| Pets: Owners continue to worry about safe food
T hese days, if pet food labels were books, they'd be on the best-seller list. Since the pet-food recalls in March, when the deaths of dogs and cats were blamed on pet food containing Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine, pet owners all over the United States now find themselves in the position of attempting to become instant experts on pet nutrition. It's not always easy, but most say they think their pets are better for it and even their own human diets have improved with their new awareness. Take Rosalie Paoloni, a medical transcriptionist in Wolcott, Conn., who has nine cats and two dogs. She says she has recently changed everyone's diets with some extra effort. Paoloni is trying to buy more organic and locally produced foods for her pets and her family.
Tomatoes devalued by the FDA
This just in: Organic tomatoes have more lycopene than conventionally farmed tomatoes. This also just in: Lycopene might not be as healthful as we thought. So goes the bold field of tomato research. As the most frequently consumed produce in America after potatoes, tomatoes provide vitamins, minerals and fiber -- and, of course, they're non-fat. Plus, with high levels of the antioxidant lycopene, they've been considered a potentially powerful cancer fighter. But even as new research identifies which growing methods produce the most lycopene-rich tomatoes, the Food and Drug Administration has said the fruit's health-boosting powers can't be proved. In a review published in the July 18 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers at the FDA explain the agency's 2005 decision not to allow beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt health claims for tomatoes.
Music industry increasingly in tune with environmental revolution
The music industry is turning green. No, it has nothing to do with slumping retail sales, endless label mergers or leaked albums being downloaded online. Instead, the intense focus on "greening" everything from tour buses to CD cases stems from what "Pollstar" Editor-in-Chief Gary Bongiovanni calls "part of the shifting consciousness of the American public." "I think the music business might've been a little ahead of the curve on that," Bongiovanni says. "The Dave Matthews Band, in particular, comes to mind as being someone who advocated green touring ... (but) it's certainly more in people's minds." More than ever, artists of all stripes - from the arena-packing Fall Out Boy to the indie-rocking Andrew Bird - are employing various methods to reduce the environmental impact of touring, recording and releasing albums.
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