About 30-40% of all food produced is wasted and not consumed. That is a stunning figure – a third of produce goes to waste. That amount of food is grown on land area the equivalent of China, uses 45 trillion gallons of water, and produces about 3% of greenhouse gas emissions. An average American household of four spends about $3 thousand a year on food they don’t eat. About 80% of wasted food is perishable with an estimated two thirds due to spoilage.
Obviously, if we could slow the process by which perishable foods (such as fruits and vegetables) spoil that could go a long way to reducing food waste. It is already common practice to coat perishable food with edible wax after cleaning at the packing house stage. The wax reduces moisture loss and protects against mold. However, this has limited efficacy – the spoilage statistics above are with the existing use of such wax coatings.
In 2012 a small company called Apeel Sciences was launched, partly from a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They developed a new produce coating from plant-based mono- and diglycerides. These are natural, edible fat compounds (lipids) extracted from the peels, pulp, and seeds of fruits and vegetables. We already consume many such lipids so there is really no plausible health concern. The manufacturing process, of course, does involve some solvents, but these remain in only trace amounts, orders of magnitude less than even cautious safety limits. For this reason the FDA has approved Apeel as GRAS (generally recognized as safe), and the EU has likewise granted approval as safe.
The effect of the thin coating is to extend the freshness of produce by 2-3 times, reducing waste due to spoilage by up to 12%. This has impacts all along the food chain, reducing the need for energy-intensive refrigeration, reducing food spoilage, price, and environmental impact. And all of this is through a thin coating made from natural plant products that are certified organic.
Despite all this, MAHA influencers managed to demonize this safe and effective product through flagrant misinformation, almost destroying the company and effectively removing the product from American shelves. The anti-Apeel campaign appears to have been started with two Facebook posts. This was enough – a new product to fear-monger about in order to maximize clicks and drive customers to their own supplements and other products.
What did not happen was any careful investigation or fact-checking. That is not the influencer culture, and not what drives MAHA. They are driven by narratives, and there are certain core go-to narratives – big industry are all villains trying to kill you, Bill Gates is some sort of demonic supervillain, everything is a conspiracy and you can’t trust anything, especially the government. The only thing you can trust are online mobs with virtual torches and pitchforks – oh, and buy my supplements.
Some of the misinformation that was spread included confusing the Apeel food coating with a completely different UK company also called Apeel which makes cleaners, even listing the ingredients of the cleaner as if it were the ingredients of the food coating. This Reddit post includes a lot of the typical propaganda – fearmongering about trace contents far below safety limits, falsely claiming they contain heavy metals when they are only found in the same amounts as all produce, which is absorbed from the soil (even less as the processing removes some), and the false claim that Apeel is sprayed on about to spoil food to make it appear fresher. Wrong – Apeel is applied at the packaging level right after harvest and is not purely cosmetic – it actually slows spoilage. There is even a reference to Bill Gates (who had virtually nothing to do with the company or product beyond initial grants).
Unfortunately fearmongering can be very effective. All you have to do is spook the major food chains like Costco into thinking this will hurt their sales, and they will cheerfully proclaim that their produce is “Apeel free”. We see the same thing with the “NON-GMO project” (which in my opinion is a scam). Companies can’t be out-fearmongered from their competitors, which is why virtually all pasta brands (for example) have the NON-GMO label despite the fact that there are no GMO wheat products in existence – not to mention that GMOs are completely safe and the anti-GMO campaign is built entirely on misinformation and ignorance.
There is a slight bright spot in this story – Apeel Sciences sued some of the influencers for defamation and won an undisclosed settlement which included a statement that the prior claims were wrong. The damage, as they say, was done, however. In addition to defamation, the suit was based partly on the Lanham act, which I happen to be very familiar with because I and SBM were also once sued under the Lanham act.
The Lanham act of 1946 establishes a national system for trademark registration and protects businesses and consumers from deceptive marketplace practices. What this means is that if one business lies about another business in order to ruin their competition, that is illegal and they can be sued for damages. The lawyer for Apeel is quoted as saying: “Advertising laws should apply to influencers,” she said. “Otherwise, they don’t feel obliged to make truthful representations. And people trust what influencers say as fact, especially in health and wellness marketing.”
I agree. But the complexity is in how the Lanham act is applied. The entity making the alleged false claims must be a business – it does not apply to non-commercial uses, such as political speech, news reporting, parodies, or educational commentary. In fact my case, Tobinick vs Novella, is now a precedent in how the Lanham act is applied. SBM is not a business, we are doing medical journalism, commentary, and advocacy. Any fund-raising is incidental, used to pay expenses, and that is not enough to trigger the Lanham Act.
In the Apeel case, the lawyers had a target-rich environment in terms of who they could sue, and they were wise to choose an influencer who was clearly running a business, Robyn Openshaw, a wellness influencer who markets herself as GreenSmoothieGirl. Apeel claims in the suit: “Defendants’ reasons for perpetuating these lies about Apeel are clear: They knew they could garner attention on social media, gain notoriety, and generate engagement by smearing Apeel, while simultaneously advertising their own
products. On information and belief, Defendants’ smear campaign against Apeel has generated substantial revenue for Defendants.” Specifically – Openshaw is reported to have sold a guide to Apeel-free produce, so she directly profited from her fearmongering about Apeel.
Because they settled this case does not create a legal precedent. But it was enough to cause many other influencers to take down their anti-Apeel content. Where does this leave us?
It certainly seems reasonable that “influencers” are a type of journalist, or at least opinion columnist. This actually makes it difficult to sue them for spreading misinformation – you have to prove defamation, which in the US is difficult (I think appropriately so). All they have to do is couch what they say as opinion and they are protected. Defamation requires writing things that are factual claims, false, you knew they were false or acted with reckless indifference to whether or not they were true, and caused demonstrable harm.
The Lanham Act in some ways is a lower bar, but it requires that you are making money from your false statements. This can be a fuzzy standard, and the lines are very blurry. I think it should be obvious that sites like SBM are not primarily businesses. None of us make any money directly from our work here. Other sites are clearly businesses, primarily selling products and services. But many sites deliberately blur the lines, using sensational reporting to drive engagement while selling stuff on the side. The question is, which of these things is primary? Are they selling stuff so they can spread their opinions, or are they using their opinions to drive traffic to their store and sell product? Alex Jones is a great example of the latter, but many influencers are in the gray zone. The courts will have to further work out exactly where this line is.
This case shows how powerful influencers have become. They can tank a company by casually spreading disinformation. There has to be some accountability.
MAHA Ruins Everything – Apeel Edition