After a meteoric rise in popularity in the US as a health drink, Kombucha has been pulled from the shelves of many major retailers over concerns that the drink often contains significant amounts of alcohol due to bottle-fermentation. On the bright side, it isn't too hard to find a mother and brew your own. But fermentation fetishists everywhere are left to wonder: Is Kefir next? More generally, do the trade-offs necessary to conform to commercial food regulations destroy the benefits of fermentation?
posted by kaibutsu on Sep 28, 2010 - 67 comments

Brassed off?! (YouTube, 5 min.) Like the health care debate itself, the boycott / buycott confrontation regarding the recent article by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey may be heating up. Mackey, who was previously investigated by the SEC for making anonymous internet posts talking up his stock while trashing the valuation of an acquisition target, now faces opposition from suppliers and labor groups, a decrease in brand perception, investor calls to step down... and pesky oom-pah bands.
posted by markkraft on Sep 28, 2009 - 29 comments

In a surprise move, Anheuser-Busch has gone up against some of the biotech firms that would like to grow genetically-modified (GM) rice containing human DNA. The biotech firm that grows it says that their rice contains synthetic human genes which the company hopes to harvest and refine for use in medicines to fight diarrhea and dehydration.

Anheuser-Busch's concerns are not with the science of biotech, but rather the risk of crop-contamination, as has happened with farmers not only in the U.S. and Canada, but all over the world. The USDA has issued rice-tweakers Ventria Bioscience and 300 other biopharmers permission to plant various augmented plants around the country since 1995, but Anheuser-Busch is the first large corporation to threaten a boycott - unusual, because poultry and beef stock (PDF) are fed this kind of thing every day, and have been for the past 20 years. I guess the Budweiser brewers just don't want to see 'dead people' in their suds...

On the flip-side of this occurrence, the response of the anti-stem cell activists has been nothing short of sensory-deprivation. Shouldn't six-packs, cornfields and Porky be given the same human rights as the unborn?

Also related: Contaminated: The New Science of Food (quicktime movie)
posted by vhsiv on Apr 14, 2005 - 31 comments

Fist or famine? President Bush accused European nations of contributing to famine in Africa because of their reluctance to accept GM foods. But one of Bush's many EU critics says "even serious experts on GM will concede that there is no evidence that GM can make any greater contribution to feeding the world than existing agricultural science." There may be, however, a risk of cancer, according to a Scottish expert, among other profound misgivings. Plus, it looks like some GM crops aren't even doing their genetically-modified job. So uh, how are they gonna stop world hunger, again?
posted by soyjoy on Jun 24, 2003 - 26 comments

Today I had a great burrito at Tacos Guaymas. What kinds of food did you eat today? What do you normally eat? Where do you usually go? What kinds of food did you hate as a kid but find delectable now? What do you find yourself eating more of this summer than you did last?
posted by crasspastor on Sep 9, 2001 - 42 comments