This is not the Bobby Jr. diet
By Sara Håkansson, Lund University
edited by Gaby Clark, reviewed
by Robert Egan
The EAT–Lancet diet is a global dietary guideline developed to promote both human health and a sustainable planet. It is based on plant-based foods rich in wholegrains, legumes, fruit and vegetables, with small amounts of animal products—above all, considerably lower meat consumption than what the Swedish Food Agency recommends.
We're in court again this time to fight Trump/RFK anti-vax agenda
By Ben Solis, Rhode Island Current
The new childhood immunization policies and vaccine schedule from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is the focus of yet another multistate lawsuit..webp)
The US has had 3,300 new measles cases since
Trump and RFK Jr. took over
The lawsuit challenges the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “decision memo” issued in January, which stripped seven childhood vaccines, including those protecting against rotavirus, meningococcal disease, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), of what has been a typically and universally recommended status.
The complaint — which names federal DHHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CDC Acting Director Jay Bhattacharya — also challenges what several attorneys general have called the unlawful replacement of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the expert federal panel that has guided U.S. vaccine policy for decades.
Hospital drops SLAPP suits against advocacy group, both sides call a truce
By Will Collette
Much of the blame was focused on then newly appointed
hospital CEO Aaron Robinson.
Opposition to Robinson gelled into the Save South County
Organization who stepped up the pressure for reforms at the hospital. At the
same time, South County’s once top-ranked ratings for patient care and satisfaction dropped significantly. Last November, their patient safety rating, once A-rated, dropped to "C."
In a surprising move, Robinson and the hospital board
filed a SLAPP suit against Save South County Hospital and its leaders. “SLAPP”
stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation,” that actually
gives the defendant, usually a community group or local leader, grounds to
countersue for damages under Rhode Island
law. SLAPP suits have been around since the 1990s and are generally
reviled as a tool used by corporations to stifle opposition.
But both sides have now agreed to end the lawsuits and
apparently resolved, or at least stuck a pin in, the underlying disputes. Save
South County Hospital has changed its name to “Save Our Health Care” in a clear
gesture to de-escalate the conflict. They posted a statement, reprinted below,
describing where they see the issues going forward.
For its part, South County Hospital has reinstated and
restaffed its Oncology
Department that was one of the sparks that set off the conflict.
Robinson is not resigning and neither side has addressed the labor-management
issues that were also the major casus belli.
I hope this really does work and that South County Hospital
can improve patient care, working conditions and regain public trust and
confidence.
I first got acquainted with South County Hospital in the
1970s through friendship with then CEO
Donald Ford. Alone among RI hospital administrators, Donald supported a big
organizing drive in Rhode Island that aimed to get all hospitals in the state
to comply with federal law requiring that patients be treated regardless of
ability to pay and to provide a reasonable amount of free or reduced cost care
to uninsured patients.
I worked as a strategic researcher on that campaign and
Donald was a key contact who also became a cherished friend and mentor. I wish
he was still alive. He never would have filed the SLAPP suits, and I doubt this
painful conflict would ever have gotten so out of hand.
When Cathy and I returned to Rhode Island in 2001, South
County Hospital and later South County Health became our primary source for
health care. I’ve had a couple of multi-day stays as an inpatient and really
came to appreciate the great staff, as I wrote in this
review of my last stay.
Fingers crossed that this ordeal is over.
Here’s “Save
Our Health Care’s” statement posted on their re-branded substack site:
New Approaches for Our Health Care Advocacy In and Beyond
South County
With Our New Name Will Come an Expanded Purpose for Our
Group
Feb 16, 2026
New
Approaches for Our Health Care Advocacy In and Beyond South County
Dear Subscribers,
We’re continuing our work to support better health care in
South County. As our efforts with South County Hospital continued through
various discussions, our Save South County Hospital group discovered a role for
itself and this site beyond just one hospital. As such, we will no longer go by
that name.
Our decision came from multiple factors, including the
thorny issues in our current national, state, and local health care services.
We have decided to focus on both the big and small pictures. To align with that
purpose, we have rebranded ourselves Save Our Health Care to
touch on many and varied matters affecting medicine and your health.
In addition, our experiences in the last year have led us to
see ourselves as part watchdog and part advocate of best practices overall.
This means providing periodic information related to real
problems—physician shortages, physician autonomy removed when corporations
decide on allowed medical services, private-practice dilemmas, management in
the healthcare profession, cost-reimbursement and other kinds of financial
issues, coverage denials, prior authorization delays, surprise/out-of-network
bills, charity-care disputes, Medicaid access barriers, and “can’t get an
appointment” problems as a larger issue than just for a few patients.
Medicine is changing at a fast rate with new drugs, new and
different treatment protocols, and new approaches to healing or dealing with
old ailments and serious diseases.
The point is to examine, inform, and provide commentary on a
range of issues confronting health care and patients.
As a Rhode Island and South County watchdog, we also aim to
be a policy and regulatory force multiplier—showing up, as time allows, where
decisions are made and asking for measurable fixes.
This means we could testify at the State House, hold our own
press briefings, and form partnerships with community health centers and
providers, faith groups, senior centers, disability advocates, unions, and
municipal leaders.
To accomplish this, we will reach out to recruit additional
community members and professional stakeholders knowledgeable about the health
care landscape. We will invite them to join with us to broaden the scope of our
initiative and increase online commentary on this site about issues affecting
you.
We will be in touch shortly with more information about this
change and the overall benefits it can bring.
Yours Truly,
Save Our Health Care
Midlife crisis is complicated in the US
Edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Robert Egan
In a new study, psychologist Frank J. Infurna of Arizona
State University and co-authors, analyzed survey data from 17 countries seeking
to identify why U.S. trends diverge from other wealthy nations.
