Big Tobacco seems to have a shiny new billion-dollar Trojan horse. The question now: Will medical scientists be savvy enough to avoid a credibility catastrophe by rejecting funding from Tobacco’s wealthy new foundation? Rita Rubin, a seasoned health care writer, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that Philip Morris, a global hawker of….
Continue ReadingFood Safety
Sickening eggs and lettuce? Didn’t we pass a major law to fix food safety?
After fading from the headlines in 2015-16 when a major restaurant chain struggled with meals that sickened dozens in multiple states, big worries have erupted anew about the safety of the nation’s food. That’s because federal officials and a supersized-farmer are struggling with salmonella outbreaks tied to more than 200 million now-recalled eggs, even as….
Continue ReadingTrust your gut: Don’t swallow hype about ‘microbiome’ and dietary gee-whiz
Trust your gut: If anyone hypes a diet to you, saying it’s beneficial because it’s somehow tailored to the makeup of your complex, prehistoric, and individual intestinal microbiome, just wink and walk off. You know better, right? Healthnewsreview.org, the watchdog about accuracy of medical news reports, rightly has taken after the Wall Street Journal for….
Continue ReadingAre we back to this? Kids targeted by nicotine and sugary cereal peddlers
Big Tobacco, Big Sugar, and technology may be targeting the well-being of young people faster than regulators can prevent them from heading back to the future in a bad way: Teens getting hooked on nicotine, while tots take in excess calories with super sweet breakfast cereals. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times….
Continue ReadingIs it carbs, fats, calories, or genes in dieting? Try quality food in moderation
Rigorous, reliable research on diet and nutrition is not common, so it’s worth paying close attention to the results of an $8-million, year-long study conducted at Stanford University with more than 600 test subjects. Its recommendations are filled — in a good way — with common sense and moderation. The New York Times reported of the….
Continue Reading‘Raw water:’ Liquid looniness
The new year is bubbling with numerous reports about “raw water.” Enthusiasts are flocking to outlets — in Oregon, Maine, San Diego, San Francisco, and the Silicon Valley — for unfiltered, untreated, and unsterilized H2O from springs. They’re paying dearly, for example $36.99 for a 2.5-gallon glass orb of “off the grid” Live Water from a….
Continue ReadingFDA caught dawdling in key duty of getting contaminated foods off shelves
Watchdogs have caught the Federal Food and Drug Administration dogging one of its most basic and important tasks — getting contaminated and potentially dangerous foods off the shelves quickly. Federal inspectors spot-checked several dozen recalls among 1,557 the agency conducted between 2012 and 2015, partly to see how the FDA used wider powers given to….
Continue ReadingSome straight dope on pot products, soy foods, essential oils, stem cell hype
Let’s give them their just deserts and dispatch them with alacrity. In this week’s hokum alert: The federal Food and Drug Administration couldn’t make it clearer: Companies pushing products with cannabis in them can’t make unfounded claims about their use in treating or “curing” cancer. It’s just rubbish. The agency ordered the makers of dozens….
Continue ReadingWith obesity soaring, Americans gulled by dark chocolate myths and more
Although most of our elders have preached at us from a chapel of common sense, dietary nonsense seems to rain on our heads faster than the autumn leaves. It ought to go without saying that dark chocolate really isn’t a health food. And, to repeat again something that many pregnant women ought to know already:….
Continue ReadingFDA, lacking staff and budget, falls short on oversight of food processing
Uncle Sam, estimating that 48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne diseases each year in the United States, has pledged to step up preventive and protective measures to prevent these all too common health banes. Here’s the dirty secret about that vow: The federal Food and Drug Administration lacks….
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