The global food supply chain generally delivers products that are safe to drink and eat, but every so often there are some stories about unscrupulous distributors who try to sell knockoff items that aren't exactly what they say they are. The infamous 2008 scandal in China is probably the scariest example where melamine was added to infant formula to make it look like the milk had a higher protein content. Less dangerous tricks involve deceptive food labeling practices, and it can be extremely difficult to detect food fraud when it's not so egregious. Here are just a few links on identifying authentic foods.

• Olive oil from Italy might not be as virgin as you might think. One estimate says 69% of olive oil sold in the US may be doctored -- diluted with cheaper oils or otherwise adulterated. [url]
• Natural organic flavorings (eg. vanilla, cinnamon oil, anise oil) can be more expensive than chemically synthesized additives, but it's usually not that hard to tell the difference. Natural oils contain ambient levels of carbon-14 atoms, whereas artificial flavorings made from petroleum distillates contain no trace amounts of this radioactive isotope of carbon. [url]
• If you drink bottled water that says the water is straight from a natural spring, how does anyone really know if they didn't just filter some tap water and bottle it? The isotopic composition of water can indicate the authenticity, but how often do you test your hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios.... [url]

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There are a lot of different kinds of pizza, and it's a food that is often mentioned here on Techdirt -- often as the example of how giving away free samples can drive greater business. But if you just like to eat pizza, and don't care about any other aspects of the pizza business (or any other business), here are just a few tips for you.

• According to one pizza box aficionado, the best box design for holding a pizza comes from India. The VENTiT pizza box allows steam from a hot pizza to escape without exposing the pizza via big holes in the box and keeps the pizza warm longer. [url]
• If you don't like cold pizza, you should really re-heat your leftover pizza in a skillet. The pizza crust will stay crispy this way, so just forget about using a microwave or toaster oven. [url]
• Don't eat a pizza with a fork and knife in New York City, especially if you're a politician like Mayor Bill de Blasio. The proper way for New Yorkers: "You grab it, you fold it, you eat it, and you walk." (Otherwise, you're a tourist.) [url]

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The 2004 documentary Super Size Me set out with a goal of showing everyone how unhealthy it is to eat nothing but fast food every day for a month. The movie wasn't done in any particularly controlled way, but it still seemed to provide some convincing anecdotal evidence for the common sense knowledge that fast food is usually junk food. But the counterexample for fast food is Jared Fogle who lost an incredible amount of weight eating only at Subway (and has gone on to become Subway's most famous spokesperson). Does it really matter what you eat? Of course it does, but exercise and watching how much you eat is important, too. Here are just a few other weird diets that are trying to prove some point (with varying success).

• John Cisna, a high school science teacher, ate only McDonald's food for 90 days... and lost weight and improved his cholesterol levels. Cisna exercised more than he did prior to his all McD diet, and he strictly limited his daily intake to 2,000 calories. [url]
• Sylvester Graham was one of America's first radical diet promoters in the 1800s. The Graham Diet consisted of a lot of bland foods including graham crackers (which would not be easily confused with those made by Nabisco today). [url]
• Almost anyone could probably eat nothing but pizza for a week without even really trying. The teenage mutant ninja turtles are probably not great diet role models, but there are a lot of varieties of pizza to keep things interesting. [url]

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For some folks, boiling water isn't a simple task. Others can whip up a delicious meal before a pot of water can boil. Cooking skills can be amazingly good or mind-bogglingly bad, but there are some people who just don't want to do things simply, and they turn cooking into a kind of obstacle challenge. Sure, there are reality TV shows that put ridiculous time pressures on cooking a 7-course meal or restrict ingredients to rare delicacies. For pure fun (or sometimes necessity...), though, some cooks are forgoing a stove or conventional cooking devices to make their meals. Here are just a few examples.

