Television is a persuasive, powerful, and pervasive medium for disseminating information on a plethora of topics, including health and nutrition. In fact, television is consistently ranked by Americans as their primary source of nutrition information. In addition, it is widely acknowledged that events portrayed on TV influence eating and health attitudes and behaviors. To gain an understanding of the influence of television on health attitudes and behaviors, it is important to investigate the health content of television programming. The purpose of this study was to content analyze the health-related information conveyed by The Simpsons television show. This show was selected because it is consistently listed as one of the top 20 prime-time television programs in terms of viewing audience and because a pilot test indicated this show has many embedded nutrition and health messages. A total of 63 episodes (21%), 7 from each of 9 television seasons, were videotaped and content analyzed using the instrument developed for this study. The results indicate that health-related messages occur an average of 12 times per episode, with each message being an average of 32 seconds in length. Nearly two-thirds of the health-related messages were incidental to the episode; that is, the message did not directly pertain to the plot of the episode. Data analysis indicated that messages focused mostly on nutrition, alcohol use, smoking, and body image (57%, 20%, 11%, and 5%, respectively). Only 20% of the messages that focused on nutrition were positive (i.e., practices recommended by health care professionals), while 27,48, and 5 percent were negative, neutral, or ambiguous, respectively. The overwhelming majority of messages focusing on smoking and alcohol consumption were negative. A food pyramid constructed based on the frequency foods were verbalized, shown, and eaten in The Simpsons shares little similarity to the USDA pyramid. The foods most commonly mentioned verbally by characters were beer, entree type foods, and sweets. These same foods were the most frequently shown. Foods that were consumed most often were beer, entree type foods, coffee, sandwiches, and baked desserts. Foods were eaten as snacks, rather than meals, nearly 60% of the time. Homer, an overweight character, made the most verbal references to food and was portrayed eating food more often and in greater quantities than any other character. This study indicates that many health-related messages on The Simpsons run counter to those of promoted by health professionals. The next step is to determine how health-related messages on television affect viewers’ health and nutrition attitudes and behavior.