The first time I ate a hot dog from a New York City street cart I felt like I’d taken part in some mysterious initiation rite — would I get sick from eating “street meat” and either way, did I just prove I was cool enough not to care or worry about it? While I (and countless others) have come out just fine on the other side of a plate of rice and meat sold on the street, there’s always that underlying hesitation of, “Is this really sanitary?” [More]
food
Why Does Bending Uncooked Spaghetti Break It Into More Than One Piece?
By 12.29.14
Anyone who’s ever broken a handful of uncooked pasta over a pot of boiling water, only to find noodle shards flying all over the kitchen might wonder why the darn noodles refuse to simply break in half. So why does dry pasta shatter into more than two pieces when you bend it, to the frustration of many a home cook? Science is here to explain. [More]
The Only Food On The Menu At London Cafe Is Cereal (Okay, And Milk)
By 12.11.14
There’s just something about tucking into a full bowl of your favorite cereal, doused in your milk of choice, that’s unlike any other eating experience. In an effort to tap into that segment of people who love shoveling spoonfuls of breakfast into their mouths at all times of the day, a cafe in London recently opened up that serves exclusively cereal. Yes, just cereal. And milk, which is also a food as well as a beverage, right? Sure. [More]
How Do You Eat A Live Octopus?
By 12.10.14
Let’s be clear: There are many things in life I would be willing to try, that at first sound horrifying. Like talking to strangers on the subway before I’ve had any coffee and after I’ve had no sleep, maybe I could manage that someday. But eating a still squirming octopus? That is not on the list. Luckily for those of you who would like to try something that I imagine feels like internal strangulation, someone else is on the job already to show you how. [More]
FDA Issues Sweeping New Calorie Requirements For Everything From Vending Machines To Chain Restaurants
By 11.25.14
If new requirements from the Food and Drug Administration end up sticking, you could be seeing calorie counts for most things you eat outside the home — from vending machines to chain restaurants, movie theater popcorn to pre-made sandwiches at the grocery store. [More]
This Is The Future, And We Can Track Domino’s Pizzas From Our Wrist Computers
By 11.14.14
It was almost seven years ago that Domino’s introduced its Pizza Tracker, an online feature that lets customer keep track of what is happening with their pizzas right now, to within under a minute. In case you wondered what kind of glorious era we’re living in, the Tracker is now available for the Pebble smartwatch, meaning that you don’t even need to sit down at a computer to learn that your pizza is entering the oven right now. [More]
Bakery That Never Used The Word “Cronut” Told To Stop Using The Word “Cronut”
By 10.24.14
While NYC pastry chef Dominique Ansel may have trademarked the word “cronut” to describe the cross-breeding of a croissant and a donut, he’s certainly not the only person to have made or sold them. Now his lawyers are sending cease-and-desist notices to bakers to get them to stop calling their creations “cronuts,” even if they’ve never used the word on their menus. [More]
Chili Dogs, Sandwiches And More Than 150 Other Foods Recalled For Possible Listeria Contamination
By 10.13.14
No picnic is complete without chili dogs, sandwiches, hamburgers and listeria monocytogenes? Okay that last one doesn’t exactly scream party, but it was found in all of the aforementioned food times, necessitating a large recall from SunBurst Foods. [More]
Mysterious Salmonella Outbreak Had Innocent Victims: Tomatoes
By 9.29.14
We like to share news of product, food, and vehicle recalls, because keeping our readers free from fire, illness, and injury is very important to us. However, every recall and warning of potentially contaminated food has hidden victims. Sometimes those victims are vegetables left to rot in the fields, and the farmers who were supposed to sell them. [More]
FTC May Block Planned Sysco And U.S. Foods Merger
By 9.23.14
Last December, we shared the news that commercial food suppliers U.S. Foods and Sysco were planning a merger, which would put about a quarter of the country’s entire foodservice-supply business in the hands of one company. The merger hasn’t yet gone through, and the Federal Trade Commission is considering a federal antitrust lawsuit to stop it. [More]
California Lays Down New Requirements For Olive Oil Labels
By 9.19.14
Sure, the label says California olive oil — but how do you know something else hasn’t crept in along the way, an oil of another sort? California is trying to prevent that adulteration from happening by instituting new standards for olive oil makers in the state. [More]
Newsflash: Frozen Breakfast Sandwiches Are Not Nutritious, Taste Weird
By 9.15.14
There’s a wide variety of frozen breakfast sandwiches on the market, but are any of them any good? No, not particularly, our flavorful colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports determined. Very few of the sandwiches they reviewed earned a good nutrition rating, and sandwiches don’t retain their texture very well after freezing. As with the guacamole tests earlier this year, they provided a recipe and recommended that maybe you just make own breakfast burritos at home instead. [Consumer Reports] [More]
General Mills Acquires Annie’s Homegrown Foods, Bunny Mascots
By 9.9.14
Annie’s is a 25-year-old company based in Berkeley, California that has its organic products everywhere from the shelves of health food stores to the checkout of Target. General Mills is 158-year-old company based in the Minneapolis area that owns familiar American brands like Cheerios cereal and Green Giant frozen vegetables. These companies are getting hitched, thanks to their shared love of the growing organic food market and money. [More]
September Food And Supplement Recall Roundup – Salmonella Is Not A Superfood
By 9.8.14
In our September Recall Roundup for food, there could be walnuts lurking in the spinach, eggs in the frozen desserts, and Salmonella in pretty much every kind of food. [More]
Just Because You’re Shopping At A Farmer’s Market Doesn’t Mean The Food Came From That Farm
By 9.4.14
When you pull up to a farmer’s market, ready to stock up on locally grown produce, you’d probably assume that everything on sale was raised by the farmers doing the selling, or that it was at least from another local grower. But you may be buying food that’s actually been trucked in from hundreds of miles away, possibly from another country. [More]
Map Shows Which Foods Set Your State Apart From The Rest Of The Country
By 9.2.14
Look around you — are you surrounded by cheddar cheese? Ranch dressing? Or is every menu you see overflowing with hoagies? What’s on many of the menus in your state sets it apart, whether it’s chocolate, ahi tuna or cheesesteaks. [More]
Americans Are Gradually Eating Less Cereal For Some Reason
By 8.14.14
It was once as American as, well, blue jeans to start your day with a bowl of cereal and milk. Breakfast grains were once major sponsors behind kid-oriented television programming, or licensed beloved fictional characters to put on cereal boxes. Now sales at major cereal companies are down, and a variety of reasons are contributing to the decline. [More]
Scientists Accidentally Find Switch In Mouse’s Brain That Can Turn Appetite On Or Off
By 8.12.14
What if you had the superhuman ability to resist a plate of say, fresh cheese curds, or maybe a giant vat of banana pudding? The power to walk away from your favorite food could be within reach eventually, after scientists stumbled on a sort of appetite on/off switch in the brain of mice. [More]
