The birth and boom of the baby carrot and other food and drink news

Baby carrots are not baby carrots - The smooth, snack-sized tubes that have come to define carrot consumption in the United States are something different. They're milled, sculpted from the rough, soiled, mangled things we call carrots, and they serve as an example, though perhaps not a terribly grave one, of how disconnected we have all become from the production of our food.

Restaurants Counter Outside Cakes With Cakeage Fees

The Best Italian Wine Comes From… New Zealand? - You don’t have to go to the source to drink world-class Sangiovese or Montepulciano. Turns out, some of the finest Italian wine is made in Middle-earth.

How an Israeli Chef's Cauliflower Recipe Took Over the World - Roasted whole cauliflower seems to be everywhere today, but the dish's origins can be traced to an Israeli celebrity chef and a Shabbat dinner a long time ago.


Could campaigns like Dry January do more harm than good? - Lack of evidence that such campaigns work and don’t have unintended consequences, concerns Ian Hamilton. But Ian Gilmore thinks they are likely to help people at least reflect on their drinking.

The Secret Sex Lives of Crop Plants - What distinguishes food crops from other plants has nothing to do with taste, nutrition, or whether they contain poisons. The plants we eat are atypical because of their particularly dull sex lives.