junk food

McDonald's got a letter from 550 health experts Wednesday accusing the fast food giant of ignoring the impact its products -- and its marketing -- have on America's children. It's not the first such criticism of McDonald's, but so far, the attacks don't appear to have hurt its sales.

In the eyes of 8- to 24-year-old consumers, M&Ms are cooler than Google. That's according to a new poll by Harris Interactive, which found that sugary snacks made up four of that age group's top 10 favorite brands.

Carrot farmers want to convince young eaters to put down that bag of chips and pick up a pack of baby carrots. So, a new ad campaign will use weapons favored by the junk-food giants: flashy snack bags, video games, humor and YouTube videos.

Holy cow! Baldwin Park, Calif., purported home of the state's first drive-through restaurant -- a hamburger haven called In-N-Out -- has imposed a nine-month moratorium on new drive-through eateries there. In a climate of soaring obesity rates -- 17% of children and nearly 34% of adults are obese,...

I'm thinking a lot about serving sizes this week. Several days ago, I went to the grocery store and bought a low-fat garden vegetable lasagna frozen meal. Made by a company called Cedarlane, it was very tasty and pretty healthy (I have no beef with the food and am not really looking to pick a...

I have a new theory about food, one I developed after watching some ducks in my neighborhood. We have these two ducks that seem to live on our street, which is your typical suburban street that's more or less in the Ohio countryside. There's a nondescript lake about a 10-minute walk away, where I...

Apparently, my weight problem is a little more noticeable than I realized. So it's last Sunday, and I'm at a restaurant with my two daughters (6 and 8-years old), my parents, my 85-year-old grandmother, two uncles and two aunts, when this friend of the family saunters up to our table, cracking...

Lunchables may be mom-friendly and child-approved, but it's not exactly healthful nourishing food. In fact, Oscar Mayer's Lunchables (snack size) appears in the top four of WebMD's "Not-so-healthy snack" list, sharing top billing with such obvious selections as chocolate-covered doughnuts, mini...

Streetwise British chef Jamie Oliver is shaking up America's ideas of what's good to eat, with his Food Revolution show set in one of the U.S.'s unhealthiest cities. The reality TV show hits home for many families and has set food bloggers a-twitter. Are food makers paying attention?

Next time you eye that hot dog or bag of chips, check yourself. It could just be a slippery slope. A new study published in Nature Neuroscience Sunday by scientists at the Scripps Research Institute found that junk food has the same kind of addiction as other bad stuff such as cigarettes, cocaine...