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Foods you should avoid during the government shutdown

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you know that the government is in a partial shutdown sparked by differences of opinion between the president of the United States and members of Congress over funding for Trump’s border wall. More than 800,000 federal employs have gone unpaid during this, the longest government shutdown in history. One of the affected departments is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.   You know — the ones who check to make sure our food is safe to eat. Without proper funding, FDA employees aren’t able to adequately carry out crucial tasks including publishing recalls and outbreaks. The absence of this vital information would be bad enough, but after 2018’s record number of FDA recalls, ranging from romaine to Goldfish crackers, its a bit unnerving what we might be missing in the wake of the agency’s absence. Before the government shutdown, it wasn’t unusual for the FDA to…

Nutrition labels are about to look different

The next time you pick up a bag of chips at the grocery store, flip it over and look for the new nutrition label. The Food and Drug Administration announced that nutrition labels would be receiving a makeover that reflects new scientific findings. The changes will ultimately help you make better-informed choices about foods you and your family eat. The new labels will only be required of manufacturers who sell more than $10 million in food a year. Companies in this category have until 2020 to adopt the new label. Some manufacturers have already incorporated the new label into their packaging, so it might already look familiar if you’re a frequent label checker. One of the most noticeable changes comes with the serving size and calories. Serving sizes have been adjusted to reflect how much people actually eat, rather than an arbitrary number some companies were perviously using to skew…

Supreme Court rules in favor of Colorado baker who refused to create a wedding cake for gay couple

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a heterosexual couple. In 2012, bakery owner Jack Phillips turned away David Mullins and Charlie Craig because he said heterosexuality was against his religious beliefs. The official ruling for the case — Masterpiece Bakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission — was 7-2. In 2014, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission decided that Masterpiece Bakeshop’s rights had been violated, and in 2016, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative nonprofit, petitioned for the Supreme Court to take the case. According to CNN, The Supreme Court’s ruling held that the commission showed hostility toward Philips’s religious beliefs. The case was one of the most anticipated of the year. Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Kristen Waggoner, who represented Phillips said in a statement, “Jack serves all customers; he simply declines to express messages or celebrate events that…