Interest in Sustainability, Plant-Based Diets Among Trends in IFIC Foundation’s 2019 Food & Health Survey

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MAY 22, 2019 DOWNLOAD THE SURVEY (Washington, D.C.)—Topics like sustainability, plant-based diets and clean eating seem to permeate news about food, but it turns out they’re not just buzzwords or “flavors of the week.” IFIC Foundation’s 2019 Food and Health Survey shows genuine and growing interest in these and other trends. The 2019 edition marks the 14th consecutive year that IFIC Foundation has surveyed American consumers to understand their perceptions, beliefs and behaviors around food and food-purchasing decisions. Sustained Interest in Sustainability Previous Food and Health Surveys asked consumers about their views on sustainability, but their interpretations of the concept varied. This year’s Food & Health Survey gets more specific by asking consumers what they look for in order to know whether a product is environmentally sustainable. Every year the survey identifies leading factors that impact food and beverage purchases. Every Survey has seen “taste” reign supreme and in 2019 the trend continues. Deemed important by 86% of consumers, the impact of taste on purchasing decisions is up significantly from 81% in 2018. Other factors such as “price” (68%), “healthfulness” (62%) and “convenience” (57%) held steady. “Sustainability” as a purchase driver registered in the mid- to high-30 percentages through the years, but the 2019 refinement to “environmental sustainability” resulted in a drop to 27%, indicating that consumers may think of more than the environment when it comes to sustainability. Regardless of the impact on purchasing decisions, over half of consumers (54%) say it’s at least somewhat important that the products they buy be produced in an environmentally sustainable way. Among those 54%, many look for specific labels or attributes to assess whether they believe a product is environmentally sustainable: 51% perceive products that are locally produced as environmentally sustainable, followed by products literally labeled as sustainably produced […]

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Food Safety Precautions During Extreme Weather

When extreme weather conditions result in environmental hazards such as flooding, it is important to still practice food safety measures to help support your health. Safe food handling precautions are important under optimal conditions, but they should also be practiced under stressed, emergency conditions as well. In addition to these actions, there are more considerations to be mindful of in cases of long and short-term power outages. Keep in the Cold Remember to keep refrigerator and freezer doors closed during power outages to maintain the cold temperature. Use appliance thermometers in your refrigerator and freezer to help determine if food is safe during power outages. Refrigerator temperature should be 40° F or lower and the freezer should be 0° F or lower. Without power, a refrigerator will likely keep food at a safe temperature for about four hours if the doors are kept closed.  Without power, a full freezer will stay cold for 48 hours, and a half-full freezer will stay cold for about a day. Smell Won’t Tell Do not rely on the appearance or smell of a food item to determine its safety.  It’s important to use a thermometer to determine a food’s safety. If a thermometer was not kept inside the freezer to gauge temperature, use a food thermometer on each item to determine safety.  For items in the freezer to be safe to re-freeze or prep consume, they should have an internal temperature below 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  If meats, eggs or leftovers have been above 40 degrees Fahrenheit for more than two hours, throw them out. When in Doubt, Throw it out If you are unsure about the safety of food items that were in your refrigerator or freezer during a power outage or anytime, THROW IT OUT! We typically encourage not wasting food, but in […]

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The Holidays: Celebrating With Safety

The weather is getting cooler, and as fall and winter holidays approach, many of us are thinking about how we can celebrate with friends, family and food in a safe manner. In addition to the many traditional food safety precautions we should plan to follow, this year there are more adjustments we can make to support our celebrations with pandemic preparedness. The following food safety tips will help you celebrate while avoiding food safety faux pas. Read on for ways you can make sure that foodborne illness and COVID-19 know they are not invited to the party! Talking turkey: Thawing, cooking, and avoiding foodborne illness Turkey and other types of poultry and meat are popular choices for family meals during this time of year—but it’s important to consume them safely. Eating raw or undercooked poultry (and meat) can lead to foodborne illness, which can be very serious. Foodborne illness from undercooked or raw poultry can be caused by Campylobacter, Clostridium perfringens, Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella. Symptoms of related foodborne illnesses can vary from person to person but are usually associated with nausea, stomach cramps, diarrhea and vomiting (as well as dehydration in many cases). If you purchase a turkey in advance of your holiday celebration, a great way to keep it fresh and safe before you are ready to cook it is by freezing it. After freezing, proper defrosting techniques are needed to ensure quality and safety. The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) advises that the proper way to thaw a turkey or any other type of meat is NOT to leave it out at room temperature or anywhere else that might fluctuate in temperature. Instead, there are three ways to thaw poultry and meat safely: in a refrigerator, in cold water, or […]

