A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about the link between fast food restaurants and diabetes. According to a study headed by UCLA's Center for Health Policy, the number of fast food joints in one's neighborhood has a direct, measurable effect on one's changes of developing diabetes. In fact, the study generated an measurement method, the "Retail Food Environment Index," and determined that people who lived in areas with and "RFEI" of 5 or more had a 23% greater chance of being obese than people who lived in areas with an RFEI of 3 or below.

Los Angeles councilwoman Jan Perry has issued a proposal that takes the RFEI to the next level. Her ordinance would place a two-year moratorium on the construction of any new fast food restaurants in South Central Los Angeles. This makes perfect sense: according to the Los Angeles Times, South LA has the highest percentage of fast food restaurants in the city, which has resulted in an obesity rate that is just under 30%, almost 10% higher than the obesity rate in the rest of LA county. Among children, the obesity rate was 29%, almost 6% higher than in the rest of the county. Similarly, the area's diabetes rate is over 25%, more than 10% higher than the rest of the county.

Many other areas, particularly small, wealthy enclaves, have already placed bans or limitations on fast food restaurants. However, this ordinance, should it pass, will place a particularly large hardship on the fast food industry, as it completely dominates the South LA dining scene.

As somebody who has a McDonald's, a Burger King, a KFC, a Kennedy Fried Chicken, and a Dunkin' Donuts all within a one-block radius of his apartment, I can only wish that Jan Perry would have a heart-to-heart with some of my elected representatives!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. In truth, he gets most of his trans fats and empty carbs from the Mexican restaurants in his area. Sometimes, he dreams of a carne enchilada taco with extra crema...

I grew up in a "traditional" family with the sort of mom who got up early to make us a big breakfast. I remember eggs, pancakes, biscuits, sausages, toast, and always a pitcher of freshly-mixed juice. We were also firmly on the underside of the poverty line (so it was margarine on our toast and generic brand 'pancake syrup' on our flapjacks).

When I got to be a parent, I stuck to my grown-up spendthrift ways for quite a while, buying cold cereal, scones, bagels and the like, rarely making a big delicious breakfast of biscuits or pancakes or muffins but far more often just picking it up from the coffee shop.

And then one day -- maybe it was the fact that I stopped eating processed foods and cut out white sugar, or maybe it was just that our grocery budget was through the roof -- I made a commitment to start making breakfast, just like my mama before me.

Every day, WalletPop will be bringing you information about a fantastic freebie. Like what you see? Check back tomorrow for more!

Most avid home chefs -- at least the ones I know -- would never pass up a free cookbook. If you fill out this form, Gooseberry Patch will send free copies of its Fall Favorites with Sun-Maid® Raisins & Dried Fruit and Gooseberry Patch Family Favorite Recipes with Sun-Maid® Raisins & Dried Fruit.

A suggestion: uncheck the boxes to receive free tips and special offers unless you feel like you don't receive enough promotional email already.

It's commonplace for customers to ask for some kind of freebie if a meal is screwed up or if the service is poor at a restaurant and most places will happily oblige. It's another story entirely when consumers threaten to leave a bad review of the restaurant on an online review site. This has been happening in San Fransisco at several restaurants where customers have threatened to "Yelp" the restaurant if their meal is not on the house.

Yelp is a site whose trademark is "Real People, Real Reviews" but unfortunately since the reviewers are real people it doesn't always mean the stories are real. While the site tells its users that they shouldn't accept free food in exchange for a good review, and that they should disclose any special services or comps they get, the reality is that the users can do and say whatever they want. While these amateur reviewers definitely fill a gap in bringing real life opinions about restaurants to the masses, many seem to lack the ethics of professional food critics.

I think this abuse of the restaurants is despicable, it's cases like these that ruin the current system of comping items when something really is wrong. Have you ever wondered why every store is moving to a return policy with as many rules as the FAA issues for air travel? It's because people abused the system and took advantage of lax return policies ruining the experience for the rest of us. Not to mention degrading the value of user driven review sites as well. I wonder how long it will be until we hear about the first case of extortion on Angie's List from a customer who wanted her walls painted for free!

