Category: Media Coverage
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Michele Simon, “Taking on Big Soda over Taxes: Lessons Learned from Fighting Big Alcohol,” Corporations and Health Watch Newsletter, April 2010
“Whether it’s the food industry, tobacco, or alcohol, they all use the same talking points and lobbying strategies,” opines the Marin Institute’s Michele Simon in this April 2010 article that likens “Big Soda” to the alcohol lobby. Simon draws on her experience as a research and policy director to claim that soft drinks are more…
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Bolivian President Blames Baldness, “Deviance” on Hormones in Poultry
Bolivian President Evo Morales attracted international media attention when he publicly linked “deviances in being men” on hormones once used to raise chickens. Speaking at the World People’s Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Morales reportedly claimed that “the chicken we eat is loaded with female hormones. So, when men eat…
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Marc Ambinder, “Beating Obesity,” The Atlantic, May 2010
“If we are to solve the many problems that obesity is creating for American society, we must first move beyond the stale ‘willpower versus the food-industrial complex’ debate,” contends politics editor Marc Ambinder in the May 2010 edition of The Atlantic. Examining the powerful interest groups arrayed against each other in this fight, Ambinder claims that…
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Tom Bartlett, “Step Away From the Coke Machine,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 4, 2010
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently profiled Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, and his decades-long advocacy of soft drink taxes, an idea that once attracted derision but today “doesn’t seem so radical.” The Chronicle notes “growing evidence of a link between price and consumption,” citing recent reports…
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Scientific Battle Brewing over BPA Safety
The Independent has reported on an escalating dispute in the scientific community over the safety of bisphenol A (BPA), tracing the brouhaha to a three-year study commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that found no evidence of BPA adversely affecting laboratory rats exposed to high doses of the ubiquitous plasticizer. In an April 13,…
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Moby Discusses New Book Critical of Factory Farming
AlterNet recently interviewed musician Moby on the publication of his new book, Gristle: From Factory Farms to Food Safety (Thinking Twice About the Meat We Eat), edited with food policy activist Miyun Park. According to the March 31, 2010, interview, the vegan manifesto is “a medley of anti-industrial meat memes written by an eclectic mix of…
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Laura Beil, “Is Your Breakfast Giving You Cancer?,” Prevention, March 29, 2010
“If there’s a nutrient it’s easy to overdose on, it’s folic acid,” writes Prevention columnist Laura Beil in this article citing research allegedly linking the synthetic form of B vitamin folate to colon, lung and prostate cancers. Beil reports that this nutrient is already a staple in most diets, partly because the government requires its…
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USDA Survey Generates Buzz on Honeybee Health
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Bee Research Laboratory has released the preliminary results of a survey estimating that honeybee colony losses nationwide “were approximately 29 percent from all causes from September 2008 to April 2009,” touching off speculation about the fate of the ubiquitous pollinator. Federal investigators reported that only 15 percent of all…