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TweetApril 30, 2012, China Millman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Buzzword: High-fructose corn syrup
The Mystery: Is high-fructose corn syrup responsible for the obesity epidemic, or isn’t it? Is it worse for us to eat than sugar? Should we avoid it in the grocery store or is it really just the same as sugar?
The Expert: Frank Hu, M.D., Ph.D., professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Channing Lab and Brigham and Women’s Hospital; and director of the Boston Obesity Nutrition Research Center, …

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TweetThe Philadelphia Inquirer, Alfred Lubrano, October 31, 2010
Mold grows thick and black on the walls of Celeata Bailey’s Norris Square bedroom.
Because most of the ceiling is missing, Bailey, 21, gets soaked in bed when it rains.
Her family puts up duct tape to keep the bathroom wall from collapsing. Raw sewage burbles in the basement, and the family stores surgical masks in the kitchen for anyone who has to descend into its putrid depths.
Bailey’s poverty is evident throughout the house, which sits in the First Congressional District, the second-hungriest in America, …

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The Huffington Post, Gordon Campbell, October 28, 2010
New York City has an obesity problem and it’s hurting our children. Almost 40% of New York City public school children in kindergarten through eighth grade are overweight or obese. Obesity rates are substantially higher in low-income neighborhoods like Harlem and Corona, Queens where the percentages of obese or overweight children are 48% and 51% respectively. It is telling that consumption of sugar-packed drinks is consistently higher in those neighborhoods.
This is why Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. David Paterson are seeking permission …

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TweetLos Angeles Times, Karen Kaplan, October 26, 2010
High-fructose corn syrup is often singled out as Food Enemy No. 1 because it has become ubiquitous in processed foods over about the last 30 years – a period that coincides with a steep rise in obesity. One of the primary sources of HFCS in the American diet is soda – in fact, many public health advocates refer to soda as “liquid candy.”
That nickname is more apt than advocates realized, according to a study published online this month by the journal Obesity.
Researchers from …

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TweetCleveland.com, Evelyn Theiss, October 24, 2010
Move over, trans fat. There’s a new nutritional pariah.
It’s high-fructose corn syrup, a moniker that has become so unappealing that the industry trade group behind it — the Corn Refiners Association — made a bid to the Food and Drug Administration in September to change the name to “corn sugar.”
The group says that “corn sugar” is more accurate, because “high-fructose corn syrup” incorrectly implies that the product, which is used in foods as a sweetener, is high in fructose when actually its proportion of …

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TweetSeptember 14, 2010
Press release from Corn Refiners Association to try to get the public to eat more HFCS by changing its name…
In an effort to help clarify the labeling of food products for consumers, the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) today petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow manufacturers the option of using ‘corn sugar’ as an alternative name for high fructose corn syrup.
“Consumers need to know what is in their foods and where their foods come from and we want to be clear with them,” said CRA …

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TweetLos Angeles Times, Elena Conis, August 23, 2010
For parents looking to sneak some nutrition into their kids’ school lunches, brightly packaged fruity snacks — many of which promise they’re the equivalent of a serving of fruit or more — are undoubtedly tempting. After all, the plastic-wrapped bars, sticks, rolls and strips contain no pits, seeds or cores and require no washing, peeling or slicing. And kids tend to eat them without any fuss.
But convenience aside, parents shouldn’t kid themselves. “They’re not as good as eating regular fruit,” no matter the …

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TweetLos Angeles Times, David Lazarus, June 29, 2010
What to do about the obesity epidemic? Here’s a thought: Substitute “tobacco” for “junk food.” That provides a pretty clear road map about what government authorities should be doing to safeguard public health.
Unfortunately, officials are instead just reheating the same old leftovers.
Dietary guidelines issued recently by the U.S. Department of Agriculture basically say Americans need to ease up on the salt, sugar and saturated fats, and instead eat more fruits and veggies.
This is the same advice given by the department three decades ago. …

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FOR much of 2009, Michael Locascio, an executive at ConAgra Foods, watched with concern as the bad news about high-fructose corn syrup kept coming.

In January, there were studies showing that samples of the sweetener contained the toxic metal mercury. Then came a popular Facebook page that was critical of the syrup. By year-end, there were about a dozen spoofs on YouTube mocking efforts by makers of high-fructose corn syrup to show that science is on their side.
But it was pleading comments like this one, from a devoted ConAgra  customer, …

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Between them, Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey have worked on Wall Street, traveled the world and taught school from East Africa to Ecuador. Now they make lunch for a living.
Friends since they met in business school at the University of California, Berkeley, Ms. Richmond and Ms. Tobey founded Revolution Foods Inc. to ride a political and economic wave: surging support for healthier food in school cafeterias.
Federal nutrition guidelines require subsidized school lunches to meet benchmarks on calories and fat, but they do not require that foods be whole, local, …