” above), that basically says you’re wasting your money on vitamins and that they may even be dangerous. I can’t imagine what Katz is reading beyond Reader’s Digest, but every day I read scientific studies that come to an opposite conclusion.

Katz claims that it is a “myth” that vitamins can protect against heart disease or cancer. I haven’t seen a lot in the scientific literature about multiple vitamins being studied for prevention of these common killers, but I just came across one today in Medical News Today from the American Association for Cancer Research, about a study on vitamins and calcium supplementation reported on at the organization’s annual conference. Jaime Matta, Ph.D., a professor in the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico, said about the study, “It is not an immediate effect. You don't take a vitamin today and your breast cancer risk is reduced tomorrow. However, we did see a long-term effect in terms of breast cancer reduction.”

Then there is the study I referred to in my last blog about omega-3s reducing breast cancer risk by 25 per cent.

To be fair, Katz does say in the end of the interview not to “throw out the baby with the bath water.” He correctly says that we’re all deficient in vitamin D, recommends a minimum of 1,000IU, and that more and more he is recommending krill oil to his patients.

So he’s not against supplementation, as it were, only taking multivitamins … unless they are whole-food vitamins. Makes me wonder if he has a thriving business on the side selling whole-food supplements.

Do You Know the History of Supplements?

If there was ever any doubt in your mind that getting natural products (supplements, etc.) and alternative medicine practices into the mainstream has been a long struggle, you’ll want to read James Gormley’s recent blog. Among the eye-opening tidbits he shares are these:

1910-1930

The American Medical Association (AMA) and a lobby of early “modern” pharmacies are embarrassed by the Flexner Report of 1910 (which made disease-focused, or allopathic, medicine look bad) and work together to mainly run natural medicine “out of town,” focusing especially on Eclectic, naturopathic and homeopathic medical schools. By 1930, aside from osteopathic and chiropractic schools, alternative medicine has been dealt a severe blow.

1960

In December, government agents enter the warehouses of the Balanced Foods Company in New York City and seize many copies of Folk Medicine and Arthritis and Folk Medicine, two popular books by the late doctor, D.C. Jarvis. The agents also seize bottles of vinegar and honey, since they were referred to in Jarvis’ books. The FDA brought suit against Balanced Foods in Federal District Court in New York City on the grounds that the vinegar and honey products constituted “misbranded drugs”! Milton Bass won this case … for consumers and the industry.

1998

FDA inspectors arrive at the offices of a Texas-based stevia company to "witness destruction" of "offending" cookbooks featuring stevia, and other literature. A video camera taping the aborted destruction, and the intercession of Julian Whitaker, M.D. and Jim Turner prevented the book burning.

This last one will probably come as a surprise to many people who now see stevia (Reb-A) being used as an alternative sweetener in soft drinks, among other things. The early pioneers tried for 40 years to get the FDA to even look at stevia as a sweetener. Then when Cargill and Coca Cola teamed up to petition for it last year (because the grassroots have been demanding it), it happened almost overnight. Now stevia is a burgeoning new industry.

The Future of Food

I just returned from a panel discussion at University of Colorado’s famous Conference on World Affairs titled “The Future of Food.”

The panel consisted of Jim Hightower, a well-known radio personality who was elected twice as Texas Agriculture Commissioner; Sarah Rich, a writer specializing in design, food and sustainability; and Terrence McNally, a journalist from Los Angeles and radio host of Free Forum (A World That Just Might Work).

It was a wildly informative session, full of passion and hope. Here’s just a taste of what was said there:

“In the past few decades, control of our food system has passed into the hands of the lawyers, CEOs and accountants of big corporations whose interests are not ours. Food to them is not something you eat or taste, but a profit center.”

“Eaters are participants in the global agriculture systems, not just consumers, though they don’t know it. Industrial eaters are passive and uncritical, and have no connection to the land.”

“The organics movement began as a revolt against corporate food. All of this came from us. It didn’t begin with policymakers or corporations, it began with normal people who wanted to take back control of their food, and it is a growing coalition of people.”

“Some people think that Whole Foods brought the organic foods revolution, but Whole Foods simply rode the wave that was already created.”

“If your calorie intake is 2,000 a day, it takes 20,000 calories of energy to bring it to your table. This is unsustainable.”

“Global warming is a real threat. A rise in temperatures of one-degree celsius brings about a 10 percent decline in crop yields.”

“Perhaps the biggest problem we have to solve in the U.S. is the Agricultural Bill that comes up for vote every five to seven years. It defines U.S. food policy, and is what has created innumerable problems. The vast majority of farm subsidies we pay go for soy and corn, almost none of which reaches our plates as food. For decades, the farm program has focused only on expanding production.”

“Our system is precarious. Food safety is a matter of national security. Eighty percent of our meat production is controlled by only four companies. 300,000 people are hospitalized from food poisoning in the U.S. every year.”

“There exists in all our major cities food deserts, where the only place for miles where you can by anything to eat is at liquor stores.”

“There are 52,000 acres of backyard space in New York City that could be cultivated into vegetable gardens.”

“The future of food is now. It is local, sustainable and unstoppable. Farmer’s markets are growing in number at amazing rates. School lunch program reform is going on all over the nation. There are food festivals in cities all over the nation, restaurants are touting their local and organic sourcing. People are working on zoning for fast food restaurants, and people are working to create school gardens. Michelle Obama is championing organic gardens and raising awareness about the dangers of the obesity epidemic.”

Here are some of the resources the participants recommended:

Websites:

http://civileats.com

www.earth-policy.org

http://stuffedandstarved.org

www.betterschoolfood.org

www.smallplanetinstitute.org

www.i-sis.org.uk

www.organicconsumers.org

Books:

Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times

The Pleasures of Eating

Soil, Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis

Read more wellness news at WellWise.org