Category Archives: Food

Coffee is Good for You

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That’s a finding of research done at the USC School of Medicine.

Drinking coffee was associated with a lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and respiratory and kidney disease for African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Latinos and whites.

People who consumed a cup of coffee a day were 12 percent less likely to die compared to those who didn’t drink coffee. This association was even stronger for those who drank two to three cups a day — 18 percent reduced chance of death.

Time for my second cup of Blue Mountain.

Mmmmm … settled science.

Unsettled Science

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The New York Times has a post up titled E.P.A. Chief, Rejecting Agency’s Science, Chooses Not to Ban Insecticide. That headline is somewhat misleading. EPA Administrator Pruitt killed the regulation because its scientific basis had been challenged by outsiders, including scientists at the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

The ban would have eliminated chlorpyrifos, one of the most commonly used classes of insecticides. Pruitt has sent the agency staff back to resolve the questions raised by the USDA and others. So, for now, chlorpyrifos will still be used by farmers to protect their crops.

“It means that this important pest management tool will remain available to growers, helping to ensure an abundant and affordable food supply for this nation,” Sheryl Kunickis, director of the U.S.D.A. Office of Pest Management Policy, said in a statement Wednesday.

Read the whole thing. It give a glimpse into a turf war between two of the embedded bureaucracies and how pitting one against the other might be a useful strategy to reign in overregulation.