Californians still undecided about their next senator, the relationship between social media and the news, FDA to review their current definition of "healthy."
Candidates face off in last US Senate debate before primary
California's June 7th primary is less than a month away.
Mail-in ballots started going out this week, and the competition is ramping up in the race to replace long-time U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer.
Last night the candidates vying for her seat met on the debate stage for the last time before the primary.
Much of the focus was on California Attorney General Kamala Harris, the front-runner in the race, as the remaining candidates battled for a shot at second place.
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- KPCC's Senior Politics Reporter Mary Plummer
Missed the debate? Watch it here.
Trump's delegate troubles
Donald Trump's campaign said it was a computer error that caused William Johnson, a LA area lawyer and prominent white nationalist to be on his list of California delegates.
State officials have reported that it may not be possible to cut him from the official delegate list, so will it come back ti hurt Trump?
LA Times reporter James Quealy wrote about it and joined us for more.
Plan to track climate emissions would use network of satellites
The landmark climate deal signed by 175 countries last month calls for the "verification and certification" of greenhouse gases, but a key question remains: how will the global community ensure that nations are hitting their emission targets?
One solution is a global satellite system that would track and monitor emissions on a nation-by-nation basis – with an ability even to get data down to the square mile.
Scientists at the Paris-based Centre National d'Études Spatiales, or CNES, France's space agency, unveiled plans this week.
"It's a new step in the monitoring of climate change," Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of CNES, told Take Two. "The different countries will know exactly who will be the polluters...and inside the country you will know exactly where are these emissions."
The system, which would include satellites from multiple countries, would also add an important layer of accountability, said Ben Orlove, director for the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, at Columbia University.
"These multiple systems will keep tabs on each other," said Orlove. "There's really going to be no place for a polluter to hide."
If the proposal moves forward, the satellites could start collecting data as early as 2020, according to CNES in Paris.
Sports roundup: Steph Curry clinches MVP, but is today's NBA competition 'watered down'?
The Dodgers are at the top of the pack, so why are their games failing to excite fans? Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry earned the MVP for this season, but does it mean less in today's league? And how much free beer does one big home run deserve?
We're joined by
.
The FDA plans to redefine 'healthy.' But it may take a while.
What do you look for when planning your next nibble? Does the word “healthy” ever influence your decision?
Since the mid-1990s, the FDA has defined “healthy” as a product with limited levels of fat, sodium and cholesterol. But that could all change soon. The Food and Drug Administration says it plans to re-evaluate and eventually re-define the word healthy.
The decision was spurred — in part — by the pushback they faced from Kind LLC, a company widely known for their snack bars. Last year, the FDA asked the company to stop calling their bars “healthy” because they contained too much fat to meet the criteria. The FDA is now backing away from this complaint.
Dr. David Katz is the founding director of the Griffin Prevention Research Center at Yale University. He worked with Kind LLC to petition the FDA. He spoke about the shortcomings of the current guidelines with Take Two.
What’s behind this decision to redefine the word ‘healthy?’
This grew out of what’s called the citizen’s petition to the FDA, and it was put together by leadership at Kind … And the problem was the regulations on the books at the FDA — first of all — they’re a throwback to the time when we were tossing out the baby with the bathwater. When we were unduly fat-phobic in our culture. We failed to note that some high-fat foods are extremely nutritious, like nuts and seeds and avocado in particular … This was clearly the law of unintended consequences kicking in. Those regulations were never meant to imply you can’t call almonds healthy [or] you can’t call an avocado healthy. That’s just silly.
Why did they let it go on for so long?
There’s a long lifecycle for changing regulations at the FDA. There are a lot of really good people there doing really good work, but it’s a federal agency. Big bureaucracy. Change is slow … They haven’t changed the regs yet. That process is just beginning … If it takes years, it won’t surprise me.
Are you finding any research that shows that a healthy label can sway consumer choices?
Yes … The people who least need the guidance of the word ‘healthy’ on a label are the ones who look at ingredient lists and nutrition fact panels and can sort that all out. The people who are most influenced by a word — ‘a good source of whole grain’ or ‘healthy’ — are the people who tend to know the least about the details of nutrition … Those words are important, and they need to be truthful … There’s no question you’re creating confusion, and certainly everything we know about food choice tells us that if we confuse people, then they just stop trying. Then they just say, ‘forget about it; you’ll find me at Burger King,' and that’s the last thing we want.
Press the blue play button above to hear the interview.
(This post has been updated.)
You're getting your news from Facebook, and someone's controlling that feed
It was a big shock to some people when they heard the charge: Facebook routinely censored conservative news.
