Food

After a five-year drought, chocolate and strawberry milk are making their way back into public school lunchrooms in Los Angeles.   With a vote of 6 to 1, the Los Angeles Unified School District loosened a district-wide ban on sugary, flavored milk that took effect in 2011. The board approved a pilot program to study the effects of reintroducing flavored milk in a small group of schools, all of which must volunteer to take part in the experiment. t is not that board members believe children aren’t consuming enough sugar. [node:read-more:link]

A group of farm organizations has sent a letter to officials at Dannon questioning the company’s pledge to be more sustainable. In April, Dannon announced a pledge to use fewer genetically modified ingredients, a goal that includes the feed given to milk producing cows. The pledge also vowed to label GMOs in its products by December 2017 and the ambition to offer products coming from a more sustainable agriculture. But six groups representing ag producers don’t see this as a sustainable goal at all. [node:read-more:link]

Former McDonald’s executive, Robert Langert, said: “Quality is redefined as feeling good about the food we eat.” He said the fast food giant shifted a few years ago from an operational focus to being customer driven, and adopting the cage-free purchase pledge fits into this focus on the customer. “No one is closer to the consumer than McDonald’s,” he said. Egg producers who questioned Langert didn’t agree with his assessment of what consumers want. These egg producers cited the fact that the vast majority of U.S. [node:read-more:link]

Keiser died on Saturday of natural causes, the firm said. With his death, co-founder Craig Culver will take over as interim CEO until a successor is named.  Keiser would have turned 61 on Monday. Keiser worked for Culver's for more than 20 years and was a driving force in the chain's expansion, the company said. Since 1996, Culver's has grown from 44 restaurants to 580 spread across 24 states.  Almost all of the restaurants — known for its "Butter Burgers" and frozen custard — are franchises. [node:read-more:link]

The publication makes the usual three-part argument about why we should all stop eating meat – animal welfare (“why not stop killing animals for the fleeting taste of their flesh?”), nutrition (“why not stop clogging our arteries with saturated fat and cholesterol?”), and the environment (“why not stop supporting water and air pollution and the waste of resources caused by factory farms?”).  The kit also gives tips for going to parties, suggesting that if other guests seem annoyed by conversation about being vegan, it is just “a reflection of an otherwise kind person’s conflicted feelings a [node:read-more:link]

Nearly two-thirds of the U.S. layer flock will need to be housed in cage-free system by 2025 to meet anticipated demand, according to figures published by United Egg Producers. On October 7, the egg farmer cooperative published an updated report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Analytics Division estimating 213.8 million cage-free hens, about 74 percent of the 276 million layers in the U.S., will need to be cage free by 2026.  Currently, there are 16.6 million non-organic, cage-free layers in the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

The first shipment of beef from Brazil to the U.S. in nearly two decades arrived Thursday in the Port of Philadelphia, according to a notice posted by the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority.  Sao Paulo-based JBS S.A.’s shipment of fresh beef is the first since the U.S.officially opened to Brazilian beef in August after 17 years of negotiations between the two countries. That decision followed USDA’s recent finding that the Brazil’s food safety system is equivalent to that of the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

The government’s nutrition assistance programs don’t tend to get a good rap. [node:read-more:link]

 The eco-warriors are getting increasingly desperate in their histrionic attacks on science. A group of environmental activists will host a faux tribunal in The Hague to pretend to prosecute Monsanto for crimes against humanity. The Missouri-based company sells both genetically engineered seeds and pesticides, which makes them Enemy No. 1 of the socialist Luddites who lead the global environmental movement.

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The lesson so far is lost on most lawmakers and regulators. In July, President Barack Obama signed a bill requiring foods containing genetically modified organisms to be labeled as such. It's an outwardly innocuous requirement that is supposed to leave consumers better informed but will actually cause many to be misled. The implication of the mandate is that there is some important difference between foods that contain GMOs and foods that don't. But there isn't. [node:read-more:link]