In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that the just-unveiled New York edition of the Wall Street Journal doesn’t have to beat the New York Times in order for Journal owner Rupert Murdoch to accomplish his goal. Murdoch only has to make the Times bleed.
Tag: Guardian
Open systems, open society
Apple’s attempt to ban a Pulitzer-winning cartoonist from its iTunes Store is an extension of the same mindset that led it to keep Adobe’s Flash software off its new generation of closed devices — the iPhone, the iPod touch and the iPad. And it shows that Steve Jobs and company are poorly cast in their role as a savior of the struggling news business. Or so I write in the Guardian.
The mainstreaming of right-wing extremism
In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that the difference between right-wing and left-wing hate is that the former has moved into the heart of the Republican Party, whose leaders seem either not to understand or care about the possible consequences.
New evidence that fake food isn’t good for you
Recently I wrote a column for the Guardian criticizing Whole Foods for selling ketchup that contains high-fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, the synthetic sweetener that has been linked to a catastrophic rise in obesity and Type II diabetes.
Unfortunately, at the time I couldn’t find much in the way of evidence to suggest that HFCS is actually worse for you than plain old sugar. The main problem with HFCS, it seemed, was its ubiquity and low cost, the latter a function of massive federal subsidies for corn. No subsidies, no HFCS. No HFCS, no three-liter bottles of soda.
So I sat up and paid attention yesterday when I came across Elizabeth Cooney’s “Be Well” column in the Boston Globe. Cooney reported that scientists at Princeton University had found that rats fed HFCS gained much more weight than those fed sucrose, packed on abdominal fat (which is considered particularly unhealthy) and had higher levels of fat in their blood. The study was published in the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior.
A press release put out by Princeton includes more details. Here is a key excerpt:
“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”
The release goes on to say the study raises the strong possibility that HFCS is metabolized by the body differently from sucrose.
Hoebel’s methodology has come under fire, as critics say he and his colleagues were hazy about some key details, including how many calories the HFCS-consuming rats were getting as compared to their sucrose-eating cousins. Hoebel answers those criticisms in the Washington Post.
The Princeton study is not definitive, but it’s certainly suggestive. And it demonstrates that Michelle Obama’s crusade for healthy food could, if successful, have far more to do with keeping health-care costs under control than the bill signed by her husband last week.
We’ve already heard cries from the food industry and its defenders that government has no business regulating trans fats. Soon we’re going to hear it about HFCS as well.
But laboratory-created fake food is not a matter of consumer choice. These are dangerous substances that have been foisted on us by powerful corporations looking to save money. Keeping such substances out of the food supply would seem to be well within the purview of government regulation.
Photo (cc) by Jonathan Boeke and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
What health-care reform means to our family
In my latest for the Guardian, I write about what health-care reform means to our family — and, specifically, to our daughter, who will not have to worry being excluded from insurance because of her dwarfism.
The future of journalism will be local
In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual “State of the News Media” report, though valuable, doesn’t really capture what’s going on at the grassroots, where hyperlocal projects like the New Haven Independent and The Batavian are reinventing journalism every day.
Deval Patrick is not Barack Obama
In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that if Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick loses his re-election bid this fall, as seems very possible, it will tell us precisely nothing about President Obama, despite their surface similarities. The reason is that Patrick’s political troubles, largely of his own making, go back to the earliest days of his administration in 2007.
Moving beyond Al Gore
In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that Al Gore, his admirable qualities notwithstanding, has used up his political capital when it comes to climate change. By contrast, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina offers the hope of substantive progress.
The Republican God Squad
In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at the theocratic threat posed by Tim Pawlenty (“God’s in charge”), Mitt Romney and other potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates.
Making sense of the Amy Bishop story
In my latest for the Guardian, I warn of the danger that news organizations will try to get too far ahead of a sensational story.