Free Republic

The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on Friday emphasized the need for the group to institute “population behavior change” in order to engineer healthier Americans.DGAC Chair Barbara Millen said the upcoming report would serve as the “foundation for public policy and food nutrition, physical activity, and health-related areas.” The group will release new recommendations for federal food policy in the 2015 report.Millen said the “potential is vast” for their recommendations, which deal with everything from “sustainability” in the food supply to “carbon footprints,” food deserts, alcohol consumption, and obesity “interventions.”“From our food programs, WIC [Women, Infants, and Children], SNAP, and so...

It killed 695,000 people in the EU last year. But despite restaurant bans and gruesome health labels, the number of smokers is hardly going down. A European Commission survey published for the UN's international anti-smoking day on Thursday (31 May) shows that 28 percent of the EU population smokes today compared to 29 percent in 2009. The number is still going up in the Czech Republic, Finland and Slovenia. Another 21 percent used to smoke but say they have given up. The typical smoker's profile is unflattering: it is the most prevalent among young men aged 15 to 54 who...

North Carolina officials have said there was a misunderstanding when a preschooler’s homemade lunch was sent home for not meeting certain nutritional requirements, but now a second mother from the same school has come forward exclusively to The Blaze to say the same thing happened to her daughter. Diane Zambrano says her 4-year-old daughter, Jazlyn, is in the same West Hoke Elementary School class as the little girl whose lunch gained national attention earlier this week. When Zambrano picked Jazlyn up from school late last month, she was told by Jazlyn’s teacher that the lunch she had packed that day...

The other day our sister newspaper, the Gloucester County Times, reported on a raid at a fraternity house at Rowan University where — get ready for a shock — some college kids were drinking. About 100 of the kids were underage and will face charges. Believe it or not, that incident has its roots in the same problem that led to the controversy over the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska. That problem lies in the way the federal government distributes highway funding: poorly. It’s obvious in the case of the bridge that would have connected the city of Ketchikan,...

CNSNews.com) – The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget will cause large and persistent yearly deficits that will push the public debt to $20.8 trillion by 2021. “Federal debt held by the public would double under the President’s budget, growing from $10.4 trillion (69 percent of GDP) at the end of 2011 to $20.8 trillion (87 percent of GDP) at the end of 2021,” the CBO said in its March 18 analysis of Obama’s 2012 budget. This means that the debt incurred as a result of Obama’s planned decade of deficit spending would be worth...

"Thanks to the GOP takeover of the House, the odds of such legislation advancing have markedly increased. The new chairman of the House Judiciary committee is Lamar Smith of Texas, who previously introduced a data retention bill. Sensenbrenner, the new head of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, had similar plans but never introduced legislation. (It's not purely a partisan issue: Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, was the first to announce such a proposal.) Police and prosecutors are the biggest backers of data retention. FBI director Robert Mueller has said that forcing companies to store those records...

The Brut ad features three men ogling a woman in a bikini before concluding with the message: “Brut Code #85 Spot & share”. The video has been labelled as sexist by commentators. One complaint to the Advertising Standardas Board said: I am in the obvious target audience of men aged 18-30 and am still disgusted at the lack of decency shown by any of the characters in the commercial and the lack of consideration shown by the advertisers themselves. The suggestion that women desire to be and deserve nothing more than to be gawked at as they walk down the...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A California legislative committee advanced a bill Wednesday that would place a two-year moratorium on the use of metal bats in high school baseball to allow for a safety review. Supporters said metal alloy and aluminum bats make baseballs travel faster and lead to more serious injuries. Opponents of the moratorium said wooden bats also are dangerous. The bill moved forward on the same day a 16-year-old pitcher for Marin Catholic High School, who was struck in the head by a line drive hit off an aluminum bat, was released from a rehabilitation hospital. The March incident...

When State Department Legal Adviser John B. Bellinger III gave a controversial June 6 speech on the subject of "The United States and International Law," he mentioned that the Bush Administration had "put forward a priority list of over 35 treaty packages that we have urged the Senate to approve soon, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea." The latter is now up for Senate ratification, with a vote scheduled on Wednesday, and one of its many controversial provisions is the regulation of land-based sources of pollution. This treaty covers the water and the land. But now...

