Eat This Newsletter 287: Cynical
Hello
Three of today’s four items seem on the surface to be all good news, but I can’t help feeling that there’s not much below the surface.
Babyfood Botulism
More disturbing baby milk news. ByHeart Inc.’s Whole Nutrition Infant Formula has been tied to 13 cases of botulism so far, none fatal so far. AP News helpfully explains that “Infant botulism is caused by a bacterium that produces toxins in the large intestine”. In most other cases the bacterium has already produced the toxin in some foodstuff produced in anaerobic condition.
This news comes less than 8 months after the Food and Drug Administration and Health and Human Services announced Operation Stork Speed (geddit? We like vaccine development enough to rip it off) to “to make sure infant formula products are safe and wholesome for the families and children who rely on them,” as RFK Jr. put it at the time.
This is not ByHeart’s first brush with the Food and Drug Administration. Bill Marler, scourge of food manufacturers, was quick to remind people that in 2022 its product was recalled for Cronobacter contamination.
Lemons and Satsumas Recognized
FAO keeps a list of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems that laud the kinds of intricate methods of food production that are cultural treasures and models of resilience that can protect those cultures from the pressures of modernity. This summer, it recognised two new GIAHS that share similar characteristics, the Amalfi lemons of Italy and the satsuma orchards of the Arida-Shimotsu region in Japan. Both make use of dry-stone walls to create terraces on steep slopes, where citrus is the centre of a complex ecosystem and equally complex culture.
It’s very hard to tell from the official FAO write-ups, but I feel that the satsuma farmers are doing slightly better than the lemon farmers. An article from FAO offers a human perspective on the Amalfi farmers that seems somewhat downbeat, but there isn’t yet anything similar on Arida-Shimotsu.
Eat This T-shirt
Not normally a dedicated follower of fashion, I missed the news back in 2023 that the Armani Group had launched a Regenerative Cotton project in Puglia. Now it has announced its first results and a T-shirt. The first hectare saw a hectare of cotton planted among peach trees. That expanded in 2024 to 3 hectares, 2.4 ha for the cotton and 0.6 for additional poplar and pomegranate trees. This year, they’re up to 5.2 ha, 1.6 for the cotton and 3.6 for the trees, which now include carob, fig and mulberry.
The cotton harvest last year was apparently enough for 1000 T-shirts “housed in a special blue box, made of recycled, velvet-lined paper, and FSC® certified”. I have been unable to discover the price, or what happens to the peaches, pomegranates, carob, figs and mulberries. These are not they.
Cynical, moi?
And if Giorgio Armani’s efforts to save the planet one t-shirt at a time aren’t enough to warm the cockles of your heart, I offer National Geographic’s equally heart-warming story of how Farmers in Brazil are restoring biodiversity to grow resilient crops, sponsored by PepsiCo.
Take care
