Act prompts healthy choices by requiring calorie counts

With the U.S. government’s recent interest in health-care reform, calorie counting has gone beyond the habits of the Real Housewives and is now an issue of national concern. The Labeling Education and Nutrition Act of 2009 aims to reduce the problems of obesity and associated medical conditions by mandating that restaurants provide nutritional information on their menus.

Digital textbooks offer a long-term solution

Last month, the California state budget closed a $24-billion gap, which slashed funding for new textbooks. The Board of Education won’t approve new books for kindergarten through eighth grade until at least January 2016, and budget restraints have forced school districts, such as the Los Angeles Unified School District, to halt orders for new high school textbooks.