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• In-N-Out is suing Bronzeville's Nicky's In-N-Out [Crain's]

• After almost twenty years, McDonald's will no longer be the official fast food of the NBA - it's been edged out by Taco Bell. [Crain's]

• Mario Batali's genetic profile will be revealed in new PBS series Faces of America. [The Food Section]

• A federal court ruled that the Stella D'Oro cookie plant must reinstate its striking workers and pay them back wages. [City Room/NYT]

• The Chicago Food Depository now has refrigerated trucks that act as mobile food pantries, allowing them to reach more needy individuals. [Chi Breaking News]

• Developers nationwide are adding organic farms to their lots to attract home buyers. [NYT]

• Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to citizens: lay off the vodka. [Reuters]

• France's value-added tax on restaurant meals falls today to 5.5 percent from 19.6 percent. [NYT]

• Beer cocktails are cropping up on drink menus nationwide. [NYT]

• Artisanal honeys and blood orange flavored products were among the top trends at this year's Fancy Food Show. [NYT]

• Canadian-caught seal has been banned in the EU, but many European tourists still dine on it when visiting Canada. [NYT]

• This year's corn planting is the second largest since 1946. [NYT]

• Hotelier Ian Schrager has set his sights on Chicago, having allegedly signed a deal to acquire the Ambassador East Hotel and its restaurant, the Pump Room. [Crain's New York]

• Looking for love? Go to Millennium Park: more than half the attendees of the Taste are likely to be single. [Tribune]

• Denny's is trying to rebrand itself as a late night spot for young adults with menu items created by bands like Good Charlotte. [WSJ]

• You could be the next Audrina Patridge: Carl's Jr. is looking for women to pornily eat their burgers in new ads. [Videogum]

• Last night's Law & Order: Criminal Intent featured a struggling chef as a suspect and a food news blog called PotLuck. [Serious Eats]

• That extra security might have been worth it: Police arrested a man attempting to carry a fully loaded handgun into the Taste of Chicago last night. [Chi Breaking News]

• Another upside: The smaller number of vendors at this year's Taste means that there's more room for pedestrians, and the booths themselves have some more space. [The Stew]

• The Nestle plant at the center of the cookie dough E. coli outbreak repeatedly denied inspectors' requests for information and records of the plant. [WSJ]

• Summer restaurant jobs are still plentiful, despite the economic situation. [Diner's Journal/NYT]

• Heather Mills is opening V-Bites, a vegan restaurant, in the United Kingdom. [NYDN]

• Colorado's JBS Swift Beef is recalling 380,000 pounds of products because of possible E. coli contamination. [NYP]

• Today's Taste of Chicago will have a much larger police presence than last year's, including on public transit and at Taste-adjacent train and bus stops. This is all despite the smaller number of vendors and lower expected turnout. [Tribune]

• Over 2,000 specialty food purveyors will exhibit at the Fancy Food Show in New York, which starts this weekend, but most consumers won't get to taste the products until they hit supermarket shelves. [City Room/NYT]

• Meanwhile, Grocery stores are cutting back on inventory and slashing the variety of goods they offer — no more 100-item salad dressing selections. [WSJ]

• India's security forces are mixing one of the world's hottest chili powders into hand grenades. [Reuters]

• You might have noticed that Rick Bayless won last night's Top Chef Masters. Stay tuned for him on a later episode of the show. [Zap2It]

• Classy: PETA has erected a billboard reading "Meat Kills" outside of the Scotland hospital where a pregnant woman recently died of swine flu. [Copyranter]

• All Starbucks iced coffee comes sweetened unless otherwise specified. [Newsday]

• Wolfgang Puck is lobbying ICANN to add .food to the list of top-level domains. [Eat Me Daily]

• PepsiCo has purchased 20% of Japan's largest snack company. [Crain's]

• While Top Chef-er Richard Blais's nitrogen-frozen popcorn popsicles will be on offer at the Taste this week, Blais himself won't be on hand to help promote them. [Sun-Times]

• Sobriety can be challenging for recovering alcoholics in the hospitality industry. [NYT]

• The ads for Burger King's new "Super Seven Incher" Sandwich aren't exactly subtle in their fellatio imagery. [Gawker]

• Fast-casual restaurants are in an all-out pricing war and some worry that the discounts could spoil profit margins forever. [NYT]

• Supermarkets are losing the frills like coffee bars in order to better appeal to budget-conscious consumers. [WSJ]

• The American Medical Association recently put out a resolution promoting local, sustainable food. [The Atlantic Food Channel]

• There was a fire last night at Rosebud on Rush; the restaurant was exacuated but no one was hurt. [Sun-Times]

• A Chicago meat producer has voluntarily recalled 6,000 pounds of ground beef that were shipped to restaurants and hotels, and which might be tainted with e. coli. [Chicago Breaking News]

• David A. Kessler, former head of the FDA, has spent years cracking why we crave certain foods, and revealing that food companies and chain restaurants specifically engineer their products to make us want them as much as possible. [NYT]

• The current state of global food is in crisis: one in six humans suffers from undernourishment, most are located in developing nations. [FAO]

• Stringent EU produce and livestock guidelines have left open a window for cloned food products, categorizing them as "novel foods" and saying they could be approved if they "do not present a danger for consumers, do not mislead them and are not nutritionally disadvantageous for them." [AFP]

• McDonald's new Angus Burger will debut in all of the chain's Chicago locations on July 2; it's the restaurant's first new burger in eight years, and the largest one on offer. [Crain's Chicago]

• The Sunday Tribune is reorganizing itself, with a new tabloid-formatted features section that will include, among other things, the paper's weekend food content. [Tribune]

• Hare Krishna communities are sponsoring "adopt-a-cow" programs to save their cattle sanctuaries. [WSJ]

• Iconic Pittsburgh beer Iron City is moving production to Latrobe, Pennsylvania. [WSJ]

• Francis Ford Coppola has included a picture of one of his vineyard's wines in an ad for his new film Tetro. [NYP]

• Chicago's infamous "food deserts" have shrunk since they first came to the forefront of the news three years ago, thanks to the openings of new grocery stores. [Tribune]

• An expansion of the landmark Congress Hotel has been approved; it would include, among other things, a new restaurant for the historic building. [Sun-Times]

• World-renowned chef Alain Ducasse wants to create space food for astronauts. [Bloomberg]

• KFC's chicken giveaway snafu has resulted in a class-action lawsuit. [TMZ]

• Uruguay's El Garzón is one of South America's hottest new restaurants, despite being tremendously expensive and in a hard-to-reach rural area. [WSJ]

• Despite some deft presentation and a demonstrated tuna mastery, Chicago chef Graham Elliot Bowles didn't win last night's episode of Top Chef Masters. [The Stew]

• The Energy and Commerce Committee in the House passed a bill yesterday that would require food facilities to be inspected once a year and would force companies to keep better records, to help in the event of an outbreak of food-borne illness. [Boston Globe]

• Goats — the new hot meat? Ranchers Bill and Nicolette Hahn Niman think so, and are raising the animals because they co-ranch efficiently with cattle, plus they taste good. [The Atlantic Food]

• US and Canada have agreed to accept each other's standards for organic food, so organic farmers on either side of the border can market their food under an organic label in both countries. [Reuters]

• Prices for some dishes at this year's Taste of Chicago will go above the previous $5 ceiling, with certain items selling for $5.50 or even $6. [Crain's Chicago]

• Comfort food is a trendy choice at weddings, but beware: it can cost just as much as the fancy stuff. [NYT]

• A British fake celebrity chef, who claimed to know Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver, has been unmasked and is facing jail time. [Sun]

• The gardening industry is rolling out a host of new products targeted at newbies, including a "salsa and tomato sauce" plot. [WSJ]

• Legendary French chef Albert Roux will open his first American restaurant...in Texas. [NYDN]

• In an effort to entice customers with the smell of freshly-ground coffee, Starbucks baristas will soon start grinding new batches throughout the day, rather than just in the mornings. [WSJ]

• The Dunkin Donuts at 21 W Madison was closed yesterday for a fruit fly infestation; the restaurant remains closed for the time being. [Crain's Chicago]

• It turns out that Dubuque, Iowa has the highest average burger cost in the nation at $4.29. The nationwide average is $3.12. [Telegraph Herald via A Hamburger Today]

• Jean-Georges Vongerichten prepared halibut for Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter at the United Nations last night. Security was so tight that only the chef and one assistant were allowed in the kitchen. [Crain's]

• Roadfood's Jane and Michael Stern regret not including Korean tacos in their new book, 500 Things to Eat Before It's Too Late. [WSJ]

• Fortified foods (like orange juice with added omega-3s, or pasta with added calcium) are trendy, but they don't always deliver the health benefits they promise. [WSJ]

• More and more children are choosing healthy options like yogurt and grilled chicken at fast food outlets. [Well/NYT]

• With summer vacation on hand, Chicago food pantries are preparing for an influx of children in need of nourishment. [Tribune]

• North Center's Ribfest went off on Friday night almost without a hitch, but for Browntrout running out of their product before everyone got a chance to try it. [The Stew]

• ...but San Francisco's Great American Food and Music Festival wasn't so lucky. The event's payment system went down, lines were out of control, and untold hordes of guests left without even getting the chance to try the food. Serious Eats (the event's sponsor) has apologized, and there will be refunds issued. [Serious Eats]

• Resort communities are seeing a massive influx in job-seekers, otherwise overqualified folks who are willing to work as corn-dog fryers and cotton-candy salespeople for the summer. [NYT]

• In an effort to up their products' popularity, the makers of Vegemite are introducing a new flavor wherein the yeast-based spread is mixed with cream cheese. The name of the new product will be determined through a public contest. [BBC]

• A $25 bump in unemployment payouts coupled with no change in the food stamp income cap has unintentionally pushed many laid-off workers out of the eligibility category for food stamps. [AP]

• Bice Restaurant Holdings, which owns Bice in Chicago, has been caught charging diners for high-priced fish and then serving similar, lower-priced versions instead — like subbing in catfish for grouper, or tilapia for red snapper. [Sun-Times]

• Thee Evanston baristas [er, baristos? They're guys] from the Brothers K Cafe have been selected to compete in a latte art competition in Las Vegas. [Tribune]

• Venezuela has banned Coke Zero, citing the beverage's possible health risks. [WSJ]

• In an alarming sign for T.G.I. Friday's, the chain has rolled out five major promotions in 2009 alone. [Salon]

• Poultry was the number one source of food poisoning in 2006. [NYT]

• A 2005 ordinance prevents new Chicago elementary schools from having working kitchens, despite the fact that fresh-cooked food is generally healthier and better tasting. [Tribune]

• Chicago won't be represented at San Francisco's Great American Food & Music Festival, because Hot Doug's couldn't swing the logistics of getting hot dogs for 10,000 people over to the left coast. [SJMercury]

• In the face of the economic crunch, some strip clubs are toning down their upscale options, including pricey entrees. [WSJ]

• Shocker! Ted Allen and Rocco DiSpirito admit to eating junk food on occasion. [NYDN]

• The House passed a food safety bill that would increase the authority and funding of the FDA. [WSJ]

#&8226; Wilco hung out on the roof of Superdawg yesterday, doing a photo shoot for Spin. [TOC]

• In response to the recession, many Americans are significantly curtailing their meat consumption, becoming, in effect, "flexitarians." [Gourmet]

• More and more restaurant chains are adding to their grocery offerings — branded coffees, ice creams, frozen foods, and other products. [WSJ]

• Fruit foraging and trading is on the rise with urban residents. [NYT]

• Norman Brinker, the man who made Bennigan's and Chili's household names, has passed away at 78. [NYT]

• Fine wine has long been a good investment, but those considering shelling out should be mindful that this won't always be the case. [WSJ]

• Governor Quinn visited the Chicago food depository, where he announced that there's a chance food banks will suffer if the state can't come up with a balanced budget on time. [ABCLocal]

• The European Commission has dropped a plan to allow rosé wine to be made by blending red and white wines. [NYT]

• Small craft brewers and Big Beer are joining forces to fight beer taxes. [Atlantic Food]

• A new test developed by researchers at Purdue could identify tainted food faster than current procedures. [NYT]

• Boxed wine is less likely than bottled to have an unpleasant green vegetable taste (or "ladybug taint"). [New Scientist via The Awl]

Continue reading "Mediavore: Holding Food Banks Hostage" »

• South Evanston residents are raising money to aid a pizza deliveryman who was brutally beaten in their neighborhood. [Tribune]

• McDonald's sales rose 5.1% in May, largely due to strong McCafe performance. [WSJ]

• In-N-Out won Best Burger in Zagat's 2009 Fast Food Survey with McDonald's taking top honors for fries. [Zagat Buzz]

• At a new (decidedly non-vegetarian) burger restaurant in New Zealand called Murder Burger the staff wears shirts proclaiming "Meat is Murder." [Daily Telegraph]

• Audrina Patridge of The Hills is following in Padma Lakshmi's footsteps by promoting Carl's Jr. [NYDN]

• McDonald's is confident that now is the right time to be rolling out their McCafe push, even though sales at established coffee chains like Starbucks are suffering. [BizBash Chicago]

• Certain pistachios are being recalled for salmonella contamination. Again. Sigh. [AP/Google]

• Despite being hit hard in last year's market fall, restaurant stocks are recovering nicely, with several recently tripling (or more) the value of their lowest points. [The Street]

• Lunch trucks are hip and popular, to be sure, but they're also changing consumers' expectations of lunch: local, organic, high-quality preparations are becoming the norm. [WSJ]

• Despite his financial troubles stateside, Gordon Ramsay is set to reopen Petrus, his flagship restaurant, in London's Belgravia neighborhood. According to Ramsay, the reopening marks a new chapter in his brand's life. [Bloomberg]

• The Illinois public spending bill passed this week includes $10 million to help offset food deserts and other areas without easy access to fresh fruit and vegetables. [Tribune]

• The FDA is set to impose fees on food companies to fund safety inspections, but industry groups warn the fees could lead to conflicts of interest. [WSJ]

• Maine's infamous topless coffeeshop has burned down. [Boston Herald]

• Dunkin' Donuts is expanding in Asia, particularly South Korea, the company's largest growth market. [WSJ]

• Food blogger Pim Techamuanvivit (of Chez Pim) is endorsing Rachel's Yogurt and Cottage Cheese. [The Food Section]

• An Applebee's in Plainfield was performing so poorly that it's now being converted into a doctor's office. [Sun-Times]

• Fake speakeasies, "one of the strangest exercises in nostalgia ever to grip the public," are a big trend nationwide. [NYT]

• Indie band The Hold Steady appear in a print ad for Top Chef Masters, claiming they're excited to watch the show on their tour bus. [Pitchfork]

• Michael Foley, former chef of Printer's Row Restaurant, is launching a line of frozen foods that will be available through Peapod. [PRNW]

• A suburban man held an employee at Chicago Ridge's Papa Luigi's restaurant at knifepoint, but was disarmed by another employee and held until police came. [Tribune]

• Despite its morning show "Morning Joe" signing a lucrative sponsorship deal with Starbucks, MSNBC assures viewers that they'll continue to provide critical coverage of the coffee behemoth when warranted. [Tribune]

• A new report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest finds that fast-casual restaurants like the Olive Garden are by far your least healthy dining option. [NYDN]

• As the fortunes of Swiss banks fall, the bankers' appetite for Italian food has increased. [NYT]

• Grant Achatz's Twitter-based hiring process includes Iron Chef-esque trial by fire: destemming rosemary, microplating microgreens, and creating a dish from a pre-determined set of components. [TOC]

• Grape Nuts are being rebranded as the father figure of the cereal world, but not all the cereal's fans are pleased with this emphasis on masculinity. [WSJ]

• Barack and Michelle Obama spent two hours dining at New York's Blue Hill on Saturday night. [Yahoo News]

• Pinkberry founder Young Lee's house looks a little bit like a Pinkberry. [WSJ]

• Papa John's founder John Schnatter is offering $25,000 to anyone who can find the 1972 Camaro he sold for seed money in 1984. [Gothamist]

• A feud between Kaze Sushi's head chef and majority owner could close the restaurant. [CB]

• A Deerfield woman is accused of using a discussion about ice cream as a distraction to steal $20 from two children at a Baskin-Robbins. [CST]

