January 29, 2012, CBS news, Bill Whitaker
New federal guidelines aimed at making school lunches more nutritious were announced this past week. It may seem like a welcome trend, but in the Los Angeles school district, many students are calling healthier inedible.
CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports that everything inside one L.A. school cafeteria may be nutritious, but few students have anything good to say about L.A.’s health lunch menus.
“It tastes bad. It looks bad. It doesn’t even look like it’s real food,” said Baleria Franco, a student at Hollywood High …

January 28, 2012, Christina Hoag, AP, San Jose Mercury News
Students at Roosevelt High School have declared a food fight to win back peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Fed up with new, healthy cafeteria cuisine that features dishes like ancho chili chicken with yakosoba edamame and tortellini with butternut squash, they’re petitioning the school district to return old favorites like PB&J and calzones to the lunch lineup.
“We, the students of Roosevelt High School, would like to be served food that we can enjoy eating, rather than the ‘healthier’ food that we just …

January 28, 2012, Brittany Givens, Seascoastonline.com
U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary Kevin W. Concannon said school lunch programs should be providing children with more fruits and vegetables.
“We have a serious problem of obesity in the country,” Concannon told a group of local nutrition and health services professionals Friday. “We really need to focus on activity and healthy foods.”
Concannon was the featured speaker in a roundtable discussion at Community Campus. The event was attended by representatives from programs such as St. Vincent’s, Southern New Hampshire Services and the University of New …

January 25, 2012, Houston Chronicle
School lunches, long saddled with an unhealthy reputation, are getting a makeover.Instead of salt-doused fried foods, highly processed white bread and sugar-laden desserts, cafeteria trays will be carrying whole wheat pizza, leafy green and orange vegetables and fresh fruit.The changes, announced Wednesday by first lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, mark the first major nutritional adjustment to the $11 billion school meal program in 15 years.
Under the new guidelines, which were directed by the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, schools must limit calories, trans fat and sodium, …

 January 16, 2012, Reuters, Chicago Tribune
Feeding preschoolers smaller portions of the main dish at lunchtime means they’ll eat more fruit and vegetables on the side and fewer total calories, according to a new study.Researchers said the finding may give parents one extra strategy to encourage youngsters to eat more greens, as childhood obesity rates continue rising and research suggests that kids lag well behind guidelines for fruit and veggie consumption.With main courses, “you need to be careful and use the age-appropriate serving,” said Sara Sweitzer, a nutrition researcher from the …

January 9, 2012, Blisstree.com, Deborah Dunham
As the battle to point the finger at someone for our nation’s childhood obesity epidemic continues, one top New York City Department of Health official now says that the free breakfast program in city schools is to blame. It’s what she says is causing poor kids to get fat, but in reality, she couldn’t be more wrong–or more insensitive.
Director of Community Epidemiology, Gretchen Van Wye said the in-class meals that these students receive each morning at certain urban schools is resulting in over 21% of …

December 21, 2011, Los Angeles Times, Shari Roan
Feeding young babies solid foods such as crackers, cereals and bread, which tend to be high in salt, may set them up for a lifelong preference for salt, researchers reported Tuesday.
The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests that efforts to reduce salt intake among Americans should begin early in life.
It is even possible, the authors said, that infancy contains a “sensitivity window” in which exposure to certain foods and tastes programs the brain to desire them in the future.
Americans’ …

December 14, 2011, Brittni Johnson, Winter Park/Maitland observer
For Marva Forbes and her family, dinner was coming home, hot oil in a pan and frying up some chicken.
“As a rule,” she said.
There was also lots of pizza, McDonald’s and chips and candy for snacks. Not much thought went behind planning meals for her family, which includes three of her children and two grandchildren.
“Our eating habits were: we just ate,” Forbes said.
That is until four years ago, when her 6-year-old grandson started going to Winter Park Day Nursery. The nursery, which offers free …

December 8, 2011, San Francisco Chronicle, Erin Allday
Santa Clara County’s ban on fast-food toys for kids has had no effect on the nutritional quality of the meals served there, but the restaurants are doing a better job of promoting the right food, or at least not promoting the junk, Stanford researchers say.
In a report published today, Stanford scientists found that Santa Clara County fast-food restaurants – unlike some of their peers in San Francisco, where restaurants got around a similar ban by charging a dime for toys – seem to …

 December 7, 2011
Parents have good reason to worry about the sugar content of children’s breakfast cereals, according to an Environmental Working Group review of 84 popular brands.
Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, at nearly 56 percent sugar by weight, leads the list of the 10 worst children’s cereals, according to EWG’s analysis. In fact, a one-cup serving of the brand packs more sugar than a Hostess Twinkie, and one cup of any of the 44 other children’s cereals has more sugar than three Chips Ahoy! cookies.
In response to the exploding childhood obesity epidemic and aggressive food company …