Over the holidays I wrote about a meal we all wanted to avoid.
For the appetizer: San Antonio Bay oysters polluted with Noroviruses. For the main course: grilled beef infected with E. coli from contaminated tenderizing needles; chicken with Campylobacter or imported ham with Listeria monocytogenes. Then there’s a side dish of stuffing loaded with salmonella-contaminated [...]

In what appears to be important news for victims of traumatic brain injury and stroke, the tropical spice cinnamon has been found to prevent brain cells from swelling.
The swelling is a condition in which fluid either accumulates within brain cells or is retained in blood vessels that form around brain cells.

Pumpkins are the universal symbols of Fall and Halloween. But now, researchers have found that the skin of that pumpkin you carved into a Jack-o’-Lantern contains a substance that could put a scare into microbes that cause millions infections in adults and infants each year.

I am embarrassed that I missed this innovation in gardening and sure fire way to enlarge my tomato crop. But thanks to Finnish scientists, I now know that applications of human urine will increase the size of your tomatoes.
The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found that plants fertilized with urine [...]

The office of the U.S.  Surgeon General says it is “slightly encouraged” that Americans are increasing  their consumption of more nutritious food.
But you just have to wonder whether the top doc has been to a country fair lately.
The Evergreen State Fair in Monroe, Washington.     (c) coldtruth.com

The federal government and the LAPD “launched a collaborative investigation” probing what just about every college kid knows: if buying brownies from a street vendor, there is a good chance that they may contain more than flour, sugar and chocolate chips.
Back in April, a teacher brought several brownies from a booth in front of a [...]

You just have to hand it to the Chinese.  They know how to get even in a good-old trade war.
Beijing is apparently less than thrilled over efforts in the upcoming budget bill that – because of safety concerns — might ban importation of some food products from China.
To retaliate, Chinese importers are refusing to import [...]

The first generation of GM seeds was concocted to keep crops free of weeds and bugs. Now, Japanese scientists have come up with a new generation of genetically modified food that they say will benefit the health of those who consume it.
Fumio Takaiwa and colleagues write in this week’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry [...]

Many food exports from China may be dangerous, but some of the tricks used to fool Chinese shoppers are even more treacherous.
Everyone knows about the about the tens of thousands of Chinese infants struck down but kidney-destroying melamine in their milk and the 60,000 dogs and cats worldwide who died after eating it in the [...]

I’ve been hearing from organic food producers, especially dairy farmers, who say that after years of soaring growth and markets for all they can produce, the reality of dealing with rough economic times is painfully hitting home.

(c) photo by a. schneider

They say that sales they could always count on, are falling off.
But many shopper are [...]