News & Trends
Old-fashioned oatmeal gets makeover as Starbucks, Jamba Juice add high-profit item to menus. Chains aim for upscale breakfast offerings of steel-cut oats with fresh fruit. Breakfast foods are bright spot for restaurant industry, though hot cereal sales at supermarkets have been flat. Recipe: Baked oatmeal, Wisconsin-style (click 'See also').
By Janet Adamy
The Wall Street Journal. (may require subscription) 2008-12-18 (entry)
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Philadelphia mayor signs strong menu labeling law that requires most chain restaurants to display calorie, fat, other nutrition information starting in 2010. Most of city's cheesesteak joints are stand-alone shops or small chains and won't be subject to law.
By Maryclaire Dale
The Associated Press; International Herald Tribune 2008-12-18 (entry)
When Vosges Haut-Chocolate in Chicago introduced a chocolate bar studded with applewood bacon last year, the sweet-swine concoction was novel. Now, it's popular with chefs across nation. Among the treats: bacon ice cream, maple bacon cupcakes, banana bread pudding with bacon brittle.
By Maria Hunt
The Christian Science Monitor 2008-12-03 (entry)
Pilgrim's Pride seeks protection of bankruptcy court after battling year of volatile feed, fuel costs, low poultry prices, and drop in demand from restaurants. And: Tyson, Perdue, Sanderson, Wayne are other big poultry players (click 'See also').
By Miriam Marcus
Forbes.com 2008-12-01 (entry)
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Obesity is a public health disaster and is threatening our children. About half of Americans' food budget is spent at restaurants. If we can force oil companies to tell us octane level of fuel for our cars, surely we can demand that fast-food and restaurant chains tell us what we're putting into our bodies.
By Harold Goldstein and Eric Schlosser
Los Angeles Times 2008-08-05 (entry)
Reveling in post-modern gluttony, CKE Restaurants, parent company of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., goes for the bloat and gloats about it. The attitude disarms the food police and allows diners a feel-good aspect about getting fat and the chance to strike a blow against political correctness. The strategy is making money, and copycatting is rampant.
By Joe Keohane
Portfolio 2008-02-01 (entry)
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Fast-food outlets lure cash-strapped customers and teens with expanded dollar menus. Some even include the double cheeseburger, usually a more expensive, marquee choice. Even the non-burger places - including Taco Bell - are jumping in. The Sammies, at Quizno's, are one of the rare cheap choices that also are less than 300 calories.
By Lauren Shepherd
The Associated Press; Union-Tribune (CA) 2008-02-12 (entry)
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Tom Aikens, chef and restaurateur, spent most of a year learning fish. Now, at his new fish and chips place in London, he looks to raise awareness about overfished species, like North Sea cod and Mediterranean bluefin tuna, and to expand diners' palates with fish that are sustainably and legally caught.
By Elisabeth Rosenthal
The New York Times 2008-01-15 (entry)
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(Scott Adams/Dilbert/USF, Inc.)
"Dilbert" creator, now a pointy-haired boss at a restaurant near San Francisco, is trusting and appreciative and full of off-the-wall ideas about how to turn around the business. But employees say he is dramatically clueless about the the restaurant industry, and they worry: Will they soon be wearing short-sleeved white shirts and ties that point up?
By Brad Stone
The New York Times 2007-11-11 (entry)
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Xanthan gum and agar-agar, usually low on the list of ingredients in processed foods and often at home in petri dishes, has nudged flour and cornstarch aside in a few intrepid chefs' kitchens. Chemistry, they say, as they tie foie gras into a knot, is another word for recipe.
By Kenneth Chang
The New York Times 2007-11-06 (entry)
Increase in corn price and less of it because of biofuel needs have hiked prices of commercial vegetables, food grains, oil bearing crops, milk, eggs, chicken and beef; restaurants raise prices and cut costs, but '08 earnings could slip, analysts say.
The Associated Press 2007-11-02 (entry)
Entrepreneur, seeing inspiration in her native England, re-creates in her Wisconsin town a combination of indoor children's playground and coffee house/sandwich shop featuring wireless internet access.
By Randy Hanson
Hudson Star-Observer (WI) 2007-09-28 (entry)
To determine your environmental footprint of those restaurant dinners and other lifestyle choices, play this game from American Public Media.
By Christopher Kennedy, Michael Skoler and others
American Public Media and Realtime Associates, Inc. 2007-09-19 (entry)
For chefs with the ripe stuff, now's the season for them to luxuriate in too many juicy tomatoes, fresh herbs, zesty peppers and tender zucchini, and then serve up food that's as local as the the farmers' market.
By Beth D'Addono
Philadelphia Daily News 2007-08-23 (entry)
Bush administration deserves credit for pushing immigration reform, but enforcement-only plan for handling illegal immigrants could create potentially devastating consequences for farmers at harvest season.
