By Maggie Mertens

A little-noticed provision tucked into the House's nearly 2,000 page bill would require chain restaurants and operators of vending machines to post calorie counts for the food they sell. Don't feel bad if you missed it, it's stuck down in Section 2572, starting on page 1,510.

Will calorie counts like these keep consumers from buying the burger? (Chris Hondros/Getty)

New York already requires chain restaurants to post calories. And California isn't far behind. But the House bill would take the concept national, make calorie counts prominent, and also require the display of suggested daily calorie intake. Maybe then Americans could make a more considered decision about the Big Mac (540 calories) or Premium Southwest Salad without chicken (140 calories), please, they're about to scarf?

The move is being lauded by supporters, such as Rep. John Larson a Democrat from Connecticut, who said in a statement that the menu changes would empower Americans "to make their own health care choices." Empowering, perhaps, but the changes sound like a fair amount of work for those in the restaurant biz. Nevertheless, the National Restaurant Association "strongly supports" the provision, a spokesman for the trade group told us.

Continue reading "Health Overhaul Could Make Chain Restaurants Post Calories" >

By Maggie Mertens

Cereal giant Kellogg said it's dropping the eyebrow-raising claim that a box of Rice Krispies or Cocoa Krispies, "Now helps support your child's IMMUNITY." (The caps are Kellogg's.)

Immunity-boosting cereal? Not anymore. (Paul Sancya/AP)

Blame the swine flu. Kellogg's said Wednesday it is discontinuing the IMMUNITY claim, "given the public attention on H1N1."

The decision also follows a pullback by a controversial industry-sponsored program that put "Smart Choices" labels on the front of packages of processed foods, including some of Kellogg's. Only days before that change, the Food and Drug Administration raised concerns those labels could mislead consumers.

Continue reading "Rice Krispies Are No Substitute For Swine Flu Vaccine" >

By Deborah Franklin

Want to build muscle, not fat? Forget bellying up to a man-sized sirloin or salmon steak at dinner. New research from physiologists in Texas suggests you'll build more brawn with daintier portions of protein scattered across different meals.

(iStockphoto.com)

In their study, Douglas Paddon-Jones and his colleagues at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston asked healthy adults, old and young, to eat different amounts of lean beef.

They found that there seems to be a cap in the amount of protein that the typical body can use in a single sitting to make muscle. Only the first 30 grams of pure protein in a meal -- or about the amount in four ounces of lean beef, chicken, soy, or dairy -- gets turned into muscle.

"There's so much of this 'more-is-better' mentality in this country," says Douglas Paddon-Jones of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. "But the message of our research is one of moderation."

Continue reading "Big Protein Portions Don't Mean More Muscle" >

By Maggie Mertens

When a food claims to be a "Smart Choice" or "Heart Healthy," and it's written right there on the front of the package, should you believe it? Not all the time, says the Food and Drug Administration.

Should snacks like these be considered health foods? (Joe Raedle/Getty)

The FDA is taking a long, hard look at companies that tout their products as healthy eating options. The agency is also thinking about a unified healthy label system, maybe like a voluntary one relying on eating "traffic lights" in the UK.

We dug through lists of the purported healthy foods out there now, and you can do the same by searching the online guides for Smart Choices and even the American Heart Association.

Many of the foods seem just fine. But more than a few struck us as misplaced. We compared notes with Michael Jacobson, head of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group that spends a lot of time looking at food issues. Here's a list of six "healthy" foods you might think twice about.

Continue reading "6 'Healthy' Foods You Can Probably Live Without" >

By Scott Hensley

Quick. How many calories are in a can of Coke?

Coming soon: calorie counts on the front of the cans. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Answer: the classic version packs 140 calories into 12 ounces.

But soon you won't even have to turn the can around to find out. Coca-Cola says it's going to put "energy" information on the front of almost all its product packaging around the world by the end of 2011. The company is making the changes in the US now, after doing so already in Australia, Europe and Mexico.

How come? "Now more than ever, people expect facts about the products they consumers to be both readily available and visible," Muhtar Kent, Coca-Cola's CEO said in a statement. There's also more and more chatter about taxing sugary beverages to fight obesity.

Continue reading "Coca-Cola Goes Better With Calorie Counts" >

by Maggie Mertens

The CDC and your mother have something in common: They both want you to eat more fruits and veggies. Americans, as it turns out, aren't quite fulfilling those food pyramid quotas.

Why aren't you eating these? (iStockphoto.com)

A report issued this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that only one-third of American adults are eating the recommended two or more servings of fruit per day, and only 27 percent are eating enough veggies -- three or more servings per day. The study also revealed that teens are doing even worse: less than 10 percent of them are getting enough fruits and vegetables.

This is far from the goal set by the CDC in 2000 to get 75 percent of Americans eating enough fruits and at least 50 percent to eat their recommended daily serving of vegetables.

Continue reading "(Not) Eating Your Fruits and Vegetables" >