[Stanford University researcher Dr. Crystal] Smith-Spangler and her colleagues found there was no difference in the amount of vitamins in plant or animal products produced organically and conventionally - and the only nutrient difference was slightly more phosphorus in the organic products.
Organic milk and chicken may also contain more omega-3 fatty acids, they found - but that was based on only a few studies.
There were more significant differences by growing practice in the amount of pesticides and antibiotic-resistant bacteria in food.
More than one-third of conventional produce had detectable pesticide residues, compared to seven percent of organic produce samples. And organic chicken and pork was 33 percent less likely to carry bacteria resistant to three or more antibiotics than conventionally-produced meat.
Think this will make any difference in your food-shopping habits?
Still watch Saturday morning cartoons? Or, perhaps, The Disney Channel? In case you do, you may soon stop seeing ads for sugary cereals, candy or other unhealthy products. The company is enacting a new policy called the ”Mickey Check” that will only allow for nutritionally-approved products to be sold on their shows, Web sites, or other branded products. On top of this, the company will cut back on sodium in the kids meals served in its theme parks and increase its efforts to promote exercise and healthy eating. Only downside: Due to currently-existing contracts, the ads won’t change over fully until 2015. Hey, Michael Bloomberg: this is how you do it.
What’s going on here is basically a con game to suggest otherwise. What do con men do? They normally try to change their name. The FDA has thankfully stopped that.Sugar Association lawyer Dan Callister • Praising the Food and Drug Administration’s rejection of an attempt by the Corn Refiners Association to rename the recently-controversial “high fructose corn syrup” to something a tad less innocuous — “corn sugar” to be specific. Let’s face it — when giant agricultural industry groups fight in public, everyone wins.
So … Ezra Klein did the math on last week’s school lunch story, which created the “pizza is a vegetable” meme, and found that if you put the USDA-recommended one-eighth of a cup of tomato paste side-by-side with a half a cup of fruit, the results are actually pretty comparable. How about that? “Measuring fruit and vegetable servings by volume is a bit of an odd convention in the first place,” Klein notes. “When it comes to calories and nutrients, they’re really all over the map.” Problem is, of course, that the pizza is still attached to the bread and the cheese, while the apple is attached to nothing but goodness.
» Are food companies are pulling a fast one on us? According to the study, they’ve been adding extra salt to food to trick us into eating more. “They train your taste buds — the more salt you eat, the less salt you taste, the more salt you want, to get that saltiness,” notes Professor Francisco Cappucio of the University of Warwick, one of the authors of the study. He notes that this extra salt makes us want to eat more, leading to higher food industry profits. By cutting salt intake worldwide, we could save thousands of lives each year in the U.S. alone, the study notes — and 8.5 million lives in the next decade. The study suggests that the UN get involved.
Meet the worst graphic ever created. You may have heard about this thing. It’s called the MyPyramid. There’s some random dude running up it to remind people to exercise, which it’s honestly never done for us. But there aren’t any numbers, no good explanation, and few details to explain what people should eat. It’s one of the greatest travesties the USDA has ever created. It’s as terrible as the 2012 Olympics logo, except worse, because it’s meant actually teach people how to eat healthier; that hasn’t happened. And it might finally get replaced by a completely different shape. Finally. About time. A little history:
» Why this is a good idea: Simply put, the basic idea behind this graphic needs to be as simple as possible, and while the original graphic wasn’t terrible, its replacement was. What we’d like to see is a shape that looks like a cafeteria tray, with compartments for each piece. However, the independently-produced Power Plate (which notably doesn’t include meat products at all) is also a worthy option, too. Let’s hope they don’t screw it up.
Jack LaLanne, fitness legend, dead at 96: Jack LaLanne, the famous fitness guru who was said to have stuck to a two-hour per day workout schedule into his 90s, died Sunday. He was 96. source
I don’t want to be forced to choose veggies. I do NOT like veggies or fruit. I feel like I am being forced to ‘diet,’ and that is what I DO NOT WANT.Some whiny baby on a Weight Watchers forum • Complaining about the changes to the company’s well-known points system, which previously scored processed foods and unprocessed foods about the same way. Now, the new system encourages eaters to have fewer processed foods and as many fruits and vegetables as they’d like. Seeing a bunch of people on a weight-loss plan collectively freak out is kind of entertaining. source (via • follow)
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