Subject: Food Manufacturing

• Junkie Jukebox: Adult Swim Jams

  June 6, 2008

• The Download Extra: New Cool Kids MP3s

  July 8, 2008

• Studies In Crap: Say It In Chinese and The Bicentennial Beef Cookbook

  August 7, 2008

• Shatto Ice Cream here! Or at least in eight places

  October 1, 2008

• Breakfast Buffet: 12/30

  Wait? Is this blog post even about food? It starts off on the subject but quickly veers to Twitter. You've been warned. [Hip Suburban White Guy]New Years' Resolutions are coming quick and often now. Dan Regan from KC Irish Fest has a good list of what he hopes to accomplish including, "I will get a full 8 hours of sleep a night Irish Fest weekend and will eat three square, healthful and nutritious meals each day, while limiting myself to one small glass of light beer." I wish him the best of luc

  December 30, 2008

• Three Dog's treats are safe

  Barf Blog has a post about an elderly Georgian dog (Ozzie) being one of the salmonella outbreak's casualties. While the owner believes the bacteria was passed from peanut butter crackers meant for humans, plenty of doggie treats use peanut butter as an ingredient. The FDA says throw this dog food away. "Product recalls now include some pet food products that contain peanut paste that was made by [Peanut Corporation of America] PCA. While the risk of animals contracting salmonellosis is minimal,

  January 28, 2009

• Overstep

  May 8, 2003

• Best Gizzards

  October 9, 2003

• Best Deep-Fried Celebration

  October 9, 2003

• Best Candy Innovation

  October 9, 2003

• To Hell With Cookies

  April 29, 2004

• The latest victim of the economy? A reasonable discussion about pork

  The 2009 Responsible Pork Symposium was supposed to be in Kansas City this week. Then everyone lost their money and ruined it.This year's summit was canceled because everyone's completely broke, the Responsible Pork Web site says. That includes pork producers who probably can't afford a plane ticket and stay, even if a room at the Airport Hilton comes at a group rate. Looking at the schedule of speakers, this might've been an interesting discussion. Presenters were supposed to discuss how re

  February 25, 2009

• Despistado

  April 7, 2005

• China Feats

  August 3, 2006

• Are Big Tobacco and Big Food equals?

  Flickr: Dave KnapikWe've been posting an increasing number of law- and litigation-related items on Fat City. Whether that's simply because legislatures are in session, or due to a busy new administration or several food movements reaching maturity I do not know. The latest comes not from law but from academia, where Kelly Brownell and Kenneth Warner, Yale and Michigan professors respectively, argue that the food industry's -- they call it "Big Food" -- products carry many of the same dangers tha

  March 24, 2009

• 'State-of-the-art meat-slicing' jobs coming to KCK

  Look everybody! Jobs! 250 of 'em! Sara Lee is turning the old ConAgra Foods plant into a "state-of-the-art meat-slicing facility" (those are four words that I never thought I'd see in front of "meat-slicing"). The new plant should be in the futuristic meat cutting business by 2011.

  May 29, 2009

• For the makers of Shatto Milk, success is cold and tasty

  September 18, 2008

• City Market Melon Festival

  September 4, 2008

• Tree of Life

  April 16, 2009

• Here Comes the Fun

  July 3, 2008

• The Download

  Chocolate Swim

  January 11, 2007

• A Sugar Binge

  November 9, 2006

• Cattle Call

  March 2, 2006

• Mad Cowboys

  A Kansas beef producer just wants to sell safe cattle, but the feds won't let it.

  March 25, 2004

• There's No Joy In Snackville

  Under Victor Sabatino's leadership, Guy's has faced a downhill slide.

  August 24, 2000

• Pork OK, alfalfa sprouts are not

  What a crazy weekend. We're in the middle of the swine-flu "Panico 09!" My grandmother called me last night to ask what I knew, and then said that she and my grandfather don't plan to leave their home "until we know how bad this is." Russia has stopped all meat imports from Mexico and several U.S. states including Kansas. The National Pork Board released a statement yesterday wishing "to reassure the public that pork is safe and will continue to be safe to consume." Considering The National Pork

  April 27, 2009

• As Big Ag’s grade-A meat promoter, Charlie Arnot cooks up opposition to industry reform

  April 30, 2009

• Fear Mother Nature

  The movie Food, Inc comes out later this week, promising to rip into Big Ag and all the evil it has done. Big Ag, or Big Food as it's also called (really, anything with "big" in the title will work, the better to remind people of similarities to Big Tobacco) consists of a handful of companies -- Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, Mars -- that control a majority of food products. The companies have drawn the ire of green supporters for years, but it's only been recently, through the efforts of wri

