Category: Other Developments
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Report Says UK Obesity Crisis Was Underestimated
A recent report issued by the U.K.’s National Obesity Forum suggests that a 2007 prediction that 50 percent of the British population would be obese by 2050 significantly underestimated the scale of the country’s obesity crisis. Titled “State of the Nation’s Waistline,” the report notes that “it is entirely reasonable to conclude that the determinations…
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Harvard Law School Adopts New Focus on Food Law
According to an article appearing in the January 2014 issue of the Harvard Law Bulletin, Harvard Law School has established a food law and policy clinic in light of “more and more people deeply concerned about what they’re eating and what it means for our health, the economy, the environment, social justice, and even national security.”…
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IOM Issues Caffeine Workshop Summary
The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine (IOM) has issued the summary from an August 5-6, 2013, workshop titled “Caffeine in Food and Dietary Supplements.” Convened at the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, workshop participants included “scientists with expertise in food safety, nutrition, pharmacology, psychology, toxicology, and related disciplines; medical professionals with pediatric…
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Hundreds Affected by Pesticide-Contaminated Frozen Foods in Japan
As many as 1,700 people in Japan have reportedly become ill after eating frozen food allegedly contaminated with the pesticide malathion, a chemical used to kill aphids in corn and rice fields. The food, which included frozen pizza and chicken nuggets and apparently contained 2.6 million times the permitted level of the pesticide, has been…
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New UK Campaign Asserts That “Sugar Is the New Tobacco”
A group of international health experts has launched a new campaign intended to reduce the amount of sugar in processed foods and beverages sold in the United Kingdom (U.K.). Modeled after the Consensus Action on Salt and Health and chaired by Queen Mary University of London Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine Graham MacGregor, Action on Sugar…
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Tort Reform Group Highlights “Big Food” Cases in “Judicial Hellholes” Report
The American Tort Reform Foundation has published the 2013-2014 issue of its “Judicial Hellholes” report, placing California, in part for the many lawsuits against food and beverage companies filed there, at the top of the list of jurisdictions with “plaintiff-friendly consumer protection laws” and courts purportedly receptive to such lawsuits. According to the report, plaintiffs’…
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Nestle Presentation to Target Role of SSBs in Escalating Obesity Rates
New York University Nutrition Professor Marion Nestle will join other speakers at Cornell University’s “Festschrift in Honor of Per Pinstrup-Andersen: New Directions in the Fight Against Hunger and Malnutrition,” slated for December 13-14, 2013, in Ithaca, New York. She and Cornell’s Malden Nesheim will present their paper, “The Internationalization of the Obesity Epidemic: The Case of…
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FWW Report Suggests That Choice at the Grocery Store Is a Mirage
A December 2013 Food & Water Watch (FWW) report titled “Grocery Goliaths: How Food Monopolies Impact Consumers” examines consolidation in the food industry and how this affects “every link in the food chain, from farm to fork.” Analyzing 100 types of grocery products from cereals and soft drinks to frozen meals and crackers, the report…