Pike Place Roast Coffee:

Chris: "I like the old "burnt" coffee just fine."

Ben: "This tastes like 'coffee.' Like 'acme brand coffee.'" Meg: "Like from Looney Toons?" Ben: "Yes, exactly."

Carey: "Easily overwhelmed by the milk."

Meg: "If you told me this was Dunkin' Donuts coffee I wouldn't punch you in the face and call you a liar."

Apple Bran Muffin:

The Apple Bran Muffin has 330 calories and costs $1.75

Ben: "This muffin is the sh*t. It has a lot of sugar, though."

Carey: "It tastes like Frosted Flakes in muffin form. It's Grrrrrrrrreat."

Meg: "I can get behind this muffin." Chris: "Don't you pretty much just love muffins, though?" Meg: "Ok, well. Yes. Shut up."

Perfect Oatmeal:

Perfect Oatmeal has 140-390 calories depending on the toppings you choose. It costs $2.45.

Chris: "I just don't get it. It's nothing you wouldn't do at home with instant oatmeal. There's no Starbucks touch to it. People who eat oatmeal eat it at home or microwave it at work. It tasted fine, but I don't get it."

Carey: "I'm offended by the term 'perfect oatmeal.' It wasn't perfect. It was all right. And it costs $2.45."

Meg: "The nuts are good. I don't know about $2.45 good, but good."

Ben: "Once you add the nuts, there's something to talk about."

Captain Duvel Moneycat:"NOM NOM NOM NOM GET OUT OF THE WAY NOM MOVE OVER NOM"

Power Protein Plate:

The Power Protein Plate has 330 calories and costs $4.95. It contains a hard-boiled egg, peanut butter, a small bagel, grapes, apples and cheese.

Chris: "This is a good package, but I don't like hard boiled eggs."

Ben: "Good portion size. I like it."

Carey: "This is an airplane breakfast."

Meg: "I would buy this at the airport and take it on United Airlines because it doesn't cost 9 %#%@-ing dollars."

Which of these options, if any, would you personally buy? Any final thoughts?

Chris: "I have already bought the "Stella" (280 calories, $1.75) and will again. It's a "not unhealthy" choice. I'm impressed with the changes Starbucks has made overall. It's true that the breakfast sandwiches stink up the place. It was not a good smell. Regularly brewing the coffee makes a difference as well."

Ben: "I'd have to have a reason to eat at Starbucks, but if I did, I'd get the protein pack. That's your 4 food groups right there, and its a sensible portion. It's convenient. And there's pepper. For the egg. They even peel it for you. That's great."

Carey: "If Starbucks showed up every morning with a breakfast like this, there are some days when I would open the door."

Meg: "The oatmeal was a little pricey for what it was, but it did taste good, especially once you added the nuts. I would eat that muffin again. Damn, I love muffins."

Captain Duvel Moneycat: "I love this oatmeal more than anything I have ever known. It has opened my eyes and given my life purpose. Never again will I take for granted the miracle of God's finest creation — the oat. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to lick the floor where someone accidentally dropped some."

Significant differences remain between the Senate and House legislation, but compromise seems assured on several key points:

• Funding for the Commission would rise from $63 million to over $100 million.
• The CPSC would be allowed to work without a quorum, but funding would be available for a full slate of 5 Commissioners.
• Lead would effectively be banned from all children's products, not just toys.
• Toy makers would be required to use independent labs to test their products for lead.
• Maximum fines would rise from $1.8 million to at least $10 million.
• 
  

Thirteen Senators think the bills goes too far and that their families are plenty safe without an expanded CPSC, thank you:

Allard (R-CO)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

The White House has yet to threaten a veto. Stay tuned for updates as the bill heads to conference.

Senate Votes For Safer Products [Washington Post]
Vote Summary [United States Senate]
S. 2663 - A bill to reform the Consumer Product Safety Commission to provide greater protection for children's products, to improve the screening of noncompliant consumer products, to improve the effectiveness of consumer product recall programs, and for other purposes. [THOMAS]
Write Your Representative
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Mr. Stone and his daughter Montana began their testing nine months ago after Montana heard news reports about lead in children's jewelry. She asked her father about the safety of the jewelry she had received as favors at birthday parties.

Mr. Stone, 68, used a lead testing process that he usually uses on deer carcasses to test for bullets in New York. (It is illegal in some circumstances to shoot deer with guns rather than bow and arrow.)

Mr. Stone found that more than half of his daughter's jewelry tested positive. Soon, the Stones bought 75 more pieces of jewelry in stores near their home in Albany. Of those, 56 pieces contained more than 0.06 percent lead, the federal limit, and some were half lead, Mr. Stone said, adding that he plans to continue testing children's jewelry even after the recall.

Mr. Stone works in an agency of New York state government unrelated to the attorney general, but he took his test results to Mr. Cuomo's office last February. Mr. Cuomo then started an investigation of children's jewelry sold in the state, including additional testing.

"As an individual, it's like a voice screaming in the wilderness. It's hard to be heard," said Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League, a nonprofit organization in Washington. "Bureaucracies are not really set up to listen to the public."

