You're running McDonald's and you're the world's most successful fast-food chain, growing lately all over the world. That would seem to indicate an ever-expanding (no pun intended) audience of consumers worldwide who want to partake of your burgers, fries, salads and smoothies — right?

Yet across the United States and halfway across the world, more folks seem to be falling all over themselves demanding that McDonald's stay as far away from them as possible. Blame an obesity fixation.

In the U.K., for example, a leading medical academic (acamedic? or in this case, activist-medic) is calling McDonald's "unhelpful" for being a leading sponsor of the London Olympics this summer, along with another "unhelpful" corporate ogre, that Coca-Cola Company.Continue reading...

Americans would agree that they don’t want carmakers in the bedroom or their accountant’s office. But what about their doctor’s office?

Ford, Toyota and General Motors are among auto companies developing and demonstrating new technologies that could turn their vehicles into rolling health clinics, with various types of telematics (electronic systems) able to monitor heart rates, blood-sugar readings, air quality for asthmatics and other safety criteria and medical conditions.

The technology is relatively "easy" because modern cars already are highly advanced electronic environments full of sensors, digital readouts, wireless-communications devices and other essential building blocks of medical-monitoring systems. And automakers argue that the need is a crying one:  About 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day, and 26 million Americans have diabetes.Continue reading...

Last year, during the Indianapolis 500, while racecars went around and around (and around) Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 1.1 million hot dogs were purchased (and likely consumed) by race attendees. 

That many dogs eaten in one location apparently set off some alarm bells for The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a Washington, D.C., group that promotes preventive medicine and a vegan diet, according to USA Today. As a result, the group put $2,750 down on a billboard near the Speedway and put an ad up there that shows hot dogs in a cigarette pack along with a skull and crossbones. For once, the concern isn't obesity with this food warning; it's cancer.

The billboard's text accompanying the alarming graphic: “Warning: Hot dogs can wreck your health."Continue reading...

If you think you’re doing your body a favor by having a diet soda instead of the regular, you’ve got another think — and likely, another drink — coming.

A 12-year study of 474 people between the ages of 65 and 74 that brings bad news to diet-soda drinkers was presented at the 71st scientific sessions at the recent American Diabetes Association conference.

“On average, those who drank diet sodas ended up with waistlines that increased three times more than those who avoided them,” the study showed, according to the Detroit Free Press.Continue reading...

Johnson & Johnson has signed a deal to buy Swiss medical device-maker Synthes for $21.3 billion.

In so doing, J&J is making "all the right moves" (as CNN recently put it) to rise from the ashes of a very bad period since early last year, plagued by more than 50 drug and device recalls, lawsuits and enforced government supervision of its McNeil Consumer Healthcare plant in Fort Washington.

The announcement from the pharma giant of its intention to purchase Synthes, the #1 maker of devices that treat bone fractures and trauma, is J&J’s biggest deal in twenty years.Continue reading...

This week, neuromarketing firm and Nielsen partner, Neurofocus, unveiled what it's calling the world's first wireless full-brain EEG-tracking headset, designed to capture brainwave activity, at the 75th Annual Advertising Research Foundation conference. Attendees were invited to its booth to demo the product (right) and chat with NeuroFocus CEO, Dr. A.K. Pradeep.
 
NeuroFocus, one of the leading neuromarketing experts, is already doing intriguing work for some of the world’s top companies. Pradeep was at the ARF event in New York to showcase Mynd and talk up his firm's methods, which he says are the answer to the flaws that many marketers find in focus groups.

The device took three years to produce, and as Pradeep describes it, the company already has ambitious plans for its use—from consumers donning the headset at home, perhaps using it to sync their mood with their TV viewing options, to medical-related research.Continue reading...

Touting the nutritional and health benefits of foods and beverages has fallen into a bit of disfavor recently in the western world, with both U.S. and European health-claims regulators getting tougher about what CPG manufacturers can say.

But with a nod to Jamie Lee Curtis, we are what we eat. And there’s no doubt that consumers around the world are looking more and more for “better-for-you” foods. So Nestle figures it’s time to place a bigger bet on the ultimate goal: development of truly “medical foods” that could be counted on to address human ills in a proactive and effective way, much as drugs do.

The Swiss dairy and confection giant, long considered one of the best-managed global food companies, is acquiring CM&D Pharma, a U.K.-based pharmaceutical startup that has developed a chewing gum (sold under the brand name of Fostrap) for kidney-disease sufferers.Continue reading...

Strange but true: According to research at the University of Rochester Medical Center, not only does the blue dye found in Gatorade and blue M&M's help rats with spinal-cord injuries, it turns the rats blue.

That's right, rats in custom colors! What science won't find next.Continue reading...