Aren't critics of genetically engineered food anti-science? Isn't the debate over GMOs (genetically modified organisms) a spat between emotional but ignorant activists on one hand and rational GM-supporting scientists on the other?

A new report released today, "GMO Myths and Truths",^[1] challenges these claims. The report presents a large body of peer-reviewed scientific and other authoritative evidence of the hazards to health and the environment posed by genetically engineered crops and organisms (GMOs).

Unusually, the initiative for the report came not from campaigners but from two genetic engineers who believe there are good scientific reasons to be wary of GM foods and crops.

A study by the University of Sheffield has found that the air we breathe inside our own homes can have pollutant levels three times higher than the outdoor environment, in city centres and along busy roads.

Researchers from the University's Faculty of Engineering measured air quality inside and outside three residential buildings with different types of energy use (gas vs. electric cookers). They found that nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels in the kitchen of the city centre flat with a gas cooker were three times higher than the concentrations measured outside the property and well above those recommended in UK Indoor Air Quality Guidance1. These findings are published in the Journal of Indoor and Built Environment.

"We spend 90 per cent of our time indoors and work hard to make our homes warm, secure and comfortable, but we rarely think about the pollution we might be breathing in," said Professor Vida Sharifi, who led the research. "Energy is just one source of indoor pollution, but it is a significant one. And as we make our homes more airtight to reduce heating costs, we are likely to be exposed to higher levels of indoor pollution, with potential impacts on our health."

Healthy humans harbor an enormous and diverse group of bacteria and other bugs that live within their intestines. These microbial partners provide beneficial aid in multiple ways -- from helping digest food to the development of a healthy immune system. In a new study published online in the journal Immunity, David Artis, PhD, associate professor of Microbiology, and Michael Abt, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the Artis lab, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, show that commensal bacteria are also essential to fight off viral infections.

"From our studies in mice, we found that signals derived from these beneficial microbes are essential for optimal immune responses to experimental viral infections," says Artis. "In one way we could consider these microbes as our 'brothers in arms' in the fight against infectious diseases." Artis is also an associate professor of Pathobiology in the Penn School of Veterinary Medicine.

The body mass index (BMI) is a poor measurement and a controversially inaccurate indicator to assess health. Despite this reality, almost every doctor is still trained in this useless analytical tool which is meant to provide a heuristic proxy for human body fat based on an individual's weight and height. The problem is, BMI doesn't actually measure percentage body fat or lean muscle tissue and makes absolutely no distinction between either of them.
While the formula previously called the Quetelet Index (invented by Adolphe Quetelet) for BMI dates to the 19th century, the new term "body mass index" for the ratio and its popularity date to a paper published in the July edition of 1972 in the Journal of Chronic Diseases by Ancel Keys, which ironically found the BMI to be the best proxy for body fat percentage among ratios of weight and height. It was designed as a simple numeric measure of a person's "thickness" or "thinness".

When it comes to assessing health status, most of the inaccuracy related to the BMI measurement comes from its reliance on population studies without assessing individual diagnosis. Keys himself admitted this shortfall.

Consequently, it makes absolutely no distinction between body weight from muscle and body weight from fat which labels a broad segment of the athletic and similar healthy populations as overweight and obese. An ideal BMI (which the measurement considers to be healthy) is between 20.5 and 21.5. Between 30 and 35, a person is considered to be moderately obese. Yet from the graphic above, we can see that a heavily muscled person is also classified as obese. High BMIs (35 and over) are linked to increased risk of cardiovascular events but not to increased mortality overall. BMI is extremely limited in its ability to predict deaths caused by heart attacks or strokes.

In the past, it was difficult to get an accurate measure of how stress had changed over time. This is because people 50 years ago simply didn't measure stress levels; it wasn't the concern that it is now. But because of the status quo, the need to make more money, gain more accolades, or simply pay the bills - stress has become harder to ignore.

In 1983, a telephone stress survey was conducted. Now, almost three decades later, we get to compare the results of that survey with current numbers to see how stress levels have changed through the years.

The results of the research are published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Carnegie Mellon University's Sheldon Cohen and Denise Janicki-Deverts analyzed the data from the 1983 phone survey and compared it with online surveys from 2006 and 2009. Perhaps not surprisingly, they found that stress levels have gone through the roof.

