Appearing on CBS This Morning, Andrés said he expected more of a mea culpa from Deen but suggested there is plenty of blame to go around, pointing the finger at Food Network, Hollywood, and the sports industrial complex, as well, for contributing to the country's unhealthy eating habits just as much as the Southern fried-chicken diva has.

"It's not like Paula Deen now is the cause of obesity in America," Andrés said.

Check out the full video below:

Top Chef: Played out?

Hey, I thought we were supposed to be suffering through the summer doldrums in the District? Not with this amount of news, we aren't. So let's waste no time.

• Proof owner Mark Kuller has just entered José Andrés territory with the grand opening of Estadio. [via Metrocurean]
• Pssst, the Secret Safeway is closing. [via Washington Business Journal]

• WaPo's Dave McIntyre sees some progress in the local wine movement but still sides with Todd Kliman's rebuke from the pulpit, "The Locavore Wine Hypocrisy." [via All We Can Eat]
• Don't listen to the corn-syrup lobby; that stuff really is making us fat. [via The Slow Cook]
• D.C.'s Top Chef alumni pick their favorite summer hot dogs. [via Best Bites Blog]
• There's only one A student among the federal cafeterias, despite new government guidelines to promote healthier eating at its facilities. [via WaPo]
• DCist has a great photo spread on L'Enfant Cafe's Bastille Day block party in Adams Morgan. We have just two words for you: French maids! Well, sort of. [via DCist]
• And finally, Josh  Ozersky wonders if Top Chef is played out. [via Time magazine]

One of the recurring topics at the Atlantic Food Summit today was front-of-package labeling, with its promise of giving consumers a quick reference on whether the food in question is healthy or not. The label could be a grading system or a color-coded system. It might even be a simple statement of calories per serving (with a much more realistic idea of an American "serving").

But whatever the label turns out to be, Summit panelists all seemed to agree that food packaging must include some basic, easy-to-digest information to supplement the often baffling "nutrition facts" on the back or side of products. Consumers also need information they can trust on the front of products, not some breakfast cereal promising to reduce your cholesterol.

"They are confused, very confused" over packaging promises, said Stephen Sundlof, director for the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "Secondly, they don't believe anything."

And it only seems to get worse by the day, he added. Once one company makes a wild claim, another company feels the pressure to one-up the competition. "After a while," Sundlof said, "it becomes a race to the bottom."

This week, in fact, the FDA sent out warning letters to 17 producers for making misleading claims about their products' nutrition and/or health benefits.

The proposed, apparently voluntary front-of-package labels would be one way, panelists believed, to build more trust and provide consumers with information on which products are truly healthy for their families. The labels may even help with our country's obesity epidemic.

Or would they?

The afternoon panel on "The Way We Eat," moderated by Atlantic senior editor Corby Kummer, talked extensively about obesity, and if they agreed on one thing, it's this: There is no silver bullet to end obesity in America, particularly with children.

Making school lunches healthier won't necessarily do the trick, even if school administrators across the country adopt Brian Wansink's "Cash for Cookies" program, in which children are not allowed to pay for their cookies or brownies with a school lunch card. They instead have to pay cash. Wansink, the John Dyson professor of Consumer Behavior at Cornell University, believes that children would rather spend their own money on iTunes than cafeteria cookies.

Catherine Woteki, the global director of Scientific Affairs with Mars, Inc., believes that front-of-package labels and better school lunches won't make much of a dent in obesity without the assistance of the "nutrition gatekeepers," who influence about 70 percent of what children eat. Who are these mysterious gatekeepers? Parents.

The afternoon panelists cast their net even wider when reminded by audience members of other factors that could influence obesity, such as poverty and even social justice issues.

By the time the panelists adjourned in the mid-afternoon, it seemed clear that the front-of-packaging label idea wouldn't solve our nation's obesity crisis by itself.

Photo by ashleigh290 via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

The specter of "recession pounds" is a concern weighing on health professionals, who point to numerous studies linking obesity and unhealthy eating habits to low incomes.

They fear that as people cut food spending they will cut back on healthy but relatively expensive items such as fresh fish, fruit, vegetables and whole grains, in favor of cheaper options high in sugar and saturated fats.

"People ... are going to economize and as they save money on food they will be eating more empty calories or foods high in sugar, saturated fats and refined grains, which are cheaper," said Adam Drewnowski, the director of the Nutrition Sciences Program at the University of Washington in Seattle.

"Things are going to get worse," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. "Obesity is a toxic result of a failing economic environment."