• Organic dairies are having a tough time as many penny-pinching consumers turn back to conventional milk products. [NYT]

• Last night's Scripps National Spelling Bee was full of food words, including tagliatelle, Neufchâtel, and blancmange. Bonus: winner Kavya Shivashankar described herself as "lickerish" or fond of good food. [Eat Me Daily]

• Chick-Fil-A will open its first Chicago-area location in Aurora. [Chicago Business]

• With restaurants slashing lunch prices, there's no need to spend more than ten bucks on your midday meal. [CT]

• In what is likely a distressing economic indicator, the French drank 10% less French wine last year than in 2007. [NYP]

• Top Chef Masters judge Jay Raynor on the show's panel: "You know, we all thought we were all hired to be the bitchy one." [The Feedbag]

• Food-based charity auctions are on the rise in Chicago. [Chicago Business]

• Weeds like dandelion and purslane may be scorned by gardeners, but they're increasingly popular in salads. [WSJ]

• Increased interest in slow food has led to a resurgence of canning. [NYT]

• New tome Catching Fire argues that cooking is what prompted human evolution. [NYT]

• A Washington D.C. Councilman is proposing a ban on single-slice pizza sales in the city's Adams Morgan neighborhood, charging that they are somehow contributing to violence. [Slice]

• Medici is benefiting from Obama-related tourism by peddling shirts that declare "Obama Eats Here." [CST]

• A scandal has erupted in the world of wine after revelations that writers for influential newsletter Robert Parker's Wine Advocate have been traveling on wine industry groups' dollar. [WSJ]

• After trace amounts of cocaine were found in Red Bull Cola, six German states have stopped selling the energy drink. [NYP]

• Organic farms are newly popular as internship opportunities. [NYT]

• A new study shows a strong association between childhood obesity and food allergies. [NYT]

• The official count is in: Attendance at the National Restaurant Association show fell by 24 percent this year. [Crain's Chicago]

• An Illinois ground beef manufacturer recalled almost 100,000 pounds of ground beef yesterday after a cluster of E. coli infections. [NYT]

• McDonald's will explore the use of "cage-free" hens for their eggs. [Chicago Business]

• Despite rumors to the contrary, Giada De Laurentiis says she and Rachael Ray are not feuding. [NYDN]

• Sixteen employees were laid off from Zagat yesterday. [FishbowlNY/Mediabistro via Eat Me Daily]

• Hipster Thai restaurant Sticky Rice has been temporarily closed by the DPH for mouse-related reasons. [CBN]

• Start stockpiling the booze: a new Senate proposal could raise the tax on beer 145 percent and wine 233 percent. [NYP]

• A new London restaurant uses an iPhone-like digital ordering system that eliminates the need for waiters. [Chow]

• Daniel Carasso, who as president of Dannon helped create yogurt's worldwide popularity, has died at 103. [NYT]

• Fans of the very au courant green wild watercress, beware! If it grows in polluted waters, it can cause a nasty liver ailment. [WSJ]

• A cab crashed into Petterino's last night. Again. No injuries, lots of broken glass. [WBBM]

• Cattails — the hot new ingredient? They're on the menu at Mado and The Bristol. [Mouthing Off]

• Sriracha is the condiment of the moment, appearing on menus everywhere from Jean Georges Vongerichten restaurants to Applebee's. [NYT]

• Thousands of bottles of California and Burgundy wines were auctioned off at Christie's New York last night, with a few bottles fetching over $25,000. [NYP]

• Wendy's is entering the blended coffee fray with their new Frosty-Cino, which is exactly what it sounds like. [AMNY]

• What you see is rarely what you get: Food stylists, who prep food for photo shoots, have some tricks up their sleeves, including gluing together broken crusts with Vaseline. [AMNY]

• A preview of the Lincoln Park Whole Foods behemoth, opening tomorrow, indicates that the Chicago-themed mini-restaurants are going to be delicious. [Damian Daily]

• Last night's Q&A with Michael Pollan at the CPL didn't cover any ground we haven't heard before: "Broccoli doesn't have a marketing campaign," and all that. [Chicago Bites]

• Full-service restaurants had a promising quarter, with sales up 5 percent. [Tribune]

• Starbucks is launching its biggest marketing campaign ever, a series of print ads and posters that touts the perfection of the chains' coffee. [NYT]

• Two men were arrested for throwing burritos at employees of a Lincoln Park taco stand after they won an arcade game and realized there was no cash prize. [S-T]

• Big chain restaurants oppose efforts by Congress to mandate posting calorie information nationwide, and instead propose to display nutritional information "in plain sight" but not necessarily on the menu. [Tribune]

• After 22 years of being open only from April to October, famed Spanish restaurant El Bulli will switch to a June-December schedule this year. [EaterNY]

• Most chain restaurants are faring poorly in the recession, but PF Chang's is thriving. [Slate]

• Gordon Ramsay's alleged mistress appeared on the Hell's Kitchen season finale. [EMD]

• The willingness of the Obama administration to consider ideas about local and sustainable food means it's a great time to be a progressive food activist. [NYT]

• A report from the Government Accountability Office alleges that the FDA is doing little to prevent seafood fraud, checking only 2% of imported seafood. [Diner's Journal/NYT]

• The food industry is lobbying hard against proposals that would require companies to pay for more annual inspections. [WSJ]

All the concern about high-fructose corn syrup has lead to the unlikely resurrection of sugar. [NYT]

• Michelle Obama: locavore. The First Lady will plant a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. Everyone, including President Obama, will have to help with the weeding. [NYT]

• In order to better compete with Coors Lite, Miller Lite is launching a new ad campaign as well as redesigned bottles and cans. [WSJ]

• New iPhone app Locavore helps users find nearby farmers markets, as well as what's in season in their area. [Serious Eats]

• It seems likely that norovirus was the culprit for the hundreds sickened after eating at UK Michelin three-star The Fat Duck. [Hospitality]

• Jamie Oliver's support for British pork has made him PETA's latest target. [All Headline News]

• An upscale New York restaurant will offer free, three-course meals to victims of Bernard Madoff's massive fraud scheme. [CNN]

• An Ohio county threatens to ignore food stamps altogether after relatively well-ff people have begun receiving them. [AP/NBC]

• The CEO of Kellogg food company says he will urge Congress to tighten the U.S. food safety system after this year's massive salmonella outbreak. [Chicago Tribune]

• The owner of eight New York restaurants will pay $2.3 million to 813 workers who received less than minimum wage. [NY Times]

• Could we have been in a "restaurant bubble?" More and more highly qualified chefs are finding it hard to get work. [U.S. News]

• Despite falling 20% short of meeting its basic food needs, North Korea is refusing food aid from the U.S. [Reuters]

• A large-scale study of food allergies finds the most common allergens are peanuts and shrimp, and young black males are at the highest risk of having allergies. [USNews]

• The Reuters Food & Agriculture Summit is in Chicago this week; topics of conversation include HFCS and the rise of bartering as currency drops. [Reuters]

• Greenopia has issued ratings to fast-food restaurants based on their eco-friendliness; Pizza Fusion and Le Pain Quotidien ranked four leafs, McDonald's one, most zero. [MSNBC]

• Iron Chef regular Cat Cora is opening her first restaurant, which will be located in Disney World. [Seattle Times]

• Labels on fresh meat, raw nuts and fresh and frozen produce must now list where the food came from. So now you can see exactly how far your food has traveled to get to the supermarket. [MSNBC]

• GoodGuide, which is useful for finding out if your laundry detergent is especially harmful to the environment, for example, has now added food to its database. Each food is rated according to its health/nutrition information, environmental performance, and social performance. [CNET News]

• TableXChange, the site that let you buy and sell restaurant reservations, is a victim of the recession — the site shuts down on April 1. [Wall Street Journal]

• Corned beef and cabbage...on pizza? Apparently it's a popular St. Patrick's Day meal at a Boston restaurant. Make your own with this recipe. [ABC News]

• The food situation in North Korea is desperate, and the government has decided to take such measures as banning small-lot farming (which many families use to keep from starving) and forcing farmers to give what little food they have to the army. [Reuters]

• Lawmakers in California are considering the possibility of a checkout alert system for foods that have been recalled. We'd rather see all the contamination scares come to an end, but it seems better than nothing. [LA Times]

• In the wake of a year rife with food contamination scandals, President Obama has promised to improve food safety. [NYT]

• Long before there were peanut product tainting issues, there were peanut allergies. The world has moved one step closer to dealing with the latter, after a study has shown that it's possible to gradually increase tolerance to peanuts. Now let's just hope that Obama and checkout alerts take care of the former. [USA Today]

• North Korea just got its first pizzeria, and it only took 10 years of planning! The question is less "will it be a success?", and more how many "let them eat pie" jokes will be made? [The Guardian]

• The Chicago foie gras ban of 2006 seems to have had much more to do with politics than with the merits of foie gras itself. [Chicago Tribune]

• After Kelloggs dropped Michael Phelps' advertising contract in the wake of his public bong hit debacle, the company donated 3,800 pounds of cereal to a San Francisco food bank. [MSNBC]

• The Fat Duck, Britain's renowned restaurant that closed due to a food poisoning scare, has re-opened. [AP]

• The Acai berry has garnered lots of attention for weight-loss and anti-aging benefits, but the main question still remains: Does it work?. [New York Times]

• Colorado grocery and convenience stores won't be able to sell full-strength beer after liquor store owners protested the change in state law. [Chicago Tribune/AP]

• A man killed another man and himself in the basement of a New Jersey restaurant. [MSNBC]

• It just became cheaper to eat out in Paris, and everywhere else in the EU — each country can now set value-added tax rates below the 15 percent minimum. [New York Times]

• The Chopping Block, the new show where couples do their best to impress Marco Pierre White in a restaurant wars-like competition, premieres tonight on NBC. [Los Angeles Times]

• It's official — Virginia's restaurants will be smoke-free by Dec. 1. The law was signed by Governor Tim Kaine on Monday. [Roanoke Times]

• Calorie counts may be appearing on Oklahoma menus soon; the state senate voted to set up a task force to examine the issue. [MSNBC]

• It looks like Michelle Obama is taking up the healthful eating cause and encouraging people to eat fresh, unprocessed foods. [New York Times]

• Haagen-Dazs is downsizing their "pint" from 16 to 14 ounces, in a move Ben & Jerry's is calling "downright wrong." [Advertising Age]

• McDonald's has done alright in the financial crisis so far, but company executives are worried about the future. [Wall Street Journal]

• Quaker Oats has launched a new advertising campaign and an optimistic new slogan, "Go, humans, go!" [New York Times]

• Virginia governor Tim Kaine signed a bill prohibiting smoking in the state's bars and restaurants. [Roanoke Times]

• Gordon Ramsay has sold his Los Angeles restaurant Gordon Ramsay at The London. [Daily Dish/Los Angeles Times]

• A California millionaire left his estate to Vanguard University, and it's all because of the school's cafeteria. Known as the "campus grandpa," he ate nearly every meal at Vanguard. [LA Times]

• During more prosperous times, luxury spirits sold like hotcakes, but now that consumers are cutting back on spending, brands like Grey Goose are languishing on the shelves. Meanwhile, liquor sales up are 1% overall, while brands like Popov are up 14%. [NYT]

• Concerned about how your soda habit affects your carbon footprint? Drinkers of Coca-Cola brand beverages can rest a little easier now, as the company just became biggest global brand to have transparency about their carbon footprint. [Guardian]

• A handful of stalwart New York saloons are television-less hold outs, and patrons welcome the respite. [NYT]

• As the recession deepens, foodmakers are being forced to reconsider last year's price hikes. [Chicago Tribune]

• Food stamp usage is at a record high with 31.8 million Americans receiving assistance. [Reuters]

• Private food inspectors don't generally have time to do full inspections and are often paid by the company they're auditing, so their reports are often unreliable. [New York Times]

• It might be a bear market, but McDonald's is feeling decidedly bullish about their new McCafe line of premium coffee beverages. [CNN Money]

• Michelle Obama brought mushroom risotto and broccoli from the White House to a DC soup kitchen and served it up during her lunch hour. [Top of the Ticket/LA Times]

• Americans are pretty much the only people who care about the health benefits of wine. [Slate]

• Fans of Chick-fil-A camped out in front of a new store overnight near Tulsa, hoping to win a year's supply of sandwiches by being one of the first 100 people in line. [Tulsa World]

• New Delhi is getting ready to host an enormous international food festival. Aahar India will feature as many as 450 vendors. [China View]

• The iconic Tick Tock restaurant in Los Angeles is for sale on Ebay. Bidding starts at $5.99. [LA Times]

• Chicago police found 300 pounds of marijuana in several rooms of a Chicago restaurant, including behind a false wall in the basement. [Chicago Tribune]

• An Atlanta woman is grossed out after she found the vertebra of a small mammal in her peanut m&ms. [Fox News]

• This peanut story just keeps getting worse and worse. Now the FDA says inspectors found dead mice and droppings at the Peanut Corporation of America's Texas plant. [Reuters]

• Business in Houston's Asiatown restaurants has taken a nosedive since a string of e-mails detailed how gangs of gunmen have robbed diners in nine different restaurants. Turns out that almost all of the stories are bogus. [Houston Chronicle]

• A bipartisan bill introduced to the Senate would expand funding for the FDA and allow the agency more power to recall food. [Reuters]

• Cube steak is becoming one of the more popular cuts of steak these days. Things you can do with it: make Cuban palomilla or Southern chicken fried steak. [New York Times]

• Panera Bread is the healthiest fast food restaurant, according to Health magazine, because it offers apples or baked chips, half-size portions, and antibiotic- and hormone-free chicken. [MSNBC]

• It's not just big fancy fish like tuna and salmon that suffer from overfishing; bottom-of-the-food-chain species like mackerel and squid are dwindling at a rapid rate, which has an exponential effect on the rest of the ocean's species. [SFGate]

• Organic food is currently only regulated at the production level, but now a German scientist is working on a way to test whether grocery products are organic once they reach retail. [NYT]

• Yet another story on how working professionals are turning to food banks — this time in otherwise affluent Marin County, California. [CNN]

• The 100th annual Michelin Guide was released over the weekend; partially in protest of its rigorous judgment process and make-or-break reputation, two Michelin-starred French chefs have announced that they are pulling their restaurants out of the running. [UK Telegraph]

• Levy Restaurant Group, which owns Obama-family favorite restaurant Spiaggia, flew out chef Tony Mantuano from Chicago to DC to surprise the President with dinner. Obama called Mantuano his "favorite chef." [Tribune]

• A not-so-secret way to feast on lavish gourmet meals? Dinners prepared by students at culinary academies throughout the land. [SF Gate]

• The pages of Gourmet and Food & Wine used to be filled with luxury ingredients and high-end dishes, but not so anymore! In a sign of the times, there's been a marked shift to more economical home cooking in upscale food mags. [NYT]

• Supermarkets and food manufacturers are engaged in a battle of the wills over food prices. To recap: prices went up by as much 15% on some items, but prices on raw food materials has plummeted — by up to 68%. Grocers are retaliating by ramping up their generic brands. Capitalism at work, y'all! [LA Times]

• China has new food safety laws, but consumers are dubious about how effective these regulations will be, citing the lack of oversight at the local level. [USA Today]

• A farm-to-table endeavor in Georgia is utopian food experiment. Not merely a farm and a restaurant, the Inn at Serenebe has spurred an entire hamlet devoted to all that which locavore-foodies hold dear. [NYT]

• Inspectors for the National Organic Problem are now required to report health or safety violations to government authorities. [Diner's Journal/New York Times]

• Despite the dismal times for restaurants, plenty of giant, expensive spots are still opening. [Wall Street Journal]

• Peanut butter recalls have made their way up to Canada. [MSNBC]

• New York gourmet grocer Amish Market must pay over $1.5 million in back wages to workers who were denied overtime. [City Room/New York Times]

• At a South by Southwest preview party, Rachael Ray flirted with the lead singer of Semi Precious Weapons, "grabbing his rear end several times." [New York Post]

• That stomach bug you caught? There's a better chance than anybody had thought that it was food poisoning. Apparently one in four Americans is so afflicted each year. [San Jose Mercury News]

