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I couldn't believe this when I read this.  But children in a recent study  identified apple slices as FRENCH FRIES! Apparently all the attempts by food giants to show kids healthier foods just aren't working. In the study  one-half to one-third of children did not identify milk when shown McDonald’s and Burger King children’s advertising images depicting that product, according to newswise.com. Sliced apples in Burger King’s ads were identified as apples by only 10 percent of young viewers; instead most reported they were french fries.   “Burger King’s depiction of apple slices as ‘Fresh Apple Fries’ was misleading to children in the target age range (of 3 to 7),” the Web site quotes principal investigator James Sargent, MD, co-director Cancer Control Research Program at Norris Cotton Cancer Center. “The advertisement would be deceptive by industry standards, yet their self-regulation bodies took no action to address the misleading depiction.” In 2010 McDonal...

Can it really be?  Is McDonald's really going to offer healthy food , not just salads that, when you add the dressing and croutons, have more fat and calories than Big Macs? Looks like it might be true.  Both The New York Times and Daily Mail ran stories this week about the fast food giant's new menu that will in, three years, in some places, allow diners to swap french fries for salad, fruit or vegetables (real vegetables), something they've been doing in France (it figures) for some time, and other healthy choices. The new menus are being rolled out in 20 of the company's markets, both here and abroad, that are responsible for 85% of their sales.   The changes will take place in half  of McDonald's restaurants in three years, and the rest will roll out sometime. .  .later.  Oh, 2020. The reason they're doing this?  There're a lot, but one of the main ones is you millennials, who prefer Chipotle and Panera (me, too). What's in store?  ...

It's always been a tantalizing mystery to me.  How many calories must I burn to be able to eat a bag of M&Ms and not gain weight?  Someone once told me a whole football field equals one M&M (thankfully, I've since learned that's not true). But since I've been wearing an activity monitor to see just how many calories I burn, though I run, swim and walk every day, sadly, it's not very many.  At least not as many as I  thought (/hoped). Now a new study is finding out the exact same thing in reverse about obese kids.  HealthDay reports that kids are consuming far more calories than parents and doctors knew. The new model found that it takes far more calories for children to gain weight than experts had realized. Damn those lucky kids!  It's the difference between french fries, and an apple. Brenda Goodman writes, "For example, the old model estimates that for a girl who's a normal weight at age 5 to become 22 pounds overweight by the time...

It's pretty interesting.  Why do people who normally eat fruits and vegetables, and chicken and fish, when they do eat meat, devour french fries and hot fudge sundaes when they go out to fast food restaurants? Stephanie Clifford at The New York Times reports that " American consumers, even otherwise healthy ones, keep choosing caloric indulgences rather than healthy foods at fast-food restaurants." Restaurants have added salads and fruit and other healthier foods for some time.  But, as Clifford notes, "i t’s the sugary, fatty items that are flying — or waddling — out the door." Would you believe, as Clifford points out, that you can now have a bacon and egg sandwich between two glazed doughnuts?  You can, at where else, Dunkin Donuts. McDonald's CEO Donald Thompson recently told Cifford that although the chain had dedicated "one-sixth of its advertising time to salads, they make up 2 to 3 percent of sales, and don’t drive growth. "  Then...

OK, we've been talking about low-balling calories when we try to figure out how much we're eating.  But guess who does it the most?  Teenagers! CBS News reports today that they're the ones most guilty of underestimating just how fattening what they're eating might be. The answer's pretty simple.  Where do teens mostly eat? "We found that people, especially teens, are consuming more calories than they think they're getting when they eat fast food," lead researcher Dr. Jason Block, of the Harvard Medical School/Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, said in a press release , as CBS News notes. While adults underestimate calories by about 20%, and parents of school-age children by 23%, teens do it by 34%. That's an awful lot of french fries and Big Macs and Strawberry Hand Spun Shakes unaccounted for.  Which is kind of interesting when you compare that to the young teens you see that weigh barely more than a sponge. Surely they're not the o...

Big surprise!  Children's meals at restaurants are still unhealthy! And we're not just talking about McD's and Burger King. According to a new study of the "nutritional quality of meals for children on the menus of the nation’s largest chain restaurants ... 91 percent do not even meet the standards set by the National Restaurant Association’s Kids LiveWell program," as reported by the NYT's Stephanie Strom. Just five years ago, Strom writes, a similar study found that 99 percent of kids' restaurant meals were unhealthy so I guess we've made some progress.  But not nearly enough. Strom notes that even though restaurants are now bragging about their "healthier" options for kids, truly healthy meals have gone from one percent to only three percent of what's offered.  Not nearly enough, experts agree. Strom singled out in her story Subway, which does not offer sugared sodas with its kids meals, but offers water or nonfat milk ins...