With sales declining and competition exploding, KFC Corp. today is going on the offensive with a defensive-minded strategy aimed at educating the public that fried chicken can actually be part of a healthy diet. "Consumers should no longer feel guilty about eating fried chicken," Scott Bergren, KFC's executive vice president for marketing and food innovation, said in a statement. AdAge (Here's the ad.)

Obesity is the No. 1 health threat in the United States today, the head of the leading U.S. federal health agency said on Tuesday. While much of her time is spent preparing to fight anthrax, smallpox, and biological threats, and diseases like SARS and West Nile virus, Centers for Disease, Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding, said Americans are much more likely to die from cancer, heart disease, and diabetes caused by smoking, eating too much and exercising too little. "Unfortunately, poor diet and a lack of exercise have almost caught up with tobacco as being the leading cause of death in the United States," Gerberding told a meeting of the National Health Council, which groups companies and non-profit health advocacy organizations. Reuters

A vegetarian chef is cooking up a mess of "seitanic" vittles at her Southern California restaurants for Halloween.
Seitan isn't the ruler of the underworld, it's a wheat protein which has the texture of thinly sliced beef and it's a mainstay in chef Tanya Petrovna's cooking and her book "The Native Foods Restaurant Cookbook" (Shambhala Publications). Petrovna uses the stuff because it has the same texture and taste as meat, which she says is important to satisfy the tastebuds of meat-eaters-turned-vegetarians. Her Native Foods restaurants will be preparing devilish dishes for Halloween using seitan in foods like "Vampire Blood Soup," "Transylvanian Ghoulish." Wireless Flash

U.S. infants are eating fattening foods such as french fries and drinking soft drinks instead of milk, which may help explain the country's growing obesity problem, researchers said on Saturday. A survey of the eating habits of 3,000 youngsters aged four to 24 months found their diets were surprisingly similar to that of older children -- heavy on soft drinks, sweet candy, and other junk foods, and light on vegetables and fruits. "French fries are the most popular vegetable eaten by children 19 to 24 months old," researcher Dr. Kathleen Reidy said at an American Dietetic Association conference. "Twenty to 25 percent of these kids did not eat a single healthy vegetable on the day of the survey, and 25 to 30 percent did not eat a single fruit." Reuters

Canadian men who consume comparatively high amounts of dairy products have an increased risk of testicular cancer, according to a new study. Reuters

Experts at the Medical Research Council found most fast food is very dense in calories - you only need a small amount to bump up your calorific intake. They found that these "energy dense" foods can fool people into consuming more calories than the body needs. The research is published in the journal Obesity Reviews. A typical fast food meal has a very high energy density. It is more than one and a half times higher than an average traditional British meal and two and a half times higher than a traditional African meal. The researchers concluded that a diet high in fast foods will increase a person's risk of weight gain and obesity - even though they may feel that they are eating no more than they would if they ate an average meal. BBC

Apples, peppers, celery and cherries top a list compiled by an environmental research organization of the 12 fruits and vegetables it considers the most contaminated by pesticides. The report from the organization, the Environmental Working Group, ranks pesticide contamination for 46 fruits and vegetables and is based on more than 100,000 laboratory tests conducted from 1992 to 2001 by the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. The most-contaminated list also includes imported grapes, nectarines, peaches, pears, potatoes, red raspberries, spinach and strawberries. The New York Times

The world's biggest scientific experiment into the environmental impact of genetically-modified crops, conducted on British farms, has shown that GM rapeseed and sugar beet are more harmful to wildlife than conventionally grown plants. Financial Times

Campbell Soup Co., the world's largest soup maker and one of the bigger food producers in the U.S., plans to market an organic tomato juice. Tomatoes for the juice, which began shipping in September and should be in stores next month, are grown from Campbell-developed seeds at certified-organic farms in California. Associated Press via Salon

What exactly is it that vegetarians eat? That's a question asked by researchers in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which devoted much of September's issue to the study of those who eat no meat, poultry or fish. Or, at least profess that they don't. It turns out that a number of people who report being vegetarians actually consume meat, poultry and fish regularly. They just eat these foods less often than the rest of the nation's omnivores. In a study of daily food records from more than 13,000 Americans collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Loma Linda University researchers discovered that fewer than 1 percent of those surveyed (including self-described vegetarians) reported eating no animal flesh when quizzed in detail about their eating habits. The Washington Post

Researchers at the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, Pa., say a long-term study has shown organic farming practices help retain carbon in the soil, improving soil quality and helping to prevent global warming. But two outside researchers, including one from Hawaii, have questioned the institute's findings, saying that conventional farming practices also can achieve "carbon sequestration" and that the numbers cited in the report far exceed those from other published studies. Dow Jones

Participating in regular physical "recreational" activity, even for just a few hours a week, may significantly lower a woman's risk of developing early, localized breast cancer, what doctors call breast carcinoma in situ. Reuters

Diabetes rates are shooting up in the United States, with a 27 percent increase between 1997 and 2002, according to official government statistics. The annual snapshot of the nation's health, put together by the National Center for Health Statistics, also shows that nearly a third of Americans are obese and two-thirds overweight. Reuters

A good night's sleep may help you fight cancer, says a Stanford University Medical Center study. Previous research found that people with cancer who have a strong social support network or who take part in group therapy fare better than people with weaker social support. This new study suggests that a person's sleep/wake cycle may explain how such psychosocial factors can have an impact on cancer. HealthDay