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Opinion

Commentary, columns and letters to the editor.

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6 of the Most Dangerous Ways to Try and Lose Weight

LabDoor lists diet trends it says carry real harm: unverified weight-loss pills tied to stroke and liver injury, the grapefruit diet's drug interactions, the cotton ball diet's obstruction risk, caffeine-based plans, and the Master Cleanse.

Opinion

5 Disturbing Facts Big Food Doesn't Want You to Know

Martha Rosenberg argues that food scandals fade from public memory while little changes, citing mercury in tuna and the return of pink slime. She opens her list with nitrite and nitrate meat preservatives, which researchers have known since the 1970s form nitrosamines in the body.

Apr 14, 2016

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5 Ways to Make Diet Resolutions Doable Any Time of Year

HealthyWage co-founder Jimmy Fleming lists five elements of a successful weight-loss push, starting with mapping out specific goals and dates: spend ten minutes planning, write it down or email it to someone, and set a realistic first target about a month out.

Feb 16, 2016

Comments

This will be a disaster for consumers

A fundraising appeal from an organic advocacy group, citing defeats in the California, Washington and Oregon GMO labeling initiatives and a coming Senate push on H.R. 1599, and asking readers to help raise about $15,000 before midnight.

Sep 30, 2015

Letter to Editor

To the Editor: "Unhygienic Egg" Story is also Untrue

A letter to the editor disputing an earlier article on bird flu, arguing that FDA salmonella rules and federal inspections already cover commercial egg farms and that USDA's findings of the virus in small backyard flocks undercut blaming high-volume production.

Apr 22, 2015

Letter to Editor

Letter to the editor: Water fluoridation is not based on science

A reader's letter arguing that the fluorosilicic acid used to fluoridate water is an unregulated, untested hazardous waste product and that medicating the public without informed consent amounts to malpractice.

Mar 1, 2015

Comments

Shocking Facts About the Meat Industry

Mercola argues the industrial feedlot model itself makes CAFO beef inferior, tracing antibiotic-resistant disease, mad cow and chronic wasting disease to industrial farming. He cites one estimate that up to 13% of Alzheimer's cases may be mad cow infection from contaminated meat.

Nov 25, 2014

Comments

Join the boodle boycott

A press release from rice company Amira citing a Journal of Nutrition study in which women eating instant noodles twice a week were 70 percent more likely to have heart, weight and cholesterol problems, and pitching basmati rice as the healthier alternative.

Aug 21, 2014

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Will Drinking Diet Soda Help You Lose Weight?

An industry-funded study claims diet soda drinkers lose weight faster than people who drink no soda at all. Mercola counters with 30 years of research suggesting artificial sweeteners stimulate appetite and carb cravings, and studies linking diet drinks to stroke and cancer risk.

Aug 15, 2014

Letter to Editor

Letter to editor: Ramazzini Caution

A letter from the Methanol Institute's chief executive disputing an earlier article on aspartame, citing a U.S. Pathology Working Group review that attributed the Ramazzini Foundation's tumor findings to respiratory disease in its rat colony.

Jul 22, 2014

Comments

Label Review Reveals Another Reason FDA Guidance Won’t Stop Misuse of Antibiotics in Livestock

A Food & Water Watch review of the 400-plus products covered by FDA guidance GFI #213 found 89 percent of the antibiotics it discourages for growth promotion can still be given to healthy animals for disease prevention or control, leaving only 23 drugs with no nontherapeutic use.

Mar 11, 2014

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Allergy Alert Issued On Undeclared Peanut Allergen In Dairy Rich Chocolate Ice Cream

Ice Cream Specialties of Merrillville, Indiana is recalling 56-ounce cartons of Dairy Rich Chocolate Ice Cream, UPC 0-71580-08103-1, best used by June 14, 2015, after peanut butter ice cream was mistakenly packaged in them. No illnesses have been reported.

Feb 17, 2014

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Are You Eating These Unsavory Ingredients? Part Two

Part two weighs high fructose corn syrup against artificial sweeteners, citing a Miami study linking a daily diet soda to 61 percent higher heart attack or stroke odds and a Harvard study tying one sugary drink a day to 20 percent more heart disease. It then turns to “meat glue.”

Feb 17, 2014

Comments

Are You Eating These Unsavory Ingredients? Part One

Two years after pink slime drove public revulsion, this piece flags azodicarbonamide, a dough conditioner also used in yoga mats and shoe soles. It is banned in Europe and Australia, and CSPI warns it yields the carcinogen urethane when baked into bread.

Feb 17, 2014

Comments

Are You Eating These Cruel Products? Part 2

This second installment describes selective breeding and growth chemicals that leave factory-farmed turkeys unable to walk or reproduce, chickens prone to sudden "flip over" death, and pigs on ractopamine too muscle-bound to stand back up.

Jan 6, 2014

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Are You Eating These Cruel Products? Part One

Martha Rosenberg describes factory farming practices, focusing on calves taken from their mothers at birth as a byproduct of dairy. Veterinarian Dean Wyatt testified that bob veal calves reach slaughterhouses weak and injured, wait 12 to 18 more hours without food, and some die of dehydration.

Jan 6, 2014

Letter to Editor

Letter to Editor: European "Fructose Health Claim" as of 2014

A reader's letter pointing out that the European Union approved a health claim, effective 2014, for foods substituting fructose for glucose or sucrose, and objecting that it ignores fructose's metabolic effects at typical intakes.

Oct 15, 2013

Comments

How Do We Deal With Our Cravings?

Psychiatrist Omar Manejwala tells Martha Rosenberg that cravings for food, exercise or sex arise in brain regions similar to those behind drug and alcohol cravings and can wreck lives just as thoroughly, and that neither yields to willpower alone but to a new way of living.

May 4, 2013

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