Fast Food

In an age of long commutes, late sports practices, endless workdays and 24/7 television programming, the image of Mom hanging up her dish towel at 7 p.m. and declaring "the kitchen is closed" seems a quaint relic of an earlier era. It also harks back to a thinner America. And that may be no coincidence. A new study, conducted on mice, hints at an unexpected contributor to the nation's epidemic of obesity - and, if later human studies bear it out, a possible way to have our cake and eat it too, with less risk of weight gain and the diseases that come with it. Just eat your cake - or better yet, an apple - earlier.

Julie Oelling's 6-year-old daughter, Zoe, began asking to go to McDonald's for Happy Meal toys when she started preschool two years ago. "When she was 4, it was kind of a big thing to do, but when she turned 5, it tapered off," Oelling said, adding that it's been about six months since her daughter's last request. "I'd even say she's starting to outgrow it now depending on what the toy is. " Long portrayed as a key contributor to childhood obesity, fast-food kids meals may be losing their appeal to youngsters — and, more importantly, their parents.

Fast-food eateries are in the throes of drive-through Darwinism as more upscale upstarts, such as Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panera Bread Co., grab market share from the likes of Taco Bell, Subway and Wendy's. Chains that are fancier than fast-food options but cheaper than sit-down alternatives are part of a hybrid sector known as fast-casual that is maturing into one of the food industry's strongest. That category is tapping into growing demand for more healthful, specialty foods that are still speedily served and moderately priced.

A Chicken McNugget in England is not the same as a Chicken McNugget in America -- not in terms of salt content, anyway. A study out this week in the Canadian Medical Assn. Journal shows that the salt levels in certain fast food varied widely from country to country -- even if the foods being compared were the exact same menu items from the same restaurant chain. Take the aforementioned McNuggets, courtesy of McDonalds. The nuggets contained 0.6 grams of salt per 100 grams of foodstuff in Britain, but more than double that -- 1.6 grams of salt -- in the United States.

Julie Oelling's 6-year-old daughter, Zoe, began asking to go to McDonald's for Happy Meal toys when she started preschool two years ago. "When she was 4, it was kind of a big thing to do, but when she turned 5, it tapered off," Oelling said, adding that it's been about six months since her daughter's last request. "I'd even say she's starting to outgrow it now depending on what the toy is. " Long portrayed as a key contributor to childhood obesity, fast-food kids meals may be losing their appeal to youngsters — and, more importantly, their parents.

In writing my Friday restaurant review, I spend dozens of hours each week combing the San Fernando Valley for good things to eat, so I pass the following wisdom along with confidence: The relationship between how much one spends and how well one eats is highly overrated. The Valley has hundreds of good small restaurants that practically give food away, places where spending $10 becomes a challenge.

Will burritos replace borscht as the lunch of a new generation of Russians? Pepsico, the Purchase, N.Y.-based restaurant, food and beverage concern, is betting that many of the 9 million Muscovites who take the subway every day will be enticed by the restaurants-on-wheels concept it unveiled last week at Moscow's Culture Park subway stop.

Burger King's strategy for success? Be more like McDonald's. And maybe toss some tropical mango into the drinks. Among the slew of new offerings available at the fast-food chain: garden salads, snack wraps, real fruit smoothies and frappes. Sounds an awful lot like the selection served further up the quick-service food chain at the golden arches. But Burger King will do what it takes to win the game, which at the moment is one of catch-up. The Florida chain, which isn't close to eclipsing McDonald's presence, had its second-place rank in the burger market snatched from it by Wendy's last month.

Barely 300 feet separate Fullerton Union High School from a McDonald's restaurant on Chapman Avenue. Researchers say that's boosting the odds that its students will be super-sized. Teens who attend classes within one-tenth of a mile of a fast-food outlet are more likely to be obese than peers whose campuses are located farther from the lure of quarter-pound burgers, fries and shakes.

Heart attacks might not be such a big wake-up call for some. Sure, many people turn their lives around, but consider this study that tracked fast-food habits among patients who had been hospitalized with heart attacks. Six months after having an attack, researchers say some cut back on their frequent fast-food habit -- but more than half didn't. The study published in February in the American Journal of Cardiology identified 884 heart attack patients who said they frequently -- every week or more -- ate fast food.

