A new study in Pediatrics finds most U.S. schools to sell junk food from food carts or vending machines. The situation isn’t too terrible in grammar schools but 97% of high schools sell junk food. I’m curious about that other 3%.

The Rudd Center at Yale has produced a handy summary of the research in support of calorie labels on menu boards.

The government of Great Britain has produced a major report on the need for healthier food systems, meaning the effects of current trends in food production and consumption on health, society, food safety, and the environment.  It will be interesting to see if they do anything with it.  I wish we could do things like this.  Maybe soon?

CBS News reports that FDA bureaucrats collected $35 million in bonus pay last year, a year in which the agency was charged with gross incompetence. Who got the biggest one? The person in charge of giving them out. Sigh.

Thanks to Andy Bellatti of Small Bites for announcing the winner of the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. 64 hot dogs? The contestants do not look like happy campers, alas.

Yesterday’s New York Times published a gorgeous recipe for chocolate chip cookies but I was stunned by the size. The recipe calls for pounds of ingredients but only makes 18 cookies (5 inches in diameter). I couldn’t resist looking up the calories on the USDA’s food composition data base. If I added them up right, they came to about 500 calories each. If you want to understand the vast change in the food environment that has taken place in the last 30 years, take a look at an old (1964 or 1975) edition of the Joy of Cooking. Its recipe for chocolate chip cookies calls for almost exactly half the ingredients of the one in the Times but makes 45 cookies. Two batches would be the same as the Times’ recipe and would make 90 cookies! These would be just under 100 calories each.

USA Today has just run a piece on how tough it is to eat healthfully if you are poor.  It quotes my University of Washington friend, Adam Drewnowski, giving a brilliantly succinct summary of precisely what it takes.  He says: “It takes three things to be well nourished: knowledge, money and time.  If you have three out of three, you have no problem. If you have two out of three, you can manage…The problem is when you are zero for three.”   And lots of  people are, and more to come it seems.

Mark Schrimsher writes to tell me that his CalorieLab site has just posted a U.S. map indicating the states with the highest levels of obesity.  The site has a calorie counter for a huge number of items and meals, and does things like adding up the calories expected to be consumed in the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest–19,600.  Did this happen?