Washington, apparently, draws the line at flour. It defines candy as "a preparation of sugar, honey, or other natural or artificial sweeteners combined with chocolate, fruits, nuts, or other ingredients or flavorings and formed into bars, drops, or pieces." But any sweet that contains flour is considered food, and thus not taxable -- which sounds logical enough until you start looking at what is exempt. A Nestle Crunch bar is not candy, but a Hershey Bar is. Gummy Bears are candy, licorice is not. Milky Way Midnight? Candy. Milky Way? Not candy.

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This slide show is a tour of some of the country's most innovative approaches to urban agriculture. These are farms and gardens created in the service of education and activism. Whether they're training entrepreneurs, teaching kids to grow organic kale, or producing food from plots no bigger than your living room, the urban approach to farming is about feeding, not being fed.

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To investigate, I talked to Dr. Alan Hirsch, founder and neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, about the ways mom's cooking shapes our memories of childhood and our preferences as adults.

Why is our mothers' cooking so special to us?

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What worries fans of small farms and locally produced food is that the closing of small processors will mean the closing of small farms. Slaughter and processing is the biggest challenge for small-scale meat; they're operations simply too costly and complex for farms to handle themselves. As it is, farmers have few options for meat processing without selling their animals to massive feedlot-meat operations, and without that piece of the puzzle, many farmers may quit. Why is the USDA considering the new testing regime? Some producers wonder if the machinations of Big Food are in play.

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But Black Wednesday was not an artifact of the '50s. This was the America of the '80s and '90s, and in 1994, the USDA itself commissioned a review of the treatment of minorities in its Farm Service Agency programs. The commission's study found that "minorities received less than their fair share of USDA money for crop payments, disaster payments, and loans."

The result was a massive class-action lawsuit, Pigford v. Glickman, which the USDA settled out of court in 1999, admitting to widespread racial discrimination against black farmers in its loan programs between 1981 and 1996. About 15,000 farmers were paid a total of more than $900 million in the settlement. But tens of thousands of farmers filed claims after the deadline, and many charged that the government's outreach had been insufficient, causing them to miss their opportunity.

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Bannister isn't the only one with a food fixation so singular that a private collection balloons into a homegrown museum. Here's a look at some other self-made curators whose devotion to edibles has gone a little nuts.

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As the story unfolds, however, possible Salmonella contamination is not the only thing raising eyebrows about HVP, a flavor enhancer commonly used in processed foods. It turns out that the amino acid in HVP that is responsible for "enhancing" the taste of foods is glutamic acid. In its crystalline form, glutamic acid is more commonly known as monosodium glutamate, or MSG. Using HVP is a way for manufacturers to use glutamic acid to add flavor without using MSG -- and having to put those oft-avoided letters on the label.

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Farr is the star of San Francisco's 4505 Meats, "Home of Revival Butchery," and he is taking his gospel to the barroom. He is one of a handful of young practitioners across the country who are staging bacchanalian "butcher parties," where they bring whole carcasses -- from rabbits to steer -- to bars, hang them up, take them apart, and cook them while wide-eyed partyers wash down the resultant meaty snacks with cocktails and beer. The resurgence of artisan butchery is supposed to be about respect for traditional craft, an emphasis on ethical, sustainable meat eating, and a renewed awareness of where our meat really comes from. Do blood-and-booze-soaked butcher parties cheapen these ideals?

Farr doesn't think so. "It's very educational," he says. "You get to see the whole animal, it gets processed in front of you, and then you eat it. And at the same time you get to have martinis or beer. It's just a good time all around."

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Howes died last week at age 83, but even before memorials started flooding the Internet, Web sites like Feeling Retro had archived hundreds of Easy-Bake memories. Salon spoke with professional chefs who credit their Easy-Bakes for career inspiration, and even research scientists who engage in very serious studies about play were not immune to nostalgic pangs. It might seem easy to explain the Easy-Bake Oven's power over children: It is a toy that makes cakes; a perfect storm of passionate kid desire. But let's face it: Not even the most swooning devotee was in it for the plasticky taste of the treats. So why does the Easy-Bake Oven have such power over us?

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But just a week before Domino's announced its "Pizza Turnaround," General Mills took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to announce that it would, at some uncertain point, lower the sugar content in its cereal to "single digit" levels. The two campaigns illustrate our complicated relationship with sugar.

There is a big psychological difference between "sweetness" and "sugar." Sweetness is good. It tastes good, and it feels good, going all the way back to our reptilian brains. But our nutritional superego constantly battles our sweet-toothed id: Sugar is bad, it's tooth decay and empty calories. We call in a seemingly endless string of substitutes, from rat-killing chemicals to low-glycemic-index nectars, to exorcise the demon of sugar from the deliciousness of sweet things.

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The Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Arizona ("A Taste Worth Dying For") is suing Heart Stoppers Sports Grill in Delray Beach, Florida for stealing its ideas. The Heart Attack Grill, whose menu features single through quadruple bypass burgers (one beef patty for each bypass), "flatliner fries" deep fried in pure lard, unfiltered cigarettes, and Jolt Cola, filed a lawsuit against Heart Stoppers that, according to SlashFood.com, "outlines about 30 ways Heart Stoppers is similar, including signs with EKG heart monitors on them, waitresses dressed as nurses and offers of free food to patrons weighing more than 350 pounds."

Yes, that's right, free food for people who weigh more than 350 pounds. The Quadruple Bypass Burger packs an estimated 8,000 calories (which presumably doesn't include a side of flatliner fries), and this, enough calories for four full days, is free to anyone who weighs over 350 pounds.

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Looking at the Wonderland exhibit, it becomes obvious that the Chinese are not all that familiar with chocolate. The museum misses the mark so many times it's almost hard to watch. A 30-foot replica of The Great Wall? OK. Louis Vuitton handbags? Not so delicious. A chocolate basketball player suspended from the ceiling, about to make a slam-dunk? Let's just say that if you made that in the US you would never be allowed to touch another Hershey bar. The worst of it, though, is the legion of chocolate soldiers, replicas of the famed Terracotta soldiers buried with the First Qin emperor. This stern-faced, armored candy crew is scary like a clown; something that's supposed to be fun turns desperately creepy. And for the ultimate in yuck, the opening ceremony featured a fashion show with models not only working chocolate garments but also sporting chocolate wigs.

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The WSJ article suggests that the new wave of low-calorie menu items stems from possible federal legislation requiring chains to post calorie counts on their menus. The science is still out on the effectiveness of menu calorie counts -- a Stanford University study showed that the posting of nutritional information reduced overall calorie consumption at Starbucks, but another study, by the New York University School of Medicine, found that the calorie information had virtually no effect on what people ordered in low-income areas, which are areas particularly high in rates of obesity.

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