What Bernie Gets Wrong About the Soda Tax

As published in  An estimated 27,500 people in Los Angeles, 20,000 in Seattle, and 18,500 in the Bronx: Bernie Sanders is sparking some of the biggest crowds in primary history. For millions across the country, his message is clearly resonating. It’s refreshing to hear someone running for the country’s highest office finally articulate (without any prodding!) […]

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Millennials Aren’t Lovin’ McDonald’s

by Anna Lappé for Al Jazeera America   McDonald’s is having a bumpy year. It just installed a new CEO after a mere two-and-a-half-year stint by his predecessor. In January it announced its latest returns — and the news was bad. It included such shareholder downers as a “global comparable sales decrease of 1 percent, reflecting negative […]

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Gates Foundation dumps stock in Coca-Cola and McDonald’s

There was good news last week about the Gates Foundation dumping about $1 billion worth of stock in Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. Whether it was a sign that the Foundation realizes these companies don’t have a rightful place in a portfolio of an organization promoting health and well-being or that their financial analysts are smart on […]

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News Flash! The latest report from the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is out. All 571 pages of it.

As Mark Bittman says in The New York Times, “The report is not a paradigm shift, but it does contain significant improvements.” Here’s what is most exciting to me about them: For the first time the scientific advisory committee on dietary guidelines did a radical thing: it recommended we eat less sugar and red meat, […]

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Berkeley Bellwether: What the Soda Tax in this City Means for the Country

by Anna Lappé for Earth Island Journal The face of Berkeley vs. Big Soda is the face of mainstream America At Tuesday night’s Berkeley vs. Big Soda victory party in the heart of downtown, the results rolled in slowly, but spirits were high. Early returns around 8:00 p.m., with only 8 percent of precincts reporting, showed the […]

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Big Soda Is Outspending Its Opposition 10-to-1 to Fight a Soda Tax in Berkeley

by Anna Lappé for The Nation   Drive around the streets of Berkeley, California and you’ll see “Yes on Measure D” signs everywhere. This morning, on the one-mile drive to my daughter’s elementary school, she and I counted ten. Measure D, also known as the soda tax, would seem a shoo-in for this city of […]

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Big Food Uses Mommy Bloggers to Shape Public Opinion

by Anna Lappé for Al Jazeera America   This past weekend, biotech giant Monsanto paid bloggers $150 each to attend “an intimate and interactive panel” with “two female farmers and a team from Monsanto.” The strictly invitation-only three-hour brunch, which took place on the heels of the BlogHer Conference, promised bloggers a chance to learn […]

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Junk Food Industry’s Shameful Targeting of Black and Latino Youth

#82055765 / gettyimages.com by Anna Lappé for Al Jazeera America   One hundred and six million people tuned in to watch the Broncos take on the Seahawks in this year’s Super Bowl; almost as many saw the McDonald’s ad that ran during the game, featuring a dunk contest between basketball stars LeBron James and Dwight Howard. Using […]

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