Moore to Schwarzenegger: Adopt Austrian health care system Wednesday, June 27, 2007 By: DAVID GERMAIN - Associated Press LOS ANGELES -- Michael Moore has a suggestion to help California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger bring universal health care to the nation's largest state: Just do it the Austrian way. "I would like Gov. Schwarzenegger to say that he wants the citizens of California to have the same, fine, universal health coverage he got as a young man in the country of Austria," Moore said Tuesday of the Austrian-born governor. "That's all we're asking for, governor. Just give us the Austrian plan," Moore...

Operators of Web sites with racy content must label their sites and register in a national directory or be fined, according to a new U.S. Senate proposal that represents the latest effort among politicians to crack down on Internet sex. The requirements appear in legislation announced Thursday by two Senate Democrats, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Max Baucus of Montana, that they say will "clean up the Internet for children." The proposal, which the senators describe as a discussion draft, relies on the idea of embedding a new tag--such as --in all Web pages that the government deems unsuitable for...

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy chatted with one of the Democratic Party's brightest stars last week when he met Illinois Sen. Barack Obama during a mayors summit in Washington, D.C., that called for tougher federal gun control laws. "Meeting with Sen. Obama, and later with our local senators, Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg . gave me a unique opportunity to emphasize how the federal government does play a role in fighting this problem, the violence that erupts on our streets due to the other illegal destruction of firearms," Healy said.

Chubby drivers and plump passengers add to the fuel crisis in more ways than one. A fat nation needs more gas in the tank, according to research released yesterday.

Not content with his crusade against vending machines, Rep. Peter Koutoujian (D-Waltham), co-chairman of the Committee on Public Health, is taking a swing at another public menace - aluminum baseball bats. “If it does rise to a level where our children are in a certain amount of danger, there may be a need for some type of action,” Koutoujian told the State House News Service before a hearing on the issue, scheduled for today. By “some type of action,” yes, he means a new state law telling parents and league organizers how their children may play the game. By no...

CLAYTON, MO. - A St. Louis weight-loss instructor is suing the Coca-Cola Co. over its product loyalty campaign, claiming the program might encourage children to drink so much of the soft drink that they could die. The campaign, called "My Coke Rewards" gives customers points for buying Coca-Cola products. Customers trade in points for prizes that range from baseball gloves to free vacations. Julia Havey says it's no sweet deal. The program expires in January, and to accumulate enough points by that time for high-end prizes, customers would need to drink hundreds of Cokes a day, she said. Coca-Cola spokesman...

Psst! Hey kid! Come over here and jump off this bridge! All the cool kids've done it 'n you're the only one left! It won't hurt, it'll be fun. Anyhow, if ya don't do it, I'm gonna come back 'n bugya, 'n bugya, 'n bugya forever till ya do. With that sort of reasoned discourse in the background, accompanied by taunts of "You smell like an ASHTRAY!", Philadelphia finally jumped on the bandwagon and banned smoking. Well, sorta. They banned it unless you're a bar that agrees not to feed its customers anything healthy, one that's well-off enough to have...

China is winning the war on Internet pornography but it will be hard to eradicate entirely as many Web sites are based outside of the country, a senior police official said Thursday. China routinely blocks access to Internet sites on sensitive subjects such as self-ruled Taiwan, which China regards as its own, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations, which were crushed by the military with heavy loss of life. Regulations also target sites that publish fabricated information and content deemed to harm national security. "The spread of Web sites that involve pornography has been bought under effective control," Zhao...

      Vegetarian Advocate: A New York Ban on Meat Consumption in the Workplace By Jack Rosenberger What are the odds that New York will ban meat consumption in restaurants, bars and workplaces within the next 25 years? None, right? Maybe not. Twenty-five years ago the idea that New York would ban smoking in restaurants, bars and workplaces was laughable. (In fact, one legislator's response to the legislator who proposed the statewide ban back then, well, was to blow smoke in his face.) Yet, earlier this year New York passed a strict ban on smoking in nearly every...

MAY. 1, 2003: THINGS TO COME While Donald Rumsfeld takes his victory lap in Iraq and Americans celebrate the capture of yet another al Qaeda creep, the British media are consumed by a controversy over ... chocolate. It’s worth paying attention--because a similar story will in all likelihood be coming on this side of the Atlantic very soon. Cadbury’s is the dominant British chocolate maker. Last week, they announced a new promotional scheme. In exchange for empty Cadbury wrappers, the company would offer schools athletic equipment. It’s not exactly a new idea, but it kicked off an incredible row in...