To be fair, when Cherrie Herrin-Michehl, a therapist in Seattle, wrote the phrase of the headline in her post about "Fat Boy Thin Man," she was speaking more about the details of my story, rather than my telling of it.

That's an important distinction: A joke, for example, can be really funny but can still be ruined by the jokester. My opinion is that "FBTM" has both, but as the author, I'd better think so, no? I hope you'll investigate for yourself, of course. 

Sarah Palin has found a new way to channel the Tea Party movement's anti-big-government fervor — and tweak First Lady Michelle Obama at the same time. On Nov. 9, she showed up at a Pennsylvania school bearing dozens of cookies, a gesture intended to show her disapproval of a state proposal to limit the sweets served in public schools. "Who should be making the decisions what you eat and school choice and everything else?" Palin asked the students, in a clear swipe at the First Lady's campaign to end childhood obesity. "Should it be government or should it be the parents?"

Tamara, a blogger and kindred spirit in Colorado, recently posted on her search for the intersection of nutrition and cost. Here's her report.

I've written before about Corporate Accountability International, which carries an impressive record of effectiveness into its current effort to halt the marketing of fast food to children. That includes their "Retire Ronald" campaign.

While I continue to fondle my opinion that in popular culture, fast food is considered fun while nutrition is nerdy, here's someone's list of the 20 healthiest foods under $1.

Don't let the fact that she included beets put you off. None of the others taste like dirt.

This time it's the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Health Organisation, as related by the Daily Mail newspaper:

"A ‘fat tax’ on unhealthy foods, restrictions on junk food advertising and better labelling are the most cost-effective ways to cut obesity," a study finds.

Here's another finding from the Rudd Center's f.a.c.t.s. report on the relationship of food advertising and children:

Faced with fresh assaults on fast food from politicians and anti- obesity activists, the restaurant industry is gearing up to fight back, emphasizing the role fast-food businesses have played in providing jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities.

That's the lead paragraph from a story in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, and I just have to laugh at the attempt to misdirect.

Actually, my headline is wrong. Fast food is absolutely a battlefront in the culture war. But that's part of the misdirection I wrote in my previous post.

I don't know how far I'll get with it, but this is the first in a series of data gathered and interpreted by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. The center released its extensive f.a.c.t.s. report this week. The acronym stands for Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score.

The fast food industry spent more than $4.2 billion in 2009 on TV advertising, radio, magazines, outdoor advertising, and other media.