Food Facts with Melissa Wright

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Travis

How do you feel about food? I'm pretty sure that I like food a whole lot more than I like much of the conversations I see about food, food ingredients, and even nutrition on social media platforms. Quite frankly, I find it a little overwhelming and can come away little confused. But thankfully Virginia Tech's Melissa Wright is an expert in this very subject and was kind enough to join the podcast to help me navigate this space.

Melissa is the director of the Food Producer Technical Assistance Network at Virginia Tech, which supports food entrepreneurs by assisting with nutrition label content, food safety analysis, and pertinent food regulations. The program's goal is to help Virginia's food processing industry produce high quality, safe, and innovative food products. So Melissa and I talked a little bit about labels and how I should even interpret labels, the numbers on the back, the list of ingredients. We also talked about topics like raw milk, protein, ultra processed food, and even color additives with me basically asking the same questions. How can I navigate these conversations? So if you like I have been a little overwhelmed by all the information out there, I think this podcast will have a lot for you to chew on. I'm Travis Williams and this is Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

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Travis

I want to talk to you about buzz worthy food conversations that I keep seeing everywhere. And the reason I want to talk to you is because I think I'm tired of just leaning into social media for all of, you know, my guidance in this area personally. Um, but I think maybe a good place to start this conversation is simply what is extension and what do you do with it extension in this space?

Melissa

So extension is a really large umbrella that exists at Virginia Tech and also Virginia State University. there are employees who are extension focused and extension means that we take all the great research that's being done by our colleagues and distill it down to a way that the general public can understand it. So we are science communicators. So my job is to talk about all my colleagues who are doing science research in microorganisms and packaging and food safety and things like that and put that information into a way that the general public can understand and then also do programming that teaches, in my case, food producers, food safety, food labeling and that kind of stuff.

Travis

That sounds like a great job. It actually, sounds very similar to what I'm trying to do with this podcast really is take very complicated things and hopefully make them more accessible and understandable and usable for Well, on the topic of foods I know you do a lot of work with labels and you just mentioned labels with producers, but me as a consumer, as a shopper, what's just maybe some general good guidance on how I should approach a label. how should I interpret those?

Melissa

Well, that's a good question. There's a lot of discussions back and forth about something as simple as what a product is called. You you think about plant milk and things like that, because they use the word milk. So there's a lot of information on the package you could glean. So packages are required to have a certain number of things. They have to have the product's name, which may be something that has a standard of identity, like cottage cheese or skim milk. Those things are defined. And so to call a product something, it actually has to meet that definition. So if you look at, mayonnaise, you look at Hellman's mayonnaise, mayonnaise is a definition. If you look at Miracle Whip, it's not called mayonnaise because it's called salad dressing, because it's a difference in what it actually is chemically. It's really the amount of oil it has in it. That's really the difference between those two products. Or you look at whipped cream versus, you know, dessert topping. So you can glean a lot by what the product is actually called. And that tells you a lot about what it actually is as far as standard of identity, which is, know, just in the law, it says standard of identity for milk is this, you know. And so it has to have that, it has to have a net weight. So the package has to tell you how much you're actually getting in the package. And that has to be true to what's actually in there. It has to be at least what's in there. It can be, less than you have more product in the package than it says it has. That's fine. You can never have less though. So if something says it's 16 fluid ounces, it has to have at least that much in there. It has to have the manufacturer's contact information so that the consumer can contact a manufacturer if they have a question, if they have a concern or there's a recall or something like that. And it has to have an ingredient statement. And so the ingredient statement is listed in order of predominance. So it's listed in the amount of, you know, this is the greatest thing and it goes all the way down in order of predominance. And so you can glean a lot about what's in your product. You you see those, you know, water is always close to the top a lot of times, right? Water is an ingredient. If it's in there, it has to be included. So, you know, you can tell by how high salt or sugar is in that list, you know, how much of something is really salty, it's going to be really at the top of the list, right? You can also glean that information from the nutrition facts panel. Some things are not required to have a nutrition facts panel. It depends on the size of the producer. It depends on whether there's actually any nutritive content in the product. But so you can glean a lot from that too. So if you're looking at salt or sugar, you're worried about there are natural sugars in foods. So you may see a large number for total sugars. Like if you look at a can of pineapple that's just in pineapple juice, it's gonna have a lot of sugar because it's natural sugar. But if you look at the lot as added sugars, it's probably gonna be zero unless there's been sugar added to sweeten it. So that information, people don't always understand the difference between total sugars and added sugars. And the same for sodium. If you have a lot of salt in there, you're gonna have a really high sodium number. And it's nice because it actually gives you the number, the amount of sodium that's in a serving, but it also gives you the percent daily value that's over there. And that gives you an idea of...how much am I eating in this one serving relative to how much I should have in one day. And so we often find ourselves helping these small to mid-sized producers, helping them actually create the nutrition facts panels for their food products and actually helping them write ingredient statements as well. And so, because a lot of times people are using value added products for their foods, if they're making a barbecue sauce, it might start with Heinz ketchup and Heinz mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and they're adding some onions or something like that, right? So they have to actually take everything that's on the label of the ingredients they're using and move it to their label. And sometimes you can do that in a couple of different ways. So we help them do that so that it's correct. So they're actually including all the correct ingredients on their statements. So I spent a lot of time reading and writing ingredient statements. And so it's kind of fun sometimes to look at something and try to interpret exactly what's going on. There are some generic things people can use in ingredient statements, which is always interesting. You can say spices and spices encompasses a really large list of things not to include though, garlic powder, onion powder, salt. Those are not spices. They have to actually be called out by name. So those are always interesting to see. If you ever see one that says spices and coloring, that means that they've added something that may be a spice, but it also may be in part in color and it may be paprika, saffron, or turmeric. Those are considered coloring agents as well as spices because they're usually added for color and not necessarily for flavor. So I can go down a really long rabbit hole on ingredient statements.

