The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for everything from the proper labeling of foods to the inspection of mammography facilities. They’re responsible for making sure the “general public” is safe from misrepresented products and that drugs won’t have dangerous side effects.
The FDA was created in 1906 and is under the direct jurisdiction of the federal government of the U.S. Its 2008 annual budget was $2.3 billion and the FDA used every penny of it. As it regulates $1 trillion in consumer goods, it’s probably safe to say that nobody wants to underpay the people who are keeping us safe from, well, just about everything.
This isn’t to say that sometimes companies and products slide by the FDA.
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No, you don’t have to go back and read the headline a second time because, yes, you read it correctly the first time. According to two new studies, drinking moderate amounts of alcohol will not, I repeat, will not give you that infamous beer belly or equate you to middle to lower class, all-American man Hank Hill sitting in your front yard, admiring your latest mow job with a cold beer cracked and gripped in your hand. In fact, it might mean just the opposite. The first of the two studies took place over the course of eight years, taking more than 20,000 beer drinkers and their beer-boasting habits into review. The results: although heavy drinkers were shown to put on some weight, it wasn’t necessarily on, around, or even near the belly. |