February 11, 2008: Artificial Jarvik, Troubled Ledger, Fat Twins, Menaced Babies
¢Quote to Note: "I'm confused. The way they do these studies shouldn't the rats have died from cancer or something before they could become obese?" -- Comment by "OceanLover" on Lucianne.com News Forum about a study linking saccharin consumption to obesity in rats.

"Locavore" is a term that was coined in 2005 by a group of four women in San Francisco, who proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius. "Locavore" has become such a buzz word, that the New Oxford American Dictionary (the trendy alternative to the traditional Oxford English Dictionary) recently jumped on the "loca"-motive, announcing that it would be the 2007 word of the year.

This item first appeared in the New York Post.
Congress is poised to pass a massive giveaway to the ambulance-chasing trial attorneys -- under the guise of protecting consumers.

A press release in the New York Sun caught ACSH off guard with its negative coverage of Swedish smokeless tobacco, also known as snus. Sweden is the only country in the European Union (EU) that is permitted to market smokeless tobacco because it joined after the EU placed a ban on the product, and was given an exemption.

Some parents may be sending their children to school with brown bag lunches this week, and who could blame them? The Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. based in California recently issued a recall of 143 million pounds for all of its raw and frozen beef products since Feb 1, 2006. It is the largest-ever meat recall in the U.S., the previous record being set in 1999 when another company -- Thorn Apple Valley -- recalled 35 million pounds of ground beef.

Scare after scare appears in the popular press -- with news blaming traces of all sorts of chemicals and "toxins" for causing cancer. But it is becoming ever more apparent that many types of cancer are in fact linked more to lifestyle-related choices such as smoking and, now, obesity.

An article featured in the Wall Street Journal this week may have left many people asking: What's more important, my heart or my brain?

It's rather obvious that people are not rats, but there must be some confusion as many news outlets are trumpeting the results of a rat feeding study as though they could be applied directly to humans. Major newspapers and TV stations, as well as various Internet outlets have posted headlines stating or suggesting that the non-caloric sweetener saccharin can lead to weight gain. What gives? Are there really data substantiating such a conclusion, or was it just a slow news day?

Finally, looks like saccharin will not only cause cancer (according to high-dose rat studies), it also will make us obese. A study published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience found that the calorie-free artificial sweeteners drove rats to overeat by breaking the physiological connection between sweet tastes and calories.

Along with today's frigid cold throughout the country, fear is also in the air. "High" lead levels have been found in baby products, such as a cooler for storing breast milk and a pacifier carrier. ACSH staffers find this a bit outrageous. It's one thing to ban toys that contain lead and can be easily consumed by children, such as jewelry and painted plastic figurines. But it's another story altogether if the products you seek to ban are impossible to bite down on.