When in 2006 new federal regulations required a line for trans fat on Nutrition Facts labels, food manufacturers raced to reduce or eliminate partially hydrogenated oil -- the source of that nasty fat -- from their pie crusts, pastries, microwave popcorns, frozen French fries and other foods. Most big restaurant...

Packing a reasonably nutritious school lunch -- a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread, say, plus a sliced orange and a carton of milk (lowfat with an ice pack) -- doesn't have to take a lot of time. But Americans love saving time almost as much as...

Think of all the things that food manufacturers could be doing to improve the nation's health. They could reduce the amount of salt in packaged foods to help prevent blood pressure from rising. They could make healthier foods for school lunches. And they could use their billions of advertising dollars...

To help encourage healthier ways of eating, the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest is working with food and health advocates of all stripes to create Food Day, Oct. 24. Its goals are nothing less than to reshape the nation's diet and orient food and farm...

Some big American food companies are engaged in a tug-of-war with the Obama administration over the nutritional quality of foods marketed to children.

At issue is a voluntary set of nutrition guidelines for those foods, developed by the Interagency Working Group, comprised of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the...

The "Big Gulp." Free refills. Twenty-ounce single servings. Two liters for 99 cents. Soda vending machines just about everywhere. During the past 40 years or so we've opened the spigot of sugary drinks, roughly doubling our consumption. It shows in our bulging waistlines and widening bottoms, but equally so in...

"Everything in moderation," goes one.

"There are no good foods and no bad foods," goes another.

Boy, if I had a nickel for every time I heard someone try to end an argument with one of those tired sayings! I believe such sayings had meaning when we first heard them...

Cue the music; the gauzy, soft-focus ads; and the focus-grouped fridge magnets: Coca-Cola turns 125 this week.

Coke has something of a 10-Year Plan, first floated in a chilly manifesto called "2020 Vision and Roadmap for Winning Together" -- a doubling...

"April 15" fills many Americans with anxiety as tax returns become due (though this year Uncle Sam has given us until April 18). I recently remembered that April 15 has another grim association: the opening, 56 years ago, of Ray Kroc's first McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines, Ill. (Now is...

It's time to fix our broken food system. Over the course of the next six months, we hope to create what will be a huge grassroots mobilization for changing what Americans eat -- and what the food industry produces -- for the better.

Let me introduce you to

Food marketers have long had a special knack for euphemism. (If you didn't believe me I'd offer you a Rocky Mountain oyster.) But even as someone who has watched the food industry closely for 40 years, sometimes even I can get taken by surprise.

One such case is an innocent-sounding...

Walmart doesn't exactly conjure up warm and fuzzy feelings among many of us who call ourselves progressives. Though the company's huge footprint in the marketplace means consumers can pay lower prices for clothing, electronics, and increasingly, food -- it has also resulted in the shuttering of many family businesses. Much...

There are two diametrically opposed forces fighting for control over children's diets: "Should it be the government or should it be the parents?" Sarah Palin said in a recent speech. "It should be the parents!"

Of course parents bear the primary responsibility for guiding their children's food choices, and for...

Monday, November 29 is our last best hope for the Senate to pass food safety reform. That's something I hope we can be thankful for next week.

Part of the point of Thanksgiving is to appreciate the incredible bounty of foods we enjoy and often take for granted. Imagine what...

When Congress comes back for the post-election session, there will be little time and many competing priorities. One that must be addressed is child nutrition. Child nutrition may not have the political cachet of some of the big ticket items on Congress' plate, but here are seven reasons why this...

Wouldn't it be great to walk through the supermarket and be able to identify the healthiest products at a glance? Without even turning the package over and looking at Nutrition Facts panels?

Well, of course the healthiest foods in the supermarkets often don't come in packages at all: fresh fruits...

By now you've likely heard the good news that Ben & Jerry's is taking the words "All Natural" off of labels of 48 varieties of ice creams that have non-natural ingredients.

It was back in 2002 that we first noticed the factory-made ingredients in Ben...

Forty-three million Americans depend on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, to help provide the foods they need for good health. SNAP (formerly known as Food Stamps) is a critically important part of the government's safety net and has become even more vital to low-income families since the economic...

Would you like some disodium 6-hydroxy-5-(2-methoxy-5-methyl-4-sulfophenyl)azo)-2-naphthalene-sulfonate in your yogurt?

Well, you won't find that mouthful of mumbo-jumbo on food labels. But you will find it listed with the friendlier name of Red 40.

You might pass up a macaroni and cheese that contains the slightly foreboding-sounding tartrazine. But...

Dangle a toy in front of a child's eyes, and you can bet the child will do just about anything to get it. And that's exactly what McDonald's (and other restaurants) do, using everything from TV commercials to signs in windows to the Internet in order to get kids to...