The Chatterbox

The Chatterbox

News and views from the staff of FamilyEducation.

archives

November 21, 2011
Ask any child that question, and chances are you'd get a resounding, "YES!" After all, what child would put up a fight about eating his veggies if pizza was one of the choices? And a new bill approved by Congress makes this dream a reality. The Agriculture Appropriations bill does, in fact, make pizza a vegetable. Let's back track-- the pizza itself isn't a vegetable. But the tomato sauce on each slice is. In general, one serving of vegetables is half a cup. The USDA moved to block pizza being counted as a veggie, unless it contained the half a cup of tomato sauce....
November 2, 2011
Two potentially cancer-causing chemicals thought to be harmful to babies remain in Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo, two and a half years after the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics began urging the company to remove them. Johnson & Johnson is the world's largest health care company, and the popular baby shampoo at the center of the controversy is one of their signature products. Although Johnson & Johnson offers versions that don't contain the harmful chemicals, some products still contain trace amounts of dioxane and a substance called quaternium-15 that releases formaldehyde,...
November 1, 2011
Back in the day, "tweet" was something a bird said. Now? It's what shows up on one your social media feeds. Spam was canned ham, not unwanted and annoying emails. And roaming certainly wasn't something your phone did. (How could it, when it was attached to your wall by a long cord?) Oh no- roaming was reserved for the buffaloes on the open plain. Over the generations, some pretty common words have taken on newer, more modern definitions dubbed by today's youth. CD, Like, Text-- depending on your age, all three of these words could have very different meanings. I got a...