Go shopping for cheese at the Ballard Fred Myer in Seattle, and you'll learn an interesting new fact about your food:

The check-er-outer lady looked at it a while and said (without the slightest trace of irony),

“I don’t think cheese is a dairy product.”

Oh. Um. Well. Yes. Um. WHAT?

“No, they don’t consider cheese a dairy product.”

With that newly created fact, the cashier refused to apply a store coupon for dairy products to a package of cheddar slices. When the columnist for The Stranger asked her who "they" are, she replied, "Fred Meyer Corporation."

The columnist and his coupon-wielding friend saved the coupon for another day and purchased the cheese at full price, but we have a feeling a lot of our readers would not have let Fred Meyer off so easily.

"Cheese: The Totally Other Food Group. Apparently. Maybe From Space!" [The Stranger] (Thanks to everyone who sent this in!)
(Photo of tomato plant: Aine D)