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More Empty Recommendations on Junk Food Marketing to Children

May 16, 2012, By Michele Simon, CHW Contributing Writer

Cross posted from Center for Food Safet y . Institute of Medicine Gives Big Food Another Deadline – or else! This week, the nation’s top public health experts gathered at a much-trumpeted obesity conference hosted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called Weight of the Nation . (A quick glance at the agenda reveals nothing that would even begin to challenge the food industry.) Released at this bland event was an equally uninspired report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM, an advisory arm of Congress) called, Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: Solving the Weight of the Nation. [More]

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Commentary/Analysis

Obesity Prevalence and Costs Rise; House of Representatives and Supreme Court Hamstring Fight Against Obesity

May 9, 2012, By Nicholas Freudenberg, CHW Contributing Writer

A new report to be published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine estimates a 33 percent increase in obesity prevalence and a 130 percent increase in severe obesity prevalence over the next two decades. By 2030, according to this forecast, 42 percent of Americans will be obese and 11 percent severely obese. The authors conclude that...[More]

Commentary/Analysis

New Report on Policies to Slow Down Fast Food

May 2, 2012, By Monica Gagnon, Nicholas Freudenberg and Corporate Accountability International

On the heels of a new study in the Journal of Health Economics , which finds that the U.S. spends more than $190 billion a year on medical costs associated with obesity , Corporate Accountability International and Dr. Nicholas Freudenberg and Monica Gagnon of The City University of New York have released a report that will serve as a tool to...[More]

Commentary/Analysis

China’s Choices on Autos to Shape Global Health

Apr 25, 2012, By Nicholas Freudenberg, CHW Contributing Writer

A recent trip to China has persuaded me that the choices the Chinese people and government make about consumption, health and economic development will shape global patterns of chronic disease and injuries for the rest of this century. Last week, I wrote about Coca Cola and PepsiCo’s plans to encourage increased sugary beverage consumption...[More]

Commentary/Analysis

Coke and Pepsi in China: the New Opium Trade?

Apr 18, 2012, By Nicholas Freudenberg, CHW Contributing Writer

In 1842, the United Kingdom and the Qing Dynasty of China signed the Treaty of Nanjing to end the first Opium War. A few years earlier, concerned about its trade imbalance with China, Great Britain began to export opium from India to China in order to cover its growing trade deficit generated by British imports of Chinese silk and tea. China...[More]