USERNAME 
PASSWORD 
Subscriber? · Lost password?
Lost username? · More help

Food

64-65
28
65-71
24
31-33
32
35-37
22
36-39
20
36
20
20
Readings/Article


SEE ALSO: Food
PDFPDFZoom in on this pageIMAGES
97
78-79
6
7
8
8
9
10
69-74
61
67-70
194-199
178-189
245
668-675
705-711
55-63
356-360
321-330
39-44
696-701
701-713
48-52
861-871
486
162
892-898
241-244
513-517
136
Editor's drawer/Article


SEE ALSO: Food
PDFPDFZoom in on this pageIMAGES
495-507
562
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)

December 15, 2012A New Jersey ShopRite refused to decorate the birthday cake of a three-year-old boy with his name, Adolf Hitler Campbell. “ShopRite can't even make a cake for a three-year-old,” said the boy's mother. “That's sad.”
Source:

LehighValleyLive.com

July 22, 2009The Taco Bell chihuahua died of a stroke.
Source:

People

January 30, 2009 Coca-Cola announced plans to remove the word “classic” from its packaging.
Source:

Reuters

January 18, 2009 Little Debbie snacks containing peanut-butter paste were recalled after they were linked to an outbreak of salmonella.
Source:

F.D.A. Cautions on Peanut Butter

December 6, 2008 Ireland recalled its pork.
Source:

RTE News

November 15, 2008Sales rose for Hormel Foods Corporation, which produces SPAM. “We are scheduled to work every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas,” said Darwin Sellers, a SPAM “formulator” who adds salt, sugar, and nitrates to rectangles of pork at a plant in Minnesota. “The man upstairs [would like] to get us to work eight days a week.”
Source:

NYT

October 3, 2008Between April and July, nearly one million people enrolled in the federal food-stamp program.
Source:

Washington Post

August 9, 2008 Australian scientist George Wilson called on people to eat kangaroo instead of beef to reduce global warming.
Source:

BBC

August 5, 2008 McCain campaigned at a biker rally in South Dakota, at which there is each year a beauty pageant that features topless contestants performing fellatio upon bananas. “I encouraged Cindy to compete,” he told a crowd. “I told her with a little luck she could be the only woman ever to serve as First Lady and Miss Buffalo Chip.”
Source:

Talking Points Memo

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.
Source 1:

One Bakersfield Online

Source 2:

Mumbai Mirror

October 10, 2006Right-wing columnist Christopher Hitchens confessed that he had eaten a dog.
Source:

Daily Mirror

October 5, 2006 Starbucks announced plans to add 28,000 new locations to its extant 12,000.
Source:

Starbucks' new store-opening goal: 40,000

September 28, 2006President George W. Bush served Presidents Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan sea bass with stuffed tomatoes, fondue, and a pomegranate-dressed endive salad at a White House dinner.
Source 1:

BBC News

Source 2:

The Australian

September 25, 2006Aides to Prince Charles denied that he only eats one of the seven eggs that are boiled for his breakfast each morning.
Source:

Reuters via Yahoo! News

September 22, 2006 Fruit farmers rallied in Washington, D.C., to protest a shortage of low-wage, uninsured, illegal immigrant laborers.
Source:

New York times

September 20, 2006The Food and Drug Administration announced that it had found the “smoking gun” of bacteria-infested spinach in a refrigerator in New Mexico.
Source:

CNN

September 20, 2006Scientists announced that breakfast may not be the most important meal of the day.
Source:

Los Angeles Times

September 14, 2006An Ontario woman died after choking during the Chubby Bunny marshmallow-eating contest. “It was just an unfortunate incident that happened,” explained a fair manager.
Source 1:

EdmontonSun.com

Source 2:

London Free Press

August 15, 2006 Colombia began exporting its big-butt queen ants (Hormiga culona), which taste like juicy popcorn when toasted.
Source:

The Penninsula (Qatar)

August 8, 2006 Coke and Pepsi were banned in the state of Kerala, India, because of their high levels of pesticide residue.
Source:

MSN.co.in

August 7, 2006America Online released the search query data of 658,000 people to the Web, then pulled the information because it could be used to violate user privacy. User 88112, for instance, searched for “christian beliefs and sex outside of marrigae” and “penis abnormalities in children,” while user 843043 searched for “fungal meningitis and coma” and “easter cookie recipe for jesus' suffering.” “This,” said an AOL representative, “was a screw up.”
Source:

eWeek

August 3, 2006 Lance Corporal Mark Beyers, an Iraq war veteran and double amputee, was attacked and robbed outside a restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland.
Source:

Local6.com

August 2, 2006 Basketball player Yao Ming announced he would no longer eat shark fin soup because “endangered species are our friends.”
Source:

NY Times

July 30, 2006It was reported that Private Steven D. Green, who is charged with raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then killing her and members of her family, had said that, in Iraq, “killing people is like squashing an ant, I mean, you kill somebody and it's like, 'All right, let's go get some pizza.'”
Source:

Washington Post

July 25, 2006Gunmen in Mosul set fire to government-run food-ration shops.
Source:

