Food Makers Push Back on Ads for Children
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Are Goldfish crackers junk food?
Under proposed new nutritional guidelines, the federal government says yes, and it does not want food like the crackers advertised to children because they contain too much saturated fat and salt and are made from white flour.
But food makers say the fish-shaped treats, made by Campbell Soup’s Pepperidge Farm division, belong on a list of healthful foods that are fine to market to children.
The seeming tempest in a fishbowl is typical of a growing tug of war as government and public health advocates tighten pressure on the food industry to fight childhood obesity by making and marketing healthier products.
Getting to Crazy
By PAUL KRUGMAN
There aren’t many positive aspects to the looming possibility of a U.S. debt default. But there has been, I have to admit, an element of comic relief — of the black-humor variety — in the spectacle of so many people who have been in denial suddenly waking up and smelling the crazy.
A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being. “Has the G.O.P. gone insane?” they ask.
Why, yes, it has. But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades. Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye.
And may I say to those suddenly agonizing over the mental health of one of our two major parties: People like you bear some responsibility for that party’s current state.
Death and Budgets
By DAVID BROOKS
I hope you had the chance to read and reread Dudley Clendinen’s splendid essay, “The Good Short Life,” in The Times’s Sunday Review section. Clendinen is dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S. If he uses all the available medical technology, it will leave him, in a few years’ time, “a conscious but motionless, mute, withered, incontinent mummy of my former self.”
Instead of choosing that long, dehumanizing, expensive course, Clendinen has decided to face death as one of life’s “most absorbing thrills and challenges.” He concludes: “When the music stops — when I can’t tie my bow tie, tell a funny story, walk my dog, talk with Whitney, kiss someone special, or tap out lines like this — I’ll know that Life is over. It’s time to be gone.”
Brooks has a point, of course. But while we are struggling with the very real problem of the diminishing cost-benefits and cost-effectiveness of end-of-life care, why isn't he also taking on the huge problem of our dysfunctional, corporate-dominated methods of financing and delivering health care that contributes at least one-third of the costs of our outrageously expensive medical care system, and distorts the practice of medicine in the process? Isn't that at least as important as arguing about how people should die? Maybe it's just too tough for a Republican, like Brooks, to take on.
CONCORD, N.H.
Lynch doesn’t veto GOP bill on health law
July 15, 2011
| Harvard Study Puts Maine's Rural Hospitals on Defensive | |||
| 07/14/2011 Reported By: Jay Field | |||
Officials responsible for ensuring that patients in small rural hospitals get safe, reliable care are taking issue with how a recent national study portrayed their efforts. The report--written by Harvard researchers and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association--paints a stark picture of the risks patients face at so-called critical access hospitals. Those who monitor care at rural hospitals and provide it---in Maine and elsewhere---argue the study failed to document how much progress has actually been made improving conditions for patients. |
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