Free Republic

Dinner planning: It's the bane of every five o'clock shopper who can't bear to serve up frozen pizza one more night. Now, with the help of some spooky video analytics, Intel and Kraft aim to help harried shoppers come up with better--or at least different--solutions, right in their grocery aisles. Debuting at this week's 2011 National Retail Federation show (along with an amazing checkout counter of the future from Adidas), The "Meal Planning Solution," part of Intel's "Connected Store," is a sort of kiosk you might find in an upscale suburban market, catering to families desperate to find something...

Intestinal bacteria may contribute to obesity and metabolic syndrome, a new study in mice suggests. "It has been assumed that the obesity epidemic in the developed world is driven by an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and the abundance of low-cost, high-calorie foods. However, our results suggest that excess caloric consumption is not only a result of undisciplined eating but that intestinal bacteria contribute to changes in appetite and metabolism," senior study author Andrew Gewirtz, an associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, said in a university news release. He and his colleagues found that increased...