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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...

First Lady Michelle Obama leaves Thursday for a three-day, four-state tour to mark the second anniversary of her “Let’s Move!” initiative to get Americans to eat healthier and be more physically fit. The trip is a mix of events and announcements, including one Thursday about a program intended to combat weight gain among members of the military. Mrs. Obama will make the announcement, along with the Department of Defense, at the Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., which has participated in a pilot program for the initiative. The initiative melds Mrs. Obama’s two signature policy goals as first lady –...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hold the mystery meat: Military bases will soon be serving more fruits, vegetables and low-fat dishes under the first program in 20 years to improve nutrition standards across the armed services. First lady Michelle Obama and Pentagon officials planned to announce the effort Thursday during a visit to Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas, where the military has been experimenting with the idea through a pilot program designed to improve the quality and variety of foods served on base. It's not just about giving members of the armed services a more svelte profile.

Jamie Oliver has won an apparent victory by persuading McDonald’s to remove a form of ‘reclaimed meat’ from its burgers. It’s a victory built on ignorant scaremongering. News from America, where McDonald’s has responded to a segment in Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution by removing an ingredient called ‘finely textured lean beef trimmings’ from its burgers. This luxurious-sounding product is in fact another form of ‘reclaimed meat’, where meat processors try to get every last bit of meat from an animal’s carcass. In the segment, Oliver shows a group of parents and children a cow and explains the value of each...

Fat people have less than thin people. Older people have less than younger people. Men have less than younger women. It is brown fat, actually brown in color, and its great appeal is that it burns calories like a furnace... --snip-- The brown fat also kept its subjects warm. The more brown fat a man had, the colder he could get before he started to shiver. Brown fat, Dr. Carpentier and Jan Nedergaard, Dr. Cannon’s husband, wrote in an accompanying editorial, “is on fire.” On average, Dr. Carpentier said, the brown fat burned about 250 calories over three hours. But...

I occassionally go to the CIA World Factbook to lookup information on a country. I was looking at something today and noticed that they now have "obesity" in the stats they keep on countries. Countries are also ranked by obesity. They have a list of 70 countries in the obesity ranking. U.S. comes in as #6, American Samoa as #1, and Vietnam as #70. Alas, Ethiopia did not even make it onto the list. They define obesity as follows: "This entry gives the percent of a country's population considered to be obese. Obesity is defined as an adult having a...

A new study of nearly 20,000 middle schoolers has found that kids who attend schools that sell junk food such as soda and doughnuts do not gain more weight than students who attend schools where that type of food isn't avai

Breakfast lovers, beware. A new study found eating processed meats like bacon and sausage could increase your risk for deadly pancreatic cancer. For every piece of sausage or two strips of bacon a person eats every day, there's a 19 percent rise in risk for pancreatic cancer, the study found. "There is strong evidence that being overweight or obese increases the risk of pancreatic cancer and this study may be an early indication of another factor behind the disease," Dr Rachel Thompson, deputy head of science at The World Cancer Research Fund, told BBC News. For the study, researchers reviewed...

As if Newt Gingrich doesn’t have enough problems after his disappointing fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses under a barrage of blistering attack ads, here’s one more to consider: his weight. Compared to his primary rivals, the erstwhile Republican front-runner is, well, pudgy. If Mitt Romney is a human Ken doll, then Mr. Gingrich is more of a mini-Stay Puff marshmallow man. And in an image-conscious, fat-obsessed nation that hasn’t elected a truly hefty commander-in-chief since President William Howard Taft in 1909, that may be a serious — and seriously underappreciated — political liability. Call it unfair, call it shallow...

A series of stark anti-obesity ads featuring miserable, overweight kids has sparked controversy in Georgia. The ads feature children talking about their weight issues in between harrowing messages such as, “Some diseases aren’t just for adults anymore,” and “Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid.” Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which co-founded the Strong4Life ad campaign, intended for the ads to be grim, hoping the clips would help parents recognize the severity of the obesity epidemic in Georgia, where it is the second highest in the nation.

El Mercado salad? $2.34. A cup of white chicken chili? $1.55. Portland diners could get used to this. For a special lunch on what for many Portlanders will be their first workday of 2012, four city restaurants are pricing their menu items according to their calorie counts. At a penny per calorie, the Jan. 3 promotion will cut some plate prices by more than half at Sebago Brewing Co., DiMillo’s On The Water, El Rayo Taqueria and Spartan Grill.

