McMillan spent months exploring the American food system from three different angles: picking produce in California fields, working in two Michigan Walmarts, and expediting (organizing the flow of food from the kitchen to the dining room) at a Brooklyn, N.Y., Applebee's. By turns analytical and anecdotal, her book marshals first-person experience, history and current research to paint a picture of America's 21st-century food reality.

McMillan asks why the distribution of good, healthy food -- easy access to which she considers a human right -- is so often left to private companies, begging us to change the conversation from one about what people eat (she thinks that given the choice, people will eat relatively healthily) to one about healthy food's accessibility.

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Antibiotics are routinely given to livestock on factory farms to make them gain weight with less feed and keep them from getting sick in confinement conditions. But the daily dosing, at the same time it lowers feed needs, lowers drug effectiveness and produces antibiotic resistant bacteria or super bugs that can be deadly to people.

This month, researchers found 230 out of 395 pork cuts bought in U.S. stores were contaminated with a super bug called MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Worse -- there were "no statistically significant differences" between "conventionally raised swine and swine raised without antibiotics," reported the researchers.

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But Jordan doesn’t take the credit. The secret to her booming business, she says, is instead a complex and seemingly rather dull legal contract called an agricultural easement. The arrangement, made with a land trust, allows farmers to be paid in return for stripping their land of its development rights – no new subdivisions or shopping malls allowed – and instead keeping it as farmland. In 2004, the Jordan family placed 47 acres of their property under an easement with the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust for an undisclosed sum. “The Jordans settled Cape Elizabeth,” Jordan says. “We would not have kept the farm, let alone been able to invest in the business, without this.”

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The beloved Vermont confectioners, who have previously paid sly tribute to their favorite people and things via Cherry Garcia, Napoleon Dynamite, Phish Food, Bonnaroo Buzz, Magic Brownies and Hubby Hubby (celebrating same-sex marriage), are now rolling out a limited batch inspired by a classic, innuendo-riddled "Saturday Night Live" sketch.

The flavor has been the subject of more hot rumors than a Jennifer Aniston pregnancy ever since "SNL" alum Ana Gasteyer casually let the news slip in an interview with NY1. In the world of "SNL," the balls are the holiday treats of one Pete Schweddy (Alec Baldwin), who tells his NPR "Delicious Dish" hosts that "the thing I most like to bring out at this time of the year are my balls." As he explains, "No one can resist my Schweddy Balls."

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Finland and McDonald's may seem an odd pairing to those who associate the former with forests and socialism, and the latter with obesity and corporate greed. Indeed, my mother hardly embodies the McDonald's brand. She's bone-thin, elegant, and has a vaguely European sophistication -- her sweet tooth is satisfied with a nickel-sized morsel of dark chocolate and she'll go three years without saying "like." But she also has a specifically Finnish industriousness, a self-sufficiency Finns recognize as born of a long history of hostile borders and surviving off the land. She guts and skewers, pickles and preserves. A few days ago I watched her use the last embers of a bonfire to cook a whole pike, which she wrapped in seawater-soaked pages from the Helsinki newspaper before jamming it into the ashes. This woman -- the only person I've ever seen to mill her own wheat berries for flour outside of an anthropology textbook -- deeply admires a company that sells nuggets of L-shaped chicken for a dollar to people in cars. Now as a grown-up -- and one who sees McDonald's as a greedy peddler of fatty trash -- I marvel at this paradox and try to account for her unshakable loyalty to the company.

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The Agriculture Department and the Minnesota-based company announced Wednesday evening that Cargill is recalling fresh and frozen ground turkey products produced at the company's Springdale, Ark., plant from Feb. 20 through Aug. 2 due to possible contamination from the strain of salmonella linked to 76 illnesses and the one death.

Illnesses in the outbreak date back to March and have been reported in 26 states coast to coast. Both the Agriculture Department and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are still working to identify the source. Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department has warned consumers to properly cook ground turkey.

Just before the recall announcement Wednesday, CDC epidemiologist Christopher Braden said he thought health authorities were closing in on the suspect. He said some leftover turkey in a package at a victim's house was confirmed to contain the strain of salmonella linked to the outbreak.

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Do you:

A) Call back the restaurant and ask for a refund;

B) Just eat the food and promise to deal with it next time;

C) Call the police

If you answered C, you are not alone. A woman in Savannah, Ga., called 911 to rectify her dinner order yesterday. This was the result:

Sadly, these kinds of calls aren't as uncommon as you might think. In March 2009 a woman called the police after being given the wrong order of McNuggets at McDonald's.

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I have long opposed the AquAdvantage salmon, taking pretty familiar positions that any member of the local/organic/wild food community would recognize: Positions that include the fear that the fish will escape and contaminate wild populations of salmon, and that the fish requires much wasteful transport since it would be cloned in Canada, grown in Panama and then flown back to the U.S. for consumption. But at a recent lecture when I was laying out these old chestnuts, it suddenly occurred to me that the non-fishy public might be missing one monumental fact about the AquAdvantage salmon, with all its attendant risks:

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And while this grievance might not seem new, exactly, CAI is launching another campaign on Thursday against Ronald McDonald himself, whom the watchdog group called a "Deep Fried Joe Camel." They claim Ronald's the equivalent of a drug pusher for MSG-addicted kids.

But how "friendly" is Ronald? A new study done by outside marketing group Ace Metric found that in a survey group of 500, an overwhelming amount found a guy with big red lips and white greasepaint more creepy than cute.

