On June 2nd, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed the “Docs versus Glocks” bill that requires doctors, emergency medical personnel and other health-care providers not to enter information about a patient’s gun practices into a database and refrain from asking about gun ownership unless they “in good faith [believe] that this information is relevant to the patient’s medical care or safety, or the safety of others.” In response, Bruce S. Manheim, Jr. and Douglas H. Hallward-Driemeier, the Washington lawyers for the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Family Physicians, and Florida Chapter of the American College of Physicians, wrote: “In violation of the U.S. Constitution, the law would … deprive patients of potentially life-saving information regarding safety measures they can take to protect their children, families and others from injury or death resulting from unsafe storage or handling of firearms,” “For these reasons, we intend to file a lawsuit” against this law.
New England Journal of Medicine to Supremes: Uphold Vermont Ban on Selling MD Prescription Data to Big Pharma
An editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine calls on the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Vermont law that requires pharmaceutical data mining companies to obtain physician’s consent before selling their prescription data to drug companies. “This undesirable practice is nothing more than commercial conduct—not speech,” the editors wrote, “and it is not in the best interests of the American people.”
Sweet Battles: Sugar Companies Sue Corn Processors
Last month, five more sugar companies and two trade associations joined the lawsuit the sugar industry had filed against the Corn Refiners Association to block its move to change the name of high fructose corn syrup to “corn sugar.” Meanwhile, the corn processors have launched an ad campaign that includes TV spots featuring a mom walking through cornfields declaring that whether corn sugar or cane sugar, “your body can’t tell the difference.” A recent study published in the medical journal Obesity found significantly higher levels of fructose in sweetened beverages than the amount listed on the label, leading the authors to conclude that actual fructose consumption may be higher than assumed.
Food Prices and Public Health Part 3: Impact of Subsidies and Speculation
Subsidies and food prices
Can the USDA put our tax money where they want our mouths to go?
Source: Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.[1]
The public subsidizes food producers in a variety of ways. Most directly, the United States Department of Agriculture pays a variety of subsidies to food producers – direct payments to farmers or landowners for growing or not growing certain crops; counter-cyclical payments that are paid when crop prices fall below a level set by Congress; market-loss payments that are distributed when prices fall as a result of economic changes; a crop insurance program that reimburses growers for weather-related and other losses.[2] These subsidies disproportionately benefit big food growers. According the to the Environmental Working Group’s Farm $ubsidy Database, the largest and wealthiest 10 percent of farm aid recipients received 74% of all farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009, with an annual average payment of $445,127 per recipient to this top tenth, compared to an average of $8,682 for the bottom 80 percent of farmer recipients.[2]
Another type of subsidy comes through safety net programs such as SNAP (formerly called Food Stamps) and the school food program. These programs feed hungry people but also provide a guaranteed market for food producers, limiting their vulnerability to economic downturns. In Fiscal Year 2009, federal spending on SNAP was about 54 billion dollars and on other food programs about $20 billion for a total of $74 billion.[3]
A variety of other public programs subsidize the food industry more indirectly. Tax laws that allow food (and other) manufacturers to claim advertising costs as business expenses means that tax payers are indirectly subsidizing the marketing efforts designed to persuade people to eat unhealthy products. A study by the National Economic Research Board found that the elimination of tax deductibility tied to fast food advertising would reduce childhood obesity at a rate of 5-7 percent.[4] The authors estimated that since the corporate income tax rate is 35 percent, the elimination of the tax deductibility of food advertising costs would be equivalent to increasing the price of advertising by 54 percent.
Laws that shield food manufacturers from liability for the health consequences of their products constitute another huge subsidy. According to the National Restaurant Association, 23 states have passed “Cheeseburger Bills,” which bar lawsuits against fast food companies for their contributions to obesity. As a result, food prices don’t include these “externalized” costs. Avoiding liability or penalties for food safety violations or escaping paying the costs of treating the victims of food outbreaks constitutes another externalized subsidy to the food industry. Unsafe food costs Americans $152 billion per year. As Marion Nestle has observed, “the high externalized cost of our present food system is a good reason to reconsider current food policies.”[5]
While more research is needed to calculate the full costs of all food subsidies, Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group estimates that the federal government paid out a quarter of a trillion dollars in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009.[6] The other types of subsidies such as tax deductions, lax regulation and liability protection make the full costs much higher.
