After Chris Cosentino, the San Francisco chef famous for cooking offal, took a few of his staff members to watch animals get slaughtered for meat, food waste in his kitchen went down. “I don’t have mistakes anymore,” he says after the experience. “They don’t burn meat. They don’t miscount. There are no screw-ups.”
Continue reading Offal good news
Back in July, the Los Angeles City Council placed a one-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in South Los Angeles, a poor neighborhood threatened by obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. New York City now requires calorie counts on menus, and according to a New York Times article that appeared in August, California is considering doing the same statewide.
Continue reading Tightening the screw on fast-food chains
Earlier this month the FDA sent out a press release inviting people to comment on their new regulations for genetically engineered animals. Basically, genetically modified animals are coming to American tables whether we like it or not, and the FDA has decided that its approach to regulation will be to treat recombinant DNA constructs just as they would new drugs under review for approval.
Continue reading Genetically modified food: expect to see more of it, soon
Think food is just food? Take a look at the controversy raised by the “Obama Waffles” that hit the market after Barack Obama supposedly asked, “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” It may have seemed witty to pounce on his supposed ambivalence (note John Kerry’s cartoon endorsement on the Obama Waffles website: “I know a thing or two about wafflin’, and I approve this mix,”) but the Arab-like headdress, protruding eyes, thick lips, and intimating nods at Aunt Jemima have many people up in arms, believing the creators went too far.
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Bottled water’s increasingly bad rap has Nestle, Danone, and Highland Spring bonding together to deflect the assault on their product by the likes of Alice Waters, Mario Batali, and Maury Rubin. Following this year’s campaign encouraging consumers to drink tap water in restaurants, the corporations swiftly erected a glib counter-offense in the guise of the heroically named “Natural Hydration Council,” which aims to “research and promote the environmental, health and other sustainable benefits of natural bottled water.”
Continue reading Bottled water lashes back
