Category: Issue 284
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Swedish Doctoral Thesis Links Fast Food Diet to Brain Abnormalities
A researcher at a Swedish medical university, Karolinska Institutet, has studied the effect of a high fat, sugar and cholesterol diet on the brains of mice. Susanne Akterin’s doctoral thesis, “From Cholesterol to Oxidative Stress in Alzheimer’s Disease: A Wide Perspective on a Multifactorial Disease,” shows that mice fed a diet equivalent to the nutritional…
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John Tierney, “Health Halo Can Hide the Calories,” The New York Times, December 2, 2008
This article addresses one possible explanation for a phenomenon that New York Times journalist John Tierney refers to as “the American obesity paradox,” which he describes as the failure of America’s health food obsession to curb obesity rates. Tierney and Pierre Chandon, an assistant marketing professor with the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires (INSEAD), asked…
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Tom Avril, “Influence of Corporate Money on Study of Nutrition Questioned,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 25, 2008
Inquirer staff writer Tom Avril opens his piece by focusing on a nutritionist who advised consumers to drink orange juice as a boost to the immune system when Forbes.com wrote an article in 2007 about preventing colds and the flu and turned to her for a quote. Apparently, nutritionist Lisa Hark was being paid by…
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CUNY Campaign Against Diabetes Publishes Obesity Policy Report
The City University of New York Campaign Against Diabetes and the Public Health Association of New York City (PHANYC) have published a report, titled Reversing Obesity in New York City: An Action Plan for Reducing the Promotion and Accessibility of Unhealthy Food, that aims to educate policy makers, advocates and health professionals about food policy…
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CSPI Annual Report Claims Seafood Causes More Cases of Illness Per Bite
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has issued its annual Outbreak Alert! report, which claims that “a pound of fish and shellfish is 29 times more likely to cause illness than the safest food category, a pound of dairy foods.” According to CSPI, their database has tracked 1,140 foodborne illness outbreaks linked…
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CSPI and Consumer Reports Focus on Sodium
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has published new data on the levels of sodium in processed foods. CSPI apparently found that of the more than 500 products tested in 2005 and retested for this report, “[t]he average sodium content of 528 has remained essentially constant, increasing by a slight 0.6 percent.…
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Canada Challenges U.S. COOL Law Before World Trade Organization
The Canadian government has reportedly filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO), challenging the U.S. country-of-origin labeling (COOL) law. According to a news source, Canada alleges that COOL will impose unnecessary costs on meatpackers that use Canadian livestock and could lead to additional and more stringent labeling requirements in other countries. Canadian Trade…
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U.S. Sues Organic Dairy Seeking to Stop Interstate Sale of Raw Milk
The federal government has sued a California dairy that ships raw milk to other states, claiming that the company falsely labels its products as “pet food” to exploit a purported loophole in the law about raw milk distributed in interstate commerce and makes claims that its products can treat or prevent a host of diseases…