Consumed Consumer . org

Toronto was recently shaken by a the rapturous news of a Kirkland Signature recall. For countless consumers, the KS brand had come to symbolize high quality and most of the time low prices.

This being Bike Week , I have decided I will shop less at Costco (where it doesn’t really work to shop by bicycle, because most merchandise won’t fit in a rucksack) and more at the neighborhood supermarkets. On a bicycle, it makes sense to look at the flyers than go to whichever store has the lowest prices – you get to pedal the most this way and shopping is cheapest!

There are people who mourn the imminent disappearance of Twinkies. I am not one of them, but I've had something to do with their advertising.

The prevailing view has been for a while that taking your daily dose of multivitamins can't hurt and will certainly benefit you. Yet every now and then research comes out stating that most vitamin supplements are not being absorbed by the body. One such last study claims that vitamin supplements may in fact have an adverse effect.

What if we told you that you can buy a cheap laptop and, for the price you would normally pay for a Windows based one, you can get a laptop running a much more stable operating system AND send a similar laptop to a child in Africa?

Having recently purchased a bunch of fruits (red grapes, cherries and apples) in Chinatown at deep discounts, I was curious to learn what was the best value not only in terms of price discount but also in terms of fiber vs sugar.

It is a very sad reality that poor nutrition happens mostly to poor people. It also does not happen “by itself” but it is rather the result of targeted marketing and advertising campaigns that bombard kids long before their critical thinking is formed. The truth is that too much fat, especially from natural sources, is far more preferable to sugar.

Though men are not exposed to the same monthly ups and downs like women, men will end up having to deal with an unruly prostate. Furthermore, there is no magical pill that will cut their risk of cancer.

One of my favourite winter things to do is cooking good food. After all, you’re stuck inside for longer than usual, you get those carb cravings, and what better way to fight that then with good, wholesome, homemade food?

In what is becoming a regular occurrence, I attended yesterday evening a meeting of the Art Experience Group (AEG). We ate, drank, watched a movie, and plotted to take over the world. The spiritual one, that is :)

Every now and then, we're hit by nuggets of wisdom from peer-reviewed scientific journals that confront our pre-exsiting beliefs, or by articles from less-than-scientific publications that confirm our biases in spite of all scientific evidence to the contrary. We dutifully share them with you.

Just as reports of the rate of birth defects continuing to increase in China were published, we learn that UK researchers have determined that levels of lead exposure previously determined to be safe are in fact unsafe. Furthermore, most electronic waste dismantled in China is recycled back into consumer products (and sometimes, unwittingly, in food) and sold back to the industrialized world.  

This is Winter Wonderland season and while some can’t wait for it to end, others would like to keep it going for the rest of the year. For them and all those who just can’t get enough of its magical power, here is a list of Christmasy things you might enjoy.

  The Beijing Olympics are in the center of the world's attention, exemplifying what the Chinese leadership has deemed the "peaceful rise". We take a quick look at smaller consumerist happenings in and from China.

We recently learned that the Canadian federal government has failed to produce reports regarding the state of our water supply for more than five years (1).

Given a recent study on weight gain during the pandemic, we look at conventional wisdom advice on dealing with weight gain and the omnipresent menace of diabetes.

I recently had the opportunity to benchmark two very similar Acer computers, differing mostly in the kind of Intel processor they shared. I found that only Novabench is worth using.