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Some kids can't get enough of online games where they can pretend to run a candy factory or decorate cakes. But children who play with these games may eat more, and eat more junk food, even if the game features fruit or other healthful choices, according to new research.

Food industry critics have long bemoaned the fact that many popular food games for computers and other devices are actually "advergames", created by food manufacturers to market their products. Some argue marketing junk food to kids is unethical, even if it's through tiny bits of entertainment software.

To find out if advergames affect how children eat, Dutch researchers had 8- to 10-year-olds play either a game that featured a popular brand of candy, or one that featured fruit. Another group of children played an online game involving a toy. All the games tested the children's memory skills. Afterwards, the children were offered bowls of jelly candy, chocolate, sliced bananas, and apples.

The researchers say they assumed that the children who played the fruit game would choose fruit. But boy, were they wrong. All the children who played a food-themed game ate more, and ate more candy, even if they played the fruit game.

"We were very surprised," Frans Folkford, a graduate student in communications at the University of Amsterdam who led the study, tells The Salt. The children who played food-themed games took in about twice as many calories as children who played a non-food game, or played no game at all. The work was published online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Just looking at pictures of food is enough to make people want to eat, as any dieter can tell you. But food-themed games may be more persuasive, Folkford says, because children are actively engaged with them, and less likely to realize that the game is actually an advertisement.

Games may get children to eat more healthfully, but it's tricky, says Jennifer Harris, director of marketing initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. She found in a study she did last year that children who played an online game from the Dole fruit company did eat more fruit – but they also ate more overall. "A lot depends on the game and the actual messages in there," Harris says. "It's very complicated."

Over the past decade hundreds of food companies have launched online advergames aimed at children, Harris says, and millions of kids are playing them. Many mobile apps aimed at kids are also designed to market junk food to them. "Pay attention to what your kids are downloading," Harris says. "A lot of parents figure as long as it's free and it's listed as for children, they assume it's safe and not harmful. You really can't assume that."

It's harder to track children's use of advergame apps for mobile phones or tablets, she notes, but ones like "Cookie Dough Bites Factory" or "Candy Sports" often show up on lists of favorite downloads.

"The apps are made very appealing to deeply engage young users," says Jeffrey Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy, which lobbies on digital privacy. "They can be helpful, but they're also tiny spies lurking on your cellphone or other devices to market to you."

Food and beverage marketers have dramatically increased their spending on online and mobile marketing to kids and teens, according to a Federal Trade Commission report released last month.

Weeks before President Obama officially nominated Chuck Hagel to be secretary of defense, the lobbying battle was well under way. The fight might be bigger than any other Cabinet nomination in history as the former Republican senator's friends and foes prepare for modern combat on TV and the Internet.

As important as confirming a defense secretary might be, this Senate vote will come wrapped in all sorts of other issues, too. A win is critically important for President Obama; in December, a conservative campaign demolished the chances of his apparent choice for secretary of state, Susan Rice.

"It may be stormy, it may be a difficult fight, but the president has to win on this one," says Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "On the other side, I think the criticism is heightened by several factors."

Opposing Hagel

For one thing, Republicans want to forge a more openly assertive foreign policy than the Obama administration has employed. Another thing is that many pro-Israel groups don't trust the president's instincts on Israel, which led to an anti-Hagel campaign, which led to ads funded by conservative groups.

Michael Goldfarb, an adviser to the Emergency Committee for Israel, a group organized by conservative leader William Kristol, says it's not worried about financing more messages.

"You know, honestly, I expect people are going to be coming to us, looking to support our activities on this front," Goldfarb says. "But right now I think we have enough money in the bank to get started."

A more surprising attack came from a small, national gay organization — the Log Cabin Republicans, which ran two full-page ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post. The group attacked Hagel, not only on gay rights — which he opposed as a senator 15 years ago — but also over things he has said about U.S. policy toward Israel and Iran.

Gregory Angelo, the group's interim director, says it's not unreasonable for the Log Cabin Republicans to branch out from its core issues.

"The fact is there are some Log Cabin Republicans who put equality issues first and foremost, and there are some who put other issues first," Angelo says — issues such as small government, low taxes and a strong national defense.

"Log Cabin Republicans have forever been these two types of gay Republicans that are co-existing," he says.

Angelo declined to discuss how the group raised money for the ads.

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Businesses complained that the uncertainty surrounding the "fiscal cliff" froze their decisions about hiring and expanding, which hurt the economy. Washington has now managed half a deal, which settles tax issues, at least for the time being. But has that removed enough uncertainty to boost some business hiring and investment?

Vickers Engineering in New Troy, Mich., makes parts for auto companies, agriculture equipment manufacturers and the oil and gas industry. Scott Dawson, the company's chief financial officer, says the fiscal cliff deal on taxes helped his company move forward, by extending a provision that allows firms to rapidly deduct the value of new equipment from their tax bill.

"Now we can invest in more equipment, which allows us to take on more projects, which allows us to hire more people," he says. "That was one of the things that really we were waiting until they came to this agreement on how we were going to pursue our capital plans for 2013."

