Last month, I participated in an important panel at a childhood obesity conference to discuss the current strategy backed by some advocacy groups: asking industry to market “healthier” foods to children. But as Susan Linn and I recently argued, any marketing to children is harmful, regardless of the product’s
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Letter From The Editor: An Obesity Gut Check
One of my favorite iPod apps is for Stitcher, which collects podcasts that I might be interested in listening to. I must admit I favor either old time radio drama or history programing. There’s nothing better to fall asleep to than the adventures of Captain Midnight or Fort Laramie. Stitcher’s
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Busted: Food Myths Brought to You By Corporate Front Groups
Over the past few months, I’ve been writing about Proposition 37, the California initiative that would require foods made through genetic engineering to be labeled, a policy that is common sense in 61 other countries, but has been denied to Americans thanks to lobbying by Big Biotech. One
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How Did My Profession’s Conference Get Hijacked by Big Food?
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) hosted its 2012 Food & Nutrition Conference and Expo (FNCE) earlier this month. Sadly, the event once again (see last year’s report) demonstrated how this registered dietitians’ accrediting organization drags its own credentials through the mud by prioritizing Big Food’s corporate interests
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Preparation Underway for Second Annual Food Day
For the second year running, chefs, authors, filmmakers, consumer groups, animal welfare advocates, policymakers and other proponents of the food movement are gearing up to celebrate Food Day, a national occasion to raise awareness surrounding food issues – from hunger to sustainability to nutrition.
Food Day, launched for the first
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Organic Food and Human Health – Is There a Connection?
A meta-analysis of the health benefits of organic foods was published in The Annals of Internal Medicine on September 4, 2012. A large team of physicians and graduate students affiliated with the prestigious Stanford Medical School carried out the work. The paper’s basic finding was that consuming organic food does
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Romney and Obama Take Questions on Food Policy
While food and agriculture policy often take a back seat during presidential elections, the United Fresh Produce Association got both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on the record regarding some key food issues this week. The association on Thursday released both campaigns’ responses to its policy questionnaire, which focused on
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EWG Says Eating Well on a Budget Is Possible, and Here’s How
Healthy food doesn’t have to be expensive. That’s the message of a new guide to eating well on a budget released by the Environmental Working Group today. The guide – “Good Food on a Tight Budget” – is designed to debunk the popular belief that low-income families can’t
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Food Quality: An Issue As Important As Safety
Food safety is important, but it is not the only consideration when choosing foods.
For example, for people in the U.S., the aversion to dog meat and horse meat is more a cultural matter than a safety issue. For Jews and Muslims, the aversion to pork might have begun as
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Eat Your Fruits and Vegetables: They’re Essential to a Healthy Diet
Last month the United States Department of Agriculture released its Pesticide Data Program Annual Summary which reports pesticide residues on fruits, vegetables and other foods commonly consumed in the United States. This was the 20th time this report has been published and it, in part, represents the transparency the USDA
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