When food is past its prime and leaves the distributor or supermarket, where does it go? We’d like to think that it all ends up in a compost pile or anaerobic digester, which at least re-purposes the food and the methane it gives off while decomposing to fertilize future crops and to generate electricity. Here’s one sad exception: bagged salads. [More]
vegetables
Organic Spinach From Meijer, Target, Wild Harvest, And Cadia Recalled For Possible Listeria
By 3.25.15
It’s not always fun when our predictions come true, especially when that prediction is about how contaminated food from a single vendor is about to trigger recalls in a variety of places across the food supply. On Monday, we predicted more organic spinach recalls to come, and we were right. Packages of frozen organic spinach from four additional brands have now been recalled due to possible contamination with Listeria bacteria. [More]
Brace Yourselves For A Frozen Organic Spinach Recallapalooza
By 3.23.15
When food items with ingredients in common that were sold at multiple retailers are recalled because of the same food-borne pathogen, that’s a sign that the source may be that ingredient that they have in common. Three recent recalls from Amy’s, Wegmans, and Costco show that it may be wise for people who are young, old, sick, or pregnant to stay away from organic spinach. [More]
5 Food Prep Tips For Reducing Pesticide Risks
By 3.20.15
When you buy a sack of potatoes with dirt still clinging to the spuds, you know they’ll need a wash before going into your dinner. But those completely clean-looking apples, peaches, and strawberries may carry a less-visible danger in the form of pesticide residues. [More]
Consumerist Friday Flickr Finds
By 2.27.15
Here are ten of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness. [More]
Bag Of Fresh Spinach Includes Free Dead Mouse
By 2.24.15
A fresh salad and some lean protein make a fine dinner, but a couple in Georgia are kind of freaked out at the freebie that came in their bag of pre-washed spinach. After eating most of the package, they found a fresh dead mouse at the bottom. How did it get there? [More]
Whole Foods Introduces Produce Ranking System Based On Suppliers’ Farming Tactics
By 10.15.14
How do the fruits and vegetables you buy stack up against other produce? Are those flowers really the best you can get? Whole Foods is trying to answer some of those questions for customers with its new “responsibly grown” labeling system that ranks produce and plants at its stores, based on how suppliers farm those products. [More]
Study: Eating These 41 ‘Powerhouse’ Fruits And Vegetables Can Prevent Chronic Disease
By 6.6.14
Is your daily diet full of “Powerhouse” fruits and vegetables? Probably not, unless you regularly munch on watercress, chard or beet greens. [More]
All Squash Weighs Four Ounces At Stop & Shop, Regardless Of Size
By 5.2.14
We all learned in elementary school that an object’s mass and its size are different things. A pound of cotton candy is much larger than a pound of, say, raisins, because raisins are so much denser. Yet this package of squash that reader Adam spotted at Stop & Shop would have us believe that some of the same vegetable are twice as dense as others. [More]
At Kroger, “Local” Produce Comes From Within 400 Miles
By 4.29.14
The virtue and environmental impact of buying locally-grown produce is a controversial question, but produce trucked from a nearby farm usually tastes better, at least. It’s also nice when a grocery store points out which items of produce come from farms in your community. The key question is, how do you define “local”? [More]
Cilantro Is Not Local To Ohio When Grown In California
By 4.28.14
It’s not that Nancy expects all of the produce sold at her local Kroger to be grown locally. That’s not possible, especially if you like things that can’t be grown in Ohio. For example: bananas. She does expect that when the company labels produce as locally grown, that it is. The store has some trouble with this concept. [More]
Keep Your Onions & Potatoes Separated And Other Tips For Storing Fruits & Vegetables
By 4.5.14 — Updated: 1.20.17
We’ve all got kitchens and we all eat food, but not everyone can agree on where and how to store that food so it doesn’t immediately turn into a moldy mess or dry out into a worthless husk. We’ve already looked at the the best places and methods for keeping your bread, dairy and eggs fresh, and in this second Spoilage Wars installment, we’ll deal with the fruits and vegetables you endeavor to keep from rotting away. [More]
Starbucks Offers Vegetable Muffin Or Mini-Quiche In Hong Kong
By 3.17.14
We consider it our duty to keep you updated about the finest and most exciting international fast food available, like Marmite pizza and apple burgers. We’re not so sure that this new pastry offering from Starbucks in Hong Kong will have Americans longing to buy plane tickets, though. It features…vegetables? [More]
Suss Out Fakers At Farmers Markets
By 10.12.10
As an undercover hidden camera investigation recently revealed, not every bearded and overall-wearing guy behind the stand at farmers markets is selling food he grew himself. Some of them just load up a local produce warehouses and sell it to you at a feel-good-about-saving-the-earth premium. So how do you tell who’s real and who’s shoveling you fertilizer? [More]
Los Angeles Farmers Markets Full Of Lies, Warehouse Produce
By 9.27.10
If you’re in California and need to make a little extra cash, why not buy a bag of baby carrots from the supermarket, throw some potting soil on them, and sell them at your local farmers market as fresh-from-your-farm organic treats? Okay, maybe technically that’s not permitted, but who’s going to stop you? An NBCLA investigation found vendors at several farmers markets were lying to customers about their produce, and sourcing it from local warehouses instead of their own farms. [More]
How Bags Of Oranges Costs More Than Coke
By 3.12.10
This is also why you’re fat. A graph of inflation-adjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows how the prices of different food and beverages has changed over the past three decades. The price of crap food over the past 30 years has dropped. At the same time, the food you used to try to hide in your glass of milk has gotten steadily more expensive. No wonder the average man in his 60’s is 25 lbs heavier than he was in the late 70’s. Hey, govmnt, how about shifting some of those corn and soybean subsidies over to produce growers? [More]
Lay's Chip Tracker Helps You Find The Source Of Your Salty Snacks
By 8.5.09
Do you lie awake at night, wondering where the potatoes in the bag of Lay’s chips you downed while watching “Dancing With the Stars” were grown? No, neither do most sane people. However, our alert colleagues over at ShopSmart magazine have discovered the Lay’s Chip Tracker, which can tell you the potato source based on the bag’s production code. No, seriously.
Store Brand Mixed Vegetables: Not Quite As Mixed As You Would Think
By 7.16.09
Have you ever taken a serving of mixed vegetables and sorted it by vegetable? Louis, annoyed at inaccurate depictions of food on labels, decided to sort, count, and weigh the vegetables in his can of Always Save brand canned vegetables. The results? Uh, not so mixed.
