Food News

And to answer your first question: Yes, it’s good for you too. In case you’re not familiar with it, and we’re guessing you aren’t, this is the black sapote. It’s a member of the persimmon family and is often called simply the “chocolate pudding fruit.” Before you go hunting for this sweet treat at your farmers’ market, keep in mind that it only gets that rich, chocolate pudding flavor when it is really ripe.

Money.com just published a list of ten things that Americans have suddenly stopped buying, and foods make up most of the list (although guns also put in an appearance). Can you detect a theme? Out of this list of ten things, six are edibles: Bread, cupcakes, chewing gum (the decline of chewing gum is also something we’ve mentioned recently), soda, cereal, and Chef Boyardee.

What’s America’s favorite condiment? It’s not ketchup, and definitely not mustard. Nope, it’s mayonnaise all the way. Does this surprise you? If pressed, I might have thought that ketchup would win the award for most-consumed condiment (think of all those fries). But when you consider that mayonnaise is not only slathered on sandwiches but used as an ingredient in many other dishes (like ranch dressing) it really isn’t so surprising.

When legendary cookbook author Paula Wolfert realized one afternoon last year that she had forgotten how to make an omelet, she knew something was very wrong. Doctors diagnosed her with either early-stage Alzheimer’s disease or mild cognitive impairment, a form of dementia. Neither has a cure, but The Washington Post tells the inspiring story of how she has turned to food and cooking for help.

Have you heard the news? Campbell’s and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters are working together to come up with a line of “fresh-brewed soups” formulated for the Keurig coffee maker. That’s right, chicken noodle soup at the push of a button. Greatest invention ever? Or another sad sign of America’s culinary decline? The soups, which will hit shelves next year, will consist of a soup pod and a packet of dried noodles, vegetables or other whole ingredients.

Bagged lettuce is a lot of things. It’s convenient, it’s usually affordable, and it can make a quick lunch or dinner side salad in a cinch. But recent health scares and extensive media coverage have people chatting about the other not-so-great side of bagged lettuce. Modern Farmer recently explored the potential health risks that go along with bagged lettuce.

If you’ve ever tried to kick the coffee habit, you are familiar with the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal: headaches, fatigue, irritability, and difficulty concentrating. But the release of the newest version of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) made official what us coffee addicts suspected all along. Caffeine withdrawal can be a mental health disorder.

If you wanted to encapsulate the strange new power of social media in one bizarre news story, the tale of JC Penney and an oddly-shaped teakettle would be the one to tell. Have you heard about this?This year has already been a rough one for JC Penney; earlier this month, the retailer issued an apology to consumers for its recent changes, such as the decision to stop offering discounts and sales.

You don’t have to be a farmer or a food scientist to know that genetically-modified food is a heated, divisive issue. Everyone has an opinion on whether it’s safe or dangerous, harmful or helpful. But as with most issues that elicit strong reactions on both sides, it can be difficult to cut through the drama and just look at the facts.

We’re no strangers to sriracha. In fact, we like it in our beer, our mayo, and sprinkled on everything from roasted vegetables to grilled meats. While it seems ubiquitous now, sriracha as we know it didn’t come around until 1980…A recent article in the Los Angeles Times delves into the hot sauce’s history. David Tran, 68, a former major in the South Vietnamese army, moved with his family to Los Angeles in the late 1970s.

There are cocktails. And there’s green juice. Ne’er the twain shall meet… or so we thought. From what we’re reading, the latest wave in cocktails could be a move to using greens in lieu of the traditional herbs.  Details magazine thinks so, anyway. Their interviews with a few prominent bartenders across the country prove that “it’s all about the vegetables.

Why are all the honeybees dying? In the last year alone, a shocking 50 percent of of the hives needed to pollinate many of the country’s cropsThe Agricultural Department, according to a recent article in The New York Times, underscores the importance of bees to our country’s food supply: “A quarter of the American diet, from apples to cherries to watermelons to onions, depends on pollination by honeybees. Fewer bees means smaller harvests and higher food prices.

