Weston A. Price Foundation filed a lawsuit today against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The lawsuit seeks to compel the FDA to provide a substantive response to the Citizen Petition filed by Weston A. Price Foundation on August 8, 2008, which challenged the FDA’s Final Rule that allows…
Food Labeling
If you’re trying to avoid high fructose corn syrup — as well you should be — one of the products you’d probably gravitate to is General Mills Vanilla Chex with natural vanilla flavor and “no high fructose corn syrup” (one of several additives it claims not to contain on the front of the box). But before you buy it, confident…
For a long time the word “natural” was perhaps the most overhyped and ambiguous term to be used by the food industry. But it looks like that may be changing, despite the failure of the Food and Drug Administration to give it a clear-cut definition. The latest indication of that is the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the Center…
Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot about “food fears.” In the past few months, for example, we’ve seen a couple of university “studies,” both funded by the Corn Refiners Association, which represents makers of high fructose corn syrup, that suggested that consumers harboring such fears are really ill-informed or don’t deserve to be taken seriously by the food industry. But…
We’ve talked about the risk posed to babies by the presence of whey protein concentrate, an “excitotoxin” containing free glutamic acid, in the “Good Start” products currently being marketed by Gerber as a preventive for childhood allergies (a claim now being disputed in a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission). In this one, we’d like to talk about two other…
Your Turn to Comment on FDA’s Proposed Changes to Labeling Rules We’re gaining momentum in the fight to change the labeling of added sugar on nutrition labels. As you may know, more and more food manufacturers are leaving HFCS out of their foods. Most recently, the FDA announced proposed changes to the nutritional information on product labels that would include…
The power of well-informed consumers to reverse harmful food industry practices has once again been demonstrated by the response of a major company to the concerns of its customers. The company is General Mills, which has come out with a TV commercial proclaiming that “What matters most should always come first – which is why we use whole grains in…
When we refer to “a study” done at some prestigious university, we’re usually talking about scientific research in which the effects of a particular substance on animal or human subjects have been carefully evaluated over a period of time, and then published in a peer-reviewed professional journal. A number of such studies cited in this blog, for example, have suggested…
In response to a backlash from consumers, a growing number of food and beverage companies have changed their recipes to remove industrial sweeteners that people find objectionable. We’ve named High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) as the most important ingredient to avoid, and you listened. Furthermore, concerned consumers are asking businesses to remove it from their products. The food and beverage industry…
Yesterday at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, First Lady Michelle Obama made a comment about high fructose corn syrup that has raised the ire of The Corn Refiners Association. According to the White House pool report, Mrs. Obama told her guest chef, celebrity chef Marc Murphy: “Our bodies don’t know what to do with high fructose corn syrup…