  June 8, 2009

• Calcium Deposit

  June 18, 2009

• Cow producing too much milk? Better kill it

  People aren't drinking as much milk as they used to, and the price has fallen. Yet, there are more dairy cows than ever, all eating feed -- and the price of that keeps rising. The result is that $10 of milk can cost $17 to produce. As Bloomberg News writes,In California, the largest milk-producing state, dairies lost $1.07 per 100 pounds in April, compared with profits of $11.23 in July 2007, based on feed costs and milk prices, USDA data show. In January, the state was the most unprofitable in

  June 23, 2009

• Gently Used

  April 30, 2009

• Friday Farmers Market at Bad Seed

  August 28, 2008

• How much do you really know about frozen desserts?

  Ice cream and its thousands of flavors are pretty much universally loved. Nothing on a sweltering day can compete with a sweet, cool treat -- say a milkshake or an ICEE.  But do you you know your ice cream history? The James Beard Foundation has just released a small quiz to test your knowledge of frozen desserts in its June/July issue of JBF Notes.Be forewarned, it's a trade mag and so it expects test takers to have a ridiculous amount of knowledge. Also, at only five questions long, it's

  June 29, 2009

• Is IBM the future of food safety and management?

  We've heard a lot of debate about free markets in this country lately. And while we're likely to be saturated with government-vs.-market arguments about health-care reform, IBM is quietly starting another free market battle of its own.The company has been running "smarter planet" advertisements for several months, talking about smarter cities, smarter retail, smarter this and smarter that. The oversimplified gist is that IBM has the ability and technology to solve (or help solve) problems normal

  June 29, 2009

• Got milk money?

  Forget spilled milk -- dairy farmers seem ready to spill blood. They're seeing red because of declining raw milk prices, the result of a decrease in worldwide demand and a glut of milk production that was ramped up in expectation of greater demand that never materialized. Some groups are seeking legislative redress, while others feel that financial subsidies are the only way to keep dairy farms in operations. Farmers donned cowsuits to protest a recent hearing by the Department of Agriculture an

  July 21, 2009

• Lawsuit wants warning labels on hot dogs

  After buck night at The K, a lot of people wish hot dogs came with warnings. And if the Cancer Project in New Jersey gets its wish, hot dog packaging would come with the following label: "Warning: Consuming hot dogs and other processed meats increases the risk of cancer."  The nonprofit vegan advocacy organization filed a lawsuit yesterday asking the Essex County superior court to issue a judgment requiring companies selling hot dogs in New Jersey to put a warning label on every package

  July 23, 2009

• File it under 'I' for ice cream

  ​Bookworms unite! A new Facebook group "People for a library-themed Ben & Jerry's flavor!" boasts more than 6,400 members. Among those who want to see book-inspired ice cream flavors, the top entries so far are the "Gooey Decimal System" (dark fudge alphabet letters with caramel swirls in hazelnut ice cream), "In the Stacks" (butter pecan with fudge swirl), and "Library Loan Shark" (butter rum with little butter-flavored sharks). The New Yorker has come up with several flavors to add to th

  August 6, 2009

• When local goes corporate

  ​The idea of buying and eating local is one of the most easily identifiable food trends. There's been an explosion in farmer's markets, farm-to-table dinners/restaurants and a series of articles, movies and books trying to teach people to ask questions about where their food is grown or made.But invariably when a grassroots movement (pun slightly intended) enters the zeitgeist, corporations quickly follow. In this case, we've gone from born-on dates and use-by stamps to location codes allowing

  August 7, 2009

• Green Dirt Farm cheese wins gold, bronze awards

  Green Dirt Farm's Bossa...is the boss​Green Dirt Farm, the lamb farm and artisan cheese maker in Weston, Missouri, was honored last Friday at the 2009 American Cheese Society Competition in Austin, Texas. This was the first year that cheesemaker Sarah Hoffman -- who owns the farm with Jacquie Smith -- has entered the competition, but good fortune was definitely with her: Green Dirt Farm's Bossa won the gold medal in the washed rind sheep's milk category and two other cheeses -- Fresh Pl

  August 13, 2009

• If an Airstream and a slaughterhouse had a baby

  ​The concept of eating local always has geographic limitations. And those limitations are most apparent with regard to meat -- the challenge for cattle ranchers and farmers is in finding a local slaughterhouse. A group in the Puget Sound-area hopes to meet the demands of the locavore movement through the introduction of a Mobile Meat Processing Unit -- a "slaughterhouse on wheels." The 45-foot stainless steel trailer has been specially built to bring a local butchering option to farmers in Was

