Nestlé is the latest company to slap some nutrients (or in this case probiotics) in a product, call it “functional food,” and market it to shoppers as a healthy and smart product. Last week, the FTC got the company to agree to stop claiming that its chocolate Boost Kid Essentials–which comes with a straw lined with probiotic bacteria (mmm delicious!)–will do things like protect them from diarrhea and improve school attendance rates. The FTC says the claims aren’t substantiated with adequate scientific research. [More]
groceries
Hey You In The Kitchen: You're Doing It Wrong
By 7.13.10
Are you holding on to some old kitchen myths? If so, this website will shock and astound you as it slap chops the truth into your face. For example, baking soda in the fridge isn’t an efficient way to prevent odors, aluminum cookware doesn’t cause Alzheimer’s, and mayonnaise–at least the commercial brands made in the U.S.–will actually help prevent spoilage in dishes like chicken salad. [More]
Arby's Is Expanding To Supermarket Shelves
By 6.15.10
Although the Arby’s spokeswoman who talked to the website Nation’s Restaurant News wouldn’t give specifics, she confirmed that in the near future you might see “packaged Arby’s items” in your grocery store. Sadly, it looks like these will be food items and not giant foam hats. [More]
Does Your City Spend A Lot On Eating?
By 5.24.10
When it comes to spending on munching and swigging, how do you think your city stacks up? Bundle crunched the numbers and turned it into a plump and juicy infographic, served up piping hot inside… [More]
Customer Says Supermarket Sold Rotten Chicken With New Sell By Date
By 5.18.10
A woman in Brooklyn has accused a local grocery store of slapping a new “sell by” sticker over an expired one in order to unload some old poultry that was past its prime. [More]
Food Tampering Craze Hits Calgary As Copycats Join In
By 4.5.10
Maybe Calgary’s residents didn’t like being eclipsed by the Olympics, or maybe there’s just an awfully high number of bored crooks living there. Either way, the city has now reported 11 cases of food tampering, mostly involving shards of metal inserted into food items, in grocery stores across the city since January. [More]
Investigation Reveals Widespread Fraud In Seafood Packaging
By 3.30.10
It’s a common, legal practice to protect seafood with a layer of ice before packaging it up for retail sale. It’s also apparently a common practice to add that ice into the total weight of the seafood, and in some cases to add more ice than necessary just to bump up the total weight, which isn’t legal and which defrauds the consumer. The National Conference on Weights and Measures recently investigated seafood packaging in 17 states and pulled more than 21,000 packages of seafood from store shelves, noting that in one particularly bad case ice made up 40% of the total listed weight. [More]
Find Out Where Your Dairy And Produce Items Came From
By 3.8.10
A longtime reader sent in a couple of links to websites that let you find out more about your food supply chain, if you’re into that sort of stuff. Where is my milk from? matches carton codes with a list of dairies published by the FDA. FoodLogiq is less user-friendly and requires free registration, but you can apparently use it to track produce from participating growers. (Thanks to Cy!) [More]
Is It Okay To Switch Out Eggs At The Supermarket?
By 2.24.10
Zachery says when he goes to buy a dozen eggs, he wants to make sure he’s not paying for any bad ones, so he opens the cartons and switches them out. He says a fellow shopper told him this was illegal. Obviously this fellow shopper is an idiot, but I thought I’d post Zachary’s question anyway just so readers can share their own supermarket QA methods. [More]
Who Keeps Pooping In My Bags Of Salad?!
By 2.3.10
In my household, there’s an ongoing argument about whether bagged salad can be eaten straight from the bag, or whether it should be washed first, or why did we buy this bag of salad instead of more beer. When not championing beer, I’ve always come down on the don’t-bother-washing side, but I might finally agree to change my food prep habits after this recent Consumer Reports study that says 39% of bagged salads are contaminated with bacteria. [More]
Customer Punches Grocery Store Manager Over Price Of Crab Cakes
By 1.28.10
A man in Sandusky, Ohio, grew so angry at the price of some crab cakes that he punched the store manager “five or six times,” head butted him, and spit in his face. According to the Associated Press article, there was a pricing error in the customer’s favor, and the manager had offered to give the customer the first crab cake at the incorrect price but wanted to charge full price for the rest. [More]
Walgreens Wants To Sell You Food Now
By 1.18.10
Walgreens told Bloomberg News that the company is looking into selling fresh food and prepared meals–things like salads, cut fruits, and sandwiches. From RetailWire: [More]
Tyson Chicken Settles Class-Action Suit, Will Pay $4.4 Million To Consumers
By 1.14.10
If you bought Tyson chicken from 2007 to 2009, you may want to start keeping tabs on the new settlement being considered by Tyson to settle the class-action suit against it. The agreement was filed earlier this week, and a review is scheduled for tomorrow. If approved, approximately $4.4 million will supposedly be available to disburse to consumers. [More]
Save Money By Using Up Old Groceries
By 1.6.10
Chances are you’ve got forgotten food supplies in your pantry, writes Herb Weisbaum, so why not feed your family some old food for a week and ban yourself from the grocery store? The woman in Weisbaum’s article tried it out, and found that there were enough unused items that when she was forced to make do, she figured out a way. [More]
Consumer Reports And New York Times Ask Why There's So Much Air In Packages
By 12.7.09
Padding chip bags with air is a pretty well-understood practice by now–supposedly it helps prevent the chips from being crushed. But what’s the purpose of similar packaging tricks in frozen fish, or boxes of instant rice? After a recent Consumer Reports article questioned the amount of air in packages at the grocery store, New York Times reporter Andrew Adam Newman asked two of the manufacturers for an explanation. [More]
General Mills To Axe Product Lines, Won't Say Which
By 12.4.09
General Mills announced a chilling statement as it announced it will spend $24.1 million in restructuring expenses this quarter. [More]
9 Shrink-Rayed Products To Mourn
By 12.3.09
LiveCheap has scoured the grocery aisles to discover 9 products that have been reduced by the ubiquitous grocery shrink ray. [More]
Is A "Fully-Cooked" Turkey Supposed To Be Hot?
By 11.24.09
Wendy was in charge of planning the at-work Thanksgiving feast for her colleagues at her new job, and was happy to take on the task. A series of misunderstandings at the grocery store deli meant that she nearly had to serve her colleagues a fully cooked but entirely cold turkey. [More]