However, Vickers Engineering was already in an expansion mode, riding the revival of the auto industry. It has almost doubled its annual revenues to $30 million in the past two years. The fiscal cliff agreement will help the company complete a near doubling of its workforce by the end of this year.

But Dawson says another part the deal, the tax hike for people making over $450,000 a year, could be a drag. That's because Vickers' owners will pay more in taxes and have less money to invest in new equipment.

Dyke Messinger runs a small company called Power Curbers in Salisbury, N.C., which builds machines used to construct curbs and gutters for streets and highways. Messinger says he is ready to hire three or four workers.

But the reason Messinger is hiring is not the fiscal cliff deal but rather that the construction industry is getting back on its feet. "The economy has strengthened enough in the construction sector that we can foresee increased business, which will allow us to bump up hiring, bump up our spending on a variety of things that we were holding back on before," Messinger says.

Scott Shane, a professor of entrepreneurial studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, says the situation at Power Curbers underscores that what is most important to small businesses is what is happening in their sector of the economy.

"You know, if demand is strong and the economy is growing and people are demanding products and services, then they feel confident on expanding and when that's not happening they don't feel confident," he says.

Shane says if you're not confident in the underlying economy, removing a little uncertainty about the government's fiscal situation may not be the answer to your problems.

Government contractors, especially in defense, may have the greatest uncertainty right now, says Stan Soloway of the Professional Services Council, an association of government contractors. "For the most part, I think what we're seeing are companies being very, very conservative and very, very disciplined in terms of their investments in people and in technology and so forth," he says.

What these companies want, Soloway says, is for policymakers to proceed with the second step in the fiscal cliff, cutting government spending — even if it means some pain for them.

"Rip the Band-Aid off and let's deal with this," he says. "If there's going to be substantially reduced spending, which we all expect, at least let's get it on the table, know what's coming so we can plan against it. That's when you'll start to see normalcy and investment decisions start to move forward."

But most analysts expect negotiations over spending cuts and the debt ceiling will once again go right down to the wire.

After the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., President Obama asked Vice President Biden to lead a group tasked with drafting policies to reduce gun violence. One of the issues sure to come up in the Biden group's discussions is the role of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The ATF is the primary enforcer of the nation's gun laws, but advocates and former ATF officials say the agency has been underfunded, understaffed and handcuffed in its abilities to go after gun crimes.

In an ad campaign launched Tuesday by the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Roxanna Green, whose child was killed two years ago, appeals directly to the camera: "My 9-year-old daughter was murdered in the Tucson shooting. I have one question for our political leaders: When will you find the courage to stand up to the gun lobby?"

Standing up to the gun lobby is seen by gun control advocates to mean not only banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, but restoring some teeth to the ATF.

"The restrictions on ATF are absurd," says Jon Lowy of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "They're not allowed to use computers in doing their trace work. They're not allowed to do more than one spot inspection on a gun dealer."

When looking at the problems facing the ATF, it's instructive to start at the top. The current acting director of the Washington agency is B. Todd Jones, who is juggling the ATF post with his other job, that of U.S. attorney in Minneapolis.

There hasn't been a permanent ATF director for six years, since back in the Bush administration.

Michael Bouchard, a former ATF assistant director, says that lack of leadership has handicapped the agency.

"You need somebody there who has ownership and is going to be there for the long haul and can start projecting a couple years out, versus people who are just brought in for a temporary fix," Bouchard says.

Obama has nominated a permanent director, but there hasn't even been a hearing on the nomination because of opposition from the gun lobby.

There are other administrative issues: Funding has been relatively flat, and the agency has roughly the same number of agents today as it did a decade ago.

Then there are the issues ATF agents face with gun laws. Congress refuses to allow a centralized gun database, so tracing a weapon used in a crime means a lot of legwork, says former ATF agent William Vizzard.

"They have to contact the manufacturer or importer, who tells them, 'Oh, on July 14, 2009, we shipped that gun to Buckeye Sporting Goods, a wholesaler.' Then you contact Buckeye Sporting Goods, and they say, 'Oh, yeah, we received that gun four days later and we shipped it out to Billy Bob's Bait and Tackle Shop.' Then you go to Billy Bob and you say, 'OK, what do your records say?' "

Another frustration, says Bouchard, is the lack of gun-trafficking statutes to charge those suspected of supplying guns to criminals.

"It's very frustrating when you see people that you know are criminals and buying guns for the criminal element, and you don't have ... a statute to prosecute them under," he says. "You have to be creative and try to make other statutes fit."

Advocates also say the ATF should be allowed to inspect firearms dealers more than once a year, and that dealers should be required to keep track of their inventory.

The Brady Center's Lowy says that more than 100,000 guns are missing from dealers' shelves.

"There's a great likelihood that most of those guns were sold off the books to criminals," he says. "Easy way to fix that is to simply require dealers to do an inventory every year of their stock. ATF is prevented from even requiring dealers to do that. That makes absolutely no sense."

Gun rights advocates say they are defending law-abiding dealers from overzealous government agents.

Former ATF officials have written Biden with suggestions to correct what they see as the agency's problems. Lowy and other gun control advocates will be meeting with the vice president Wednesday to make their case for changes at the ATF.