Congress poised to leave healthy meals for kids out of stop-gap funding measure

While Congress is poised to avert a government shutdown today by passing a short-term funding bill through December, it will fail to include a pathway to free healthy school meals for all students, a key priority of the Biden administration’s recently unveiled National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.

On hunger and health, can Biden top Nixon? 

Watergate’s long shadow obscures a Nixon achievement that should be celebrated: Improving the way America eats. 

Surprise! Supplement makers claim their products are effective against long Covid

It’s no surprise that in this confusing environment, with millions of patients desperate for help, some companies have taken advantage of how loosely dietary supplement claims are regulated to sell unproven long COVID treatments.

Now you see it, now you don’t

It’s long been held that the more general immune-enhancing characteristics of the century-old bacilli Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine might convey protection against diseases other than TB. Why not Covid-19?

Biden issues executive order promoting agriculture and food biotechnology

On September 12, 2022, President Biden issued an “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy.” While much of the Executive Order stresses health, medicine, energy and biological data, there are specific sections that apply to agriculture and food.

A historic opportunity to improve the science underlying federal nutrition efforts

Contradictory and headline-grabbing information about nutrition can lead to confusion about what to eat. Some of this confusion could be reined in by improving coordination and increasing investment in nutrition research. The second-ever White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, set to take place later this month, is an opportunity to advance those goals.

Targeting truth: gagging pharmacists in Missouri

There’s so much COVID-19 misinformation out there, it’s easy to become desensitized to it. But, a recently passed Missouri law (the Gag Rule) takes misinformation to a new height (low?) and may shock even the most cynical among us.

Turning up the pressure for front-of-package nutrition labeling

Congress missed a big chance on healthy school meals. They have one more shot to make it right.

In passing the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Congress failed to include key child nutrition provisions from last year’s House-passed Build Back Better Act. The Inflation Reduction Act is monumental legislation, to be sure, and will bring health care and drug costs down and invest in climate protection. But it left out our school children.

Making sense of science in the media: Spotting red flags

Many readers may not understand that few safeguards are in place to make sure that science is correctly interpreted and used once it is published. This post lists 10 common red flags in media stories, along with examples, that could alert readers to poor science usage.