Recently, Wegman's Foods, a widely heralded supermarket chain in the Northeastern United States, announced that they are discontinuing the sales of tobacco products. Other food chains appear to be following their lead, and drug chains may well also ban the sale of tobacco in their stores.

Many new products that come on the market are designed to change how Americans eat. A driving force behind all these products is to control weight and to preserve health. Now, bread, long a target of abstinence, is making a return in a new form. It is competing with a cornucopia of snack foods, which have been targeted as a cause of obesity and ill health. Ironically, the snack food industry developed early in the last century as an evolution from bread. Instead of snacking on bread, consumers learned to snack on crackers, chips and various puffed products made from corn, wheat, potatoes, rice, and flavored with salt, cheese and spices.

Most American adults are in an ongoing struggle to control their weight. Their struggle is associated with a profusion of information delivered almost continuously over the media, in newly published books, on food packages, and by the government advising the nation on what to eat and on the risks of obesity. If you are overweight, you are vulnerable to information overload.

Between 2006 and 2007, households buying organic foods remained virtually unchanged at just over one-third of households. Although sales of organic foods have grown, many still feel tentative about their purchasing of organic food. Only 7% of households are strongly committed to the purchase of organic food.

People tell us they eat “comfort” foods such as chocolate and ice cream to break a bad mood. But a consumer survey by LJS Food Research Institute shows that the relationship between mood and food extends even farther -- to breakfast cereals.