By SAM MCMANIS, Sacramento Bee

Did you hear the big news? Twinkies are getting smaller, if not necessarily healthier. Hostess announced that it is repackaging the iconic log-shaped treat into a 100-calorie "snack pack."
Take our quiz about this cream-filled antithesis to a healthy diet.

1. How many calories are in one regular-size Twinkie?

A) 300
B) 150
C) 227

Using the heart as a metaphor for desire, for spirit and determination against long odds, has become cliched to the point where it's lost impact.
Only when meeting a teenager like Hunter Todd of Roseville, Calif. does the phrase "This kid's got heart" actually hold true meaning.

He came to dread Octobers. When the leaves turned and the calendar flipped over to the 10th month, it was time again for Steve Abrams to have his yearly colonoscopy.
As a longtime colitis sufferer, Abrams knew he was at extremely high risk for colon cancer, so he dutifully complied with his doctor's edict to have a yearly colonoscopy.

Some jittery people out there -- you can spot them gnashing their teeth, shaking like Jell-O and sweating profusely -- have grounds to suspect that the decaf coffee they are drinking is secretly laced with that demon caffeine.

What say we channel our inner Wilfred Brimley and rhapsodize about oatmeal, which may be the best breakfast option out there? You remember breakfast, don't you? The most important meal of the day.

Claire Gliddon is usually a cheery sort -- downright perky, even. Get her talking about her charity work with Project Linus, which provides blankets to needy children, and she gets as excitable as a kid herself.Yet the 52-year-old Fair Oaks, Calif., resident also has these moods, these bouts of sluggishness and ennui, that must be acknowledged and overcome.

Soon, the sun will be merely a rumor for long stretches during waking hours, and darkness will dominate our senses and moods.As if that weren't depressing enough, here's another grim thought: You most likely will become significantly deficient in vitamin D.

Teen suicides have risen alarmingly. It doesn't have to be that way.Yet the view persists that adolescents are somehow immune to the debilitating clinical depression that afflicts many adults. And such carefree-days-of-youth thinking on the part of some parents and caregivers can yield tragic results.

When it comes to the myriad risk factors for heart disease, few things top LDL cholesterol. A true bodily evildoer, this bad-boy lipid hogs all the media attention as a potential cardiac killer.