Search results

Calcium-fortified orange juice, special fortified margarine, nutrient enhanced salad dressings, and other "functional foods" are advertised everywhere these days. Is there a scientific basis for the claims made on these products -- and should they be used by everyone? There is no across-the-board answer to this question; whether these foods are beneficial depends on several factors.

When ACSH writes about bloodsucking creatures, you might expect to read an article about plaintiff's attorneys suing over multiple chemical sensitivity. But this time, we are writing about the actual aquatic animal, the leech, which is almost synonymous with pre-modern medicine.

Scientists at a private fertility clinic in Chicago isolated twelve new embryonic stem cell lines from genetically flawed human embryos, the Associated Press recently reported. The embryos, which had a total of seven mutations related to genetic diseases, were donated by couples who underwent prenatal genetic screening at the Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago. The embryos likely would never have been chosen for implantation given their genetic conditions.

The June 22nd CBS Evening News item "Vaccines Linked to Autism" by Sharyl Attkisson was a journalistic atrocity. Based on the litany of unsupported claims, and the obvious reliance on anecdotal evidence over sound science, I would guess her information came from an alarmist group still looking to blame thimerosal, a mercury-derived vaccine preservative, for causing autism.

There is never a bad time to quit, no matter how hard it is, considering the deleterious effects smoking has on the respiratory, circulatory, digestive, and reproductive systems but some effects of smoking are permanent. Does quitting substantially decrease the damaging, continuing effects that years of smoking have on the body?

We've said it before, and we'll keep saying it: The fact that a food or supplement is "natural," i.e., non-synthetic, doesn't necessarily mean that it is always safe. Such beliefs underlie at least some of the popularity of herbal supplements the market for such products reached an estimated $20 billion plus last year, according to the Wall Street Journal.1 Unfortunately, along with the increasing popularity of these products comes the potential for increasing health risks.

With all the media coverage of alleged "carcinogens," it is no wonder that Americans are confused as they try to distinguish the real from the hypothetical causes of human cancer. Over the past few years alone, the media have reported claims from various so-called "environmental" groups about cancer threats from PCB traces in farmed salmon, acrylamide in French fries, nitrite in hot dogs, PCBs in the Hudson River, dioxin in paper towels, and trace levels of naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water.

June 8, 2004 A broad range of groups, from landlords to the non-profit Community Preservation Corp., went to court last week to stop the city's new lead-paint law.
Here's hoping Judge Louis York grants the injunction before the law goes into effect Aug. 2 because the law would make it harder for all New Yorkers to get housing.
It's already deterring investment in affordable housing, a reality that will leave more of New York's 40,000-plus homeless in shelters.
Why would the City Council pass a law to increase homelessness?

New York's Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has accused the British-based drug giant Glaxo-SmithKline of consumer fraud because of the manner in which GSK promoted Paxil, an anti-depressant, for children and adolescents. He has accused GSK of misleading consumers by suppressing studies which did not support the drug's efficacy, especially for teenagers with depression.

This mention of ACSH's survey of magazines' health reporting appeared in the New York Daily News:

An August 31, 1992 National Review piece by Peter Samuel was reprinted by http://nationalreview.com on June 10, 2004 and contains the following ACSH reference:

From a June 14 Mercury News editorial:
''There are just four words for weight control: calories in, calories out,'' said Dr. Ruth Kava, director of nutrition for the American Council on Science and Health.
The full article can be found at:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/8918380.htm?1c

An article by Denise Mann, updated July 6, 2006, quotes ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava on trans fats:
"We used to use animal fats, and people said, 'saturated fats are bad,' so we switched to trans fats," says Ruth Kava, PhD, RD, director of nutrition at the New York City-based American Council on Science and Health. "This kind of gives us an unfortunate focus on ingredients rather than the whole diet when the problem isn't this fat or that fat, it's too many calories"...

A June 9 article by Elizabeth Millard notes ACSH's Stier and Whelan:
The presence of protests at gatherings like Bio 2004 has become fairly standard, said Jeff Stier, associate director of the American Council on Science and Health. In an interview with the E-Commerce Times, Stier said that although most demonstrators carry signs about the health effects of genetically modified foods, most often it is the presence of large corporations that really bothers them...

A June 8 article about obesity, eating habits, and McDieter Soso Whaley quotes ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava:
Ruth Kava, director of nutrition for the American Council on Science and Health in New York, is analyzing what Whaley ate at McDonald's during the month of April...
According to Kava, during the first week, Whaley kept her calories right around 1,845 per day...
Kava noted that the meals do not include enough fiber, and lack a variety of vegetables and different kinds of meat needed for a healthy diet.

This letter to the editor appeared in the Orlando Sentinel on June 16, 2004:
To the editor:
Roger Moore's review in Friday's Calendar section of the movie Super Size Me calls director/star Morgan Spurlock's downward spiral compelling. But what Spurlock demonstrated in his movie was just plain gluttony, compounded by an intentional lack of physical activity.

Another myth bites the dust. This one falls into the category of supposed facts that "everyone knows." What's the worst thing you can drink in terms of ruining your teeth? "Everyone knows" that's got to be colas, right? But recent preliminary research from the journal General Dentistry casts doubt on this truism.

Yesterday's report that the United States Federal Trade Commission is going after the maker of Pedia Loss and Pedia Lean is good news, no doubt.

The juxtaposition of two recent items in the New York Times was striking.
First, there was the Sunday, June 13th frontpage photo of Presidential candidate John Kerry, helmetless, riding a motorcycle (accompanying the article "Behind the Scenes, a Restless and Relentless Kerry").

Get your VCR set, and don't miss the other side in the debate over fast food and obesity. Soso Whaley and Chazz Weaver (thirty-day McDieters) were interviewed by John Stossel of ABC's 20/20. The show is scheduled to be broadcast this Friday, June 18 at 10pm (and Madonna's on the show as well, if that helps). In the not-too-distant future, ACSH's director of nutrition, Dr. Ruth Kava, will present a nutritional analysis of Soso's and Chazz's McDiets. So watch 20/20 this week, and watch this site for further insights.

The brain hungers to place things in simple categories: good for you, bad for you...safe, risky. But the stomach hungers for French fries, salmon, meat substitutes, and other things that have been hastily labeled "bad" by activists, so the brain has some work to do: putting the activists' warnings (about food and other things) in context, weighing those tiny or imagined risks against other risks from everyday life. Ten lessons for the discriminating risk-assessor:

Two stories came to my attention recently testimony to our distorted health priorities thanks to activist groups' alarmist emissions and the media's slavish devotion to them:

That's toxic toothpaste you're using, or so says a consumer health advisory recently issued by the Environmental Working Group (EWG). The study claims that one out of every hundred popular cosmetic products contains ingredients identified by the government as toxins and/or carcinogens. This information, while meant to "heighten consumer awareness," actually exploits a fallacy and accomplishes little more than unnecessarily frightening the public.

"Study finds possible link between autism and mercury preservative in vaccines," screams the headline of the L.A. Times. It seems like a bad, recurring dream: why won't these people go away?
A little historical overview is in order: