Be sure to catch our special coverage of Natural Products Expo West starting this Thursday through Sunday.

We’ll reporting from our special Total Access site. Click here to visit.

If it’s natural, organic or green, it’ll be at the show, with more than 3,000 booths and 50,000 industry attendees. The show itself turns 30 years old this year, and much of the talk will be on how far the industry has come in this relatively short period of time.

We’ll resume regular postings on Refresh next week. Until then, see you in Anaheim!

A trio of beverage reports out this week all come from different sources, and consider different questions — but there’s a common thread that ties all of them together: obesity.

Two of the studies focus on carbonated soft drinks and other sugary beverages in our nation’s schools. The first compares deliveries of soda and full-sugar beverages to schools in 2004 to those this year. The numbers are down a whopping 95%. The ongoing initiative — headed up by the American Beverage Association (and big manufactures like Coke and Pepsi), the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association — has stressed 100% juice drinks, teas and flavored waters (though high school-age kids can additionally opt for diet drinks).

The program was introduced formally in 2006, in response to data showing that two-thirds of all Americans, including one in three children, have serious weight problems.

Against that backdrop, a second report unveiled at a heart disease convention this week shows that the increase in full-sugar beverage consumption has brought about 130,000 cases of diabetes and 14,000 cases of heart disease over the past decade.

The study’s lead author says that the greatest risk right now is to younger people, age 35 years and under.

“No one argues that these drinks are not fine in moderation, but over the past decade their consumption has been on the rise, while consumption of other beverages has declined,” Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, senior study author and an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, was quoted as saying in a Reuters story. more

When you’re the best, you’re always looking to get better.

Colorado currently has the lowest obesity rate of any state in the union. If you look at this map from the Centers for Disease Control, it’s the only state colored blue, indicating that less than 20% of the population (the exact number is 18.5% as of 2008) is obese. That’s pretty good, especially when compared to Deep South states like Alabama and Mississippi, which have obesity rates above 30%.

So you’d think the Rocky Mountain state could kick back, have a veggie burger, and bask in its relative healthfulness. Wrong. Citizens and advocacy groups are working hard to keep their state in fighting form, and even bring obesity rates down further.

One organization called LiveWell Colorado just today released a “Food Policy Blueprint” that’s impressive for its comprehensiveness, and gives a glimpse into why the state is flying high. It focuses specifically on access and policy issues, encouraging a system of subsidies and other incentives to encourage healthy retailing and farmers markets in underserved areas, as well in schools. That’s targeting the most affected and at-risk segment of the population, and it echoes the Obama administration’s recent announcement that it will spend $400 million to help eradicate food deserts. more

With baseball season fast approaching, there’s a pressing issue that goes beyond pitchers and catchers, squeeze bunts and any postseason predictions you might have.

What are we going to do about the hot dog?

As you may have read recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics has called for a redesign of that most American of delicacies. Sure, a lot of us grew up eating them. They’ve long been a symbol of summer, the easy-to-grill, quick-to-eat meal that can get a little messy, okay — but what’s a little mustard around your mouth or in your seat? Well, there’s a bigger problem here. Hot dogs also pose a choking hazard, causing about 17% of food-related asphyxiations, according to the academy.

“If you were to find the best engineers in the world and ask them to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, you couldn’t do much better than the hot dog,” Dr. Gary Smith, lead author of the AAP policy statement, told AOL News recently.

This isn’t a revelation. Of course hot dogs can get caught in your throat! So can a lot of foods. That’s why we’re taught to take small bites, and to chew thoroughly before swallowing. What’s next? Grapes? Popcorn? Actually, yes, and yes. The academy also called out foods like popcorn, grapes, nuts and raw carrots. more

Here’s further proof that healthful eating can be the best medicine: An Ohio insurance company that’s shipping boxes of fresh produce to policyholders.

Medical Mutual, a Cleveland-based insurer that serves 1.6 million, started the promotion last month. Eligible customers sign up and pay $25 for each box of fresh fruits and vegetables that come from none other than The Chef’s Garden, the well-known grower in nearby Huron that supplies high-profile restaurants like New York City’s Aureole, and the French Laundry in California. A recent shipment described in a Plain-Dealer story included red fingerling potatoes, candy-striped beets and baby bok choy.

So recipients get great-tasting produce, and they throw in their lot with sustainable agriculture, the guiding principle behind how The Chefs Garden farms its 260 acres.

There’s just one complaint, and it crops up a few times in the comments section of the Plain-Dealer article. Apparently the boxes are pretty small. “Tons of packing, very little produce. We didn’t even have enough greens to make 2 salads,” wrote one disgruntled customer.

Sadly, eating healthy is expensive, and buying from a boutique grower doesn’t help matters much. But there’s no discouraging the principle behind this story — that preventive care through healthful eating is gaining momentum. And sourcing from local farms is icing on the cake. more

With so many different apps and gadgets springing up around the supermarket industry, it’s only appropriate that we get this, an interactive map detailing just about anything you’d care to know about food availability, our eating habits, and how depressingly obese we’ve become.

