Food Links for the Info-Famished

Tony CenicolaNecrophilia? PETA says yes.

We’re keeping tabs on Denmark’s “fat tax” (which took effect last Saturday). Here are my thoughts, and those of the Washington Post. Also, New Zealand is in the grip of an obesity epidemic, but health minister Tony Ryall has ruled out a fat tax, citing the economy.

Here is a great “back and forth” between Anna Lappé and Hugh Whaley (General Manager of the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance) about what the USFRA actually stands for.

Want to tell the FDA to label genetically engineered food? Right this way. (As far as the back-story goes, campaign-trail-Obama pledged to label GE foods “because Americans should know what they’re buying.” Needless to say, President Obama has not yet come through.)

Add a new word to your vocabulary: Bio-piracy. India announced last month it is pursuing charges against Monsanto for “stealing” an indigenous crop — eggplant — and using it to create a modified version without permission, a violation of India’s decade-old Biological Diversity Act. It’s the first prosecution of a company for the act of “biopiracy” in the country, and possibly the world.

It’s an uphill battle for healthy vending machines in schools (not surprisingly, kids still prefer the stuff that comes out of mainstream vending machines). Closely related: new obesity reports blame food marketing. A possible solution? Multi-colored novelty carrots.

American farmers seeking to replace migrant laborers with local (jobless) workers often find there aren’t enough locals willing to work their fields.

In California’s Central Valley, where much of our produce is grown, the water is too contaminated with nitrates for locals to drink. Related: avocados, the second-largest crop in Florida, are being threatened by beetles the size of a date-stamp on a penny.

A Labor Department study found that only 10 percent of people the Labor Department personally trained for green jobs have found work.

PETA called a come-hither photograph of a skinned chicken that appeared in the Times “necrophilia.” The article was about chicken skin used as a delicacy in cooking. Here’s the backstory.

Amazing cultural intersection here: Sesame Street is debuting a food-insecure muppet named Lily in a one-hour special featuring country singer Brad Paisley, and sponsored by Wal-Mart.

A new report says that unless we see some major technological innovation, the U.S. probably won’t reach its long-term goal for advanced biofuels consumption.

A study in the Journal of Applied Psychology sampled 127 college students and found that men eat more around women than they do around other men. Women, perhaps not surprisingly, ate less around their male counterparts than they did in the company of other women. I kind of love this.

The first chef in Italy to receive three Michelin stars is now working for McDonald’s, creating two “gourmet” hamburgers and a tiramisu. Wow.