News on Health and Nutrition from the Americas

Local diets will be nearly trans fat-free by July 2009, the Calgary Health Region confirmed yesterday. The region's board unanimously endorsed a plan that, according to its medical officer of health, Dr. Brent Friesen, will put the city in the natio...

Hardee's is expected to complete the transition to zero trans fat cooking oil by the end of 2008, its parent company CKE Restaurants Inc. said Wednesday. CKE originally thought the conversion would be completed in Hardee's and Carl's Jr. restaurants...

Researchers from the US Agricultural Research Service (ARS) claim to have stabilised a process of using extrusion technology to make healthy and tasty snacks out of legumes.

More than 90 percent of Americans surveyed are quick to identify high blood pressure as one of their biggest health concerns related to sodium intake. However, according to a recent survey conducted by Orville Redenbacher's(R) Gourmet(R) Popping Corn(1...

The check. For each of the chains, we bought and analyzed fries from five to nine restaurants in five states.CR's take. In our sampling, Wendy's still missed its mark. So did Burger King. McDonald's fries claim a high 8 g for most locations and 0 g fo...

Popcorn Workers Lung victims involved in a class action lawsuit got some good news from a New York appeals court yesterday. The court ruled that if the former Missouri popcorn plant workers successfully prove their claims that diacetyl exposure cause...

Obesity rates did not rise last year for the first time in 25 years, a study has said, but are still too high and will continue to dominate public health agenda. The findings for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that while 34 p...

US ingredient giant Cargill is expanding its line of high oleic canola products, on the back of customer demand for oils and shortenings with no trans fat and low levels of saturated fat.Cargill has changed the brand name of its TransEnd all-purpose s...

A few years ago it looked as though the odd crumbling monument in hick, southern towns would be all that remained of the fast-food industry. The obesity epidemic, class-action lawsuits and the stomach-churning revelations in Eric Schlosser’s book Fast...

There’s no telling how many calories the restaurant industry has expended running away from New York’s pioneering attempt to improve the city’s health by requiring chain eateries to prominently display calorie information. Fortunately, the city health...

The Bloomberg administration, in its continuing fight against obesity, reintroduced a measure yesterday to force chain restaurants to display calorie information on their menus or menu boards, after a federal judge struck down a similar measure last m...

Four Queens restaurants were recently slapped with fines for trans fat violations during routine inspections, placing them among the first establishments to be punished under new laws that require city eateries to switch to alternative oils, margarin...

Workers exposed to the butter-flavoring chemical, diacetyl, may get a reprieve. Exposure to diacetyl has been linked to a severe, potentially lethal form of lung disease, bronchiolitis obliterans. Despite calls for action by unions, health-care provide...

Saborear unas humeantes, doradas, saladitas y crujientes papas fritas es una tentación que pocos logran resistir (...) ¿Pero qué tan recomendable o sano es comerlas? (...) (un) factor de riesgo para la salud es que muchas veces las papas son freídas en...

Perhaps no company has more at stake than chip-giant Frito-Lay, the world's biggest producer of snack foods, with $10 billion-plus in annual sales. Home of Doritos, Fritos, Cheetos and Tostitos, Frito-Lay represents 36 percent of parent company Pepsi...

A proposed bill that calls for emergency regulatory action to protect workers from diacetyl, a chemical linked to lung disease, has met with resistance from the Bush administration.The bill, submitted to the House of Representatives, would require the ...

Recently, after numerous complaints of serious illness from popcorn workers and one complaint of illness from a consumer, ConAgra and Pop Weaver removed diacetyl from its microwave popcorn and now proudly announce to their customers that their product ...

Exposure to a microwave popcorn additive linked to a deadly lung disease would be swiftly regulated under a bill passed on Wednesday by the U.S. House of Representatives, defying a White House veto threat. The bill would order quick action by the Occu...