China has ordered the 112 official Olympic restaurants not to serve dog meat during the Beijing Olympics in August so as not to gross out Westerners. They also strongly suggest that all the other eateries in town stop selling dog meat for the month, too. The move is like their orders to shut factories to clear pollution for the month: purely cosmetic. If anything it shows how deeply entrenched dog-eating is. Animal groups say the practice is actually growing into a big business worth about $4 billion a year.

Even the government's Xinhua News Agency announcement shows how dog-eating is almost revered: "Gourmets with a special predilection for dog meat will be disappointed if they come to the Chinese capital in the coming two months." The Beijing Catering Trade Association (BETA) will "blacklist" those who don't cooperate, but they'll make an exception for dog meat "for medicinal purposes." Many Chinese think eating canines lowers blood pressure, the agency says.

According to the Asian Animal Protection Network, eating dog used to be a "cottage industry" where the rural poor would raise puppies to take to market. Now it's become fashionable -- especially in southern China and among Koreans. Dog meat is more expensive than pork. Factory farms with horrific conditions raise the dogs. The Asia Animal Protection Network says the farms are now importing big, docile breeds, especially St. Bernards, known locally as "Big Dumb Dog," as dog livestock. The Filipino organization Dog Meat Trade also reports that the dog meat industry is expanding and is now about $3.8 billion.

In a comment made in response to my post lamenting New York City's insane grocery prices, one WalletPop reader explained how he cuts down on his grocery bills (edited for clarity):

I get my son to shop for me... It helps me avoid me from impulse buying. Thefirst thing I do is visit online grocery stores, prepare a grocery list & if I think the delivery fee doesn't make sense then I get Neil to pick up the stuff for me. I really think getting a person who doesn't like to grocery shop works because it doesn't put a hole in your pocket.

It makes perfect sense to me -- if you have a son who's willing to do your shopping for you at no charge. Most people know that making a grocery list and sticking to it is a good way to avoid overspending on impulse items. But I also wonder whether having someone else to your shopping is a good personal finance strategy: maybe if you and a friend swap lists and do each other's shopping, you'll both spend less? It seems a little complicated and most orders would probably get messed up in some way: "I wanted the light blue cheese dressing!" But if are looking to lose weight -- and can't help stocking up on unhealthy foods -- sending someone else to do your food shopping might be just the trick. It's sort of the idea behind programs like Nutrisystem.

I'm curious if anyone reading this has experimented with having someone else do their shopping, and what the results have been. Please leave a comment and I'll do a follow-up!

No need to panic yet, but you may have heard the buzz that honeybees have been disappearing from the Earth.

This is a problem for a variety of reasons. For starters, we have a lot of crops that depend on honeybees. The United States alone has 130 crops that are dependent on honey bees for pollination, including carrots, onions, squash, blueberries, apples and almonds. Honey bees are basically in charge of seeing that $15 billion in food crops are nutritious and edible and able to go to the grocery store. Or put another way, the honey bee is given credit for 85% of the pollination necessary to supply about one-third of the nation's food supply.

Nobody really knows the cause, and lately it's suspected that it's a variety of causes, but there are the current crop of suspects.

I'm in New York City this week and one of the exciting things about that is that I can try a wide variety of foods that Cape Cod grocery stores don't have. Today I bought a package of "Glenny's Low-Fat Soy Crisps" and, while they were quite good and relatively healthy for a packaged snack food, the consumer advocate in me has some complaints about the advertising on the package at right. It reads "10 Grams pure Soy Protein" and "Only 65 Calories per Serving."

This is a classic example of advertising spin: it isn't false and it isn't even misleading necessarily -- but it's a case of the company putting its best nutritional foot forward, and health-conscious consumers will need to be vigilant.

A look at the nutritional fact shows that there are indeed 65 calories per serving, with 2 servings per bag for a total of 130 calories. Each serving contains 5 grams of protein and the entire bag contains 10.

My beef with the marketing here is that they present the one you want a lot of -- protein -- on a per bag basis and then they present the calorie count on a per serving basis. 10 grams of protein appears right above 65 calories, but you'd actually have to eat 130 calories to get the 10 grams of protein.

Moral of story: pay no attention to "low -fat", "high protein", "light," "low calorie", etc labels on the front. If you want to know what you're eating, flip the product over, put on your glasses, and read the nutritional label: "just the facts ma'am."

