If you missed the fight between restaurant trade associations and the New York City Health Department over calorie labeling, you get another chance: San Francisco.  San Francisco’s city attorney wants fast food places not only to post calories, but also saturated fat, sodium, and carbohydrates (check out the link for all the documents in this case).    Is this a good idea?  Aren’t calories enough?

The nutrition committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics has just issued a new set of recommendations for cholesterol screening.  The advice of this august body?  Screen 2-year-olds for high cholesterol and start prescribing statin drugs at age 8.  OK, they are just recommending this for kids with risk factors, such as high LDL cholesterol (the bad one), family history of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, etc.   This sounds great for doctors, testing labs, and drug companies.  Is it a good idea for kids?  Which kids?  Who is going to pick up the tab for this?

Yesterday, July 3, Jim Prevor, the Perishable Pundit, published a long series of posts (his ninth collection) on the tomato recalls.  One of the last in this bunch is in response to some comments I sent him.   We disagree about a number of points.  But if it were easy to achieve safe food, we’d have it by now.  I think it’s great that people like Jim are thinking seriously about these issues.  See what you think of this debate.

Think what you like about genetically modified crops; farmers love them.  How else to explain the latest data from USDA?  GM soybeans are leveling off a bit – at close to 90%–and corn at close to 60%.   The public doesn’t like GM much.  They aren’t labeled.  What’s in this for farmers?

It’s getting to the Fourth of July silly season, so thanks to Jack Everitt for making sure that I know about Luther Burgers–hamburgers in a Krispy Kreme donut bun. They even have their own Wikipedia entry. Don’t you need to know about such things? This is another food joke, right? Thanks (?) Jack.

Thanks to Herman Lelieveldt for sending this link to a group of papers prepared by his students at the Roosevelt Academy in Middleburg, The Netherlands: The Politics of Food and Fat. It’s always interesting to look at these issues from another perspective, in this case European.

Consumer Federation of America (CFA) has a new Alcohol Facts chart out that compares the calorie content of alcoholic beer, wine, and hard liquor. CFA produced it to fill the regulatory gap in labeling of alcoholic beverages–they are regulated by an arm of the Treasury Department (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) and viewed as revenue generators, not something that might affect health. It’s amusing to see where the calories are…

The epidemic of illness caused by the unusual saintpaul type of Salmonella has now affected more than 800 people, and federal agencies seem more than perplexed about its source. The FDA says tomatoes, and called for their removal from the market, an action with devastating consequences for the tomato industry. But cases are still turning up. Perhaps that is why the CDC thinks maybe something else might be the cause. Salsa? Guacamole? The produce industry is understandably interested and two websites are excellent sources of day-to-day information: the straight-news Packer, and the tell-it-like-it-is Perishable Pundit. Go to the FDA website for updates on the ongoing investigation and also provides lists of tomatoes safe to eat. Part of the difficulty in following this story is that two federal agencies are involved: the FDA and the CDC. The CDC has its own version of events (with useful maps of where the cases are in the U.S.). The USDA , which only deals with animal foods, doesn’t seem to be part of this one. It should be. The ultimate source of this outbreak has to be animal waste. This tomato (?) outbreak is precisely why we need a single food agency to oversee food safety. When, oh when?

Update, July 1: The Wall Street Journal reviews the outbreak and explains why the produce and restaurant industries are so angry.

Update, July 2: The Wall Street Journal quotes the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt , saying that because multiple countries and multiple agencies are involved in the investigation, “it shows the need for better cooperation.” No. It shows the need for a single food agency!

Update, July 3: I’ve just discovered USA Today’s nifty time line of the tomato saga.