For French residents fond of sugary drinks like Coca Cola, life is about to get more expensive. The country's top constitutional body, the Constitutional Council, approved a new soda tax on Wednesday. The tax, which works out at about 1 euro cent per container, is part of austerity measures passed in France to combat the debt crisis, and is expected to generate around €120 million ($156 million) in revenue for the government. … The "cola tax," as people are calling it in France, will now go into effect on Jan. 1. French media are reporting that most companies will raise...

Children who have a poor emotional relationship with their mother are more than twice as likely to become obese, research claims. A study found toddlers who struggle with their mothers are at higher risk of being grossly overweight by the time they are 15. Those who had the worst emotional relationship were almost two-and-half times more likely to be obese at 15 than those with a strong bond. Meanwhile, only 13 per cent who had close bonds in their formative years became obese. U.S. researchers studied nearly 1,000 toddlers and their mothers at play then rated how strong the bond...

Obese Americans have smaller paychecks than those who aren't overweight, and this difference is especially strong among women, a new study finds. The analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth revealed that in 2004, overall average annual incomes were $8,666 less for obese women and $4,772 less for obese men compared with normal weight workers. In 2008, obese women made an average of $5,826 (15 percent) less than normal-weight females, the George Washington University researchers said. "This research broadens the growing body of evidence that shows that in addition to taxing health, obesity significantly affects personal finances,"...

(CNSNews.com) – Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) says obesity threatens America’s “national security” because many people who join the armed forces cannot pass the required physical tests because they are overweight. Frist also cited a 2010 study on the problem entitled “Too Fat To Fight." “Childhood obesity is something much larger than something that just hurts and pulls back and restrains our economic strength. It threatens our security, our national security as a nation,” Frist said on Tuesday at the "Building for a Healthier Future" summit held in Washington, D.C. “Between 1995 and 2008, over 140,000 potential military...

Study suggests US Dietary Guideline for upper limit of sugar consumption is too highA recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM) found that adults who consumed high fructose corn syrup for two weeks as 25 percent of their daily calorie requirement had increased blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, which have been shown to be indicators of increased risk for heart disease. The American Heart Association recommends that people consume only five percent of calories as added sugar. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 suggest an upper limit of 25 percent...

<p>CLEVELAND (AP) — An Ohio third-grader who weighs more than 200 pounds has been taken from his family and placed into foster care after county social workers said his mother wasn't doing enough to control his weight.</p>

Christopher Sultze, 35, was released on bond and was ordered to have no contact with the child involved. Mary Sultze, 36, waived a preliminary hearing, so she could continue caring for her other three children. She cannot have contact with the infant she is accused of starving. No report on the condition, age or weight of the remaining children was given. The couple could face a year and a half in prison and $25,000 in fines. ..

‘Food Day’ was earlier this week, an event sponsored by The Center For Science In The Public Interest (CSPI). To celebrate the CSPI released their ‘Terrible Ten’ food list. It seems fitting that this list was released just before Halloween, as it makes ‘monsters’ out of food. “Vending machines dispensing soft drinks and candy are the ubiquitous, mute, metallic monsters that promote unhealthy diets 24/7”, according to the list. Even Toucan Sam is among CSPI’s list of terrors, “Kellogg’s Froot Loops, a fruit-less sugary cereal gussied up with synthetic dyes, is one of a host of junk foods marketed heavily...

People carrying extra pounds may need extra protection from influenza. New research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows that obesity may make annual flu shots less effective. The findings, published online Oct. 25, 2011, in he International Journal of Obesity, provide evidence explaining a phenomenon that was noticed for the first time during the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak: that obesity is associated with an impaired immune response to the influenza vaccination in humans. "These results suggest that overweight and obese people would be more likely than healthy weight people to experience flu illness following exposure to...

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same. In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United...