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Food Safety Precautions During Extreme Weather

When extreme weather conditions result in hazards such as power outages, it is extra important to practice food safety measures to help support your health. Safe food handling precautions are important under optimal conditions, but they should also be practiced under stressed, emergency conditions as well. In addition to these actions, there are more considerations to be mindful of in cases of long and short-term power outages. Keep in the Cold Remember to keep refrigerator and freezer doors closed during power outages to maintain the cold temperature. Use appliance thermometers in your refrigerator and freezer to help determine if food is safe during power outages. Refrigerator temperature should be 40° F or lower and the freezer should be 0° F or lower. Without power, a refrigerator will likely keep food at a safe temperature for about four hours if the doors are kept closed.  Without power, a full freezer will stay cold for 48 hours, and a half-full freezer will stay cold for about a day. Smell Won’t Tell Do not rely on the appearance or smell of a food item to determine its safety.  It’s important to use a thermometer to determine a food’s safety. If a thermometer was not kept inside the freezer to gauge temperature, use a food thermometer on each item to determine safety.  For items in the freezer to be safe to re-freeze or prep consume, they should have an internal temperature below 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  If meats, eggs or leftovers have been above 40 degrees Fahrenheit for more than two hours, throw them out. When in Doubt, Throw it out If you are unsure about the safety of food items that were in your refrigerator or freezer during a power outage or anytime, THROW IT OUT! We typically encourage not wasting food, but in […]

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Genetically Modified Organisms and Our Food Supply

GMO (genetically modified organism) foods are being seen more and more in our food supply and are often cited as the future of our agricultural system. Many GMOs, in fact, are already ingredients in food products that we frequently enjoy. GMO crops are crops that have been safely engineered to have new traits such as increased vitamin availability, drought resistance and pest tolerance. Genetically modified (GM) foods support the food production system by increasing yields, supporting conservation and building sustainability through social, environmental and economic opportunities. Today, let’s take a closer look at the characteristics of the 11 GM foods that have been approved in the U.S. 1. Alfalfa GM alfalfa, a highly nutritious legume used as cattle and dairy feed, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2006. It is the fourth largest U.S. crop (both in acreage and production). GM alfalfa has been altered to (a) be more resistant to herbicides like glyphosate and/or (b) contain less lignin, making the alfalfa easier to digest by cattle. These modifications limit the overgrowth of weeds, increase alfalfa production, and increase the nutritive value of feed for cows. 2. Apples Approved by the FDA in 2015, GM apples first appeared on the U.S. market in 2017. We’ve all heard that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” and GM apples have been modified to keep browning away by suppressing the oxidase enzyme. These non-browning apples can reduce food waste in the food system, as bruised apples (which may be perfectly fine to eat) may appear brown and distasteful to consumers. 3. Canola FDA-approved in 1999, the GM canola plant is an oilseed crop whose seeds are used for canola oil (a heart-healthy unsaturated fat), animal feed and biofuel. The canola plant has been modified to increase […]

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One of Our Food System’s Helping Hands: GMOs

