• With your help - Free speech in health science may become a reality: The Free Speech about Science (FSAS) Act, HR 1364, would change FDA regulations so that legitimate, peer-reviewed scientific studies can be referenced without changing the food's regulatory category to an unapproved drug. This will protect access to scientific information, and will protect your right to know about the healthy benefits of food and food supplements. The bill amends the appropriate sections of current law to allow the flow of legitimate scientific and educational information while still giving FDA and FTC the right to take action against misleading information and against false and unsubstantiated claims.
• Obesity Surgery Even Worse than Previously Thought: "Researchers concluded that the adjustable gastric band surgery, which is growing in popularity in the United States, 'appears to result in relatively poor long-term outcomes.' The results 'are worse than we expected,' said Dr. Jacques Himpens ... lead author of the new study."
• Oakland officials threaten to shut down urban gardener growing food on her own land: The city of Oakland, Calif., which is marked largely by blight and crime, has decided to go after a backyard gardener for growing and occasionally selling the fruits of her labor. According to a recent report in the San Francisco Chronicle (SFC), Oakland city officials are summoning Novella Carpenter to either pay a costly permit fee and penalties for providing locals with backyard produce items like Swiss chard without government approval, or face city sanctions.
• Want to Burn Away Those Excess Pounds? Heed This Lesson From the Afghans... : The organs of the Canadians, Americans, and Europeans he treated were encased in fat. Afghan civilians and soldiers had little or no fat or adipose tissue underneath the skin. Patterson has become convinced that the effects of urbanization are making people everywhere in the world both fatter and sicker.
• The Surprising Benefits of Drinking This 'Unhealthy' Everyday Beverage...:
• Are New 'Healthier' Potato Chips Really Any Better For You?: "Making snacks with natural ingredients doesn't necessarily make them healthy, nutritionists and industry critics caution, even if they are potentially less bad. That includes potato chips."
• Do You Practice These 4 Habits of Some of the World's Healthiest People?: Eating a "Mediterranean diet" could prevent or even reverse metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors for heart disease and diabetes. Scientists believe that a Mediterranean-style diet has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects on your body.
• Last-minute budget deal narrowly avoids the Big Government shutdown America desperately needs to balance its budget: The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats want to spend us into oblivion while the Republicans only want to spend us into purgatory. The idea of actually running a balanced budget has never seriously occurred to either party. Government, after all, increases its popularity by confiscating money from some people and redistributing it to other people while keeping at least half of all that money for itself.
• What's Lurking in Your Meat and Poultry? Probably Staph: Researchers were surprised to find that nearly half of samples of beef, pork and poultry tested from popular grocery stores were contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) doesn't even monitor in the food source, because it's not known as a common food-borne pathogen.