It’s called Your Food Environment Atlas, and it’s courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of the Obama administration’s drive to get Americans — and especially kids — eating healthier. Earlier this month Michelle Obama launched Let’s Move, a nationwide effort to increase availability of healthful foods for kids, and to get them exercising more. The administration also announced it plans to spend $400 million to help eliminate food deserts.

The new food atlas is incredibly detailed, and that makes it a fun, useful tool for consumers and food industry insiders alike. Go ahead, play around with it for a while. Want to know what U.S. county eats the most pounds of fruits and vegetables? How about the regions with the highest density of fast food restaurants? I was interested to see the distribution of farms that sell directly to consumers.

Other than being a diversion when things get slow at work, the USDA’s atlas is a definitive guide in the drive to make America healthier. That might sound overblown, but information is power, and this much information can go a long way. The food industry has stated time and again its commitment to helping people lead healthy lives. Well, now they have a good idea of what they’re up against.

Next month we head out to Anaheim for Expo West, the great green granddaddy of trade shows for the natural and organic industry. We’re anxiously anticipating that, and in the meantime there are a few smaller shows to tide us over, like today’s Green Products Expo in midtown Manhattan.

We went up this afternoon, walked the floor, and came back with a grab bag of new product information. Vendors covered a wide range of categories, from spice companies to cookware to toilet leak detectors. If there was one unifying theme, though, it was providing reusable substitutes for many commonly used products.

Now let me just reach into the bag and pull out a few of the highlights…

- Conserve: Reusable water bottles have gotten a lot of attention lately, and now we’re seeing that concept evolve into other containers and packaging. Conserve has come out with a combo pack that includes a reusable spray bottle and four cleaning tablets. Drop in a tablet, fill the bottle with water, and you’ve got your cleaning solution.

- Regreet: This is an even more interesting twist on the “reusable” concept. Rather than throw out that birthday card, Regreet wants you to cover over the signature with one of its sticky pads and write in your own. It sounds a bit tacky, but the cover-ups are colorful and attractive. Also consider that millions of paper cards get thrown out each year. more

Most of the attention at food shows goes to the fun, “around the plate” foods like chocolates and cheeses, teas and olive oils. “Center of the plate” offerings are usually few and far between. But this year, I am already noticing a handful of companies offering items that answer the daily question, “What’s for dinner?”

One company in particular caught my eye and piqued my interest with its steamable, sustainable seafood entrees like Japanese Black Sesame Wild Ahi Tuna, Veracruz Style Tilapia and Wasabi Ginger Wild Salmon. These are not your chemical-feast TV dinners of yore; instead, they are all-natural, flavorful meals with seafood as the protein of choice. These products were in trays, but more and more steamable meals are popping up in grocers’ freezers in bags that perform the same function.

Another company out of the Chicagoland area is producing restaurant-quality meals much like you can find in high-end European retailers like Picard in France. They are starting with high-quality ingredients to produce an upscale meal — also in a steam bag — that you would be proud to serve to your family and friends.

Interestingly enough, this steamable technology cropped up first in private label offerings from Europe before it was adopted by frozen vegetable producers. The frozen veggie manufacturers have been on board with steam-in-the-bag offerings for the past few years now, so it’s a natural transition that the entrée manufacturers would follow suit. Now that most households in America cannot “cook” without a microwave, we’re seeing new item introductions with microwave-only instructions. The day of the dual microwave or oven tray seems to be a thing of the past. more

The annual convention of the nation’s independent supermarket operators is being held this week in Las Vegas, and the consumer survey released every year to mark the occasion has some interesting insights into the mind of the whole health shopper.

The poll, conducted by the National Grocers Association and SupermarketGuru.com, devotes an entire section to “Nutritional Concerns,” and that’s where you see just how many of the nearly 2,500 chief household, mostly female shoppers remain committed to eating healthy despite the tough times.

When asked what concerns them most about the foods they eat, the simple “Desire to be healthy/eat what’s good for us” came in first, at 22%, far outpacing the other choices (fat content received 13%).

That desire is apparently translating into action. A full 27% stated their diets are healthy enough. More important, the number of those who admit shortcomings is falling: “Compared with a year ago, when 68% were critical of the foods they eat at home and away from home, this figure improves markedly to 62%,” the report said.

Fruits and vegetables are the most popular ways of improving diet, according to the survey, with 84% of respondents saying so. Less junk food was second (64%) and fewer fried foods was third (63%). more

As the economy improves in 2010, consumers may be more interested in (and willing to pay a premium for) healthy convenience foods. In 2009, only one in four identified frozen entrees as key to buy organic. We expect those percentages to increase in 2010…first with more customers shifting to organics when buying frozen fruits and vegetables and then to healthy convenience foods.

Retailers can get ahead of the trend by expanding their offerings of organic prepared foods and offering more healthy take-out options. Premium quality store brand and private label organics will be an important part of the product mix for 2010 as consumers will continue to look for value in their natural and organic purchasing.

As for name brand organics, they’ll be looking to coupons, consumer education and promotions to maintain consumer loyalty.

Movies like Food Inc. and the continuing popularity of books such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Michael Pollan’s latest release Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual should continue to build consumer focus on both healthy eating and safe, sustainable agricultural methods. That means consumers will be looking for more locally raised food, clear labeling and signage introducing new health- and earth-conscious products.