food and nutrition

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...

As I suggested in my previous three blog entries this week, as the need for global agricultural expansion continues, Africa is going to be the obvious place where others will seek for food security or that donors will see the obvious potential for food production expansion.

There is the potential in African agriculture to contribute both to food security for African countries and to food security for their non-African partner countries. African leaders will have to decide to what extent they are willing to allow...

Nuclear energy is released from atomic nuclei via controlled nuclear reactions. The most common method used today is nuclear fission, which involves the splitting of uranium atoms with a resulting release of energy. This energy is then captured and used to produce electricity to power modern societies varied needs.

In terms of environmental impact, nuclear power is one of the cleanest means of generating...

Over the past two days, I reviewed reasons for optimism and pessimism about food production. Today, let's take a closer look at how promising technological solutions to the current crisis must be tailored to the geographic regions that might benefit.

The history of outsiders' views of the tropics, particularly the humid tropics, has varied over time. Early contacts with forested areas in Africa and the Americas gave rise to myths of lush, dense tropical forces with massive undergrowth. This was reinforced by a number of Hollywood movies showing our heroes hacking their way through the dense "jungle."...

New York, NY -- August 27, 2008. Nuclear energy is the cleanest source of electrical power available today, according to an analysis by scientists associated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). Their main points are summarized in the brochure Nuclear Energy and Health: What's the Story?

Not only can nuclear fission (the process by which atomic energy is released) provide a clean source of energy, it is sustainable far into the future, without causing either environmental degradation or ill effects on human health. ACSH's analysis disproves fear-inspiring stories about leaking radiation, the Chernobyl explosion, and nuclear weapons proliferation spread by anti-nuclear...

In spite of the unimaginable global transformations described in my blog post yesterday, per capita food production and consumption in many parts of Africa has actually declined. Unless there is a massive infusion of aid (from the Gates Foundation and others) for seeds, fertilizer, and infrastructure, the situation could get worse, since in many regions of Africa, farmers are taking more nutrients out of the soil than they are returning. They are mining the soil and destroying its structure.

This is "organic agriculture" as practiced by the poor who can not afford synthetic fertilizer, improved seeds and pesticides.

It is sustainable in the sense described by C.S. Prakash...

In describing the current world food situation, let me first give the good news: the long-term transformations that have brought us to the present.

The real price of raw materials and other commodities has been on an overall downward trend for roughly 250 years, and the real price of food has experienced the same general downward trend for the last 150 years. The Green Revolution accelerated these trends over the last half century so that by early this century, the real price of rice was about 40% of its 1960 price and the real price of wheat was roughly 50% of its mid-century price (these trends are nicely illustrated in a graph on the BBC website)....

A few interesting nutrition-related items brought to our attention this summer:

As the Olympics began, the group Consumer Freedom noted some amusing differences between champion swimmer Michael Phelps -- a voracious living proof of the calories in/calories out equation for weight maintenance -- and head food nanny Michael Jacobson of the perennially worried Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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Science writer Marilynn Larkin, whose work has appeared in ACSH publications, crafted the introduction to this New York Academy of Sciences briefing on the problem of so-called "diabesity"...