In the blistering summer heat, everyone enjoys watermelon. It was a staple during my childhood and it is one of the most fun fruits for kids to eat. Watermelon is huge, drips everywhere and you can have seed spitting contests. What's more fun for a kid than making a mess? However, if watermelon was expensive, I would have certainly grown up making a mess with other fruits.

Recently a Densuke watermelon fetched $6,100 at an auction in Japan. This is one of the most expensive melons ever sold in Japan, and I would have to imagine the rest of the world as well. At 17 pounds the cost of the fruit was about $359 per pound. I think that's more than I would fetch at an auction. For comparison, it's equivalent to 122 pounds of Godiva Dark Chocolate Truffles. This price isn't even much of a shocker for Japan where a pair of cantaloupe melons sold for $23,500 last month.

If you're a fan of Kettle chips as an alternative to the greasy, unhealthy convenience store brands, you know the big drawback: they're really expensive!

If you go to Amazon and use the coupon code KETTLE45, you'll save a ton of money compared with grocery store prices. And, as always, shipping on Amazon is free for orders over $25.

One example: for $15.62, you can get 12 9 ounce bags of the yellow corn chips. The sticker price on that is $42.30. Why eat Lays at that price? Browse through all of Amazon's Kettle products here.

A piece in today's USA Today looks a lady who has a master's in psychology and then left the field to try her hand at real estate. Now she's on food stamps.

In the midst of a sinking real estate market and stagnant economy, food and gas prices have soared. That combination has led to a surge in the number of Americans relying on the government to put food on the table. And it's not the people you'd expect. According to the article, "They are real estate agents and homebuilders hit by the housing slump, seniors on Social Security, parents of students whose free breakfast and lunch programs don't solve the problem of dinner. Increasingly in recent months, they have signed up for food stamps and shown up at food pantries, trying to make ends meet."

Demand at food banks is up more than 15%, with an increasing number of clients working full-time jobs.

But it's about to get worse: as schools around the country let out for the summer, many kids who were relying on school-provided breakfasts and lunches will find themselves in a precarious position.

Many charities exist that purportedly raise money to feed hungry children. But the best way -- that involves the smallest amount of money going to advertising and bureaucracy -- is to donate to your local food pantry.

A video from MSNBC has some great tips on saving money at the grocery store. They're mostly common sense, but they're gaining new relevance with gas prices and food costs on the rise: shop at the least expensive grocery store even if it's not the closest, use coupons, buy in bulk when the prices are good.

But there are a couple problems: first, never underestimate the value of your time and energy. If you don't like driving or shopping, don't drive all over the state looking to save on paper towels. Save your energy! You'll be more productive and you can find other ways to save money or add to your income.

And then there's the advice to "shop where the prices are good." The problem is that prices vary from item to item. It's well-known that it's often cheaper to buy milk at the convenience store, for example.

Every day, WalletPop will be bringing you information about a fantastic freebie. Like what you see? Check back tomorrow for more!

OK, so you probably wouldn't rush to your Netflix account to add a DVD about "the world of rice" to your queue. Still, a DVD about the many different kinds of American rice -- featuring 11 recipes! -- is a pretty solid Fantastic Freebie. It's offered by the USA rice Federation. From the site:

'Exploring the World of U.S. Rice' is an informative view of all things rice from paddy to plate. You'll learn about the types of rice grown in the U.S., how to prepare and use each variety and follow top chefs as they create some of today's hottest rice dishes.

If cooking is your thing, order a copy by filling out the very brief form here.

Americans -- the majority of whom are overweight -- are crying their 42-inch waists off over the soaring price of food. Some U.S. officials have suggested that India's rising prosperity and the resulting increase in demand for food are to blame.

India's response? The New York Times has all the details but if you're in a rush, I'll summarize it for you: Sit on it.

Pradeep S. Mehta, secretary general of the center for international trade, economics and the environment of CUTS International said that if Americans ate less, "many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates." He also added that the savings resulting from a decreased need for liposuction could be used to feed famine victims.

Burn sauce! Apparently this whole mess started when our commander in chief opined that "When you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up."

Indian commerce ministry Jairam Ramesh's rebuttal? "George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics." More burn sauce!

I'm inclined to agree with the commentators critical of Bush on this one. The idea of America's president blaming increased consumption in India for rising food prices is laughable. It's like Ralphie May telling Amy Winehouse to get off the couch because she's taking up too much room.