• This year's West Coast salmon season will be slim to nonexistent, officials predict, after fish stocks hit record lows. [AP/Chicago Tribune]

• Is food the new sex? George F. Will explores the idea that, as our mores loosen in relation to the act of love, the act of eating is becoming more and more charged.. [Washington Post]

• The new Brooklyn culinary scene is all about DIY and bartering. And it's full of smart, creative upstarts. [NY Times]

• Between last year's writers' strike and the recent economic slump, Los Angeles restaurants have seen a particularly steep decline in busines — as much as 15 percent in some cases. [LA Times]

• A man was actually selling marijuana from a drive-thru window at a Maryland McDonald's. That's so...brazen. It wasn't too difficult for the cops to find him. [MSNBC]

• If you live in an area with lots of fast food restaurants, you're more likely to have a stroke; in fact, according to a recent study, for every fast food restaurant in an area, the relative risk went up 1 percent. [Los Angeles Times]

• Even the food industry is warming to the idea of more stringent food regulation. [AP]

• Three inebriated men walked into a Berkeley restaurant and demanded free burritos. When they were denied, they flashed a knife and a belt. The restaurant employees, however, weren't scared — they chased the drunks out and beat one of them with a tire iron and metal pipe. All in a day's work. [Mercury News]

• Use less water to boil your pasta and collectively we could as a nation save 250,000-500,000 barrels of oil each year. [New York Times]

• Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack supports Congress's desire to create a single food-safety oversight agency; the current system is excessively bureaucratic and hard to oversee. [AP]

• Additional bags of Northern Star potato products are being voluntarily recalled because of potential contamination. Double-check your freezer stock! [Forbes]

• Washington State sent out food stamp checks to 250,000 recipients in the amount of one dollar each; this idiosyncratic amount is intended to trigger additional federal aid for the state's poor. [SPI]

• Whole Foods' first British grocery store is their overall loss leader, as UK customers are appalled by their high prices and limited parking availability. [BusWeek]

• Manhattan's Moondance Diner was picked up by flatbed truck and moved out of the city a few years ago; after much salvage work it's now doing a brisk business at its new home in Wyoming. [AP/Tribune]

• The Obamas hosted their first official dinner on Sunday night, and Michelle Obama gave an exclusive tour of the kitchen beforehand. On the menu? Wagyu beef and scallops favored by President Obama. [NYT]

• Things not faring well in this economy: casual dining restaurants. Consumers are staying in more, and profits are down by almost 50%. [USA Today]

• New England's Stop & Shop supermarket has recalled potato products made by Northern Star Co. over contamination concerns. [Boston]

• Drug-laced brownies at Heaven City, Milwaukee's "third most romantic restaurant," made three very elderly employees very sick. Will the food tainting never end? [MSNBC]

• The British are catching on to using cooking oil to fuel their cars, prompting a joke headline about how they eat so many fish and chips. [NYT]

• Snapple is losing the high-fructose corn syrup and getting a sleek new makeover. [City Room/New York Times]

• For the first time since at least 1959, beer sales have been negatively effected by the economic climate. [FiveThirtyEight]

• Food bank demand rose 30% in 2008, and pantries are scrambling to keep up with the newly poor. [New York Times]

• The Council of Fashion Designers of America will release a cookbook this fall featuring recipes from a hundred designers. [Women's Wear Daily]

• Nespresso, Nestlé's premium coffee pod line, is the company's fastest-growing brand. [New York Times]

• Just as we had hoped, the Obamas' social inclinations are helping stimulate Washington, D.C.-area restaurants. They actually eat out! [Bloomberg]

• A woman in Florida is arrested for allegedly poisoning baby food jars in a Ft. Myers-area grocery store. Yikes. [MSNBC]

• Fast food chains generally do alright during economic downturns, but one report suggests they're now out to compete with casual "sit-down" restaurants, which are suffering. [CNN]

• Turns out no less a food figure than Tom Colicchio has to deal with finicky children. No matter how you prepare it, many kids just don't like broccoli. [New York Times]

• Two brothers who are gay twins have sued a Vermont restaurant, alleging sexual harassment. [ABC]

• Opening a small restaurant in LA and dealing with the permit process sounds pretty nightmarish. [Los Angeles Times]

• Pizza for breakfast? We don't mean last night's leftovers; check out this polenta, spinach and pancetta pie that makes a good first meal of the day. [New York Times]

• Now Texas is considering a statewide indoor smoking ban. The idea is to simplify the rule for everyone; currently, a number of cities and counties have bans while others don't. [MSNBC]

• A federal appellate court ruled against the New York State Restaurant Association's challenge to the law requiring chain restaurants to list calorie counts. [New York Times]

• Forward Foods, which makes Detour energy bars, has filed for bankruptcy protection. The company had to recall all foods made with peanuts from salmonella-tainted Peanut Corporation of America; unfortunately, those energy bars accounted for 75 percent of the company's sales. [Bloomberg]

• Despite what might seem like media saturation, most consumers still aren't aware of what food products might be tainted and have been recalled. [NYT]

• It's not fair to put all the blame for rising obesity on restaurants — portion sizes and calorie counts from cookbook recipes have been steadily increasing over the years, too. [Tribune/AP]

• In a change of pace from all the layoffs elsewhere, KFC is planning to open 200-300 new restaurants in the UK, hiring about 6000 new jobs. [AFP]

• Artificial sweeteners still have vocal naysayers, even with the introduction of an "all-natural" stevia-based product to the market. [WaPo]

• The Obamas celebrated their first presidential Valentine's Day at Chicago's Table 52, and now reservations are near-impossible to get. [Tribune]

• With all the fuss about contaminated food, it's good to remember that most food contains anything from maggots to mouse poop. There, now don't you feel better? [New York Times]

• The price of cocoa is skyrocketing and, while confectioners are keeping prices down through Valentine's Day, your chocolate could be costlier next week. [Wall Street Journal]

• Starbucks will begin selling "soluble" (read: instant) coffee in selected stores next month. [Crain's]

• More Peanut Corp. of America peanuts are being recalled, this time from the company's Texas plant. [LA Times]

• Breaking: people are spending less on food these days. [Wall Street Journal]

• The company at the middle of the salmonella-tainted peanut scandal shipped its products before getting results of contamination tests, according to investigators. [NY Times]

• All that tainted peanut butter is bringing about changes in the way those and other food products are inspected and controlled. [AP]

• Two Ann Arbor restaurateurs have been sentenced, one to prison time, after they were found guilty of harboring illegal immigrants. [Mlive]

• A complaint letter detailing a sub-par meal on Virgin airlines has taken the web by storm, and airborne caterers have taken notice. But some say airline food isn't necessarily as bad as all that. Oh, really? [CNN]

• Could there be a glimmer of hope for restaurants? Three U.S. chains did better than expected last quarter, but the jury's still out on whether we've seen the bottom. [Reuters]

• Restaurateurs in northern Virginia, until yesterday the last haven for smokers in the District, worry that business might decline once the smoking ban takes effect. [Washington Post]

• Speaking of smoking bans, a bill currently in the Oklahoma legislature would ban smoking in restaurants statewide. A recent poll suggests that it's a popular idea. [MSNBC]

• In a bad economy, people tend to save by forgoing restaurant meals and turning to grocery stores instead. But now competition is so high among grocery stores that profit margins are disappearing as stores engage in price wars. [CNNMoney]

• The Peanut Corporation of America, the company that brought you this salmonella scare, just closed another plant in Texas after it showed signs of possible salmonella contamination. [New York Times]

• Change is all around at restaurants as they figure out how to weather the recession, but some are a bit more creative than others. [Houston Chronicle]

• The FDA used to perform three-quarters of all food inspections; now they barely do half — the rest is done by underfunded state programs. Someone's dropping the buck. [AP]

• It's official: Virginia has become the latest state to ban smoking in restaurants and bars. [WaPo]

• A restaurant in Australia is being investigated after a man died from eating their asparagus sauce. [ABC/au]

• Nadya Suleman, the now-infamous single mother of 14 fertility treatment-aided children, turns out to have been on food stamps — giving rise to general public outrage and calls for increased scrutiny of the program. [Houston Chronicle]

• An Ohio teenager ordered $37,000 worth of candy online and tried to bill it to his former high school. He's been charged with fraud. [Tribune/AP]

• In a move clearly meant to ramp up the competition with Starbucks, McDonald's has wrangled a deal with New York City's Fashion Week. Although the McCafé launch isn't until May, it will be the official drink of Fashion Week. [Advertising Age]

• An ever-growing number of new farmers are people who are doing it for the lifestyle change, though they're not making enough money at it to quit their day jobs. [NYT]

• This weekend, over 5,000 runners competed in the Krispy Kreme Challenge in NC. The race involves eating a dozen donuts per person, which sounds like a recipe for death if there ever was one. [AP/San Francisco Chronicle]

• In other strange food news, a literal ton of frozen chicken was abandoned outside of an old auto factory in Detroit. Investigators are on the case! [AP/Chicago Tribune]

• As with many of the past year's food contamination stories, the salmonella outbreak can be attributed to "holes in the food safety," including ones as egregious as leaking roofs. [NYT]

• Lawmakers in Virginia cross the aisle to support a restaurant smoking ban in that state. [Washington Post]

• Manhattan has been "plagued" by wafts of maple syrup smell for a few years now. Turns out it was coming from herbs used in a New Jersey plant that makes food flavors. [CNN]

• Restaurants are getting hit just like everybody else in this economy. Many are just trying to hang on for the next few months. [MSNBC]

• At least one person is dead and six wounded after two gunmen opened fire on a coffee shop in San Gabriel, Calif. [LA Times]

• And it looks like those tainted peanuts not only went to FEMA, they went to schools, too. Scary. [Washington Post]

• The owners of the Peanut Corporation of America, who are responsible for the recent salmonella outbreak, would like you to know that several private inspectors who they hired thought the plant was in ship-shape condition. [New York Times]

• FEMA food kits might contain tainted peanut butter. Whoops. [CNN]

• Joan Nathan on having her life saved by a Heimlich maneuver performed by Tom Colicchio: "Before the party, I had never met Tom Colicchio. Now we are linked for life." [New York Times]

• The Federal Trade Commission is going to wait 30 days before pursuing its antitrust challenge against Whole Foods. [CNN]

• Though it has been critically reviled, ratings for the Food Network's Chopped! are good enough that the show has been renewed for a second season. [The Feed/Time Out New York]

• Hamas raided a UN warehouse in Gaza last night, taking 3,500 blankets and 400 food parcels meant for needy Gazans. [AP]

• One food bank in Texas, facing increased demand and decreased donations, has taken matters into its own hands by starting a vegetable garden. [Dallas Morning News]

• If you'd like to get a sense of what Denny's was like yesterday, check out this Trib feature in which a reporter visited five different Denny's and got a free meal at each one. [Chicago Tribune]

• New York restaurants are "hugging their customers" with dining deals and "extreme solicitousness tinged with outright desperation." [NYT]

• Looks like those grocery store loyalty cards are good for something other than getting deals; stores with loyalty programs are contacting customers who bought possibly salmonella-tainted peanut products by telephone to warn them of the risk. [US News & World Report]

• President Obama isn't mad at the FDA for failing to prevent salmonella outbreaks before they start; he's just very, very disappointed. [WaPo]

• An uptick in the misdiagnosis of allergies can lead to even more problems than the (theoretical) allergies themselves. [NYT]

• All the food-and-drink-related Superbowl commercials on Sunday were pretty much duds. [LAT]

• Organic farmers are increasingly skeptical of fertilizer producers, and want there to be more government oversight. [Mercury/AP]

• Denny's is offering free Grand Slam breakfasts today to basically anyone who comes in before 2pm today and asks for one. No catch. Probably giant lines, though. [BusinessWeek]

• There were many important Bowls yesterday — the Super Bowl, the Puppy Bowl, and Philadelphia's annual Wing Bowl. This year's winner was a scrappy 23 year old who goes by the pseudonym "Super Squib" and ate 203 wings. [Philadelphia Daily News]

• Also in honor of the Super Bowl, a Chicago pizzeria shipped 2,000 pizzas to Illinois National Guard members stationed in Afghanistan. Let no one be denied the American dream of drinking beer and eating pizza and jalapeno poppers on Super Bowl Sunday! [Chicago Tribune]

• Dolphins prepare their cuttlefish before eating it! Scientists have found that they undertake an intensive process to clean out ink and cartilage, resulting in calamari-grade meat. [Reuters/Boston Globe]

• Food irradiation (to prevent contamination outbreaks) has been on the table for the past ten years, but has never taken off. There are many reasons, but the biggest is fear that consumers would probably not react well to food with the label "radiated." [NYT]

• The current salmonella scare seems inevitable in the face of the following: the health inspector who visited the main peanut plant responsible found only two health violations. They were minor, at that. [AP/LA Times]

• The recent peanut butter salmonella outbreak has led to increased concerns about food safety. [New York Times]

• In addition to gross and objectifying, it turns out those PETA ads that were banned from the Super Bowl and claimed that vegetarians have better sex may have been a trifle misleading. [Slate]

• New Yorkers can now order their foot-longs from Subway via text message. [IntoMobile via Consumerist]

• This just in: what you eat is more likely to make you obese than where you eat it. [Chicago Tribune]

• One Illinois family has started a website to encourage the Obamas to hire an official White House farmer and the site has been getting thousands of hits. [Associated Press]

• Criminal charges may be in the pipe for the owners of a Georgia peanut plant, where multiple health infractions seem to have lead to the nation's massive salmonella outbreak. [AP/chicago tribune]

• Meanwhile, we should also be worried about corn syrup, not just because it's nasty, but because it often contains mercury. [SF Chronicle]

• The Obamas kept on executive chef Cristeta Comerford from the Bush White House, but they're also making some new kitchen hires, including private chef, Chicago native and local foods enthusiast Sam Kass. [NY Times]

• The family of a little girl found alone at a Bel Air, Md. Chuck E. Cheese restaurant says it was a mistake that they left her there and didn't come claim her at the Sheriff's office till the next morning. [MSNBC]

• And don't freak out, decaf-junkies. Starbucks, which shook the very foundations of the earth when it announced yesterday it wouldn't continuously brew decaf after noon, will still brew the stuff on request. [Chicago Tribune]

• So now we're learning that the peanut processor responsible for this latest salmonella outbreak knew that there was bacterial contamination in the factory and shipped the peanut butter anyway. [USA Today]

• Organic food sales haven't declined too much yet, but sales are slowing down a bit as people tighten the purse strings. [Reuters]

• A combination of years of government mismanagement, a recent devastating cyclone and a terrible rat infestation (ick) have left Myanmar in dire need of some food aid. [AP]

• The "Olympics of cooking," the Bocuse d'Or, a two-day culinary contest in Lyon, began yesterday. The photos definitely make it seem like a sporting event; chefs have coaches, and spectators loudly cheer for the home team. Unlike in the real Olympics, however, the Americans have never won a medal in this competition. [NYT]

• Smoking, trans fat, calories — now the commissioner of New York City's health department is focusing on salt. [NYT]

• In the midst of heightened public awareness of recalls and tainted food, the USDA is still finalizing their pick for the chief of the Food Safety Inspection Service, who would be in charge of eggs, dairy, and meat. [WaPo]

• This year's low international crop prices could lead to short supplies and rising prices next year. The UN is worried. [Guardian/Reuters]

• Yet another reason to avoid HFCS: It contains mercury! [WaPo]

• Some fast food restaurants are outsourcing their drive-thru order-taking. Customers don't seem to mind, as long as they get their Oreo milkshakes and value meals. [Monterey Herald]

• Whole Foods CEO John Mackey cut his annual salary to $1 in 2007, but thanks to stock returns his 2008 compensation is valued at a whopping $33,831. [Forbes]

• The Rhode Island oyster industry is ever-growing, and farmers are out gathering oysters everyday. It's worth it (a farmer can sell up to 10,000 oysters per day), but temperatures are low, low, low. [Boston Globe]

• Although Mormon culture doesn't sanction drinking, a healthy brew pub scene has sprouted up in Utah. This is a good thing, if only because the world now has a beer named "Polygamy Porter" (tagline: "why stop at just one?"]. [NYT]

