Category: Media Coverage
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Sofía Baliño, “Fishing with the Stars,” Food & Water Watch Blog, February 2, 2009
This blog post examines a fish diet trend currently sweeping Hollywood, raising questions about the safety and sustainability of certain seafood selections. According to Food & Water Watch, actor Jeremy Piven became “the rumored victim of mercury poisoning” after eating sushi twice daily, while Madonna has pledged to eat more salmon and Angelina Jolie earlier…
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Marlena Spieler, “Saving a Squirrel by Eating One,” The New York Times, January 7, 2009
“While some have difficulty with the cuteness versus deliciousness ratio – that adorable little face, those itty-bitty claws – many feel that eating a squirrel is a way to do something good for the environment while enjoying a unique gastronomical experience,” writes New York Times journalist Marlena Spieler in this article chronicling Britain’s efforts to…
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Seattle Newspaper Exposes Widespread “Honey Laundering”
“A far cry from the innocent image of Winnie the Pooh with a paw stuck in the honey pot, the international honey trade has become increasingly rife with crime and intrigue,” claims a recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle P-I)investigative report on the widespread practice of “honey laundering,” the illegal practice of transshipping products through other countries to…
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Nicholas D. Kristof, “Obama’s ‘Secretary of Food’?,” The New York Times, December 11, 2008
This op-ed piece advises President-Elect Barack Obama to select a reformer for the top position in the Department of Agriculture and to recast the agency as the Department of Food, thereby “giving primacy to America’s 300 million eaters.” Appointing a “secretary of food” would signal Obama’s intention to “move away from the bankrupt structure of…
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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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James E. McWilliams, “Our Home-Grown Melamine Problem,” The New York Times, November 17, 2008
This op-ed article examines the widespread presence of melamine in U.S. agriculture, claiming that despite China’s highly publicized problems with the industrial plasticizer, “what the American consumers and government agencies have studiously failed to scrutinize is how much melamine has pervaded our own food system.” James McWilliams, a history professor at Texas State University at…
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Andrew Martin, “Budgets Squeezed, Some Families Bypass Organics,” The New York Times, Nov. 1, 2008
This article examines the effect of “shaky consumer spending” on the organic industry, which is “starting to show signs that a decades-long sales boom may be coming to an end.” New York Times reporter Andrew Martin states that, according to the Nielsen Co., organics sales growth has declined from 20 percent per year in recent years…