Like many parents, Mr. Jones said he was suspicious of all of his daughter's toys now that millions of items for children have been recalled for high levels of lead.

To put his mind at ease, Mr. Jones bought several LeadCheck swab kits from his local hardware store to test dozens of his daughter's toys. So far, he has not found any lead.

Home testing kits are not reliable. If you want an accurate reading, be prepared to shell out $25,000 for an industrial grade scanner.

Don't believe us? How about the CPSC, EPA, and CDC? Oh, you hate the government and only trust the private sector? Fine, let's ask the makers of the home testing devices: "Vendors say that test kits are not intended to gauge lead levels but can be useful for parents." So what exactly do they do? "...they can empower the consumer and help parents rule out a product."

We're all for empowering consumers, but parents concerned about the dangers of lead poisoning should focus their fidgety need for action on the lead in old house paint - a significantly more potent and reliable source of danger to children. For now, testing for lead at home has all the use of digging up the backyard in search of gold, without the prospect of finding anything valuable.

Some Parents Test Toys at Home [NYT]
(Photo: Yogi)

The bill was sparked largely by problems with the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx, sold by Merck & Co Inc., which was linked to heart attacks and strokes in some patients.

Some other features of the bill:

• It increases the amount that pharmaceutical companies will have to pay to support FDA safety studies—about $87 million more than current levels beginning October 1st of this year;
• It requires pharmaceutical companies to pay $225 million over the next five years to support FDA safety monitoring for drugs that have reached the market;
• It requires drugmakers to place the results of their clinical trials for approved products in a public database;

"House clears FDA drug safety, fee bill" [Reuters]
(Photo: Getty)

For the companies, the problem is two-fold: figuring out exactly what to test for and maintaining control over their network of suppliers, even as they turn to China for vast quantities of imports at lower prices.

•Testing: General Mills has started testing for contaminants. Which contaminants? They aren't saying.
•Supplier Screening: Kellogg has begun screening suppliers and is lining up alternates in case of an incident.
•Product Safety Executives: Toys "R" Us has hired two new fall guys executives to oversee procurement and product safety.

Though we applaud any effort that improves the safety of our food, catching contaminants before they arrive on American shelves is the lesser half of the battle. Removing the economic incentives that encourage Chinese companies to substitute inexpensive poisons for specified ingredients is the real challenge, and not one that we believe can be addressed by new executives or random testing. What steps do American companies need to take to allay your concerns about Chinese products? Tell us in the comments.

Companies in U.S. Increase Testing of Chinese Goods
(Photo: showbizsuperstar)

The Dissolving Test
Pour some honey in water. If the honey is pure, it will sink like a witch. If it is impostor honey, it will dissolve like a fair villager.

The Burning Test
Find a lighter or torch, and a candle with a cotton wick. Dip the wick into the honey and set it alight. If the honey-covered wick burns, then, like a fair villager, it is pure. If it refuses to burn, the impostor additives have cast a protective spell, like a witch.

WikiHow has other suggestions, like the bludgeoning blotting test, just in case the aforementioned trials don't help rid your village of its fake honey problem. — CAREY GREENBERG-BERGER

How to Verify the Purity of Honey [wikiHow]
(Photo: raindog808)

The issue landed in court after Creekstone Farms offended the USDA by constructing a state of the art facility to test for mad cow. The USDA fears that testing will reveal too many 'false positives,' scaring the hell out of consumers and threatening the financial health of the nation's meat industry.

The USDA sued Creekstone in U.S. District Court, where they lost. Judge James Robinson ruled that the USDA: "lacks authority to prohibit the private use of BSE test kits, which are not used in the treatment of BSE, but are used on cattle that are already dead to see if they had significant levels of BSE infection."

This is not over. The USDA won't stop fighting to protect the health of consumers the meat industry, and has vowed to appeal. Until the appeal is resolved, meatpackers won't be able to test their stock for mad cow diesease. — CAREY GREENBERG-BERGER

Government to restrain meatpackers from testing for mad cow disease [AP] (Thanks to Scott)
(Photo: destinelee)

We are a (maybe the only one?) testing area for Time Warner Cable. They have put a new DVR menu on my household's cable box and we all agree it is terrible. It was definitely a step down for TWC. Now a local committee is doing something about it!

"There are serious problems here," Cook [City Councilman] said Wednesday afternoon. "I think Lincoln customers deserve better. They are not getting what they have paid for." The new guide has been beset with problems since its introduction. Complaints have ranged from the guide itself — ugly graphics, incomplete information, etc. — to problems with slow-reacting cable boxes and DVRs after the software was loaded into them, causing some subscribers to reboot one or more times a day.

Cook said he is a Time Warner subscriber and DVR user. As the council's liaison to the Cable Television Advisory Board, he said he received his upgrade with Time Warner employees before it was introduced to the public.

"I didn't think it was ready," he said. "I thought it needed more work before it was released."

Shrewsbury [Time Warner Spokesperson] said Time Warner will comply with an evaluation

Cook calls for evaluation of Time Warner Cable [Journal Star]
(Photo: ChadoeKyll)

Blood substitute too risky to test, panel says [MSNBC]