Feed your children plenty of fruits and vegetables but don't fret over whether they're organic or not if you're on a budget, U.S. experts said Monday.
While organic foods have lower pesticide levels, they also have the same vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other nutrients as their conventional counterparts.
Full StoryObesity rates in young people in Britain appear to be going into reverse, a top gathering of health officials heard Monday, as the message on the risks of being overweight seems to be getting through.
Presenting research on obesity in Britain, Klim McPherson from Oxford University told the World Health Summit in Berlin that people aged 16 to 29 had generally tended to be less overweight or obese in recent years.
Full StoryWomen's health advocates set out their plan Monday to put a copy of "Our Bodies, Ourselves" in the office of every lawmaker on Capitol Hill, 41 years after the guide to the female body was published.
By doing so, they're aiming to check the danger that senators and congressmen in Washington -- and the vast majority are men -- might give short shrift to science when forging legislation that impacts on women's health.
Full StoryThe parents of an 8-year-old boy who has had severe brain damage for years have sued a Chicago hospital, alleging that doctors pronounced their son dead, keeping him off his ventilator for hours, even though relatives continued to insist that the boy's eyes and body were still moving.
The lawsuit filed this week by Sheena Lane and Pink Dorsey on behalf of their son, Jaylen Dorsey, accuses Mercy Hospital and Medical Center of negligence in the February incident and alleges that nearly five hours passed before staff agreed to perform a cardiac ultrasound, which showed Jaylen Dorsey's heart was beating.
Full StoryAn investigative panel on Monday rejected a contested French study linking transgenic corn to cancer in rats but called for a "long-term, independent" probe into the product to advise the public.
The Higher Biotechnologies Council (HCB) said it found "no causal relationship" between the rats' tumors and consumption of Monsanto's NK603 corn or the Roundup herbicide that was part of the experiment.
Full StoryA controversial study that linked genetically modified corn to cancer in lab rats is a "scientific non-event," six French scientific academies said on Friday.
"This work does not enable any reliable conclusion to be drawn," they said, adding bluntly that the affair helped "spread fear among the public."
Full StoryThe maker of Banana Boat sunscreen recalled 23 spray-on products Friday saying there was a risk they could catch fire on one's skin, after reports of five people being burned in the U.S. and Canada.
Energizer Holdings said it was recalling its popular continuous spray sunscreen "due to a potential risk of product igniting on the skin if contact is made with a source of ignition before the product is completely dry."
Full StoryThe death toll in a wave of poisoning from methanol-tainted alcohol in the Czech Republic rose to 30 on Friday as a 66-year-old man fell victim to lethal bootleg liquor, the Czech CTK news agency reported.
On October 3, he was admitted to hospital in Brno, a major city about 200 kilometers east of the capital Prague, after drinking the Tuzemak-brand of Czech rum he had purchased for an unusually low price at a gas station, police in the city said.
Full StoryMexico, second in obesity in the world after the United States, wants its children to cut down on the soft drinks and fatty foods that have made them the chubbiest kids in Latin America.
Worried about the growing waistlines in schools, the public education ministry has launched a campaign to encourage youngsters to change their eating habits.
Full StorySub-Saharan Africa is likely to see a more than 200 percent increase in the number of older people living with HIV in the next 30 years, thanks to improvements in lifesaving treatment, experts said Thursday.
"The proportion of people living with HIV aged 50 and over is going to increase a lot," Robert Cumming of the school of public health at the University of Sydney said at a conference on ageing in Africa.
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