Like many other food companies these days, PepsiCo is trying to figure out how to appeal to consumers who have shifted toward healthier products. But while Pepsi is touting higher global sales, with 45% of the company’s revenue coming from “guilt-free” products — what exactly does that term mean? [More]
Food & Personal Care
Guggisberg Cheeses Join Listeria Contamination Recall List
By 2.15.17
Yet another brand of cheese has fallen victim to an ongoing listeria contamination: Guggisberg Cheese has recalled a dozen types of Colby type cheese products. [More]
NYC Investigating After Rare Disease Transmitted Through Rat Urine Kills Victim
By 2.15.17
New York City officials have a mystery on their hands: There have been three recent cases of humans falling ill — including one fatality — with a rare disease that’s transmitted through rat urine, all in the same neighborhood of the Bronx. [More]
Listeria-Contaminated Cheese Recall Expands To Cover Mushrooms, Other Snacks
By 2.14.17 — Updated: 2.23.17
Just like previous recalls before it — salmonella-tainted milk powder, flour-contaminated with E. coli, and listeria-infected cookie dough — the recent listeria contamination of certain cheese from Deutsch Kase Haus has spread to include a number of companies and products, including Meijer and MDS cheese and snacks. [More]
Report: Burger King And Tim Hortons Asked Popeyes Out, Maybe For A Merger
By 2.14.17
Hey, Popeyes, don’t look now, but that restaurant conglomerate over there has its eye on you. Yeah, that one: Restaurant Brands International, the company formed when Burger King and Tim Hortons merged and settled in Canada. It’s interested in maybe acquiring the fried chicken chain to add to its portfolio. [More]
Starbucks Testing Ice Cream In Coffee At 100 California Stores
By 2.14.17
If you’re the kind of person who likes your desserts caffeinated, or your caffeine in dessert form, you’ll have another way to get your buzz on: Starbucks will soon be serving ice cream at more than 100 U.S. locations. [More]
Hooters Opens Fast Casual Restaurant “Hoots”
By 2.14.17
Fast casual restaurants are all the rage. Even eateries that have been around for years are jumping into the world of counter-service and quick eats, including Hooters, which recently opened its first location of a new, smaller version of its restaurants: Hoots, A Hooters Joint. [More]
World’s Largest Orange-Juice Exporter Producing Excessively Watery Oranges
By 2.14.17
While your morning glass of orange juice won’t taste any different, it’s got more oranges than usual in it. Thanks to a water problem, the world’s largest exporter is having to squeeze many more fruits just to make you the same amount of juice [More]
Snuggle Up And Share Some Valentine’s Day Specials And Meal Deals
By 2.13.17
People love to go out to dinner for Valentine’s Day, and that means restaurants are competing for your business. If what you and your significant other share is a love of frugality, the holiday is a fine time to find discounts and deals on meals out. Or heart-shaped pizzas. [More]
Lawsuit Claims Walmart’s Private Label Craft Beer Is “Wholesale Fiction”
By 2.13.17
It can be hard to tell if that craft beer on the grocery shelf comes from the vats of a small, independent brewer, or if it is the product of a commercial vat. That’s the crux of a new class-action seeking lawsuit that claims Walmart is deceiving consumers with its private label “craft” beer brands in an effort to inflate prices. [More]
Engineering Professor Explains How To Get Ketchup Out Of A Glass Bottle
By 2.13.17
Heinz ketchup in glass bottles has been around for over 140 years, and for all of that time, aspiring condiment-eaters have been working hard to actually get the stuff out of the bottle. Fortunately for our fries, there are scientists who study this kind of thing, and have shared the best way to get ketchup out without splattering it or resorting to sticking a knife in the bottle. [More]
Valentine’s Day Chocolate Could Be Cheaper This Year Amid Big Cocoa Harvests
By 2.13.17
If you’re waiting until the last minute to run out and buy your sweetie some sweets ahead of Valentine’s Day tomorrow — or maybe you’re planning to treat yourself — you’ll probably be glad to hear that that box of chocolate hearts could be cheaper than it was last year. [More]
Sprite Cherry Now Exists Because Of The Coke Freestyle Machine
By 2.13.17
Here at Consumerist, we’ve been slightly obsessed for most of the last decade with the Coke Freestyle machine, a contraption that lets customers add a startling variety of flavors to their soft drinks. (Pepsi has a competing super-fountain, the Spire.) What we didn’t know is that Coca-Cola has been using the devices to collect data on what beverages we want, and then giving them to us. [More]
Possible Listeria Contamination Leads To Sargento Cheese, Taylor Farms Salad Recalls
By 2.13.17
Cheese is delicious. Salad with cheese is also delicious. But Listeria is not. For that reason, Sargento has recalled seven prepackaged cheese products and Taylor Farms has recalled 6,630 pounds of pork and chicken salad products that use the affected cheese. [More]
Sodium Warnings Will Stay On The Menu In NYC After Court Ruling
By 2.10.17
Nine months after a New York court denied a request from a restaurant trade group to stop New York City’s rule requiring warning labels on foods high in sodium from going into effect. The eateries took their gripe to an appeals court, which today ruled that these warnings aren’t going anywhere. [More]
Here’s What It’s Like To Visit New York City’s Pastry-Serving, French-ish McDonald’s
By 2.10.17
Outside of french fries, there’s nothing about McDonald’s that makes you envision a Parisian café or some bistro in Marseilles, but that hasn’t stopped the fast food goliath from testing a supposedly France-inspired location in the middle of Manhattan; just convenient enough for me to check out. [More]
Whistleblower Claims Major Baby Formula Company Used Defective Packaging
By 2.10.17
The business pages are lighting up this morning with the news that baby formula biggie Mead Johnson Nutrition — makers of Enfamil — is being bought by Reckitt Benckhiser (whose brands include baby-stopping Durex condoms) for $16.6 billion, but we’re more interested in a new whistleblower lawsuit from a former Mead Johnson executive who claims the company ignored concerns about defective packaging and fired her for trying to get the problem addressed. [More]
