Fat cats: please do not feed the (human) animals! Actress and best-selling author Marilu Henner offers classes and community at www.marilu.com.(marilu: eye-opening discoveries on health and fitness)

My boys and I decided to go to the zoo one Saturday for some fresh air, exercise and, hopefully, to learn about our cousins in the animal kingdom. Instead, we mostly learned about our cousins in the burger kingdom.

We purposely skipped lunch before heading out. Our plan was to have a picnic as close as possible to the chimpanzees (our favorites) so that I could pretend I was lane Goodall and my sons could pretend they were Timon and Pumbaa. We worked up a good appetite after a scenic stroll through the Australian Outback and the rain forest of Borneo before reaching the chimpanzees. Some of the new exhibits at the LA Zoo are terrific, well designed for viewing and appear to be very animal-friendly.

We were now primed for our picnic, so we stopped at the Gorilla Grill. "Oh no!" I thought as I looked at the menu and saw Philly cheesesteaks, BBQ rib sandwiches, sausage with onions, corndog, fries and onion rings. That was about it unless you counted the ice cream, soda pops and potato chips. I was so mad at myself for not packing a lunch. "Well, that's just one snack stand," I thought. "We'll find another. They can't all be that bad."

Eventually, we did find some tuna sandwiches at a place back near the entrance. But that was after zigzagging through three other eateries that collectively offered cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, pizza, Polish sausage, fried chicken, beef burritos, churros, cotton candy, candy corn, ice cream, cherry and strawberry slushes, and what seemed to be evenbody's favorite: nachos and Cheez Whiz! And we wonder why the incidence of obesity has doubled in America in the past 15 years.

After lunch, the "Please do not feed the animals" signs took on a whole new meaning for us, and we couldn't stop laughing about it. My l0-year-old, Nicky, read one of them out loud: "Protect and respect the animals, and please do not feed them. Animals need special diets to stay healthy." "Yeah," Nicky continued. "It's called food! The stuff they're selling us could kill a T-Rex!"

It's funny when you think about it. I've seen people become outraged after spotting someone tossing popcorn to a gorilla--and people should be outraged by that transgression--but these same people think nothing about feeding candy corn and Cheetos to their own toddlers!

I remember seeing a PBS documentary on gorillas. In it, the) talked about how, in the first 30 years or so that gorillas were in captivity, zoologists unknowingly fed them meats and sandwiches and ...