How do these subsidies affect food prices? In general, subsidies lower the cost of the subsided products, especially in comparison to unsubsidized products that consumers could choose as an alternative. However, given the multiple sources of subsidies and the product-specific consequences, there is no simple or single answer to this question. Some analysts have pointed to the significant effects of one subsidy or another while others have disputed the claim that subsidies play a major role in food prices or health.
For example, in an analysis of the impact of federal subsidies to corn growers, Alicia Harvey and Timothy Wise at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, concluded that these policies provided high fructose corn syrups producers an implicit subsidy of $243 million dollars a year and more than $4 billion since 1986.[7] However, they concluded that HCFS subsidies are not the primary cause of soda overconsumption.
In my view, analyses of specific subsidy programs for specific products, while necessary to build a comprehensive body of evidence that can guide policy, miss the larger point of health impact. In almost all cases, subsidies are enacted at the behest of the food industry, not consumers or health advocates. Not surprisingly, their intended goal is to benefit the subsidized industry not to advance public health.
Given the central dynamics of the food industry in the last five decades – more industrialized production, higher profits for more processed and less healthy food, more advertising spending on less healthy than on healthy food, emphasis on national and global rather than local markets, heavy reliance on a few crops such as corn, wheat and soy – most industry-supported subsidies end up reinforcing rather than challenging the status quo. And from a health perspective, the most problematic element of the current status quo is that unhealthy food is cheaper and more available than healthy food. To change that dynamic will require a transformation in how government uses subsidies, not simply tinkering at the margins.
Currently, two disparate groups support large federal agricultural subsidies. Agribusiness wants to maintain the flow of public money that helps to maintain profitability while supporters of entitlement programs want to protect and expand programs such as SNAP, school meals and various rural programs. Together these constituencies have a powerful voice in Washington.
Similarly, opponents of the current pattern of subsidies include two groups with very different interests: health advocates who want to switch subsidies from less healthy to healthier food[8] and the most conservative Republicans who want to end or significantly shrink safety net programs and let free markets reign. Recently Republican House leader Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, told reporters, “We shouldn’t be giving corporate farms, these large agribusiness companies, subsidies. I strongly believe that.”[9] Ryan has also called for a 20 percent cut in SNAP funding, reductions amounting to $127 billion by the year 2021.[10]
From a public health perspective, an urgent priority is for advocates to develop strategies that can unite supporters of anti-hunger programs and those concerned about diet-related health conditions such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease without making unacceptable compromises with the food industry or the politicians who want to end entitlement programs. Forging such a policy agenda will require advocates to develop far more sophisticated understandings of the causes and consequences of rising food prices. Several of the alliances working on the 2012 Farm Bill such as the Community Food Security Coalitionand the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition are engaging their members in just such dialogues.
Speculation and food prices
At the Global Commodities Forum in Geneva in January 2011, hosted by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, Michael Dunn, a Commissioner of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), noted that commodity derivatives markets, places where financial instruments based on food commodities are traded, perform a “critical price discovery function.” He said the CFTC should ensure stable and orderly markets and not prevent or limit volatility that arises as a result of a change in market fundamentals.[11] But how does that financial goal affect the ability of the world’s population to get the food they need to sustain health?
Speculation can lead to increases in food prices when food producers from small farmers to multinational agribusiness corporations withhold products from the market in hopes of causing or benefiting from subsequent price increases. More indirectly, investors can buy “food futures” in commodity markets and hold on to these investments in the hope that as demand increases or supply falls, the re-sale price of the food future will increase, leading to more generous returns on their investments.
Some observers believe that the collapse of the housing and derivatives markets in the United States that began in 2006 encouraged speculative investors to move their money out of housing and real estate and into seemingly safer commodities markets, including energy, metals and food. In early 2008 such investments contributed to sharp increases in the price of food staples such as rice and wheat, as shown in Chart 1 below. After this bubble inevitably burst, food prices collapsed, further contributing to market volatility and disadvantaging the small producers least able to survive periods of market disruption.