• A Mexican chef made the world's biggest cheesecake this weekend. It won a Guinness World Record, but it should be noted that there has never been competition. [AP/San Francisco Chronicle]

• Ruh-roh! The latest salmonella peanut butter scare has already led to the recall of over 200 products. 2007 bore a similar outbreak, so there are some questions about why no lessons were learned. [Newsday]

• The confluence of the recession, an endless stream of food contamination stories, and the popularity of locavorism mean that more and more people are trying to grow their own food. [Chicago Tribune]

• The tainted food in Asia is leading to a shortage of products in Asian markets here in the States. [Mercury News]

• The rising cost of ingredients has led to fewer Girl Scout cookies in every package. [Dallas Morning News]

• If you're not sure whether or not something is affected by the peanut butter recall, it probably is. [New York Times]

• Proposing in a restaurant might seem like a great idea, but there are a million ways it could go horribly wrong. [Gourmet]

• Your morning OJ has a huge carbon footprint. [Diner's Journal/New York Times]

• A Chinese court sentenced two men to death and a third to life in prison, after determining they were responsible for last year's tainted milk scandal. [Washington Post]

• A Texas man drove his Corvette into the front window of a Corpus Christi taco joint. Hot! [MSNBC]

• One candidate vying for the job of head of FDA says the agency needs more staff to inspect food. [Newsday]

• Meanwhile, federal officials have expanded the list of peanut products that may contain salmonella. [Newsday]

• Times are tough. A man who walked into an Omaha Subway restaurant and started filling out a job application apparently changed plans halfway through and robbed the place instead. [AP/Yahoo]

• It's not just peanut butter you should be avoiding; now the FDA is telling everyone to not eat anything made with peanuts because of the salmonella scare. [Washington Post]

• The US restaurant count was pretty much flat in 2008, but it's expected to decline in 2009. Not surprisingly, fast food restaurants have been doing well in the sluggish economy. [Reuters]

• A new study concludes that it is much more difficult for women to resist their favorite foods than it is for men. [AP]

• A man who helped invent that ever-useful kitchen appliance, the microwave, has died. He apparently used to keep an early-model prototype of the microwave in his basement — it was the size of a refrigerator! [Nashua Telegraph]

• The iPhone — a cook's best friend. [NYT]

• Apparently someone's becoming the President today? The Florida Avenue Grill, the oldest African-American-owned restaurant in DC, is gearing up for massive crowds. [MSNBC]

• And of course everyone is still all in a tizzy about what the Obamas will be eating. [WaPo]

• Counterfeit foods — faux fish, honey, olive oil, vanilla — are all over the U.S. Here's how to spot (and avoid) them. {USAToday]

• A Japanese study clears cloned animals for human consumption. [Reuters]

• The FDA, on the other hand, has asked everyone to stop eating peanut butter altogether, until they can find the source of the recent salmonella outbreak. [MSNBC]

• France is unhappy about the heavy import duties the United States has imposed on Roquefort. Oh France, why so blue? [New York Post]

• The parents of the first child in China to die from melamine-tainted milk have accepted a settlement from the company responsible. [New York Times]

• In order to tackle the country's food emergency, Kenya needs 900,000 tons of corn. [Bloomberg]

• The full text of Alice Waters' November letter to the Obamas regarding the selection of a White House chef is now available online. [Gourmet]

• Coca-Cola is being sued by the Center for Science in the Public Interest because of what they call the deceptive marketing practices of VitaminWater. If the suit is successful, look for that one refrigerator case at your local bodega to get a whole lot emptier. [New York Post]

• Cold weather-fighting tips from some Chicago doormen: Eat more food. [Chicago Tribune]

• A Long Island restaurant offers its own stimulous plan by randomly comping dinners. That just may work. [Newsday]

• The USDA's regulatioon may not be able to keep pace with genetically modified crops and animals, thus potentially allowing unapproved GMO imports. [Reuters]

• Oh noes! Of all the sushi joints in all the world, Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears awkwardly met in this one. But nothing happened. [SF Chronicle]

• Alabama sheriffs are reconsidering the policy allowing them to pocket leftover jail food money after one of them spent the night in the slammer for allegedly starving his inmates. [AP/Opelika-Auburn News]

• For those who don't have the time to read nutrition labels at the grocery store, Albertsons is flagging healthful items on its shelves. [LA Times]

• Whole Foods is now asking for its competitors to help the company fight its legal battle. Apparently, some are actually doing it. [Bloomberg]

• China gets to blame its tainted food crisis on another country for once; bags of dog food imported from Australia are being pulled off the shelves. [CNN]

• Miami is the fattest city in America this year, according to Men's Fitness magazine. How do these rankings change so much year-to-year? [USA Today]

• It's not just the administration that's changing; the face of the restaurant scene in Washington, DC might look different a couple years into an Obama presidency. [NYT]

• UN Aid organizations are working doubletime in Gaza, but are still only able to reach a small portion of those in dire need of food, thanks to ongoing fighting. [AP]

• While our current rate of global warming is slightly beneficial to crop production, in the long term we're looking at some serious agricultural meltdown thanks to rising temperatures. [Time]

• Anti-litter activists in the UK are calling on fast food chains to take responsibility for their contribution to the national litter problem — branded litter from McDonalds alone made up 29% of a sample area's trash. [BBC News]

• The FTC has filed an injunction to force Whole Foods to rebrand all former Wild Oats stores back to Wild Oats, and treat those stores as a separate brand. It's weird and makes no sense. [Tennessean]

• Frozen food - it's good for you! And there's a nifty wall of ice to prove it! [WaPo]

• A man in Maine is planning a new "concept" coffee shop &mdash specifically, one where the baristas and waitresses are topless. Hey, anything in this economy, am I right or am I right? [Boston Globe]

• What's named George, weighs 20 pounds, and is anywhere from 80-140 years old? Not Curious George, if that was your guess, but rather, a giant and ancient lobster who got his thousandth chance at living a long, healthy life. He was slated to be served at a NYC restaurant, but was set free in Maine after intervention from PETA. [AP/Chicago Tribune]

• A couple in Illinois got married at a Taco Bell this weekend! They decided to get hitched there because it's where they spend a lot of time. The guests were their closest friends and family as well as normal customers. Decorations included hot sauce packets that said "will you marry me?" [AP/NY Daily News]

• Milk demand (and subsequently, milk prices) have been plummeting. No state has been hit harder than California, and dairy farmers are struggling. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• Is food contamination so 2008? In the wake of all those melamine scandals, China is going forward with a food safety campaign. Here's hoping that it works, and that we are forevermore done with writing the words 'China' and 'melamine' in the same sentence. [Reuters]

• In the midst of closing stores, laying off employees, and reconsidering matching 401k plans, Starbucks purchased a $45 million corporate jet. [Seattle Times]

• If you unfriend ten people on Facebook, Burger King will give you a free Whopper as part of their "Whopper Sacrifice" program. The catch? The unfriended will get a message letting them know you ditched them for a burger. [A Hamburger Today]

• 42% of 18-25 year-old females and 35% of males in the same age group said they don't have time to sit and eat a meal. [Bitten/New York Times]

• People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is offering a $10,000 prize to the chef who comes up with the best vegetarian version of foie gras. [Fork In The Road/Village Voice]

• Gaston Lenôtre, who trained chefs like David Bouley and Michel Richard in addition to operating a vast culinary empire, has passed away at 88. [New York Times]

• A salmonella outbreak has sickened 388 people across the United States, sending some to the hospital and leaving officials scratching their heads trying to find the source. Sound familiar?. [Reuters]

• An Alabama sheriff has been locked up in his own jail after he allegedly under-fed prisoners and pocketed the surplus food money, a move that may or may not have actually been legal. [AP/Yahoo]

• Are you getting enough vitamin D? If you asked that question of Quest Diagnostics, you'd better ask again. The nation's biggest medical lab seems to have given false results to thousands of patients whose vitamin levels it tested. [NY Times]

• Despite a recent dip, food prices ended the year overall of 7 percent higher than they began it. [Reuters]

• Washington, DC restaurants brace themselves for the onslaught of visitors expected on inauguration weekend, throwing parties, extending hours, and laying in supplies. [DC Examiner]

• Squirrel meat appears to be all the rage in the UK. Britons are happily munching away at gray squirrels (a North American invasive species) in order to save their beloved red squirrels, which, we must agree, are much cuter. [NYT]

• A fire completely destroyed six restaurants near Fenway Park that were popular with Red Sox fans for a bite before and after games. [Boston Herald]

• Virginia lawmakers consider whether or not to ban smoking inside restaurants in the state. Fun fact: 67 percent of Virginia restaurants already ban smoking inside. [Washington Post]

• Did you know that "cochineal," which shows up in lipstick and some foods, is actually a crushed bug? Yes, all this time you've been eating insects — they show up in the ingredients as "artificial color." Yum! [Newsday]

• Five years after a maintenance employee died in a Tyson Foods plant, the company has to pay $500,000 for failing to protect its workers from hydrogen sulfide gas. [CNNMoney]

• Over Israel's protestations, the UN is qualifying the strike on Gaza as a humanitarian crisis: Not only are food and water supplies dangerously low, but people are scared to go outside to get what little is in stores. [AFP]

• The UK's Oxford Farming Conference focused on enhancing domestic agriculture for "security" reasons.* [BBC News]

• A raging fire in Boston's Fenway neighborhood took out five restaurants; no people were injured. [Boston Globe]

• Recalls! Bacon! Bacon recalls! If you're in Colorado and have recently purchased food containing bacon bits, there's a risk of listeria. [Denver Post]

• A folk-kitchen-science explainer goes head to head with Harold McGee on matters of the Maillard reaction. [NYT]

Bonus quote from this article: After a couple of glasses of wine, farmers here will admit they are an industry prone to whingeing.

• Three months into the trans fat ban, the vast majority of Boston restaurants are free of the dreaded substance. However, doughnuts and cakes still have a couple more months before they too must be trans fat free. Get 'em while you can? [Boston Globe]

• Last month, Chan Yan-tak, a chef in Hong Kong, was the first Chinese chef to be awarded three Michelin stars. It turns out that this honor is not free of controversy, as his restaurant is at the Fours Seasons &mdash potentially not the most authentically Chinese of establishments. [NYT]

• Speaking of Michelin controversy in Hong Kong, Bo Innovation, a restaurant with a self-taught chef garnered two stars. What's the drams? Some consider Bo the El Bulli of Asia, others deem it far over-hyped, but most interestingly, it would appear that the real problem is having a French guidebook act as a definitive guide on Hong Kong cuisine. [Wall Street Journal]

• A grocery store burglar in Wisconsin has a mighty refined palate: the $625 worth of groceries that he stole was mostly in lobster and ribeye. [AP/San Francisco Chronicle]

• Chicago-area Whole Foods stores pulled items from the shelves that were mislabeled as gluten-free, in the wake of a Chicago Tribune story about this very matter. Score 1 for journalism! [Chicago Tribune]

• A pair of caviar smugglers were apprehended in Italy, carrying about 88lbs of beluga caviar &mdash estimated cash value, $550,000. So what's to be done with the valuable, and extremely delicious, contraband? It's to be fed to the needy and homeless on Christmas. [BBC]

• Get scared, y'all! Apparently, Chicago-area groceries stores (and, we assume, stores nationwide) "routinely" mislabel products that contain food allergens. [Chicago Tribune]

• A lawyer in Arizona was arrested for feeding his client a piece of candy against detention officers' orders. We are left wondering how many other times candy has been against the law. [AP/San Francisco Chronicle]

• Attention holiday travelers: while most airports are still black holes for good eats, the lucky millions passing through LAX, Dallas, Miami, and Atlanta are in for some tasty grub. That said, none of the the food at these airports comes close to that at JFK's new Jet Blue terminal. [NYT]

• After 16 years of dwindling returns, salmon are finally coming back to Maine rivers in greater numbers. [AP/Boston Globe]

• Philadelphia's mayor just signed a law requiring fast food and chain restaurants to list calorie and fat levels in their dishes. [Forbes]

• The NRA (no, not that NRA — we mean the National Restaurant Association) predicts a 2.5 percent increase in restaurant sales next year. It also says menu prices are likely to go up 3.6 percent ; that means a 1.1 percent drop in real growth. Not promising. [Dallas Morning News]

• Some awful man actually posted videos on YouTube in which he claimed to have poisoned millions of Gerber baby food jars. It was all untrue, but it caused quite a scare. He pleaded guilty yesterday. [Reuters]

• The UN says 33 countries are in need of food aid, Zimbabwe and North Korea in particular. [AP]

• The lack of good supermarkets and fresh fruits and vegetables in poor urban areas is a huge problem across the country, but one teenager in South Los Angeles is making a difference by using grants to remake the shelves of local independent grocers and convenience stores. [AP]

• The FDA approves two new types of diet sweetener: One for Pepsi, one for Coke. [New York Times]

• Tough economic times like these can breed strange success stories. Witness, the booming business in used restaurant equipment [Dallas Morning News]

• After an Iowa Kosher meat producer ran into legal troubles this past year, Kosher products are becoming scarcer and more expensive in the Chicago area as Hannukkah approaches. [Chicago Tribune]

• Protesters in Beijing call on citizens of that province to stop eating cats. [AP/Yahoo]

• Michigan state lawmakers are having a hard time reaching an agreement on a restaurant smoking ban, likely leaving eateries hazy until at least the next session. [AP/Michigan Live]

• In a blow for famous foodies like Alice Waters and Michael Pollan, who had hoped to see someone with a background in progressive food policy as Secretary of Agriculture, Obama has appointed former Iowa governor and ethanol enthusiast Tom Vilsack to the post. [New York Times]

• Although political types were greatly excited by the news that city bars would serve alcohol until 5am during inauguration week, the DC Council voted yesterday to push last call back to 4am. [Washington Post]

• Some economic good news, for once: restaurant shares held their gains yesterday. [Forbes]

• G. Franco Romagnoli, a pioneering television chef whose 1970s show "Cooking with the Romagnolis" helped introduce Americans to Italian food passed away on Monday. [New York Times]

• The FDA will continue to study BPA, a chemical found in hard plastics that could pose health risks. [Washington Post]

• China has explicitly banned 17 substances — like lye, formaldehyde, and boric acid — from being used as food additves. Helpful. [AFP]

• Marion Nestle advises taking advantage of the presidential administration change to get your voice heard about food safety and chemical additives. [SF Chron]

• The state of New York is closing its last pheasant farm, and declaring that its 8000 pheasants should be given to food pantries. Let them eat ... game birds? [NYT]

• A Florida man is in jail for throwing a sandwich at his girlfriend's head. "Police reports did not what type of sandwich was used in either attack." [AP/Tribune]

• There's a sarcastic cookbook out called 'Cuisines of the Axis of Evil,' and the author seems pretty awesome. [Reuters]

• Call it the ultimate recession special: tending chickens is on the rise in Chicago. [Chicago Tribune]

• It might be hard to stomach for those fond of Kanga and Roo, but kangaroos are a much "greener" bunch that cattle, and some in Australia would like to see them replace beef and mutton as the default meat. [NYT]

• A pizza deliveryman in Florida was held and gunpoint and saved himself by throwing a hot pepperoni pizza at his assailant. [Newsday]

• Amidst worries over flagging US sales, KFC is looking to launch a grilled chicken option in 2009. [LA Times]

• The government deal to buy Florida sugar cane fields from U.S. Sugar and turn said fields into Everglades conservation areas has not been sealed. There is some controversy over who it benefits &mdash and the $1.35 billion price tag. [Miami Herald]

• In case you were wondering what wines "single, handsome men" drink, the answer seems to be full-bodied reds. [Wall Street Journal]

• McDonald's is taunting Starbucks with a billboard touting the virtues and low price of McDonald's espresso outside the 'Bucks corporate headquarters. [Daily News]

• In today's edition of "Possible Explanations for Obesity Digest": maybe some people's genes cause them to crave junk food. [Washington Post]

• Think that the next Secretary of Agriculture needs to be a Secretary of Food? Add your name to an online petition. [Mouthing Off]

• After years of conflict, workers at a Smithfield pork-processing plant have voted to unionize. [CNN]

• A suicide bomber kills 55 people in an Iraqi restaurant Thursday in the deadliest attack in six months. [AP/SF Chronicle]

