Food

I think so.  Just look at it: Yogurt. Call it a typographical phobia but I'm not eatin' anything that looks like that word.   Even its etymology is not encouraging. 

If you buy organic products, your options may be about to expand. The U.S. and the European Union are announcing that they will soon treat each other's organic standards as equivalent. In other words, if it's organic here, it's also organic in Europe, and vice versa. Organic food companies are cheering because their potential markets just doubled.

When my Food for Thought pard Nancy Leson confided to me that she was taking a six-month leave of absence from The Times I predicted that she'd be climbing the walls within a month.  How wrong I was.

It happened to KPLU's Grooveyard and Weekend Edition host Kevin Kniestedt. Assaulted by a deranged woman in an electric shopping cart at a local supermarket.  Click "listen" to hear him describe his harrowing ordeal.

My heart says "No" but my head says "They make 'em better." Probably... I think.  

Although it's true that my kitchen stove, new just four years ago, began emitting un-ignited gas in a near-death fashion, I still think that today's appliances must be more reliable than those of decades past. Aren't they? 

My Food for Thought pard, Seattle Times food writer Nancy Leson isn't so sure.

Last week, 500 tacos appeared at the mayor's office in East Haven, Conn. But they weren't intended for a casual luncheon.

Instead, this truckload of tacos was meant to be a symbol of discontent. An immigration reform group sent the fare in protest to what they said was an insensitive comment from Mayor Joseph Maturo in reference to Latinos and tacos.

The Connecticut activists join a long line of protesters who've resorted to food in the name of public humiliation. Perhaps the most famous act was the disposal of 342 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of taxation without representation.

Think you know how to avoid overeating? Think again.

Research suggests that choices, like how much to eat during a meal, are often made subconsciously. Trouble is, our brains are hard-wired to mislead us in lots of little ways, which can have a big impact on our diets.

Take the Delboeuf effect, an optical illusion first documented in 1865. It starts with two dots of equal size. But surround one dot with a large circle, and the other dot with a small one, and suddenly the second dot looks bigger.

At the rate they're going, those nutritious-looking sprouts may disappear from sandwiches and salads near you in not too long. And that may be a good thing.

This week, the Beaumont, Tex.-based Jason's Deli chain announced that it would no longer serve fresh sprouts, citing frequent recalls due to bacterial contamination.

"We've lost confidence in sprouts," Daniel Helfman, the chain's director of public relations, told The Packer, a produce trade journal. The chain has more than 230 restaurants around the country.

I don't bother to do it but Nancy Leson does. Find out why below – along with the reason you should never use old tuna cans to cut biscuits. 

I've also posted my "Clamity Cheryl" DeGroot-approved red clam sauce recipe. You can make it in the time it takes to bring a big pot of water to boil for the spaghetti – and in these times of the Fetish for Fresh it's proud to use canned clams.

From about 1966 to 1976, China's leader Mao Zedong enforced a brutal agenda. Everything was rationed during the Cultural Revolution. Millions of people were forced out of the cities and into the countryside, where food was even scarcer. The government controlled people's movements, their livelihoods, even their thoughts.

A new book combines the memories and culinary skills of one Chinese political dissident who lived through that time. The Cultural Revolution Cookbook was written by Sasha Gong and her friend Scott Seligman, a Washington, D.C., writer who lived for several years in China.

A Celebration Of Triumph