During scenes from the movie The Secret Lives of Dentists, Dana and David Hurst are seen undergoing an unholy combination of adultery and viral gastroenteritis. While Dana (Hope Davis) and their three kids are all feverish and vomiting, David (Campbell Scott) responds to the illness and betrayal in his family by . . . pulling out a pack of smokes.

[Editor's note: We admire Sandy Szwarc for pointing out some of the excesses in America's war on obesity, such as lawsuits now brewing against fast food chains. But our nutrition director, Dr. Ruth Kava, objects to Szwarc's promotion of an odd, revisionist theory about obesity: that we are neither consuming more nor exercising less but are getting fat precisely because dieting causes metabolic changes that induce obesity. TS]

The invaluable Snopes.com, which exposes hoaxes, notes an e-mail that's been making the rounds that warns people about purported dangers from heated or frozen plastic containers. Here is the text of the e-mail, with some commentary from HealthFactsAndFears.com:

A trip to the supermarket should be a simple task, but nowadays it seems that you need a science degree to figure out which foods should be on your shopping list. Due to revised Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules regarding health claims on products, it is about to become even more difficult. The new health claims will allow food packages to communicate possible health benefits as opposed to proven benefits. The new food label guidelines will allow scientifically supported health claims to be made on food packages, but this refers to scientific support of almost any strength.

"No Smoking," the ubiquitous sign in public buildings, should also be present in another building your home. According to the August issue of the British Medical Journal, University of Warwick researchers recommend banning all smoking in parents' homes in order to decrease the potential harm of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) to babies.

Editor's note: People sometimes think of smoking as little more dangerous than countless other bad habits, so the idea of quitting through nicotine replacement therapy or pharmaceuticals that combat nicotine cravings may strike some as counterintuitive as though it were a mere switching from one substance to another. But smoking kills about a third of users and has many other negative health effects (see ACSH's book about Cigarettes), while drugs to aid smoking cessation just might save your life.

Products containing Olestra, the zero-calorie fat substitute, will no longer bear a label informing consumers of purported unpleasant gastrointestinal (GI) side effects. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), after reviewing a six-week study that involved 3000 people, ruled that Olestra "caused only mild, infrequent GI effects," according to an FDA press release. The FDA also decided to continue the requirement for food manufacturers to add vitamins A, D, E, and K to counteract Olestra's effects on the absorption of these specific vitamins.

Some random thoughts from a food-focused academic:
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Humane Vegecide

Smokers shorten their lives by an average of seven years, according to insurance actuarial tables (one of humanity's greatest inventions and a model for rational calculation that the rest of the culture would do well to imitate). At least, seven years is what studies suggest is the handicap insurance companies are putting on smoking. Insurance companies normally don't officially open their actuarial tables to outside inspection, since those numbers are the basis of all the gambling-like choices the companies make about who to charge how much, the odds of having to pay out, and so forth.