• The tight economy affects businesses of all stripes, not least small-town restaurants, one of which is the subject of an ongoing CBS profile. [CBS]

• Sales of expensive organic food slow when nobody has any money. [AP/LA Times]

• Can food produced using unfair labor practices still be labeled Kosher? That was the subject of a huge debate at Yeshiva University in the wake of a labor scandal at a major Kosher meat producer last spring. [NYT]

• In honor of the holidays, a Chicago-area restaurant is serving reindeer sausages. Yum, Blitzen!. [Chicago Tribune]

• Pork isn't the only meat with a problem in Ireland — now three cattle herds have shown illegal levels of dioxin. [AFP]

• Bird flu! The Hong Kong government has shut down all poultry farms and killed 80,000 chickens after the dreaded virus was found in 200 chickens at one farm. [MarketWatch]

• The average New York Times reader's idea of "budget dining:" a meal for two for under $100. [NYT]

• Despite a decreased number of donations, more food banks these days are offering fresh produce and letting people pick what foods they'd like to take home (instead of just handing them a box with canned goods). [NYT]

• Your heartwarming story of the day: a woman finds $97,000 in cash in a purse hanging in a bathroom stall at a Cracker Barrel restaurant. Turns out the money belonged to a woman who'd sold her house and all her belongings and was moving to Florida with her son. It was returned, and all is well. [USA Today]

• Ireland has issued a recall of every single Irish pork product, thanks to higher-than-normal dioxin levels found in tested meat. [SFGate]

• A huge study is underway that's looking for explanations for severe food allergies. [NYT]

• Whole Foods is attempting to block the FTC's investigation of its acquisition of Wild Oats, saying it would be too hard to undo if they're found to be in violation of antitrust regulations. (Whoa. Is that really a viable defense?) [Bloomberg]

• China is still trying to boost its international reputation for non-tainted food, this time with a four-month PR blitz. [WaPo]

• The locavore movement (or at least, a variant thereof) has finally reached Japan. [SFGate]

• Consumer Reports has exposed some unexpected foods as being very high in sodium. (Twizzlers?! Really?) Concurrently, the AMA has some pretty sobering statistics about the number of deaths that could be prevented if Americans halved their salt intake. Yikes. [NYT]

• To file away under 'who knew?', Missouri has quite the crop of wine grapes from 2008. Huh. Who knew! [AP/Boston Globe]

• A public library in Illinois is offering fine-forgiveness in exchange for donations of canned foods for the hungry. What a great way to both deal with hunger and extend a helping hand to delinquent library patrons. [Chicago Tribune]

• Meanwhile, in California, the LAPD also has an exchange! This one is a little different though: instead of books and library fines, LA residents can trade in their firearms for $100 gift cards. In the past, people mainly chose cards for electronics stores and the like &mdash this year, the gift cards for Ralphs supermarkets have been the hot item. [Newsday]

• Might the Northeast be making a comeback as an agricultural region? Well, "comeback" might be overstating it, but the combination of the increased cost of food and a full-blown locavore movement does mean that more Northeastern farmers are trying their hand at long-abandoned crops like grains. [Chicago Tribune]

• China is finally planning to issue a blacklist of all food additive that might be tainted. [Associated Press]

• The FDA would like you to know that they're doing a great job protecting you from tainted food. Look, they even made a report saying so! [US News & World Report]

• Sustainable foodies from Alice Waters to Michael Pollan are very interested to learn who Obama will choose as his Secretary of Agriculture and are hoping for someone outside of Big Farming. [New York Times]

• Starbucks plans to cut costs to the tune of $200 million by closing 600 stores and laying of 13,000 employees company-wide. [New York Post]

• Mario Batali is ringing the opening bell at NASDAQ this morning. Funny, we didn't know you could wear Crocs on the trading floor. [MarketWatch]

• Two Manhattan restaurant owners are arrested and charged with more than 400 criminal counts for labor violations. [NY Times]

• Washington, D.C. bars and clubs will go for the gusto over the inauguration weekend, staying open 24 hours. [Washington Post

• Hong Kong finds its fourth batch of tainted eggs from China in less than two months. [NY Times]

• Another grim economic indicator: U.S. food stamp use at an all-time high. [Reuters]

• A Chicago-area restaurateur protests the closure of his business as part of a redevelopment plan. [Chicago Tribune]

• FDA: "So we've had some problems. We're getting better. Look! We're opening five offices around the world!" [US News]

• There's melamine in Chinese eggs now. [BBC News]

• Need some ideas for a Christmas gift for the food-obsessed person in your life? Here are some good book ideas. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• Going green can help save restaurants lots of money, which could help considerably nowadays. Maybe that'll be one positive that comes out of this recession: more environmentally friendly restaurants. [Boston Globe

• McDonald's is getting a makeover. The first coffee-shop style branch of the chain opened in Springfield, Illinois. [State Journal-Register

• Sigh. China has doubled its count of babies who've died from melamine-related formula — it's now up to 6 — while over 300,000 have been made ill. [AP/Houston Chronicle]

• On the upside, the Michelin guide just awarded three stars to a Chinese restaurant for the first time ever. [AFP]

• If you (like us) are freaked out by all the tainting/recalls/etc, there's a new website that aggregates food safety information. [WaPo]

• Unhealthy foods about which a healthy aspect is emphasized (like slapping a "trans-fat-free" label on something) lead to a "health halo" — we eat more of it without realizing our guard is down. [NYT]

• There's a serious shortage of kosher meat, thanks to the closure of one of the largest kosher processing plants. [AP/Trib]

• Ruh-oh! The cranberry industry is not doing so hot, as people buy fewer cranberries while harvests swell. As with so many things in the food industry these days, hopes of salvation are being pinned on Europeans. [NYT]

• The FDA may be on the verge of giving a stamp of approval to stevia, a natural sweetener. Soda companies are basically falling all over themselves in excitement and anticipation. [Chicago Tribune]

• You've all heard the news by now: the economy is terrible, and people want to save money. Organic food has been all the rage for the past few years, but in cost-cutting times, are the benefits worth as much as the monetary price? [LA Times]

• Remember colony collapse disorder, that mysterious bee plague with scary implications for agriculture the world over? Bees Without Borders, based out of Connecticut, is on a quest to keep honeybees alive and producing. Winnie the Pooh would be tickled pink. [NYT]

• The name Cavanagh Co. may not ring a bell, but rest assured: as far as churchgoers are concerned, they are the messiah of Communion wafers. Perhaps it's because they taste so much better; perhaps it's crazy business smarts. Whatever it is, they are doing something right, seeing as they control 80% of the market in the States! [Boston Globe]

• Food stamp use in this country is closing in on an all-time high. Not surprising, given the economic situation. [Washington Post]

• At the same time, food banks are having a hard time keeping shelves stocked, with increased demand and decreased donations. [USA Today]

• You thought we were done with melamine? Oh no. And this time it's hitting close to home: the FDA found traces of melamine in American-manufactured infant formula. [NYT]

• The Times suggests you take charge of the Thanksgiving meal by running it like a CEO does a company: delegate and assign tasks. [NYT]

• And because feel-good stories are hard to come by these days, we thought we'd share this one: a man in Central Florida who owns 27 Golden Corral restaurants will be feeding 20,000 people at the Salvation Army on Thanksgiving. [Orlando Sentinel]

• Despite a rash of pro-Spam coverage in major papers, Hormel's profits are down thanks to the skyrocketing price of ... turkey feed. [AP/CNN]

• Salt is the new bad guy. Lower-sodium foods (and advertising supporting them) are set to flourish in '09. [USAToday]

• A 3-Michelin-star Tokyo restaurant , Kagurazaka Ishikawa, apologized for selling bacteria-contaminated black beans. [Reuters]

• The rampant speculation about who will be the Obamas' White House Chef is "fantasy football for foodies," and also totally off-base, says Walter Scheib. [AP]

• Obligatory compare-your-ten-person-guest-list-to-the-army's-hordes pre-Thanksgiving article! [AP]

• Live from Nova Scotia: lobster season is on! There are many fears over plummeting lobster prices, but with tighter regulations and a total of 540,000 traps, perhaps the fishermen will stay afloat. [Chronicle Herald]

• The jury is still out on MSG, scientifically speaking, but consumers really, really don't like it. In light of that, it's somewhat surprising that Campbell's Soup waited until now to stop using it. In any case, expect a barrage of advertising announcing the change. [Chicago Tribune]

• A farm in Colorado decided to have a food give-away, after finding that they had a surplus of produce following their fall harvest festival. What they didn't count on? 40,000 people showing up. [Denver Post]

• The full-blown global food crisis makes it harder to justify using corn for ethanol, instead of for food, and there's a great deal of debate over how to find a middle ground. Let them eat cake? [AP/SF Chronicle]

• A tamale cart in Mexico City advertises its goods via robotic loudspeaker. It's like Wall-E, but with tamales. [LA Times]

• A new study shows that keeping food diaries via text message might help kids stick with the activity, thus reducing child obesity. [Washington Post]

• Not helping to reduce child obesity? Fast food ads. [LA Times]

• High-end New York fromagerie Murray's Cheese goes Midwestern with stores inside supermarket chain Kroger. [New York Times]

• In a sort of Black Friday for the wine industry, vineyards nationwide will be holding events next weekend. [Wall Street Journal]

• Everything you wanted to know about tainted food, all in one place! [Slate]

• The FDA opens three permanant offices in China to keep an eye on exports after a series of scares over tainted products. [NYT]

• Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrive! Such as it is, with the disappointing grape harvest in the supplying region. [AP/Chicago Tribune]

• A teenager shoots his father, then turns the gun on himself, after they fought when boy brought home the wrong fast food order. [Local 6]

• A recent study finds that cutting down on fast food advertising actually does affect childhood obesity. [LA Times]

• Food banks are feeling the economic pinch as would-be donors keep the canned goods for eating. [Washington Post]

• PETA released a video taken undercover at a West Virginia poultry plant that shows workers kicking, stomping, snapping necks and doing all sorts of other awful things to turkeys. [NYT]

• The UN moves into rebel-held territory in eastern Congo to distribute food to people who used to grow most of the country's food, until rebels confiscated their fields. [AP]

• If you happen to have any Lean Cuisine frozen dinners — specifically the pesto chicken with bow tie pasta, the chicken Mediterranean and the chicken Tuscan — you might want to get rid of them; consumers have found pieces of blue plastic inside. [Los Angeles Times]

• Wal-Mart is donating more than 90 million pounds of fresh food over the next year to Feeding America, the country's largest hunger-focused nonprofit organization. [NYT]

• Grocery stores. That's where the money is during a recession, apparently. And it's not surprising, really — people still need to eat, and they're cutting back on restaurant meals. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• Those new Chinese branches of the FDA? Lots of forced smiles going on over that. No one seems very happy. [AP]

• 11% of US households are experiencing food scarcity. Why is this only being reported in the British press? [Reuters/Guardian]

• The UN is back in Gaza issuing food supplies, but warns that they'll be out again in days unless Israel gives up their blockade. [AFP]

• Employees of Justin Timberlake's New York restaurant are suing him, claiming unpaid wages. [HuffPo]

• A new biography of Queen Sofia of Spain reveals that the late King Hassan II of Morocco was obsessive about food, and traveled with his own cooks because he didn't trust anyone. [NYT]

• China's reputation as food contamination central has earned the country some of their very own USDA offices! Three, to be exact &mdash and they just so happen to be the first to ever open outside of the United States. [AP]

• In what might be the weekend's most adorable food-related story, a 12-year old from Manhattan's Upper West Side is an aspiring food critic. Not only does he write up restaurant reviews in his journal, he also goes out to eat on his own at sophisticated restaurants. All together now: aw. [NYT]

• The business lunch suffers in these gloomy financial times. The problems are twofold, when you think about it: less business to lunch over, less money to spend on lunch. [Chicago Tribune]

• On the other hand, the economic downturn is a boon time for Spam? Hormel, the company that makes Spam, is ramping up production because Americans have traditionally turned to Spam during penny-pinching times. Important note: increased production is not the same as increased sales. [NYT]

• Good news for scallop lovers: the Eastern Seaboard is currently chock-full of young scallops, after six years of dwindling crops. Patience required though, as the little scallop babies won't be fished for another couple years. [Boston Globe]

• It turns out that the majority of fast food meat is derived from corn. [Time]

• Barack and Michelle Obama are simple, yet adventurous eaters, while Malia and Sasha prefer kid food like mac and cheese and French toast. [Seattle Times]

• Good news: access to food is improving in Iraq. [CNN]

• Bad news: access to food is decreasing in Gaza. [AP]

• Chinese milk is still tainted. [New York Times]

• The European Union lifts its ban on the sale of ugly, misshapen vegetables, much to the chagrin of cuter, more popular vegetables. [NY Times]

• Having had it up to here trying to remember what's tainted this week, the FDA has slapped a detention order on dozens of foods imported from China. [AP/Miami Herald]

• Whether its residents know this or not, it appears Los Angles is a city ripped by strife: Two bagel bakeries, with different styles, rule the breakfast scene. Are you Brooklyn Bagel Bakery or Western Bagel? [LA Times]

• The former director of a New York City nonprofit has been charged with stealing more than $500,000 in government aid to feed hungry children. [Newsday]

• A woman in the UK will avoid jail time after chasing a restaurant owner around his kitchen with a meat cleaver in a dispute over money. [The Scotsman]

• The UN warns that it has exactly two days' supply of food in Gaza and no more. [BBC]

• The four largest ethanol producers have teamed up to create a new lobbying group called "Growth Energy." The message: don't blame ethanol for high food prices. [US News]

• A survey of schools in South Carolina found some that had action plans for food allergic students, while others did not. If your kid has severe allergies, you might want to check with the school about what happens if he or she has an attack. [Reuters]

• A Georgia restaurant had its liquor license removed after authorities found photos of underage drinkers on Facebook. [AJC]

• The Hawaiian plate lunch — two scoops of white rice, macaroni salad, and meat slathered in gravy — may see its popularity rise with a Hawaiian-born president in office. [NYT]

• The changing food pantry demographic: Employable people who had never needed aid before. [NYT]

• Today in food aid: The UN will withhold aid to Gaza if Israel continues to keep the territory sealed. This is a savvy diplomatic move how, exactly? [AP]

• A study of fast food revealed what Michael Pollan was telling us all along: An overwhelming majority of animals used for meat in the industry are fed entirely on corn. This is a bad thing. [WiredBlog]

• Meanwhile Tyson, a major fast-food meat supplier, has noted that its profits are up 50%. [AP]

• Spend more than 80 yuan at a particular restaurant in Beijing, and you get a free joy ride in a Ferrari. [ChinaDaily]

• Philly lawmakers voted to require calorie labeling from chain restaurants. Many of the city's fattening dishes (hello, cheesesteaks and scrapple!) are exempt, as most of them come from small businesses. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

• First the cocaine kielbasa business in Brooklyn, now a butcher shop in Staten Island! The market was the cover business for some mafia-types &mdash until the feds bugged the place and caught the meat mobsters. [NY Daily News]

• If you've noticed your grocery bill staying the same, despite talk of food prices going up, it's because products are shrinking to keep costs the same. For example, thanks to a clever new dimple in the jar, Skippy is 10% smaller, but costs the same. Totally legal, but sneaky, sneaky! [LA Times]

• Guess what else doesn't fare well in a financial downturn? Beer on the global market! People turn to local, cheaper spirits (see: Russia, vodka; Colombia, aguardiente) and majors brewers are worried. [Wall Street Journal]

• Birthday parties may or may not be legal in Saudi Arabia, but people keep having them, because celebrating is fun, and cake is delicious. [AP/LA Times]

• The global financial crisis may well lead to a global food shortage, as farms in developing countries may not have enough money to keep on. [Business Day]

• Food industry economists predict that food prices will rise at least 7% in 2009. [Reuters]

• New Hampshire's food banks urgently need more food, as requests have sharply increased in the past few months. [Boston Globe]

• An examination of the practice of tipping raises more questions than it answers. [Wall Street Journal]

• In a strange twist to the standard tainted food story, a brand of dry pet food has sickened humans, but not pets. [New York Times]

