Word: health
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...booked solid on talk shows and Capitol Hill. Soon apples were ordered removed from school cafeterias in New York City, then Los Angeles and Chicago. Said one school official: "It was overreaction and silliness carried to the point of stupidity." Kenneth W. Kizer, director of the California department of health services, said the panic was creating a "toxic bogeyman." Still, a number of school systems across the country followed suit. Signs were posted above produce bins coast to coast pointing out the Alar-free apples. Makers of products like apple juice, a staple of the preschool diet, sent out releases...
...fear of fruit swept the country. National Restaurant Association spokesman Jeffrey Prince said, "We learned to our relief that Granny Smith apples were not treated with Alar, only to learn to our horror that they were included in the Chilean ban. It seems you can't win for losing." Health-conscious restaurants that had banished artery-clogging red meat, butter, eggs and cheese from their menus now had to remove the fruit plate...
...themselves. Immune from the ills that ail less affluent cultures, America has the luxury of fretting over the little things. It is the particular indulgence of baby boomers who believe that restraint of one's appetites, daily workouts and a lot of oat bran can delay aging indefinitely. To health-and-fitness puritans, sagging flesh and excess weight represent an inexcusable lack of vigilance. Accustomed to success in translating their private anxieties into public activity -- protesting a war, toppling a President, taking over universities -- they turned to perfecting their immediate environment in the 1970s, pressing the Government for help...
...growing paranoia justified? How safe are the U.S. food and water supplies? The reassuring answer: very safe. In fact, the country's food and water systems are the safest in its history and among the safest in the world today. Despite all the alarms, the dangers to human health appear to be quite small...
...Government insists that pesticides pose little hazard to health. The EPA sets limits for the amounts of residue left in foods that are well below what it considers to be danger levels. And regular checks by the Food and Drug Administration of both domestic and imported crops uncover few violations. In 1987, for example, the FDA tested 14,492 food samples, about one-third of them fruits and vegetables, and found that less than 1% of the items had residues that exceeded the legally allowable EPA level. No pesticides at all were detected...