If you own a soda maker, then you know the manufacturer rules: you must only use water! But as The New York Times recently wrote, a few adventurous drinkers are flouting those instructions and using home carbonators to concoct everything from sparkling wines to non-alcoholic fruit sodas. How do they do it, and what’s more, is it safe? In 2012 Americans bought roughly 1.2 million home carbonators, according to the Times.

The results of a new study published just this morning on The New England Journal of Medicine‘s website found that switching to a Mediterranean diet rich in nuts, beans, fish, fruits, vegetables, and olive oil that can cut up to 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease in high-risk patients.

If you live in California and want to sell your own homemade goods, listen up! On January 1st the California Homemade Food Act went into law, and that means that producers of certain nonperishable foods are now allowed to prepare the food at home. No more paying for that commercial kitchen!A few of the non-perishable goods accepted in the new law include items like bread, granola, and jams.

If you really want to experience hot chocolate in all its sweet, warming, chocolatey goodness, don’t add more sugar or milk or spices. Just drink it out of an orange mug. What? Yup. Apparently drinking hot chocolate out of an orange or cream cup makes people think it tastes better. Our eyes are playing tricks with our taste buds again!

The rapid, feverish ascent of Fifty Shades of Grey has proven to be too much for PR persons and trend watchers. When there’s a bandwagon, one must jump on it. The two latest riffs on the erotic novella have come from the food world: Fifty Shades of Chicken (which includes recipes for “Dripping Thighs” and “Mustard Spanked Chicken”) and 50 Shades of Kale (“Thai’d Up Roughage”). Oh yes (yes, YES!) it’s true.

A new study recently published in the Journal of Social Psychology says that the smell of freshly baked bread appears to make people act nicer to strangers. Apparently good aromas equal good deeds!To test this hypothesis that bread makes people act nicer to strangers, researchers from the University of Southern Brittany in France stationed volunteers in front of bakeries and clothing stores and instructed them to drop an item (a glove, handkerchief) to gauge stranger response.

You may choose to drink tea with a little bit of milk to make it taste better, but are you diminishing tea’s health benefits in the process? It turns out that, yes, that may be the case. Researchers at the Fifth International Scientific Symposium on Tea and Human Health say that milk proteins bind with the flavonols in tea, making it more difficult for the body to absorb them and reap the health benefits.

We know the shape of wine glasses matters, but does the shape really matter for beer glasses? Yes, it does, but not only for the reason you think.Much like wine, the aroma, color, and taste of beer is affected as soon as it hits a glass. (That’s why, at a bar, you’ll often be served beer in brand-specific glasses.) But there’s another reason the glass shape matters.

It’s been a stifling summer across most of the country, and it’s all one can do to try and stay cool. But according to Food Republic, some foods may only make the problem worse. Check out their list of foods to avoid in hot weather, and weigh in with your own experiences:1. Spicy foods: Capsaicin (found in spicy foods) consumption is correlated with a short-lived increase in body temperature, so when it’s really hot out, every effort should be made to keep that body temp low.

Food writer Marion Cunningham, author of such seminal cookbooks as The Fannie Farmer Cookbook and Learning to Cook died Wednesday at the age of 90. Ms. Cunningham was an unrelenting champion of home cooking and sharing food together around the table, which is evident in the following memorable quotes: Home cooking is a catalyst that brings people together.

It reads like a headline from The Onion, but this bit of news isn’t fiction: Craft brewery Rogue Ales is working on a new beer made with a strain of wild yeast produced from the follicles of brewmaster John Maier’s beard.The brewery didn’t set out to make a beard-influenced beer. On a whim, nine follicles from Maier’s beard were sent into a lab for testing and, to everyone’s surprise, turned out to produce a yeast strain that was suitable for beer-brewing.

