Tag Archives: proposition 37

HealthBuzz November 2: Halloween Candy Buy Back, GMO Facts, and Halloween Candy Recipes

We are hours away from the weekend, which means it is time for your weekly dose of healthy news! This week we have rounded up stories from Entertainment Weekly, Best Life Diet, and Yahoo! Shine. And while Halloween may be over, we’ve got treats that can be made with your leftover candy.

Eating Healthy on $12 Per Day Food Stamp Budget is Impossible and How the Next President May Make it Worse

With the elections coming up, government programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, could be changed drastically. DIR’s staff writer Lacy J. Hansen tried to feed her family healthy meals on a food stamp budget and barely made it. Read about Lacy’s food stamp project and tell us what you think!

Vanessa Lembo Lost 120 Pounds After Deciding She Was Worth The Change

This week’s true weight loss story features Vanessa from Upstate New York. After Vanessa’s mother’s passed, she knew she had to start living a healthy life. She ditched the bags of Dove chocolate for cardio and weight training. Tell us what you think about Vanessa’s weight loss journey!

Kids Sell Halloween Candy for Cash at Dental Buy Back Programs Across the Country

There is a new trend sweeping the nation – kids selling their Halloween candy back to dentist offices. Tooth decay and cavities are a result of children eating loads of Halloween candy. We found one kid who received $22 for selling his Halloween candy to a local dentist office! This is a neat way to get rid of the sugar high will still giving them a reason to celebrate. (more…)

Posted on November 2, 2023 by Samantha

Mark Bittman Proposes a Better Food Label

Food labeling is kind of a messy issue right now. On one side you have advocates of “Right to Know” fighting for GMO-containing products to be labeled as such. On the other side you have soda companies and fast food restaurants digging in their heels to fight laws that would require further nutrition information posted on vending machines and menu boards.

From this perspective, it seems there’s plenty of push and pull in this important debate. The worst part, however, is that the consumer is caught in the middle with the simple desire to know what’s in the food they buy and to feel good about what they put in their bodies.

While the discussion of food labeling may have multiple sides and a variety of opinions, an editorial piece by Mark Bittman published in The New York Times Saturday shined some much-needed light on the topic and offered a simple solution: Make labels honest, easy to read and understand, and useful to the health-conscious consumer.

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Posted on October 15, 2023 by Dana

Join Us For a Twitter Chat August 10 to Help Get GMOs Labeled

Election day is drawing near. In just a few months, we get the opportunity to exercise our right to choose who and how our country will be ran. This is one of the greatest freedoms we have as Americans, and it should never be undervalued. Many people in the world have absolutely no say in how their lives are run.

No matter whose side you’re on this coming November, there is one health issue both parties should desire to support. That issue is the labeling of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).

In brief, a GMO comes from a lab where genes from one species are inserted into another in an effort to create a desired trait. This lab process is called Genetic Engineering (GE) or Genetic Modification (GM).

In many cases this process is done at seed level. The seeds are crossed with the food and a pesticide and then grown into products that are placed on our supermarket shelves. These foods grown with the genes of a pesticide and other lab creations are not required to be labeled differently, and consumers are not able to determine what’s really in the food they’re purchasing. (more…)

Posted on August 6, 2023 by Lacy

Are GMOs Making You Fat?

While health experts and non-experts alike continue to take stabs at the solution to our nation’s obesity crisis, the answer still seems rather illusive.

Some say we need more exercise. Others suggest we need less food. Still others contend we need incentives and rewards to get off our duffs and lose the weight. But perhaps the answer is as simple as what’s in our lunch.

New research from the Norwegian School of Veterinary science is pointing the fat finger at genetically modified organisms, a term we now affectionately know as GMOs.

Researchers are suggesting that while GM foods may not be directly making us sick, they might be causing weight gain which can in turn contribute to illnesses.

To conduct the 90-day study, researchers studied how rats and salmon responded to genetically modified food. One group of rats was fed GM corn and scientists watched as they slowly got fatter than the group that was being fed non-GM foods. Researchers also noticed that the GMO rats ate more and grew faster. (more…)

Posted on July 24, 2023 by Dana