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Hot spots and cool links on FDA's Website and beyond

Home on the Web for Seniors

The United Nations has designated 1999 the International Year of Older Persons, and FDA is participating in this worldwide initiative with the theme "Active Aging: A Lifetime of Good Health." The agency's Active Aging Website, www.fda.gov/oc/olderpersons/, includes articles, brochures, and other materials on a variety of health issues such as arthritis, cancer, health fraud, and nutrition. Some of these are in Spanish. The Website also includes links to other organizations of interest to older people, such as the National Institute on Aging and the American Association of Retired Persons.

You've Got Food Questions?

How often should you sanitize your kitchen sink? Why shouldn't you sample cookie dough before baking it? How safe is food bought through the mail? Why should pregnant women avoid soft cheeses? Answers to these questions and more can be found at www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/advice.html, the new "Consumer Advice" Website maintained by FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. The site has huge amounts of useful information on food preparation, food-borne illnesses, dietary supplements, cosmetics, nutrition, weight loss, and women's health. Also on the site are links to consumer advice from other federal sources such as the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the General Services Administration.

A Wealth of Health Material

Consumers now have a massive database of health information at their fingertips. The National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine, which operates the world's largest medical library, now offers an on-line consumer version of its mammoth MEDLINE database. MEDLINEplus allows access to MEDLINE's more than 9 million references to articles in 3,900 medical journals in a consumer-friendly way. It also links to comprehensive information about 23 specific diseases, such as asthma, diabetes, hepatitis, and tuberculosis. Other helpful features on the site include dictionaries for looking up medical terms, clearinghouses for health information, directories for finding doctors and hospitals, and publications for reading on-line. Tap into MEDLINEplus at medlineplus.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/.

Safe Keeping for Meals to Go

Convenience foods, including complete meals to go, are handy products for busy Americans. Some are hot, some cold, and some are intended to be eaten later. But all foods are perishable and can cause illness if mishandled. So how do you ensure these products are safe when you sit down to eat them? The basic advice from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service at www.fsis.usda.gov/OA/pubs/mealtogo.htm: Keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold. Also on the site is advice on how to refrigerate and reheat convenience foods, how to keep buffet foods safe, how to keep foods safe in a cooler, and what to do with leftovers.

FDA Consumer magazine (January-February 1999)

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