Free Republic

he conglomerate's child-focused radio stations and websites will also launch strict standards for food ads, which CEO Bob Iger is expected to unveil with first lady Michelle Obama. Disney on Tuesday will unveil plans to keep junk food ads off its child-focused TV networks, radio stations and web sites, The New York Times reported.

Michelle Obama to Announce Food Initiative With Disney Theme Parks First lady Michelle Obama will appear with Disney CEO Bob Iger in Washington Tuesday to announce an expansion of the media company’s food guidelines. Disney representatives say the corporation will be making health-conscious revisions to menus at their theme parks and resorts, though the details and scope of their implementation are yet to be revealed.” Disney is the parent company of ABC News. Michelle Obama has made promotion of nutrition and exercise a major theme of her tenure as first lady, particularly concerning children. The administration says her “Let’s Move”...

THE first time I questioned the conventional wisdom on the nature of a healthy diet, I was in my salad days, almost 40 years ago, and the subject was salt. Researchers were claiming that salt supplementation was unnecessary after strenuous exercise, and this advice was being passed on by health reporters. When I spent the better part of a year researching the state of the salt science back in 1998 — already a quarter century into the eat-less-salt recommendations — journal editors and public health administrators were still remarkably candid in their assessment of how flimsy the evidence was implicating...

New York City plans to enact a far-reaching ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts, in the most ambitious effort yet by the Bloomberg administration to combat rising obesity. The proposed ban would affect virtually the entire menu of popular sugary drinks found in delis, fast-food franchises and even sports arenas, from energy drinks to pre-sweetened iced teas. The sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces — about the size of a medium coffee, and smaller than a common soda bottle —...

The founder of the Organic Pastures business in California is reporting that government health officials have begun tracking down the names and addresses of natural-foods customers and showing up at their homes, demanding to confiscate any raw milk they might have. The dispute over raw milk has reached a fever pitch in recent weeks, with a judge ruling that owners of cows have no right to the milk their herds produce, and protests being staged by mad moms whose access to such foods is being threatened. The latest report is at NaturalNews.com, which interviewed McAfee. The report said Los Angeles...

In order to remain eligible for federal subsidies for school lunches, officials at Davis High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, knew they weren't allowed to have active vending machines selling soda and candy in the school lunchroom during the 47-minute lunch period. But rules designed to keep kids from washing down their lunches with something fizzy can be tricky. That lesson was driven home when the state Office of Education's Child Nutrition Program hit the school with a $15,862 fine—75 cents per violation over the period of many months that it turns out students had been illicitly selling soda...

America's obesity epidemic is so deeply rooted that it will take dramatic and systemic measures - from overhauling farm policies and zoning laws to, possibly, introducing a soda tax - to fix it, the influential Institute of Medicine said on Tuesday. In an ambitious 478-page report, the IOM refutes the idea that obesity is largely the result of a lack of willpower on the part of individuals. Instead, it embraces policy proposals that have met with stiff resistance from the food industry and lawmakers, arguing that multiple strategies will be needed to make the U.S. environment less "obesogenic." The IOM,...

More than six decades ago, when the federal standards on the strength of airplane seats and seat belts were written, government regulations specified that seats be designed for a passenger weight of 170 pounds. But now the average American man weighs nearly 194 pounds and the average woman 165. Now, some engineers and scientists have raised questions about whether airplane seats, tested with crash dummies that reflect the 170-pound rule, are strong enough to protect heavy travelers. “If a heavier person completely fills a seat, the seat is not likely to behave as intended during a crash,” said Robert Salzar,...

PHILADELPHIA - New federal regulations require healthier lunches in schools next year. USDA undersecretary Audrey Rowe lunched on chicken salad yesterday with kids at the Roberto Clemente Middle School. Rowe was in town to highlight new school lunch nutrition standards that take effect in the fall. “We will be expanding on the amount of fruits and vegetables offered to the children. Obviously, even though the products are going to be prepackaged, they’re going to be healthier.” With the new requirements, comes a modest 6-cent-per meal increase in federal reimbursements.

Beginning next school year, students across the country may be in for a shock when they purchase their lunch in the cafeteria. In an effort to fight childhood obesity and diabetes, the federal government is requiring students of all ages to buy at least one serving of fresh fruit or vegetable for lunch. Even if they toss the produce into the garbage. Fresh fruit and vegetable portions will double next year. “Some students don’t take one now, but they will have to,” Eileen Faustich, Milford’s food services director, said Friday. “We can’t let a child go by the cashier without...