• A coffee maker can double as a steamer, cooking dishes like poached salmon with steamed broccoli. When you're only allowed to have a coffee maker in your dorm, that Mr. Coffee machine can start to look more interesting after your 50th bowl of ramen noodles. [url]
• Okay, there are some fancy rice cookers that come with pretty lengthy recipe books, but even no-frills rice cookers can make stuff beyond plain rice. Banana bread, chocolate lava cake... and maybe someone should try making coffee in a rice cooker? [url]
• The concept of cooking in a dishwasher has been around for a while, but some chefs are starting to really refine dishwasher techniques. Aluminum foil wraps for dishwasher cooking are being replaced by ziplock bags and mason jars -- so you can actually add soap and wash some dishes at the same time you cook your next meal. [url]

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Many people are freaking out about the potential shortage of Sriracha, the popular hot sauce (aka "rooster sauce") that has taken the world by storm, after it was reported that the new Sriracha factory in Irwindale, California, was facing a potential shutdown due to noxious fumes coming from the plant -- generated by chili pepper processing -- that were causing eye and throat irritation, as well as headaches, in nearby residents. A judge has now ordered the makers of Sriracha, Huy Fong Foods Inc., to stop any work that generates irritating fumes. While the smelly factory may not be welcome in Irwindale, at least two other cities (Philadelphia and Denton, TX) have suggested that the makers of Sriracha sauce relocate to their neck of the woods. In the meantime, here are a few links with more information about Sriracha, as well as potential alternative hot sauces.

• Sriracha is made with hybrid jalapeño peppers (processed within a day of being picked), vinegar, sugar, salt, and garlic. Sriracha was created in 1980 by David Tran, at the time a recent immigrant from Vietnam, who couldn't find any hot sauces that would satisfy his palate. It took him months to come up with the right formulation for the now well-known Sriracha sauce that's packaged in the distinctive clear bottles with the rooster logo and green caps. [url]
• YouTube filmmaker Griffin Hammond has created a 33-minute documentary about Sriracha. The film -- which features many interviews, a glimpse inside the Sriracha factory, as well as a number of songs and videos dedicated to Sriracha sauce -- can be viewed online for $5 a view. It seems that, until recently, relatively little was known about the company that makes this popular hot sauce. [url]
• "Bizarre Foods" host Andrew Zimmern thinks Sriracha sauce is overrated. While he does love Sriracha, he says there are many better alternative hot sauces, such as the Marie Sharp line from Belize and Crystal from Louisiana. Other chefs recommend hot sauces such as the Rogue, a super-hot Moruga blood orange and Scorpion chili sauce from High River Sauces, and Tobanjan (Japanese) and Kochujang (Korean) sesame-based hot sauces. And if you just can't get away from Sriracha, you can try the Thailand-made Shark Brand Sriracha sauce. [url]

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If there's a way to eat something, there's someone out there with a "right" way to eat it. Sometimes etiquette dictates how you should eat, but sometimes efficiency trumps the normal rules of society (don't ask when). If you're looking for more efficient ways to eat some common fruits, just check out these guides to eating apples, oranges and bananas.

• If you eat an apple by pulling out the stem and eating it top down, you'll probably be able to eat the entire apple without really tasting the core. Of course, some joker is going to say that it's better to eat it up from the bottom... [url]
• Do you hate cutting/peeling oranges? Can't decide to make an equatorial or polar cut? Here's your new method: slice a bit of the top and bottom off and then cut the peel so that it can unroll. The drawback is that you don't end up with any pieces that you can readily use to make an orange-peel-teeth smile. [url]
• Most people peel a banana from the stem down, but did you know that monkeys peel bananas from the other end? Monkeys don't care which end of the banana is the top. They just want to peel bananas in an easy way, instead of making a banana joystick with the stem and mashing the top of their bananas. [url]

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It turns out that many Americans aren't paying much attention to the ongoing battle over labeling genetically modified foods. A recent survey by researchers at Rutgers University found that half of Americans know very little or nothing at all about GM foods, while a quarter have never even heard of them. Furthermore, they found that many Americans are also confused about what types of GM foods are on the market. Meanwhile, heirloom fruits, vegetables, and grains are gaining popularity. These are plants that have been grown and passed down from one generation to another -- some for more than 100 years -- often selected for their superior flavor, as well as other characteristics such as productivity, hardiness, and adaptability. If you want to avoid GM foods, why not spend some time rediscovering heirloom varieties? Here are a few links to get you started.

