Hi there! I am on vacation in the beautiful Pacific Northwest this week, but I wanted to leave you with some Food for Thought:

Tags: eating, entrees, Food & Nutrition, health, restaurants

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As more bistros, brasseries, and cafes go out of business because of a down economy in France, new research finds one restaurant is doing quite well there. France is now the second most profitable market in the world for McDonald’s. The chain has more than 1,000 restaurants in the country, serving more than a million [...]

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Counting calories may soon become easier to do at restaurants. Chains have now agreed to support legislation that would require them to post calories on their menus. Restaurants with 20 or more locations would have to list the number of calories in each item. And if someone asks, they would also have to show them [...]

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It’s back. A bill Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced that would require nutrition labeling on chain-restaurant menus across the country was reintroduced today. If the Menu Education and Labeling (MEAL) Act passes, fast-food and other chain restaurants would have to post calories on menu boards and list calories, saturated fat, [...]

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We’ve talked about how there’s hidden sodium in foods you wouldn’t think to check. Now a new report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) finds mega amounts of salt in foods you might think of as salty… but probably not quite this bad. 

Tags: Food & Nutrition, restaurants, salt, sodium

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Last summer, New York City was the first city in the country to go trans-fat-free. Then it posted calories on menus. Now, NYC’s health department is taking on salt. City officials are meeting with food makers and restaurants to talk about cutting down the amount of salt in common foods like soup, pasta sauce, salad [...]

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Are healthy choices back-firing at some restaurants? A new report shows having healthy options at fast-food chains can make some diners eat less healthily than they would have otherwise. Researchers found 10-percent of customers ordered fries from menus that did not offer a salad as an option. But 33 percent ordered fries from menus that [...]

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Do you check calories at fast food restaurants before you order? Most people don’t. New research shows out of 4,311 people buying food at McDonalds, Burger King, Au Bon Pain, or Starbucks, only six looked at the nutrition information the restaurants have – that’s one-tenth of one percent. Researchers say the best way to get [...]

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Remember the study a couple of months ago about how fast-food restaurants near schools could lead to fatter kids? Now another study seems to echo those results, saying a fast-food restaurant within about 500 feet of a school may lead to at least a five percent increase in the obesity rate at that school. Researchers [...]

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Does living near a lot of fast food restaurants increase your chances of having a stroke? New research from the University of Michigan finds the risk of stroke in a neighborhood increased by one percent for every fast-food restaurant in the area. Researchers say they don’t know whether the food itself actually increased the risk [...]

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