Wow, yeah, well, I know just because my wife has a gluten intolerance or allergy that natural flavorings is something she's always like, we have to be very careful about that because they can have gluten in that. And so we're very careful about that. do think with labeling, the first thing you said about skim milk, I do think that Ron Swanson says that skim milk's label is a lie, that it shouldn't be called milk, but that's a preference, that's an opinion, right?

Melissa

It should be called water.

Travis

Well, I think that's super helpful but speaking about milk that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about because I see a lot of stuff just bubble up in my own world about Not just milk but raw milk and to be completely honest with you. I Really wasn't even sure when we started this conversation. I talked to you earlier a couple weeks ago. What rawmilk even meant so maybe What is raw milk and how should I navigate this raw milk discussion?

Melissa

Raw milk just means milk that has not been pasteurized for safety. And pasteurization is a heat step that kills microorganisms that could and often are in the fluid milk just by virtue of the environment in which it's produced.

Travis

Okay. Well, is there an upside to having raw milk? it's, is there a downside to having, is there a danger to having it? How do I, how do I make sense of this?

Melissa

Yeah, I guess it depends on who you asked. From a food safety standpoint. Yes, there are inherent dangers with drinking raw milk, especially to those people who we consider the category people that are called Yopi, the young, old, pregnant or infirmed. Those are the most susceptible parts of our population. And so to them, ingesting something like the pathogens that may be in raw milk can be especially dangerous. It could be deadly. So from a Public safety, food safety standpoint, we do not advocate drinking raw milk. People are free to make their own decisions about what they ingest in their own homes. And that's fine. If people want to buy raw milk, you know, there are ways around it. are loopholes. You could buy herd shares. So you essentially buy the rights to the milk from a cow that is in a herd. So you don't actually buy the raw milk itself. You say, I'm buying a portion of a cow that's in a herd share. So then when that cow gets milked, I get the milk. So they're not really buying the raw milk. They're actually buying rights to the milk. And so, you know, people have a belief, people who are raw milk proponents have a belief that sometimes, oftentimes, that the pasteurization makes it less nutritious or that it takes something away from the milk itself from a standpoint of, you know, what they want to be ingesting. So if they want to drink milk that is unpasteurized because they feel that there are health benefits to it, That's fine. They just can't then they people can't take raw milk and actually just sell it. And you can't make any products like in Virginia, you can't make raw milk cheeses and sell them from your home. You have to make them under really strict regulations because we know they're inherent dangers with milk. And then we just know that there are pathogens that can survive in milk, which is why pasteurization has become a thing.

Travis

Yeah, well that helps me out a lot with understanding kind of like, again, how to make sense of that conversation. Another conversation that comes up a lot, especially in my parent's circles, is related to food dyes. And I am not 100 % sure, again, what food dyes even consist of and if there are different, maybe different levels and different types of dyes. So how should I make sense of food dyes?