1 Soda A Day Equals 50 Pounds Of Sugar A Year, Says NYC Health Department October 25, 2011 10:04 AM NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The New York City Health Department is launching a new campaign to show just how much sugar is in a can of soda. The health department says drinking one soda a day equals 50 pounds of sugar a year, which can lead to problems like obesity, diabetes and heart disease. “Sugary drinks are the largest single source of added sugar in the diet, and a child’s risk of obesity increases with every additional daily serving of...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. senators and health officials are taking on a baseball tradition older than the World Series itself: chewing tobacco on the diamond. With the Series set to begin Wednesday between the St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers, the senators, along with health officials from the teams' cities, want the players union to agree to a ban on chewing tobacco at games and on camera. They made the pleas in separate letters, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.

Caption anyone..? U.S. President Barack Obama walks past a statue of a pig in a chef's uniform as he arrives to meet diners at the Countryside Barbecue restaurant in Marion, North Carolina, October 17, 2011. Obama began a three day bus trip to North Carolina and Virginia on Monday to promote his American Jobs Act that faces congressional approval. REUTERS/Jason Reed (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS)

Michael Moore on Friday called for police departments across the country to join the Occupy Wall Street protests "the same way the Egyptian army joined the people in Freedom Square there in Cairo." "My appeal to the police is you are us and we are you," Moore said in a web only video published at MSNBC.com. "We’ll even let you beat on a bongo drum" (video follows with transcript and commentary): MICHAEL MOORE: My last word here out in the hallway just outside of [Lawrence O’Donnell’s] studio is that the police need to join us. In the same way the...

An internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security document indicates that a controversial program designed to predict whether a person will commit a crime is already being tested on some members of the public voluntarily, CNET has learned. If this sounds a bit like the Tom Cruise movie called "Minority Report," or the CBS drama "Person of Interest," it is. But where "Minority Report" author Philip K. Dick enlisted psychics to predict crimes, DHS is betting on algorithms: it's building a "prototype screening facility" that it hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate to "detect cues...

Is Michael Kinsley sure he wants to go down this path? In a Bloomberg View column and then in a clip run on "Good Morning America" today, the liberal pundit claims Chris Christie is "just too fat" to be president. According to Kinsley, Christie's weight is evidence of a lack of the self-control necessary to be an effective president. If self-control is a key requirement for the presidency, I wonder how Kinsley would apply that standard to other recent occupants of the White House? View GMA video here.

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – The work of a team of scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) led by Professor Nicholas Tonks FRS, suggests a way to overcome one of the major technical obstacles preventing a leading therapeutic target for diabetes and obesity from being addressed successfully by novel drugs. The target is an enzyme called PTP1B, discovered by Tonks in 1988 and long known to be an important player in the signaling pathway within cells that regulates the response to insulin. Insulin is a hormone that regulates carbohydrate and fat metabolism by spurring cells, particularly in the liver...

“We can’t just leave it up to the parents," Michelle Obama We live in a golden age. A wondrous era where the government compels us to buy health insurance, whether we need it or not. And whether we want to or not. Where the First Lady is no longer in charge of the White House's meals, but of our meals. Where wise and generous czars in the nation's capital ponder day and night how to stop the flow of free information that's rotting our minds and filling our heads with critical thoughts about the government. Previous generations had to do...

Not content with going after the nation's children, its grocery stores, the food pyramid and McDonalds, Michelle Obama is now going after the country's most beloved restaurant chains Olive Garden, Red Lobster and its sister restaurants have pledged to serve healthier meals by cutting calories and sodium in its meals by 20 per cent over a decade. And if the little ones desire some French fries they will only be able to do so with adult supervision. Among promised changes for children, Darden Restaurants Inc said a fruit or vegetable side and low-fat milk will become standard with kids' meals...

...The Darden Restaurant Group, which runs fine dining boutiques Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and other strip-mall destinations is getting itself healthy with Michelle Obama's help...

Encouraged by Michelle Obama's campaign to reduce childhood obesity, the company that owns the Olive Garden, Red Lobster and four other popular restaurant chains is pledging to cut the calories and sodium in its meals and overhaul its kids' fare. Darden Restaurants Inc. was unveiling the changes Thursday, with the first lady on hand to lend support. The company will pledge to reduce the calories and sodium in all its meals by 10 percent over five years, and by 20 percent over 10 years. For children, French fries and sugar-sweetened beverages will become the exception and not the rule....