McDonald's refuses to give up on Ronald, though, and its defense on why it needs to keep a terrifying clown as its mascot would be charming if it weren't so ridiculous and backward. Below, five of the responses McDonald's has given for keeping Ronald on the payroll.

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The diets were judged on criteria including nutrition and weight loss; the worst-performing overall was Atkins, which received a nutrition rating of "fair" because its fat-heavy plan largely contravenes the 2010 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Why did Jenny Craig do so well? The magazine explains:

What gave it the edge over the other big names we assessed -- stalwarts such as Atkins, Ornish, and Weight Watchers -- was a 332-person, two-year study of the program published in the Oct. 27, 2010, Journal of the American Medical Association. Ninety-two percent of participants stuck with the Jenny Craig program for two years -- a remarkable level of adherence -- and at the end of that time weighed an average of about 8 percent less than when they started.

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How did Mr. Stiff do it? For most of the 20th century, corporate drones wanting to jump ship have had a pretty reliable road map to culinary glory: You started at the bottom, maybe as a dishwasher somewhere, and worked your way up to line cook, to sous chef, to positions at steadily fancier and more expensive restaurants. Or, you enrolled in cooking school. Either route helped you build up the broad, deep culinary repertoire you need.

But the rules are changing.

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A recent report in the New York Times announced that American grocery store "shoppers are paying the same amount, but getting less," and proceeded to quote a woman whose three-box pasta dinner for her large family didn't quite satisfy. She only later realized it was because those boxes now contain 13.5 ounces of noodles, not 16.

The report goes on to catalog other shrinkages: cans of tuna going from 6 ounces to 5; buckets of ice cream going from 2 liters to 1 ½; orange juice from 64 ounces to 59, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

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In Helena, Jackie Merenz loads her beat-up SUV with juice boxes, graham crackers and apple sauce she bought at Walmart for her 6-year-old daughter's birthday party. The 60-mile round trip she makes twice a week for groceries hits her wallet hard -- the food stamps don't go far, gas prices are skyrocketing and to top it off, her husband had to stop working after getting injured.

Living out in Montana's Big Sky Country often means driving long distances for the basic necessities, and people on tight budgets like Garcia, 49, and Merenz, 26, have long been creative in making ends meet.

But with food prices up nearly 4 percent last month -- the biggest leap in 36 years -- and the national average for a gallon of gas at a whopping $3.57, this economic double-whammy is stretching family budgets to the breaking point.

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The sandwich chain surpassed the world's largest hamburger chain in terms of number of stores in the U.S. in 2002 and now it has taken the global lead.

Subway had 33,749 restaurants worldwide at the end of last year, according to the company. McDonald's Corp. had 32,737, according a regulatory filing.

"We've been on a great run," said Tony Pace, chief marketing officer of Subway's Franchisee Advertising Fund Trust, the franchisees organization under the company's umbrella.

Subway is entirely franchisee-owned. That has been part of its success, Pace said. Its smaller-format stores cost less to open and operate than other chain restaurants. The company's emphasis on cost-control, marketing and advertising has also helped grow the brand.

Subway, like many restaurant chains, is making a major push in international markets.

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Gael Greene We had razor clams three nights in a row last week. John Dory, Bar Basque, Dressler. Good but not a match for Esca's.

mattduckor @GaelGreene Casa Mono's razor clams predate the trend and are excellent.

And this is what I tweeted in response:

MrEddieHuang @mattduckor cantonese razor clams predate the trend by at least a couple dynasties... #ohamericans...

Gael and Matt know their bidness. Not trying to call them out on anything. It's their job to report trends and identify them; they do it well. They didn't determine the way Americans -- and to a certain extent postmodern foodies around the world -- dine. This is just how they found it. And you may think, "Eddie, why would you care if razor clams are a trend or not? Let 'em eat razor clams!" But, see, as a chef and a person who cares about food and cares about culture, it's not that simple.

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So what's in it, then? To start: the eponymous coca extract, plus citric acid, lime juice vanilla, caramel, caffeine, sugar and water. More important, though is "7X" -- which includes orange oil, alcohol, nutmeg oil, lemon oil, coriander, neroli and cinnamon -- and constitutes the drink's backbone.

You can read more about the recipe and listen to This American Life's broadcast at their website here. 

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If you're looking forward to saying these magic words to your sugarpie honeybunch over Valentine's Day dinner tonight, you're not alone! Peeking into Google search trends each of the past two February 14ths reveals a nation ready for romance at the Applebee's.

A report by a search engine consulting firm called Everspark Interactive reveals that right around 5pm Eastern time on Valentine's Day, Google lights up like a pinball machine with searches for the following terms: 

1. Olive Garden
2. Red Lobster
3. Applebee’s
4. Outback
5. Outback Steakhouse
6. Outback Steakhouse coupons
7. Outback Steakhouse menu
8. Chili’s
9. Macaroni Grill

On this blessed day on the past two years, the statistics for these searches fly through the freaking roof, or, in Google terms, they go "Volcanic," the highest rating on their "hot searches" scale.

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The Koch brothers, who use their vast fortunes to encourage the creation of political consensus around various government policies that allow them to pollute as much as they want in order to make as much of a profit while sacrificing as little of said fortunes to the tyrannical government as possible (they'd rather spend a million dollars on a libertarian think tank than see one cent of that hard-earned money go to a wasteful big government school lunch program), held their annual retreat in Rancho Mirage, Calif., last weekend. A bunch of liberals protested the event, in order to call attention to the obscene wealth of the brothers and the ways they use that wealth to quietly influence the political process in their favor.

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