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ACSH Morning Dispatch: Getting the Skinny
By Corrie Driebusch
Soon, this daily dose of ACSH staffers' conversations will be e-mailed to donors each morning, made available to the public the next day.
You can become a donor at http://www.acsh.org/support/ or send a tax-deductible donation to:
American Council on Science and Health
1995 Broadway, 2nd floor
New York, NY 10023
For questions, please call Jeff Stier at 212-362-7044 x225 or e-mail Tara McTeague at McTeagueT[at]acsh.org._
--Quote to Note: "I am Mr. Popcorn. I love popcorn." --fifty-three-year-old man who developed "popcorn workers' lung" after consuming two bags of microwave popcorn a day for ten years.
--If you want the skinny on the new gene that reports are labeling a key to weight loss, you could watch MSNBC today. ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan will appear on the show between 11 and 11:30am and 12 and 12:30pm. Jeff Stier will also speak on the show between 2 and 2:30pm and 3 to 3:30pm.
--Today's news featured a health "scare" ACSH staffers have heard before: that microwave popcorn may cause a serious long condition. Today's report highlighted a great example of using something "in excess" -- the man profiled had a popcorn habit and ate two bags of microwave popcorn a day for ten years. By no means, though, should people thus assume that occasionally eating their favorite movie-time snack is dangerous. As ACSH has said for many years, high doses of any chemical can pose a health risk, but the normal doses that consumers encounter in their foods or other environmental contacts do not pose such risk. (An interesting follow-up: after cutting back on the popcorn intake for six months, the man lost fifty pounds and his lung condition improved.)
--Also this morning, ACSH staffers discussed an all-too-common situation when baking: opening flour and finding it crawling with bugs. Common advice is to wrap floury mixes in plastic to prevent infestations by flour weevils and other bugs, but Dr. Whelan noted that insect eggs may already be in the package, and if stored at an appropriate temperature they will develop into bugs. Could this be because of decreased use of chemical fumigants, she wondered? Not all ACSH staffers have had experience with the weevils, but we all agreed that the earlier you use the flour the better -- after all, any bug eggs will die in the oven.
Corrie Driebusch is a research intern at the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com).
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