Archive: Jan 2013

Are Soda Scolds Super-Sizing Us with Sweetener Scares?

Before New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene unleashed its War on Soda, there was its War on Trans Fat. And as we noted repeatedly at the time, the…
PostedJanuary 31, 2013 at5:42 pm

Big Brother Brownell to Be a Blue Devil

In 1991, a young professor started his career at Yale. Many pants sizes, several awful proposals to regulate what everybody can eat and drink, and 22 years later,…
PostedJanuary 30, 2013 at6:01 pm

Same Silly Sweetener Scaremongering from Shameless Sap

Daytime television’s self-promoting “You Doc,” Mehmet Oz, has a long history of scaremongering about high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) which he continues in his syndicated column. The Great Oz blames HFCS for…
PostedJanuary 28, 2013 at5:17 pm

Fighting the Last Obesity War

There’s an old saying about military generals: They plan to “fight the last war” rather than addressing new and evolving threats. This is perhaps best exemplified by World…
PostedJanuary 25, 2013 at5:44 pm

New York’s Anti-Prohibitionists Get Day in Court

Yesterday, a New York court heard the argument by groups opposing the New York City ban on sodas larger than 16 ounces in restaurants and other eateries. Advocates for consumer…
PostedJanuary 24, 2013 at4:09 pm

Careening Down the Road to the Obesity Apocalypse at Zero M.P.H.

Last year, we saw a couple of projections of staggering increases in obesity over the next 20 years. We were skeptical at the time, noting that measures of obesity did not show…
PostedJanuary 23, 2013 at5:25 pm

Consumers Union Wrong Again on Food Science

The Consumers Union of the United States — the group that does the household appliance comparison tests and publishes the results in Consumer Reports — might know something about refrigerators, but…
PostedJanuary 22, 2013 at5:53 pm

Soda Taxes Arise Again in Hawaii, Vermont

The impulse among America’s food police to tax soft drinks is an old one— Kelly “Twinkie tax” Brownell pushed the idea as early as 1994 — but it has the …
PostedJanuary 21, 2013 at3:31 pm

This Week in Food Freedom: Unintended Meat-Free Consequences, New York Hypocrites, and More

British newspaper The Guardian brings us a gem of unintended consequences from the so-called “sustainable” food movement (that wins a striking lack of converts). Vegans and vegetarians looking for meat substitutes…
PostedJanuary 18, 2013 at5:05 pm

CSPI Awards “Xtremely” Hyperbolic

If you believe the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), all sorts of health catastrophes stalk you whenever you dare darken a restaurant’s doorway. So it…
PostedJanuary 16, 2013 at1:57 pm