food safety

For Quality's Sake, Don't Ignore Food Labels

"Use by" and "sell by" labels are not about food safety, although it's easy to be confused by them. In fact, they're only pointers about when a food's quality might not be at its peak.

EWG rates foods for healthfulness by their definition of course

According to a report in the New York Times, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has released its latest masterpiece of misdirection an 80,000 item database of foods that purports to help consumers decide which foods are most healthful.

FDA tackles a non-issue: the case against 4-MEI in caramel coloring

Last winter Consumer Reports came out with a relatively new scare concerns about a chemical in cola drinks, and other foods with some forms of caramel coloring. The chemical in question is 4-MEI, an abbreviation for 4-Methylimidazole, produced as a byproduct of the manufacture of caramel.

Thirty-two years later Aspartame is still safe (duh)

In the no news is no news department, one of the most studied chemicals ever - Aspartame, NutraSweet - has gotten a clean bill of health from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). It s about time. But will it matter?

You are what you eat? Better hope this ain t true.

As overused as the expression you can t make this up is, sometimes there is simply no other phrase that can do the trick. You decide. Yesterday, it was Chinese dietary supplements that were in the news. Today it s spices from India. And if there is a better way to illustrate how badly the FDA s hands are tied while trying to protect people from substances they should not be consuming, it isn t obvious.

Salmonella-tainted poultry sickens hundreds

Foster Farms owns three poultry-processing plants in California that are now being targeted as the sources of Salmonella-contaminated poultry that have sickened 278 people in 17 states, according to a report in the Sacramento Bee.

Eating Safely: Avoiding Foodborne Illness (second edition)

Introduction Food safety is a matter of great interest and serious concern to consumers in the 1990s. But today's media, armed with red-flag words such as "toxin" and "carcinogen," often report alleged health hazards in the American diet as fact. This has led many consumers to believe, erroneously, that our modern food supply is inherently dangerous because it contains such synthetic chemicals as food additives and pesticide residues.