Most people showed increased stress levels. But women, poor people and those with lower education levels reported more stress in each subsequent survey. The group that experienced the most stress related to the 2008-09 economic catastrophe were white, employed, middle-aged men with college degrees. Researchers surmise this could be because the group had the most to lose when the economy took a downturn.

Could the water people swallow their acid reflux pills with be more therapeutic than the drugs themselves?

In 2008, a remarkable study took place comparing a glass of water to an antacid and "acid blocking" drugs, in their overall effect in increasing gastric pH (i.e. making it more alkaline) in healthy subjects.

Published in the journal Digestive Diseases & Science,[1] researchers took 12 healthy subjects who were screened to be negative for Helicobacter pylori infection, and gave them a single oral dose of the following agents:

• A glass of water (200 ml)
• Antacid
• Ranitidine (Zantac)
• Omeprazole (Prilosec/Losec)
• Esomeprazole (Nexium)
• Rabeprazole (AcipHex)

Gastric pH was recorded for six hours after drug intake.

The study found it took the following duration to increase gastric pH >4:

• Water increased pH >4 in 10/12 subjects after 1 minute
• Antacid increased pH >4 in 2 minutes
• Rantidine increased pH >4 in 50 minutes
• Omeprazole increased pH >4 in 171 minutes
• Esomeprazole increased pH >4 in 151 minutes
• Rabeprazole increased pH >4 in 175 minutes

I've noticed that quite a few Grist readers have been struck by our coverage of shockingly high food prices in Inuit communities in Canada's far north. It's less a story of life in extreme lands than the culmination of a historical destruction of indigenous peoples' traditional foodways combined with a conservative government's unwillingness to help them adapt.

How appropriate then that NPR's Planet Money, as part of its Graphing America series, should look at how America's food spending has changed over the last 30 years. The headline figure - the one Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is proudest of - is that we spend just under 9 percent of our income on food, about 30 percent less than we did in 1982.

In a riveting victory against genetically modified creations, a major biotech company known as Syngenta has been criminally charged for denying knowledge that its GM Bt corn actually kills livestock. What's more is not only did the company deny this fact, but they did so in a civil court case that ended back in 2007. The charges were finally issued after a long legal struggle against the mega corp initiated by a German farmer named Gottfried Gloeckner whose dairy cattle died after eating the Bt toxin and coming down with a 'mysterious' illness.

Grown on his own farm from 1997 to 2002, the cows on the farm were all being fed exclusively on Syngenta's Bt 176 corn by the year 2000. It was around this time that the mysterious illnesses began to emerge among the cattle population. Syngenta paid Gloeckner 40,000 euros in an effort to silence the farmer; however, a civil lawsuit was brought upon the company. Amazingly, 2 cows ate genetically modified maize (now banned in Poland over serious concerns) and died. During the civil lawsuit, however, Syngenta refused to admit that its GM corn was responsible. In fact, they went as far as to claim having no knowledge whatsoever of any harm.

The case was dismissed and Gloeckner, the farmer who launched the suit, was left thousands of euros in debt. And that's not all; Gloeckner continued to lose many cows as a result of Syngenta's modified Bt corn.

Todd Putman stepped up to a podium Thursday ready to break with his past.

Stretched before him was a ballroom full of public health officials and community activists, gathered in Washington for a "National Soda Summit" on how to loosen the soda industry's grip on the American appetite.

The conference marked the latest salvo in a barrage of recent attacks on makers of unhealthy food and beverages, especially sodas.

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) has announced plans to ban super-size sodas from his city's restaurants, movie theaters, sports arenas and bodegas. Disney will no longer run junk-food ads with its children's programming. First lady Michelle Obama's book about the White House vegetable garden, released Tuesday, notes that the only drinks offered during family meals at home are milk and water.

The logic behind these moves has been repeated so often it is practically a mantra: The nation is in the throes of an obesity crisis and sodas account for an outsize share of the sugar pouring into American bellies.

Putman, 51, shares that view. But he is also driven by another motive: From 1997 to mid-2000, he was a top marketing executive at Coca-Cola.

"It took me 10 years to figure out that I have a large karmic debt to pay for the number of Cokes I sold across this country," he said.

On Thursday, he came to settle it.

Former Coke executive come speaks out on his former employers tactics.