  August 19, 2009

• The 20 food inventions that didn't further our existence

  ​Food science in the hands of someone evil can be as devastating on your stomach as something off the Volcano menu at Taco Bell -- you know, the menu with the big signs proclaiming "the good hurt." Taco Bell isn't an emo ex-girlfriend. There is no good hurt in relation to that drive-thru. Sloshspot has compiled a list of the "20 Food Innovations That We Could Have Done Without." In hitting a number of packaged food products and beverages, the list is a nice walk-through of the items that masqu

  September 1, 2009

• Wheaties Fuel set for release today

  ​You probably haven't thought about Wheaties recently -- you haven't thought about the 1984 Olympics either, which was when Wheaties probably peaked. But General Mills is hoping to change all that with today's introduction (at 1 p.m., according to the Facebook page) of Wheaties Fuel -- an athlete-tested, souped-up version of the standard cereal. It's a radical move for "The Breakfast of Champions," which seemingly hasn't changed since that slogan was introduced in 1933. Those who are nostalgic

  September 9, 2009

• Cloudy With a Chance
  of Meatballs

  September 17, 2009

• A closer look at beef inspection

  ​Ground beef is one of the few foods that can make me uneasy because I can't divorce the delicious joy of eating burgers from the very real fear of E.Coli contamination. While the odds suggest that a severe infection or death are highly unlikely, our current food safety system makes me weigh the benefits and risks in the same way I'd check to see whether a bungee cord operator really cares about whether I'm strapped in tightly.  This results in a binge-dieting-like approach to burger cons

  October 6, 2009

• Keep your banana wrapped

  ​Though the trend is toward less packaging, 7-11 is going for more -- in a case where the product already comes in its own package. In 27 Dallas locations, the company is test-marketing banana wraps, sealing fresh bananas in plastic in an effort to keep them yellow for a longer period of time."Our customers want yellow bananas -- not brown," CEO Joseph DePinto tells USA Today. And since his customers buy 27 million bananas a year, DePinto is trying to figure out how to reposition 7-11 as a fre

  October 14, 2009

• You can't escape the California Raisins

  If you weren't scared of the California Raisins long ago, this might do the trick. Here's a face-painting homage to the ubiquitous mascots of the 1980s. It will take a moment to figure out what's face, what's background and what's a shirtless man. Repeat watching may be necessary.  

  October 14, 2009

• Shatto unveils pumpkin-spice eggnog and four cheeses

  ​Add pumpkin spice eggnog and cheese to the list of products that the Shatto Milk Company, based in Osborne, Missouri, is selling in the Kansas City area. "This product has been tested and received the best reviews of any product we have put on the shelves to date," says Shatto's owner, Leroy Shatto. "Customers truly love the full body of this product, and many are saying the only thing it needs is a bit of whipped cream on top."  The pumpkin-spice eggnog is expected to be in stores today

  October 21, 2009

• Pranks and beans

  ​The world of pranks has come to jelly beans with Bean Boozled Jelly Beans -- the latest product from the Jelly Belly Candy Company. It's a clever repackaging of the Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans -- a licensed Harry Potter candy that featured ear wax, vomit and bacon flavors. (The bacon was kind of tasty in an artificially bacon sort of way.) But with Harry Potter leaving movie theaters shortly and the books having ceased publication in 2007, Jelly Belly needed to find a use for its collect

  October 22, 2009

• Manwich is all about the vegetables?

  If I said Manwich, your first thought would likely be a drippy, beef-filled sloppy joe. ConAgra Foods hopes to change that through Manwich's new advertising campaign, which focuses on the fact that each serving of the tomato-based sauce has a full serving of vegetables."The fact that Manwich has a full serving of vegetables in each serving was something we were keeping to ourselves and had never communicated to consumers before," ConAgra representative Becky Niiya tells Media Daily. The vegetabl

  October 29, 2009

• Closing Saturday: Midtown's Russell Stover Shop

  Midtown's Russell Stover's Candy Kitchen bids a bittersweet farewell​Saturday will be the final day for the sweet little Russell Stover store on 51st Street -- the 51st Street Candy Kitchen -- before the popular confectionary closes for good. It's been a neighborhood candy shop (it also sold ice cream and baked goods) since 2000. Now that the newly built Russell Stover in Fairway has opened at 2814 Shawnee Mission Parkway -- which also has ice cream and a candy kitchen and a lot more pa

  October 29, 2009