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The business section of Sunday’s New York Times reports counterintuitive research suggesting that locally grown foods may have a higher carbon footprint than foods transported from long distances. CSPI’s Integrity in Science project says the source of the research, University of California Davis’ program on sustainable agriculture gets industry funding, including a $250,000 grant from Campbell Soup. It’s not that food companies buy the research results they want. It’s just that groups that take industry money are more likely to come up with research favorable to the sponsor’s interests. Just a coincidence, I guess.

My previous post on bisphenol A linked to a National Toxicology Program giving this component of plastic water bottles a relatively clean bill of health. Now, Integrity in Science Watch (a branch of Center for Science in the Public Interest) reports that according to an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, the science behind this report is industry-sponsored as the final report relied more on industry-funded studies than on those conducted by independent researchers. When reviewing studies of controversial topics, it’s always a good idea to check who sponsored the research.

The Public Health Advocacy Institute has produced “Mapping School Food: A Policy Guide“for anyone who thinks school food needs fixing. As they put it, the Guide provides “tools to help advocates find answers, resolve conflicts, and build consensus for improving school food in their community.” Sounds useful, no? Enjoy and use!

The USDA makes data on farm households and the economics of farming readily available. You can even get the numbers you need by state. A handy resource, no?

One of the things that USDA does really, really well is research designed to develop a basis for food assistance policies. Its Economic Research Service is one of the best kept secrets in American government. Here’s what the ERS investigators have done, discovered, and published over the last 10 years. Best of all, you can access their publications from an electronic data base.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundations’s Healthy Eating Research initiative, “Building Evidence to Prevent Childhood Obesity,” has a bunch of grants open for proposals. Have a good research idea? This is the place.

A new study from U. North Carolina measures soft drink consumption in the U.S. population from 1965 to 2002. The increase is 21%–and a whopping 222 calories per day, close to the reported increase in calorie intake from all sources over that time period. The authors count all sweetened drinks: traditional colas, juice drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks, and vitamin waters. All of these add calories (unless they are artificially sweetened, of course.

We have this week’s Advertising Age to thank for telling us about McDonald’s new marketing venue: the covers of report cards! And how’s this for an incentive: kids in this school district in Florida who earn all A’s and B’s, have no more than two absences, or (not even and?) exhibit good behavior are entitled to a free happy meal when they present their report card. Next?

Plenty, apparently. See what the New York Times says about all the other food companies that have figured out creative ways to market to school kids.