Contributing Writers
Michele Simon
Michele Simon is a public health lawyer specializing in industry marketing and lobbying tactics. She is the author of Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back, and president of Eat Drink Politics, an industry watchdog consulting business. She is grateful to live in Oakland, Calif., within walking distance of a farmers market. You can follow her on Twitter @Appetite4Profit
Articles Written by Michele Simon
Institute of Medicine Gives Big Food Another Deadline -- or else!
Last week, the nation's top public health experts gathered at a much-trumpeted obesity conference hosted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called Weight of the Nation. (A quick glance at the agenda reveals nothing that would even begin to challenge the food industry.)Released at this bland event was an equally uninspired report from the Institute of Medicine...
The national hysteria over obesity has reached a crescendo this week, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hosts the conference, "Weight of the Nation" in Washington, DC. If you couldn't make it, no worries, more fear-mongering is on the way in a four-part mini-series on HBO to air next week. The show of the same name is...
In a long-awaited decision, last week the Food and Drug Administration disappointed health advocates once again by allowing Bisphenol A or BPA, a known endocrine disruptor, to remain approved as a chemical additive in food containers such as plastic bottles and metal cans.While the agency says it's still studying the matter, a number of groups say the science is clear...
You've probably never heard of the Microbiological Data Program (MDP) but if you eat fresh produce, you should, because it's currently on President Obama's budgetary chopping block. The MDP is a small ($5 million annually) pathogen monitoring program tucked away in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It tests fruits and vegetables for deadly bugs like E. coli, salmonella, and listeria.While...
This week Congress begins hearings on the 2012 farm bill, the massive piece of legislation that gets updated about every five years and undergirds America's entire food supply, but that few mortals can even understand. As nutrition professor Marion Nestle recently lamented, "no one has any idea what the farm bill is about. It's too complicated for any mind to...
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission took public comments on a proposed settlement with the alcohol company Phusion Projects, which makes a beverage line called Four Loko. You might recall in 2010 how that product gained much notoriety for sending scores of college students to the emergency room as a result of its dangerous combination of alcohol with caffeine. In a...
Retailer positions itself as solution to urban food deserts
Having saturated the rural landscape, shuttering local stores in small town America along the way, now, in the wake of stagnant sales and increased competition, Walmart desperately needs to expand into urban markets. And what better urban market than one full of eight million people? While the big box retailer is eager to enter the Big Apple, challenges loom large. Given...
Instead of a potentially depressing year-in-review post, I decided to look ahead. (But do see Andy Bellatti's amusing compilation of 2011 food news.) Given all the defeats and set-backs this year due to powerful food industry lobbying, the good food movement should by now be collectively shouting: I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.If...
At a recent summit on childhood obesity, the first lady announced a shift in her well-known Let's Move campaign -- away from food reform and toward an increased focus on exercise. Instead of "forcing [children] to eat their vegetables," she told her audience, "it's getting them to go out there and have fun."Yes, you heard that right. The first lady...
Last month, when Congress declared pizza a vegetable, it was hard to believe things could get much worse. But never underestimate politicians' ability to put corporate interests ahead of children's health.In the massive budget bill just passed, Congress stuck in language to require the Federal Trade Commission to conduct a cost/benefit analysis before finalizing a report that would provide the...
McDonald's made national headlines when it announced it had allegedly found a work-around to a San Francisco law designed to curb the predatory practice of using toys to lure kids into a lifetime of fast food. But as I wrote for Grist, I am not convinced McDonald's convenient trick to charge ten cents instead of give the toy away is...
Marion Nestle, the author of Food Politics, recently got a reminder that food is indeed political, right up to the nation's highest office. On November 30, the first lady made a speech in which she announced that her Let's Move campaign (on childhood obesity) would have a renewed focus on physical fitness, to combat "the crisis of inactivity that we...
Kids cereals fail industry's own nutrition guidelines
Yesterday the Environmental Working Group (best known for its "Dirty Dozen" list of pesticide-laden produce) released a not very surprising report detailing the insane amounts of sugar in children's cereals. Kellogg's Honey Smacks, at nearly 56 percent sugar by weight, won the top prize, packing more sugar (20 grams per cup) than a Hostess Twinkie.This, despite the company's "commitment to...
While most media outlets dubbed it the "Happy Meal toy ban," the ordinance passed in San Francisco last year didn't ban anything. The law just placed a few reasonable nutrition guidelines (a maximum of 600 calories per meal and limits on fat and salt, for example) for restaurants using free toy incentives to lure kids into a lifetime of bad...
Lawsuit alleges massive price-fixing scheme
If you think you're paying too much for a gallon of milk these days, it could be the result of an elaborate price-fixing scheme, according to a recent class action that charges the dairy industry with federal antitrust violations, among other claims. The case was instigated by the animal advocacy organization Compassion Over Killing whose research revealed that, between 2003...
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