1 . The Yurok people have lived along the Klamath River, which flows from the Cascades in Oregon southwest through Northern California, for thousands of years, protecting the region and river from which they — and others — draw sustenance (生计).

But as development and pollution continue to reduce the number of fish in the river and the quantity and quality of its waters, the Yurok Tribe is legalizing (合法化) the tribe’s longstanding care by granting the Rights of Personhood to the Klamath, the first river in North America to have such rights declared.

The Yurok Tribal Council’s May 2019 resolution means the river has the same legal rights as a human under tribal law. This order allows people to bring law cases on behalf of the river when its rights are violated. According to the resolution, the tribe’s intention is to provide a legal basis for safeguarding the river and its ecosystem, especially in the face of water diversion, industrial pollution, and climate change impacts, among other threats. In a testimony (证词) delivered to the U. S. House of Representatives in October 2019, Yurok Tribe Vice Chairman Frankie Myers said this legal framework could create a path to ward a more thoughtful view of the rights of nature in other communities and courts, and that any money awarded by the Yurok courts will fund cleanup and restoration projects to remedy the litigated harms.

The Yurok Tribe’s resolution draws lessons from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and echoes the efforts of other Indigenous tribes, including the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, which adopted the Rights of wild rice, in December 2018. “This is a very important step forward in the Rights of Nature movement,” Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund commented.

3 . The Food and Drug Administration (F. D. A.) announced a new proposal on Wednesday that would change the criteria for which packaged foods the agency considers “healthy”, in an attempt to modernize its approach to nutrition and reduce the burden of diet-related diseases.

Currently, about 5 percent of all packaged foods are labeled “healthy”, according to the agency. The definition, which was set in 1994, allows for food manufacturers to add the word “healthy” to their products, as long as the products have limited amounts of total fat, saturated (饱和的) fat, cholesterol and sodium (钠) and provide at least 10 percent of the daily value of one or more of the following nutrients: vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, iron, protein or dietary fiber. (Seafood, game meat and raw fruits and vegetables have slightly different criteria.) In 2021, the F. D. A. updated its guidelines to allow for some foods to contain more total fat and to include some that provide at least 10 percent of the daily value of vitamin D. Importantly, there is currently no limit on added sugars under the current definition- an omission that the F. D. A. believes is inconsistent with today’s nutrition science.

“The old rule was really outdated— you could create any kind of Frankenstein food that met the nutrient criteria and label it as healthy,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a professor of nutrition in Boston. “This is a major advance.”

The proposed rule, which the agency announced to coincide with Wednesday’s White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, introduces a new limit on added sugars-in general, no more than 2.5 grams per serving, although this can vary depending on the food.

The new definition aims to encourage healthy eating by prioritizing a mix of vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy, proteins and certain oils, including vegetable oils.   A “healthy” food would need to contain a minimum amount of at least one of those food groups and be under the proposed limits for saturated fats and added sugars. Raw whole fruits and vegetables would automatically qualify. Many sugary cereals (谷物), highly sweetened yogurts and white breads, which might currently qualify as “healthy” under the existing definition, would be removed under the new rule．