That's the allegation published in Gizmodo, which talked to people who formally worked for Facebook. They claimed they curated what would trend and what didn't. And conservative news often didn't.
U.S. Senator John Thune has even launched an inquiry into the practice.
But it's shed a light into what we expect from social media.
USC journalism professor Mike Ananny says he routinely encounters students who believe Facebook and other sites are automated, run by machines and pulling content from your own friend groups.
But he has to remind them that social media sites are run by humans, and the algorithms that build their feeds are made by humans, too.
Those people might be engineers and software developers, and not trained with journalism ethics.
Ananny joins Take Two to explain more about our relationship with Facebook and how we get our news.
LADWP says Watts's dingy water is safe to drink
Residents in Watts say the water coming out of the taps is many colors -- brown, yellow, beige -- but not clear.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is investigiating the complaints.
"In the last about ten days we got a call from LA Unified School District that they had some pretty dirty water showing up," said Marty Adams, director of Water Operations at LADWP, to Take Two's A Martinez.
These complaints prompted testing of the water to determine if it was safe to consume."The water came back as meeting drinking water standards in terms of being clean and safe to drink," Adams said.
Still the cloudiness and discoloration in the tap continues. Adams attributes that to some sediment build up, the result of resting in the pipes.
"It is technically safe to drink. No one's get sick from drinking it. But it's not what we'd want to serve our customers by any stretch," Adams said.
As part of their investigation, Adams said that LADWP will be purging the supply in an act called "extreme flushing." "We're going to flush the entire system to make sure we get all the sediments out of there," Adams said. The flushing will begin way back at the source area to achieve maximum effect.
In the meantime, Adams wants to assure its customers in the area that they are working as hard as they can to get the tap water back to normal.
"We've got all hands on deck right now," Adams said. "It's priority number one for everyone in the water system to make sure that the water pipes in that area are cleaned of all those sediments and we track down the source of this problem so that it doesn't reoccur."
To hear the full conversation, click the blue player above
1,284 more planets confirmed to exist in our galaxy
Turns out we've got some newly discovered neighbors in he Milky Way... a LOT of them.
Scientists have been going through data from the Kepler space telescope and have confirmed the existance of over twelve hundred new planets in our galaxy.
What's more, nine of those COULD be Earth-like.
To talk with me a bit more about this, I'm joined by Ed Krupp.
He's an Astronomer and the Director of the Griffith Observatory.
Move over Jetsons, the smart home of the future is here
So imagine having a smart home that would put the Jetsons to shame.
You walk in the door, your chef robot would have dinner -- a plate of Chicken Alfredo, let's say -- sitting there, waiting for you.
The robot vacuum would've cleaned your house. No dust bunnies. Your DJ robot would know what music you were in the mood in-- some Sade, and your robot husband would give you a foot massage - like a real one!
While this isn't a reality yet, last year CNET did put together a smart home in Kentucky and they've been testing it out ever since.
Rich Brown an Executive Editor at CNET, joined the show to talk about the smart home and all its high tech features.
To hear the full segment, click the blue play button above.
The Styled Side: the trend towards more 'organic' nail salons
There's a movement afoot in Southern California to make going to the nail salon better for the environment and your hands.
And it all started with the New York Times.
"Last year, on this very week, the Times published a series of articles on the nail industry that made the front page," says Michelle Dalton Tyree from Fashion Trends Daily. "It served as a big wake-up call to both consumers, businesses and regulators."
It sparked a national conversation about not only conditions at salons but products, themselves, and cleanliness.
Nail polishes traditionally came with chemicals like toulene, formaldehyde and camphor.
Tyree says there's a trend in response to that Times story: customers are asking for polishes without those chemicals, even organic ones.
"West Coast brands are leading the charge to change these formulas," she says, pointing to companies like Jenna Hipp and RGB.
More salons in SoCal are also slowly expanding their offerings of "green" products, including one run by Tyree's sister Jackie Dalton.
"Lollipop Nail Studio based in Costa Mesa, helmed by Jackie, has been among the pioneers of salons going greener and cleaner," Tyree says. "Her salon has been recognized nationally for being ahead of this trend."
Other salons include Can Can Parleur in the Fairfax neighborhood and Elite Organic Nail Salon in Long Beach.
Tyree says if you're dedicated to the salon near you, you cannot directly ask for "organic" products because that term isn't regulated when it comes to nails.
Instead, she suggests you ask for "5 free" products, a widely known term in the industry used to describe chemicals without toluene, dibutyl phtalate (DBP), formaldehyde, formaldehyde resin and camphor.