"The real midlife crisis in America isn't about
lifestyle choices or sports cars. It's about juggling work, finances, family,
and health amid weakening social supports," Infurna said. "The data
make this clear."
The findings, published in Current Directions in
Psychological Science, point the way to likely solutions for
individuals and U.S. society.
Scientists say this is a misleading number
By Max Planck Institute for Human Development
 |
| What counts as a food decision? Food decisions only make sense when you know the context in which they were made. Credit: Pietro Nickl |
Numbers often drive health advice. They are meant to inform, motivate, and guide behavior. But not every widely shared statistic rests on solid scientific ground. One long repeated claim says people make more than 200 food-related decisions every day without realizing it.
According to Maria Almudena Claassen, a postdoctoral fellow
at the Center for Adaptive Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Human
Development, that figure gives a misleading impression. “This number paints a
distorted picture of how people make decisions about their food intake and how
much control they have over it,” she says.
Claassen, along with Ralph Hertwig, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, and Jutta Mata, an associate research scientist at the Institute and Professor for Health Psychology at the University of Mannheim, published research examining how this number became so influential. Their work shows how questionable measurement methods can shape public understanding of eating behavior in inaccurate ways.
The Origin of the 200 Food Decisions Claim
The widely cited estimate dates back to a 2007 study by U.S.
scientists Brian Wansink1 and Jeffery Sobal. In that study, 154 participants
were first asked to estimate how many decisions they made each day about eating
and drinking. The average response was 14.4 decisions.
Participants were then asked to break down their choices for
a typical meal into categories such as “when,” “what,” “how much,” “where,” and
“with whom.” Researchers multiplied these estimates by the number of meals,
snacks, and beverages participants said they consumed in a typical day. When
combined, this calculation produced an average of 226.7 daily decisions.
The difference between the initial estimate and the larger total, 212.3 decisions, was interpreted as evidence that most food choices are unconscious or “mindless.”
A 20-year-old cancer vaccine may hold the key to long-term survival
Duke Health
Researchers say survival over such a long period is extremely uncommon for
people with metastatic breast cancer, which is why the case drew renewed
scientific attention.
Researchers at Duke Health took a closer look at the immune
systems of the women who participated in the trial, which was led by Herbert
Kim Lyerly, M.D., George Barth Geller Distinguished Professor of Immunology at
Duke University School of Medicine. What they discovered surprised them. Even
after many years, the women still had powerful immune cells that could
recognize their cancer.
These immune cells shared a specific marker known as CD27.
This marker plays an important role in helping the immune system remember past
threats and respond to them again. The results, published in Science
Immunology, point to CD27 as a possible way to make cancer vaccines far
more effective.
"We were stunned to see such durable immune responses
so many years later," said Zachary Hartman, Ph.D., senior author of the
study and associate professor in the Departments of Surgery, Integrative
Immunology and Pathology at Duke University School of Medicine. "It made
us ask: What if we could boost this response even more?"
Gov. McKee is gaslighting Rhode Island energy consumers
By Bill Ibelle, Rhode Island Current
Right. It’s the elephant in the room that’s going to trample you, not the gerbil.
But the governor and our for-profit utility want you to pay attention to the gerbil, even though the real problem is our overdependence on natural gas.
Save now, pay later: Critics warn McKee’s plan to ease energy bills comes with a tab
Why?
The governor is in the fight of his political life and needs a quick fix to win back support. That’s why he wants to roll back state renewable and energy efficiency programs to save ratepayers money on their monthly bills. It doesn’t matter that his quick fix doesn’t fix anything. It just has to save you a few dollars this election year.
Try using a stainless steel go-cup
To most of us, that cup feels harmless – just a convenient tool for caffeine delivery. However, if that cup is made of plastic, or has a thin plastic lining, there is a high chance it’s shedding thousands of tiny plastic fragments directly into your drink.
In Australia alone, we use a staggering 1.45 billion single-use hot beverage cups every year, along with roughly 890 million plastic lids. Globally, that number swells to an estimated 500 billion cups annually.
In new research I coauthored, published in Journal of Hazardous Materials: Plastics, we looked at how these cups behave when they get hot.
The message is clear: heat is a primary driver of microplastic release, and the material of your cup matters more than you might think.
Microplastics are fragments of plastic ranging from about 1 micrometer to 5 millimeters in size – roughly from a speck of dust to the size of a sesame seed. 
No plastics
They can be created when larger plastic items break down, or they can be released directly from products during normal use. These particles end up in our environment, our food, and eventually, our bodies.
Currently, we don’t have conclusive evidence on just how much of that microplastic remains in our bodies. Studies on this subject are highly prone to contamination and it’s really difficult to accurately measure the levels of such tiny particles in human tissue.
Furthermore, scientists are still piecing together what microplastics might mean for human health in the long term. More research is urgently needed, but in the meantime, it’s good to be aware of potential microplastic sources in our daily lives.
University of New Hampshire poll shows Foulkes leading McKee 34% to 18%
The survey of 703 residents, including 364 likely Democratic primary voters, marks a new low in voters’ long running dissatisfaction with McKee. Less than one in five likely Democratic voters (including registered Democrats and independents) had a favorable view of the incumbent governor, while more than three-quarters viewed him unfavorably.
If asked to mark their primary ballots today — six months out from the September primary — 18% of likely Democratic voters would reelect McKee. Foulkes, a former CVS executive viewed as McKee’s main primary competitor, was the pick for 34% of likely primary voters. The margin of error overall was 3.7%, with a 5.1% margin of error for questions specific to likely Democratic voters.
The poll was conducted online between Feb. 12 and 16.
More bad news for McKee’s reelection prospects in latest AFL-CIO poll
