Making your own carbonated soft drinks has a few benefits -- from knowing where all the ingredients came from (eg. no brominated vegetable oil) to getting the satisfaction of creating your own custom flavoring. It's not quite as simple as punching a button on a vending machine, but it's not exactly rocket science, either. Here are just a few links on being your own soda jerk.

• Sodastream has been around since 1903, but it went public on the Nasdaq in 2010 and started expanding its DIY soda making system to take on the big soft drink makers. But marketing itself as an alternative isn't always easy, and it had to change its 2013 SuperBowl commercial to remove Coke and Pepsi logos. [url]
• The secret recipe for a can of Coca-Cola isn't just getting the mixture of caramel coloring and phosphoric acid right; there are also a zillion other details from packaging and distribution that have been optimized. The top of the aluminum can is actually a different aluminum-magnesium alloy from the rest of the can, engineered so it can have a pop-top and still withstand the pressurized contents. [url]
• When making your own soda, be sure to use 100% essential food oils that are rated food grade. Recipes to make Open Cola and the "original" Coke are available, but there's a bit of set up involved. [url]

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Is it still junk food if you make it yourself? If you feel guilty about buying junk food and have lots of time on your hands, here are a few links that might inspire you to try recreating some popular snacks at home.

• Here's a recipe for homemade Cheez-It crackers, which supposedly taste better than the store-bought version. By the time you're done making these, you'll wish that you had just gone to the store and bought a box of Cheez-Its. [url]
• McDonald's Canada has revealed exactly how they make their fries, "from the farm to the fryer." If you've ever wondered whether their fries are made from real potatoes, the answer is yes. Their fries are cut from whole potatoes harvested from farms in New Brunswick, Alberta, and Manitoba. [url]
• Read about one junk food enthusiast's attempts to recreate Twinkies, Hostess Cupcakes, Oreos, and Fritos. While some of the homemade versions were somewhat "healthier" calorie-wise, the general concensus was that there's just nothing like the real thing. [url]

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It's actually somewhat difficult to avoid eating insects accidentally. Bugs (or bug parts) get into our food supply all the time, and it's not really a bad thing (unless you're a strict vegan). Some folks, though, want more insects in their food, and not just fried grasshoppers or exotic scorpions. Insect protein could be a more sustainable food source, and arguably, our distant primate relatives eat far more insects than meat from other animals like we do. Here are just a few interesting links on insects in our food.

• For over 20 years, candy lollipops with entrapped insects have been on the market. How many licks does it take to get to the insect at the center of a Hotlix lollipop? [url]
• The Starbucks Strawberry Frappuccino was once made rosy red, not with an artificial color (like Red #40), but from natural colors derived from grinding up the dried bodies of cochineal bugs The bug-based coloring was safe to eat (as long as you weren't allergic to those bugs), but Starbucks had to switch to a vegetable-based dye because people were either grossed out or vegan. [url]
• Some European researchers are trying to make insects more palatable for people, and a popular Dutch restaurant called Specktakel tries to incorporate an insect into at least one item on its daily menu. Insects are a good source of protein, and it is far less energy intensive to raise bugs than beef. [url]

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been trying to get the meat industry to reduce its use of antibiotics, even proposing a set of voluntary guidelines in 2012, but it hasn't done much with it since. In the meantime, antibiotic (ab)use on livestock farms continues to grow. According to data from the FDA, the livestock industry now uses almost 80% of all the antibiotics used in the U.S. The main concern is that the practice of dosing healthy farm animals daily with antibiotics will create drug-resistant bacteria. About three-quarters of Salmonella found on ground turkey and chicken breast are now resistant to at least one antibiotic, and almost half of the Campylobacter found on chicken products are resistant to tetracyclines. Here are some other examples of antibiotic abuse in the food industry.

• Researchers have found 149 different drug-resistant genes in bacteria on antibiotic-intensive pig farms in China. These antibiotic-resistant genes can spread to the environment and end up in many different kinds of human pathogens. [url]
• Did you know that organic apple and pear orchards are treated with tetracycline to prevent a disease called fire blight? While this may be surprising, tetracycline has actually been allowed for use in organic farming in the U.S. since the mid-'90s (with the understanding that their use would eventually be phased out). Fire blight has already become resistant to streptomycin -- how long will it be before tetracycline stops working, too? [url]
• If you use logic "borrowed from the anti-GMO crowd," you could argue that antibiotic abuse in the meat industry causes autism and diabetes... because both antibiotic use and the number of autistic children and diabetics have been increasing over the years. Right? Right?? [url]

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Breakfast is supposedly the more important meal of the day. But does it matter what you eat for breakfast? There are plenty of incredibly unhealthy-sounding breakfast menus, but people are always coming up with even more outrageous breakfast items. Here are just a few examples of how kids can start their day.

• PepsiCo has a breakfast soda called Kickstart -- a Mountain Dew-flavored beverage with caffeine and some fruit juice and added vitamins. Are you a backer for 92 milligrams of caffeine in a 16oz can? [url]
• All kinds of deep fried foods can be found at county fairs, and deep fried breakfast cereals are no exception. Last year, the San Diego County Fair offered several kinds of breakfast cereals in a hot, crispy slightly chewy and delicious form (if you like fried stuff, and who doesn't). [url]
• If there's an important state-wide standardized test, students should eat a good breakfast before they take it -- and they can get a free meal from McDonald's for taking the FCAT (in Florida) in 3rd to 11th grade. And if anyone can correlate higher test scores with the students who ate at McDonald's.... [url]

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These days, it actually takes some effort to find food at the grocery store that contains fewer than five ingredients. Processed foods contain so many ingredients that it might be better to just avoid them altogether. But even when you think you're getting "whole foods," they may actually contain hidden ingredients. When did food get so complicated? Here are a few things that will make you think twice before you decide to eat something.

• Potentially harmful ingredients that have been banned in other countries around the world are still legal in the U.S. What's worse is that many food companies have already reformulated their products to be safer for the foreign market, but they continue to sell Americans the "original" versions. [url]
• Olive oil, milk, honey, and saffron are the most commonly adulterated foods. The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention has created a database of more than a thousand cases of food adulteration from 1980-2010, noting what the foods were mixed with, and providing links to press reports and scientific papers on each case. [url]
• Some people choose to eat organic food because they think it's more nutritious, but studies seem to suggest that the health benefits are minimal. Buy organic if you have deep pockets, want to avoid ingesting small amounts of pesticides, and want to support more environmentally friendly agriculture, but don't be fooled into thinking that it's necessarily more nutritious. [url]

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A pretty concerning statistic for Americans is that 17% of kids in the US are obese. The solutions to reduce that figure range from getting kids to eat better school lunches to eliminating various kinds of advertising aimed at getting kids to equate food with fun. There are a few other crazy ideas to keep people from getting fat, without trying to eat less or exercise more. Here are just a sampling of such suggestions.

• There's a chance that the bacteria in our intestines have some influence on obesity. From a preliminary study, morbidly obese people were found to have different bacterial communities in their intestines, but it's not clear if the different flora are a cause (or a result) of obesity. If there is a causal relationship, maybe there will be an effective treatment that involves cultivating different intestinal microbes. [url]
• "The Parasite Diet" isn't a new idea. At the turn of the 20th century, some people used tapeworms to lose weight (before modern medicine convinced people this was a very bad idea). But genetically modified tapeworms that are benign to people could be a reality someday. [url]
• Freakonomics has yet another podcast on obesity called "100 Ways to Fight Obesity" that covers some interesting proposals to prevent overweight adults and children. Some suggestions, such as smelling a vial of vomit to curb an appetite, are not so pleasant -- and not really guaranteed to work that well, either. [url]

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The food industry has a growing number of problems, ranging from food labeling to determining what ingredients are actually considered safe to eat. One of the oldest issues people have brought up about food is whether or not to eat meat. It's a serious question, but the answers aren't so easy for the multi-billion dollar meat industry. Someday, meat producers may need to change their ways, and here are just a few dramatic suggestions.

• PETA president Ingrid Newkirk asserts that there's no such thing as a free lunch humane meat. This is obviously an extreme position (or an exercise in semantics), but there should be other ways of raising "humane meat" without resorting to eating only roadkill, right? [url]
• Animal 57 is an urban legend that commercial fast food meat is grown in tanks of water. However, the concept of lab-grown meat might not be so far-fetched. [url]
• The "Blind Chicken Solution" proposes that farmers raise congenitally-blind chickens as a more humane food source (assuming that blind chickens are actually less traumatized than sighted chickens when raised in crowded conditions). The "Headless Chicken Solution" goes the extra step of creating a Matrix-style farm of brainless birds that feel no pain whatsoever. As long as these chickens never realize that "there is no spoon" -- then we'll presumably be okay with this. [url]

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While it may be a bit late for New Year's resolutions, it's never too late to start counting calories as part of a sensible weight loss (or maintenance) plan. But before embarking on a crusade to cut out all those extra calories, it might be wise to learn more about this unit of energy. For example, scientists are still debating whether all food calories are equivalent from a metabolic perspective -- are calories from fat the same as calories from carbohydrates? The answer still isn't clear, but one thing is for sure: eat fewer calories and you'll lose weight. Here are a few more interesting tidbits about calories.

• Want to learn more about calories? New York University professor Marion Nestle gave a talk in which she discusses what calories are and how they work biologically and politically. [url]
• Bad news: Claims that sex burns 100 to 300 calories are just a myth, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. Apparently, one study found that sex lasted 6 minutes on average and burned only 21 calories. [url]
• Good news: Watching 90 minutes of a horror movie can reportedly burn almost 200 calories because it causes an increase in heart rate. For the greatest calorie-burning workout, watch The Shining. [url]
• How accurate are those calorie counts listed on food labels? Apparently, you could unknowingly be ingesting an extra 550 calories a day. [url]

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Just when you thought the horse meat scandal in Europe was winding down, it's once again getting media attention as more cases continue to pop up. But is horse meat really that bad? According to people who have (willingly) eaten it, horse meat has been described as being lean, tender, sweet, juicy, like a mix between beef and venison, and better than a really good beef steak. Perhaps beef products in Europe should just come with a label that says: "May contain traces of horse meat." Here are a few more links about horse meat.

• Traces of horse meat were found in IKEA's signature meatballs which had been distributed to 21 European countries. Did you know that food sales make up 5% of the Swedish furniture giant's $35.6 billion revenue, and that about 150 million IKEA meatballs are consumed globally? [url]
• Nestle has had to remove two of its pasta products from store shelves in Europe after traces of horse DNA were found in them. In both cases, the amount of horse DNA found in the products was higher than the 1% threshold which the British Food Standards Agency uses as an indicator of adulteration in foods. [url]
• People were up in arms recently when chef Hugue Dufour announced that he was going to serve horse tartare at his restaurant, M. Wells Dinette, in Queens, NY. With all the public opposition, Dufour decided it was best to drop the horse tartare from the menu, because he didn't want to be famous for "scandalizing animal lovers." That's probably for the best, since horse meat (esp. that sourced from the horse racing industry) could contain all sorts of drugs, including phenylbutazone, which is a carcinogen and has been strongly linked to bone marrow and liver problems in humans. [url]
• Here are some fun facts about eating horse meat: During World War II, Americans ate lots of horse meat when beef was scarce; In 723 A.D., Pope Gregory III declared that eating horse meat was a "filthy and abominable" pagan custom; In 2011, President Obama made horse slaughter for human consumption legal again; Until 1985, the Harvard Faculty Club reportedly served horse steaks, prepared "chicken fried" with a mushroom sauce; and apparently, horse meat is a healthier option than beef, since it's high in protein and omega-3 fatty acids, low in fat and cholesterol, and has twice as much iron and Vitamin B. [url]

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