Remember all those studies that show a direct correlation between the number of hours kids watch TV and their weight? The conclusions of these studies all warn that too much television leads to an all too sedentary life, which leads to obesity.

Well. Today a study was released which concluded that it’s not the hours of TV, but the number of junk food commercials! Oh, those savvy junk food marketers. Did you know that by the time a child is 5 years old, they have seen an average of more than 4,000 television commercials for food annually? During Saturday morning cartoons, children see an average of one food ad every five minutes! And up to 95 percent of those ads are for junk foods.

Click here to continue.

My oh my. Things like this make you wonder what our federal regulatory bodies are actually good for. This Friday, the FDA reversed their decision that Bisephenol-A (BPA) is safe. However, because the chemical is classified as an “indirect food additive” in the “generally recognized as safe” category, the FDA says they are powerless to regulate it!

Ah, don’t you just know the food industry is loving that little loophole right about now?

Click here to continue.

Maybe you don’t know who David Gumpert is, but I’d be willing to bet money you know who Joel Salatin is. In addition to being a self-described Christian environmentalist libertarian lunatic farmer, my hero, and the author of one of my most controversial guest posts, Joel Salatin also loaned his pen out to David Gumpert by writing the foreword to Mr. Gumpert’s recent book, The Raw Milk Revolution.

That’s quite a shining endorsement. David Gumpert is a journalist focusing in the area of health care, and he’s been blogging at The Complete Patient for nearly 4 years. His book chronicles the growing battle between the industrialized food system (propped up by the government and law enforcement personnel) and the local food movement (represented by devotees to raw milk). It’s an eye opener.

Click here to continue.

Pernicious ads saturate children’s media. Yes, they’re advertising toys (truly a bane to any parent’s existence). But they’re also spending billions of dollars advertising industrial waste products which have been repackaged in colorful containers and marketed as food.

Generally speaking, I like Michael Pollan’s rule regarding food advertising: if you see a food advertised, don’t buy it. That’s because if a food has advertising dollars behind it, chances are good that it’s an industrialized food product rather than Real Food. A good exception to this rule are the advertisers at Real Food Media which I promote on this site — each and every one of these producers has a commitment to creating healthful, ecologically-sustainable food.

Yesterday, the FTC released a report from a hearing on marketing food to kids, and my reaction is mixed.

Click here to continue.

Today, scientists gave us even more ammunition to use in the fight against bisephenol A (BPA) — the synthetic estrogen present in many plastics and packaged foods. Ever since low levels of BPA were shown to be toxic to mice in 1997, the chemical has been steadily in the news as researchers around the world keep unlocking the many ways that it leaches into our foods. From today’s press release:

Click here to continue.