This report on a Congressional hearing highlights the tension between supplying nutritious food to children and balancing stress-laden school budgets. The Child Nutrition and Women, Infants and Children acts are up for reauthorization this year. They were first created to feed undernourished children and now target obesity. Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) has introduced a bill [...]
Archive for May, 2009
School Food a War Between Health and Money
Posted in Uncategorized on May 17, 2009 |
Celebrity Drug Endorsers
Posted in Uncategorized on May 14, 2009 |
This informative post on Merrill Goozner’s Gooznews blog details the ways pharmaceutical companies and their public relations firms manipulate the truth about drugs and do everything possible to hide information about their adverse side effects. Case in point: Andy Behrman, who suffers from bipolar disorder: The story comes to light because one such celebrity patient [...]
Vitamin C and E Supplements Curb Exercise Benefits
Posted in Uncategorized on May 13, 2009 |
It seems counterintuitive at first, but there appears to be a short-circuiting of the body’s natural response, which may prove most problematic for diabetics. “If you exercise to promote health, you shouldn’t take large amounts of antioxidants,” Dr. Ristow said. A second message of the study, he said, “is that antioxidants in general cause certain [...]
Home Interventions Help Cancer Survivors with Diet and Exercise
Posted in Uncategorized on May 13, 2009 |
This is precisely the kind of low-tech, low cost health promotion initiative that we need to see everywhere. A telephone-based intervention significantly halted functional decline compared with no intervention, Miriam C. Morey, Ph.D., of Duke University, and colleagues reported in the May 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Even with modest [...]
FDA: Cholesterol Claim Makes Cheerios an “Unapproved Drug”
Posted in Uncategorized on May 13, 2009 |
Applying federal food and drug regulations consistently is good policy. This appears to be a step in the right direction.
Comparative Effectiveness Research Opponents Seek Convincing Rationale
Posted in Uncategorized on May 8, 2009 |
The idea that treatments and devices should be evaluated for effectiveness strikes fear into the hearts of many health care providers and device manufacturers. Currently we are seeing some rather convoluted and questionable arguments for preventing this. The playing field needs to be level. The studies need to be fair. But objecting to the very [...]
When Old Paradigms No Longer Work
Posted in Uncategorized on May 8, 2009 |
As we approach crunch time for health reform, I highly recommend this post on HealthBeat. In it, the author steps back a bit to think more deeply about how paradigms shift and how doctors accommodate themselves to systems they initially feared. Doctors working in other countries are very used to continuous improvement, and many are [...]
USDA To Fund $50 Million for Farmers Converting to Organic Methods
Posted in Uncategorized on May 6, 2009 |
Good news, as the USDA reverses previous federal policy.
