Snack Food

The hungry and the curious follow the greasy, but alluring, scent of batter frying in hot oil to Charlie Boghosian's stand at the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona. When they arrive, the menu stops them in their tracks: deep-fried Twinkies, deep-friend Oreos, deep-fried avocados, deep-fried pickles, deep-fried olives and more. Boghosian sees himself as not just a fried-food salesman, but as a fried-food innovator. He recently saw possibilities in churros, the already deep-fried sugary treat.

Inside vending machines in Santa Ana, the hot-fudge sundae Pop Tarts, Brownie Bites and Coke may soon make way for granola bars, dried mangos and bottled water. In hopes of producing a skinnier city, the council is expected to approve an ordinance Monday that would require half of the options in city vending machines to be healthful.

With Monday's appointment of Indian-born Indra Nooyi as chief executive, PepsiCo Inc. has positioned itself to compete for key emerging markets in Asia and the Middle East, analysts say. Nooyi, who had been the soft drink giant's president and chief financial officer, will replace Steve Reinemund, 58, who announced that he was ending his five-year tenure to spend more time with his wife and four children. Reinemund praised Nooyi, a 12-year PepsiCo veteran, as a talented role model.

The Fluff war of 2006 began innocently enough, when 8-year-old Nathaniel Barrios asked one of his daddies to make him a Fluffernutter, his new favorite sandwich from school. State Sen. Jarrett T. Barrios was indignant. He and his partner run a healthy household. Since when was one of their two sons eating peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff?

Employees in the New York City offices of Porter Novelli, a public relations firm with branches across the country, now have an alternative snack to what's offered at the fast-food chains that ring their building near New York's Grand Central Station. Each week, kitchens in the company's three floors of office space are filled with baskets of oranges, apples and a rotating "guest fruit."

On a gorgeous spring morning, Eric Schlosser, investigative journalist and author of "Fast Food Nation" -- the expose of the fast-food industry and how it manipulates customers to buy food that isn't good for them -- is speaking to his latest audience: preteens and teenagers.

Confronted with consumers who would rather peel open a snack bag than a fresh orange, Sunkist Growers Inc. will announce a plan today to fight back with a line of grab-and-go cut fruit. The Sherman Oaks-based growers cooperative said it would produce small bags of sliced Sunkist fruit to be sold in grocery stores, schools and fast-food chains this year through a joint venture with Taylor Farms of Salinas.

SUNFLOWER seeds and pistachios are not just for Super Bowl snacking anymore -- they might even be health food. Of 27 nuts and seeds tested for phytosterol content, sunflower seed kernels and pistachios had the highest levels among those commonly consumed as snacks, say researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va. Phytosterol, a type of plant chemical, can help reduce cholesterol levels in the blood.

EATING opportunities abound for kids in school, and not just in the cafeteria. Students eat in classrooms and hallways, buy and then nibble at fundraising caramel corn and chocolate, and are rewarded with cookies, candy or maybe a fast-food coupon when they turn in work on time. A report in the December issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine shows that school and classroom policies that permit such liberal snacking put students at risk for gaining weight.

KEEPING your hands off chocolate can be difficult -- and you may have your eyes to blame. For three weeks, researchers at Cornell University and the University of Illinois-Champaign gave 40 women several dozen chocolate Hershey Kisses in clear or opaque candy jars either on their desks or six feet away. They refilled the candy jars each day and tracked how much the women ate.