To battle the growing public perception that McDonald's offerings are not healthy, the fast food chain is tapping more mothers as its frontline warriors under the firm's Quality Correspondents program.

McDonald's launched the program in 2007 and recently tapped five mothers in the Washington region to be part of the program. The five are among the thousands who responded to a TV ad seeking volunteers to help explain the nutritional value of McDonald meals to the public

Food insecurity meant that 691,000 children went hungry in America during 2007, the Agriculture Department reports.

Some 36.2 million adults and children struggled to get enough to eat last year . These are people who didn't have the money or assistance to obtain sufficient food to maintain active, healthy lives

According to the findings of the Boston University School of Public Health, the Gulf War Syndrome is a real ailment experienced by one in four of 697,000 soldiers or 175,000 war veterans deployed in the 1991 Gulf war.

The ailment was caused by the troops' exposure to toxic chemicals, pesticides and drugs administered to the U.S. veterans as protection against nerve gas. Unfortunately, no effective treatment has been found

Because of the poor air quality in California, the worst in the U.S., the state economy loses $28 billion yearly on premature deaths and ailments linked to pollution.

The bulk of it is on 3,000 smog-related deaths each year. The figure included absences at school and office, visits to the emergency room, asthma attacks and other respiratory ailments

A new report on air pollution in California by a Cal State Fullerton research team found $28 billion in annual losses to the state's economy attributed to premature deaths and illnesses caused by ozone and particulates.

About 75 percent of the people in Los Angeles County are exposed to levels of particulate pollution that endangers health, the study found