Twinkies cheaper than carrots?

From John Robbins, on the Huffington Post:

“Why is Coca-Cola often more affordable than clean water? Why are candy bars and cigarettes often more readily available than fresh fruits and vegetables?

If you want to eat healthfully, you have to fight an uphill battle. Why are government subsidies pushing in the wrong direction?

Who would it hurt if we enacted policies that actually encouraged the foods that are healthiest for people and for our world? Who opposes the efforts to make it easier, rather than harder, for people to make healthy food choices?

What do raw milk, junk food and tobacco all have in common?

From David E. Gumpert on the Complete Patient blog:

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“I was at a food safety conference a few years back that focused on raw milk, and one state public health official concluded his remarks by saying, to effect, “I personally don’t see why we spend all this time going after raw milk. If people are going to be stupid enough to drink it, then let them go ahead and kill themselves.”

Then, at a raw milk symposium a couple years after that, I heard a raw milk proponent give the other side of the same mind-set. “You know, things will change over the next few years, because the people who oppose us will die off from all the junk food they eat,” she said, referring to the public health regulators.

Junk food may be as addictive as drugs

From Robert Langreth and Duane D. Stanford on Bloomberg.com

Image via Technoccult blog. Click to go there.

“Cupcakes may be addictive, just like cocaine.

A growing body of medical research at leading universities and government laboratories suggests that processed foods and sugary drinks made by the likes of PepsiCo Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc. (KFT)aren’t simply unhealthy. They can hijack the brain in ways that resemble addictions to cocaine, nicotine and other drugs.

“The data is so overwhelming the field has to accept it,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “We are finding tremendous overlap between drugs in the brain and food in the brain.”

The idea that food may be addictive was barely on scientists’ radar a decade ago. Now the field is heating up. Lab studies have found sugary drinks and fatty foods can produce addictive behavior in animals. Brain scans of obese people and compulsive eaters, meanwhile, reveal disturbances in brain reward circuits similar to those experienced by drug abusers.

Home-lunch ban at Chicago area public schools — What’s more revolting: junk food, the student reaction, or the nanny state precedent this regulation sets?

While one can agree that junk food from home is no good for kids, the nanny-state implications of this are scary indeed. And students don’t like it much either. From Monica Eng and Joel Hood at the Chicago Tribune:

“Fernando Dominguez cut the figure of a young revolutionary leader during a recent lunch period at his elementary school.

“Who thinks the lunch is not good enough?” the seventh-grader shouted to his lunch mates in Spanish and English.

Dozens of hands flew in the air and fellow students shouted along: “We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch!”

Americans are “Food Libertarians” — they want to eat what they want, when they want, and where they want

From a Society Pages post titled “Let them eat Cheetos”, a treatise on food and social class in America. Among their findings: “Essentially,” he [Michael Pollan] says, “we have a system where wealthy farmers feed the poor crap and poor farmers feed the wealthy high-quality food.”

“The phrase “you are what you eat” may refer to more than your physical make-up. In fact, the food in your fridge might say just as much about your social class as about your health.  Newsweek reports:

Genetic damage from eating junk food

Excerpted from Augie’s Journal of Natural Food and Healing, from a story titled “Studies: Junk Food Causing Birth Defects“:

Photo via Journal of Natural Food and Healing

“A recent study out of Georgetown University Medical Center has concluded that what you eat can affect your children’s and grandchildren’s health, even if they eat healthy themselves. Sonia de Assis and her colleagues observed that rats fed Omega-6 fatty, unhealthy food pass on an increased cancer risk to their children and grandchildren. Omega-6 fats are found in cheap, industrial oils such as soy, vegetable and corn oil.

Into the valley of the shadow of Codex

“The FDA has gone nuts…” says Augie in the title of his latest post about overreaching on the part of food regulators:

Picture via Augie's Journal

“…More and more letters like this one sent to Diamond Foods are being sent via certified mail and followed up by FDA agents and attorneys in their regional and district offices:

“Based on our review, we have concluded that your walnut products are in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act) and the applicable regulations in Title 21, Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR).

Massive snack-food recall on horizon

Thanks to Karen Selick for the heads up on this latest affront to the vast majority of North Americans who wager their personal health on the safety of processed foods. Here’s an excerpt from this National Post/Canwest news story.

“Canadian consumers could be facing an avalanche of food recalls after an ingredient used in thousands of processed foods was found to be contaminated with salmonella, government investigators said yesterday. The popular flavour enhancer hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP) is added to a wide range of processed foods, including dips, salad dressings, chips, sauces, hotdogs, soups and frozen dinners. Already, 56 products in the United States and two in Canada — chips and veggie dips — were recalled this week after salmonella was detected in the flavouring ingredient produced by a Nevada company….”