I'm not a big fan of the book Eat This, Not That. It purports to tell you which foods you should be eating in restaurants instead of other foods. Sometimes the comparison is good, but other times it just seems to save a person 100 calories here or a few grams of fat there and doesn't seem worth the bother (and sometimes the "eat this" choice has more carbs or salt). But I guess it's good to have the info.

Now Men's Health editor Dave Zinczenko exposes some restaurant secrets. Why don't some chains want us to know the nutritional numbers of their foods? What foods are often cooked with other foods in the kitchen? Do some fast food chains actually have healthier options than sit down restaurants?

It's official. The Worst Food in America is not the Pizza-Crepe-Taco-Pancake-Chili Bag that was famous for about 30 seconds a couple of years ago. First of all, the PCTPCB doesn't actually exist, and second of all, the Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing from Outback Steakhouse, which does exist, has made its way to the top -- er bottom, as it were -- of Men's Health's list of the 20 Worst Foods in America.

The foods were chosen based on sheer caloric impact alone, because in the end, it all comes down to the number of calories we consume and burn. However, some "allowances" were made for excessive carbohydrates and fat, added sugars, trans fats, and sodium. After all their calculations, the Aussie Cheese Fries weigh in at 2,900 calories, 182 g fat, and 240 g carbs. Even if you do the polite thing and share the order with three other people, your starter alone will already put you over a dinner's worth of calories before the server even brings your entree to the table.

So I guess that means, order the Aussie Fries and a glass of water for dinner, right?

Perhaps one of the reasons we're having trouble with our efforts at weight loss is that we can't visualize what we are consuming. In other words, when you look at a plate of fried chicken with a heaping scoop of mashed potatoes and a brick of mac n cheese, you can't really tell how much fat and how many calories you're about to consume.

Website Foodsel is a tool that not only gives you detailed nutritional information of popular foods, but lets you visualize energy, sugar, and fat. For example. if you were to eat an entire 12" Pizza Hut cheese pizza, you'd be consuming 4.4 sugar cubes, one entire stick of butter, and would have to burn the equivalent of 87.5 D batteries. That's a lot of energy to burn.

How's that for some visual non-stimulation?

NYC's Board of Health attempted last year to pass a measure that forced fast food joints to post calorie counts on their menu boards, right where people could see them (and, I guess, be horrified by them and run screaming from the restaurant. Or...something. Not quite sure what the city's goal was).

At any rate, a judge struck down the measure, so now they're back to where they started. But they're not giving up on trying to hoard their mighty caloric knowledge on the citizens of New York! By golly, they will succeed in getting people to acknowledge the 600 calories in that Premium Crispy Chicken Ranch BLT Sandwich they're eating! And then the Board of Health officials will sleep soundly at night, feeling virtuous that they have single-handedly handled the "obesity epidemic." Right?

For the record, Burger King and McDonald's already make this information available (it took me half a minute to find how many calories were in that Chicken McWhatever listed above), they just don't advertise it like the marquee outside of Radio City. Currently, if the city's restaurants want to display their food's nutritional info, they are more than welcome to.

And I mean, really, how many people nowadays don't know that fast food is bad for them? I highly doubt that prominently displaying caloric information will make people who have already walked through a eatery's doors gawk at the fat content and walk out of the store in a huff. I mean, if I want a cookie, I'm eating the cookie knowing that it's bad for me (and even secretly reveling in that fact).

If enacted, the regulation will go into effect March 31. So, until then, we can remain uneducated, bumbling masses. Sound good?

"Hey, your kids are obese!"

Out of politeness, we normally don't point and scream such obvious statements to the people around us, but we just might have to. It seems that many parents are in total denial about their own children's obesity.

Research firm Knowledge Networks conducted a survey of 2,060 adults then collected height and weight measurements on the children from their parents to calculate body mass index. The comparison of what parents said about their children's weight -- "about right," "slightly overweight," "very overweight" -- was different from what the research firm calculated.

That's slightly alarming, given that obese children are susceptible to diabetes, high blood pressure, and cholesterol problems. Overweight children are likely to grow up to be overweight adults with the same issues. What's more alarming is that children are open to changing their dietary habits to improve, but if their parents don't help them because they can't even see a problem, well, then, that's a problem.

We all know that the Food Pyramid under went a makeover a few years ago, both in cosmetics to make it easier to understand, as well as content for updates to health and nutrition needs. However, a specially targeted Food Pyramid for older adults hasn't gotten an update in 10 years -- until now.

The new pyramid takes into account two things. With the assumption that older people are less web-savvy, the new pyramid, made available online, has more graphics and is easier to understand. We will make no comment about the "dumbing down" of web tools for older people.

The slightly more useful change is in the content of the pyramid itself. Older adults need to get enough fiber, calcium and vitamins D and B-12 via nutrient-rich fare, like fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy and high-fiber whole grains. The pyramid also emphasizes the importance of regular exercise and adequate fluid intake.

We want to believe that there is a magic pill that will melt the fat off our bodies. We even hope there's some secret formula that nobody else knows. In the end, however, in our heart of hearts, we always know that "the formula" for staying trim is no formula at all. Quite simply, we have to exercise more and eat less.

Right?

Well, not exactly. According to various bits of research done here and there and compiled by AOL Diet & Fitness, it seems that for one particular trouble spot for a lot us, abs, eating more might be key.

