Reuters has issued a “special report” titled “How Washington went soft on childhood obesity” that details how food and beverage industry interests have allegedly turned aside national and statewide initiatives aimed at addressing childhood obesity. According to the article, “[a]t every level of government, the food and beverage industries won fight after fight during the last decade. They have never lost a significant political battle in the United States despite mounting scientific evidence of the role of unhealthy food and children’s marketing in obesity.” A number of industry critics, including Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity Director Kelly Brownell, and Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) Executive Director Michael Jacobson, are quoted making comparisons between the tactics used by the food and beverage industries and those used by tobacco companies. The report focuses on first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, which has…
Category Archives Media Coverage
“Ready-to-eat cereals are the fourth biggest source of added sugars in Americans’ diets, behind sugary drinks, desserts, and candy,” opine Center for Science in the Public Interest Director of Nutrition Policy Margo Wootan and New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center Director David Ludwig in this article, disputing claims that children who eat sugary cereals for breakfast are less likely to be overweight than those who do not eat breakfast at all. According to Wootan and Ludwig, the research supporting such claims “cannot prove cause and effect, and most have been funded or conducted by the industry.” They argue instead that manufacturers should market their lower-sugar offerings to children as well as adults, citing studies conducted by Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity that show such products “are well accepted by children” even though cereals targeted to youth typically “contain 85 percent more sugars and 65 percent less…
An April 17, 2012, New York Times article has drawn attention to two recent studies questioning the perception that poor urban neighborhoods are “food deserts” with little access to fresh produce, vegetables and other healthy options. According to Times science correspondent Gina Kolata, reports published in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine (February 2012) and Social Science and Medicine (March 2012) have concluded that such neighborhoods “not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too.” “Maybe we should call it a food swamp rather than a desert,” said RAND Corporation Senior Economist Roland Strum, whose study matched height, weight, diet, and residential data from participants in the California Health Interview Survey with information about nearby food outlets. Meanwhile, the second report funded by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) relied on a federal study of 8,000 children…
Anti-sugar crusader Robert Lustig was among the scientists participating in an April 1, 2012, “60 Minutes” interview claiming that studies indicate that sugar is toxic, addictive and can lead to obesity, Type II diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Lustig, an endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco, has written extensively about the topic, including an article titled “The Toxic Truth About Sugar” featured in Issue 425 of this Update. Asserting that sugar is as “equally toxic” as high-fructose corn syrup, Ludwig recommended that men daily consume no more than 150 calories of added sugars and women no more than 100, which is less than the amount in one can of soda. “Ultimately this is a public health crisis,” Lustig said in reference to what he deems the excessive amount of sugar in many processed foods. “When it’s a public health crisis, you have to do big things and you…
A March 27, 2012, “Great Speculations” column on Forbes.com draws parallels between carbonated soft drink (CSD) companies and the tobacco industry, claiming that a recent decline in CSD consumption in the United States has created a competitive market environment similar to that faced by cigarette manufacturers. Authored by contributors from Trefis.com, an investment and market research tool, the article notes that decreased CSD sales volume has prompted soft drink manufacturers to adopt strategies allegedly used by tobacco companies, such as raising product prices, promoting alternatives like energy drinks and juices, and arguing against taxation. “Part of the reason why these industries attract high taxation is because the fiscal deficit of the government is in a mess and imposing taxes n hese industries ensures higher revenue collection in the name of political mileage,” concludes the article. “Cola companies won’t hesitate to ncrease the prices periodically (although certainly not as aggressively as…
“The ‘calorie is a calorie’ argument is widely used by the processed food industry to explain that weight loss isn’t really about what you eat but about how many calories you eat,” writes New York Times columnist Mark Bittman in a March 20, 2012, “Opinionator” post about Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim’s new book, Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics (University of California Press 2012). Initially interested in how calories are processed by the human body, Bittman concludes after interviewing Nestle that “the situation is not so simple,” with many factors beside calorie intake determining how metabolism regulates weight. “It’s hard to lose weight, because the body is set up to defend fat, so you don’t starve to death;” explains Nestle, “the body doesn’t work as well to tell people to stop eating as when to tell them when to start.” Nestle suggests that more is needed to reduce…
A January 18, 2012, Mobiledia article has highlighted the increasingly sophisticated technology used to trace food back to its source, exploring how QR codes and other tracking devices can help consumers, retailers and regulators follow products from farm to fork. According to Mobiledia contributor Janet Maragioglio, systems like IBM’s InfoSphere label products with unique bar codes “at each stage of production and distribution” to identify “farms, slaughterhouses, shipping containers, trucks, grocery stores and other stops along the food supply chain.” As Maragioglio reports, InfoSphere can even tag specific animals so that consumers with smart phones could “theoretically, find out which specific cow their milk came from or which pig provided their bacon.” Meanwhile, the capabilities of these systems have drawn attention from government agencies interested in accessing information about the entire market. “Federal regulators are imposing increasingly strict requirements on food suppliers, and may soon need them to adopt traceability…
A Slate.com science writer has penned a January 17, 2012, “Medical Examiner” blog post criticizing media coverage that used recent microRNA (miRNA) research to erroneously suggest a link between genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and human health. According to biologist Emily Willingham, Nanjing University scientists reportedly identified miRNA from rice and other plant foods in human blood and tissues, raising questions about whether the foreign genetic material could inhibit normal protein functions. “The rice results, simply stated, show an effect of one miRNA from one non-GM plant on one protein in live mice and in cultured human liver cancer cells,” recounts Willingham, who singles out a January 9 Atlantic article by Ari LeVaux for mischaracterizing these findings as evidence of GMO health risks and igniting “a social-media chain reaction” in the process. In particular, Willingham refutes LeVaux’s implication that GM foods contain modified miRNA and thus should come under more stringent…
“Maybe we’re too inclined to believe the worst about supermarket food,” writes NPR’s Dan Charles in a November 25, 2011, column about a recent Food Safety News report suggesting that most honey sold in the United States does not deserve the name. According to NPR, the article in question implied that producers use a process known as “ultrapurification” to remove pollen from honey, thus preventing “anyone from detecting illicit honey from China.” “Food that doesn’t deserve its name, processed beyond recognition, probably adulterated, maybe unsafe, of unknown origin. It sounded so right, plenty of people decided that it just had to be true,” opines Charles, who upon further investigation found the entire story “misleading” at best. His research showed that most packers use diatomaceous earth before filtration to eliminate the microscopic particles of pollen, dust and bee parts which otherwise promote crystallization. Moreover, audits of the raw or pretreated honey…
NBC’s Rock Center recently reported on how Alabama’s new immigration law is affecting farmers in the region, where stricter enforcement measures for undocumented workers have apparently left agricultural communities struggling to find workers. As cucumber farmer Jerry Danford explained to correspondent Kate Snow, the new rules have drained the seasonal labor pool and made it difficult for Alabama producers to compete with neighboring states. “Since the bill was signed into law, Danford has watched many of the immigrant workers he relied on leave. He worries that none of them will return for the spring harvest, when a provision requiring that employers check the immigration status of workers will be in effect,” reports Snow. Although Alabama Governor Robert Bentley (R) defended the law as necessary to uphold federal standards and secure jobs for Americans, the domestic workers interviewed by Snow preferred other kinds of work over field jobs, which typically pay $10…
