Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said this week that Democrats are hoping to pass a child nutrition bill before lawmakers leave town for the August recess. The $4.5 billion proposal, sponsored by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), would expand eligibility for school meal programs; establish nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools; and provide a 6-cent increase for each school lunch to help cafeterias serve healthier meals.

The health effects of being overweight or obese are well documented. Extra pounds add extra risk for diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers, even among children. But new research also documents significant social and economic consequences of being overweight since high school.

Four billion dollars. That’s how much Americans spend in food stamp dollars each year to buy sugar-sweetened, carbonated soft drinks. In Maine, it translates to about $20 million a year. Imagine, says Maine pediatric dentist and public health advocate Jonathan Shenkin, how much healthful food could be purchased with those dollars.

The lush, fertile ground of the Mississippi Delta is an abundant source of fresh produce, delivered across the world, but a new study suggests the fruits of the Delta soil are rarely consumed at home.

Stamford Hospital has joined forces with the Stamford YMCA to combat childhood obesity. Beginning this fall, children enrolled in the hospital's after-school wellness program can elect to join the YMCA after their 12-week session with medical and fitness professionals at the Tully Health Center ends… Through regular meetings with a pediatrician, nutritionist, exercise instructor and social worker, children are taught how to make healthier food and lifestyle choices.

Jana Estell has watched helplessly as two full-time grocery stores have closed in her Ashburn neighborhood in the last 10 years, leaving her and her family with a gasoline station for a corner store and limited-selection grocers within driving distance… So Estell jumped at a chance to order groceries from online delivery company Peapod, the 21-year-old company that got its start in Skokie and is now a subsidiary of Royal Ahold of the Netherlands.

So long, nachos. Hello, brown rice. Dallas school students can also say goodbye to high-sugar cereals, potato chips and sundry other snacks when they return to school this fall. As part of a nationwide push against childhood obesity, the Dallas Independent School District is overhauling its cafeteria menu by featuring healthier food and tossing aside classic artery cloggers.

Lucky Charms. Froot Loops. Cocoa Pebbles. A ConAgra frozen dinner with corn dog and fries. McDonald’s Happy Meals. These foods might make a nutritionist cringe, but all of them have been identified by food companies as healthy choices they can advertise to children under a three-year-old initiative by the food industry to fight childhood obesity. Now a hard-nosed effort by the federal government to forge tougher advertising standards that favor more healthful products has become stalled amid industry opposition and deep divisions among regulators.

Andre Perrin notices it whenever he goes for a run through his neighborhood on the West Side: parks empty while kids stand on corners holding bags of fast food and slurping down pop… It bothers Perrin, who grew up near Jackson Park on the South Side, where he and his friends would often spend long days playing basketball, baseball, tennis or other games. Now Perrin is helping to lead a new running program for youth that also emphasizes healthy eating.

A bill to restrict the sale of high-calorie, high-fat, and high-sodium snacks in schools has hit Governor Deval Patrick’s desk and could be law within 10 days. The legislation, meant to limit childhood obesity, cleared its final procedural votes yesterday. Under the bill, schools would be encouraged to sell nonfried fruit and vegetables, whole grain products, nonfat or low-fat dairy products, noncarbonated water, and juice with no additives.

The intensive 12-week program aims to decrease the obesity rate of mothers, which in turn could lower their children’s chances of being obese. The women keep food journals, undergo nutritional education, take part in group and personal training, and get a 30-minute lifestyle coaching session each week. The program is funded through an anonymous donation and is free to the chosen participants.

Years of being overweight not only contributes to health problems but also to a person’s economic woes, new research suggests. Adults who have been overweight since high school are more likely to be unemployed or on welfare than those who gained weight gradually during their 20s and 30s, according to a study published in The American Journal of Epidemiology. People who have been persistently overweight since high school are also more likely to be single at 40 and have no more than a high school education, compared with those who have gained weight slowly over time, the study showed.

Should local governments in Wisconsin consider regulating the sale of French fries and cheeseburgers the way they control the sale of alcohol and cigarettes? State public health officials think so. Wisconsin's new 10-year public health plan, released Wednesday, suggests that municipalities use zoning regulations to limit the number and density of fast-food restaurants, particularly in low-income neighborhoods.

Every Monday till Sept. 6, the Southeast Raleigh Assembly invites all comers to the park off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where they can fight North Carolina's high obesity rate with 60 minutes of Zumba, funk, oldies and Afro-Brazilian grooves. The Raleigh nonprofit group's push for healthy living echoes first lady Michelle Obama's nationwide fight against childhood obesity, an epidemic that is also straining local neighborhoods.

The International Olympic Committee and World Health Organization have agreed to work together to promote healthy lifestyles and tackle child obesity. IOC president Jacques Rogge and WHO director general Margaret Chan signed a five-year agreement Wednesday at Olympic headquarters.

Michelle Obama has enlisted Major League Baseball and its players’ association for a new public service advertising campaign to promote her program to eliminate childhood obesity.

Edith Murnane has always been defined by food, from the bucolic 700-acre apple orchard where she grew up to her Jamaica Plain restaurant, which served an extraordinary chili that tempered the bite of chipotle peppers with dark Belgian chocolate. Now Mayor Thomas M. Menino has pulled Murnane out of the kitchen to employ her gastronomic know-how in a new way. Murnane has been named Boston’s first food policy director to help increase access to fresh eats and expand opportunities for urban farming.

A thousand households in the Hill District will be the subject of a study that researchers say would be the first of its kind in the country to track a grocery store's impact on food-buying habits in a particular neighborhood over time. Researchers from the Rand Corp., with a $2.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and help from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research, will begin tracking food-buying and eating histories this year in anticipation of the proposed 2011 opening of a Shop 'n Save on Centre Avenue near Dinwiddie Street.

Four Cleveland farmers markets are taking part in a pilot program to encourage customers who receive food assistance to shop for fresh food. Starting this week, customers who carry the Ohio Direction card, a benefit formerly known as food stamps, will be able to shop at the Coit Road Farmers Market, Downtown Farmers' Market, Kamm's Corners Farmers Market and Tremont Farmers' Market.

The West Cook YMCA in Oak Park was selected on Monday to participate in a $6.8 million grant to tackle obesity in children. Sixteen Ys in the Midwest will take part in an expansion of the national organization's statewide Pioneering Healthier Communities, or PHC Initiative. The program, already in place in Connecticut, Kentucky and Tennessee, aims to reduce childhood obesity through “policy, systems and environmental changes that help transform communities, states and the nation,” according to the national YMCA.