1. Dr. Shmuel Gan-Mor and a team of scientists with the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture released a study and a subsequent product design Wednesday, revealing that they’ve created an environmentally friendly oil emulsion that functions — and pretty well at that — as a substitute for chemical pesticides. To stray from the official delivery and unbiased governmental tone of the Agricultural Research Organization, this stuff is as bad-ass as green pesticides can get. Not only does it run nearly the full gamut of pesticidal application (fungicide, bactericide, insecticide), this highly potent and inexpensive emulsion even works overtime, laying out early disease prevention, muscling its way past pest resistance, totally being edible. Pass the dressing, Israel.
2. Absurdity abound: in Tokyo this week Wendy’s patrons are officially privy to the wonders of a $16 sandwich featuring truffles and foie gras atop a fatter beef patty. The Japan Premium hamburger is the vanguard of the fast-food chain’s return to Japan after a two-year absence.
3. The USDA announced this week they’re doing better than expected, that they’ve improved operations in undisclosed ways and, while doing some pre-New Year’s tidying, happened upon the $10 million needed to reinstate 14 agricultural reports previously slated for slashing. What, was it under a couch cushion? These reports are used by farmers to gauge pricing and demand and to calculate sales timelines, but, in October, the department planned on scrimping to save by reducing or eliminating certain reports rather than cost-cutting in areas potentially less detrimental to the lives and livelihoods of small-scale farmers.
4. Getting wise to non-Jewish food companies getting kosher certified, supercentenarian matzos-king Manischewitz this week began matching the mainstream’s strides, pasting up ads in Sunday papers as part of a new campaign to appeal to gentiles and a generally younger demographic. Not only have they pushed for certain items’ inclusion in non-kosher grocery aisles and adopted a secular approach to promotion, Manischewitz plans to unveil almost 70 new products — such as white chocolate–covered egg matzos and Moroccan fish meat balls — come 2012.
5. We often hear husbandry horror stories documenting abuses perpetrated against all sorts of livestock and fowl, but seeing truly is believing. The animal rights group Mercy for Animals, known for recently steering McDonald’s away from buying Sparboe Farms eggs, forwarded to state officials extensive undercover footage of awful turkey mistreatment on a Butterball semen collection factory in Shannon, North Carolina. The farm was expeditiously raided Thursday in response to the severity of cruelty.
6. Now for some lighter fare, let’s all watch this new foodie spin-off — “Shit Vegans Say” — of the still-fresh Twitter-feed video series “Shit Girls Say (Episodes 1, 2, & 3),” which has given life to a series of copies, some lackluster, others pretty awesome, poking fun at a ridiculously huge group of people. “They have Daiya!”
7. Similar to the recent trademark infringement tussle between Chick-fil-A and the kale guy from Vermont is this David-versus-Goliath tale about a Brooklyn diner and a Swiss watch company. The Rolex Diner was sued by the eponymous watchmaker for stealing their name, asked to pay a fine, destroy all promotional materials with the word Rolex on them, and find a new word to place in front of the word “diner.” The Rolex Diner’s owner, Shawqu Ali, has some rocks for his slingshot, though, seeing as the New York State Division of Corporations gave him the go-ahead several months ago. We can picture confused customers now, storming out of the Rolex, crumpling paper bags and wringing sandwich wrappers, hissing invectives about the towering cost of their chicken strip dinners and vanilla milkshakes with no wrist-bling to show for it.
8. Do you ever compare your habits to those of the people around you? What about the intensity of your shared habits? Take a gander at this list of America’s top 25 drunkest cities and join us in a collective sigh of (possibly disingenuous) relief at the fact that we weren’t surveyed for this informal study.
9. With the New Year right around the corner, this piece of drinking advice, courtesy of the guys at Freakonomics Radio, might just save your life. Turns out, if faced with only two homebound options, walking drunk or driving drunk, the latter is statistically safer, especially this time of year. And we all know just how practically safer that option is… So, to echo Steve Levitt at the University of Chicago, if you’ve been imbibing, maybe you crash on your buddy’s couch this Sunday morning and avoid streets altogether?
10. In an article published online by PLoS Medicine Tuesday, the authors explore why nearly 15 million Americans working night shifts — in the service industry, in the custodial trade, in hospitals — are at higher risk than people working daytime shifts for a veritable bevy of health problems, including cardiovascular disease, sleep disorders, diabetes, and cancer. What did they come up with? Food choices during the witching hour are notoriously devoid of nutritional value, and they’re limited, usually, to processed snacks dropped into employees’ hands by spinning metal coils. Astoundingly, no specific studies have been conducted on the causal relationship between what graveyard-shift workers eat and the development of serious ailments. The surfacing of this topic in medical journals presages a coming day of health-food vending machines for all night owls on the clock. High five.
Photo: IRRI Images
