Is This McNuts or What?

Tots say food tastes better if it’s inside McDonald’s packaging

CHICAGO (AP) — Anything made by McDonald’s tastes better, preschoolers said in a study that powerfully demonstrates how advertising can trick the taste buds of young children. Even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches.

The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald’s foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test. ‘‘You see a McDonald’s label and kids start salivating,’’ said Diane Levin, a childhood development specialist who campaigns against advertising to kids. She had no role in the research. Levin said it was ‘‘the first study I know of that has shown so simply and clearly what’s going on with (marketing to) young children.’’

Study author Dr. Tom Robinson said the kids’ perception of taste was ‘‘physically altered by the branding.’’ The Stanford University researcher said it was remarkable how children so young were already so influenced by advertising.

The study involved 63 low income children ages 3 to 5 from Head Start centers in San Mateo County, Calif. Robinson believes the results would be similar for children from wealthier families.

The research, appearing in August’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, was funded by Stanford and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The study will likely stir more debate over the movement to restrict ads to kids. It comes less than a month after 11 major food and drink companies, including McDonald’s, announced new curbs on marketing to children under 12.

McDonald’s says the only Happy Meals it will promote to young children will contain fruit and have fewer calories and less fat.

Take Really Good Care of Your Lawn--Don't Use Pesticides

Now that spring has sprung, it is important to remind people that taking care of your lawn is good, but doing it without herbicides and pesticides is better for all of us.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 100 million pounds of active ingredient from herbicides, insecticides, miticides, and fungicides were applied in homes and gardens in the United States in 2001. Of that, homeowners used 13 percent of total herbicides, 16 percent of total insecticides and miticides, and 16 percent of total fungicides.

The EPA also tells us that the average homeowner uses 20 times the concentration of pesticides on their lawns than a farmer does.

Pesticides, herbicides, and miticides are bad news to little people and other living organisms.

Pesticides drift and settle during application. In the Antarctic ice pack alone there are 2.4 million pounds of DDT and its metabolites from years past.

Pesticides engulf the home and are easily tracked inside, readily inhaled and absorbed through the skin. They do harm by attacking the central nervous system and other essential organs.

The National Academy of Sciences reports that at least one out of seven people are significantly harmed by pesticide exposure each year. Increasingly, reports from many people around the country are "beginning to link feeling terrible with the fact the neighbors had the lawn sprayed the day before", notes Catherine Karr, a toxicologist for the National Coalition Against The Misuse Of Pesticides.

Symptoms of pesticide poisoning are often deceptively simple, commonly mis-diagnosed as flu or allergies. They include, but are not limited to, headaches, nausea, fever, breathing difficulties, seizures, eye pains, vomiting, cramps, diarrhea, sore nose, tongue, or throat; burning skin, rashes, coughing, muscle pain, tissue swelling, blurred vision, numbness and tingling in hands or feet, incontinence, anxiety, irritability, sleep disorders, hyperactivity, fatigue, dizziness, irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, spontaneous bleeding, and temporary paralysis.

Long-term consequences include lowered fertility, birth defects, miscarriages, blindness, liver and kidney dysfunction, neurological damage, heart trouble, stroke, immune system disorders, menstrual problems, memory loss, suicidal depression, cancer, and death.

There are natural ways to address your lawn in a healthier way, try them.