We’ve all seen them — those tiny handles on maple syrup jars. They’re too small to be functional, so what are they doing there? I know, I know … this question has been keeping you up at night, so I am about to put your mind to rest!

It’s hot and muggy outside, and you know how good it feels to throw back a beer or two with friends. Well, Man’s Best Friend wants to get in on the action, too. Say hello to Bowser beer, a non-alcoholic, non-carbonated “beer” for dogs!Unlike regular beer, Bowser Beer doesn’t have any hops in it, which are toxic to dogs; rather, it’s made of meat-broth, malt barley, and glucosamine, which is added for joint health.

It may be refreshing and delicious, yes, but advocates (and PR companies) claim coconut water replenishes your body better than water after a strenuous workout. Nature’s Gatorade, if you will. But is that really true? The big deal with coconut water, according to Andrea Giancoli, registered dietitian and spokesperson for The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, is that it has a lot of potassium, which is important for heart health and regulating blood pressure and other body systems.

If you, like many Americans, think you’ve tasted Kobe beef, think again. Unless you’ve actually been to Japan and tasted it there, you haven’t had the real thing, because you cannot buy Kobe beef in this country. If you’ve ever specifically ordered something called “Kobe beef” on a menu, we hope it was delicious… but it wasn’t Kobe beef.

A new study finds that online media has dramatically changed the way consumers discover food. Instead of relying on family recipes, newspapers, or cookbooks, it’s estimated that 50 percent of consumers now use sites like Twitter and Facebook to learn about food…… while another 40 percent learn about food from websites, apps, or blogs.This is hardly groundbreaking news, as this shift has been evident for awhile. So what else can we learn from this?

When Kraft Foods brought Oreo cookies to China in 1996, everyone expected the iconic black and white cookie to succeed, but sales were mediocre. So the company made a surprising decision, one that has made Oreos the number-one selling cookie in China today.Kraft started by playing around with the cookie’s design and flavor, releasing cookies shaped like wafers or straws, and filled with tea-flavored cream tinted green or bright orange-mango filling.

If you had to rank all the foods in the entire world on how they tasted and put them all in order, what would make the top of your list? Peking duck? Lobster? Biscuits and gravy? Circus peanuts? The folks over at CNN have made their own list and we’re curious to see if you agree. Did we mention ketchup made the list?The list is quite diverse and although there are many tasty dishes on the planet, many of the ones chosen seem a bit odd.

The USDA’s new food safety campaign reportedly cost $2 million and features eye-catching graphics and quirky TV ads. But in making food safety the responsibility of the public, does it miss the point?The graphic above illustrates the main points of the campaign:1. Clean: Clean kitchen surfaces, utensils, and hands with soap and water while preparing food.2. Separate: Separate raw meats from other foods by using different cutting boards.3.

In today’s food news, via our friends at Food News Journal: Duff beer is apparently doing quite well in Latin America. But is it licensed for distribution in the United States? Plus, China cracks down with the death penalty for food safety violators.Read on for more news of the day via Food News Journal.• E.

The New York Times recently took a look at a number of gadgets that may now be unnecessary, thanks to the multitasking capabilities of smartphones and other consumer technology. The verdict? Books are worth keeping — except for cookbooks.Is it time to move beyond cookbooks?The article points to an iPad app, Martha Stewart Makes Cookies, as the future of cookbooks.

When you’re on the hunt for a new recipe, are you more likely to open a Google search window than a cookbook? If so, Google’s new recipe search feature just made it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for.The feature basically restricts your search results to only recipes, then allows you filter them by ingredient, cook time and calories.

It keeps happening: discoveries like the one reported on the front page of today’s New York Times (High Mercury Levels Are Found in Tuna Sushi) keep telling us that eating tuna just isn’t a great idea.After being pregnant last year, I all but completely removed it from my diet. But lately, there are some interesting “lower” and “lowest” mercury options out there, which Burrows’s article neglects to discuss.