A new report finds nearly 10 percent of health care costs are due to obesity and per capita medical spending is significantly higher for obese people. The Wall Street Journal/AP report: "New research shows medical spending averages $1,400 more a year for an obese person than for someone who's normal weight.

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Since trade liberalization between Central and North America, imports and availability of processed, high-fat and high-sugar foods have increased dramatically. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Globalization and Health link this influx of American junk food to a 'nutrition transition' in Central American countries, with a growing burden diet-related chronic disease.

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Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), July 28 - August 1, 2009, the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, shows that exposing rats to a context associated with eating chocolate activates a part of the brain's reward system known as the orexin system. This finding helps explain why eating can be triggered by environmental cues even in the absence of hunger.

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