public health

The USDA’s acting chief scientist, Chavonda Jacobs-Young, has publicly criticized the World Health Organization’s updated recommendations for curbing antibiotic use on farms, citing poor science.

A USDA report says that when food companies reformulate their products to reduce the salt and sugar content, the fat content, which can raise blood cholesterol, tends to go up, says the Washington Post.

A study of 14 participants in the "Biggest Loser" TV show indicates that plenty of physical activity — "much more of it than public health guidelines suggest — is the key to preventing weight gain after significant weight loss, says the New York Times. "On average, those who managed to maintain a significant weight loss had 80 minutes a day of moderate activity, like walking, or 35 minutes a day of vigorous exercise, like running."

Three out of four farmers and farmworkers say they have been affected directly by opioid abuse, according to a survey commissioned by the two largest U.S. farm groups.

Newly released documents from the 1960s show that the sugar industry funded research on sugar and cardiovascular health “and then buried the data when it suggested that sugar could be harmful,” says the New York Times.

The director of the UN International Agency for Research on Cancer rebutted criticism of his agency’s listing of glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world, as probably carcinogenic to humans, saying the criticism included “repeated misrepresentations” of the IARC’s deliberations.

The Democratic leader on the Senate Health Committee wrote FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb to complain of an unreasonable delay in updating the Nutrition Facts label that appears on every package of food.

With an eye toward the 2018 farm bill, congressional backers of regional food marketing efforts filed bills in the House and Senate that would expand local and direct sales of food, which were estimated at $8.7 billion in 2015.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is expected to vote next Tuesday on an ordinance that would require large grocers in the city to report on antibiotics used in producing the meat they sell, says the San Francisco Examiner. The information would be made public in an effort “to use the power of the consumer to force marketplace change.”

The Food and Drug Administration will aim to begin enforcement around May 7, 2018, of the long-delayed requirement that chain restaurants, grocery stores, and convenience stores put calorie counts on their menus, according to an agreement reached in federal court. The target date is in line with a statement by FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb a month ago that the agency will be providing guidance to retailers so they will be ready to comply in May 2018.

Fourteen of the top 25 restaurant chains in the United States are telling farmers to restrict the routine use of antibiotics in chickens, compared with nine a year ago, according to the annual Chain Reaction report. “While restaurant chains made great progress on chicken, the groups found that there were no new commitments to limit antibiotic use in beef and pork.”

The U.S. appeals court in San Francisco ruled that the city’s ordinance requiring health warnings on display advertisements for sugar-sweetened drinks is a violation of the Constitution’s freedom of speech protections. A lawyer for the Washington Legal Foundation told the San Francisco Chronicle that the ruling, by recognizing “the right not to speak,” puts a cloud over government efforts to require labeling of foods made with GMO ingredients.

Facing a proposed budget cut, an Interior Department agency told the National Academy of Sciences to stop work on a study into the health risks faced by Appalachian residents who live near mountaintop removal coal-mining sites, said the Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette-Mail.

A group of Democratic Senators, led by Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico, introduced a bill to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos over health concerns, after the EPA refused to take it off shelves earlier this spring. “Udall's bill calls for the EPA to conduct a broad review of the use of the pesticide to determine which groups are most vulnerable to its harmful effects,” says Reuters.

A veteran consumer advocate and public health official, Dr. Peter Lurie, a physician by training, is the new executive director and president of the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest. Lurie will succeed Michael Jacobson, a co-founder of CSPI in 1971, said the watchdog group, which is suing the FDA over its delay of menu labeling.

Six state prosecutors from New York, Maryland, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia are joining environmental and social advocacy groups in a lawsuit to push the EPA to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos. "It is EPA's responsibility to protect Americans from unsafe chlorpyrifos residues on food because of the potential neuro-developmental and other adverse health effects caused by exposure," the prosecutors said in their filing, according to Reuters.