What to do, what to do, when you’re merging and want to be the biggest without being too big? Divest, of course. And that’s where Rite-Aid finds itself today: in order to sell itself to Walgreens and allow their onetime-competitor to become the biggest drugstore chain in the country, it’s ready to shed several hundred stores to build a new third-place competitor. [More]
Food & Personal Care
Attacking A Cashier, Order Screens Because You’re Unhappy With Your Food Joins Long List Of Customer Overreactions
By 12.19.16
Another day, another extreme overreaction: police in Dayton, OH say a McDonald’s drive-thru customer who was unhappy with her food went on a rampage in the restaurant, overturning ordering screens and attacking the cashier. [More]
Campbell’s Soup Tries Out Its Own Recipe From 1915
By 12.19.16
At the same time that Americans are demanding more fresh foods and a return to ingredients that our grandparents might recognize, processed food Campbell’s looked back at its own heritage and decided to conduct an experiment, remaking the company’s original tomato soup recipe from 1915. [More]
Yet Another McDonald’s Location Offering Endless Fries
By 12.19.16
Nothing stirs the hearts and stomachs of the fast food-loving masses quite like all-you-can eat specials, especially when they involve endless French fries. Just in time for the holidays, one Missouri McDonald’s is offering customers the gift of unlimited fries. [More]
Starbucks Devises Fruitcake Frappuccino, Mercifully Only Sells It For 4 Days
By 12.16.16 — Updated: 12.19.16
We are now living in a dystopian holiday hellscape, where every special holiday food short of fruitcake has been commodified into a limited-time offer at a fast food restaurant and/or a flavor of candy. Until now, when Starbucks has brought us the Fruitcake Frappuccino. [More]
Fruit Salad, Potato Chips, Crepe Mix Added To Recall List For Salmonella-Tainted Milk Powder
By 12.16.16 — Updated: 12.28.16
When a common food ingredient like flour or black pepper might be contaminated with a pathogen that can make people sick, it gives us extra insight into how complex and intertwined the modern food production system is. For example, thanks to the Great Powdered Milk Recall of 2016, we’re learning how many different kinds of products use the same product from the same potentially salmonella-contaminated source. [More]
House ‘Freedom Caucus’ Asks Trump To Undo 232 Rules On Net Neutrality, Tobacco, Nursing Homes & Ceiling Fans
By 12.15.16
What’s on your wish list this holiday season? For the few dozen members of the House of Representatives Freedom Caucus, the hope to see President-elect Donald Trump undo or revise more than 200 federal rules involving everything from tobacco to food labels to ceiling fans to your constitutional right to bring a lawsuit against your credit card company. [More]
FTC Settlement Permanently Halts Alleged Energy Drink-Slinging Pyramid Scheme
By 12.15.16
A year ago, a court agreed to put a temporary halt to an alleged pyramid scheme that made its money by convincing college students they could make big bucks shilling energy drinks — but only paying up for recruiting more sales friends instead. Today, the FTC has announced a settlement with the Vemma Nutrition Company that puts a halt to those practices for good. [More]
20 States Accuse Teva, Mylan & Other Pharma Companies Of Price-Fixing
By 12.15.16
When the Justice Department announced it was bringing criminal charges against two former executives of a pharmaceuticals company, alleging a conspiracy to fix prices on generic drugs, we said that this was likely just the tip of the legal iceberg. Today, the industry ran smack into that iceberg — in the form of a lawsuit filed by twenty states against six different drug companies, including notables like Teva and Mylan. [More]
USDA Asks Meat, Dairy Companies To Replace Confusing Expiration & Sell-By Labels With “Best If Used By” Date
By 12.14.16 — Updated: 2.15.17
Though almost every food item you buy at the supermarket has some sort of expiration date — under the headers of “Sell By,” “Use By,” “Use Before,” “Best Before,” among others — printed on the packaging, the truth is date labels are largely voluntary and determined by the food producers. If handled properly, most foods are perfectly safe to eat after whatever date is on the label, but stores and consumers throw away an inordinate amount of food every year simply because that date has passed. In an effort to reduce food waste, the federal government is hoping to encourage meat and dairy producers to all use the same phrase: “Best If Used By.” [More]
Customer Sues Over Citric Acid In “Preservative-Free” Lean Cuisine Pizza
By 12.14.16
“Preservative-free” is a food label that plenty of shoppers seek out, and it’s printed right on the front of Lean Cuisine’s boxes of frozen pizza. One customer claims, however, that this label isn’t accurate. Whether she’s right depends on whether citric acid — a chemical that serves different purposes in different kinds of food — is considered a “preservative.” [More]
Restaurant Made Hundreds Of Customers Sick On Thanksgiving Day
By 12.14.16
Hundreds of Thanksgiving diners at a restaurant in western New York apparently got a little something special with their holiday meal that made them all sick when they should have been enjoying the extended weekend. [More]
Some Chipotle Restaurants Facing Food Shortages
By 12.13.16
Though Chipotle has been focused on winning back all the customers it lost during its food-safety crisis, a company executive says some restaurants don’t have enough food to feed the people who do want to eat there. And those food shortages are making customers cranky. [More]
Are Cigarette Warnings That Show Actual Harm More Effective At Getting People To Quit?
By 12.13.16
Imagine you’re holding a package of cigarettes you’re thinking about buying. Which would encourage you to quit: a label with a written warning, or a label with a photo of a throat cancer patient and former smoker who’s had a larygnectomy? According to a new study, labels with photos that show the harm done by smoking are more effective at dissuading people from lighting up. [More]
Pressing Your Phone Camera Against Your Finger Will Not Measure Your Blood Pressure
By 12.12.16
The tiny sensors in our smartphones can do amazing things, but what they cannot do is substitute for a blood pressure cuff. That’s unfortunate, because having your blood pressure measured can be painful and unpleasant. However, one app-maker ran afoul of federal regulators by claiming that your smartphone camera could be used to accurately check your vitals. [More]
Macaroni And Cheese Cups Sold At Walmart, Aldi, Rite Aid Recalled For Possible Salmonella Contamination
By 12.12.16 — Updated: 12.16.16
Remember those pancake and waffle mixes recalled for possible Salmonella contamination? They were just the first items in a wave of recalls related to the shutdown of a production facility in Virginia. The most prominent so far has been the recall of macaroni and cheese packages sold under the store brand names of Walmart, Aldi, and Rite Aid. [More]
FDA Warns 4 Tobacco Makers To Stop Selling Flavored Cigarettes Labeled As Cigars
By 12.12.16
If you want to sell an illegal product, simply slapping on a different label won’t magically make it legal. That’s why the Food and Drug Administration is ordering four tobacco manufacturers to stop selling flavored cigarettes labeled as “little cigars” or “cigars.” [More]
A Few Pen Strokes On This McDonald’s Coffee Cup Give “Warmest Greetings” A New Meaning
By 12.12.16
There are some things that, once seen, cannot be unseen. Like when someone draws hands on a pair of mittens on McDonald’s McCafe cup, and changes innocent outerwear into, well, something not quite so innocent. [More]
