The New York Times, Sewell Chan, June 3, 2010
WASHINGTON — Maybe it should have just stuck with Snap, Crackle and Pop.
The Kellogg Company has agreed to advertising restrictions to resolve an investigation into its claims about the health benefits of its Rice Krispies cereal, the Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday.
The agreement expands on a settlement order that Kellogg agreed to last July over similar claims that another cereal, Frosted Mini-Wheats, was “clinically shown to improve kids’ attentiveness by nearly 20 percent.”
The commission acted against Kellogg as public health researchers …

The Wall Street Journal Blog, Katherine Hobson, June 2, 2010
The Associated Press wrote today about employers that are offering their workers financial incentives for losing weight. Too bad they’re unlikely to work, the AP quotes some experts as saying, noting that while cash rewards have been shown to increase smoking quit rates, losing weight is a whole different ballgame. For one thing, you can toss your cigs forever, but food is a necessity.
Still, we were curious about how other strategies that have been used against tobacco might apply to the obesity …

CNN, Saundra Young, June 8, 2010
The Food and Drug Administration is not properly protecting the nation’s food supply and must change it’s approach to food safety in order protect public health, according to a report released today by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), part of the National Academies of Science (NAS).
The report, 18 months in the making, found that outbreaks of foodborne illness will continue unless the FDA changes its management style and adopts a risk-based approach to food safety, moving from a “reactive” system where they address issues on a …

The New York Times, May 29, 2010
With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food giant Cargill kicked off a campaign last November to spread its own message.
“Salt is a pretty amazing compound,” Alton Brown, a Food Network star, gushes in a Cargill video called Salt 101. “So make sure you have plenty of salt in your kitchen at all times.”
The campaign by Cargill, which both produces and uses salt, promotes salt as “life enhancing” and suggests sprinkling it on foods as varied as chocolate …

AP, Mike Stobbe, June 1, 2010
How much money would it take to get you to lose some serious weight? $100? $500?
Many employers are betting they can find your price. At least a third of U.S. companies offer financial incentives, or are planning to introduce them, to get their employees to lose weight or get healthier in other ways.
“There’s been an explosion of interest in this,” said Dr. Kevin Volpp, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Health Incentives.
Take OhioHealth, a hospital chain whose workforce is mostly overweight. The company …

The Guardian, Jo Tuckman, May 27, 2010
The Mexican government is to ban junk food and fry-ups in primary and secondary schools in an effort to combat one of the worst obesity problems in the world.
From the beginning of the next school year, school shops will no longer be allowed to stock fizzy drinks, sugar-stuffed fruit juices, processed snacks, or more local delights such as chilli soaked sweets. Nor will school kitchens offer traditional standards such as fried tacos.
“The kids are going to complain, of course,” the education minister Alonso Lujambio …

Associated Press, Alicia Chang, May 26, 2010
Holy fish sticks! Scientists finally have some good news about fat in our foods.
Contrary to fears, most food manufacturers and restaurants did not just swap one bad ingredient for another when they trimmed artery-clogging trans fats from products and menus, an analysis finds.
Even the french fry, a longtime dietary scourge, got a healthier remake. But theres still room for improvement, particularly for some items sold in supermarkets, which replaced heart-damaging trans fat with its unhealthy cousin, saturated fat.
A Harvard researcher and a consumer advocacy …

Washington Post, Melissa Bell, May 27, 2010
The plastic soup can looks as if it’s a single-size meal, a healthful lunch option for one hurried customer. But the nutrition label on the back says otherwise. Gummy fruit snacks show a shower of strawberries on the label, which reads “naturally fruit flavored.” Customers would be hard-pressed to find any strawberries in the ingredient list.

Because of rising obesity rates and a push for more healthy living, many new products in the supermarket claim to be low-fat, immunity-boosting, vitamin-added foods. Some brands have become …

HealthDay, Ed Edelson, May 24, 2010
Even a small reduction per day in sweetened soft drink intake could improve your blood pressure, researchers report.
In an 18-month study, researchers found a measurable reduction in blood pressure — 1.8 points in systolic pressure, the higher of the desired 120/80 desired reading, and 1.1 points in diastolic pressure — when intake was reduced by about a can of sweetened beverage a day, said the report published May 24 in Circulation.
“We found a direct dose-response relationship,” said study leader Dr. Liwei Chen, assistant professor of …

San Fransisco Chronicle, Susanne Leigh, May 24, 2010
Like many midlife adults, Ken Holmes noticed that the toned abs of his 20s had billowed into a fistful of flab. He blamed long drives from his Sunset District home to jobs as a program consultant in Silicon Valley and the East Bay, together with extended workdays spent deskbound tinkering with software. In his childless days, Holmes would have offset these sedentary periods with frequent punishing workouts. But now with two elementary-school-age children, the gym was relegated to the back burner.
Still, Holmes was …