The editors
Denver Post 2007-08-14 (entry)
The FDA is warning consumers not to eat raw oysters harvested from an area of the southern tip of Hood Canal in Washington after an outbreak of illness caused by Vibrio parahaemolyticus bacteria. Oysters from the area were distributed to California, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, New York, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia (Canada), Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Food and Drug Administration (entry)
Entrepreneurs find booming business in selling biodegradable and compostable cups, bowls and flatware made of sugar cane and corn plastic to local restaurants, but find they must educate restaurateurs on plastics problems first.
By Joanna Hartman
Sierra Sun; Nevada Appeal (entry)
Humane Society targets Wendy's for its egg-buying choices, comparing it unfavorably to Burger King, which is phasing in cage-free policy; company responds that its interests are focused on welfare of chickens and pigs, the meat of which they buy in larger quantities.
By Monique Curet and Tracy Turner
The Columbus Dispatch (entry)
Overfishing, poaching and pollution have depleted worldwide fish stocks to 10 percent of normal; for every pound of shrimp harvested, 10 pounds are discarded, along with turtles and dolphins, conservationists report.
By Eviana Hartman
Washington Post (entry)
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With ethanol craze and escalating corn prices taking all the attention, worldwide drought has gone almost unnoticed, but it is driving wheat prices up; breadmakers are paying more for flour and weak dollar makes U.S. wheat attractive.
By Jeff Cox
CNNMoney.com (entry)
New interactive map allows users to tract proliferation of factory farms by state and county - even number of animals - and it raises questions of whether we pursue the logic of industrialism to its limits, and how badly will it harm the landscape, the people who live in it and democracy itself?
The editors
The New York Times (may require subscription) (entry)
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Diet rich in high-fat, low-nutrient junk food and meals made outside the home, plus parents' extra hours of work are combining to shorten and widen our children in comparison to others in developed countries around the world, study suggests.
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times (may require subscription) (entry)
Lead singer Chrissie Hynde, of the Pretenders, plans to open a vegetarian restaurant in hometown of Akron; she's calling it VegeTerranean.
Associated Press (entry)
Study shows that secondhand smoke sends carcinogen markers surging in urine of waiters and bartenders, even after brief exposure; research likely will strengthen anti-smoking efforts across nation in bars and restaurants.
HealthDay News; Forbes.com (entry)
'Positive' and 'selfless' Sioux Falls restaurateur avoids jail sentence after judge determines he was helping illegal immigrants, not exploiting them, by hiring them to work in his Iowa restaurant, Inca Mexican.
By Josh Verges
Argus Leader (IA) (entry)
Lax food safety standards in China push General Mills, Kellogg and other companies to increase scrutiny on ingredients, including apple juice, ascorbic acid and xanthan gum, and point up growing dependence of U.S. on new, untamed economic giant that offers vast quantities at lowest prices.
By Nelson D. Schwartz
The New York Times (may require subscription) (entry)
Responding to demand from affluent countries, tuna, along with sharks and other ocean-dwelling species, have been rapaciously overfished by aggressive industrial fleets (Japan is a chief offender) for decades, but will new global discipline save the Atlantic bluefin from extinction?
The editors
The New York Times (may require subscription) (entry)
FDA issues alert, requires testing on shrimp, catfish and its relative basa, eel, and dace, related to carp imported from China because of recurrent contamination from carcinogens and antibiotics; country supplies one-fifth of imported seafood and made $1.9 billion in 2006.
By Andrew Martin
The New York Times (may require subscription) (entry)
Kitchen incubator in San Francisco helps women with big dreams and few resources to start their own food businesses, linking them to planners, marketers and food retailers, and sometimes giving them step away from poverty.
By Laura Novak
The New York Times (may require subscription) (entry)
Ralph Stayer, Johnsonville Sausage Company founder, who popularized bratwurst.
Associated Press; The New York Times 0000-00-00 (entry)
Overfished, now scarce, expensive and in demand in U.S. and Russia, South Korea and China, tuna slips from sushi menus in Japan, causing national panic and in-depth reports on nightly news; country frets about global tuna superpower status.
By Martin Fackler
The New York Times (may require subscription) (entry)
Citing intellectual property, New York restaurateur and chef of Pearl Oyster Bar sues former employee for remarkable similarities in look and feel of a new place, Ed's Lobster Bar.
By Pete Wells
The New York Times (may require subscription) (entry)
According to new measure of environmental stewardship, ConAgra and Sara Lee are stuck, but Danon, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Stonyfield are striving; food production companies, with large transportation and packaging responsibilities face particular challenges.
By Anna Cynar
Utne Reader 2007-03-04 (entry)
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Families of children sickened from e.coli after eating McDonald's hamburgers told they can sue only in rural Missouri counties where restaurants are situated, and not in Kansas City, court rules; stores are independent franchisees, company says.
By David A. Lieb
Associated Press; Houston Chronicle (entry)
Hamburger giant works with translation service to create a series of nutrition icons for calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and sodium that work with or without language, worldwide; company will allow free use of new symbols to food and restaurant industry.
QSR Magazine (entry)
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Wolfgang Puck and other culinary luminaries converge in northeast Ohio, serve up heaping portions of lobster, beef, lamb chops and wine in a biennial benefit to fight cancer - hopes were to raise $2 million.
By Lisa Abraham
Akron Beacon-Journal (entry)