Source: Ghosh J.[12]
As Susanne Amann and Alexander Jung observed last summer in the German news weekly Der Spiegel, investors are now “betting big again on commodities like wheat, coffee, rice and soybeans.”[13] “As a result,” they wrote, “prices are no longer determined by supply and demand, but by investment banks and hedge funds.” In 2009, Goldman Sachs earned $5 billion in profits from commodities speculation. Other financial institutions involved in commodities trading are Bank of America, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan, many of the same cast of characters who helped to precipitate the 2008 financial crisis. In fact, these banks have created new financial instruments known as collateralized commodities obligations, CCOs, which are similar to the subprime mortgage derivatives that helped to burst the housing bubble.
These developments have led some officials and advocates to call for tighter regulation of food speculation. In 1936, as part of the New Deal reforms, Congress passed the Commodities Exchange Act, restricting speculation in food products. In the 1990s, however, the financial industry successfully lobbied Congress to weaken these limits, leading to increased trading in agricultural products, led by Goldman Sachs.[13]
In a report published in Harper’s Magazine last July, Frederick Kaufman investigates the rise of the financialization of food commodities.[14] He concluded that the 80 per cent increase in world food prices between 2005 and 2008 suggests that investors will continue to invest in food commodities and quoted a hedge fund manager who wrote his clients that “the fundamentals argue strongly that these sectors have significant upside potential.”
Other analysts disagree. In a 2011 research report written for Deutsche Bank, Claire Schaffnit-Chatterjee concluded that deeper structural factors influencing food supply and demand were more important than speculation, which in her view generally follows rather than creates a price bubble.[15] She did note that since food has a low price correlation with other asset classes, “agricultural commodities are likely to remain an interesting instrument for portfolio diversification.”
Acknowledging this debate about the role of speculation, Olivier de Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, observed that volatility in food prices, viewed by market proponents as a necessary price correction, has a particularly disruptive impact on poor and food-insecure populations.[16] He argued that “reforming the global financial system should therefore be seen as part of the agenda to achieve food security, particularly within poor and food-importing countries.” By framing food security as a basic human right, he opens new avenues for the pursuit of affordable, healthy food.
In the fourth and final post on food prices and health, I will consider various strategies that have been proposed to better align food subsidies and health, reduce the adverse health consequences of food speculation and reverse the current situation in which unhealthy food is often cheaper than healthy food.
References
[1] Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Agricultural and Health Policies in Conflict How food Subsidies Tax our Health. 2011.
[2] Cook K. Government’s continued bailout of agribusiness. Environmental Working Group Farm $ubsidy Database.
[3] Richardson J. The Federal Response to Calls for Increased Aid from USDA’s Food Assistance Programs. Congressional Research Service, 7-5700 R41076, February 17, 2010.
[4] Chou S-Y, Rashad I, Grossman M. 2008.”Fast-Food Restaurant Advertising on Television and Its Influence on Childhood Obesity,” Journal of Law & Economics,2008; 51(4),599-618.
[5] Nestle M. Food is cheap at market but costs a lot elsewhere. San Francisco Chronicle, April 3, 20ll.
[6] Cook K. Government’s continued bailout of agribusiness. Environmental Working Group Farm $ubsidy Database.
[7] Harvie A, Wise TA. Sweetening the Pot. Implicit Subsidies to Corn Sweeteners and the U.S. Obesity Epidemic. Global Development and Environment Institute. Tufts University. February 2009.
[8] Bittman M. Don’t End Agricultural Subsidies, Fix Them. New York Times, March 1, 2011.
[9] Steinhauer J. Farm Subsidies Become Target Amid Spending Cuts. New York Times, May 6, 2011.
[10] Rosenbaum D. Ryan Budget Would Slash SNAP Funding by $127 Billion Over Ten Years Low-Income Households in All States Would Feel Sharp Effects. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, April 11, 2011.
[11] Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/us-mission/5409594103/in/set-72157625959659406/
[12] Ghosh J. Commodity Speculation and the Food Crisis. In Excessive Speculation in Agriculture Commodities: Selected Writings from 2008–2011, Lilliston B, Ranallo A, editors. Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, 2011., pp. 51-56.
[13] Amann S, Jung A. Speculators Rediscover Agricultural Commodities. Der Spiegel Online, July29, 20101.
[14] Kaufman F. The Food Bubble. Harper’s Magazine, July 2010, 2734.