• Production has been stopped at a Chinese drug manufacturer after three deaths were linked to the company's herbal supplement. [AP/Chicago Tribune]

• Yes, yes, there will be new cabinet secretaries and whatnot, but what of the new food and entertainment trends to come in Washington? [NY Times]

• Female waitstaff have a hard time of it, dealing with a stressfull job and a host of other nonsense male waiters never do. [LA Times]

• We're looking at a worldwide record wheat harvest. Why is this not fantastic news? [Reuters]

• Finally, a man who dumped a beer over the head of a restaurant employee who was smoking outside his window won't face charges. [Chicago Tribune]

• Kids who have at least one parent who smokes are more likely to be underfed and undernourished, according to a new study. Apparently cigarette money is coming out of the food budget, which is tragic. [Washington Post]

• Newark gets its own Zagat guide! [Newsday]

• A priest and two nuns walk into a restaurant ... and beat up the manager. Seriously! It happened in Italy. [BBC]

• Meet the cacao farmers of the Kallari cooperative, a group in Ecuador that eliminates all middlemen by producing and marketing their own chocolate. [NYT]

• Lots of people say China's melamine problem is only going to get worse. [Time]

• China's food-safety concerns aren't likely to go away any time soon, thanks to massive supply chains and spotty enforcement. [Time]

• A California couple blog about what it's like to live on $1/day and make the New York Times. (Meanwhile, countless billions worldwide do the same and yet somehow don't quite fly at radar level.) [NYTimes]

• OMFG: A Haitian migrant resorted to cannibalism while adrift for two weeks en route to Puerto Rico — he and three others are the only ones of the 33 in the boat who survived. [AP/Tribune]

• Just like in politics, food brands are unafraid to run smear campaigns against their rivals. [NYTimes

• Hunters in South Dakota can donate their excess venison and antelope meat to local food pantries! Neato! [KXMC News]

Bonus 6!
• In a groundbreaking synergistic move, the MenuPages blog network has formed secret alliances with Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, and Ben and Jerry's — go in today with proof of voting and they'll give you free food. You're also welcome to let them know how much you love MP, but it's not required. [AP/Tribune]

• The owner of a five-table restaurant in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY is trying out a novel solution to keep his restaurant afloat. He's selling "V.I.P. cards" for his restaurant, which entitle card holders to free meals up until they consume the price of the card plus 20% (they start at $500 and go up to $10,000). Like a CSA, but for restaurants! [NYT]

• The newest 100-calorie snack pack on the block is a diet-friendly packet of Twinkies. Each contains three bite-size morsels of hyper-processed goodness and is expected to do well in this economy &mdash because people are packing lunches, and all. [AP/Boston Globe]

• China seized and destroyed 3,600 tons of melamine-tainted animal feed this weekend. Really, China? Really? We'd say that it's getting embarrassing, but it is so far past that point that there really aren't any jokes to be made. [NYT]

• Profits are up by 2% at Burger King. It's nothing but a hunch, but could this be tied to the economy? [Chicago Tribune]

• On the other hand, Ferran Adrià purports to be puzzled and bemused by all this talk of a financial crisis, because people are still clamoring to eat at El Bulli, as well as posh London restaurants like Pied a Terre. [Bloomberg]

• Burger King's profits have risen 2% in the last quarter. Yay? [Washington Post]

• Also on the rise: diabetes, probably due to obesity! [Boston Globe]

• The former CEO of the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant is now being facing federal charges for hiring illegal immigrants. [New York Times]

• A Texas man was jailed after refusing to pay for his meal at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Classiest dine and dash ever! [AP]

• What's tainted today? Animal feed! [Chicago Tribune]

• A panel of scientists has come out with a report pretty much tearing the FDA a new one over its ruling that bispenol-A is safe. [NYT]

• A restaurant in Hamburg, NY was closed after officials discovered staff had butchered road kill in the sink. [CBS/AP]

• Golfer John Daly was found drunk and unconscious outside a North Carolina Hooters. [LA Times]

• Melamine turns out to be a somewhat common additive to Chinese animal feed, a practice the Chinese press called an "open secret." [AP/Chicago Tribune]

• The original Starbucks team is back in charge, but could the "back to basics" company turnafound be too little, too late?. [NY Times]

• Calorie counting is back, or so says The New York Times. Didn't realize it had ever really fallen out of favor. [NYT]

• The LA Times editorial board calls for all food from China to be tested for melamine. Here's a better idea in the meantime: if a food product says "made in China," place it back on the shelf. [LA Times]

• Environmentalists are urging the FDA to re-evaluate the agency's position on bisphenol A, which is found in most plastics and has been deemed safe in small quantities. [AP]

• A woman who's had a bit too much to drink gets on a mechanical bull at Johnny Utah's in New York. Now she's suing the restaurant for causing some injuries (which are unspecified) by allowing her to a) get on the bull drunk and b) cranking up the speed to get her to fall off. Isn't that the point? Someone please dismiss this case. [Newsday]

• A restaurant in Gijon in northern Spain is offering a one-euro recession special lunch menu that sounds like an amazing deal: seafood soup, ribs with rice or chicken or anchovies with a salad, bread, dessert, and a drink. According to a manager, the restaurant isn't losing money, but it's not making any either. [China Daily]

• Various big names in the retail food business are voluntarily adding easily visible nutritional icons to their packaging. [NYTimes]

• Wal-Mart removed some Chinese eggs from their shelves. You guessed it — melamine! [AP/SF Chron]

• ... but the World Health Organization just announced that Chinese eggs are a-okay. Unless you eat, like, twenty a day. [AFP]

• The original Slow Food conference opened yesterday in Turin, Italy, and is drawing comparisons to the Olympics. [SF Chron]

• Vermont (yes, the state) has set up speed-dating sessions between its local farmers and various buyers — supermarkets, restaurants, colleges, etc. In our humble opinion, this is the cutest thing ever. [AP/WaPo]

• A grim reminder that the financial crisis is about so much more than jobs, foreclosed homes, and retirement funds: it's also calamitous news for the global food crisis. [WaPo]

• On the plus side... potatoes? Cheap and less subject to market fluctuations than grains, they are a promising solution to global hunger. Just don't tell the Irish, circa 1850, mkay? [NYT]

• Oh, China. Although it's fun to write out sentences like "another day, another melamine contamination disaster!" at this point, we'd rather hear that all is A-OK with your food supply. Sadly, this time, it's a melamine-tainted egg scare. [AP]

• Crazy weather patterns in Europe = ideal mushroom growing conditions. Okay, global warming. You win this round. [Chicago Tribune]

• The Massachusetts Oyster Project is sowing oysters in the Charles River for the purposes of water clean-up. Neat idea, even though it means they will be off limits for nomming (pollutants and all). [Boston Globe]

• A soon-to-air episode of a Belgian food show teaches viewers how to prepare Hitler's favorite meal (trout with butter sauce). Unsurprisingly, this has drawn some serious ire. [Boston Globe]

• North Korea is facing its worst food crisis in a decade. [New York Times]

• "Sushi bullies" (sushi chefs who dictate what you will and will not order) are on the rise. [Wall Street Journal]

• Scientists confirm what we've suspected for a long time: holding a cup of coffee makes you happy. [New York Post]

• Food allergies are up 18% from ten years ago. [Washington Post]

• Scientists are working on making drought-resistant crops to fight hunger abroad and fatten wallets at home. [NYT]

• That Michigan pizzeria that put a cheese-and-tomato bounty on McCain signs has canceled its offer. [AP/Chicago Tribune]

• A Canadian E. coli outbreak seems to be linked to a North Bay Harvey's restaurant. [Canada.com]

• Michelin releases its Las Vegas restaurant guide. [Vegas Eye]

• And elsewhere, more scientists are working on modifying foods so that they make you feel full. Wait a minute... [AP]

• A judge awarded $4.6 million in back pay and damages to 36 delivery workers for New York's Saigon Grill, where they had previously earned as little as $2 an hour. [NYT]

• The UN gets in on the whole melamine crisis, suggesting to China that the country should probably revamp its food regulations. [AFP]

• If you're going to skip out on the bill at a restaurant, make sure you remember your purse. If you forget said purse, do not return to the scene of the crime to retrieve it, especially when you have marijuana tucked away inside of it. [FOX News]

• Wal-Mart helps stock the shelves at New York state food banks with a $577,000 donation. [Newsday]

• And in news you already knew: diets heavy in meats and fried foods are more likely to give you heart problems later on than diets rich in fruits and veggies. [Star Phoenix]

• They might not be regulating anything else, but at least the government is stepping in to regulate the beef packers! [AP/NYTimes]

• Including farmed versions in the count disqualifies many of species of salmon from the endangered list. Good or bad? [AP/Chicago Tribune]

• Sure, Pam Anderson eats fried pickles. They're vegan! [LATimes]

• 40 food writers spent a week in Houston learning about space food. Did you know that Taco Bell provides the tortillas? [SFGate]

• 45,000 pounds of chocolate, ice cream, hot dogs, and deli meat spilled out of an overturned truck on a Tacoma, WA highway. Party! [Seattle Times]

• Warming waters are pushing Alaskan pollock further up north... to Russia! The geopolitical/economic ramifications are pretty enormous. [LA Times]

• Worried about all the contaminated food scandals? A trio of nutrition experts give advice on how to select and prepare your food. [Boston]

• The financial crisis begets the question; do we even know how much money we spend on food? [SF Chronicle]

• A restaurant in the East Bronx, NY is the proud employer of an 88 year old waitress. She sounds like one of the Golden Girls, so it's not so surprising that she herself is a reason people eat at the restaurant. [AP]

• Iran tried to go for a Guinness World Record by eating the world's largest sandwich. Things were going pretty well (the sandwich was present, as were the eaters) except for one tiny problem: the crowd got over-eager and started devouring the sandwich before it could be measured. Uh-ohs. [Reuters]

• Hey there, eco-friendly sushi lover. Wondering which fish you can eat in good conscience? Not most of them! [Washington Post]

• To the surprise of very few, it seems that the Chinese tainted milk crisis can be traced back to corruption in the courts. [New York Times]

• Irony alert! A new study shows that weight gain may be tied to not getting enough pleasure from food. [Boston Globe]

• Ouch: 2008 has been the worst year for the restaurant industry since 1980. [Chicago Tribune]

• Call us a prude, but a fifteen pound burger seems a little...immoderate, and like it probably wouldn't even be that good! [San Francisco Chronicle]

• A bound man is found dead in the basement of a chicago restaurant. Cue ominous music. [Chicago Tribune]

• The Mi Tierrita restaurant chain, of New York, will pay out $660,000 in back wages and penalties to workers, some of whom it paid as little as $2.10 an hour. [Newsday]

• A British man pleads guilty to planning a suicide bomb attack on a family restaurant in Exeter. [CNN]

• Once he's in the clink, maybe our would-be terrorist will get a job at Britain's prisoner-run restaurant, The Clink. [Telegraph UK]

• In what could be a harbinger of a new danger to restaurants and diners, a deer crashed through the front window of a South Carolina hibachi joint. [Myrtle Beach Online]

• Restaurant stocks are trading down, way down, on the market. Then again, isn't everything these days? [LA Times]

• Some restaurants are trying to bring in a little more revenue by expanding hours. [NYT]

• A two-year-old boy in Hong Kong developed kidney stones from tainted Chinese milk. Ouch. That poor kid. [VOA]

• Food stamp use is on the rise, and has been for a few months already. [AFP]

• The fields are green in Ethiopia, thanks to a recent downpour, but the eight months without rain prior to that did some serious damage to the crops. Oxfam estimates 6.4 million people will need extra food aid. [AFP]

• Bob Dole and George McGovern win the World Food Prize for their contributions to ending world hunger. [AP]

• The upshot of overfishing, factory farming, and obesity: People are taking food seriously again! [NYT]

• While food prices have gone up almost 15%, menu prices have only gone up about 5%. Expect that to change in 2009. [AP]

• "Heartless thieves steal food-laden church van" — that headline sums it up neatly. [Boston Herald]

• Speaking of headlines that say it all: "Disney's new dinosaur-themed restaurant opens today." In related news: AWESOME. [Orlando Sentinel]

• The CEO of a listeria-infested meatpacking plant is unsurprised. Charming. [Reuters]

• It's been a rather successful year for Idaho's potato growers, to the tune of eleven billion pounds of spuds. [Chicago Tribune]

• The Great Lakes are being threatened by bottled water consumption. All our water just tastes like what it's like to be from Maine. [Washington Post]

• All the new safety requirements are making it hard out there for a Chinese dairy farmer. [Boston Globe]

• Starring in today's tainted food drama: California lettuce! [LA Times]

• Tagging along with a couple Chicago health inspectors could put you off your food. Though the point is to do the opposite. [Chicago Tribune]

• From the "bout fricking time" file, China announces stricter controls and testing on its food supply. [NY Times]

• An Ohio death row inmate is too fat to execute. He blames prison food for the weight gain. [Akron Beacon Journal]

• A group of Boston-area restaurant owners are forming a buying co-op to negotiate better wholesale prices on ingredients. [Boston Herald]

• Gender plays a much bigger behind-the-scenes role at restaurants than one would think. [NYT]

• The Chinese have lost all faith in their government's ability to regulate food, and they expect more food scandals to come. [USA Today]

• Wolfgang Puck needs help naming his new restaurant in Dallas. The winner gets a free meal for four once a month for a year. Not a bad deal. [Dallas Morning News]

• Talk about food inflation; food prices have doubled in the past year in Cambodia. The Asian Development Bank just announced that $35 million we soon be sent to feed the poorest of the poor in Cambodia. [AP]

• Despite increased support for biofuels, the UN Food Council warns that it might distract from the more pressing issue of food security. [AP]

• Speaking of the UN! They're reinstating a free-breakfast program for 450,000 Cambodian schoolchildren. [AP]

• Speaking of free breakfast! Healthy most-important-meals-of-the-day are offered to all Baltimore schoolchildren, who also get free "food group glasses." [Baltimore Sun]

• The national average for a meal is $34.09, while New York clocks in at $40.78 and Las Vegas at a whopping $44.44. [Bloomberg]

• And in news that will surprise absolutely no one, melamine-laced Chinese imports have been found in yet another country. Today's special winner: South Korea! [Reuters]

• The financial crisis means that people are looking for ways to cut costs. One sign that they are doing so? A resurgence in food clubs. [Chicago Tribune]

• All those melamine taintings, plus the salmonella and E. coli scares from earlier this year, have led to a new rule about food origin labels. Because if you know where it's from, there's no way it could be contaminated! [ABC News]

• Are fried dough based foods poised to become the latest dessert trend? Even more importantly, are they green? Yes, and yes. [NYT]

• The number of wolffish, more commonly known as ocean catfish, swimming our oceans has been decreasing for the last decade. As such, they might be the next fish added to the endangered species list. [Boston]

• Aw! Chinese panda bears are being fed chicken soup to keep healthy. Thus unexplored: the effect of matzoh balls. [Boston Globe]

• A seven year old boy went on a "killing spree" at an Australian zoo, feeding several animals to the zoo's crocodile. [LA Times]

• The Mafia in Naples is now in the bread business. Sorpresa grande! [Chicago Tribune]

• In today's installment of Where In The World Are Melamine-Tainted Goods (please sing to the Carmen Sandiego theme): the Philippines! [New York Times]

• Where else? Utah! [Salt Lake Tribune]

• Well, we couldn't sit it out forever. Traces of melamine have finally been found in products on U.S. shelves. [NY Times]

• Darnell Hartsfield is found guilty of five counts of capital murder, 25 years after he abducted five people from a Texas KFC restaurant, then shot them to death on an abandoned oil road. [Houston Chronicle]

• Fed up neighbors oppose wineries opening tasting rooms in their communities. Something about drunk-driving tourists. Who wouldn't want that? [AP/Contra Costa Times]

• Jeez, what is it about KFC? A robber was killed Monday in a botched attempt on a franchise in Jamaica. [The Jamaica Observer]

• This melamine-in-Chinese-milk scare just goes on and on. South Koreans now have to forgo Ritz crackers after investigators found high levels of melamine in them. [IHT]

• California becomes the first state to require that all chain restaurants list calorie counts. [AP]

• A San Francisco restaurant group suffers a setback in its case against the city's proposed health care plan, which would require small businesses to contribute to a city-sponsored health plan. [Sacramento Business Journal]

• A handful of restaurants have taken to ordering a whole cow (or pig) directly from the farm and butchering it in-house. [NYT]

• Thieves in Haiti steal three storehouses' worth of donated food for hurricane victims and put it up for sale. [Reuters]

• Today the new FDA country-of-origin labeling requirements go into effect for produce and meat! [Seattle Times]

• ... for most produce and meat, that is. Mixed vegetables and Spam are exempt. [Bloomberg]

• Part of yesterday's failed bailout included a bill that would prevent non-ambulatory cattle from entering the food supply. [Pork Magazine (a real publication!)]

