A person almost starts to feel sorry for Paula Deen. Not only does the Butter Queen have to deal with the internet being angry over her diabetes cover-up but she's also lost her publicist and is getting flack for having high blood pressure, too. And now local gyms are making fun of her in the Paper of Record! more ›

Nanny Bloomberg's Department of Health is letting itself go this term! Just three years ago they were terrifying New Yorkers with soda that turned into human fat in the air and now they are resorting to fat chicks on scooters and expanding hamburger line graphs. Even compared the department's recent "casual smoking will KILL you" campaign this one seems lackluster. Still, they got us to talk about them? more ›

We've been told that being fat can also be healthy, but we don't think we're going to see any fat guys squeezing into the Oval Office anytime soon. At this point, Americans would rather give up sex than their favorite dessert! But there is one silver lining for zaftig dudes: pretty skinny ladies don't care how fat you are as long as you're rich! more ›

In the US today there are nearly 5.4 million vending machines and almost seven percent of them are located in elementary, middle and high schools. Scary, but even scarier is the fact that until recently most of those machines were not even close to healthy. Not that it really matters? Though school districts across the country are trying to bring healthy vending machines to their hallways, they are finding the same thing that fast food companies have found: People don't go to vending machines for healthy food. more ›

Americans may say they want to eat healthy but the truth of the matter is we really like to eat disgusting fatty foods. Despite efforts to bring healthier fare to fast food restaurants—thanks, Michelle!—when it comes time to order we turn to the fried stuff nearly every time, according to the AP. In totally unrelated news, Pediatrics magazine now recommends doctors not call kids fat since their parents would prefer to be told their kids are at an "unhealthy weight." more ›

Olive Garden, home of unlimited breadsticks, and Red Lobster, purveyors of fine cheddar biscuits, are shaping up at Michelle Obama's request. more ›

New Jersey woman Donna Simpson, who dreamed of hitting 1,000 pounds (and came close, too), is going on a diet, she announced this week. more ›

A new study in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism says that sometimes it is totally healthy to be fat. Really! While studying the uses of the Edmonton Obesity Staging System (EOSS), a recently proposed means of measuring obesity that is more complex than a Body Mass Index (which has problems), researchers at York University found numbers that "challenge the idea that all obese individuals need to lose weight,” according to lead author Jennifer Kuk. more ›

Yesterday, NJ Governor Chris Christie suffered a severe asthma attack and was hospitalized for a few hours. The rumored 2012 presidential candidate—or VP candidate—admitted his weight causes problems. "I think the weight exacerbates everything," he said last night. "The lighter I am, the healthier I'll be... I feel a pretty big sense of urgency [to lose weight]. It's one of the major struggles of my life. I'm working on it." more ›

Calorie count information is everywhere these days—and soon will be even more so—but how can you be sure that the numbers a restaurant lists on its walls are accurate? You can't! At least not according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. After testing 242 unique foods in 42 restaurants from three states, and they found that while overall the stated numbers were accurate "there was substantial inaccuracy for some individual foods." Nearly one in five of the samples taken, when measured in a laboratory, were at least 100 calories over the amounts listed on the restaurants’ websites. And that isn't even the surprising part. more ›

Obesity remains a huge problem in America—especially with one third of our our nation's children being classified as overweight or obese—but a number of large restaurant chains are now teaming up to do something about it. Of course, let's not go overboard: they're teaming up to cover themselves in case the government ever gets too worried about our nation's girth. To that end, more than a dozen chains, including Au Bon Pain, Burger King, Chili's, Denny's, Friendly's, IHOP and Outback Steakhouse, have created a "Kids LiveWell" initiative that aims to bring healthier fare to kids trays. more ›

For today's installment of Food News You Probably Could Have Figured Out Yourself, we present the following: a new study shows that the more you eat out, the more likely you are to be fat. Who would'a thunk it? more ›

Former State Comptroller Alan Hevesi may be ailing, but he was still sentenced to one to four years in prison for his role in the state's pay-to-play pension scandal. On the other hand, Raymond Harding, the former Liberal Party head who took $800,000 in fees from investment firms hoping to be selected for the NY pension fund, was let off with no jail time. And it's partly because he's really overweight —state officials noted his cooperation with the case as well as his health problems. more ›

Seeing unattractive photos of fat people in the media is (part of) why you are fat, according to a new study out of Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. According to the researchers, online news sources tend to use negative images of overweight people in stories about obesity (i.e. eating fast food, wearing tight clothes or shown with their heads cut off) and those images in turn perpetuate obesity's bad reputation, which may contribute to obesity itself. more ›