Many of us have heard the term “GMOs,” but how many of us know what they are as well as their benefits to the food supply and the environment? GMO (genetically modified organism) technology uses specific scientific innovation to genetically alter plants and promote desired characteristics. For example, these characteristics can help fruits and vegetables grow better under environmental stresses like drought, ward off crop diseases and pests and even forgo browning in fruits once they are sliced. This technology also decreases food waste, gives multiple populations reliable and nutritious food options and helps farmers use less pesticides and grow crops even more efficiently. In fact, this technology has been used for over 20 years and has been scientifically been proven to be a safe and effective way to support agriculture. While these scientific advances are in their 20s, the idea of cultivating crops with more desirable characteristics is thousands of years old. Farmers have been breeding plants together for millennia in order to get them to prime edible states. You should have seen kale, watermelons, carrots or bananas 10,000 years ago! They weren’t the big, beautiful, fleshy, juicy fruits and vegetables we have today. Here are some helping hand highlights, showcasing how GMOs are improving our food system: Helping Farmers and Saving Natural Resources GMO crops have significantly increased crop yields and simultaneously decreased pesticide use. By doing these two things combined, we are producing more food with less inputs. Decreased use of pesticides, means less pesticide production demand and also less energy use on the farmers’ end, too. Genetic characteristics in fruits and vegetables, such as insect- and disease-resistance, can also help farmers use less pesticides. But, in instances where pesticides won’t eliminate the presence of a pest, a genetic modification can make a crop resistant to the […]

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What A Pediatric Nutrition Expert Says About Baby Food and Infant Formula

In light of a recent wave of media coverage related to a report stating that “alarming” levels of arsenic, lead and cadmium were found in baby food, we called a pediatric nutrition expert to help us navigate this news cycle. Dr. Keith T. Ayoob, a pediatric nutritionist and registered dietitian at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, answered our questions about the safety of baby food currently on the market today. Here are Dr. Ayoob’s tips for parents: Based on the recent report, is there any reason to change a child’s diet? Not really. I wouldn’t change my recommendations about baby food, infant formula or a child’s diet based on one report. I also have strong concerns about it.  It’s not clear why the study and results were not submitted to a peer-reviewed journal of experts where toxicologists and other professionals could review the data, the findings and the context for the conclusions. For example, what trace amounts of metal have been found in baby food?  So, if they are detected in baby food, is this something new?  Wouldn’t the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pull these products off the market? Wouldn’t we see a public health outbreak?  My experience and skills tell me this is not something new or anything to be alarmed about.  Peer-review would help ensure that any conclusions would be placed in the proper context whereas this latest incredible-to-believe piece of work got smeared across our media and news outlets without any context for the consumer. It troubles me to see the rapid spread of misinformation as a clinician who sees children regularly. I have the responsibility for giving evidence-based advice to parents and caregivers of all economic and cultural backgrounds.  Just as troubling is an organization can advocate for “greater transparency” on labels, yet doesn’t […]

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A Little Q&A on CRISPR Cows

While the majority of all our food has come from farms for hundreds of years, agricultural practices have changed over time, largely due to advances in farming technology. In more recent years, these developments have included the use of biotechnology techniques such as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). We’ve explained previously that CRISPR is one of the bioengineering methods that can be used to alter the genetic information in the cells of living things—plants, fruits, vegetables, and more. That genetic information is contained in what we know as the fundamental building block of life—DNA. DNA can produce proteins that define what a living organism’s cells do or don’t do. To use an analogy from another type of technology, DNA acts in a way similar to how software controls the operation of a computer. Food science and related-field researchers all over the world have been using CRISPR to perform genetic alterations in cells in order to alter food characteristics in ways that support the reliability of our food system. As mentioned above, CRISPR has been primarily used so far to alter the cells of plants, fruits and veggies. However, we’ve recently learned of the work being done by researcher Alison Van Eenennaam, Ph.D., a professor at the University of California, Davis, who is using CRISPR on a new target: food-producing cows. To learn more about Dr. Eenennaam’s groundbreaking work, we asked her to field a few questions. Q: How is your research team using CRISPR technology? A: Gene editing is a technique that can be used to introduce useful genetic variations into [animal] breeding programs. It involves the use of enzymes that cut DNA at a specific sequence (site-specific nucleases, e.g. CRISPR-Cas9), thereby introducing a break into the DNA at a targeted location. Depending upon how that break is […]

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