We recommended better nutritional labeling on menus for chain restaurants, GrubHub, and other food delivery website

NCHR responded to the “Request for Comments” about the FDA's draft guidance on menu labeling for chain restaurants and virtual third-party platforms like GrubHub and UberEats. The FDA's draft guidance requires that fast food chain restaurants and other chains include nutritional information on physical and internet menus, but didn’t include those requirements for third-party platforms. NCHR urged the FDA to require that nutritional information be provided in all places where customers may order food, whether online or in person. We also urged the FDA to require information about added sugar (instead of making it voluntary) since too much sugar in one’s diet. Unless there is a requirement, there is no incentive for restaurants or third-party platforms to provide the information that consumers need to make healthy choices. The goal is to prevent cancers and other serious diseases and improve everyone’s health. Read more here.

EPA tightens rules on some air pollution

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced stricter regulations on one of the most harmful forms of air pollution: soot, also known as fine particulate matter or PM 2.5. These minuscule particles, about 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair, pose significant health risks, including lung cancer and other lung diseases, including severe and sometimes fatal asthma and heart attacks. The EPA has reduced the permissible annual average concentration from 12 to 9 micrograms per cubic meter, which is 25% lower and the first reduction since 2012.  This is expected to prevent approximately 4,500 deaths a year by 2032. EPA will give states several years to comply. Read more here.

Cancer-causing chemicals have been found in Clinique, Clearasil, and PanOxyl acne treatments

High levels of cancer-causing chemical benzene were detected in some acne treatments from brands including Estee Lauder's Clinique, Target's Up & Up, and Reckitt Benckiser-owned Clearasil, said independent U.S. laboratory Valisure. Valisure has also filed a petition with the FDA calling on the regulator to recall the products, conduct an investigation, and revise industry guidance. Valisure's tests showed some products could form more than 800 times the conditionally restricted FDA concentration limit for benzene. Read more here.

Palliative care can help patients live longer

Palliative care is often misunderstood as meaning a patient will not get “real treatment.” That is not accurate. In fact, patients who have palliative care often live longer as well as having a better quality of life than other patients. That’s because palliative care focuses on helping relieve the patient’s pain, offering psychological support to the patient and family, and providing the patient and family with information they may need to adapt to life with a serious illness and make relevant decisions.



For example, research shows that palliative care is a very effective addition to standard cancer treatment for people with metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer. The patients who had palliative care that was offered as soon as they were diagnosed, suffered less depression, were less likely to receive aggressive end-of-life care, and lived longer. There is similar evidence with other very serious diseases. Why is that? Unfortunately, there is sometimes so much emphasis on trying everything to fight cancer that patients are undergoing treatments that doctors know have almost zero chance of helping them, with a high likelihood of having terrible side effects. In contrast, palliative care enables patients with late-stage cancer and other debilitating diseases to live as comfortably as possible during the time they have left, spend fewer days in the hospital, and spend meaningful time with their families. To learn more, read here.