• Cadbury, Heinz, and Mars are all pulling their Chinese-made products, as they may contain melamine. Sigh. [Telegraph]

• Voters in California are debating Proposition 2, which would mandate that farm animals — including swine, veal, and chickens — be uncaged. In related news, why don't we live in California? [SF Chron]

• Uh-oh, Jack-o-Lantern (and pumpkin baked good) enthusiasts! Too much rain this summer = poor pumpkin harvest this fall. [Boston Globe]

• The poisoned milk disaster spreads its melamine tainted tentacles even further, with news that White Rabbit candies, the inexplicably tasty vanilla-flavored chews, are NSFE (not safe for eating). [LA Times]

• The North Dakota Farmer's Union is opening a restaurant in Washington, D.C., and they're shooting for making it the "greenest" in the city. Ironically, since this demands an emphasis on local crops, most of the food will not come from North Dakota farms. [AP]

• Would you like Starbucks in exchange for your empty milk carton? RecycleBank awards per pounds recycled, and those points can be redeemed for Starbucks, groceries, Coca-Cola products and more. Filling your tummy by emptying your bottles and cans? Pretty sweet deal. [Newsweek]

• 103,000 pounds. Sound heavy? That is how much meat the Utah Food Bank got from 4-H members across the state, in an incredibly weighty donation. [The Salt Lake Tribune]

• Europe is concerned that their condensed milk could be of the tainted Chinese variety. [New York Times]

• People in Japan and Taiwan have already become sickened by the melamine-tainted milk. [Washington Post]

• Hong Kong residents are staying as far away from food imported from China as possible. [Bloomberg]

• Here in the U.S., we don't need to worry about tainted food because the FDA has the resources to stay on top of it. Oh wait. They totally don't. [Chicago Tribune]

• Even amidst the financial meltdown, there's good news for at least one group of rich people: McDonald's shareholders. [LA Times]

• If it weren't for that pesky financial crash, this Chinese food safety thing would be really big news. As it is, you may not have heard that all sorts of potentially contaminated products are being yanked in all sorts of countries. [CNN]

• When San Francisco passed a health-care mandate, some restaurants tacked on a surcharge. Now a New York City grocery store is doing the same and blaming the high cost of energy. [Newsday]

• A London restaurant is offering a meal meant to replicate the diet of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. It contains 6,000 calories, but no penguin. [Times Online]

• Pity the French. Really. They had a good thing going with the long lunch, and now they're not only cutting that short, their options are shrinking as restaurants across France shutter in these tough times. [Business Week]

• The French are moving away from long, lazy lunches to sandwiches eaten at their desks, and cafes in Paris are suffering. Naturally, this is really big news over there, lots of hand-wringing involved. [The Independent]

• And now fast food is making serious inroads in the Mediterranean, and the kids are getting much fatter because of it. [NYT]

• Hot oatmeal is the top seller among the new food items at Starbucks. It's great news for the company since profit margins for the oatmeal are among the highest. Which is usually a good indication that it's so cheap and easy you should be making it at home. [Reuters]

• Scandal in the food industry: it seems there may have been some price fixing among California tomato processors. [SFGate]

• Kolkata (aka Calcutta) in India has banned smoking in restaurants after October 2. [Times of India]

• Now that 53,000 babies have fallen ill from tainted milk, Chinese officials are saying that "this is a failure of the system." [Bloomberg]

• ...So China's top food safety official has resigned. [WaPo]

• A new study says Splenda is bad for your tummy. But! The study was funded by the National Sugar Association! [NYT]

• At a cafe in the Netherlands, cameras watch every move the customers make. For science, of course. [SFChron/AP]

• In lighter news: An elderly vegetarian in Australia befriended a giant pig, who is now holding her hostage inside her home. Pig. As in bacon. [Daily Mail]

• Those FDA guidelines on genetically modified animals were released on Thursday, and the plan is to treat modified animals "like drugs." There is already a glow-in-the-dark aquarium fish on the market, but don't expect to find GMO meat in your supermarket today. [Chicago Tribune]

• Attention aspiring diner-owners! The owner of Grubb's Diner in Huntingdon, PA is looking to sell or even donate his vintage diner to the right person. Once you've proven your mettle, all you need to do is move and reopen it. [Boston Globe]

• The judges at the Nez Perce County Fair in Idaho awarded first place in the "hog-calling" category to a woman named Bacon. Jolee Bacon. [AP]

• "Spain... on the Road Again," the culinary/travel show featuring Mark Bittman, Mario Batali, Gwyneth Paltrow, and some other chick, begins airing this week. Opinion is divided on whether the addition of Paltrow will be a boon or a bust. Guess we'll find out soon enough! [NYT]

• In the world of cure-all food trends, acai seems to be the new wheatgrass or bee pollen. Before it was that, the berry was a "poor man's staple" in the Amazon. Now it's known as "purple gold," and although considered a green harvest, there are concerns about what it might do to the rain forest. [LA Times]

• The Japanese minister of agriculture steps down after tainted rice is found in the food supply. [BBC]

• The Canadian processing plant linked to all that tainted deli meat re-opens [National Post]

• The Chinese may start taking their coffee black after contamination is found in regular milk as well as baby milk. [BBC]

• British bans on advertising junk food don't seem to translate to the waistline. [Reuters]

• Twelve more arrested in Powdered Milkgate 2008. [New York Times]

• The FDA will finally release guidelines on bioengineered animals today. Get excited! [Washington Post]

• Want an endless pasta bowl or some Old Bay biscuits? It's gonna cost you. [Chicago Tribune]

• Twenty five states ask MillerCoors not to put their plans for Sparks Red into motion. God, it's like they don't want teenagers to be drunk or something! [LA Times]

• The salmon industry needs at least seventy million dollars, preferably as soon as possible. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• Now a third baby has died in the contaminated milk scandal in China; more than 6,000 have gotten sick. [VOA]

• BPA — the stuff that is found in plastic food and drink containers — is now linked to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and liver-enzyme disorders. [Chicago Tribune]

• The US approved $250 million worth of farm sales to Cuba — that includes food and construction materials — to help them rebuild after being battered by Gustav and Ike. [AFP]

• The USDA is considering revamping the way allergy precautions are written on food labels. [Washington Post]

• Moose: it's what's for dinner. (In Alaska.) [NYT]

• Salmonella recall watch, part nine zillion: Petfood! [WebMD]

• Countries experiencing food crises, part five gajillion: Haiti! [Reuters]

• French chef Anne-Sophie Pic is the third straight chef in three generations of her family to be awarded 3 Michelin stars. Also notable: She's a woman. [Reuters]

• A British celeb chef has been admitted to a treatment clinic after stabbing himself in the chest with a kitchen knife. [DailyMail]

• There's a good chance that if you've eaten something in your lifetime, you've eaten something owned by billionaire Nelson Peltz. [AP]

• Regulations on produce coming from Mexico to the States are not tip-top. Could this be the root of some of the recent salmonella recalls? Maybe! [Chicago Tribune]

• An update on the tainted powdered milk drama taking place in China: two babies have died; two brothers have been arrested on the suspicions that they added melamine to the formula. Not good, not good at all. [AP]

• The state of Florida is buying the United States Sugar Corporation, in a move that is supposed to help restore the Everglades. It's also a move that will help the Fanjuls, a family perhaps best described as the Microsoft of the sugar world. [NYT]

• Pat yourselves on the back for being so awesome at eating locally, Californians! Now that being a locavore has become de rigeur, you may be called upon to become "locavolts." [San Francisco Chronicle]

• In other happy food news, food banks are benefiting from a bounty of food, mostly in California. Volunteer harvesters collect food from gardens that might otherwise go to waste, and redistribute it to the needy. So nice. [NYT]

• Tainted Chinese product of the day: baby formula. Charming. [New York Times]

• Maryland chicken farmers need can no longer store their manure outside. [Washington Post]

• A Cape Cod Stop & Shop had to remove the vanilla extract from shelves, as "people" (read: "almost certainly area teenagers") were stealing the bottles and drinking them for the purpose of getting drunk. Classy, guys. Classy. [Boston Globe]

• OMG you guys, Pinkberry is getting totes litigious. [LA Times]

• As it turns out, it's hard to maintain the correct temperature of wine while it's in transit. That, friends, is a high end problem. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• Privatization of food safety could be linked to the recent rash of contamination outbreaks. [U.S. News And World Report]

• A Chicago pizzeria owner is charged with hiring thugs to burn down his restaurant in a case of good, old-fashioned insurance fraud. [Chicago Tribune]

• The nation's largest kosher meatpacker may lose that certification after it is hit with charges for more than 9,000 child labor violations. [NYT]

• Los Angeles is the latest city to require chain restaurants to post calories on menues. [LA Times]

• Two men are arrested in San Francisco for dealing crack in line for a soup kitchen. [SF Chronicle]

• The World Food Program is coming up short in Haiti; so many people are displaced and need food, and officials worry they're going to run out. [Reuters]

• The average size of a grocery store nationwide decreased a bit in 2007 after 20 years of growth. [NYT]

• Local wheat is the next new big thing. [NYT]

• Out with the old (stainless steel), in with the new (titanium). Scientists are now recommending the latter for food factory work surfaces, since bacteria have a hard time attaching to the metal. [Science Daily]

• Say it with us now: Another day, another recall. Today — alfalfa sprouts! [WiscAg]

• They're revamping the security of the piece of paper on which is written the Colonel's secret recipe. [AP]

• The legal battle for (or against) L.A.'s taco trucks is escalating into a war. [Houston Chron/AP]

• At least not everyone is suffering through the recession: McDonald's global is up 14.5%. [Tribune]

• Oh, poor little CEO of the Humane Society. It's tough to go to airports 'cause you're a vegan! *Tear* [NYT]

• In a new development in the whole the-cattle-are-ruining-the-environment idea, it turns out that cows can be made greener simply by changing their diet. Huh. Now back to your steak and milk! [Times UK]

• One upside of economic downturn/environmental crisis is an increased incentive to bring lunch, and packed lunches have really evolved. [Boston Globe]

• In post-modern news items, the NYT clues in to the fact that Yelp and Zagat reviewers have made everyone a critic and can &mdash gasp! &mdash sometimes be as useful as professional reviews. [NYT]

• Truly on fire this weekend, the Grey Lady posits that escalating competition between Pinkberry and Red Mango may have helped create the current fro-yo craze. [NYT]

• California wants to buy water from farmers, but the farmers say there's not enough. On the other hand, Oakland's Pacific Institute says farmers could increase their water conservation to the tune of billions of gallons per year. Well? Which one is it, guys? [LA Times vs San Francisco Chronicle]

• Cupcake bakeries are embroiled in a delicious trademark dispute. One is called "Sprinkled Pink" and should welcome the chance to get rid of that name. [LA Times]

• Tropical Storm Hanna has caused so much flooding in Goniaves, Haiti, that trucks bearing food aid can't even reach the area. [NY Times]

• You know that chemical BPA? The one that's probably in your water bottle? Well, it might be reducing your ability to learn and remember. That explains so much about college. [Canada.com]

• San Francisco's mayor wants to use local food for school and prison meals. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• Oh hey, speaking of sprinkles, it turns out that the former director of external affairs at Dunkin' Donuts (Dunkie's, for the Bostonians among us) was embezzling like crazy. [Boston Globe]

• A chemical in many food and drink containers has been linked to brain cancer (ugh). [Canwest News Service]

• Food distributer Sysco settles with the state of Florida over false fish allegations. [CNN Money]

• The dust is finally settling in that fatal 2003 Rhode Island nightclub fire, and very little of it lands on the club owners. [Chicago Tribune/AP]

• Reaction to LA fast food ban is some mix of insolence and skepticism. [Reuters]

• There's a pretty good chance that meat and milk from the offspring of cloned animals has entered the U.S. food supply. [Reuters via Guardian]

• A severe drought in Ethiopia has left 8 million in urgent need of food aid. [Reuters]

• Lobster prices are at their lowest in years due to decreased demand, so now might be a good time to splurge. [NYT]

• United Airlines reversed the decision to stop offering hot meals to economy class passengers on international flights. [Chicago Sun-Times]

• Today in global food aid: North Korea needs $503 million of it. [Reuters]

• Slow Food Nation is the perfect hybrid of Democrat and Republican ideals. [SFChron]

• Cinnamon prevents food spoilage! Neat! [NYT]

• RIP Raymond L. Danner, Sr., businessman behind the Shoney's restaurant chain. [AP/IHT]

• A roundup of victims of the "grocery shrink ray" (coinage, btw, by Consumerist) [AP/IHT]

• Good news: it looks like the salmonella outbreak might finally be over! [Washington Post]

• Bad news: in the wake of last month's flooding in eastern India, villagers have resorted to eating uncooked rice mixed with polluted water. [Boston Globe]

• Good news! Items at a 99 cent store are still, generally, 99 cents or less. Way to run the least necessary sidebar of all time, guys. [LA Times]

• Bad news: mice can still really put a damper on your food wholesaling operation. [Chicago Tribune]

• Good news: Brazil seems to be handling rising food costs relatively well. Bad news: Argentina? Not so much. [New York Times]

• A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge rules taco trucks can stay and vend, instead of being forced to move every hour. [LA Times]

• A look at how two South American nations are dealing with the rise in food pricesw. [New York Times]

• The disease outbreak near Tulsa is, in fact, E. coli, from a local restaurant that is (finally) named. [Tulsa World]

• Here's a guide to Slow Food Nation. The San Francisco event kicks off tomorrow. [SF Chronicle]

• A takeover-style robbery in Hayward, Calif. is just the latest in a wave of such crimes. [SF Chronicle]

• A much friendlier trend is also taking off in the form of underground restaurants. [New York Times]

• Could hot dogs in the school cafeteria cause colon cancer? [AP]

• Chicago-area rail commuters face last call in their beloved bar cars. [Chicago Tribune]

• At least eleven listeriosis-related deaths in Canada; everyone is in a tizzy (especially the meat suppliers). [Bloomberg]

• Utah has to get 6 million carp out of Utah Lake, on the condition that they do something with the dead fish. [AP]

• MSG consumption is apparently linked to obesity. (Hey kids! Correlation is not causation!) [NYT]

• San Francisco is gearing up for this weekend's Slow Food Nation Festival. (MP's own Adam Martin will be there!) [SFChron]

• A man was found in the ceiling above the women's restroom in a Florida restaurant, spying on female patrons. [TCPalm]

• In a food-recall heavy summer, another one! This time it's Pepperoni Pizza Hot Pockets that consumers should avoid, at the risk of biting down into plastic. Mmm. [Market Watch]

• North Korea has created a new soy and corn based noodle to combat hunger problems. The noodles have more protein and fat and "delay feelings of hunger." [BBC]

• Some colleges and universities across the country are eschewing plastic trays in their cafeterias for reasons of being "green" and "not wasting water." The number of broken dishes does not seem to have gone up... yet. [AP]

• Hey, have you heard about that economy? In another sign of end-times, school lunch prices are also going up! [NYT]

• Healthy food prices are not just a US problem: fresh produce is a luxury item for Aboriginal communities in Australia. [ABC News Australia]

• Have you been waiting for years for the chance to irradiate spinach with FDA approval? If so, your time has come. [Washington Post]

• Is you local sushi restaurant ripping you off? Quite possibly! Is this the second time in a year this has been a news story? Quite possibly! [New York Times]

• Hurricane Fay soaks Florida for the fifth day in a row. We suspect this can't be good for either Florida's delightful residents or its delicious crops. [LA Times]

• Best. Cranberry crop. EVER. [Boston Globe]

