News on Health and Nutrition from Northern America

McDonalds prints coupons on report cards that reward young children for getting good grades. As childhood obesity rates soar, the controversy is growing about this potentially harmful partnership between fast food companies and public schools.

ConAgra Foods has said it has removed nearly three million pounds of sodium from a range of products without affecting taste.The firm said it will continue to look at ways of cutting down salt, and said it has already managed to remove up to 20 per cen...

Ontario is taking action to make schools healthier places to learn by moving to drop trans fat from lunchroom menus."Our kids' health is just too important to risk,"said Premier Dalton McGuinty. "Trans fats have no place in our schools a...

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...

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 ...