Melissa

So back to our conversation about ingredient statements. There are some colors that have to be called out by name and those are called certified colors. Those are the ones that you see that sometimes will say FDNC Red 40. They might just say Red 40. Those are certified colors, which means that they are synthetically produced by a company using, you know, whatever mechanism there are to produce them. They are not made from petroleum. They are not made from gas. People have you know, this misnomer that these are, you know, they say that they're, I can't remember the word in there, people have been using it in the hot button issues, but you know, they are organic, they have carbon and hydrogen and oxygen. So they are organic chemicals that are being synthesized, but they are not being made from petroleum products. So they take gas from the gas station and turn it into red 40. That's not what's happening. But those are synthesized in a factory. And they're called certified because there's a certain standard. They have to meet a certain color standard so that the food is repeatedly the same color every time when you use that certified color. Right. So we can use red 40, yellow five, yellow six, you know, blue one, blue two, something like that. Those all have a standard. They are a certain color. And so those are also really highly purified and tested for pathogens to make sure they don't have anything in there. And then they're sold as a coloring to these food companies. They're used in very minuscule amounts. There have been some that have been recently taken off the market. So Red 3 was actually removed from the market because under what's called the Delaney Clause, which was a clause that said if something causes cancer in humans or animals, must be, it cannot be used in food. Right? So they did animal studies and it caused cancer in these animal studies, Red 3 did. So it's taken off the market.

Now I say that and people say, my gosh, it caused cancer. Okay, well, if you pump any animal full of something long enough in such quantities, it may indeed give them cancer. So I will say that's how those studies work, right? As far as red 40 is concerned, you know, like I have three sons and a daughter, all of which who have varying levels of ADHD. And, you know, I mean, is that genetic? Is that food coloring? I don't really know. I mean, there are studies that link red 40 specifically hyperactivity in children. But as people say, sometimes, you know, it's the the poison is in the dose. It's not really what you're taking or what you're eating. It's really in the amount of what you're eating. So everything in moderation, right? Like your body can't live without a little bit of salt. If you eat too much, can kill you. Right. So as a parent, you know, it's like, do I is it a fight that I fight? Do I try to find things that only have then instead of having certified colors have natural colors or just other colors added. So those other colors are coming from, you know, vegetative or fruit material. A lot of times you might get a red from, you know, beets. You might get blues from blueberries. You might get greens from spinach or matcha. You get yellows from saffron or turmeric. And the problem with replacing all these certified colors with natural colors now, is that it's gonna increase the price of the product because there's a lot more demand. You have to grow a whole field of carrots before you can make a color out of those carrots. So have to grow that whole field of carrots, harvest it, process them. You get a really small amount of dye that you put on the market. So it's a supply and demand question. So that cost gets passed along to somebody. So your food cost is gonna go up. Smaller producers are gonna be a lot less likely to be able to keep up with that price change without passing it along to their end consumers. So it's a supply and demand question. And it's just also it's a repeatability question. Like if you make something with carrot dye, a dye that you've synthesized from carrots, is it going to look the same batch after batch after batch? No, it's really not because it's going to be all in how that crop look. There's no standards for it, right? And so as consumers, we usually eat with our eyes first before we even smell it or taste it, right? So you go down to the cereal aisle and you have all those boxes of really bright, you know, tricks and apple jacks and whatever they are, right? The consumer sees the same thing when they pour it in that bowl every time. That's comforting, that's nostalgic, that's what you're expecting. As you move to natural colors though, you're not going to see the same thing every time. And the consumer might think, is that a quality defect? Is that a safety problem? Should I eat this now? So it begets a whole another round of questions. It may answer the questions about, I'm not eating synthetic dyes. But now it's like, well, this doesn't look like the same as what I ate last time. Is it as safe as it was? I don't really know. You know, so as with a lot of things, you answer some questions and you just generate more.

Travis

Yeah, it reminds me of when the ketchup came out and it was green and I couldn't eat it. I friends that could eat it. I couldn't eat it. I was like, it doesn't taste the same. It probably.

Melissa

Yeah. Yep. The purple ketchup is the same way to me. I was like, no, I, no, I can't do it. It's just not right.

Travis

I've also wondered and I'm not, this is like a very uneducated just thought that I have because I'm not an expert in really anything. But I've also wondered with like food does and kids and hyperactivity because I also have a young kid. I've noticed there's a correlation it seems between things that are very brightly colored and having like a high sugar content. Like we don't really have a lot of nutritious food that's also pink artificially colored. So I just.

