Snack Food

Links found by researchers between snack foods and obesity in poor communities are prompting new calls for more regulation of convenience stores in South Los Angeles. The proposed new regulations under discussion are an outgrowth and expansion of last year's city restrictions on new fast-food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area of South Los Angeles. The area is home to about 500,000 residents, including those who live in West Adams, Baldwin Hills and Leimert Park. Motivated by new data focusing on convenience stores, civic activists and a City Council member favor limiting the development of new convenience stores.

I'M READY to start a home-baked cracker revolution to match the bread revolution of the last 15 years. I've spent nearly two decades trying to convince folks to bake their own bread and, most recently, asked the nearly impossible: make 100% whole grain breads at home. It's been a noble, uphill battle. But I've encountered far less resistance in urging people to make their own whole grain crackers -- toasty, nutty, crisp, crackly crackers. Why the receptivity?

IT'S a beautifully flamboyant cracker -- a big square of a cracker, almost the size of a sheet of paper, topped with swaths of white sesame seeds, fiery-russet Japanese shichimi pepper and black-green nori powder. And it's elegant too -- thin and super-crisp and light. This dashing cracker, based on L.A. bakery Breadbar's lavash, sprang out of a collaboration between chef Noriyuki Sugie and Breadbar head baker Nicolas Lauge.

Pringles, Procter & Gamble Co.'s salty snack stacked in a tube, are not potato chips, a London judge ruled Friday in a tax dispute. Pringles don't fulfill the legal definition of "potato crisp," the British term for "chip," allowing them to be sold tax-free in Britain, Justice Nicholas Warren at the High Court in London ruled. Under the law, most food is exempt from Britain's 17.5% sales tax.

Nagging by parents, teachers, doctors and just about every other grown-up hasn't rid school campuses of junk food. But even fifth-graders agree a new federal program just might help. The Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program doesn't nag. It provides money so that schools can give students the food everyone has been saying they need to eat in order to combat obesity, malnutrition and their attendant ills.

Starbucks Corp. is cutting trans fats from the doughnuts, muffins and other treats in half of its U.S. stores and plans to eventually drop the artery-clogging fats from company-operated coffeehouses across the country. The world's largest specialty coffee retailer has been working to eliminate trans fats from its food menu for about two years, spokesman Brandon Borrman said Tuesday.

Kids! It's not bad enough that they leave their clothes on the floor, cost you a fortune and drive you crazy with worry. They also may be making you fat. So says a study appearing in the Jan. 4 online edition of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. Compared with adults living without children in the home, adults living with kids younger than 17, on average, take in an additional 4.9 grams of fat daily. And 1.

Jose Mier will be working the ShoWest convention floor in Las Vegas this week, peddling his Capital Churros to theater owners there for the annual convention. He envisions the fried and sugary snacks -- about 16 inches long and stuffed with Bavarian cream, caramel and strawberries -- spicing up movie theater concession stands across the nation.

Children are being fed a steady diet of junk-food ads by the TV channels they watch, according to a new study. Youngsters 2 to 7 years old see a dozen food ads a day, researchers said Wednesday, and nearly half of the commercials aimed at children 17 and younger are selling candy, snacks, soda or fast food. The review of more than 8,800 ads by Indiana University and the Kaiser Family Foundation couldn't find a single commercial for fresh fruit or vegetables.

After years of staying slim on a humble diet of fish, vegetables and rice, Japanese are developing a sweet tooth. That's proving to be a business opportunity for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. and other fast-food chains from the U.S., home of the Big Gulp and super-sized fries. Since opening in December, Japan's first Krispy Kreme store is drawing long lines for an hour wait or more. In the first three days, 10,000 people came to the shop.