• Glass Gem corn is a stunning variety of heirloom corn that's named for its multi-colored, gem-like kernels. You really have to see it to believe it. Glass Gem is the result of many years of selective breeding of corn that exhibited vivid, translucent colors.[url]
• Tartine Bakery in San Francisco has started incorporating heirloom and ancient varieties of grains into the bread they make. Apparently, these older varieties of grains -- rye, barley, einkorn, and emmer -- have a different gluten quality that makes them easier to digest. [url]
• In case of an apocalyptic disaster that destroys the world's crops, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault will make sure we can rebuild the global plant population. Built on the edge of the Arctic Ocean in Svalbard, Norway -- away from civilization -- the seed vault can hold up to 4.5 million different seed varieties and keep them safe from disasters caused by climate change, asteroid strikes, plant diseases, nuclear warfare, and even earthquakes. [url]

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It seems like every other day we hear about yet another chemical in our food supply that's bad for our health. Maybe it's because the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, which is supposed to help regulate the use of chemicals in consumer products, has failed us with its assumption that "chemicals are safe until proven harmful," and has turned us into unwitting human guinea pigs. Phthalates in vinyl, perfluorinated chemicals in non-stick cookware, brominated flame retardants in electronics, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in coolant/dielectric fluids, and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) in insecticides -- these are just a few chemicals that, over the years, have been discovered to be unsafe, long after they were introduced in consumer products. Here are a few more:

• The FDA will likely ban trans fats in foods. Trans fats, typically found in partially hydrogenated oils, help increase the shelf life of processed foods and make deep-frying oils last longer. However, the FDA has now concluded that the negative health effects of trans fats -- they raise LDL (bad) cholesterol and lower HDL (good) cholesterol -- far outweigh their benefits. [url]
• The FDA is now warning people to reduce their consumption of acrylamide, which tends to form when starch-rich foods are cooked at high temperatures, like in frying or baking. Acrylamide, in high doses, can cause cancer in animals and likely also in humans. So, in every humanly possible way, avoid eating tasty things like fries, chips, toasted bread, and even coffee. [url]
• The FDA is keeping an eye on bisphenol A (BPA). While there have been a ton of fear-mongering media reports on BPA, the FDA has concluded that at this time, there is no strong evidence that BPA is unsafe at the very low levels we get exposed to through our diet. However, it will continue to study BPA and recommends that people who want to reduce their exposure to BPA should: avoid using plastics with recycle codes 3 or 7; never put hot liquids in containers made with BPA; and throw away scratched plastic bottles. [url]

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It's not easy to introduce a new soda (or pop or whatever you like to call carbonated soft drinks). Just try to find a bottle of New Coke, Crystal Pepsi, OK Soda or 7Up Gold -- and those are just the discontinued sodas that had some significant marketing campaigns behind them. The successful introduction of diet sodas has evolved into a trend toward "healthier" sodas with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, real sugar, no BVO, herbal supplements and all sorts of other ingredients that might provide some kind of health benefit. However, some of these healthy sodas are dying off because consumers don't seem to want sodas that sound too good for you. Here are just a few examples of healthier sodas you might want to try.

• Pepsi Special is a diet soda that contains dextrin -- an indigestible fiber that can make a person feel full and reduce the body's ability to absorb fat from foods. This beverage has recently been approved for sale in Japan, but it's not the only soft drink with dextrin on the Japanese market. (NB: drinking a lot of indigestible fiber might keep you in the bathroom for a bit longer than usual...) [url]
• A few years ago, Coke and Pepsi both introduced "healthy" sodas (Diet Coke Plus and Tava, respectively). These carbonated beverages were fortified with vitamins and minerals, but they didn't quite catch on. [url]
• Coke and Pepsi weren't the first to try adding vitamins and minerals to soda -- in 2004, 7Up Plus hit the shelves a few years before Diet Coke Plus and Tava. 7Up with antioxidants also ran into some problems, and a lawsuit from the Center for Science in the Public Interest made the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group agree to stop adding vitamin E to drinks and claiming to have antioxidant health benefits. [url]

Nature has devised some convenient ways to protect foods until we're ready to eat them -- bananas have nice yellow peels, grapes come in handy bunches, etc. People have also devised a few interesting packages for food (not just Pringles cans), but there's always some room for improvement. Here are just a few examples of some ways to store food/drinks in interesting ways.

• Almost everyone can recognize an egg carton -- a container design that's well over 50 years old. However, the humble egg carton might still evolve if an "eggbox" design (that can fold flat) gets commercial interest. [url]
• Coca Cola is experimenting with a Coke bottle made of ice, but it's only being sold in Colombia. Looks like a cool idea to have the bottle melt away, but the refrigeration necessary to store the bottles isn't too environmentally friendly. (Also, you have to drink it all in one sitting?) [url]
• You can get a 12-course meal to fit into a can -- and you don't even need a can opener to eat it. The pop-top can contains 12 layers of deliciously compacted food, but you have to be a bit careful about getting everything out so you don't mix up the appetizer with the dessert. [url]

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