[15] Schaffnit-Chatterjee C. Where are food prices heading? Deutsch Bank Research March10, 2011.
[16] De Schutter O. Food commodities speculation and food price crises. Briefing Notes 02, September 2010. United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
Image Credits
1. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
2. USDA
3. StephenZacharias via Flickr.
4. US Mission Geneva via Flickr.
Interview with Michael Schwalbe, Author of Smoke Damage
Michael Schwalbe is author of the recently published book Smoke Damage: Voices from the Front Lines of America’s Tobacco Wars (Madison, WI: Borderland Books, 2011). He is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Recently, Corporation and Health Watch editor Monica Gagnon interviewed Schwalbe about his new book. An edited version of the transcript is presented here.
CHW: Why did you want to write a book about the people affected by the tobacco industry?
MS: The initial impetus was watching my mother care for my father as he was dying of lung cancer caused by smoking. The experiences of caregivers under those conditions are not well documented.
We know a lot about how many people die, but we don’t know a lot about how the dying and the decline affect people around them. Watching what my mother went through for a year and a half—between the first diagnosis, treatments, and my father’s death—made me think that this was something that really needed to be documented.
CHW: How did you end up expanding from tobacco widows to all of the faces we see in your book now?
MS: As I thought more about it, it occurred to me that there are many categories of people in our society whose lives are changed in dramatic ways because of the health damage caused by tobacco use. I thought the book would be more compelling if I could document a wider range of the experiences related to tobacco-related disease.
CHW: Your book has a lot of images and seems like it’s really about giving the tobacco industry’s victims a human face. What did you hope to accomplish by that?
MS: I wanted to make the magnitude of the problem have more emotional weight. We can look at the statistics and say that 443,000 die every year [in the United States] of tobacco-related disease. We can say that 3.6 million suffer from some kind of chronic disease related to tobacco use. But those figures are overwhelming, so it’s hard to feel what they mean. If people don’t feel what those figures mean, as well as grasp them intellectually, I don’t think it motivates much action. That’s why I did the photographs and the interviews—to try to put the experience in people’s own words. In the book there’s a brief descriptive paragraph about each person and then a 500-word excerpt from the interview in which the person talks about his or her experience as related to tobacco and tobacco-related disease.
CHW: What was it like taking photographs of these people—meeting them and hearing their stories?
MS: Some of the stories were familiar to me from my own family, but I learned a lot about how people experience the problem in different ways, especially struggling with addiction. Some of the people I interviewed were still struggling to quit smoking. Talking to the litigators was new for me. I found it interesting to get their perspective on the industry and on efforts to use the courts to bring the industry to heel. Legislators were a new group too, and it was interesting to get their perspective on what they hoped to accomplish. It took me ten months to find three ex-tobacco farmers. These are people who the industry portrays as absolutely dependent on tobacco to make a living. Certainly there’s an economic dependency on the part of some farmers, but the ones I interviewed had decided that they didn’t want to be in it anymore, [not just] for market reasons [but also] for moral reasons. And they were doing fine as farmers. So this idea that farmers can’t get out of the industry is simply not true. I had never talked to farmers in that situation before, so that was new to me. In general, people in every category were cooperative and helpful.
CHW: How did you feel the experience was for them, to talk about their interaction with tobacco in this context?
MS: Part of what makes the material in the book powerful is that people spoke honestly about some very difficult experiences in their lives. I think it comes through in the text.
CHW: Talk about the economic and political interests that keep tobacco so widely available to the public.
MS: Most people know that the tobacco corporations have a clear interest in profits and in continuing to profit from selling an addictive and disease-causing product. Many government units also have a stake in deriving revenues from tobacco taxes and the Master Settlement Agreement. So I don’t think we’re going to see the government move any time soon to put the tobacco corporations out of business. And of course there are a host of secondary industries dependent on tobacco—advertising, marketing, retailing. It’s an industry that has its tentacles spread deeply throughout our society, throughout our economy and into government, so it’s a difficult industry to combat.
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CHW: What concerns should readers have about workers in the tobacco industry?