RALEIGH — State lawmakers questioned a N.C. Department of Health and Human Services official at a hearing Tuesday to determine why a Hoke County preschooler’s homemade turkey sandwich was replaced with chicken nuggets. Members of the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Health and Human Services wanted to know if a teacher at West Hoke Elementary School was following state law when she offered a 4-year-old girl a cafeteria tray containing chicken nuggets, a sweet potato, bread, and milk as an alternative to her homemade turkey and cheese sandwich, potato chips, banana, and apple juice. Deborah Cassidy, director of the DHHS...

The doughnut hat has become a signature hair accessory for Joy Feldman when she goes to schools and organizations to read her new children's book, "Is Your Hair Made of Donuts?". Feldman, a nutrition expert, hasn't always been a health guru. "I was a lawyer. I did corporate mergers and acquisitions," she explains. That was in the 1980s. In the early 1990s she became very ill. "It was after I delivered my first child. About six months after delivering, my joints started to swell in my body to the point where I couldn't work," Feldman said. Feldman said she had...

It’s a useful distinction to consider. A particular moral idea governs left-wing views on social and health matters, and the left’s purpose with political advocacy is to put the power of government behind that view. By examining the left’s very different policy approaches to eating and sex, we can discern the features of the morality at work.The left’s governmental approach to sex today involves, among other things, the following:1. Advertising it to children through the public schools and encouraging them to explore and participate in it.2. Basing policy on the assumption that no solution to any problem lies in individuals...

The National Center for Public Policy Research hosted a “lunch-in” today at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C.The target of the protest? “[F]ederal school nutrition guidelines that allegedly forced at least one student to forgo her mother’s home-packed lunch in favor of chicken nuggets,” a press release announcing today’s event read. The alleged lunch incident happened in North Carolina. “A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious,” a local reporter wrote last week. “The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato...

Just the Facts: State vs. Federal School Nutrition ProgramsPosted by Courtney Rowe, Press Secretary, USDA, on February 16, 2012 at 1:21 PM In the past 24 hours, we’ve seen a lot of chatter online regarding a story from North Carolina in which a pre-school student’s lunch was deemed “unhealthy.” We’d like to set the record straight. As established by law, USDA promotes healthier lifestyles for our nation’s school children through the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program. The Department sets science-based nutritional standards for and oversees State administration of schools that choose to participate in these national programs. In exchange...

(AmericanThinker.com) The California legislature continues to act as the hard left's petri dish for testing totalitarian policies. AB 1678, introduced last Tuesday, would ban mobile food and beverage trucks within 1,500 feet of elementary and secondary schools. ... The "no vend" zones would look effectively prohibit mobile food trucks from almost all of California's urban and suburban cities.

North Carolina officials have said there was a misunderstanding when a preschooler’s homemade lunch was sent home for not meeting certain nutritional requirements, but now a second mother from the same school has come forward exclusively to The Blaze to say the same thing happened to her daughter. Diane Zambrano says her 4-year-old daughter, Jazlyn, is in the same West Hoke Elementary School class as the little girl whose lunch gained national attention earlier this week. When Zambrano picked Jazlyn up from school late last month, she was told by Jazlyn’s teacher that the lunch she had packed that day...

It was a big week for John Besh, even by his eventful standards.... Apparently, several attendees of the “workshop” took Besh to task for lecturing about healthy eating on one hand while serving high calorie food at his restaurants on the other. “I went on to address a complex issue in very simple terms only to only be heckled by those that feel we can regulate restaurants to the point that our children will be happy and healthy,” Besh writes in his blog, which appears on epicurious.com. “In response to these suggestions, I pointed to a variety of other options...

Who Is the Mystery Food Monitor?No agency has said it employed the person checking preschoolers' lunch bags By Rick Henderson Feb. 16th, 2012 RALEIGH — Three days after a Carolina Journal report on the plight of a 4-year-old preschooler and her lunch made national headlines, the identity of the person who determined that the youngster's homemade lunch was not nutritious remains unknown. Of the several government agencies who have been named in the controversy — the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Division of Child Development and Early Education at the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, Hoke County schools,...

... A child’s mother sent the kid, a preschooler mind you, to school with a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice. Is there any conceivable grounds here for government intervention? No? Think again. Bauer reports that the lunch from home “failed the mandatory lunch inspection”...