A fatal lung disease linked to chemicals used in artificial butter commonly used on popcorn has killed three workers and sickened 200.

"Playing video games can give boys a physical workout that raises their blood pressure and heart rate and burn as many calories as brisk walking or cycling, US researchers say."

Fat levels in junk food at McDonald's and KFC VARIES WILDLY from country to country, city to city and store to store, and the use of deadly trans fats -- which kills up to 75,000 Americans per year -- varies as well, according to a new international study. A KFC meal in some countries, for example, contains 19 grams of trans fats, but only one gram of trans fats in Germany for the very same meal. It appears that the junk food giants use trans fats wherever they can get away with it -- where local education levels about food and health are lower -- because it costs much less.

"Pharmaceutical companies are systematically creating diseases in order to sell more of their products, turning healthy people into patients and placing many at risk," according to a new report in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine. Normal conditions, such as menopause and even shyness, are increasingly medicalized, requiring drug prescriptions.

University of Mississippi researchers have shown how moderate alcohol consumption leads to the growth of tumors. The researchers gave mice the equivalent to 2-4 glasses of alcohol per day and found that the alcohol dramatically increases "microvessels" -- tiny blood vessels too small to be seen with the naked eye -- which feeds tumors and leads to rapid and sustained tumor growth. Alcohol was already known to increase the risk and virulency of cancer, but this study shows how.

Researchers have discovered that when meat is charred at high temperatures during barbecuing, a chemical compound called PhIP is formed that has been found to encourage the growth of prostate cancer in rats. Their study was presented at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.

A new study published in the April, 2006, issue of Nutrition Reviews reviewed data from 87 previous studies and found that vegetarian diets definitely lead to weight loss for those who switch to vegetarianism -- up to one pound per week -- and that vegetarian foods are more efficiently burned than meat is (meaning that it's not so easily converted to fat).