Reuters

July 23, 2006 Saddam Hussein was being force-fed through a tube.
Source 1:

NY Times

Source 2:

BBC

July 21, 2006A school headmaster in China burned down 10 classrooms when the dog meat he was cooking burst into flames.
Source:

The Australian

July 21, 2006Violence was forcing Shiite-owned bakeries in Baghdad's Sunni neighborhoods to close their doors.
Source:

NY Times

July 18, 2006The Chinese government announced that it would begin issuing identity numbers to fresh vegetables.
Source:

Reuters

July 13, 2006In Chennai, India, more than a ton of camel meat from Dubai was destroyed at an airport after no one claimed it.
Source:

News Today Net

July 13, 2006A chicken in Kazakhstan laid an egg with the word “Allah” in Arabic on its shell. “We'll keep this egg,” said a farmer, “and we don't think it'll go bad.”
Source:

The Scotsman

July 11, 2006In Mauritania, where local custom favors obese women and where girls are sometimes fattened up by being force-fed sweetened milk and millet porridge via a funnel, large numbers of women were attempting to lose weight for health reasons.
Source:

The Christian Science Monitor

July 10, 2006 Scientists in Maryland found that two thirds of people who consumed the hallucinogenic drug psilocybin had extremely meaningful experiences.
Source:

The Wall Street Journal

June 21, 2006In Baghdad a car bomb detonated next to an ice cream shop, killing at least three people of indeterminate age, and insurgents beheaded two Russian diplomats and shot another.
Source:

Houston Chronicle via Google News

June 20, 2006A Canadian bear was caught stealing oatmeal.
Source:

CNN

June 18, 2006 Baboons in Saudi Arabia ruined a picnic.
Source:

Arab News

June 17, 2006 and bBanana rustlers were on the loose in Australia.
Source:

Times Online

June 9, 2006 Florida's wildlife officials decided to remove the manatee, which has a mild taste that readily adapts itself to recipes for beef, from the state's endangered-species list.
Source:

New York Times

June 1, 2006 British scientists powered a small fan by feeding chocolate to bacteria.
Source:

New Scientist Tech

May 19, 2006About 2,000 gallons of Sunny D concentrate leaked into a river in England, killing fish and turning the water bright yellow.
Source:

Daily Mail

May 17, 2006At least 18 people fell ill in Dallas after eating tainted muffins.
Source:

UPI

May 16, 2006A South African ice cream company sprayed a ton of ammonia gas into the atmosphere, sending 100 schoolchildren to the hospital; afterwards, the company held an assembly for some of the children and gave them free ice cream. "They've been reading words like 'toxic' and 'poisonous' and obviously got quite a fright," said an engineer. "We want to enlighten them about how ammonia can be used constructively."
Source:

Iol.co.za

May 15, 2006The mayor of Scottsdale, Arizona, was offended by a new restaurant called the Pink Taco.
Source:

Local6.com

May 13, 2006Many species of bananas, said the United Nations, were in danger of extinction.
Source:

New Scientist

May 12, 2006The Hershey Company opened a new health center to study the benefits of cocoa.
Source:

The Gourmet Retailer

May 12, 2006A woman in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, found a potato shaped like a heart.
Source:

AP via Yahoo! News

April 17, 2006In Purcell, Oklahoma, a man named Kevin Ray Underwood was arrested for killing a 10-year-old girl named Jamie Rose Bolin. “I chopped her up,” he told police. “Regarding a potential motive,” said a police chief, “this appears to have been part of a plan to kidnap a person, rape them, torture them, kill them, cut off their head, drain the body of blood, rape the corpse, eat the corpse, then dispose of the organs and bones.” The police also announced that they had removed skewers and a meat tenderizer from Underwood's apartment.
Source:

Winston-Salem Journal

April 16, 2006Polls found that nearly three quarters of 10- to 13-year-old Americans like quesadillas.
Source:

SFGate.com

April 12, 2006 Researchers in Africa discovered a catfish that stretches out of the water to eat land animals.
Source:

Nature

April 7, 2006First Lady Laura Bush welcomed 51 egg artists to the White House for the annual egg display.
Source:

New Kerala

March 22, 2006 China announced a new 5 percent tax on disposable chopsticks.
Source:

ABC News Online

March 8, 2006The House passed legislation that, if approved in the Senate, will make it far more difficult for states to put warning labels on food; under the new rules all warnings will be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. "What's wrong," asked Representative Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), "with our system of federalism?"
Source:

Canada.com

March 7, 2006 Japanese scientists extracted sweet-smelling vanillin from cow dung.
Source:

The New Zealand Herald

February 27, 2006In France far-right groups were criticized for serving pork soup to the poor with the intent of discriminating against observant Muslims and Jews. "We are all pig eaters!" chanted a crowd of soup activists. "We are all pig eaters!"
Source:

The New York Times

February 16, 2006A British nurse was in trouble for slapping her co-workers with a frozen trout.
Source:

BBC News

February 11, 2006 Vietnam was refusing to allow people to register website names that contained the word "buoi," which, depending on tonal intonation, could mean either "penis" or "grapefruit," or the word "lon," which could mean either "vagina" or "pig."
Source:

Reuters via Yahoo! News

February 3, 2006 Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi performed a love ballad on Rome radio. "You are chocolate and coffee," he sang. "The samba that you have within you comes to me as I come to you."
Source:

The Scotsman

February 2, 2006A study found that the mineral content of meat and milk has dropped over the last 60 years due to intensive farming. The average rump steak, for instance, has only 45 percent as much iron as it did in 1940.
Source:

The Guardian via Common Dreams.

