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I am so happy to hear that the French chocolate company, Barry Callebaut, is marketing a probiotic chocolate–one packed with friendly bacteria like the kind in yogurt. Only the company claims that chocolate is a better source of probiotic bacteria than yogurt. And you only need to eat half an ounce a day! Chocoholics rejoice! Skeptics roll your eyes! Personally, I like my chocolate unfunctional. File this one under Techno-Foods.

This play, described by the New York Times as a Brecht-like primer on the politics of food, is followed by an After Show Café, with free cupcakes and fair-trade certified coffee from the Lower Eastside Girls Club, where the audience can meet the actors and special guests. Anna Lappe (co-author of Grub) is hosting two special guests: Eric Schlosser on Sunday November 11^, 3:00pm to 5:30pm, and yours truly on Wednesday November 14^, 7:30pm to 10:00pm. Anna says you can find the showtimes and order tickets at this site.

Thanks to Fred Tripp who sent me this article from the Wall Street Journal about a little known (at least to me) aspect of food history: teams of intrepid dieters in the early years of World War I who competed to see who could eat for the least amount of money and maintain their weight. The guys managed this for under today’s equivalent of $4 per day, and some of them gained weight–no surprise since they were taking in more than 3000 calories a day. The article is a lot of fun but I wish the writer had provided references. Does anyone know the source?

The USDA has just announced its new MyPyramid for moms–for the special nutritional needs of women who are pregnant, nursing, or expecting twins, triplets, or more. You log in a bunch of information about yourself and your condition, and bingo! You get your own private dietary prescription. Anyone out there pregnant or nursing? Try it and see if it’s useful.

CIO, the magazine for corporate Chief Information Officers, has an interesting report on this year’s recall of Peter Pan peanut butter. It’s written from the standpoint of company data managers, the folks responsible for setting up tracking systems for product recalls. Fine, but what about food safety systems?

According to news reports, the USDA has just announced that it plans to hold companies accountable for producing safe beef. USDA safety officials say they are taking aggressive steps (see list) to reduce outbreaks from E. coli and other pathogens. As I keep saying, companies know how to produce safe meat, but need some encouragement (translation: enforcement) to do so. The USDA absolutely has the mandate to enforce food safety regulations and let’s hope it really does.

The Senate Agricultural Committee voted to continue $288 billion in farm subsidies, as well it might. Its members must have lots of friends among the top 1% of subsidy beneficiaries, those who (according to the Chicago Tribune) collectively get 17% of the cash–an average of $377,484 each. At this point, nobody expects much good to come out of the farm bill, due to be voted on next week. Reformers say they just don’t have the votes. I guess we’ll just have to start organizing now for the next round.

Sneaking vegetables into desserts so kids will eat healthier foods seems like such a bad idea that I can’t believe anyone would do a book on it let alone two people with virtually identical recipes. Never mind plagiarism. Mimi Sheraton, the delightfully outspoken former restaurant critic of the New York Times writes on Slate.com: “A plague on both their houses.” She cites reasons: it’s the wrong nutrition message, it’s lying too your kids, there are better ways to get kids to eat foods they think they don’t like, and the amounts of vegetables sneaked into those brownies are too small to matter much. On this last point, she quotes me. Isn’t teaching kids to be adventurous eaters worth doing? Or am I missing some point here?