Burger King's strategy for success? Be more like McDonald's. And maybe toss some tropical mango into the drinks. Among the slew of new offerings available at the fast-food chain: garden salads, snack wraps, real fruit smoothies and frappes. Sounds an awful lot like the selection served further up the quick-service food chain at the golden arches. But Burger King will do what it takes to win the game, which at the moment is one of catch-up. The Florida chain, which isn't close to eclipsing McDonald's presence, had its second-place rank in the burger market snatched from it by Wendy's last month.

Looking to take your lady love or handsome paramour for a romantic meal this Valentine's Day? White Castle is there for you. Harold and Kumar's favorite burger joint plans to offer candlelit dinners with table service Tuesday. It's just one of many quick service chains angling for a piece of the estimated $3.4 billion that will be spent on holiday dining. Most of that money usually goes to fine-dining establishments. But with many consumers still price sensitive, fast-food eateries are betting that they can siphon some of the prix-fixe crowd.

Millions of Chinese have come to love Big Macs and Whoppers. So when a California-inspired chain put up signs in Shanghai announcing the coming of the Double-Double, local burger lovers rejoiced. The same can't be said of In-N-Out. The Irvine-based company doesn't operate any stores in China. So its owners were miffed to see a red-and-yellow doppelganger called CaliBurger laying claim to its signature burger, touting "Animal Style" fries topped with cheese, special sauce and onions, and planning to serve thick shakes in palm-tree-print cups.

Fast food's new love affair with healthful items may be less a marriage than a fling, if the new crop of milkshakes - think bacon, bourbon and shamrocks - is any indication. Jack in the Box just launched its bacon milkshake, which uses flavored syrup, not real meat, to simulate the porky taste. Add in vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and a maraschino cherry, and according to our friends at the Booster Shots blog , the concoction registers at 1,081 calories for 24 ounces.

Without a single liquor store, and legally smoke-free for nearly three decades, the tiny hillside town of Loma Linda brims with pride about its devotion to health and spiritual well-being. So news that the first McDonald's was coming to town, with its special-sauce-slathered Big Macs and 500-calorie sheaves of large fries, has triggered enough political reflux to put City Hall on the defensive. A noisy group of doctors at the city's landmark Loma Linda University Medical Center definitely isn't lovin' it. Already, there are whispers of election day payback and crafting a ballot measure to choke off a proliferation of fast-food joints.

Taco Bell struggled last year but is now staking its hopes for a turnaround on new menu items, including a "First Meal" breakfast lineup as well as tests of more healthful fare to compete with more upscale rivals. The Irvine-based fast-food chain, which serves mostly Mexican-style meals, will roll out an 11-item roundup of "classic American" breakfast options next week in 750 restaurants in 10 states, including California. The First Meal lineup will include Cinnabon Delights, breakfast burritos, Johnsonville sausage and egg wraps, Tropicana orange juice and Seattle's Best Coffee.

Go ahead, have a side of fries with your trip to Disney World. Everyone else apparently does, making Orlando tops in the nation for the number of fast-food restaurants at least in one ranking.    An article in the Orlando Sentinel explains how the amusement park mecca comes by the distinction. The Daily Beast was curious enough to determine that out of nearly 500 large U.S. cities, Orlando had the most McDonald's, Burger Kings, KFCs and other fast-food restaurants per 100,000 residents.

A regulation banning the establishment of new fast-food restaurants in South Los Angeles is unlikely to curb obesity rates, according to a study by researchers at Santa Monica think tank Rand Corp. Concerned about high levels of obesity, the lack of traditional grocery stores and a proliferation of fast-food eateries, the Los Angeles City Council approved a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in one of the poorest sections of the city last year. It has extended the ban through March of next year.

A homeless man was stabbed to death behind a busy fast-food restaurant in Anaheim late Friday, the fourth such killing in Orange County in the last month, and police quickly took a man into custody for questioning. The suspect was being chased by two bystanders when police caught him on La Palma Avenue about a quarter-mile from the scene of the crime, according to Sgt. Bob Dunn, an Anaheim police spokesman. Authorities were cautious about linking the latest killing to the previous three, but said the suspect bore a resemblance to a man being sought in those deaths, which have been called the work of a serial killer.

Wendy's has a new burger, and it's not for the cost-conscious. It's a foie gras and truffle-festooned burger that costs $16. But the trip to the restaurant will cost you much more — this burger is available only in Japan. It marks the return of Wendy's — the third-largest fast-food chain in the U.S., now on track to overtake second-place Burger King — to Japan after a two-year break. The first new Wendy's in the country opened this week in a luxury shopping area in Tokyo.