Michigan Governor wants to document state's child obesity statsby Angi Gonzalez Posted: 1 hr, 23 mins ago MICHIGAN (AP) -- Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has announced plans to begin asking doctors, practicing in Michigan, to start monitoring the body weight of patients 18 and under. Under the proposal, revealed during an event in Lansing on Wednesday, the data would be entered into a Michigan Care Improvement Registry in the hopes of addressing the state's growing pediatric obesity problem. **SNIP** The Governor's plan would require the information be stored anonymously, but according to the Governor's office, would give doctors the perfect...

WASHINGTON-- First Lady Michelle Obama is expected Thursday to announce headway in her drive to have restaurants reduce portion sizes, part of her "Let's Move' campaign against obesity. "The Childhood Obesity Task Force Report"--commissioned as part of Mrs. Obama's "Let's Move" project, "specifically calls on restaurants to, "consider their portion sizes, improve children's menus, and make healthy options the default choice whenever possible." below, from White House.... UPCOMING GUIDANCE FOR FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA Thursday, September 15 11:45 AM - First Lady Michelle Obama will make a major Let's Move! announcement related to providing healthier choices and greater variety for...

Gov. Rick Snyder plans to direct doctors in Michigan to begin monitoring the body weight of their young patients and provide the data to a state registry in one of the most extensive government efforts to address the growing problem of pediatric obesity, the Associated Press has learned. The move would help track the state's growing obesity problem while opening the way for doctors to be more proactive in offering advice, Snyder spokeswoman Sara Wurfel told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The Republican governor will announce the initiative Wednesday as part of his proposal for improving Michigan residents' health. The...

FULL TITLE: 'I blame it on my genes': 700lb Californian woman enters the record books as the world's fattest woman After reaching 700 pounds, Pauline Potter has officially entered the record books as the world's heaviest woman. But the 47-year-old from Sacramento, California, now says she wants to lose weight so she can enjoy every day life again. Mrs Potter had boasted that men think she is a 'sex goddess' and she has 'fantastic sex every day', but she now struggles with daily life and cannot turn over in bed and or fit in her car. She wants to lose...

Donna Simpson's record-breaking weight had brought her all she dreamed of. The 44-year-old had a chubby chasing fiancé, was world famous and earning $90,000 (£55,000) a year from fans who paid to watch her eat more than 15,000 calories a day online. But the 600 pounds supersize mother-of-two has decided to start losing weight after she broke up with her feeder future husband. The holder of the Guiness World Record for the 'World's Heaviest Mother' told subscribers of her website, 'I ask that you take your last looks at the old Donna', as she revealed she was closing the site...

In a multi-part series published Thursday, the British medical journal The Lancet recommends national governments impose new regulations and taxes to stop an “obesity epidemic” that is sweeping the planet. The respected peer-reviewed journal lays out how the world has seen “four decades” of a “rising obesity epidemic.” One paper from Columbia and Harvard University researchers concludes that if “historic trends continue” there will be “65 million more obese adults in the USA and 11 million more in the UK by 2030.” The authors also write that obesity “is increasing in all countries, but rates vary widely.” In an editorial,...

Being fat can actually be good for you -- with obese people who are otherwise healthy living just as long as slim people -- according to a Canadian study published Monday. The study, published in the Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism journal, found that obese people with no other health problems were also less likely to die of cardiovascular causes than their slim counterparts. Researchers at York University, Toronto, said the study of thousands of obese Americans indicated that trying and failing to lose weight may be even worse for obese individuals than remaining fat. Lead author Jennifer Kuk, an...

Psychologist Margaret Gatz explains what 25 years of research have taught her about reducing the risk of dementia. Margaret Gatz, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, is investigating the causes of Alzheimer's disease. To that end, she has studied the health of more than 14,000 Swedish twins for more than 25 years. On 5 August, she will tell the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in Washington DC what the study has taught her about how to reduce risk for the disease. Nature got a preview. What first motivated you to study Alzheimer's disease? Before...

A report in the August issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism might help to explain why it's so frustratingly difficult to stick to a diet. When we don't eat, hunger-inducing neurons in the brain start eating bits of themselves. That act of self-cannibalism turns up a hunger signal to prompt eating. "A pathway that is really important for every cell to turn over components in a kind of housekeeping process is also required to regulate appetite," said Rajat Singh of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The cellular process uncovered in neurons of the brain's hypothalamus is known as...