• Burger King's profits went up 42% in the last quarter, but investors remain nonplussed. [Chicago Tribune]

• A visit to Hooters — er, American Owl Restaurant — in China [Chicago Tribune]

• A guide to Pamela Anderson's favorite LA Vegan Food. [LA Times]

• A crime wave persists in Oakland, Calif., with robbers holding up restaurants, Pulp Fiction-style. [SF Chronicle]

• Massachusetts considering a ban on trans-fats. [MarketWatch]

• Identity thieves are stealing food stamps in New York. How awful do you have to be to steal from someone who cannot afford to buy food? [Newsday]

• Boston mayor's food relief plan includes "increased awareness" and potluck dinners. [Boston Herald]

• Japan's trade houses are looking to get into the food market, particularly grains in China. [Forbes]

• The Cheesecake Factory tops a list of 120 chain restaurants rated by consumers. [MarketWatch]

• Only sporadic conveys of food aid have made it to Georgia; food is "the major issue." [AP/NYT]
• Companies like Wal-Mart are taking on food safety issues, thanks to increased consumer awareness (and, um, litigiousness). [L.A. Times]
• Apparently peppers from Mexico have been consistently problematic, long before the salmonella scare. [AP/NYT]
• Possible fraudulent grape-mixing in Siena, Italy has the wine world in an uproar. [Tribune]
• A British watchdog group wants to stamp out "bawdy" and "humorous" beer names. [The Publican]

• Aspiring reality TV show contestants are advised to pull on their fats pants and their running shoes! The Food Network is set to run "Eat the Clock," which can be summed up as competitive eating meets "The Amazing Race." [Reuters]

• Wild Maine blueberries may be about as "wild" as a lion in a zoo, but that doesn't stop them from being full of complexity, both in taste and within the species. [NYT]

• To catalog under 'nature is neat-o': chile peppers produce their own pesticides as a means of fending off toxic fungi. [LA Times]

• This weekend bore more sad news for the fishes, with some few hundred found dead in Rhode Island. [Boston]

• Chinese officials have cracked down on streets vendors, but it's still possible to sample local delicacies in Beijing. Think sea horses, bee cocoons, centipedes, and deep fried scorpion. [Toronto Sun]

• The number of oxygen-deprived "dead zones" in the ocean is growing. This can't be good for the fishies! [Washington Post]

• If you want to waste water in Los Angeles, it's going to cost you. [LA Times]

• The immigration raid on an Iowa kosher meatpacking plant may have had judicial interference. [New York Times]

• The French equivalent of the Department of Health has had a busy summer shutting down restaurants. [Guardian]

• Childhood chronic ear infections can cause a craving for sweets and fatty foods in adulthood. This explains so much. [BBC News]

• Julia Child (yes, THE Julia Child) was a spy for the OSS in World War II! [Chicago Tribune]

• A top Chinese food safety official commits suicide. [New York Times

• Burger King employee takes bath in restaurant sink. Makes newspaper. [USA Today]

• Stupid salmonella won't go away. Now it's in pet food. Maybe. [LA Times]

• Loyal customers raise money for a flood-damaged Iowa restaurant. Warms the heart. [Iowa City Press-Citizen]

• The UN begins a $214 million program to provide food in 16 "hunger hotspots" around the world. [AFP]

• Despite the many recalls, the head of the USDA says all is well. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

• And you thought inflation here was bad — Venezuelans are dealing with 33 percent inflation on food, and the government just raised prices again. [BBC News]

• Some backyard gardeners in Connecticut tried to donate some of their extra veggies to an organization that feeds the needy. Turns out they can't; all food must come from "approved sources" to avoid unknown health problems. Because e. coli is never found in grocery store veggies. [Newsday]

• Sudan, which has the potential to be the "breadbasket of Africa," is exporting lots of food while at the same time receiving tons of food aid from other countries. Meanwhile, those in Darfur starve. Something's wrong here. [NYT]

• Another day, another Whole Foods crisis: Fallout from recalled beef hurts the bottom line. [NYT]

• Another day, another UN food aid shipment: This one's to Georgia. [AP/IHT]

• The CSPI thinks restaurants should display their health dept. ratings in their windows. [Time]

• Holy crap, it's expensive to open a restaurant: $2.5m for an Olive Garden?! [LAT]

• The consumer food safety group LGMA has finished its audited first year with flying colors. [BusinessWire/MarketWatch]

• With the ranks of food snobs swelling, is ice snob-ism the next frontier? Judging by the existence of gourmet ice, perhaps! [New York Times]

• Oh noes! First the spinach, then the tomatoes, and now ground beef! Yet another recall, yet another weekend spent wondering if anything is safe to eat. [Washington Post]

• China is mad into wine these days, but one billion new oenophiles is way more than current production can handle. Fun fact though: turns out there are lots of vineyards in China! [Slate]

• That warehouse club might not be saving you as much money as you think. [ABC News]

• L.A. could be the next city to require restaurants to post calorie counts. Is this going to be the new smoking ban? [LA Times]

• A Chicago cop is suspended after allegedly demanding a free coffee from Starbucks. [Chicago Tribune]

• Today's a lucky day for the Chinese. You'll need luck getting a reservation in a restaurant, church, event hall, or any other place that might have to do with a wedding [Xinhua]

• Could it be possible that those calorie counts popping up on chain restaurant menus are more complicated than they seem? [Los Angeles Times]

• As the 2008 Olympics kick off, a look at a different kind of "sport:" Competitive eating. [LA Times]

• Lunch has a new hero in actor Michael Douglas (natch). [Times Online]

• Monsanto wants to sell their dairy hormone business, presumably to focus on their many other monopolies. [New York Times]

• The latest victim of unsafe food stuffs? Boy Scouts. [Washington Post]

• When will people learn that pre-made sandwiches are a Bad Thing? [Boston Globe]

• As New York goes, so goes LA: calorie counts might be added to the menus at Angeleno chains. [LA Times]

• Not necessarily food-related, but did you know that there were two unrelated tiger attacks in Missouri within the past week? TWO! [Detroit Free Press]

• California strawberries will be shipped to China for the first time ever for the duration of the Olympics and Paralympics. [NYT]

• New at this Olympics: etiquette classes for all American athletes that include things like "don't spear food with your chopsticks." [WSJ]

• Food consumption at the athletes' village is insane: 9,000 bananas, 4,000 liters of cooking oil and three tons of rice per day. [China Daily]

• Health inspectors have been working overtime for months to make sure that China's food supply is safe for the athletes and visitors. [AFP]

• The Brazilian soccer team have decided to stay in the athletes' village (in the past, they've splurged for hotels and brought their own food), but are having a difficult time asking for menu changes. [Reuters]

• A U.S. food aid shipment has arrived in North Korea; it's just one load out of 500,000 tons of food promised. [AP]

• Potato chip and french fry manufacturers are lowering their levels of acrylamide, a possible carcinogen, to avoid CA labeling laws. [LA Times]

• New food trend 1: Cafeteria theft! Fairfax, VA estimates it lost $1.2m to school-age fruit swipers. [WaPo]

• New food trend 2: Pharmacognosy. That'd be the study of naturally-derived medicines, like ginger, turmeric, etc. [MLive]

• Ted Allen's new TV show, "Food Detectives," isn't off to a promising start. Thank heaven for Alton reruns. [NYT]

• Airplane food used to be fine china, silver, an extensive wine list, and good food. How times have changed! [NYT]

• A recent study reveals that the kids' meals at fast food chains are loaded with calories. Is anyone surprised? [AP/Philadelphia Inquirer]

• As leaner times continue, Whole Foods is trying to shake off the "Whole Paycheck" moniker. [NYT]

• On the plus side, this whole flailing economy thing means that the price of lobster is going down. Mysteriously, lobster consumption not rising either. [Boston Globe]

• All the news about the harms of corn syrup means that some consumers are starting to shy away from it. [LA Times]

• Shockingly, Miller Lite's craft beers were not so successful. [Chicago Tribune]

• Are there are too many blueberry growers? And if so, could Whole Foods stop charging four bucks for a pint? [Boston Globe]

• Congressman John Dingell thinks that this whole salmonella probe could have been over and done with quite some time ago, calls the whole situation "Keystone Kops." How your sausage gets made, people. [LA Times]

• The World Food Program has resumed emergency operations in North Korea. [Washington Post]

• A new pill may be able to fool your muscles into thinking you've exercised. May we suggest the brand name Lazify? [New York Times]

• New Yorkers are taking their dining rooms to the streets this summer. [NY Times]

• A Chicago coffeehouse serves up conservative politics with its lattes. [Chicago Tribune]

• Investigators are closing in on the farm that produced those pesky tainted peppers we've heard so much about. [AP/MSNBC]

• Cities looking at banning fast food in poor neighborhoods. [Slate]

• Rice costs triple what it used to in North Korea, which the World Food Programme warns is on the brink of a serious food crisis. [The Guardian]

• The Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger is stuck in court for the time being. [NYT via Salt Lake Tribune]

• Chef-driven restaurants are in store for the new terminal at JFK airport. Maybe people will actually want to show up early for their flights now. [NYT]

• About 13 percent of the average American family's food comes from outside of the United States. [Chicago Sun-Times]

• Australia is just getting the ball rolling on the trans fat issue; their food labels don't even have to list trans fat. [Canberra Times]

• Produce gets sunburn? Apparently so — and now sunscreen, too. [IHT (AP)]

• L.A. chefs forced to become "food police," journalistic puns ensue. [LAT]

• There's $1.6 billion in food and beverage advertising targeted at kids. [NYT (AP)]

• Despite speculation, the EU has approved the merger of Mars and Wrigley. [Forbes]

• Weakened economy means more eating at home means higher profits for Kraft. [NYT]

(Also! MenuPages humbly suggests the New York Times revise their capitalization policy with regard to particles, because we stared at that Kraft headline for like a full two minutes, unable to parse it, before realizing the lowercase "in" was not a preposition.)

• Iowa workers protest conditions at a kosher meatpacking plant. [New York Times]

• A DC raw foods restaurant will be nation's first "crowdsourced" restaurant, offer oat-hemp balls. [Washington Post]

• Users of Los Angeles food banks are hungry. [LA Times]

• West Bank Palestinians are thirsty. [Chicago Tribune]

• Meanwhile, in Japan, they're going wild for eel drinks. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• EPA bans carbofuran residue on domestic and international foods, food safety advocates rejoice. [Washington Post]

• The New Orleans Times-Picayune is reviewing restaurants for the first time since Hurricane Katrina. [New York Times]

• McCain sees Obama's trip to Germany and raises him a visit to an Ohio German restaurant. [LA Times]

• New England based grocery chain thinks Whole Foods stole its slogan. [Boston Globe]

• Colorado scientists can tell you just how good (or bad) your senses of taste and smell really are. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• Rapper 50 Cent is suing Taco Bell for messing with his name. [Wall Street Journal]

• A look at the detective work that went into tracking down that nasty jalapeno [AP/Chicago Tribune]

• An Ohio woman charged with assault after throwing peanuts at her allergic neighbor [Fox News]

• Seems a Wisconsin grocery store owner might have been selling stolen fruit [Twincities.com]

• Rising food prices may be a culprit behind the rising crime rate in Manila [GMANews.tv]

• Slow Food is hoping to put on the "Woodstock of food" in San Francisco this Labor Day. [NYT]

• Grocers are now pulling jalapeno peppers from shelves in the next salmonella scare. [LA Times]

• Lack of preparation, poor record-keeping — there are a million things wrong with our food safety system. [WSJ]

• Grocers are adjusting to new consumer spending habits, thanks to inflation. [Star-Tribune]

• A proposed law would ban any new fast-food restaurants from opening in a 32-mile area of Los Angeles. [LA Times]

• Finally! One lone salmonella-tainted pepper has emerged in Texas. But the mystery continues... [Discover/80Beats]

• Poor regulation of Chinese food production has U.S. Olympians worried about what they eat in Beijing. [ABC News]

• L.A. wants to close 400 fast food restaurants in order to save the obese from themselves. [WSJ]

• Food banks take a page from The Book of Ruth, start setting up gleaning programs. [USAToday]

• Want to eat sustainably and locally without actually doing anything? You lazy locavores are not alone! [NYT]

• Global warming is killing the oysters. [Boston Globe]

• Oh good! "Fish Ebola" has been found in Lake Michigan fish. [Washington Post]

• Middle East dilemma: food or water? [New York Times]

• Where is Haiti's promised food aid? [Chicago Tribune]

• Hey! In the midst of a global food crisis, maybe it might be a little tacky to use fish to give yourself a pedicure! [LA Times]

• The FDA has finally lifted the ban on tomatoes. Um, does this mean we shouldn't have been buying them for the past few weeks? [New York Times]

• Jalapeño and serrano peppers, however, are still dangerous. [Chicago Tribune]

• All these food poisoning outbreaks are driving people right to their local farmers' markets. [Washington Post]

• The Pope thinks you're greedy. [Guardian]

• Well, maybe not those of you in the EU who want to start a 1.6 billion fund to combat the global food crisis. [LA Times]

• A big huge study seems to support a low-carb diet and "Mediterranean regime." Screw that, though. Bread still rules. [AP/Yahoo]

• Though a bread habit can be dangerous when Subway employees apparently bake a knife into your loaf. [Reuters]

• Not just a producer: The government of India announced it's looking to make food processing its next big economic growth engine. [Press Information Bureau of India]

• And speaking of economic "engines," right here in our own bread basket Iowa corn producers are pretty proud of the massive popularity of E85 ethanol. [Wallaces Farmer]

• Food pantry and soup kitchen usage is up 9 percent over last year in New York City. [NYT]

• The head of the World Bank says we're going to need $10 billion to offset the effects of food inflation over the next few years in developing countries. [AP via NYT]

• Did you know that the FDA spent $2.2 million over the past eight years on employee award ceremonies? [Food & Water Watch]

• In a slow market, realtors turn to food to lure buyers. Apparently freshly-baked pies or lemonade on a hot day make the idea of a mortgage go down a little easier. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

• Vertical farming is (a) quite possibly the solution to the food crisis, (b) SO COOL. [IHT]

• California becomes the first state to ban trans fats across the board. [SF Chronicle]

• 400,000 Japanese fishermen staged a one-day strike to protest fuel costs. [NYT]

• The "silent tsunami" of rising food costs hits hardest on ... sunflower seeds? [Forbes]

• Biochemists in Argentina work 'round the clock to find the perfect hamburger. [WaPo]

• It's a DC burger extravaganza. [Washington Post]

• Rocky Aoki, may you rest in a heaven where Japanese chefs with sharp knives entertain fat midwesterners. [New York Times]

• If you're going to rob a house, you might as well bathe yourself in barbecue sauce. [WWMT]

• Once again, New York has the best food markets. [Village Voice]

• Starbucks is selling smoothies. Just don't call them smoothies or CEO Howard Schultz will drink your blood. You know, like the boogieman. [Serious Eats]

• Mint leaves may have given a Virginia family food poisoning. [Washington Post]

• Delivering drug-laced cookies to the police department is probably not the perfect crime. [Chicago Tribune]

• Restrictions are tightening up on pesticides, but is it enough? (No.) [LA Times]

• There's a drought in California. Is irresponsible water usage to blame? ( Probably!) [San Francisco Chronicle]

• OMG, we might have to walk further to get Starbucks. [New York Times]

• Some American consumers getting in on the ground floor of food production. [NY Times]

• Investigators pretty well stumped as to what caused that pesky salmonella outbreak. Maybe Jalepenos? [Sacramento Bee/AP]

• Using sea water to farm the desert in Mexico [LA Times]

• Iraq having as hard a time with its crops as with everything else [Chicago Tribune]

• Family grocery bills skyrocketing across the pond [Times of London]

• Despite a recent recall of 5.3 million pounds of beef, our meat is totally safe. So says the secretary of agriculture. [AP]

• Farms are dying off, but produce festivals live on! [NYT]

• Need to lose weight? Try writing down everything you eat. No cheating! [San Francisco Chronicle]

• Staff of the AP Beijing bureau give their restaurant recommendations for Olympic spectators. On the menu: deep-fried starfish. [Welt]

• An instant menu translator — genius! [BusinessWire]