Fast-food restaurant’s healthier offerings don’t seem to do much for Americans’ bottoms or the chains’ bottom lines. After all, experts say, customers generally show up for the burgers and fries, not the supersized salads.

But that hasn’t stopped the restaurants from trying to serve up more nutritious fare. Burger King is the latest to join the fray. As part of its plan to once again become a publicly-traded company, Burger King this week introduced one of the biggest menu revamps since the company began in 1954. Its “fresh offers” include strawberry and banana smoothies, Caesar salads and crispy chicken strips. “We found that consumers wanted a broader range of menu options,” Burger King’s North America president Steve Wiborg said in a statement. But history shows such efforts – even when they are relatively successful – do more to improve the brand’s image than its revenues, analysts say. And sometimes, healthy menu items are outright flops.

As for smoothies, though the blended yogurt drinks tend to have higher margins, they are unlikely to ever beat sales of fries, says R.J. Hottovy, an analyst with Morningstar. “Guilty pleasures still carry more weight for consumers,” he says. “But the industry is in a secular decline so it’s looking for new ways to drive traffic.”

Indeed, studies show even the prominent display of nutritional information has had mixed results in changing customer behavior. One 2008 study in the “American Journal of Public Health” said Subway patrons who saw calorie information purchased 52 fewer calories than other patrons. However, another2011 survey in the “British Medical Journal” said only one-in-six New Yorkers counted calories before making their purchase. One explanation: even the healthy options are not always so healthy, according to Steffie Woolhandler, professor of public health at the City University of New York and visiting professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Frozen yogurt products have as many calories as ice-cream,” she says. Burger King’s new menu, for instance, includes a mocha frappé with caramel sauce (600 calories for a 20-ounce cup).

That said, adding salads and other healthy choice do help fast-food chains appeal to families – if only to get them in the door, experts say. A McDonald’s spokeswoman says the restaurant aims to provide options for all tastes, “whether you want oatmeal or a Big Mac.” But Hottovy says it’s tough to change the consumer’s perception of a fast-food restaurant even with a wider selection on the menu. That’s why KFC’s “Double Down” — two pieces of bacon and cheese smothered by two giant hunks of breaded chicken – was a hit online and in the restaurants, Hottovy says.

The chains’ attempts at healthy fare often don’t do as well. Here are four of the biggest nutritious fast-food flops:

CONTINUED at Smart Money. Written by Quentin Fottrell.

Whole Foods will open its first location in Park Slope, Brooklyn next year, following an eight-year battle with community activists, preservationists, and some leaky subterranean oil tanks.

Opponents of the project are concerned the upscale grocer will destroy the bucolic landscape, chase away the thriving manufacturing industry, and forever conceal the historic backyard of one of Brooklyn’s most treasured landmarks. Seriously.

A few blocks away sits the legendary Park Slope Food Co-op, which routinely tackles issues of national—and international—importance, such as conflict in the Middle East, natural gas drilling, and our “post hyper-capitalist” future.

What do threatened co-op shoppers and neighborhood activists have to say about the new Whole Foods?

Reason.tv correspondent Kennedy investigates.

Written and produced by Jim Epstein.

What would you do if you came across someone on the street that had not had anything to eat for several days?  Would you give that person some food?  Well, the next time you get that impulse you might want to check if it is still legal to feed the homeless where you live.  Sadly, feeding the homeless has been banned in major cities all over America.  Other cities that have not banned it outright have put so many requirements on those that want to feed the homeless (acquiring expensive permits, taking food preparation courses, etc.) that feeding the homeless has become “out of reach” for most average people.  Some cities are doing these things because they are concerned about the “health risks” of the food being distributed by ordinary “do-gooders”.  Other cities are passing these laws because they do not want homeless people congregating in city centers where they know that they will be fed.  But at a time when poverty and government dependence are soaring to unprecedented levels, is it really a good idea to ban people from helping those that are hurting?

This is just another example that shows that our country is being taken over by control freaks.  There seems to be this idea out there that it is the job of the government to take care of everyone and that nobody else should even try.

But do we really want to have a nation where you have to get the permission of the government before you do good to your fellow man?

It isn’t as if the government has “rescued” these homeless people.  Homeless shelters all over the nation are turning people away each night because they have no more room.  There are many homeless people that are lucky just to make it through each night alive during the winter.

Sometimes a well-timed sandwich or a cup of warm soup can make a world of difference for a homeless person.  But many U.S. cities have decided that feeding the homeless is such a threat that they had better devote law enforcement resources to making sure that it doesn’t happen.

This is so twisted.  In America today, you need a “permit” to do almost anything.  We are supposed to be a land of liberty and freedom, but these days government bureaucrats have turned our rights into “privileges” that they can revoke at any time.

The following are some of the major U.S. cities that have attempted to ban feeding the homeless….

CONTINUED at the Economic Collapse.

The Burmese government has committed serious abuses and blocked humanitarian aid to tens of thousands of displaced civilians since June 2011, in fighting in Burma’s northern Kachin State, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Some 75,000 ethnic Kachin displaced persons and refugees are in desperate need of food, medicine, and shelter, Human Rights Watch said.