Well that didn’t take long. Yesterday, in a post discussing a New York Times op-ed that called for heavy taxation on “unhealthy” foods, I asked, “How long before some starry-eyed but angry-faced Democrat proposes legislation to force ‘healthy food’ advertising?” Now The Daily Caller reports that food producers could face government regulations requiring “healthy” composition profiles for foods marketed to children two to seventeen years old.If enacted, new regulatory criteria will reclassify many foods which the FDA presently considers healthy as off limits for advertising to children. In the present formulations, eighty-eight of the top 100 most-consumed foods will be...

While a report released earlier this month indicates that New York ranks 41st in the nation for adult obesity rates, the state ranks 16th in childhood obesity rates. The ranking is a cause for concern for everyone from mothers and fathers to policy officials and health care providers. According to "F as in Fat, How Obesity Threatens America's Future 2011," a report compiled by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 17 percent of New York's kids are obese. About one-quarter of adults are considered obese. An individual is considered obese when their body mass index...

Should parents of extremely obese children lose custody for not controlling their kids' weight? A provocative commentary in one of the nation's most distinguished medical journals argues yes, and its authors are joining a quiet chorus of advocates who say the government should be allowed to intervene in extreme cases. It has happened a few times in the U.S., and the opinion piece in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association says putting children temporarily in foster care is in some cases more ethical than obesity surgery.

Tom Condliff, a 22-stone former policeman trying to persuade a health authority to fund obesity surgery, has started the latest round of his legal battle The grandfather from Talke, Staffordshire - who is 62 and 6ft 2in - says he needs stomach surgery to save his life. But the North Staffordshire Primary Care Trust (PCT) refuses to fund a laparoscopic gastric bypass operation. In April, the High Court refused to quash the PCT's decision not to provide the surgery. Mr Condliff's lawyers are seeking to overturn the High Court ruling in the Court of Appeal. (snip) Mr Clayton told Lord...

When it comes to losing weight, most of us are aware of the three factors at play: genetics, the number of calories we consume and the energy we are prepared to expend sweating our way into shape. We can’t choose our parents but, according to the dieting mantra, eat healthily, exercise regularly and the pounds will eventually drop off. But what if your body stubbornly refuses to remove excess fat, despite concerted efforts to shift it? Emerging evidence suggests that a more sinister reason than food and activity could be contributing to weight problems and that so-called ‘chemical calories’ lurking...

America continues to get fatter, according to a comprehensive new report on the nation's weight crisis. Statistics for 2008-2010 show that 16 states are experiencing steep increases in adult obesity, and none has seen a notable downturn in the last four years. Meanwhile, cases of Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure that health experts have long warned would result from the nation's broadening girth and sedentary ways are becoming increasingly widespread, according to the report, titled "F as in Fat," released Thursday. Even Coloradans, long the nation's slimmest citizens, are gaining excess pounds. With an obese population of 19.8%...

Washington nearly doubled its obesity rate in the past 15 years, with more than a quarter of residents weighing in as very fat, a new national study has found. The state's obesity rate surged from 13.9 percent in 1995 to 26.4 percent. That put Washington among 10 states with a 90 percent increase in obesity rates, according to the ominously named report, "F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America's Future 2011." The study was released Thursday by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It found that adult obesity rates increased in 16 states in...

She holds the dubious honour of being the Guinness Book Of Records' fattest woman ever to give birth, requiring a team of 30 medics to deliver her daughter during a high-risk Caesarean birth. Now, four years on, Donna Simpson has gained a further 12st and, staggeringly, continues to eat as she attempts to reach 72st [1000 lbs.] and land a second record as the world's most obese woman. And after splitting from long-term partner and feeder Philippe Gouamba, the 50st mother is relying on her four year-old daughter Jacqueline to bring her food to help her reach her goal. The...

Tony the Tiger, some NASCAR drivers and cookie-selling Girl Scouts will be out of a job unless grocery manufacturers agree to reinvent a vast array of their products to satisfy the Obama administration’s food police. Either retool the recipes to contain certain levels of sugar, sodium and fats, or no more advertising and marketing to tots and teenagers, say several federal regulatory agencies. The same goes for restaurants. It’s not just the usual suspected foods that are being targeted, such a thin mint cookies sold by scouts or M&Ms and Snickers, which sponsor cars in the Sprint Cup, but pretty...