No matter how hard we try to sit down and enjoy a breakfast with our entire family, some days we just have to eat on the run. Think early school assembly, PTA meeting, basically any old Tuesday. So it's necessary to have a few breakfast bites in your repertoire. Food you can hold in your hand, and eat while moving forward.

Instead of heading to the drive-thru where they wrap it up in that thin paper so nicely for you, consider doing something better for yourself and your health. Here are five handheld breakfast bites that actually will give you some necessary nutrition to start your day.

Let's be real: The Super Bowl makes most of us feel super sized. These days, it seems like the big game has become yet another occasion where it's socially acceptable to throw all diet rules out the window, and binge eat, and be completely unhealthy.

I think it's safe to assume that today, most football fans are feelin' a little on the pudgier side. Hell, I know I do. After consuming one-too-many wings, a handful (or three) of Doritos, and enough buffalo chicken dip to feed an entire village at last night's party, I feel like swearing off eating for days.

If only it were that easy. Clearly, not eating isn't a realistic fix for dropping those few extra pounds, and neither is hitting the gym for four straight hours during a busy work week.

However, there are a few easy, quick tweaks you can add to your daily routine this week to help beat the Super Bowl. Starting with drinking water, and lots of it!

First they came for your trans fats. (Gross.) Then they came for your soda. (Whatever, water's cheaper anyway.) But now a group of scientists has a food ingredient in its sights that will really hit a lot of us where it counts: sugar.

Researchers at University of California, San Francisco, say sugar's damage goes way beyond making us fat through empty calories -- that it's actually toxic, leading to metabolic changes that can cause diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other deadly diseases. Eating sugar to excess, they say, is like drinking to excess. Consequently, they suggest, public health policy should be reshaped to control sugar the way it does alcohol and tobacco: possibly by boosting sales taxes on sugary products, controlling access to them, and changing licensing requirements on vending machines. 

Every time I have a big night with the girls coming up, I sorta kinda dread it. Not because I don't wanna see them, but because I just know that bad eating is going to be involved. Get-togethers and calories, they're practically synonymous! Surprisingly according to science, they actually are.

In a recent study, 70 pairs of women were set up to eat together. Under observation, it seemed that the women mimicked one another with their eating habits, and tended to take bites of food at roughly the same time. The reason? Those science-types believe it was to make a more favorable impression on one another. In other words, if your friend is eating a lot, then you probably are too.

BAH. Finally! We can blame random spurts of overeating on friends. I see where they're coming from with the "favorable impression" bit, but I think it depends on who's involved. Plus, getting together with your girls doesn't necessarily have to derail your whole diet. Follow me on this one ...

Processed meat in a can, sometimes known as "Spam," might skeeve you out, but in reality, it's one of the most common foods on Native American reservations and a popular choice in various populations -- like lower-income, rural communities and even on Hawaii, where they make Spam sushi! But a new study found that Native Americans who often ate Spam had a two-fold increased risk of developing diabetes over those who ate little or none. Eeeek!

I guess it should really come as no real surprise, given how unhealthy this sort of food is. As the researchers acknowledged, people who eat the most processed meats tend to be heavier, with larger waistlines, raising the possibility that the foods contribute to obesity, a major risk factor for diabetes.

Wow, Paula Deen might just be the new poster lady for anyone who ever felt like denouncing a healthy lifestyle. After revealing that she's had type 2 diabetes for the past three years -- you know, only once she had nailed down a biz deal to represent a drug for the condition -- she was spied the other day enjoying a cheeseburger with a plate of fries, while dining aboard her annual "Party at Sea" Caribbean cruise. Haaa ...

Well, given that she told the TODAY show that she doesn't want to "let diabetes stand in the way of enjoying [her] life," I guess we shouldn't be all that surprised that Paula is, in fact, enjoying her favorite way of life. If you know anything about Paula, you know the Southern chef is a big fan of butter, cheese, meat, fried foods, and mountains of refined carbs and sugar. Oh, and butter, did I mention that ... boatloads of butter?

When celeb chef Anthony Bourdain came out bashing rival Paula Deen this past summer for being "the worst, most dangerous person to America," most of America came to the Southern-fried chef's defense. Even if you know it's hella bad for you, most of us LOVE to indulge in the kind of comfort food that Paula's known for peddling -- from mac 'n' cheese to red velvet cake. Even if only on a rare occasion. However, it's looking like Bourdain may have had a point about Deen's dangerous habits.

Buzz is swirling that Paula has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes ... and the latest is that she plans to sit down with TODAY's Al Roker on Tuesday in an exclusive interview to "address the rumors." Wuh-oh. We all know what talking to Al Roker means ... Seems like she's about to come clean to America, leaving us wondering ... could this signal the end of her career?!

If you were to conjure up in your fantasies the most obnoxious household appliance imaginable, what would it look like? Could it be a fascist refrigerator that sizes you up and then yells at you for pulling out the chocolate pudding? What about a refrigerator that tells you to eat celery instead when it catches you reaching for the Cheez-It spray can? Or a refrigerator that has all of vegan chef Kathy Freston's recipes memorized, and recites them to you when you go for the bacon?

Well today is your lucky day, readers! Such a refrigerator has been invented: It's the LG ThinQ Smart refrigerator. Hooray, hooray! Now you too can own a Nag Robot that also happens to store your food at safely-chilled temperatures. Let's talk more about how this would not be at all helpful, shall we?