Tuesday Afternoon Sampler Platter

by: JayinPortland

Tue Mar 17, 2009 at 12:00:00 PM PDT

• An op-ed in today's San Francisco Chronicle takes on the way our government develops dietary guidelines.  Ouch -

  Here is a daily diet that meets [current] nutrition guidelines: Breakfast: 1 cup Fruit Loops; 1 cup skim milk; 1 package M&M milk chocolate candies; fiber and vitamin supplements. Lunch: Grilled cheddar cheeseburger. Dinner: 3 slices pepperoni pizza, with a 16-ounce soda and 1 serving Archway sugar cookies.

  This helps explain why 12-year-old schoolchildren develop thickening of their carotid arteries to the brain, and 80 percent of 20-year-old soldiers, dying in combat, are found to have coronary artery heart disease.

• Idaho may become the next state to change assets tests in order to allow more people to become eligible for food stamps.

• The Nature Conservancy purchased the 4,136-acre Shasta Big Springs Ranch in California, including the entire 2.2-mile length of Big Springs Creek, in an effort to restore salmon in the Klamath River system.

• A group of medical and fisheries experts in Canada are making a health and environmental argument to reduce fish consumption in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

• Is the Grocery Manufacturers Association part of a frightful (boo!) "socialist experiment", too?  Or are they just hypocrites?

  Although a spokesperson for the Grocery Manufacturers Association broadly welcomed the news that the legislation had been put forward, he criticized the proposal that industry should pay for plant inspections. He told FoodNavigator-USA.com: "We believe that food safety is a right that all Americans have...and that it should be paid for by Congress appropriating general funds."

  How about paying some taxes then, guys?