McDonald’s Corp. has reportedly announced plans to scrap “forward-to-a-friend” features on some of its online games after drawing complaints from a consumer group concerned about children’s privacy. According to media sources, the global restaurant chain said it will disable a sharing option on HappyMeal.com that allowed users “to e-mail ecards, links and photos to family and friends.” “Rest assured, the online security of our guests—especially our youngest guests—remains a top priority for us,” a company spokesperson told reporters. “We continuously review and enhance our sites as appropriate and we recently made some updates to HappyMeal.com, including removing the forward-to-a-friend option.” Earlier this year, the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) filed five complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against companies such as McDonald’s and General Mills, Inc. over the use of interactive media to allegedly promote foods and TV programs to children. CDD claimed that these so-called “viral marketing” techniques…
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The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has published its first report on organic foods, concluding that it’s more important for children to eat a wide variety of healthy produce than to emphasize an organic diet. Joel Forman, et al., “Organic Foods: Health and Environmental Advantages and Disadvantages,” Pediatrics, October 2012. According to AAP, research has “convincingly demonstrated” that organic diets can reduce consumer exposure to pesticides and drug-resistant diseases. “However, no well-powered human studies have directly demonstrated health benefits or disease protection as a result of consuming an organic diet,” states the report, which urges pediatricians to discuss the weight of scientific evidence when approached by families interested in consuming organic foods. “What’s most important is that children eat a healthy diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat or fat-free dairy products, whether those are conventional or organic foods. This type of diet has proven health benefits,” one of…
NBC’s Open Channel blog has reported “an inexplicable epidemic in Central America, where more than 16,000 people—mostly sugarcane workers— have died from incurable chronic kidney disease [CKD].” According to Open Channel, “hundreds, if not thousands” of people in the sugar-producing city of Chichigalpa, Nicaragua, have allegedly contracted CKD, which has apparently increased “five-fold in the last two decades” throughout the region and turned up in parts of India and Sri Lanka. Citing the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), NBC’s Kerry Sander and Lisa Riordan summarize the unique profile of CKD in sugarcane workers who do not exhibit the obesity, diabetes and hypertension often linked to the disease in developed countries like the United States. “It affects people who don’t have diabetes or hypertension, which are the usual risks factors for chronic kidney disease,” one CPI reporter told the blog. “No one can figure out what it is that’s making all…
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has invited the submission of “videos of people pouring out soda on or about October 24” to celebrate the second annual Food Day. Videos will be accepted until November 7, 2012, with the winning entry receiving $1,000. According to CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson, “Food Day is about inspiring people to change diets for the better and by advocating for better food policies. Making a ‘Pour One Out’ video is the perfect way for a budding filmmaker—or anyone with a smartphone, frankly—to join the movement for healthy, affordable, and sustainable food.” Entries will apparently be judged for creativity, originality and message effectiveness. See CSPI News Release, October 16, 2012.
School districts in California, New Mexico and Illinois have reportedly publicized their intention to ban “Flamin’ Hot” Cheetos® snacks from campus vending machines and lunches over concerns about the product’s nutritional content. According to media reports, the schools in question have described the snack item as “hyperpalatable” with each bag containing 26 grams of fat and one-quarter of the recommended daily amount of sodium. As University of Michigan clinical psychologist Ashley Gearhardt further explained, “Our brain is really hardwired to find things like fat and salt really rewarding, and now we have foods that have them in such high levels that it can trigger an addictive process.” “It’s something that has been engineered so that it is fattier and saltier and more novel to the point where our body, brain and pleasure centers react to it more strongly than if we were eating, say, a handful of nuts,” Gearhardt said. “Going…
A New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) perspective essay titled “The Taxing Power and the Public’s Health” asserts that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in a case challenging the validity of the Affordable Care Act opens the door to government using its taxing authority to achieve a range of policy objectives including “interventions to promote public health.” According to the authors, assuming that federal, state and local governments can overcome adverse public sentiment or industry opposition, they could, for example, adopt taxing strategies that provide credits to those with a healthy body mass index (BMI) or proof of BMI improvement. The October 18, 2012, essay cites the argument made by health care law opponents who invoked the hypothetical of government taxing people who fail to buy broccoli. The authors state, “nothing in [Chief Justice John] Roberts’s opinion stops the government” from imposing such a tax. They conclude, “The Court…
A recent perspective piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine has argued that “steps should be taken” to curb “spur-of-the moment, emotion-related purchases… triggered by seeing the product or a related message.” Deborah Cohen & Susan Babey, et al., “Candy at the Cash Register — A Risk Factor for Obesity and Chronic Disease,” NEJM, October 2012. The article takes issue with impulse marketing focused on “the placement and display of products in retail outlets,” such as candy offered for sale at cash registers. “Placement of foods in prominent locations increases the rate at which they’re purchased; purchase leads to consumption; and consumption of foods high in sugar, fat and salt increases the risks of chronic disease,” state the authors. “Because of this chain of causation, we would argue that the prominent placement of foods associated with chronic diseases should be treated as a risk factor for those diseases.” In…
Researchers with the Universities of Sheffield and Sussex recently announced plans to build a computer model of the honey bee brain that would eventually pilot “an autonomous flying robot.” According to an October 2, 2012, press release, the “Green Brain” project aims to produce a tiny flying robot able to sense and act like a live bee for applications ranging from mechanical pollination to search and rescue missions. To this end, Green Brain will rely on high-performance desktop computer processors known as GPU accelerators rather than more expensive supercomputer clusters. “NVIDIA’s GPU accelerators are an important part of the project, as they allow us to build faster models than ever before,” said Thomas Nowotny from the University of Sussex’s Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics. “We expect that in many areas of science this technology will eventually replace the classic supercomputers we use today and pave the way for many…
Mission: Readiness, a non-profit organization of senior retired military leaders, has issued a second report claiming that one in four young adults are still “too overweight to enlist.” Titled “Still Too Fat to Fight,” the latest report alleges that U.S. students “consume almost 400 billion calories from junk food sold at schools each year.” It also cites data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggesting that efforts to improve school nutrition in New York City, Philadelphia and other cities have led to decreased childhood obesity rates in those areas. Building on its 2010 call-to-action, Mission: Readiness is urging schools and governments to consider limiting the sale of competitive foods in campus vending machines and cafeterias. “Removing the junk food from our schools should be part of nationwide comprehensive action that involves parents, schools, and communities in helping students build stronger bodies with less excess…
According to a recent report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have successfully engineered a transgenic dairy cow that produces milk with decreased levels of β-lactoglobulin (BLG), a major allergen which is not present in human milk. Anower Jabed, et al., “Targeted microRNA expression in dairy cattle directs production of β-lactoglobulin-free, high-casein milk,” PNAS, October 2012. After testing their hypothesis in a mouse model, New Zealand researchers apparently used a technique called RNA interference to effectively silence the gene responsible for expressing the BLG protein in cow’s milk. The resulting transgenic calf reportedly yielded milk with “no detectable BLG protein” but “more than twice the level of the casein proteins that also normally occur in cow’s milk.” “People have long looked into reducing this enigmatic protein, or completely knocking it out, because there has been no definitive function able to be assigned to it. So, we developed…
