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OPINION February 27, 2013, 7:29 p.m. ET Michelle Obama: The Business Case for Healthier Food Options In recent years, they have generated more than 70% of the growth in sales for packaged-goods companies. By MICHELLE OBAMA For years, America's childhood obesity crisis was viewed as an insurmountable problem, one that was too complicated and too entrenched to ever really solve. According to the conventional wisdom, healthy food simply didn't sell—the demand wasn't there and higher profits were found elsewhere—so it just wasn't worth the investment. But thanks to businesses across the country, today we are proving the conventional wisdom wrong....

Obesity has reached pandemic proportions throughout the world and is now the greatest single contributor to chronic disease, an international conference was told here. "This insidious, creeping pandemic of obesity is now engulfing the entire world," Australia's Monash University professor Paul Zimmet, chair of the 10th International Congress on Obesity, said on the opening day of the conference. The spread of the problem was "led by affluent western nations, whose physical activity and dietary habits are regrettably being adopted by developing nations," Zimmet told more than 2,000 delegates. The world now has more fat people than hungry ones, according to...

The Dixie Chicks appear to be more popular than the president these days. President Bush's approval rating has plummeted, but the Chicks are on top of the pop and country charts with their first album since publicly criticizing Bush three years ago. They did it without the support of country radio, which largely ignored the Dixie Chicks after lead singer Natalie Maines told a London audience in 2003 that the group was ashamed Bush was from their home state of Texas. The new album, "Taking the Long Way," took the No. 1 spot Wednesday on the country albums chart and...