Category: Issue 480
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White House Budget Aims to Slash Horsemeat Inspection
A proposal in the Obama Administration’s 2014 budget would prohibit the funding of horsemeat inspection, essentially eliminating the possibility that horse slaughter—which has reportedly been banned since 2006—will resume in the United States. Language in the budget specifies that no federal funds may be used to pay the “salaries or expenses of personnel” to inspect…
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A recent study has reportedly claimed that “restricting larger-sized drinks may have the unintended consequence of increasing soda consumption rather than decreasing it.” Brent Wilson, et al., “Regulating the Way to Obesity: Unintended Consequences of Limiting Sugary Drink Sizes,” PLoS One, April 2013. Researchers apparently conducted a behavioral simulation in which 100 University of California,…
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“Western-Style” Diet Allegedly Linked to Premature Mortality
A new study has purportedly linked a “Western-style” diet to a greater risk of premature death in middle-age adults. Tasnime Akbaraly, et al., “Does Overall Diet in Midlife Predict Future Aging Phenotypes? A Cohort Study,” American Journal of Medicine, May 2013. Using data from the British Whitehall II cohort study, researchers evidently examined the dietary…
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New York Comptroller Resolves Shareholder Resolutions on Political Spending Disclosures
New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has reached agreements with several Fortune 500 companies, including Dr. Pepper Snapple group, to disclose their corporate political spending. The agreements apparently resolve shareholder resolutions that DiNapoli filed on behalf of the state’s pension fund, which holds more than 600,000 shares of Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, valued at some…
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Social Policy Researcher Contends Anti-Obesity Initiatives Don’t Work
In a Spring 2013 Breakthrough Institute paper, social policy research associate Helen Lee suggests that public health advocates have gone astray in modeling anti-obesity efforts on anti-tobacco efforts that have done little to address either overeating or smoking in any appreciable way. Titled “The Making of the Obesity Epidemic: How Food Activism Led Public Health…
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Harvard Public Health Chair Advocates Strategies to Reduce Obesity
Harvard School of Public Health Chair of Nutrition Walter Willett recently published an editorial in BMJ, urging policy makers to consider a range of strategies to curb obesity rates and thereby reduce the incidence of diabetes and cardiovascular mortality. The April 9, 2013, editorial responds to a study concluding that population-wide weight loss in Cuba…
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EWG Report Focuses on “Superbugs in Supermarkets”
According to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) analysis, more than one-half of meat and poultry samples tested in 2011 contained antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Using findings from the federal government’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System, the report asserts that “store-bought meat tested in 2011 contained antibiotic-resistant bacteria in 81 percent of raw ground turkey, 69 percent of raw…
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Vermont AG Signals Interest in Food Marketing to Kids
Vermont Attorney General (AG) Bill Sorrell will reportedly join other state AGs for a conference on “the current state of food industry marketing to kids,” scheduled for May 2013 at Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. After introducing a Dartmouth College pediatrics professor to the Vermont House Committee on Health Care to…