MS: Certainly we want to look for solutions that aren’t going to deprive ordinary folks of their livelihood. On the other hand, we don’t want to hold that out as a reason for protecting industries that do more harm than good. This is what the tobacco industry has done for a long time. We see it clearly in North Carolina. I say we should weigh tobacco industry jobs against the economic costs of the 12,000 North Carolinians who die every year from tobacco-related disease. In this state, it doesn’t take long for tobacco to kill more people than it employs. We also pay about $2.5 billion a year in health care costs because of tobacco—again, that’s just in North Carolina. So, while we need to be concerned with how people can make a living, we also need to be concerned with how people can live. In the long run, this is an industry that has to go by the wayside.
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CHW: How have the tobacco companies changed to adapt to the new environment they face?
MS: They’re amazing in their ability to adapt to new marketing restrictions. They can’t use terms like “light” and “mild” anymore to suggest that some cigarettes are safer than others, so they’ve started to color-code the packs to convey the same message. Now that more people can’t smoke in the workplace and in some public spaces, they’ve put money behind smokeless products that can be used anywhere. Tobacco products that can be used without giving off smoke are partly a way to keep people addicted. In fact, if you look at the advertising for some of these products, you’ll see that these aren’t offered as paths to quitting, but as alternatives to smoking if people can’t smoke in a particular situation.
In other parts of the world, tobacco industry marketing operates pretty much as it did in the U.S. thirty or forty years ago. In some parts of the world there’s also a considerable amount of illegal activity. In Africa in particular, cigarette giveaways and breaking up packs to sell one or two at a time are ways to get kids addicted. This is why comprehensive marketing bans are so important.
CHW: What do you think is the role of the tobacco industry in exacerbating health disparities?
MS: The industry is adept at targeted marketing. They know what kinds of messages appeal to which groups. Some of this developed over time; the classic example is probably the marketing of menthol cigarettes to African-Americans. Once that market began to take shape, it became something the industry could continue to exploit with its marketing imagery, selling Newports and Kools and other menthol cigarettes to African-Americans. What the industry cares about is selling its product, and it will find ways to sell product to different demographic groups based on the kinds of messages that are likely to be appealing to those groups. Marketing is a craft in that sense—a craft of figuring out how best to tap into the manufactured desires and insecurities of different groups of people and sell them a product that they’re led to believe will resolve their insecurities and satisfy their needs. In the larger sense, we’re seeing patterns develop today where it’s clear that the more education people have, the less likely they are to smoke; it’s almost a linear relationship. So we see much higher rates of smoking among high school dropouts and less-educated people in general. Rates are also higher among people in poverty. The industry takes advantage of the fact that these vulnerable populations exist. Marketing messages are tailored to these demographics, especially to young people, who are the industry’s main concern – “replacement smokers,” to use their language.
CHW: On the individual level, what can people do to influence this face of tobacco that you’ve portrayed in your book?
MS: When people ask this, I always tell them to look for a group to join so that they can benefit from other people’s experience and from the power of collective action. But whether you’re part of a group or speaking as an individual, there are certain kinds of policies that we know work and need to be lobbied for. This means bringing pressure to bear on legislators. I also tell people that a good way to pull resources away from the industry, if only in a small way, is to quit smoking. Every pack of cigarettes bought gives the industry money to continue to promote its products, and so it’s a small act of individual resistance to withdraw support from the industry, even at that level of not buying its products. Most CHW readers probably aren’t smokers, but still they can use these kinds of arguments to encourage others not just to quit smoking, but to quit giving the industry money to carry on its destructive behavior.
CHW: What about the role of the tobacco survivors in helping to mobilize people?
MS: I think it can be effective, but it’s a small effort in the face of a still-powerful industry. Education is important, and that’s one of the roles survivors can play. But policy is important too. We need policies and laws that restrict the industry’s behavior. That’s what’s crucial. So my hope is that when the survivors take their message out, they’re not just saying, “You shouldn’t smoke,” but rather, “Not only should you not smoke but you need to press your representatives for policies that will, in the long run, keep other people from becoming addicted.” We especially need policies that give people additional incentive to quit. Smoke-free air laws and higher taxes on tobacco products have this effect.
CHW: What about a grassroots movement against tobacco? Do you think that public interest on this issue has given way to newer issues or is there still a vibrant movement against the tobacco industry? If not, how would you suggest we re-mobilize the grassroots movement?
