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Food

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SEE ALSO: Food
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Oct 2006 Estimated number of minutes of cocoa picking required to make a treat-sized Hershey chocolate bar: 1
Source:

Harper's research

Oct 2006 Percentage of tea drunk in America that is served iced: 85
Source:

Tea Association of the USA (N.Y.C.)

Jul 2006Ratio of the amount of energy used in producing corn ethanol to the amount yielded when it is burned in gasoline: 1:1
Source:

Alexander Farrell, University of California, Berkeley

Jul 2006Ratio of the average U.S. import of Mexican lettuce each year to the average Mexican import of U.S. lettuce: 1:1
Source:

Foreign Trade Division, U.S. Census Bureau

Jul 2006Estimated number of hot dogs that will be eaten in the United States over the Fourth of July weekend: 150,000,000
Source:

National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (Washington)

Jul 2006Tons of mud a Mongolian girl has eaten since 1994, because she finds it “delicious”: 1.7
Source:

Bao Bao (Xinxiang, China)

Jun 2006

Percentage change since 1960 in the per-capita U.S. consumption of fresh potatoes: ‒43

Percentage change in per-capita consumption of processed potatoes: +247

Source:

U.S. Department of Agriculture

May 2006Percentage change since 1940 in the average iron content of milk: –62
Source:

David Thomas, Mineral Resources International (East Sussex, England)

Oct 2005Years after the Watts riots that the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation trademarked “Burn Baby Burn” for a hot sauce: 40
Source:

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (Alexandria, Va.)

Oct 2005Kernels of candy corn manufactured for Halloween each year: 9,000,000,000
Source:

National Confectioners Association (Vienna, Va.)

Aug 2005Fine levied last year on a restaurant in southwest China for serving sushi atop naked women : $242
Source:

Kunming Xishan District Bureau of Health

Mar 2005Average percentage of its food that an American household wastes: 14
Source:

The Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, University of Arizona (Tucson)

Nov 2004Number of restaurants in Guizhou, China, closed in April for adding opium to their dishes : 215
Source:

Guizhou Provincial Bureau of Public Security (Guiyang, China)

Nov 2004Number of U.S. McDonald’s franchises whose drive-through order taking has been outsourced to another state : 2
Source:

McDonald's Corporation (Chicago)

Nov 2004Price paid on eBay last November for two bottles of turkey-and-gravy soda : $63
Source:

eBay Inc. (San Jose, Calif.)

Jul 2004Number of fried chocolate sandwiches served at a British hotel chain in April after their debut : 1,256
Source:

Jarvis Hotels Ltd. (High Wycombe, England)

Jun 2004Percentage who are at risk of losing regular access to food if conditions there persist or deteriorate : 31
Source:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Rome)

Apr 2004Number of people in France who are injured each year opening oysters : 2,000
Source:

Institut de Veille Sanitaire (Saint-Maurice, France)

Mar 2004Cost of testing each slaughtered U.S. cow for mad cow disease per pound of beef produced : 5c
Source:

U.S. Department of Agriculture/National Cattlemen's Beef Association (Centennial, Colo.)/Harper's research

Mar 2004Calories of fuel energy used by U.S. farms in 1940 per calorie of food produced : 0.4
Source:

The Land Institute (Salina, Kans.)

Mar 2004Calories of fuel energy used in 1974 per calorie of food produced : 1
Source:

The Land Institute (Salina, Kans.)

Apr 2003Pounds of grits and other grains to be donated to fill this year's food-budget gap at the South Carolina governor's mansion: 1,000
Source:

Allen Brothers Milling Company (Columbia, S.C.)

Mar 2003Percentage change since 1990 in the annual number of large-scale outbreaks of U.S. school-cafeteria food poisoning: +100
Source:

U.S. General Accounting Office

Dec 2002Chances that a child fed "booger"-flavored jelly beans at a trade show this fall said they tasted like the real thing: 4 in 5
Source:

Litzky Public Relations (Hoboken, N.J.)

Nov 2002Average number of tons of meat recalled by U.S. producers each year since 1994: 8,500
Source:

Sierra Club (San Francisco)

Jun 2002Ratio of the number of Americans killed by terrorists last year to the estimated number who died from food poisoning: 3:5
Source:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta)/Harper's research

Jun 2002Days the University of Georgia heated its campus last winter by burning chicken fat and other leftover food grease: 21
Source:

University of Georgia (Athens, Ga.)

