“If you associate a positive feeling with trying on clothes, you’ll spend more money to buy them,” says Joan Chrisler, a professor of psychology at Connecticut College.

“The woman who needs a 12 but finds out she can fit into an 8 is going to get a self-esteem boost, even if she knows it’s a gimmick,” Chrisler says.

A self-esteem boost like that might be welcome after watching rail-thin models and celebrities on fashion runways and TV while the size of the average woman has been slowly increasing.

The average U.S. woman today wears a size 14, says the and Human Services. In Calvin Klein’s sizing chart, that would be a 42-inch bust, a 34½-inch waist and 44½-inch hips. Meanwhile, at Kmart, a size 14 has a 40-inch bust, a 33½-inch waist and 43-inch hips.

Clothing brands adjust sizes to help sales

Experts are becoming increasingly concerned about the growing number of people in their 20s and 30s coping with type 2 diabetes, which used to be rarely seen in those under 40.

As diabetes becomes more prevalent in young people, the long-term complications of the condition cardiovascular problems like high blood pressure and high cholesterol, nerve damage, blindness and kidney failure are more likely to occur at younger ages, too, says David Kendall, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association (ADA).

“Children and young adults, and young middle-aged people, are the groups in which the rates are apparently growing the fastest,” Kendall says.

Headlines – Verizon – Diabetes becomes a scourge of the young

Tony the Tiger, some NASCAR drivers and cookie-selling Girl Scouts will be out of a job unless grocery manufacturers agree to reinvent a vast array of their products to satisfy the Obama administration’s food police.

Either retool the recipes to contain certain levels of sugar, sodium and fats, or no more advertising and marketing to tots and teenagers, say several federal regulatory agencies.

The same goes for restaurants.

It’s not just the usual suspected foods that are being targeted, such a thin mint cookies sold by scouts or M&Ms and Snickers, which sponsor cars in the Sprint Cup, but pretty much everything on a restaurant menu.

Although the intent of the guidelines is to combat childhood obesity, foods that are low in calories, fat, and some considered healthy foods, are also targets, including hot breakfast cereals such as oatmeal, pretzels, popcorn, nuts, yogurt, wheat bread, bagels, diet drinks, fruit juice, tea, bottled water, milk and sherbet.

Obama’s Food Police in Staggering Crackdown on Market to Kids – HUMAN EVENTS