January 20, 2006 Japan blocked imports of American beef after a spine was discovered in a shipment from a U.S. meatpacker.
Source:

IHT.com

January 19, 2006It was reported that several of the Guantánamo Bay hunger strikers had started to eat again, while other reports indicated that 30 of the hunger strikers were close to death.
Source 1:

Reuters

Source 2:

AfterDowningStreet.org

January 18, 2006 New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said that the rebuilt New Orleans "will be chocolate at the end of the day." He clarified: "You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That is the chocolate I am talking about." One New Orleans resident said that Nagin "used the wrong dairy product."
Source:

CNN.com

January 18, 2006In San Jose, California, Anna Ayala, who planted a severed finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili, was sentenced to nine years in prison. Her husband, Jaime Plascencia, who obtained the finger from a co-worker, was given more than twelve years.
Source:

Wendy's chili-finger couple sentenced to prison

January 6, 2006It was reported that street vendors in Shanghai were secretly replacing mutton with cat meat.
Source:

Reuters

December 30, 2005A Norfolk, Virginia, man changed his name to Kentucky Fried Cruelty.com.
Source:

NBC6.net

December 10, 2005An increasing number of Americans were heating their homes with corn.
Source:

IndyStar.com

December 6, 2005A Funyun shaped like the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus sold online for $609.
Source:

The Miami Herald

December 6, 2005A Memphis, Tennessee, woman was arrested after she hired a hit man to kill four other men and take their cocaine; the hit man turned out to be an undercover police officer, and the cocaine turned out to be queso fresco cheese.
Source:

The Washington Post

December 2, 2005An Indiana man was found guilty of murder for shooting a 15-year-old boy who threw eggs at him.
Source:

Local6.com

November 24, 2005At the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the M&M's Chocolate Candies balloon knocked parts of a street lamp onto a woman and child. Both were briefly hospitalized. “We should be thankful,” said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, “none were more seriously hurt.”
Source:

AP

November 23, 2005Ruth M. Siems, who invented Stove Top Stuffing (U.S. patent no. 3,870,803), died of a heart attack at 74.
Source:

New York Times

November 22, 2005 President Bush issued pardons to two turkeys, which were then sent to Disneyland to serve as grand marshals at a parade. “The granting of the turkey pardon,” said the President, “is not a responsibility that I take lightly.” The turkeys, Marshmallow and Yam, earned their pardons when they beat out Democracy and Freedom in an online poll.
Source:

The White House

November 21, 2005In Australia a ten-year attempt to create pest-resistant peas was cancelled after it was found that the peas cause lung damage in mice.
Source:

New Scientist

November 16, 2005The Night Safari Zoo was preparing to open in Thailand; its buffet will feature tiger, lion, elephant, and giraffe.
Source:

Canadian Press

November 12, 2005A Milwaukee, Wisconsin, man was in trouble for drunken ice-cream-truck driving.
Source:

GMToday.com

November 8, 2005 Socks made from corn were slated to go on sale in Japan.
Source:

Reuters

November 8, 2005 El Salvadorean police arrested 21 people for operating a smuggling operation and seized 24 tons of contraband cheese.
Source:

AFP

November 4, 2005Chefs in Michigan baked a 600-pound pumpkin pie.
Source:

WLTX.com

October 28, 2005A 56-pound mushroom was found in Missouri.
Source:

News Leader

October 27, 2005The European Union denied a French company's attempt to trademark the smell of fresh strawberries.
Source:

BBC News

October 14, 2005 Belgian police issued a warning to whoever stole 440 pounds of leeks that the leeks were probably toxic.
Source:

Reuters

October 14, 2005In Florida one Walgreens employee stabbed another during an argument over who would be first to microwave her soup.
Source:

AP

October 12, 2005 Chinese porridge was increasingly popular in the San Francisco area.
Source:

SFGate.com

October 12, 2005Archaeologists in China discovered a 4,000-year-old bowl of noodles.
Source:

BBC News

October 7, 2005A registered sex offender in Medford, Oregon, was arrested after he asked a group of four girls for a ride to the mall. The police said that the suspect was covered in feces, but the man insisted he had just been rolling in tomato paste.
Source:

SFGate

September 16, 2005A 73-year-old New Orleans woman was being held on $50,000 bail for allegedly looting sausages.
Source:

Democracy Now!