Jun 2002Ratio of the amount of food thrown out by South Korea last year to the amount consumed by North Korea: 1:1
Source:

Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs (Seoul)

Jan 2002Number of Pop-Tarts dropped on Afghanistan as part of U.S. airborne food aid in the first month of bombing: 2,400,000
Source:

Defense Security Cooperation Agency (Arlington, Va.)

Dec 2001Chance that a "GMO-free" food product studied last April contained no genetically modified ingredients: 1 in 5
Source:

Wall Street Journal study (N.Y.C.)

Nov 2001Minimum number of U.S. food products recalled in the last year due to contamination from StarLink corn: 336
Source:

U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Sep 2001Estimated number of times an adult must taste a disliked food before learning to like it: 10
Source:

University of Buffalo

Jul 2001Percentage of Americans who believe they have never eaten genetically modified food: 70
Source:

American Museum of Natural History (N.Y.C.)

Jul 2001Chance that a processed food in a U.S. grocery store contains genetically modified ingredients: 1 in 2
Source:

Union of Concerned Scientists (Cambridge, Mass.)

Jun 2001Average number of food-poisoning incidents in the United States each day: 208,000
Source:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta)

Jun 2001Estimated number of Americans who are eligible for food stamps but have not applied: 12,400,000
Source:

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Apr 2001Tons of food suitable for human consumption wasted in the United States each year: 48,000,000
Source:

U.S. Department of Agriculture

May 2000Ratio of the number of people worldwide who are underfed to those who are overfed: 1:1
Source:

Worldwatch Institute (Washington)

May 2000Chance that a U.S. fisherman died on the job in 1998: 1 in 718
Source:

U.S. Department of Labor

Apr 2000Estimated portion of whale, dolphin, and porpoise meat consumed in Japan last year whose pollution levels were toxic: 1/2
Source:

Whale Product Analysis Study (San Francisco)

Dec 1999Billions cut from the five-year federal food stamp budget in 1996: $24
Source:

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Aug 1999Percentage of the medical supplies bought since 1996 under Iraq's oil-for-food program that has been distributed: 43
Source:

U.N. Security Council (N.Y.C.)

Jan 1999Estimated number of days that Russia's emergency food reserve could feed the country: 5
Source:

Federal News Service (Moscow)

Apr 1998Ratio of the average amount a U.S. family spent on food, clothing, and shelter last year to what it spent on taxes: 3:4
Source:

Tax Foundation (Washington)

July 12, 2008 Obama admitted that he disliked ice cream.
Source:

YouTube

July 4, 2008 British studies warned that eating junk food during pregnancy might cause lasting damage to the child, and that eating too much tofu could lead to dementia.
Source 1:

BBCnews.com

Source 2:

BBCnews.com

June 29, 2008Gardeners across Britain were reporting a harvest of deformed, dangerous vegetables, traced back to the Dow AgroSciences herbicide aminopyralid, which can wind up in manure. It was “scandalous,” said a woman with a patch near Bushy Park in London, “that a weedkiller sprayed more than one year ago, that has passed through an animal's gut, was kicked around on a stable floor, stored in a muck heap in a field, then on an allotment site and was finally dug into or mulched on to beds last winter is still killing 'sensitive' crops and will continue to do so for the next year.”
Source:

The Guardian

May 31, 2008The family of a former chemist for Procter & Gamble who designed the Pringles potato-chip can buried a portion of his ashes in a Pringles can.
Source:

Cincinnati Enguirer

May 23, 2008The United Nations, responding to food riots in 30 countries, said that the number of chronically hungry people in the world was expected to rise 100 million to 950 million. Japan released 20,000 tons of its 1.5-million-ton rice stockpile for sale to Africa.
Source 1:

The Washington Post

Source 2:

The Daily Star

Source 3:

AFP

May 6, 2008 Oil exceeded $125 a barrel. Refined french-fry grease was 32 cents per pound, up 20 cents from 2006.
Source 1:

Bloomberg

Source 2:

BBC

Source 3:

The Christian Science Monitor

May 5, 2008Police in Germany discovered the bodies of three dead babies stored in a freezer in the cellar of a family home, after two of the family's older children went rummaging for a frozen pizza.
Source:

CNN

April 15, 2008There were riots in Haiti, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Cameroon over increasing food costs. Some blamed the rising price of corn (up 31 percent from 2005) on the burgeoning biofuel industry, pointing out that to fill up an SUV with a tank of ethanol uses as much corn as can feed a person for a year. World Bank President Robert Zoellick called for more contributions to the $500 million World Food Program. “We have to put our money,” he said, “where our mouth is.”
Source:

The Age

March 28, 2008The cost of rice increased by 30 percent, raising fears of unrest in rice-eating countries.
Source 1:

