Is checking nutrition information on food labels like reading Japanese or Greek? Several surveys now show that most people claim to check nutrition labels when shopping, but may not use that information in making food purchases. Many shoppers don’t know how to interpret the data on labels, or how to use it to create an overall healthy diet. In a 2003 survey by the International Food Information Council Foundation (IFIC), 83 percent of people reported that they always or sometimes looked at ingredient or nutrition information. According to a 2004 survey by the Food Marketing Institute, a similar 83 percent said that they always or sometimes checked the Nutrition Facts panel when buying a food item for the first time. In a 2006 Associated Press poll, nearly 80 percent claimed to check food labels. In the IFIC survey, people most often noted considering calorie and total fat content, followed by sodium, saturated fat, sugar, cholesterol and carbohydrates. Many consumers reported they were ‘aware’ of the information on specific nutrients yet a far smaller percentage stated they used that information to decide about a purchase. Likewise, in the AP poll, 44 percent said that after reading the label they […]
NEW YORK — For the first time, Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest Americans consists exclusively of people worth $1 billion or more. As a group, the people who made the rankings released Thursday are worth a record $1.25 trillion, compared with $1.13 trillion last year. In the billionaire-athon, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson pole-vaulted to No. 3 from 15 in last year’s ranking, finishing behind the mainstays at Nos. 1 and 2: Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) (MSFT) founder Bill Gates and Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA) Adelson is now estimated to have $20.5 billion, Buffett $46 billion and Gates $53 billion. Gates has held the No. 1 spot for the last 13 years while Buffett has been No. 2 every year since 1994 except 2000, when Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp. (ORCL) held that spot. Adelson’s expanding net worth is related in no small part to his decision to open a casino two years ago on the island of Macau, an emerging gambling haven off the southeastern coast of China. Profits are growing rapidly thanks to the Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS) (LVS)’s Macau casino. Adelson personally and through family trusts controls 70 percent of […]
NEW YORK — Wal-Mart plans to begin selling nearly 300 generic prescription drugs for a sharply reduced price, offering a big lure for bargain-seeking customers and presenting a challenge to competing pharmacy chains. The world’s biggest retailer said Thursday that it will test its sales program, in which 291 generic drugs will be sold at $4 for a month’s supply, in Florida. The drugs involved provide treatments for conditions ranging from allergies to high-blood pressure. Selling generic drugs at prices that don’t offer much if any margin for profit could serve two purposes for Wal-Mart: It could draw customers away from big pharmacy chains to Wal-Mart stores that offer a much wider array of products, and it could help Wal-Mart with an image problem stemming from its policies on health insurance for employees. ‘We’re able to do this by using one of our greatest strengths as a company - our business model and our ability to drive costs out of the system, and the model that passes those costs savings to our customers,’ Bill Simon, executive vice president of the company’s professional services division, said in announcing the plan at a Tampa, Fla., store. ‘In this case […]
Boy or girl? Almost half of U.S. fertility clinics that offer embryo screening say they allow couples to choose the sex of their child, the most extensive survey of the practice suggests. Sex selection without any medical reason to warrant it was performed in about 9 percent of all embryo screenings last year, the survey found. Another controversial procedure – helping parents conceive a child who could supply compatible cord blood to treat an older sibling with a grave illness – was offered by 23 percent of clinics, although only 1 percent of screenings were for that purpose in 2005. For the most part, couples are screening embryos for the right reasons – to avoid passing on dreadful diseases, said Dr. William Gibbons, who runs a fertility clinic in Baton Rouge, La., and is president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, which assisted with the survey. ‘There are thousands of babies born now that we know are going to be free of lethal and/or devastating genetic diseases. That’s a good thing,’ he said. However, the survey findings also confirm many ethicists’ fears that Americans increasingly are seeking ‘designer babies’ not just free of medical […]
Almost every day, the great antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network turn to a blank patch of sky in the constellation Ophiuchus. Pointing at nothing, or so it seems, they invariably pick up a signal, faint but full of intelligence. The source is beyond Neptune, beyond Pluto, on the verge of the stars themselves. see captionIt’s Voyager 1. The spacecraft left Earth in 1977 on a mission to visit Jupiter and Saturn. Almost 30 years later, with the gas giants long ago seen and done, Voyager 1 is still going and encountering some strange things. Right: An artist’s concept of Voyager 1. ‘We’ve entered a totally new region of space,’ says Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist and the former director of JPL. ‘And the spacecraft is beaming back surprising new information.’ Before we reveal the surprises, let us discuss exactly where Voyager 1 is: Our entire solar system-planets and all-sits inside a gargantuan bubble of gas about four times wider than the orbit of Neptune. The sun is responsible. It blows the bubble by means of the solar wind. Astronomers call the bubble itself ‘the heliosphere’ and its outer membrane ‘the heliosheath.’ [diagram] Voyager […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