September 15, 2005 Chicago was considering a proposal to ban foie gras. "Our culture," explained an alderman, "does not condone the torture of innocent and defenseless creatures."
Source:

The New York Times

September 14, 2005At least 128 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay were on hunger strike; 18 of them had been hospitalized and were being force-fed. "We're going to take care of everyone," said a prison spokesman.
Source:

LA Times

September 14, 2005In Spokane, Washington, a man was in trouble for breaking into another man's house and smearing the man's naked, sleeping body with chocolate frosting, then opening a dog pen in the hope that a dog would eat the frosting.
Source:

KXLY.com

August 31, 2005A British man died when he fell into a giant blender.
Source:

BBC News

August 15, 200539 people in China died after eating contaminated pork.
Source:

Reuters

August 10, 2005 Cream puffs with 560 calories and 47 grams of fat were selling briskly at the Wisconsin State Fair.
Source:

AZCentral.com

July 27, 2005An executive at Coca-Cola said that the company would soon start producing a soda that burns calories.
Source:

Ad Week

July 19, 2005A British court, acting under the legal principle of “universal jurisdiction,” convicted a man named Faryadi Zardad on torture charges for events that took place while Zardad lived in Afghanistan, where he would often unleash a “human dog”--a crazed man he kept in a hole--on captives he was holding for ransom. In London, where he has lived since 1998, Zardad ran a pizza parlor.
Source:

GlobeAndMail.com

July 18, 2005 Suicide bombers killed at least 170 Iraqis, including twenty-six children who were waiting for American soldiers to give them candy.
Source:

Washington Post

July 16, 2005In Traverse City, Michigan, a woman drowned in a vat of cherries.
Source:

Detroit Free Press

June 27, 2005A suicide melon truck exploded in Mosul, killing six people and damaging many melons.
Source:

The Australian

June 20, 2005British potato farmers held protests against the Oxford English Dictionary; they were offended by the term “couch potato.”
Source:

The Guardian

June 16, 2005And four cheerleaders in Texas were in trouble for smearing human feces on a pizza in an attempt to frame a rival cheerleading squad.
Source:

WOAI.com

June 15, 2005 Florida police found six endangered gopher tortoises in the back of a car. The owner of the car said that he was planning a soup.
Source:

Chicago Sun-Times

June 15, 2005In Bullskin Township, Pennsylvania, four men were accused of butchering a pet pygmy goat so that they could trade its meat for either money or crack cocaine.
Source:

Post Gazette

June 13, 2005Genetic engineers were growing a SARS vaccine in tomatoes.
Source:

Globe and Mail

June 13, 2005Thirty-five percent of America's annual clam harvest was found to be toxic because of red tide.
Source:

New York Times

June 13, 2005 Israeli scientists were raising a date palm from a 1,990-year-old seed found at Masada.
Source:

IHT

June 10, 2005Two women were upset when they visited a Houston mausoleum and found that the cremated remains of their mother had been replaced by a can of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips.
Source:

Local6.com

June 7, 2005 Australian officials were investigating allegations that prison guards tricked a prisoner into inserting a sausage into his rectum.
Source:

Herald Sun

June 3, 2005A fire in Watertown, South Dakota, killed thirteen thousand turkeys.
Source:

Argus Leader

June 2, 2005There was a wave of Canadian canola robberies.
Source:

CBC News

May 31, 2005A man in Narrogin, Australia, died when he fell into a meat grinder.
Source:

The Age

May 22, 2005 China put a halt to the practice of using naked women for plates in sushi restaurants.
Source:

BBC News

May 16, 2005 North Korea needed food.
Source:

BBC News

May 10, 2005 Mecca Cola was on sale in fifty-six countries, and was the second most popular soft drink in France.
Source:

Forbes

May 8, 2005Ave Maria University, a Catholic college founded by the retired CEO of Domino's Pizza, graduated its first class and gave an honorary degree to L. Paul Bremer, who told the assembled graduates that Muslim extremists were against the separation of church and state.
Source:

Netscape News

April 29, 2005A Rhode Island man was arrested after he offered an undercover policewoman T-bone steaks in exchange for sex.
Source:

AP

April 29, 2005 The Girl Scouts were suing people who didn't pay for their cookies.
Source:

AP

April 29, 2005The Clovis, New Mexico, police locked down a middle school, closed off several streets, and placed officers on rooftops before discovering that what they thought was a weapon carried by a student was actually a thirty-inch burrito.
Source:

AP

April 17, 2005 Britain stopped importing United States corn after discovering that the United States had been sending banned, genetically modified corn to the U.K. for the past four years.
Source:

The Independent

April 17, 2005America's 7 million vending machines were being visited by 100 million people a day.
Source:

Medical News Today

April 12, 2005Brewer Anheuser-Busch, America's number one buyer of rice, announced that it will no longer buy rice from Missouri if that state allows genetically modified rice to be grown within its borders.
Source:

CNN.com

April 7, 2005In Indiana, someone threw a pie in William Kristol's face. Someone else threw a pie at David Horowitz. Prior to the pie throwings, Pat Buchanan was doused with salad dressing.
Source:

Palladium-Item

January 26, 2005More than 250 people were trampled or burned to death during a Hindu festival in western India when a stampeding riot was triggered by pilgrims slipping on spilled coconut milk.
Source:

The New York Times

January 22, 2005A survivor of the Indian Ocean tsunami was found in his underwear eating coconuts on a tiny island 25 days after the tsunami hit.
Source:

BBC

January 20, 2005Hundreds of jumbo squid were washing up on beaches in California.
Source:

CNN

January 7, 2005Francois Vacavant won a Parisian bakers' confederation award for the best Epiphany cake,
Source:

The New York Times

January 6, 2005and scientists found that organic ketchup fights cancer better than the regular kind.
Source:

The Daily Telegraph

January 5, 2005a Pennsylvania man tried to kill workers in a fast-food restaurant when they ran out of french fries,
Source:

Ananova

January 3, 2005 Krispy Kreme Doughnuts announced that it has bad credit and that the Atkins diet was not to blame.
Source:

The New York Times

December 29, 2004Astronauts aboard the international space station reported they'd had little to eat except candy for the last five weeks,
Source:

Reuters

November 26, 2004A study found that half of American food goes to waste.
Source:

Food Navigator USA

October 12, 2004The British Food Standards Agency warned that lobsters, cockles, and scallops taken from the waters northwest of England are contaminated with plutonium and will exceed United Nations limits scheduled to take effect next year.
Source:

New Scientist

October 10, 2004A nineteen-year-old Singapore man set a world record for the number of hamburgers he could stuff in his mouth. "I'm on top of the world right now," he said," because everyone's going to know that I can shove more than three burgers in my mouth."
Source:

Associated Press

October 2, 2004Eight students in Georgia were poisoned by a cookie.
Source:

New York Times

September 30, 2004In Baghdad, suicide bombs killed dozens of children who were gathering to receive candy from U.S. soldiers.
Source:

BBC

September 24, 2004The Israeli government seized 80,000 cans of dog food that had been labeled as foie gras.
Source:

Haaretz

September 21, 2004American researchers developed a device that uses spinach to generate electricity.
Source:

New Scientist

August 25, 2004A study found that women who drink more than one soft drink per day are more likely to develop diabetes.
Source:

Associated Press

August 21, 2004A 105-pound woman in Kennebunk, Maine, ate 38 lobsters (9.76 pounds of meat) in 12 minutes and won the World Lobster Eating Contest.
Source:

Associated Press

August 18, 2004A new survey found that about 10 percent of the world's food crops are irrigated with sewage.
Source:

New Scientist

August 17, 2004an Australian drunk ate a cup of maggots, a pint of anchovies, drank a pint of mouthwash, and chewed off a mouse's tail in a pub competition.
Source:

BBC

August 13, 2004A Jelly Belly factory was robbed, and
Source:

Reuters

August 11, 2004 Dominican migrants, lost at sea on their way to Puerto Rico, threw a woman overboard when she refused to share her breast milk with other passengers.
Source:

Associated Press

August 10, 2004four people were arrested in the Philippines for killing, cooking, and eating a relative at a wedding reception.
Source:

Associated Press

August 9, 2004It was reported that HIV has crossed the species barrier from apes to humans at least seven times in recent years and that a new strain of HIV, which is undetectable by normal HIV tests, has appeared in Cameroon. Scientists said that eating bush meat is the most likely cause; earlier this year, three bush-meat hunters came down with simian foamy virus.
Source:

New Scientist

August 1, 2004 Russian researchers from the Voronezh State Technological Academy said they had perfected a method for using cow blood as a high-protein dairy replacement in foods such as yogurt.
Source:

Telegraph

July 31, 2004 Italy was upset about a poster campaign in the London subway urging people not to eat smelly food; the posters show an overweight man sitting on a train surrounded by parma hams and salamis and strings of garlic.
Source:

Reuters

July 10, 2004Federal health officials were thinking about banning the practice of feeding pork, chicken, and other animal parts to cattle; the pigs and chickens eat rendered cattle and thus could transmit mad cow disease prions. There was apparently no plan to stop feeding cattle huge quantities of cattle blood, an obvious vector for the disease, and cattle will continue to enjoy the feathers and excrement of 8.5 billion chickens.
Source:

New York Times

July 1, 2004American military officers were worrying that promotional cans of Coca-Cola including cell phones and global positioning chips could be used to eavesdrop on classified meetings.
Source:

Yahoo

June 15, 2004The USDA reclassified frozen French fries as "fresh vegetables."
Source:

Los Angeles Times

June 7, 2004A horticulturalist in Florida unveiled a new low-carb potato.
Source:

University of Florida

June 1, 2004The price of rice was up in Haiti.
Source:

New York Times

May 29, 2004Thirteen million pounds of raw almonds were recalled because of salmonella contamination.
Source:

New York Times

May 27, 2004 MTV declined to air advertisements for Super Size Me, a documentary about a man who eats nothing but McDonald's food for a month, because it was determined that the ads unjustly disparage fast food.
Source:

Reuters

May 6, 2004Fifteen Chinese warehouse workers were crushed to death by an avalanche of garlic.
Source:

BBC

May 5, 2004World grain carryover stocks were at a 30-year low, it was reported, well below the 70-day consumption level that is considered the minimum for basic food security.
Source:

Earth Policy Institute

April 22, 2004Police in Mexico arrested a tamale vendor after a dead body was found in his home.
Source:

New York Times

April 20, 2004Dozens of Chinese babies died of malnutrition after they were fed counterfeit formula.
Source:

