- The San Gabriel Valley Tribune editors joined their colleagues at the Contra Costa Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal in balking at local soda taxes in California. The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board also hasn’t been convinced by the tax campaign: They restated their opposition this week. When studies predict that people will only reduce their calorie intake by less than one percent of a usual day’s total, opposition shouldn’t be surprising.
- A Los Angeles Times columnist characterized a widely rejected study on biotech food as “weapons-grade junk science” in a column on California’s trial lawyer-enabling food labeling proposition. The columnist notes that the researcher who conducted the study, Gilles-Eric Seralini, might have had a motivation to engage in practices the European Food Safety Authority characterized as “insufficient scientific quality”: “the release of [Seralini’s] anti-genetic modification book and film, ‘Tous Cobayes’ (loosely translated: ‘We Are All Guinea Pigs’), coincided with the publication of the paper.”
- CCF International: Our efforts to fight the bogus notion of “food addiction” got our Senior Research Analyst on the BBC’s Newsnight, and a typical “press sluts” campaign against Pokémon by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (that they aren’t killing) led CCF to declare on Canada’s Sun News: “If PETA were a television show, it’d have been canceled at this point.” (We can’t cancel PETA, but you can sign our petition to strip the group of its animal shelter status.)
- CCF in the News: In Tacoma, Washington we’re objecting to claims that soda is a unique cause of obesity and local media are covering our objections to a Washington, D.C. suburb’s proposed regulation to “reduce detrimental food and beverage consumption” with the zoning code. Meanwhile, our HumaneWatch project serves as a resource for authors, state legislators, and agriculture media who want to get out the truth about the Humane Society of the United States (a vegan group not affiliated with your local pet shelter).
- CCF This Week: We expressed skepticism that there’s any “food movement” like Michael Pollan thinks exists, warned that schools banning “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos” might set a precedent for regulating supposedly “addictive” foods (namely, foods people like), and called out PCRM advisory board member and soda prohibitionist extraordinaire Andrew Weil for his dubious views on “integrative medicine,” which many doctors call bunk.
