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dium apple, and the federal government estimates an average daily diet at around 2,000 calories. The study said the calories cut averaged out to 78 calories per day for the entire U.S. population.
• The 2010 pledge taken by 16 companies -- including General Mills Inc., Campbell Soup Co., ConAgra Foods Inc., Kraft Foods Inc., Kellogg Co., Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Hershey Co. -- was to cut 1 trillion calories by 2012 and 1.5 trillion calories by 2015.
• The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation signed on to hold the companies accountable, and that group hired researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to painstakingly count the calories in almost every single packaged item in the grocery store. To do that, the UNC researchers used the store-based scanner data of hundreds of thousands of foods, commercial databases and nutrition facts panels to calculate exactly how many calories the companies were selling.
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Offering an alternative to Obama, Republicans pushing ideas for helping America's poor
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Faced with an empathy gap before the 2014 midterm elections, Republicans are trying to forge a new image as a party that helps the poor and lifts struggling workers into the middle class.
• GOP leaders are using the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty to offer a series of policy proposals that would shift anti-poverty programs to the states, promote job training and offer tax incentives for low-income workers.
• The effort aims to offer an alternative to President Barack Obama's economic agenda and shed the baggage of Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential bid, which was hurt by his suggestion during a private fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans are dependent on government, view themselves as victims and won't take responsibility for themselves.
• The new-year push comes as Obama is pressuring Republicans to extend unemployment insurance and preparing to highlight income inequality in his State of the Union address later this month. The president is expected to seek an increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour and discuss ways to help the nearly 50 million Americans living in poverty.
• For Republicans, the challenge is to offer a better way.
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