The 83-page report, “‘Untold Miseries’: Wartime Abuses and Forced Displacement in Burma’s Kachin State,” describes how the Burmese army has attacked Kachin villages, razed homes, pillaged properties, and forced the displacement of tens of thousands of people. Soldiers have threatened and tortured civilians during interrogations and raped women. The army has also used antipersonnel mines and conscripted forced laborers, including children as young as 14, on the front lines.

“The Burmese army is committing unchecked abuses in Kachin State while the government blocks humanitarian aid to those most in need,” said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Both the army and Kachin rebels need to act to prevent a bad situation for civilians from getting even worse.”

CONTINUED at the Huffington Post.

Could Bernie Madoff raise the price of a hot dog at Citi Field?

Though the Mets owners remain mum about what impact – if any — the $162 million settlement over profits reaped from the Ponzi schemer will have on the team, experts say the hefty sum could eventually be passed on to fans. Tickets, peanuts and cracker jacks could all get more expensive, says Maury Brown, founder and president of the Business of Sports Network, which includes BizOfBaseball.com. “They will cautiously go after higher prices — but they’ll have to be selective about it,” he says.

The owners agreed to settle the case to avoid a high-profile and potentially costlier civil trial, according to reports.  As part of the deal reached in Manhattan Federal court, the Mets won’t have to make a payment for three years, and must surrender any recoveries from their claims against the bankruptcy estate, which amount to about $178 million. It comes at a bad time for the Mets: Ticket sales for premium seats at the 42,000-seat Citi Field plummeted to $50.6 million through 2011 from $99.3 million the year before, according to Newsday, while concession sales fell 28% since 2009, to $10.9 million in 2011.

Due to the team’s less than stellar performance in recent seasons, a massive ticket spike may not immediately be in the baseball cards, experts say – but a small one is possible. “The average Mets ticket price is $62 — much lower than the $89 for the Yankees,” says Mike Janes, general manager of ticketing site NextTag.com. “So there’s certainly room for upside,” he says. But the team will be able to maximize profits per game thanks to new “dynamic” ticket pricing being put into use this year. Qcue, a Texas-based ticketing technology company, allows the club to adjust prices up and down based on demand. Designed to help fill empty seats during a slow game, it also gives the team more flexibility to pump up prices, analysts say. “If that erases some of this debt and gets fans to come out to the ballpark the Mets will be happy,” Brown says. Given the enormity of the Madoff settlement, the introduction of dynamic pricing comes at a good time, says Will Flaherty, spokesman for ticket site SeatGeek.com. “There’s no doubt that it will help them generate incremental revenue this year,” he says.

To be sure, some commentators say the Mets fans are lucky the $162 million figure wasn’t a lot higher. Kristi A. Dosh, ESPN sports business commentator, says the settlement could have reached over $380 million had the case gone to a jury trial. (The Mets did not respond to requests for comment.) Also, in the team’s favor is the three-year window to pay the settlement, experts say. “If the team is doing better this or next season, it will be able to recoup some of the losses from this case and make additional profits,” she says.

Source: Smart Money.

The cost of living in the U.S. rose in February by the most in 10 months, reflecting a jump in gasoline that failed to spread to other goods and services.

The consumer-price index climbed 0.4 percent, matching the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, after increasing 0.2 percent the prior month, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. The so-called core measure, which excludes more volatile food and energy costs, climbed 0.1 percent, less than projected.

The biggest jump in gasoline in more than a year accounted for about 80 percent of the increase in prices last month, leaving households with less money to spend on other goods and services. Federal Reserve policy makers say the advance in fuel costs will be temporary, and most see little risk inflation will flare out of control as unemployment exceeds 8 percent.

“There are some worries from the energy prices perspective, but the Fed and most people realize that the increase will probably be transitory,” said Benjamin Reitzes , an economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto. “Outside of energy prices, there is not much risk for the consumer.”

Stock-index futures held earlier gains after the report. The contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index maturing in June rose 0.2 percent to 1,399.3 at 8:31 a.m. in New York. Treasury securities trimmed losses,, with the yield on the benchmark 10- year note at 2.32 percent, down from a high of 2.35 percent in the minutes before the data was released.

CONTINUED at Bloomberg. Video at link.

U.S. and North Korean officials are meeting Wednesday in Beijing to settle the details of a plan to allow the resumption of food aid to the North.

The talks take place against a backdrop of bellicose images and rhetoric from Pyongyang. North Korean television this week aired footage of a military unit carrying out live-fire drills in sight of a South Korean island.

Robert King, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, is holding talks with representatives from Pyongyang on Wednesday to “finalize all of the technical arrangements so that the nutritional assistance can begin to move,” according to the U.S. State Department.

North Korea last week announced an agreement to freeze its nuclear and missile tests, along with uranium enrichment programs, and allow the return of U.N. nuclear inspectors. The United States said it would provide 240,000 metric tons of nutritional assistance to the impoverished country.

CONTINUED at CNN.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s best and brightest have an idea on how to deal with Iran’s imaginary nukes – starve the Iranian people to death.