FT

Source 2:

NYT

Source 3:

BBC

October 24, 2007A couple in southern California was facing criminal charges for attempting to sell 375 pounds of bathtub cheese.
Source:

Central Valley Business Times

October 3, 2007A Thai restaurant in London was cordoned off by police after passersby mistook the smell of its extra-spicy homemade chili sauce for a chemical outbreak.
Source 1:

Cape Times

Source 2:

Sky News

September 16, 2007There were reports of a restaurant in Tokyo where patrons could rape an animal before eating it. “When people have got money and done everything else,” said a lawyer who'd had the pork, “they turn toward bestiality.”
Source:

Mainichi Daily News

September 1, 2007A vegetable grower in Fresno, California, recalled 8,000 cartons of salmonella-tainted spinach.
Source:

Washington Post

August 15, 2007A Massachusetts man pleaded guilty to intentionally eating glass in over a dozen restaurants to collect insurance compensation.
Source:

AP via SFGate.com

August 4, 2007 Israelis fired apples, chilis, corn, cucumbers, mangoes, and tomatoes into the Gaza Strip.
Source:

Daily Mail

August 1, 2007A New Zealand study found that vegans are disgusted by sex with carnivores because meat-eaters are “composed of the lives of others.”
Source:

ABC News

July 25, 2007An Israeli study concluding that hummus stimulates serotonin production bolstered sentiment that eating the popular chickpea dip could help Israelis and Palestinians reconcile.
Source:

Christian Science Monitor

July 17, 2007A newborn was found in a trashcan at a Denny's in Anaheim, California; a 17-year-old girl with blood dripping down her legs was discovered nearby, having just shared a meal with her family.
Source:

O.C. Register

July 16, 2007IHOP, which serves more than 700 million pancakes each year, announced that it would buy Applebee's for $1.9 billion.
Source 1:

IHOP

Source 2:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

July 16, 2007In China, where flooding has killed hundreds of people this summer, the rampant Yangtze River had caused Dongting Lake to overflow, leading two billion rats to flee to the Hunan countryside, where there are few predators to reduce their numbers, as the snakes have been eaten by southerners and the owls have been used for medicine. Besieged farmers were poisoning the rats, beating them with hammers, and sending them, live, by truckload to restaurants in Guangzhou, where diners pay 136 yuan for a kilogram of ratmeat.
Source 1:

National Geographic

Source 2:

ABC News

Source 3:

Sydney Morning Herald

June 25, 2007 Tuna shortages were forcing Japanese chefs to consider deer and horse meat as substitutes for sushi. Tuna shortages were forcing Japanese chefs to consider deer and horse meat as substitutes for sushi.
Source:

NYT

June 8, 2007In China, a spike in the price of pork tenderloin and bacon caused people to begin eating more fish.
Source:

New York Times

June 5, 2007Three students were arrested in Aurora, Illinois, following a cafeteria food fight. “Milk cartons, full pop bottles, and blue slushies were flying around,” said one student. “Kids literally bought the food to throw it and, to me, that's a little expensive.”
Source:

CNN

April 18, 2007Restaurant owners in Hong Kong were fining customers who did not eat all their food.
Source:

Christian Science Monitor

April 9, 2007Researchers at the Department of Food Science at Leeds University spent over 1,000 hours testing 700 variations on the traditional bacon sandwich to find the ideal “crispy and crunchy” formula.
Source:

BBC

April 5, 2007XXXChurch.com, an online ministry, staged a “Porn and Pancakes” event for evangelicals in Morton, Illinois.
Source:

CNN.com

April 4, 2007The Food and Drug Administration proposed new labeling rules that would allow irradiated foods to be categorized merely as “pasteurized.”
Source:

Washington Post

April 4, 2007In Beardstown, Illinois, federal agents arrested 62 undocumented immigrants in a pork plant.
Source:

Reuters

March 25, 2007In the United States, crystal meth was now available in candy flavors.
Source:

USA TODAY

March 23, 2007And in the Mojave Desert, a wandering photographer in search of a striptease museum stumbled across an estimated acre of rotting food discarded by a food bank, including cases of eggnog and tooth whitener. “Creepy, spooky, gross, disgusting,” he said. “Filled with animals and bugs.”
Source:

MSNBC

March 22, 2007Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck announced that his restaurants would no longer serve foie gras, but that he would continue to slice lobsters in half without first stunning them.
Source:



February 15, 2007A salmonella outbreak in 39 states was traced to contaminated peanut butter.
Source:

CNN

January 26, 2007A molecular scientist who owns a café announced that he had found a way to put caffeine in a donut.
Source:

AP via NY Post

January 19, 2007 United States/South Korea trade talks came to a halt after the Koreans refused to accept shipments of U.S. beef that contained bone fragments.
Source:

International Herald Tribune

January 18, 2007 Corn prices were at a 10-year high, leading to price-gouging by corn merchants. With more corn going to U.S. ethanol plants, the president of Mexico signed an accord with Mexican supermarket chains and bakers to cap tortilla prices.
Source 1:

BBCnews.com

Source 2:

BBCnews.com

January 17, 2007A freeze destroyed as much as 75 percent of California's citrus crop. “We may have to do without guacamole for a while,” said a Pasadena resident. “And we may be drinking our Coronas without limes.”
Source:

AP via Cnn.com

January 13, 2007Federal agents in Missouri found two kidnapped adolescent boys in the apartment of Michael Devlin, a 41-year-old pizzeria manager. “I still feel like I'm in a dream, only this time it's a good dream, not the nightmare I've had to live for the past four-and-a-half years,” said the mother of one of the boys.
Source:

New York Times

January 9, 2007Capsaicin, a substance in jalapeño peppers, was said by scientists to thwart cancer by attacking mitochondria in cancer cells, triggering cell death.
Source:

BBC

January 6, 2007 Armenian politicians were accused of buying votes with potatoes.
Source:

Telegraph

December 13, 2006In Baghdad, at a gathering place for poor Shiite laborers, the owner of a truck filled with wheat announced that he was looking for workers. A crowd gathered around the truck and it exploded, killing 70 people and wounding 236.
Source:

NYT

December 13, 2006The Marine Corps ordered a sergeant to call off an online auction that gave the highest bidder the right to rename him; bids included “King Taco” and “Sgt. Finest Freshest Fastest.”
Source:

NYT

December 13, 2006 Lettuce, rather than green onions, was deemed responsible for the Taco Bell E. coli outbreak; however, suggested a health official, “it would be folly at this point to drop the cheese completely.”
Source:

reuters

December 11, 2006In response to the deaths of three anorexic models, the fashion industry held a forum that called for internal regulation. “We would much rather come up with a way of self-policing ourselves,” said one modeling agency chief, “than have regulations rammed down our throats.”
Source:

NY Post

December 7, 2006A Christmas party in Dublin was canceled after Gus, a camel starring in Santa's Magical Animal Kingdom Show, got drunk on Guinness and ate all the mince pies.
Source:

MSNBC

December 1, 2006Poor Zimbabweans were happily eating dog food.
Source:

Institute for war and peace reporting

November 28, 2006A “yearlong rash of nut robberies” ended when police recovered 136,000 pounds of stolen nuts with a street value of $400,000 from a warehouse in Sacramento.
Source:

New York Times

November 20, 2006Residents of Oberlin, Ohio, were upset by the presence of gingerbread Nazis.
Source:

ABC News

November 17, 2006 Deep-fried American flags were removed from an art exhibit in Tennessee.
Source:

CNN.com

November 2, 2006 Corn farmers in the Midwest were resisting bids for their ethanol plants by Wall Street firms.
Source:

New York Times

November 2, 2006Scientists claimed that at the current rate of consumption, global sea food supplies will be obliterated by the year 2048.
Source:

Washington Post

November 1, 2006Bangalore, the high-tech capital of India, renamed itself “Bengalooru,” to more closely resemble the city's medieval name, “Bendakalooru,” or “town of boiled beans.”
Source:

Reuters via Yahoo! News

November 1, 2006In Aurora, Colorado, chubby girls robbed younger children of their trick-or-treating candy.
Source:

ABC 7 Denver

October 26, 2006Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, mufti of Sydney, Australia's largest mosque, compared unveiled women to “uncovered meat.” “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside,” said the mufti, “and the cats come to eat it . . . whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”
Source:

Guardian

October 19, 2006 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan collapsed from fasting during Ramadan. His security staff rushed him unconscious to the hospital and accidentally locked him in his car; they fought for ten minutes to break the car's reinforced windows with a sledgehammer and chisel.
Source:

AFP via New York Times

October 12, 2006 Coca-Cola announced plans to market a new calorie-burning green tea beverage called Enviga.
Source:

NBC

October 11, 2006 Walnut-related crimes were on the rise in the United States,.
Source:

Appeal-Democrat

October 11, 2006A pile of jelly left over from a wedding party's jelly-fight sparked a terrorism alert near Leipzig, Germany.