The city's Health Department seems willing to do whatever it takes to get you off the soda pop, even if it means glossing over certain facts about soft drinks' potential to fatten you up. According to e-mails obtained by the Times through the state's Freedom of Information Law, Health Department officials, including Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley, decided to overrule objections from some experts who said the "Pouring on the Pounds" campaign was misleading. At one point, the department's chief nutritionist simply asked Harvard and Columbia professsors, "What can we get away with?" more ›

The AP reports that the 32-year-old man said he "felt forced to sample the food each day to ensure that quality standards remained high, because McDonald's hired 'mystery clients' to randomly visit restaurants and report on the food, service and cleanliness." He also faulted the company for giving him free lunches, which he was presumably forced to eat at gunpoint. more ›

Eater has a letter that restaurateur Keith McNally (Balthazar, Pastis) sent to New York magazine critic Adam Platt. Platt wasn't that enthusiastic about McNally's new endeavor, Pulinio's Bar & Pizzeria, and McNally fires back: "The fact is, you're as out of touch describing young downtown New Yorkers as you are at understanding the restaurants where they like to eat. For in your middle-aged world it's axiomatic that busy, exuberant restaurants cannot and will not serve great food. This, unfortunately, is no less a form of prejudice than restaurateurs believing that bald, over-weight reviewers are incapable of reviewing lively downtown restaurants impartially." more ›

A study conducted on three groups of lab rats has provided some interesting insights into what might possibly drive humans to binge on fatty, high calorie food. In a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers studied the rats for 40 days. One group was fed "regular" rat food (whatever that means); another got bacon, sausage, cheesecake, etc., for just one hour each day; and the third group received access to the unhealthy foods for up to 23 hours a day. The third group's unlimited binging changed their brains. more ›

Donna Simpson, the 604-pound NJ woman whose "fantasy" to be 1,000 pounds, is now the toast of the town. According to the Star-Ledger, "Two days after the 42-year-old Simpson announced she intended to eat her way into the record books, 'Entertainment Tonight' was at her door. Her manager was fielding phone calls from 'Oprah,' 'Dr. Phil,' and 'Inside Edition.' And she’s been offered a reality show and book deal." more ›

Parents are planning a city hall “bake-in” in protest of new regulations that ban homemade treats from their kids' school bake sales. The city's rationale is that brownies and cookies made from scratch carry an uncountable calorie load, whereas Doritos, packaged cookies and other food items on a list of permissible items, disclose their nutritional content. "We don't really want to be told what to buy, especially when it's junk food from Kellogg's," one mom told the Daily News. more ›

Months after it barred schools from holding most food fundraisers, the city says bake sales can go on—as long as no homemade treats with undisclosed calorie counts grace the fold-out tables. The new regulation, designed to combat ever-increasing childhood obesity, limits bake sales to "fresh fruits and vegetables, or one of 27 specific packaged items" that include low-fat Doritos, Nutri-Grain Cereal Bars (blackberry only) and Linden’s Cookies (butter crunch, chocolate chip or fudge chip cookies in two cookie packs) among other things. The city has also recently slapped health regulations on school vending machines and is considering a "Meatless Monday" school lunch program. more ›

City officials often tout their far-reaching efforts to make school lunches healthier for students. They even called in Rachael Ray for help. But according to a Daily News investigation, school meals remain as unhealthy and as remarkably disgusting-sounding as they've always been. more ›

Another Mets fan named Eric Metzger was sitting behind Cassidy and allegedly had been "giving Cassidy the business" for using his BlackBerry during the game, the Post reports. Cassidy's lawyer maintains that Metzger "intentionally and with reckless disregard of the safety of others, pushed [Cassidy, causing] him to fall numerous rows and upon [Massey]." But Massey's lawyer insists the Mets are still at fault, and tells the AP, "We have information that one of the security people might have spoken to [Cassidy] and let him leave." On the plus side, the Mets rallied to win 11-5. more ›

There's been much debate about how to handle overweight passengers on flights. While some airlines may charge for an extra seat, not all do — and now a flight attendant allegedly snapped a photo on an American Airlines flight (destination and take-off point unknown), which of course has been leaked to the press. more ›

There is bad, if unsurprising, news for moviegoers who routinely stuff their faces with incessant handfuls of popcorn: Not only does your maddening snack rustling ruin the delicate movie magic, but you're making yourself morbidly obese and prone to heart disease, too. Lab tests conducted by the Center for Science in the Public Interest have determined that popcorn at the major movie chains has way more calories than cud-chewing plebes are led to believe. For cinema snack-hounds, these lab results are more horrifying than The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past: more ›