food and nutrition

The summer of 2008 has not been very good for the organic food industry. Below is a compendium of this summer's news items, followed by my remarks.

June 20. The season starts with news of a Which? report that a panel of 120 taste testers found no differences between organic and conventional strawberries although the former cost two to three times as much. (Which? is the UK equivalent of Consumer Reports.)

July 6. Researchers at Bristol University in the UK...

We're pleased to report that over the twelve-month period ending in October 2007, ACSH's paper "Low-Calorie Sweeteners and Other Sugar Substitutes: A Review of the Safety Issues" by Ruth Kava, Ph.D., R.D., Manfred Kroger, Ph.D., and Kathleen Meister was the twelfth most popular download on the influential online journal Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety.

This letter appeared on in the Los Angeles Times.

The 1980s Japanese experience -- wherein a requirement that Japanese schoolchildren get vaccinated against the flu led to a dramatic reduction in the death toll among seniors -- should have led our own CDC to mandate getting our schoolchildren vaccinated against the flu long ago. And it probably would have but for ongoing anti-vaccine superstition.

The benefits for seniors of also getting a pneumococcal vaccine (pneumonia shot) are clear as well -- and...

An October 2, 2007 post at Portfolio.com criticizing editor Neal Boulton notes his magazine's poor ranking in ACSH's survey of nutrition reporting:

Boulton must be pretty proud of the work he did at Men's Fitness, though, because he's repurposing some of it word for word. A cover line on the August 2006 issue of MF promised "Drink Hard, Stay Lean," while the new Genre's cover boasts "How to Drink Hard & Stay Lean." (You might want to avoid taking advice from either; the health coverage in Boulton's Men's Fitness...

•"The Scariest Health Threat You've Never Heard Of: Autoimmune Disease," from the September 2008 issue of Glamour, quoted Jeff Stier saying, "People want to blame chemicals where they don't have another explanation for the cause of a disease. I think we need more psychologists rather than more toxicologists."

•The September 29, 2008 New York Sun piece "Salt Is Next on City's Hit List" quoted Dr. Gilbert Ross likening New York City's anti-salt plans to the trans fat ban.

•The Pediatric Pointers column by Dr. Carolyn Roy-Bornstein of the Haverhill Gazette on September 25, 2008 quoted ACSH's reassurances on phthalates, in a piece entitled "Plasticizers and Children's Health" ( http...

The willful blindness of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) -- its overcautious reluctance to approve new drugs -- has led to historic declines in new drug approvals, which will cost lives in years to come.

A more immediate tragedy, though, is FDA's refusal to withdraw its off-putting "black-box" warning label on antidepressants for teens.

A new study confirms that the disastrous rise in teen suicides -- first noted in last year's analysis of 2004 data -- persisted in 2005, albeit to a lesser degree. Most experts agree the first such rise in decades was due largely to FDA-generated publicity in late 2003 about drugs for depression causing "suicidality" -- self-destructive thoughts.

No actual suicides occurred in these FDA evaluations, only thoughts about...

MORNING DISPATCH 9/12/08: McDonald's, FDA, Botox, Helmets, Drinking Water, and Religious Diets

McDonald's counters attacks on its role in obesity epidemic
Peter Bush, the CEO of McDonald's Australia, spoke out against the idea that fast food is the main cause of rising levels of childhood obesity. "He points out that a majority of children's meals do not come from McDonald's and that lack of exercise also contributes," says ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava points out that even though the causes of obesity are complex, "the media, especially in the U.S., tend to blame obesity on food intake only -- especially fast food."

"While the...

MORNING DISPATCH 9/5/08: McCain vs. Pharma, Science vs. Cancer Claim, plus Smoking, Shots, and Obesity

McCain's anti-pharma stance is misguided
ACSH staffers were extremely disappointed by John McCain's promise to "take on the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries" if he becomes president. "It's offensive and preposterous to equate an industry that kills over 400,000 Americans annually with an industry that saves countless lives," says ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan.

McCain has a contentious history with...

This piece first appeared on September 8, 2008 in the New York Post:

If the city Health Department gets its way, government officials -- local, state and federal -- will soon be deciding what you can and can't eat.

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month, Drs. Lynn Silver and Mary Bassett (both of the Health Department) argue that Americans eat too much fat, sugar, salt and calories and that it's up to government to take urgent action to protect...

Over the past four days, I have described the world food crisis -- and both obstacles to and hopes for coping with it through existing institutions -- and I mentioned that misplaced romanticism often affects these important decisions.

One belief popularized by vegetarians (and those opposed to modern agronomy) is that the world could better feed everyone on less land under cultivation if we all gave up eating meat or at least...