Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) has been cutting staff since the recession—and pallets of merchandise are piling up in its stockrooms as shelves go unfilled. In the past five years the world’s largest retailer added 455 U.S. Walmart stores, a 13 percent increase, according to company filings in late January. In the same period its total U.S. workforce, which includes employees at its Sam’s Club warehouse stores, dropped by about 20,000, or 1.4 percent.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest urges the FDA to require beverage makers to reduce the amount of high-fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners.

Incentives to make healthy food affordable, smoking bans and taxes on tobacco products, and limitations on advertising unhealthy foods to children are among the 43 proven strategies to improve public health, the American Heart Association says in a statement in its journal Circulation. Researchers reviewed more than 1,000 studies. Other recommendations include locating grocery stores closer to where people live and providing walkable neighborhoods and easier access to recreation. HealthDay News

Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey joins hundreds of senior health care leaders from U.S. and abroad as 8th Annual World Health Care Congress concludes in Washington, D.C.

A government regulator that is part of a working group concerned about junk food ads to children will announce on Wednesday it is backing off of some proposals for voluntary marketing principles.