You may avert your eyes from them, or purposefully cover them up when you’re scanning the menu at your favorite restaurant, but increasingly, they’re hard to ignore — the unsettling number of calories in the meal you’re …
fast food
It’s the Ads, Stupid: Why TV Leads to Obesity
How much TV do your kids watch? If you don’t know, you might want to find out, say experts, since the time children spend in front of a TV or computer screen can have a profound effect on their physical and developmental health.
Do Immigrant Kids Get Fat to Fit In?
Many foreign-born American citizens have said they feel that their fellow U.S. citizens question their Americanness. This spurning can be particularly difficult for immigrants’ U.S.-born children: some Asian-American kids, for …
Why Frequent Business Travelers Are Fatter and Less Healthy
Like a lot of reporters, I spare a fair amount of a time on the road, maybe eight to 10 days a month on average. I like traveling — I wouldn’t have gotten into this line of work if I didn’t — and as TIME’s environment …
And the Nation’s Fast-Food Capital Is…
Are you hankering for a Whopper? How about a Gordita Supreme, or a bucket of Extra Crispy? According to numbers crunched by AggData for the Daily Beast, you’d have the best luck in Orlando, Fla., the U.S. city with the highest …
Family MattersParenting
Are Working Moms to Blame for Childhood Obesity?
Moms, prepare to feel guilty, but only just slightly: There’s new data out there that link the more years you spend in the workforce with chubbier children.
Guiltless Gluttony: Why We Eat More From ‘Small’ Packages
What does size “small” mean anymore? When it comes to packaged foods, not much. At McDonald’s and KFC, for instance, a small soda holds 16 oz. At Wendy’s, meanwhile, order a small drink, and you’ll get 20 oz.
Study: Fast-Food Ads Target Kids with Unhealthy Food, and It Works
A team of public health researchers from Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity spent more than a year compiling data on 12 of the nation’s big fast-food restaurants, and what they found surprised even them: …
No Vegetable, No Toy: San Francisco Mimics Parents Everywhere
While the rest of San Francisco was preoccupied with the just-ended election campaign, the city’s Board of Supervisors agreed more quietly on a measure intended to help curb childhood obesity: banning the toy giveaways that are …
California county bans toys in Happy Meals
Santa Clara County, California became the first to ban toys in fast food meals for children. As CNN reports, county officials voted 3 to 2 to ban the plastic toys in any meals with more than 485 calories. County supervisor Ken Yeager said the decision was made in an effort to prevent “restaurants from preying on children’s love of toys
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Calling on health insurers to drop fast food stock
Health insurance companies in the U.S., Canada and Europe hold nearly $1.9 billion in fast-food company stock, according to a new study from researchers at Harvard Medical School and the department of medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance. In the study, published this week in the American Journal of Public Health researchers examined
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Menu calorie counts mean fewer calories for kids
City mandates requiring fast-food and chain restaurants to post calorie counts on menus have had mixed success at actually curbing people’s caloric intake. A study published this past October in the journal Health Affairs for example, found that, while nearly 30% of people said reading calorie counts on menus impacted their choices, when
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Does targeting fast food joints actually help combat obesity?
A law put into effect in July 2008 that banned fast food restaurants in a section of Los Angeles for one year may have been well intended, but missed the point, according to a study by the non-profit research organization, RAND Corporation, published online in the journal Health Affairs. Economist Roland Sturm and natural scientist …
