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Whole Foods Market can dish it out, but they sure can't take it. The largest organic foods retailer developed a mega-profitable business by scaring consumers about conventionally produced foods supposedly "contaminated" with chemicals and biotechnology.

For the complete story, please visit http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,58760,00.html .

The FDA may issue stronger health warnings about acrylamide following the release of new toxicological information about the chemical, which is found in many foods when cooked at high temperatures. Because fried potato products are the main source of acrylamide in food, the potato industry is trying to develop new spud varieties that produce lower levels of the compound.

Confused by the story, ACSH's Dr. Josh Bloom asks, “How can you ban acrylamide if it’s formed naturally when you cook?”

“You might not be able to ban it, but you can put a warning label on it,” says ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan as she recalls a previous attempt by activist groups to put warning labels on French fries in California...

ACSH staffers would like to offer a seat at the table to Ken Green of the American Enterprise Institute for his article on the BPA scare.

He notes: "The safety of BPA has been affirmed by research undertaken by the U.S. National Toxicology Program, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; the U.S. Centers for Disease Control; the European Food Safety Authority; Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology; Germany's Federal Environmental Agency; the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Toxicity, Ecotoxicity, and the Environment; the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Food; and the European Food Safety Authority."

"That's an important point," says ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. "It leaves us with the same question we've been...

An article by Peter Berry Ottaway in Vol. 10, No. 1 (January 2005) of Nutraceuticals International noted EU and U.S. controversy over defining nutritional foods and mentioned an argument made by ACSH's Jeff Stier:

There has been a recent controversy in the USA over the launch of a calcium-enriched soda by Seven-Up. At first sight, this product appears to be contravening the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's "Jelly Bean Rule" that manufacturers should not make health claims for foods low in nutrients.

However, the product appears to have been defended by a senior member of the American Council on Science and Health on the...

When it comes to food, biotech, and health reporting, the New York Times is at least consistent: It is guaranteed to be wrong every single time.

Recently, it ran a very strange article about traces of glyphosate in Ben & Jerry's ice cream. It's strange for two reasons: (1) Ben & Jerry's is vehemently anti-GMO; and (2) It doesn't matter if there are traces of glyphosate in your ice cream.

Ben & Jerry's Gets 'Greenmailed'

Like Whole Foods, Ben & Jerry's has profited handsomely by scaring people about the safety of the food supply. The company is anti-GMO and supports GMO labeling. However, that...

Rodents are an insidious health threat -- but I am not talking about disease-carrying vermin. I am talking about rodents in our nation's most prestigious research laboratories. These animals, through no fault of their own, have been scaring us to death for 50 years while restricting our pursuit of an improved standard of living and longer, healthier lives.

A thicket of current federal and state laws and regulations (including Superfund, Proposition 65 in California, and Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration regulation of pesticides and food additives) assume a rodent is a little man. Such laws substantially disrupt our nation's economic productivity (including diminishing our food supply) by banning any chemical that at high doses causes...

The Bill Moyers PBS show NOW got one important thing right about genetically-modified crops. "There's no scientific evidence that eating these ingredients hurts our health," says narrator Mark Schapiro in the segment "Seeds of Conflict," which aired earlier this month. Even Moyers' introduction muted the usual "Frankenstein foods" tone of such stories, contrasting "the surprises of nature" with "the precision of science."

The segment helpfully noted some of the practical, non-sinister reasons to engage in genetic engineering, as when introducing an agronomist who is trying to create corn that can immunize pigs (and someday people) against certain diseases: "Dr. Kan Wang isn't growing corn for food. She wants the corn to make medicine." While Schapiro's narration raises...

Dietary fat has been receiving bad press for years. At first it was just saturated fats, because they can raise blood cholesterol. Conversely, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats were thought to be good because they did not do so.

Then all fat was deemed "bad", and Americans were urged to consume as little as they could. Some have even gone so far as to advocate giving young children (under 2 years of age) non-fat milk. This is advice that no responsible pediatrician would endorse.

A major rationale for this fat obsession has been the realization that obesity is increasing in the United States. Since fat is the most energy-dense nutrient (9 calories per gram), it made sense to warn people that a diet high in fat could lead to overconsumption of calories, and that to...

Antioxidants are chemical compounds that can be a vitamin, mineral, enzyme, or one of thousands of other naturally occurring plant chemicals and many that are naturally produced by our bodies. One of their many roles is to inhibit or potentially stop harmful oxidation reactions produced by free radicals interacting with other of our body's chemicals.[1] Antioxidants neutralize unstable free radicals before it becomes toxic to the cell, while at the same time remaining stable themselves. This association is the source of supplemental antioxidants magical benefits, leading to three misconceptions.  

Free radicals are an abnormal part of cellular metabolism.

False. Free radicals are a normal and necessary part of cell metabolism both at rest and...

The FDA met last week in the first hearing to decide the regulatory fate of the cannabinoid CBD; you know the marijuana component that has no or little psychoactive effect. At the most basic of levels, a drug is a chemical. It could be an element like oxygen, or a compound like salt, or a complex molecule like aspirin or insulin. Let’s stay with oxygen for a moment. If I want to go SCUBA diving, I need only show my certification (and in many resorts that is not necessarily a requirement), and I get a tank containing 20% oxygen. But in healthcare, where we use higher concentrations (dosages) of oxygen, it is a prescription drug. 

“FDA regulations define the term drug, in part, by referenceto its intended use, as ‘...