MS: The movement has taken different forms over the years. Originally there was a lot of mobilization around control of advertising and passing smoke-free air laws. We’ve still got a ways to go on the smoke-free air laws. About half the states do not have comprehensive indoor smoke-free air laws, so there’s clearly work to be done in those states—and people are doing it. There’s also been an institutionalization of the movement, which has meant less energy at the grassroots level and more professionalization. Most states have tobacco-control agencies and branches that work on the issue. And so yes, in places where smoke-free air laws have been won there has been a predictable easing-up of effort. Now it seems like, “OK we’ve won, we’ve got smoke-free air laws. We can relax.”
On the other hand, there are strengths to institutionalization. Thousands of people have full-time professional careers in tobacco control, and they’re tremendously knowledgeable. They understand tobacco industry strategies and how to counter those strategies, and that’s a good thing. The institutionalization of the movement is a two-edged sword. Yes, some of the grassroots energy has been dissipated, but at the same time we’ve developed a stable base of expertise and personnel. In general, grassroots groups working with tobacco-control professionals have been extremely effective in promoting smoke-free air laws and other practices that have helped reduce tobacco-related disease.
Another problem is that movement organizations can get caught up in the issue of the day, so I think lately there’s been some displacement of public health energy from tobacco to obesity, for instance. Obesity is a serious problem, of course, and needs citizen energy as much as tobacco. But I think people have to remember that the tobacco problem is not behind us. That’s part of what I wanted Smoke Damage to do—keep public awareness of the issue alive and help people understand that there’s much more that needs to be done. We can’t be complacent. If politicians are going to do the right thing, grassroots groups need to bring pressure to bear. As far as reigniting the movement, people have to understand that corporations act in the interest of profit-making, not public health, and that if we’re going to protect health, we’re going to have to confront corporate power. Maybe what we’ll see is a kind of an enfolding of grassroots tobacco-control efforts into a larger anti-corporate power movement directed against corporate interests that promote obesity, tobacco use, and other kinds of unhealthy behaviors.
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CHW: Where do you think there is potential for bringing health advocates together across these issues?
MS: Some of this is going on already. Maybe the uniting vision needs to be one that looks at all the determinants of public health and asks, “What needs to be challenged?” If people understand the threat that corporate power poses, that could be an umbrella under which people come together. Industry, whether fast food or tobacco, wants to define public health problems as stemming from individual choice. They benefit from promoting the notion that this is all about individual choice. They don’t want us to see our national health problems as consequences of how corporations engage in marketing, lobbying, buying political influence through campaign contributions, and shaping public opinion. So maybe that awareness would help people come together. It’s work that needs to be done, and sometimes you have to rise above your particular issue to see what the issues have in common, whether it’s obesity, alcoholism, or tobacco-related disease.
Image Credits:
1. Smoke Damage
2. Sherryl Kleinman
Does Coca Cola Mislead Consumers?
A nutrition expert at Health Canada, that nation’s health ministry, has charged that Coca-Cola Company misleads consumers into thinking its Vitaminwater line of drinks is a healthy beverage option.
“I find calling these products ‘waters’ is misleading,” said the official, “given that they have sugars added to them. Perhaps the word ‘waters’ could be put in quotes.” Vitaminwater contains 32 grams of sugar per 20-ounce bottle. Earlier this year, Canadian law firms in Calgary and Vancouver filed class action lawsuits against Coca Cola for misleading advertising of Vitaminwater. In January 2011, the Advertising Standards Authority, the ad regulatory agency in the United Kingdom, said Coca-Cola broke ad rules when its ads described its popular line of flavored water products as “delicious and nutritious.” The Authority ordered Coke to stop making that claim.
Cars to Get New Fuel Economy Stickers and Mobile Medical Options
New car buyers will have some additional options in the future. Beginning in 2013, EPA has mandated new fuel economy labels that allow buyers to make more informed environmental choices.
In a separate development, Ford has announced the future cars will have medical monitoring options. Noting that 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day and 26 million Americans have diabetes, Ford is developing cars that can monitor blood sugar as well as heart rate that could warn of heart attack, and track breathing patterns for asthmatics or pollen counts for allergy sufferers.
Corporations and Health Watch 