John Alleman visited the Heart Attack Grill so often, the restaurant designed an entire line of clothing featuring a cartoon of its beloved "Patient Joe," and placed his face front and center on their menu. Now the restaurant reports via its Facebook page that its most loyal patron has passed away at age 52, from a heart attack.

The nighttime construction site security guard was never officially on the restaurant's payroll, but he was such a fixture at the Downtown Las Vegas restaurant, encouraging passersby to come in, he came to be known as its unofficial spokesman.

According to the Las Vegas Sun, Alleman suffered a heart attack while waiting for a bus in front of the restaurant, which boasts highly caloric menu items such as the 9,982 calorie Quadruple Bypass Burger, Butterfat Milkshakes and Coronary Dogs.

Alleman remained at Sunrise Hospital until his brother Paul, his only surviving relative, made the decision to remove him from life support on Monday. Alleman passed away soon after.
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Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic is a Bay Area writer and editor. Her first book Suffering Succotash: A Picky Eater's Quest to Understand Why We Hate the Foods We Hate, is a humorous non-fiction narrative and exposé on the lives of picky eaters. She previously coerced Anderson Cooper to overcome his dining issues and told us the most scientifically delicious snack shape.

In my years-long quest to put my picky eating into remission, I'm proud to say that I had a list of once-hated green vegetables jockeying for attention at my Thanksgiving table this year. The two that won out are okra (simply sautéed and salted to perfection) and Brussels sprouts, which will be peeled down to individual leaves, sautéed with garlic, then gilded with a balsamic vinaigrette and a smattering of walnuts to comprise a warm salad.

However, there are still some turkey day foods out there that get my gorge a-rising and chief among them is that Thanksgiving staple of my Minnesota childhood: green bean casserole.
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Editor's note: Dr. Melina Jampolis, CNN's diet and fitness expert, is a physician, nutrition specialist and the author of "The Calendar Diet: A Month by Month Guide to Losing Weight While Living Your Life."

Q: Why do we crave comfort foods when the weather turns cold? And are there healthy substitutes?

A: This is an interesting question and one to which there is no simple answer.

There is considerable research showing seasonal affective disorder (SAD) - which affects 1% to 3% of the population - is linked to increased appetite and carbohydrate cravings, which are probably consumed in the form of "comfort foods." This is likely due to changes in brain chemistry brought about by the change in seasons and alterations in circadian rhythm, the body's biological clock.
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5@5 is a daily, food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe.

Editor's Note: Peter Kaminsky is the author of Culinary Intelligence: The Art Of Eating Healthy ( And Really Well)

Six years ago if you had wanted to pick a prime target for obesity it would have been me. And I was co-operating by staying right in the cross hairs. As a food critic and cookbook writer my job entailed a lot of eating. In ten years I went from 172 to 205. The doctor told me I had two choices: lose weight or get ready to meet my Maker.

Nothing against God, but I wasn’t ready for a rendezvous yet. I had to change my diet, but I could not and would not give up delicious food. Guess what? By eating the right stuff and avoiding the wrong stuff, I took off 40 pounds and kept them off.

It’s doable and it’s delicious. It just requires some not very difficult steps, so simple that although people keep telling us what they are we keep looking for magic diets. Forget about magic and use your noggin. Common sense will do the trick. My problem wasn’t unique, nearly 40 percent of Americans have the same issue and 100 percent of them can take the same simple actions I did.

Five ways to maximize your FPC (Flavor Per Calorie): Peter Kaminsky
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Bad cholesterol, depression, high blood pressure; these are all conditions that often prompt a trip to the pharmacy. But now, physicians are administering a different treatment entirely: produce. Doctors at select clinics across the country are writing some obese patients "prescriptions" for fruits and vegetables.

The Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program provides daily $1 subsidies to buy produce at local farmers markets. FVRx, as it is also known, is funded through Wholesome Wave, a non-profit organization which operates from private donations. Each member of a family gets the $1 prescription so, for example, a family of five would end up getting $35 per week to spend on fresh fruits and vegetables.
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"Doctor" Jon Basso thought "Nurse" Bridgett was kidding when she informed the Heart Attack Grill owner that a customer was suffering some medical difficulties in the dining room.

The situation was, in fact, as serious as a heart attack. FOX5 News Las Vegas reports that this past weekend, a man in his 40s began experiencing chest pains while consuming one of the restaurant's signature 6,000 calorie "Triple Bypass" burgers. Basso, who is not a medical professional, called 911, and EMTs and paramedics arrived on the scene quickly.

The customer - or "patient" as they are referred to at the restaurant, which moved from Chandler, Arizona to Las Vegas last October - is reportedly alive and recuperating. Sadly, that's not the case for the restaurant's 575-pound spokesman, who died last March at the age of 29.
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Sara Benincasa is an award-winning comedian, podcast host and author of the upcoming memoir "Agorafabulous! Dispatches Fom My Bedroom."

Diabetes is scary. But a world without Twinkies is hard to swallow.

Like other red-blooded Americans, I breathed a sweet sigh of relief when Hostess Brands announced that despite its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing it would not, in fact, cease production of Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, and other seductively-named products.

Hostess also announced that there would be no layoffs, but do we give a flying Yodel about that? After all, ours is a nation in love with dessert, especially when said dessert is crafted largely of saturated fat and sugar in a laboratory.
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Joe Bastianich is a restaurateur, winemaker, author and a judge on the FOX series "MasterChef." An avid runner, Joe has competed in numerous marathons and triathlons and will be tackling his first full Ironman in Kona this October. With that experience in these two worlds, he offers The Chart's Fit Nation Triathlon Challenge community his thoughts on having satisfying meals while training.

Whether you are already athletic and looking to up your game with a triathlon, or are just beginning your journey on the road to getting fit, what you put in your body plays a big role in the performance you’ll get out of it.

We’ve been taught to think of food – especially carbs – as our enemy, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Food is what fuels our bodies, allowing us to physically push ourselves to reach our own potential for fitness and athleticism. But when we think about a diet to match a healthy active lifestyle, too often we mistakenly buy into the old adage that getting in shape means resigning to a bland and unsatisfying diet of meager proportions. For someone who’s spent their entire life in some of the best Italian restaurants in the country, bland, meager, and unsatisfying just isn’t going to cut it.

Read Athletes, please, eat the pasta!

Previously - Joe Bastianich's rock 'n' roll dreams

Any e-mail tip from Ali Velshi tends to be the most interesting thing in my inbox, and today was no exception. As he'll be discussing on today's CNN Newsroom, Monica Eng and Joel Hood of the Chicago Tribune report that a school on the city's West Side is prohibiting its students from bringing home-prepared lunches to school, unless they have a medical excuse or an allergy.

Instead, the children at Little Village Academy, must either purchase lunch from the school's cafeteria, or opt to skip lunch entirely. Unsurprisingly, students and parents alike are unhappy with the blanket policy, and are speaking out.
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5@5 is a daily, food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe.

Anyone remember the Outback Steakhouse commercial with Jemaine Clement of "Flight of the Conchords" fame touting his diet as "semi-veg?"

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

OK ... so maybe we're the only ones.

In any event, there's a growing movement of people, aptly dubbed "flexitarians," doing just that – living a predominantly vegetarian lifestyle with the occasional pork chop here and there.

One such person is Chef Annie Somerville of the vegetarian Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, California. She certainly doesn't have beef with folks eating meat - she just thinks you might want to consider doing it a little less often.

Five Reasons to Be a Flexitarian: Annie Somerville
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