The Sidebar

In February 2014, David Katz MPH ’93, the director of the Yale School of Medicine’s Prevention Research Center, wrote two glowing online reviews of a science-fiction novel called reVision.

In his biweekly column in The Huffington Post, Katz lauded the book’s “lyrically beautiful writing,” comparing it to the work of a veritable “who’s who” of great writers, including Plato, John Milton and Charles Dickens. “I finished with a sense of illumination from a great source,” he concluded.

...But Katz omitted a crucial detail from both reviews: the subject of his praise was his own self-published passion project, released two months earlier under the pseudonym Samhu Iyyam.

David Katz SPH ’93 — the Yale-affiliated doctor whose over-the-top Huffington Post review of his own self-published novel caused a furor in the nutrition community last year — has once again tested the boundaries of ethical journalism.

In another column for The Huffington Post over the summer, Katz lambasted the Massachusetts-based supermarket chain Big Y, calling its ad campaign for the In-Vince-Ible Pizza, a fatty snack named after NFL star Vince Wilfork, “deeply disturbing.” He described the pizza as symptomatic of the obesity epidemic in America, and questioned the parenting skills of Wilfork, who appears alongside his son in ads for the product.

...But nowhere in the May article, which also appeared in the New Haven Register, did Katz mention another crucial detail: Big Y is not just any supermarket. Just one month before the column was published, Big Y cut ties with a nutritional ratings service, NuVal, that Katz established in 2008 and has passionately championed ever since.

I keep turning up in the Yale Daily News lately...Alas, the coverage is all negative.

They reported that I wrote a blog in the 3rd person about my self-published fantasy/adventure novel (which, by the way, my Mother and I think is very good) when the publisher suggested it. In a bizarre story in The Guardian allegedly about the history of sugar, which the writer got substantially wrong, I was horribly misquoted on a topic that was never on the record in the first place. The Yale Daily News never even asked me if I said what I allegedly said (I did not), but they did repeat it, and built a story around that, too. Most recently, I challenged the propriety of a local grocer’s ads for maximizing meat intake, and linking it to ‘invincible’ health against all evidence. That third item was in the Yale Daily News this week.

...(The YDN’s) negative interest in me began exactly when I took a prominent, public position in support of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Report; when I campaigned for the inclusion of sustainability in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans; and when I confronted the cabal working to undermine these very things, and peddle more meat.

That’s the common element in this otherwise random coverage: meat.

...That the agents of meat should come after me should surprise no one. When Oprah Winfrey highlighted some of the abuses involved in the mass production of beef in the U.S., they went after her. If Oprah’s platform does not dissuade attack, mine certainly will not.

...The agents of meat, apparently, sift social media daily looking for dirt on me, and have done so for the past two years at least. They don’t find much, because there isn’t much- but they make the most of what they find. And when they can’t make a story of the latest fleck themselves, they peddle it to the Yale Daily News, which is apparently always ready to buy it, few if any questions asked.

A New Jersey Superior Court judge has determined that a Georgia man can access state records under the Open Public Records Act (OPRA). That differs with a decision rendered earlier this year by an Atlantic/Cape May County Superior Court judge who said out-of-state residents have no right to benefits of the act.

Peter Heimlich, an Atlanta-based investigative blogger, filed a lawsuit in June challenging the Educational Information and Resource Center's (EIRC) denial for records filed under OPRA because he was not a state resident. Attorney C.J. Griffin, of Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, represented Heimlich and specializes in First Amendment law. (cont.)

Today the Honorable Georgia M. Curio, Assignment Judge in Gloucester County, ruled that a person need not be a resident of New Jersey to gain access to government records under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act. Despite OPRA’s opening statement that government records “shall be readily accessible to citizens of this State,” Judge Curio found that the remainder of OPRA’s statutory provisions clearly provide that “any person” may request records and that any ambiguity in the statute was to be construed in favor of access in accordance with the State’s public policy of transparency. Accordingly, she held that Peter Heimlich, an investigative blogger who resides in Georgia, had standing to request records from the Educational Information Resource Center in New Jersey.

Curio is not the first judge to rule on this issue. Law Division judges in Burlington County and Ocean County have both held that “any person” may request government records under OPRA, not just citizens. One judge, however, in Atlantic County, has found that only citizens of New Jersey may request records. That decision is currently being appealed.

“New Jersey is often the subject of national news and is situated between two national media markets, New York and Philadelphia. It makes no sense that national news media would not be able to gain access to New Jersey’s records simply because their journalists do not live here,” said CJ Griffin, attorney for Mr. Heimlich. “We are very pleased that Judge Curio recognized that OPRA repeatedly states that ‘any person’ may gain access to government records and that she has refused to limit OPRA’s scope.”

“The public benefits when government records are made publicly available, regardless of whether they were requested by a local resident or by a journalist who wishes to publish a news story on an newsworthy event occurring in New Jersey.”

Raley’s Family of Fine Stores has introduced the NuVal™ Nutritional Scoring System in its 124 Raley’s, Bel Air and Nob Hill Foods stores. Raley’s is a family-owned and operated grocery chain with store locations throughout Northern California and Nevada.

...This robust food rating system was developed by a team of recognized nutrition and medial experts, led by Dr. David Katz of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center. The NuVal™ Nutritional Scoring System is objective and had no retailer or manufacturer involvement in its development.

The conversation around nutrition and education has continued to evolve over the past five years and since Raley’s implemented NuVal. Our customers are asking for more information about product nutrition and overall health and wellness, and we are listening and responding. Recently we added a corporate dietitian and regularly feature educational information about nutrition and wellness on our website. Additionally, we share information through our Raley's Something Extra publication and via in store materials. We are also in the process of creating a new system that is personalized and easy to understand.

Big Y adopted NuVal, a service that assigns numerical scores to food products based on their nutritional value, six years ago as part of an effort to promote healthy eating habits. But last April the chain dropped NuVal because of concerns that its ratings algorithm was out of date.