How the Government Supports Your Junk Food Habit

According to the Government Accountability Office, small "specialty" farms represent three-quarters of the country’s cropland but receive just 14 percent of government subsidies. Large agribusinesses that specialize in growing the major commodity crops represent 7 percent of the cropland and receive about half of all subsidies.

Previous versions of the farm bill even stipulated that farmers who took subsidies for commodity crops could not grow fruits and vegetables. If they did, they were penalized, said Caroline Franck, the co-author of a 2012 report in the Archives of Internal Medicine that explored the role of agricultural subsidies in obesity.

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The Mistrust of Science

So, then, what is a science believer to do? Is the future just an unending battle of warring claims? Not necessarily. Emerging from the findings was also evidence that suggested how you might build trust in science. Rebutting bad science may not be effective, but asserting the true facts of good science is. And including the narrative that explains them is even better.

Atul Gawande

Mechanics of Metabolism Maintenance: Cars, Keys, and Karelia

And, yes, there is that other population that got it right. They reside in Karelia, Finland. Here, the message was not willfully garbled for profit, but was assessed carefully, and applied with fidelity. This population heeded the actual prescription of Keys and others of his day. The result? A marked increase in life expectancy, and an 80% reduction in incident cardiovascular disease.

That bears repeating: the basic message about metabolism maintenance that is seemingly so controversial now, when applied faithfully, produced a 80% reduction in heart disease rates at the level of a whole population, persisting now for decades. This is among the more stunning achievements in the history of public health.

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Moby: Long Ambients 1

it's really quiet: no drums, no vocals, just very slow calm pretty chords and sounds and things for sleeping and yoga and etc. and feel free to share it or give it away or whatever, it's not protected or anything, or at least it shouldn’t be.</blockquote
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When Is It Ethical to Withhold Prevention?

Congress has used cost-effectiveness analyses in deciding that Medicare should cover selected secondary prevention services, such as screening for breast cancer and colon cancer. But the measure of cost per QALY is routinely ignored in decisions both about treatment for demonstrated disease and about primary prevention of disease. It is ignored, though, in entirely different ways. Medical treatments are paid for even if they are cost-ineffective; in fact, the Medicare program has been blocked from even considering cost-effectiveness in determining whether to cover the costs of treatment. For example, treatment of metastatic lung cancer may cost $800,000 per QALY, but it is typically provided.

In sharp contrast, primary preventive services are often withheld even if they are highly cost-effective. For example, the Diabetes Prevention Program, a lifestyle-training program focused on exercise and nutrition that costs only $14,000 per QALY, is covered by only some health insurance plans; Medicare is not among them.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1516534

Julie Rubicon

That afternoon, looking out across the salt flats, she trembled with certainty. "They know."

They don’t, I assured her. They can’t.

"They will. They’ll look at the logs. We’re gonna get in trouble. We’re gonna go to jail."

"I don’t think there’s any law against this," I said. How could there be a law against something that’s not possible?

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Vegan Eating Would Slash Food’s Global Warming Emissions

Adopting a diet in line with the global guidelines could avert 5.1 million deaths per year by 2050, while 8.1 million fewer people would die in a world of vegans who do not consume animal products, including eggs and milk.

When it comes to climate change, following dietary recommendations would cut food-related emissions by 29 percent, adopting vegetarian diets would cut them by 63 percent and vegan diets by 70 percent.

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