Articles by Sandy Szwarc
The Right to Know-nothingism Law
Proposition 65 deserves to be renamed "the law of mythological food fears." It's the California act of 1986 which "requires businesses to provide clear and reasonable warning if their products expose any individual to a chemical known to the...
Read More
|
Better to Die Young Than Get Fat
The UN's World Health Organization has declared obesity a crisis of "epidemic proportions" in the developing world, with 300 million people globally deemed "obese." The UN has listed it among the world's top ten 'preventable risks,' along with unsafe sex....
Read More
|
Using the Most Vulnerable
Headlines recently exclaimed: "Hormone-altering chemical puts ICU newborns at risk-Babies treated with plastics have high levels of a toxic substance, a study finds." The basis for this disturbing news was a study from Harvard School of Public Health published in..
Read More
|
MyPyramid Scheme
Many of us learn what foods to eat for good nutrition from the government's food guide pyramid -- that graphic symbol posted in American school classrooms and cafeterias. Its purpose has been to translate the Dietary Guidelines issued by the...
Read More
|
'You Can Relax About Food and Eat What You Want'
Just as the recent Flegal study by the Centers for Disease Control put the nail into the coffin of the obesity crisis myth, one published this week in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association buries the dieting myth. While...
Read More
|
The Mad Fatter
Since the CDC recently disclosed that fat people live longer than those in "normal" weight ranges, and considerably longer than thin people, those who want to control what you eat are suggesting that whether or not being fat kills...
Read More
|
Best for Mothers, Best for Babies
New mothers are besieged by people telling them what is "best" for their babies -- and pressures to breastfeed have become among the fiercest of all. Ardent breastfeeding advocates once just made mothers feel guilty if they didn't breastfeed, accusing...
Read More
|
Bon Appetit!
With tremendous media fanfare last year, Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced that overweight and obesity had killed 400,000 Americans in 2000. The CDC paper m
Read More
|
Food Nannies Hawk the Hawkeye State
Like newspapers across the country, the Des Moines Register has published a special series addressing the "obesity crisis." The Register series, which began last Sunday, was entitled "The Losing Battle" -- appropriately named, just not in the way the newspaper...
Read More
|
Father Knows Best?
If ever there was reason to reconsider the wisdom of having our healthcare and insurance under employment or government mandate, the "war on obesity" is it. The surge of employer-based health insurance, which didn't happen in other insurance markets such...
Read More
|
