These days, it may not seem like a big deal to have a drink before dinner and a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. Yet, according to the National Institutes of Health, consuming that amount of alcohol puts you in a high risk category. Rethinking Drinking, a website run by the NIH, can help you assess the risks and/or benefits of your drinking habits.You might be surprised to see how just low the threshold for "low-risk" drinking is, especially when you consider the size of a "standard" drink is just 1.5 ounces of hard liquor. The newly (or once again) popular martini drinks usually contain the equivalent of 2 to 4 servings of alcohol. What do you think? Is this too heavy-handed an approach? Are we American's showing our latent puritanism here?  Are the risks of moderate drinking being overstated? Tip: See SELF Magazine's Guide to a Healthy Happy Hour For those who are motivated to make a change in their drinking habits, the site offers tools and strategies that are consistent with the proven approach developed by James Prochaska and outlined in his excellent book Changing for Good. See also: Fitting Alcohol into Your Weight Loss Program

Every year, the U.S. federal government subsidizes America’s junk food habit with bazillions of dollars in tax breaks & subsidies.

But today, in a shocking turn of events, the USDA has announced the creation of a new “healthy eating” program.

Or, in other words… The U.S. government is subsidizing healthy food.

The $20 million program is being tested in Hampden County, Mass. and is designed to encourage healthy eating among low income families.

Specifically, The Healthy Incentives Pilot will enroll 7,500 randomly selected SNAP (aka Food Stamps) households to receive the HIP incentives.

For every dollar that participants spend on fruits and vegetables using their SNAP Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, 30 cents will be added to their benefit balance – thus cutting the cost of fruits and vegetables by almost one-third.

And if this Dutch research is correct, this cost cutting measure will result in the higher consumption of fruits & vegetables.

And to make things even better, this program will operate in tandem with the Food Bank Farm program already being sponsored by the Food bank of Western Mass. (The FB Farm program promotes local food consumption)

Conclusion

This program seems pretty great to me.

• It reduces the cost of fruits & vegetables
• It increases the consumption of fruits & vegetables
• It increases the consumption of local fruits & vegetables

The only drawback seems to be the $20 million.

Maybe the USDA should raise the cash by slashing some of the current USDA junk food subsidies.

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As consumers have grown increasingly worried about the potential harm from BPA in plastic water bottles and canned food, food manufacturers have mounted a massive campaign aimed at convincing us that we're over-reacting.  See for example this article from the industry-funded International Food and Information Council: Science and the BPA Controversy

But it's getting harder and harder to claim that consumers have nothing to fear from "normal" BPA exposure.  New data out of Italy links BPA from foods to changes in testosterone levels. These are not lab rats being given huge doses of BPA.  These are humans, simply going about their normal lives and eating their usual diet.

The study also found that BPA residues in the Italian men are slightly higher than those found in corresponding American populations. But given that canned tomatoes are one of the foods with the highest BPA levels, perhaps this just reflects a higher consumption of canned tomato products.

Unfortunately, the industry is doing more than spinning the bad news to the public. They're also engaged in serious lobbying to weaken regulations that would improve safety but cost them money. See "Industry opposes BPA ban (of course)"

What can you do? See these tips for Steering Clear of BPA and BPA: Which foods are safe?

And to give your entire diet a cancer-beating overhaul, see this terrific Diet and Cancer Prevention slideshow on Self.com