Every couple of years, studies and rumors surface that we’re facing the extinction of bananas. While we haven’t seen the popular fruit die out yet, things are looking kind of dire. The journal PLOS Pathogens has published a study that predicts bananas will be wiped out by a fungus called Panama disease. The fungus has no way of being stopped or slowed at the moment, but the good news is that it isn’t going to wipe out the world’s banana crop tomorrow.

Pre-packaged meal kits have become increasingly popular over the last few years. While the convenience of these kits may win you over, there’s another important aspect to consider: the astonishing amount of packaging they require. With many of these kits, each ingredient comes individually packed and clearly labeled to eliminate the need to measure at all. If you need one carrot, you’ll get one carrot in its own bag with a label that says carrot.

With all the pumpkin spice mania reaching a fever pitch over the past few years, we’d forgotten all about the original food craze: maple bacon. Like they say, out of sight, out of mind. Well, Kellogg’s is trying to bring maple bacon back with their latest limited-edition flavor launch. The salty-sweet Pop-Tarts will hit store shelves in December, along with chocolate caramel and watermelon flavors.

Whole Foods has issued a recall on curried chicken salad and a deli pasta salad after samples showed traces of Listeria. The affected salads were sold at stores on the East Coast, specifically in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. The curried chicken salad was served both in deli containers and wraps, and the pasta salad was just sold in containers. So what do you do if you think you might have some of the recalled food in your fridge?

When schools put a portion of their food budget toward local food, there’s a big (and unexpected) benefit. According to the USDA census of schools that have incorporated local produce into their lunch programs, the kids at those schools ended up eating healthier meals and throwing less food in the trash.

This week, NPR posed the question: What happens when those small organic food companies get bought up by larger factory farm competitors? Do consumers still trust them? It’s a valid question, as we hear about brands like Odwalla being owned by Coca-Cola, or as the article points out, Niman Ranch being recently acquired by Perdue — one of the largest chicken producers in the country.

We’ll give you one guess what the biggest difference is between the My Plate meal plan, championed by the USDA, and the Raising the Bar on Nutrition plan, put forth by The Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition. Did you guess getting rid of meat? Then you’re exactly right. Being billed as the more economical version of My Plate, the new plan could save as much as $14 per week, which adds up quickly.