More than a century after President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drug Act, deception is still a far too popular marketing tool for food makers.
READ the original article on Kellogs claims here.
The Federal Trade Commission barred Kellogg’s last year from running ads saying Mini-Wheats are “clinically shown to improve kids’ attentiveness by 20 percent.” To claim “benefits to cognitive health, process or function provided by any cereal or any morning food or snack food,” was a no-no, unless the claims were true. But the F.T.C.’s order covered only …

Washington Post, Jane Black, June 9, 2010
With the spotlight on childhood obesity, schools across the country are looking for ways to get kids to eat more fruits and vegetables. In New York, the Department of Health decided to do some research. How much, it wondered, would a school need to cut its prices for apples, oranges and bananas to increase sales by 5 percent over a year?
Brian Wansink was called in to play detective. But the director of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab soon discovered he had been hired to …

Reuters, Rachael Myers Lowe,  May 14, 2010
Children whose mothers developed diabetes while pregnant are at increased risk of being overweight by age 11, a new study shows.
The study also found that children born to obese mothers are more likely to have a weight problem than children born to lean mothers.
“The best advice is to get lean and fit before you get pregnant,” Dr. Lois Jovanovic of the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute in Santa Barbara, California, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters Health.
Earlier this week, First Lady Michelle Obama …

The New York Times, Roni Caryn Rabin, May 10, 2010
Schoolchildren are more likely to be bullied if they are overweight, and a new study suggests just how much more likely: 60 percent more, if they are obese (with a body mass index in the 95th percentile for children in their age group), and 13 percent more, if they are simply overweight (85th percentile or higher).
The researchers also tried to determine if overweight children from certain backgrounds were more vulnerable than others, and if some had social skills or other characteristics …

Center for American Progress, By Ellen-Marie Whelan, Lesley Russell, Sonia Sekhar | May 10, 2010
Obese American children and teenagers today are on track to have poor health throughout their adult lives. Overall, this next generation of Americans could be the first to have shorter, less healthy lives than their parents. Childhood obesity rates have more than tripled since 1980, and current data show that almost one-third of children over 2 years of age are already overweight or obese.
Download the full report (pdf)
Download the executive summary (pdf)
Obese children and adolescents are more likely to …

Dr. Carmen Rita Nevarez, May 6, 2010
When Santa Clara County lawmakers passed the nation’s first ordinance setting standards for restaurant toy giveaways last month, the restaurant industry let loose with a loud, if somewhat predictable, cry that government was interfering in individual choice.
It’s time for a little dose of reality.
Far from the intrusion that the restaurant association would have you believe it is, this new law does not ban toys. Rather, the ordinance requires that meals accompanied by toys meet basic nutrition standards. It’s an interesting approach: reward good behavior, …

Obese children were almost twice as likely to be bullied as normal-weight children, regardless of other demographic, social, and academic factors, a multicenter study found.
The unadjusted odds ratio of being bullied for an obese child was 1.85 (95% CI 1.37 to 2.51), according to Julie C. Lumeng, MD, of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues.
And the odds ratio for bullying for an overweight child was 1.26 (95% CI 0.90 to 1.77), the investigators reported online in Pediatrics.
“Parents of obese children rate bullying as their top health concern, and …

Los Angeles Times, Karen Kaplan, April 27, 2010
In Santa Clara County, one out of every four kids is either overweight or obese. Among 2- to 5-year-olds from low-income families, the rate is one in three. The county health system spends millions of dollars a year treating kids for health problems related to obesity, and the tab is growing.
On Tuesday, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors took action by prohibiting fast-food restaurants from using toys to lure kids into buying unhealthy meals. The vote was 3-2.
In order to combine trinkets …

CNN, April 15, 2010
Obese or morbidly obese women are more likely to give birth to a baby who has a congenital heart defect than overweight or healthy women. That’s the conclusion of a new study conducted by researchers at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Using data collected from all the women who gave birth in New York state (excluding New York City) from January 1, 1993, to December 31, 2003, the researchers found that mothers who were obese before becoming pregnant had a 15 …

Imagine that there’s a killer on the loose in communities across the United States, threatening the health and well-being of 67% of our population. Is this enemy on the FBI’s Most Wanted list? Not exactly, because this killer is obesity. We’ve heard the statistics. The prevalence of obesity is increasing at an alarming rate in the United States. For the first time in American history, the number of obese people outnumbers those who are overweight. Adult men and women are on average 25 pounds heavier than they were in 1960. …