BBC

April 10, 2004The USDA rejected a request from a Kansas beef company that asked for permission to test all its cattle for mad cow disease; the decision was announced by the department's undersecretary for marketing and regulation.
Source:

New York Times

March 30, 2004Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand made his 17-year-old daughter get a job at a McDonald's in Bangkok.
Source:

Reuters

March 24, 2004Poor people in Venezuela were said to be eating flamingos.
Source:

CNN

March 11, 2004The House of Representatives passed the so-called cheeseburger bill, which if made law would grant immunity from lawsuits to restaurants, especially fast-food chains, that serve unhealthy food.
Source:

New York Times

March 9, 2004The British Nutrition Foundation reported that McDonald's new Caesar salad with Chicken Premiere contains 18.4 grams of fat, whereas a cheeseburger contains only 11.5 grams.
Source:

CNN

March 4, 2004The inspector general of the USDA opened a criminal investigation into whether the Washington State mad cow was falsely listed as a downer; the man who killed the cow, the man who took the cow to slaughter, and the owner of the slaughterhouse have all said that the cow was able to walk. A spokeswoman for the agency said that she could not "fathom" the notion that a high-ranking USDA official could have ordered the falsification, though she did not deny the charge but simply repeated that she could not "fathom" it.
Source:

New York Times

March 3, 2004 McDonald's began phasing out its popular "Supersize" order of french fries.
Source:

Associated Press

February 28, 2004Dr. Stanley Prusiner, the Nobel Prize-winning expert on prions, said that until all cattle are tested for mad cow disease, none should be considered safe, and he noted that improved feed practices will not prevent spontaneous cases.
Source:

New York Times

February 27, 2004A large beef producer in Kansas applied to test all its cattle for mad cow disease so that it can resume exporting its beef to Japan. "The problem we're having now is that the U.S.D.A. is not wanting to do this," said the company's president. "They don't want to test. They don't want to recognize BSE is a problem. They are not going to allow anyone to test until they decide how or when. We believe that may be never."
Source:

New York Times

February 27, 2004The Food and Drug Administration banned the feeding of cattle blood to calves. Dinner scraps from restaurants, known as "plate waste," will no longer be fed to cattle either, though rendered cows will still be fed to pigs and chickens, and vice versa.
Source:

New York Times

February 25, 2004The European Union banned live poultry and eggs from the United States because of the bird-flu outbreak, and the United States banned all French meat and poultry.
Source:

New York Times

February 22, 2004An internal Pentagon report warned that global climate change will soon lead to drought, famine, and widespread warfare as countries begin to fight over scarce water, food, and energy supplies. Climate change, the report argues, "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern."
Source:

Observer

February 21, 2004The president's chief economic advisor suggested that fast-food jobs might need to be reclassified. "When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?"
Source:

Newsday

February 14, 2004An FDA advisory panel recommended widespread testing for mad cow disease, saying that absent such testing there is no way to assess the risk of transmission from meat, drugs, vaccines, cosmetics, or dietary supplements.
Source:

New York Times

February 12, 2004 South Korea cracked down on lewd candy and cakes.
Source:

Agence France-Presse

February 10, 2004 South Africa's health minister, who has repeatedly expressed doubts that HIV causes AIDS, said that a diet with lots of garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice would help fight the disease.
Source:

New York Times

February 6, 2004A new study found that many organic food products sold in the UK contain genetically modified ingredients.
Source:

Nature.com

February 5, 2004A panel of international experts said that mad cow disease is now "indigenous in North America" and advised the United States to ban feeding animal protein to cattle. The panel's chairman said that if the U.S. performed adequate tests it could find "a case a month."
Source:

New York Times

January 30, 2004A Pennsylvania company recalled 52,000 pounds of beef that might be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.
Source:

New York Times

January 15, 2004A Mexican man reportedly hacked open his father's head with a machete, drank his blood, and then ate his brains.
Source:

Agence France-Presse

January 15, 2004People in Indiana were still eating deep-fried cow brain sandwiches. The brains puff up nicely when cooked.
Source:

Associated Press

January 8, 2004American researchers found that farm-raised salmon have ten times the PCB, dioxin, and pesticide contamination of wild salmon. Using EPA risk estimates, the scientists suggested that people eat no more than 110 grams, or about half a normal portion, of Maine salmon a month; Scottish salmon, among the most contaminated in the study, which analyzed fish from all over the world, should be limited to 55 grams a month.
Source:

New Scientist

January 8, 2004A second case of SARS was reported in China, in a waitress who works in a restaurant that serves civet; the first SARS patient, who has apparently recovered, has had no known contact with civets, but there were reports that he had recently thrown a mouse out his window using chopsticks.
Source:

New Scientist, New York Times

January 4, 2004One government expert pointed out that Americans are much more likely to die of E. coli, listeria, or salmonella than from mad cow disease; in fact, since the mad Holstein was discovered in Washington, more than 1 million Americans were poisoned by their food, 6,000 were hospitalized, and 100 died.
Source:

Seattle Times

December 31, 2003In response to the mad-cow crisis, the United States Department of Agriculture banned the human consumption of cow brains, skulls, spinal cords, vertebral columns, eyes, and nerve tissue from cows older than 30 months. Downer cows may no longer be eaten by humans, though they will be boiled down and fed to chickens and pigs, and younger cow brains may still be eaten.
Source:

Forbes, New York Times

December 31, 2003U.S. trade officials were trying to persuade about 30 countries that have banned American beef that there's nothing to worry about.
Source:

Associated Press

December 31, 2003 USDA officials said that there was no need to test all cattle for mad cow disease before they are eaten.
Source:

Newsday

December 31, 2003Large shipments of frozen french fries, which were pre-fried in beef tallow, were in limbo because Japan and other Asian countries were refusing to accept them.
Source:

Tri-City Herald

December 30, 2003Washington's mad Holstein was determined to have been old enough to have eaten other cows.
Source:

New York Times

December 29, 2003and about 100 people called hot lines to say they might have eaten some of the meat.
Source:

New York Times

December 28, 2003Ten thousand pounds of beef were recalled in eight states,
Source:

Reuters

December 24, 2003 Mad cow disease was discovered in the United States for the first time, in a Holstein cow that was too sick to walk but was nonetheless slaughtered and sold for meat. The mad Holstein's brain and spinal column were sent to a rendering plant somewhere, possibly to be turned into dog or chicken food; there was no word on whether the cow's blood was processed to be fed to young calves as a milk supplement. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Venemen, a former lobbyist for the beef industry, insisted that even meat from a mad cow is safe to eat, and she promised to feed beef to her family for Christmas.
Source:

Guardian, New York Times

December 24, 2003A large crocodile ate a young man in Australia.
Source:

Guardian

December 18, 2003The Department of Justice filed suit against Mississippi for abusing juvenile prisoners. "We found evidence of systematic abuses including hog-tying and pole-shackling," said Alex Acosta, an assistant attorney general for civil rights. "It was even reported that girls, overcome by the heat during drills, were forced to eat their own vomit."
Source:

CNN

December 18, 2003 Taiwan banned the sale of dog meat as food.
Source:

Agence France-Presse

December 5, 2003It was revealed that George W. Bush's famous Iraqi turkey was a mere prop.
Source:

Daily Mail

November 23, 2003A German cannibal named Armin Meiwes said he was sorry for killing and eating another man, who supposedly agreed to be eaten and shared a meal of his own penis with his killer. Prosecutors have charged Meiwes with "murder for sexual satisfaction," because cannibalism is not a crime in Germany.
Source:

BBC

November 21, 2003President George W. Bush traveled to Great Britain, along with 650 companions, including five personal chefs, but was unable to move freely in the country because of massive protests. At Buckingham Palace the president dined on roasted halibut with herbs, free-range chicken, potatoes cocotte, salad, and a sorbet bombe but presumably skipped the Puligny-Montrachet and the Veuve Clicquot, Gold Label, 1995. Truck bombs blew up the British Consulate and a British bank in Istanbul, killing at least 27 and wounding hundreds. Bloody victims ran screaming through the streets. Two hotels in Baghdad used by Westerners were bombed as was the headquarters of a pro-American Kurdish group in Kirkuk.
Source:

New York Times, Daily Telegraph

October 26, 2003There were new reports of cannibalism in Congo,
Source:

New York Times

May 27, 2003Hungry tigers and lions in Chinese zoos were trying to eat one another.
Source:

Associated Press

January 21, 2003 Rebels in Congo were accused of systematic rape, torture, and cannibalism in the northeast region of the country; some Pygmies were reportedly forced to eat their own relatives.
January 29, 2002 Mike Tyson, the convicted rapist, took a bite out of Lennox Lewis's leg after the two boxers got into a fight at a news conference to promote their upcoming fight in Las Vegas; Tyson had previously threatened to eat Lewis's children.
January 15, 2002 Doctors in Croatia confirmed that they had removed a carrot that a man's girlfriend had playfully stuck up his ass.
December 18, 2001The Drug Enforcement Agency agreed for the first time in two decades to permit research on the medical effectiveness of marijuana; the agency also decided to ban any food products that contain trace amounts of THC, the active ingredient in pot, which is a problem for many natural-foods companies that use hempseed or hempseed oil in their products. “Pasta, tortilla chips, candy bars, nutritional bars, salad dressings, sauces, cheeses, ice cream, and beer” containing hemp have been banned, but not hats, shirts, lotion, paper, or rope, because they “do not cause THC to enter the human body.”
November 27, 2001Boxes of American food aid fell through the roofs of several houses in Herat, Afghanistan; an old shrine to a Persian poet was also damaged.
November 20, 2001 Pentagon officials were still trying to decide on a new color for food-aid packages; the current yellow color matches the one used for cluster bombs.
November 6, 2001Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, asked about the massacre, said: “I cannot deal with that particular village.” General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that United States forces would change the color of the yellow food packets being dropped from the air. “It is unfortunate that the cluster bombs — the unexploded ones — are the same color as the food packets,” he said, but he couldn't say when the change would take place “because there are many in the pipeline.” Human Rights Watch called on the Pentagon to stop using cluster bombs, each of which contains 202 soda-sized yellow bomblets, because “they have proven to be a serious and long-lasting threat to civilians, soldiers, peacekeepers, and even clearance experts.”
October 16, 2001The United Nations suspended its food convoys into Afghanistan because of the American bombing campaign.
October 16, 2001U.S. forces dropped over 100,000 yellow ration packets into Afghanistan, where there are thought to be 7.5 million people facing starvation. Each packet, decorated with an American flag, contains one day's worth of food, a book of matches, and a Moist Towelette: “Here is your Moist Towelette,” the packet says in English. “It will clean and refresh your hands and face without soap and water. Self-dries in seconds, leaving your skin smooth and soft.”
October 16, 2001Jean Ziegler, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, said the food drop was “totally catastrophic for humanitarian aid” because it links such aid with military operations; he also warned that the indiscriminate “snowdropping” of food could lead hungry children into mine fields.
September 11, 2001Thousands of volunteers rushed to lower Manhattan. Well-meaning citizens created a small disaster by overwhelming rescue workers with truckloads of socks, T-shirts, food. Much was simply thrown away.
July 31, 2001Five million Afghans, one fifth of the country's population, were reported to have little or no access to food due to drought and civil war.
June 26, 2001 Communists in the Italian senate protested the upcoming Group of 8 summit, which will be held in Genoa next month, by holding up little signs that read, “Let's throw the G-8 into the sea.” Afghanistan's Taliban agreed to let the World Food Program employ local women to survey food needs there even though this would seem to violate God's Law.
May 15, 2001The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said that 550,000 tons of old, unused pesticides were threatening to poison food and water supplies worldwide.
March 20, 2001Aventis CropScience reported that 430 million bushels of American corn are contaminated with StarLink, its genetically modified corn, which is unfit for human consumption, much more than the 70 million bushels previously reported.
March 20, 2001Epidemiologists think the current hoof-and-mouth epidemic in England may have started with contaminated swill fed to pigs in Heddon-on-the-Wall; leftover airline food from a country affected by the disease might have been in the swill.
February 13, 2001Spanish bullrings, which traditionally have defrayed costs by selling the meat from bulls killed in bullfights, were going broke after the practice was banned due to mad-cow concerns.
January 23, 2001 London officials cancelled the license of the pigeon-food vendor in Trafalgar Square as part of a new war on bird droppings. After animal-rights groups expressed concern over the starvation of the birds, it was announced that the square's 3,000 pigeons would be fed for another month.
January 23, 2001Starving Nigerians were stealing grain from anthills.
January 9, 2001 Colombia was spraying Roundup on crops near villages in the Putomayo province as part of the U.S.-backed Plan Colombia antidrug campaign; villagers complained that the pesticide was killing their food crops and livestock and that it was making them sick.
December 26, 2000Over 3.2 million Sudanese were endangered by food and water shortages.
December 0, 2000Joey Chestnut ate 45 slices of pizza in ten minutes in Times Square.
Source:

CNN

November 14, 2000Friends of the Earth reported the discovery of Monsanto's “Roundup Ready” corn in European food; the genetically modified corn has not been approved in Europe for any use.
October 31, 2000StarLink genetically modified corn was found in Japanese snack food.
October 17, 2000Safeway, the supermarket chain, recalled its house brand of corn taco shells after food critics discovered that the shells contained StarLink, a type of genetically modified corn that was not approved for human consumption. Taco Bell previously recalled its shells.
August 15, 2000 British and American warplanes again bombed Iraq, just a few days after President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela visited the country; the airstrikes destroyed a warehouse used to store food acquired in the U.N. oil-for-food program.
August 1, 2000The Defense Department proposed a new debit-card program for low-income troops who qualify for food stamps.
July 25, 2000A bear killed and partially ate a man in Alaska.
20
21
Readings/Cartoon


SEE ALSO: Birds; Food; Menus
PDFPDFZoom in on this pageIMAGES
147
Editor's drawer/Cartoon


PDFPDFZoom in on this pageIMAGES
766
Editor's drawer/Cartoon


SEE ALSO: Birds; Food; Rationing; Worms
PDFPDFZoom in on this pageIMAGES
309
150
Editor's drawer/Cartoon


PDFPDFZoom in on this pageIMAGES
606
Editor's drawer/Cartoon


PDFPDFZoom in on this pageIMAGES
PAGE MISSING
798
Editor's drawer/Cartoon


PDFPDFZoom in on this pageIMAGES
324
322
647
Editor's drawer/Cartoon


PDFPDFZoom in on this pageIMAGES
165
315
Editor's drawer/Poetry


SEE ALSO: Food
PDFPDFZoom in on this pageIMAGES

December 2009

THE GENERAL ELECTRIC SUPERFRAUD
Why the Hudson River Will Never Run Clean
By David Gargill

THE MASTER OF SPIN BOLDAK
Undercover with Afghanistan’s Drug-Trafficking Border Police
By Matthieu Aikins

MERMAID FEVER
A story by Steven Millhauser

UNDERSTANDING OBAMACARE
By Luke Mitchell

Also: Dave Hickey and Wendell Berry