“The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care,” states Times writer Michael Pollan in this op-ed piece asserting that “our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry.” Pollan predicts that requiring health insurers to “take everyone at the same rates, provide a standard level of coverage and keep people on their rolls regardless of their health” would signify a sea change in the relationship between insurance providers and the food industry. “When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to reform the food system – everything from farm policy to food marketing and school lunches – will acquire a powerful and wealthy…
Category Archives Media Coverage
Freelance writer Kristin Choo opens this overview of food safety in the United States by observing, “You could fill a shopping cart with foods recently linked to outbreaks of illness caused by contamination. In June, it was cookie dough. In May, it was alfalfa sprouts. Before that, it was pistachios, peanuts, spinach, tomatoes, jalapeno peppers and, of course, hamburger.” She discusses the piecemeal development of national food safety regulation, which has resulted in some 15 “different federal entities now regulat[ing] various aspects of food safety.” And she discusses the most recent initiatives to address the problem, including the Obama administration’s formation of a Food Safety Working Group which recently found that our food supply system “is hamstrung by outdated laws, insufficient resources, suboptimal management structures, and poor coordination across agencies and with states and localities. This approach was not rationally designed. Rather, it developed in fits and starts as the nation’s…
This article discusses a four-month Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel investigation into the initiatives allegedly undertaken by the plastics industry to forestall the proliferation of local, statewide and national restrictions on the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in food and beverage product packaging. According to the authors, “The industry has launched an unprecedented public relations blitz that uses many of the same tactics—and people—the tobacco industry used in its decades-long fight against regulation. This time, the industry’s arsenal includes state-of-the-art technology. Their modern-day Trojan horses: blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and YouTube.” The reporters apparently relied on IRS reports, disclosure forms and e-mails exchanged by lobbyists and government officials, in addition to the industry’s public relations documents and materials. They contend, “The documents offer a rare glimpse of the hardball politics of chemical regulation, where judgments about safety are made not necessarily on the merits of science but because of the clout of lobbyists working…
Describing an Iowa pig’s miserable, short life as “the state of your bacon–circa 2009,” this author recaps the “horror stories about the food industry” and how he believes things have gotten worse. “The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices,” Walsh writes. “But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans. Those hidden prices are the creeping erosion of our fertile farmland, cages for egg-laying chickens so packed that the birds can’t even raise their wings and the scary rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among farm animals. Add to the price tag the acceleration of global warming–our energy-intensive food system uses 19 percent of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy. And perhaps worst of all, our food is increasingly bad for us, even dangerous.” Some Americans are working to transform the way…
“After responding to a radio commercial seeking former banana-plantation workers for a lawsuit against Dole Food Co., Marcos Sergio Medrano thought he might be entitled to some money,” begins this article exploring fraud allegations against lawyers and plaintiffs in banana-pesticide litigation. “He says an American law firm convinced him that a pesticide used on the Dole-operated banana plantation where he had worked years ago had made him sterile. Lawyers for the 49-year-old peasant produced tests that purported to prove it. But DNA testing by Dole revealed that he had fathered three children—something Mr. Medrano says was news to him.” Stecklow writes that Medrano, of Chinandega, Nicaragua, is part of the “sorry fallout from a group of U.S. personal-injury and other lawyers who descended on this small, impoverished city, seeking to recruit thousands of clients and earn up to 40 percent of any awards. Emboldened by a developing-world legal system that…
“This is Salmonella’s world. We’re just living in it,” claims science writer Karen Kaplan of The Los Angeles Times in this article exploring the evolution of the deadly bug responsible for recent pistachio and peanut recalls. “The bacterium appeared on the planet millions of years before humans, and scientists are certain it will outlast us too. It’s practically guaranteed that Salmonella will keep finding its way into the food supply despite the best efforts of producers and regulators.” Kaplan writes that the rise of Salmonella is due in large part to the industrialization of agriculture and food processing, and that eating trends also play a role. She quotes Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of food-borne diseases, as saying that time-strapped Americans are consuming more preprocessed meals, which means that food has had more opportunity to be contaminated by handlers, machinery and other ingredients.…
This article explores how the method of estimating the calories in food, developed in the late 19th century, may provide misleading information on the amount of energy people actually get from a food. The calorie counts are calculated by burning small samples of food, and science writer Bijal Trivedi observes, “Nutritionists are well aware that our bodies don’t incinerate food, they digest it. And digestion— from chewing food to moving it through the gut and chemically breaking it down along the way—takes a different amount of energy for different foods.” Trivedi compares the nutrients in a health-food bar and a chocolate brownie and discusses research showing that more highly refined, cooked and softer ingredients tend to be absorbed more readily when eaten, thus contributing higher actual caloric intake than raw or chewy foods. Despite the acknowledged inaccuracies in calorie counts, most nutritionists have apparently decided that the measuring system should not…
Cornell Law School Professor Sherry Colb discusses the recent incident involving the removal of a morbidly obese teen from the custody of his mother for child neglect. Colb questions the wisdom of South Carolina’s decision to place the child in the state’s protective custody, suggesting, “the government could spend considerably less money providing [the mother] with healthy food and information about nutrition.” Noting that the mother works long hours at more than one job and relies on fast food to feed her child, Colb points out that she only lacks resources, “not love or concern for her son.” She considers whether the government could take custody of a child with anorexia nervosa and thus, “needlessly add psychological trauma to an already fragile child’s life.” She also considers the typical diet offered in the nation’s school lunch programs, involving high-fat and processed carbohydrates. Colb concludes, “We should not be arresting people…
“Whether anything will be done – or even can be done – to stem the global tide of obesity is, at this point, an open question,” writes New Yorker columnist Elizabeth Kolbert in her review of several “weight-gain books” that examine the causes and course of this recent phenomenon. The theories under consideration include those put forth in the following publications: (i) The Evolution of Obesity (Michael Power and Jay Schulkin), (ii) The Fattening of America (Eric Finkelstein and Laurie Zuckerman); (iii) The End of Overeating (David Kessler); (iv) Fat Land (Greg Critser); (v) Mindless Eating (Brian Wansink); (vi) The Fat Studies Reader (New York University); and (vii) Globesity (Francis Delpeuch, Benard Maire, Emmanuel Monnier, and Michelle Holdsworth). According to the article, these books each offer a unique perspective on the obesity “epidemic,” chalking up the increasing waistline to a variety of factors as divergent as evolution, corporate manipulation, cheaper calories,…
Just last month, the Endocrine Society – composed of thousands of doctors in this field – issued a powerful warning that endocrine disruptors including phthalates are ‘a significant concern to public health,’” writes New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in this op-ed article examining the chemicals’ purported role in a range of health problems such as sexual deformities, early onset puberty in girls and the “feminization” of male anatomy. According to Kristof, endocrinologists have increasingly found this “mounting evidence” persuasive enough to raise alarms despite the reassurances of the American Chemistry Council, which has pointed to research like a recent study in the Journal of Urology that casts doubt on the link between phthalates and hypospadias, a birth defect. “One of the conundrums for scientists and journalists alike is how to call prudent attention to murky and uncertain risks, without sensationalizing dangers that may not exist,” opines Kristof, who nevertheless notes…
