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Finland’s Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) is questioning a government proposal to raise the VAT value-added tax on sweets and chocolate. The THL, a Finnish research and development institute which is attached to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, announced that it did not agree with the decision to raise the tax from 14 to 25.5 percent. Talking to STT, the Finnish news agency, a senior THL investigator Heli Kuusipalo explained that the institute would prefer to see a sugar taxation system that was health-based rather than a direct VAT hike. The higher the sugar content in any...

Papers being checked for the second time tonight for being outside past curfew in Montreal, Quebec. ...

The Obama administration is quietly diverting roughly $500 million to the IRS to help implement the president’s healthcare law. The money is only part of the IRS’s total implementation spending, and it is being provided outside the normal appropriations process. The tax agency is responsible for several key provisions of the new law, including the unpopular individual mandate. Republican lawmakers have tried to cut off funding to implement the healthcare law, at least until after the Supreme Court decides whether to strike it down. That ruling is expected by June, and oral arguments last week indicated the justices might well...

Moral obligation There is no escaping that arguments for or against “government”-run health care are moral. Do I have the moral obligation to pay for the health care of another for a malady I wouldn’t try curing in myself? What about self-inflicted injuries like alcoholism or drug addiction or obesity? What about everyday complaints like zits or headaches? Is this another so-called tragedy of the commons? And what responsibilities come with these new “rights”? Can I then require my neighbor to stop smoking, stop eating what I don’t want him to, or think thoughts that are distressing to his mental...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former President Bill Clinton today announced their partnership with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation — itself a partnership between the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation — to inspire America’s youth to develop lifelong healthy habits and avoid obesity. “Initiatives like the Alliance for a Healthier Generation are providing the framework for a healthier America. I am thrilled to join with President Clinton and the American Heart Association because in California we are already doing everything the Alliance supports,” said Gov. Schwarzenegger. “The foundation for a healthy lifetime is built in the...

Regulation: The food police are back, with the misnamed Center for Science in the Public Interest saying this time that Chinese food is bad for us. Put that egg roll down and back away slowly. If you're a prisoner on death row, don't order any Chinese food, at least according to the CSPI food cops. The sodium alone will kill you. A plate of General Tso's chicken, the group says, has 40% more sodium and more than half the calories the average adult needs daily. Those who remember Seinfeld's 'Soup Nazi' shouting 'No soup for you!' whenever a customer dared...

ATKINS: Food fads may be distracting attention from something more insidiously piling on pounds: beverages. One of every five calories in the American diet is liquid. The nation’s single biggest “food” is soda, and nutrition experts have long demonised it. Now they are escalating the fight. In reports to be published in science journals this week, two groups of researchers hope to add evidence to the theory that soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks don’t just go hand-in-hand with obesity, but actually cause it. A small point? In reality, proving this would be a scientific leap that could help make the...

NEW YORK (AP) - Hoping to save hundreds of lives, health officials made a regulatory change Wednesday that will allow the city to track thousands of people with diabetes and occasionally prod them to take better care of themselves. In doing so, New York will become the first American city to monitor diabetes in the same way health departments now commonly track people with HIV or tuberculosis. It will also be treading new ground, and potentially raising some privacy concerns, by collecting information about people who have a chronic disease that isn't contagious or caused by an environmental toxin. The...

There are two kinds of conversations about Johnny Carson. One kind is the one most of you are having. It is light and interesting, about showbiz, TV, popular culture. Then there is the other conversation many of us have been avoiding. -snip- A part of it (the conversation)landed on my desk with a little thump. It was a package, about the size of your palm, with a brown camel on it, two pyramids and three palm trees. "You can have them," said a friend who tossed them, casual in voice, though there was no missing the symbolism of it, his...

Beach smoking ban under construction Sentinel Staff Report The City Council will decide whether to ban cigarettes on the main beach tonight. If second reading of a proposed ordinance is passed, the law could be enforceable in time for the winter holidays. Earlier this year, Councilman Dennis Norton suggested the city look into the ban, saying Capitola’s beach is not the public’s ashtray, while also citing health and environmental issues as reasons for a cigarette ban. In July, the Santa Cruz City Council began researching a proposal to ban smoking on city-administered beaches. While noting that secondhand cigarette smoke causes...

Joyce Reynolds has waged a seesaw battle with her weight her entire life. "I've gone through bouts of depression," said Reynolds, 47. "Even though you think you've reached a spot where you're happy, you're really not. It's like you fool yourself." Her employer, the Lee County (Fla.) Electric Cooperative, is trying to help. It recently started offering Weight Watchers classes in the office. Some of the 30-plus participants got a break on the usual enrollment fee. Others are spreading out the payments through payroll deductions. Five weeks into the program, Reynolds has lost 6 pounds and has seen her blood...

In a unanimous ruling, the New Jersey Supreme Court for the first time recognized morbid obesity as a handicap under the Law Against Discrimination, though the court overturned a plaintiff's verdict due to faulty jury instructions. The justices on Thursday affirmed an Appellate Division ruling that a 400-pound woman who suffered from a genetic metabolic disorder proffered sufficient expert testimony and other evidence to meet the statute's two-prong test for proving a physical handicap. "According to her expert, she is morbidly obese, that is, suffering from disease or pathology as a result of her obesity, and ... her obesity-based arthritis,...