Category: Issue 328
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Study Recommends Prohibiting Alcohol Advertising in Boston’s Public Transit System
Concluding that alcohol ads are viewed more than 18,000 times by public school student transit passengers during an average weekday, a new study recommends that Boston’s public transit system be prohibited from displaying alcohol advertisements. Justin Nyborn, et. al, “Alcohol Advertising on Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Transit System: An Assessment of Youths’ and…
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Raffi Khatchadourian, “The Taste Makers,” The New Yorker, November 23, 2009
“Flavor chemicals often make up less than one percent of the ingredients in processed foods, and many flavorists regard the terms ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ as largely meaningless—an indulgence for consumers who happen to believe that one is more likely to be toxic than another, even if the perception is not necessarily true,” writes The New…
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Hillary Brenhouse, “Raw Milk Sales Could Reinvigorate U.S. Dairy Farms,” The New York Times, November 17, 2009
This New York Times special report chronicles a growing movement among organic dairy farmers to overturn state bans on the sale of unpasteurized milk. According to the report, 28 states currently allow sales of raw milk “in some form,” but the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has deemed the product “inherently dangerous” and banned its…
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Testing Lab Finds Problems with Probiotic Products
According to ConsumerLab.com, many of the probiotic supplements it tested contained far less of the amount of viable organisms advertised, due, primarily, to the death of the purportedly beneficial organisms after manufacture. Some companies apparently qualify their claims of cell amounts by stating “at the time of manufacture” on product labels. ConsumerLab’s president was quoted…
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Environmental Groups Claim Rising Use of Pesticides on GE Crops
The Organic Center, Union for Concerned Scientists and Center for Food Safety have issued a report claiming that U.S. Department of Agriculture data show that the use of weed-killing herbicides on genetically engineered (GE) corn, soybeans and cotton has increased by 383 pounds over a 13-year period ending in 2008. According to the preface to…
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CSPI Report Critical of Movie Theater Concessions
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has published a report criticizing movie chain concessions for their nutritional content, comparing some medium popcorn and soda combos to “three McDonald’s Quarter Pounders with 12 pats of butter.” CSPI purportedly analyzed concessions from the three largest theater chains—AMC Entertainment Inc., Cinemark USA, Inc., and Regal…
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Additional Litigation Filed over E. Coli in Ground Beef
Plaintiffs’ lawyer William Marler has apparently filed a second lawsuit against New York-based Fairbank Farms for injury allegedly caused by consumption of E. coli-tainted ground beef. According to Marler, the suit has been filed in a Maine state court on behalf of a woman who was hospitalized for six days after consuming meat produced by…