1. In US News and World Report, they cover a publicity briefing by Greg Glassman, CEO of the Crossfit extreme exercise empire. Glassman is trying to generate some traction for his recent publicity stunt claiming he knows that soda causes diabetes, despite the fact that the evidence is similar to claiming spoons do. Yes, people with Type 2 diabetes are more likely to drink soda, but they also...well, you go ahead and make the other analogy, I don't need to spoon feed it to you.
Type 2 diabetes is directly related to obesity and that is simply related to calories. If we eliminated soda completely, it wouldn't reduce diabetes one bit. The Crossfit mogul would know that, except he also claims soda causes Type 1 diabetes - and thinks Pepsi doesn't cause either.
The journalist doesn't use all of what I told her about this weird Glassman character or his movement, but the fact that she uses anyone at all, rather than just parroting whatever the pageview gimmick is for many mainstream media health articles, shows that at least a journalist:
The American Council on Science and Health, an educational nonprofit, received such a letter because it has received grants from Coca-Cola in the past. Hank Campbell, the group’s president, says the grants had no conditions attached to them and accused Glassman and his supporters of "scaremongering.”
"More awareness is great but demonizing a product is not the solution to America’s obesity problem," Campbell says.
2. Will asbestos be the first casualty in the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform? On Science 2.0, Dr. Angela Logamasini discusses the implications of the new TSCA law. If you don't know it, asbestos is not actually banned, and that has been a real annoyance for environmental groups, who tried in 1991 and have lamented that pesky science prevented it ever since. Asbestos is actually the blanket term for a few things and obviously workers who used some of them unprotected decades ago had a greater incidence of things like mesothelioma, but that is because exposure matters. Like we have always said. Environmentalists instead insist any exposure is making a difference, which is homeopathy rather than science. Homeopathic claims are great for litigators who want to line their pockets, but lacking in fact.
Yet activists also love the flawed IARC approach that tells the public a hot dog is as toxic as plutononium - and TSCA can be misused if the EPA now takes its new authority to do what they failed to do in 1991 - because a judge demanded evidence that it was actually leading to a loss in human life.
What the ban would have done, our work showed, was increase things like automobile brake failures and those uses of asbestos couldn't possibly cause harm humans.
We supported TSCA, precisely because it needed reform to prevent strange bans created without an evidence-based methodology - but you can bet we are staying on top of it to make sure the list and priority, and how harm is determined, are evidence-based.
3. In the U.K.'s Daily Mail, Stacy Liberatore writes "Mystery of the terrible tasting greenhouse tomatoes SOLVED: Study finds lack of UV light alters the flavor - but there is a solution"
Purdue University hypothesized that because of the minimal amount of sunlight and the ultraviolet (UV) blocking properties of glass, tomatoes grown in greenhouses were not receiving the necessary volume of UV light, reports the American Council of Science and Health.