Melissa

No. Right.

Travis

you know, I don't know how much I don't know how much we give to like the sugar versus like the color like I'm not really sure.

Melissa

Exactly. It's hard to find something that's sugar free, that is also bright red, right? You know, like I think about those little drinks that my kids love and the little plastic barrels with the foil on top and they're like these really vivid colors and they're just like 72 % sugar or something. Well, yeah, is it the sugar that's making them hyperactive or is it the red 40? I'm betting it's probably the sugar, right? And that leads us into another question which is really hot at the moment is processed foods and ultra-processed foods. And, know, there really is no clear definition. I think that's something that the government is working on is what is a processed food. And so that's another buzzword that people get afraid to hear is, I don't want to eat processed food. Well, when you buy a cantaloupe and it's been cut at the counter in the fruit counter in the Kroger, it's already been processed. Right. So that cutting is a processed food. So minimally processed. Right. But it is still processed food. But As you process things, and processing just can mean cooking or heating or grinding or something, all kinds of different things, you may be actually removing nutrients and you may be changing the color of that product as you cook it. So then you're adding colors or sugars or salts or stabilizers back to it to get it to a form where it's going to be on the shelf for longer for the consumer. And so those are truly those really highly processed foods. Like we talk about cereal, cereal is really highly processed. most cereals are. It's not the grain that came out of the out of the earth. You know, it's the grain plus some sugar plus some color plus some stabilizers plus some things to make it sit on the shelf long enough. But Americans were eaters of convenience. You know, it's really very easy to go to the store and be like, hey, cereals on sale. I'm going to buy nine boxes and my kids are going to have it all summer long because I know otherwise, yeah, my kids will eat a whole box of cereal day if I let them. don't live in a society like Europe where you can just go to the market every day and buy the things you want to have every day to eat. It's just, we're not set up that way. So our food system reflects the choices that we make and the way our towns and lives are set up.

Travis

Yeah, well, unfortunately, we don't have a lucky charms tree, I guess is kind what we're getting now. It would be great. It might also be dangerous.

Melissa

Wouldn't it be great though?

Travis

speaking of labels and nutrition panels, one of the labels that pops up on stuff seemingly all the time now, even cereal, I saw it just this morning, is protein. We now have protein in a lot of different things. So how can I make sense of protein and protein content in all these different items?

Melissa

So the first thing that's important to know is not all protein is created equal. So different protein from different sources, our bodies can use differently. So they're what are called complete proteins, meaning they have all the amino acids that our body might need. So things like eggs and things like that have really high amount of protein that our bodies can actually use and turn into muscle essentially is what it's going to end up doing over time, right? And some protein, is really just filler protein. Like it doesn't have a very high nutritional content for our bodies to use. So if you look at a nutrition panel and so we talked about how there's an amount in grams or milligrams for different things and there's also a percent daily value. Now protein is one of those that if you look at the panel on something and you only see it has six grams of protein but there's no number in the percent daily value column That means that they have not, that product is not likely to have really high quality of protein because you have to actually be able to do some testing that is called the protein digestibility amino acid score. And so we call that PD-CAS. And that is essentially an assay that can be done in a laboratory to determine how complete that protein is how that means how much the human body can actually glean. If I'm ingesting that six grams of protein, am I really getting six grams of protein or am I getting two grams of really low quality protein or, you know? And so if a product has a claim, so a label claim is something that, you know, you can put on a product that says low in sodium, fat-free, sugar-free, good source of protein. So for something that is actually bearing a protein claim, That means they've done that background work and they've actually figured out the quality of that protein. And so that product will have a percent daily value. And that percent daily value is really, if you're looking at proteins specifically on your label, that's going to be the most important information for you to have is the percent daily value, not really the grams of protein, because the percent daily value is going to give you an idea of the quality of that protein relative to how much you should be taking in as a member of the general public if you're looking at being a bodybuilder or whatever, you're going to look at the quality of your protein, not just the number of grams of your protein.

Travis

Yeah, those percent daily values, I I assume they're based on kind of just a broad population. I guess that would be different for everybody. So how should we interpret that, I guess?

