Category: Media Coverage
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New York Times Explores Appetite for Tilapia
“Known in the food business as ‘aquatic chicken’ because it breeds easily and tastes bland, tilapia is the perfect factory fish; it happily eats pellets made largely of corn and soy and gains weight rapidly, easily converting a diet that resembles cheap chicken feed into low-cost seafood,” writes New York Times correspondent Elizabeth Rosenthal in a…
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New York City Defends Plan to End Soda Purchases Under SNAP
According to an April 29, 2011, New York Times article, a plan to regulate purchases under the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) continues to gain steam in New York City, where officials recently asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to approve a two-year pilot project prohibiting the use of food stamps to buy…
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Media Focuses on Neurodevelopmental Disorders Linked to Pesticides, Mercury
“Forty years before it was removed from paint, pediatricians had enough evidence of lead’s ability to maim children’s brains—catastrophically and irreversibly—to warrant discussion in a medical textbook,” opines Sandra Steingraber in the March/April 2011 edition of Orion Magazine, where she posits that not only is the developing brain more vulnerable than the adult brain to…
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New York Times Discusses Online Food Marketing, Sugar’s Side Effects
An April 21, 2011, New York Times article targets the online marketing techniques allegedly used by food companies “to build deep ties with young consumers,” claiming that “multimedia games, online quizzes and cellphone apps” have become “part of children’s daily digital journeys, often flying under the radar of parents and policy makers.” The Times highlights the…
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Maximillian Potter, “The Assassin in the Vineyard,” Vanity Fair, May 2011
“When Aubert de Villaine received an anonymous note, in January 2010, threatening the destruction of his priceless heritage unless he paid a one-million-euro ransom, he thought it was a sick joke,” writes Maximillian Potter in this May 2011 Vanity Fair article chronicling “an unprecedented and decidedly un-French” plan to poison the world’s most famous vineyard,…
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Food Marketing to Youth Discussed in Brussels
According to public health lawyer and activist Michele Simon, who recently attended a meeting in Brussels “to address the problem of cross-border marketing of unhealthy food to children,” the same types of issues confronting public health advocates in the United States confront their counterparts in Europe. Regulatory standards are apparently under development, but Simon did…
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FDF Members Change Recycled Packaging to Reduce Mineral Oil Risk
Individual members of the U.K. Food and Drink Federation (FDF) have reportedly announced plans to reconfigure their packaging after recent studies showed mineral oils from recycled cardboard leaching into food items. According to a March 8, 2011, BBC News article, which cited government researchers in Switzerland, the chemicals are used in printing inks “and have…
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Denise Mann, “Can You Get Hooked on Diet Soda?,” Health.com, February 25, 2011
“Diet soda isn’t as addictive as drugs like nicotine, but something about it seems to make some people psychologically—and even physically—dependent on it,” opens this Health.com article on individuals who drink more than the average amount of diet soda per day. According to journalist Denise Mann, some diet soft drink aficionados imbibe anywhere from four…