“North Korea is halting its nuclear program in order to receive aid in food, and this is what should be done with Iran as well,” an unnamed official told Ynetnews.

“Suffocating sanctions could lead to a grave economic situation in Iran and to a shortage of food,” the source explained. “This would force the regime to consider whether the nuclear adventure is worthwhile, while the Persian people have nothing to eat and may rise up as was the case in Syria, Tunisia and other Arab states.”

“The Western world led by the United States must implement stifling sanctions at this time already, rather than wait or hesitate,” the official continued. “In order to suffocate Iran economically and diplomatically and lead the regime there to a hopeless situation, this must be done now, without delay.”

Starving a civilian population is prohibited under Article 54 of the Geneva Convention.

The Israeli government honed this brutal practice in the Gaza Strip. “Documents, whose existence were denied by the Israeli government for over a year, have been released after a legal battle led by Israeli human rights group, Gisha,” the International Middle East Media Center reported in November of 2010.

The documents reveal a deliberate policy by the Israeli government in which the dietary needs for the population of Gaza are chillingly calculated, and the amounts of food let in by the Israeli government measured to remain just enough to keep the population alive at a near-starvation level. This documents the statement made by a number of Israeli officials that they are “putting the people of Gaza on a diet”….

The documents are even more disturbing, say human rights activists, when one considers the fact that close to half of the people of Gaza are children under the age of eighteen. This means that Israel has deliberately forced the undernourishment of hundreds of thousands of children in direct violation of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

CONTINUED at Infowars. Written by Kurt Nimmo.

Documents published online this month show that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an organization known for its uncompromising animal-rights positions, killed more than 95 percent of the pets in its care in 2011.

The documents, obtained from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, were published online by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a non-profit organization that runs online campaigns targeting groups that antagonize food producers.

Fifteen years’ worth of similar records show that since 1998 PETA has killed more than 27,000 animals at its headquarters in Norfolk, VA.

In a February 16 statement, the Center said PETA killed 1,911 cats and dogs last year, finding homes for only 24 pets.

“PETA hasn’t slowed down its slaughterhouse operation,” said Rick Berman, CCF’s executive director. “It appears PETA is more concerned with funding its media and advertising antics than finding suitable homes for these dogs and cats.”

In a statement, Berman added that PETA has a $37 million dollar annual budget.

His organization runs PETAkillsAnimals.com, which reports that in 2010 a resident of Virginia called PETA and asked if there was an animal shelter at the group’s headquarters. PETA responded that there was not.

The Virginian, the website reports, then called his state’s agriculture department. Dr. Daniel Kovich investigated, and conducted an inspection of PETA’s headquarters.

“The facility does not contain sufficient animal enclosures to routinely house the number of animals annually reported as taken into custody,” Kovich concluded in his report.

Kovich also determined that PETA employees kill 84 percent of the animals in their custody within 24 hours of receiving them.

“[PETA’s] primary purpose,” Kovich wrote, “is not to find permanent adoptive homes for animals.”

PETA media liaison Jane Dollinger told The Daily Caller in an email that “most of the animals we take in are society’s rejects; aggressive, on death’s door, or somehow unadoptable.”

Dollinger did not dispute her organization’s sky-high euthanasia rate, but insisted PETA only kills dogs and cats because of “injury, illness, age, aggression, or because no good homes exist for them.”

PETA’s own history, however, shows that this has not always been the case.

In 2005, two PETA employees described as “adorable” and “perfect” some of the dogs and cats they killed in the back of a PETA-owned van. The two were arrested after police witnessed them tossing the animals’ dead bodies into a North Carolina dumpster.

PETA had no comment when the Daily Caller asked what sort of effort it routinely makes to find adoptive homes for animals in its care.

Source: The Daily Caller.

Look out, Naga Viper chilli, there’s a new hottest pepper in town — the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Pepper. How hot is it? *touches butt, makes ‘tsssssssss’ sound* Even hotter than that if you can believe it. “That was ice-cold.” But I’ve been working out!

The team planted 125 plants of the hottest known varieties–the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, the Trinidad Scorpion, the 7-pot, the Chocolate 7-pot and the previous world record holder, the Bhut Jolokia. Once ripe, several peppers from each type were harvested, dried and ground to a powder. From that powder, the team extracted capsaicinoids (the compounds that give peppers their heat) and rated them. The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion averaged 1.2 million SHU with some individual fruits measuring a face-melting two million-plus SHU.

These peppers are so hot that the team went through multiple sets of gloves during the harvest because the Scorpion’s capsaicin, “kept penetrating the latex and soaking into the skin on our hands. That has never happened to me before,” said senior research specialist Danise Coon.

Damn, the previous record holder (the Naga Viper) topped out at ~1.4-million SHU and was strong enough to strip paint AND buttholes. And this one gets up to 2-million? I bet it could strip a person naked and set their nipples ablaze. I must have one. “Can I call you Volcano Nips afterwards?” NO. You will address me as Atomic Firetits and *slap* MY EYES ARE UP HERE, PERVERT.

Source: Geekologie.