Melissa

Yes. So there are general population numbers and that's like if you're between 18 and 64 or whatever. But there are foods, if foods are targeted to children, there's a whole different set of percent daily values for toddlers, for infants. So those foods that are baby foods that are specifically targeted to them, they have a whole different percent daily value. They have a whole different list of nutrients they should be taking in versus just the general adult. And so yeah, the numbers that you see a percent daily value, are generic to just the general public. And I will say also there's a lot of latitude in rounding when it comes to nutrition facts panels. You it says 30 calories. Well, that could be 31, that could be 34. You know, there's a lot of rounding that goes on in all of those numbers and those rules exist for a reason. So it doesn't say 47.9 calories. That's a very specific number. Are you always going to have 47.9? No. Are you going to generally almost always have about 45? Sure. So take that for what you will. Those numbers are accurate. They're just not very precise. ⁓ So just something to keep in mind as well. And some of you, like I've been on a weight loss journey my entire life. I've been on Weight Watchers for probably 20 years now. And so you keep track of your calories or your fat or whatever those metrics are that you're trying to, and you're like, why am not losing weight? Well, know, because... you're dealing with imperfect information sometimes or not just imprecise. It's not as precise as it could be sometimes.

Travis

Yeah, I think that's really helpful to keep in mind. I like that it's accurate, but maybe not precise. That's a great, I think, just thing to keep in mind when we're looking labels.

Melissa

Exactly. I mean, there are so many strict guardrails I could put in my life, but I'm just gonna spend my entire life trying to live within those guardrails and then I'm just gonna not enjoy anything that's going on out here. Sometimes you just have to eat to be happy. You eat to live. Sometimes you just have to have three donuts instead of just the one. I mean, know, just depends on the day, right?

Travis

I think that's fair. Well, is there any other kind of buzz-worthy food things that you have seen out there that really kind of stick in your craw?

Melissa

Yeah, I mean, know, one that really that always makes me laugh is when I go to the grocery store and see people buying alkaline water. So the pH has been inflated to a point where it's like nine point five or something like that. So your normal water, when you buy like bottled water, the pH is going to be neutral, six, seven, something like that. You know, and so I don't understand why, why alkaline water is a thing, because as soon as you ingest it, it's going to hit the acid that's in your stomach, which is a pH that's less than two. So it's going to immediately be acidified. And so, you know, maybe you're drinking it for flavor and that's fine, but I always think it's funny when people think they're getting some sort of health benefit from drinking alkaline water when that doesn't really make scientific sense to me. Not my area of expertise specifically, but like I know how pH works and I know that if you add something that's, you know, not got a lot of other stuff in it, it's just this water that's got something added to raise the pH and you add it to stomach acid. it's gonna immediately have a really low pH. So I always think that one's kind of funny. I chuckle a lot and my husband's like, are you laughing at a person's alkaline water? I'm like, I am indeed laughing at a person's alkaline water.

Travis

Well, that's a fascinating space between like science and marketing. Because I guess if you put alkaline on it, but people are drinking more water because of that, like, okay, it's kind of.

Melissa

While water industry's making money, right? Exactly.

Travis

Well, and people are, you know, I think this sometimes when my kid is like, we had a banana, but it had a Minecraft sticker on it. So now you're eating a banana and like, that's wonderful. I'm just glad we're eating the banana.

Melissa

It's a win for a parent. And I guess anything that gives the public to drink more water. mean, know, drinking water is not bad for you, right? It's good for you. So whatever keeps people hydrated, I suppose. But it is. It's it's kind of laughable. Sometimes the claims that you see people put on their food products and and really what goes into actually knowing what that claim means. You know, some of them have caveats. It looks a little asterisk. It's like, you know, less sugar now with less sugar. And that has to have some sort of little asterisk and on the back it says, our last formulation or then the leading market product or something like that. Yeah, I'm glad I don't work in the marketing space. like to work in. mean, the science is black and white, but the regulations for food labeling are a little bit gray enough. You know, there's enough wiggle room for what can you call something or what can you name something that But I like the black and white food regulations. to us all the time and just ask us, they're like, I saw this label, what does this mean? And know, the thing about Extension is, like, that's my job is to literally field those questions. So people have food safety questions, food labeling questions, food, anything like that. They're more than welcome to reach out to us and we're happy to answer those questions anytime.

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Travis

And thanks to Melissa for helping us better understand how to navigate conversations about food. If you or someone you know would make for a great curious conversation, email me at traviskw@vt.edu. I'm Travis Williams and this has been Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

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