Hold your horses, Soon-to-be-Taut Tonto. You can't just go eating everything in sight, thinking that the more potato chips and bacon you cram down your throat, the tighter your abs will be. There are specific nutrients in foods that seem t help fight ab fat. Unfortunately, potato chips isn't one of them. What are they? There are five things, and the matrix above is just a few suggestions for ways you can incorporate these into your diet that will get you to flatter abs:

In recent years, genetic predisposition has been used to partially explain the world-wide obesity epidemic. However, scientists in New Zealand and England think they have discovered a link between a mother's diet during her pregnancy and the chance of that child becoming an obese adult. However, even if a mother eats poorly during her pregnancy (my own mom just admitted to eating ramen noodles while she was carrying me) all is not lost, because those same scientists have found that good nutrition during a child's early years can reset their bodies and prevent a predisposition towards obesity.

It seems to all go back to the ability our bodies have to adjust to times of scarcity. If a woman doesn't get sufficient nutrition during her pregnancy, she is programming her child's body to store fuel effectively. This is terrific in times of famine, but not so good in these days of cheap and easy empty calories. It's an interesting new facet in the nature verses nurture debate.

Late last year, a TV production company filmed a new reality program in England. Nine volunteers set up camp in the Paignton Zoo in Devon, next to the ape house and for 12 days, ate like the apes did. This meant that they consumed nearly 11 pounds of fruits and vegetables a day as part of a three-day rotating diet that was designed by a nutritionist. They also were given small amounts of honey and nuts, and during the second week ate some cooked fish.

On average, each of the participants lost 10 pounds and experienced significant reductions in blood pressure and cholesterol. The majority of the participants signed up because they were experiencing health concerns and needed to do something drastic in order to improve their health.

I realize that this is sort of old news, but I just heard about it and I found it intriguing. I'm also very curious if this will become one of the many reality TV shows exported to the United States. Americans are willing to try a variety of drastic measures to lose weight. Will eating like an ape be one of them?

Brookline, MA has voted to stop using trans fats in their restaurants and schools.

The city becomes the third in the country to ban trans fats (used in frying and baked goods), along with New York City and Philadelphia. Boston and Cambridge are thinking about doing it as well.

If you're trying to watch what you eat, maybe the best thing to do is, well, watch what you eat. Literally.

According to a new study by researchers at Cornell University people ate 27% less if the table was not cleared after they finished eating something. In ther words, they had to look at the evidence of what they had just eaten.

The study was done on 50 graduate students during the Super Bowl. At a sports bar, the some of the students were faced with left-over bones from an open buffet of Buffalo wings. One of the researchers has suggested that the results of the study might show that "people restrict their consumption when evidence of food consumed is available to signal how much food they have eaten."

Guess we should re-think whether we want our servers in restaurants to clear our empty plates!

It seems like 2007 is the year of kids food. There has been a lot of talk and action around the world looking at the problem of poor diet and health, especially among children. Schools and municipalities are examining what children are eating and trying to educate them and change the school lunch diets.

The school lunch business is a multi-billion dollar industry. In the US the National School Lunch Program, which provides meals lacking in solid nutrition to approximately half the 54 million public school kids, costs around $7 billion-a-year.

Now a whole slew of food companies are producing healthier prepared lunches aimed specifically at kids in school. No more of those cheap but fat and chemical laden snack type lunches you buy in the deli section of the supermarket. These are real meals that parents can afford and are healthy too. Some of these companies are available at or deliver to schools, some sell from store fronts, and some sell through the Internet. Many of these programs are getting a larger response from parents of private school children but most service public school kids as well. I expect to see many more of these companies in the next year or two and offerings to public schools growing rapidly.

A few of the companies trying to feed healthy school lunches to our kids are:

Brown Bag Naturals (brownbagnaturals.com). In Manhattan Beach, CA, provides online ordering and delivers to several local schools.

Kid Chow (kidchow.com). In San Francisco, CA, they provide reasonably priced meals ordered online and delivered to 12 schools.

Health e-Lunch Kids (healthelunchkids.com) In Fairfax, Va., they take orders online and deliver to private schools. they are in discussion with Washington, D.C., public schools as well.

Kidfresh (kidfresh.com). A store in New York City delivers to private schools. Kidfresh plans 50 stores in six cities over the next five years.

The "traffic-light" nutrition labels unveiled by the British Food Standards agency may not be popular with the food manufacturers and supermarkets, who are uncomfortable with the black and white (or red, yellow/orange and green) separation of "good" and "bad" foods, but consumers love them. The labeling system uses the three traffic light colors to distinguish between high, medium and low levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt in food. The labels are very simple in design and it is easy to tell at a glance what the nutritional profile of a food is.

Out of all the supporters the system, parents are some of the biggest fans. Almost 80% of all parents would prefer if food manufacturers used the "traffic light" labels. They take very little time to read and, unlike the more detailed labels that use the Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) system, no "real world" translation of the information presented is necessary. On top of that, even small children can get the hang of the color-coded system very quickly, which helps to teach them about nutrition, as well as to make taking them along to the store much easier.

This week, a new edition of the Canada Food Guide was released by the Health Canada. The small booklet has been produced since 1940, with new editions being released every few years. The last one was in 1992. The Food Guide gives recommendations on portion sizes and the average daily amount of physical activity a person should get. It is one of the most requested publications of the Canadian government, second only to income tax forms.

This year's edition includes, for the first time, a warning that advises people to limit their intake of "foods and beverages high in calories, fat, sugar or salt," as well as recommendations to increase vegetable consumption and to consider taking nutritional supplements. In fact, vegetables have replaced grains as the largest component of the food "rainbow." Some former critics are pleased with the change, but many are still very skeptical about the value of the guide. Critics say that it isn't doing enough and that, as one of the most referenced food and health resources in the country, it should include more detail on calories, whole grains and on ways to make good food choices.