"ConsumerReports" news and stories

Over the past 70 years, the U.S. has seen drastic changes in food operation, including the introduction of industrial agriculture and mass foodborne illnesses. And yet standards set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have barely changed, save for the USDA's and FDA's joint egg inspection plan introduced on July 9th.

The outdated rules have left the FDA with insufficient funds and without authority to order recalls -- that call, believe it or not, is left to the individual companies, which often wait too long, resulting in a slew of consumer illness reports. A new bill -- the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) -- would finally update standards and give the FDA the power it now needs to better moderate our current system, including conducting more frequent inspections of high-risk facilities. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives over a year ago, on July 30, 2009, and has been sitting with the Senate ever since.

Great tasting ground coffee doesn't have to cost a bushel, according to a new taste test by Consumer Reports.

Eight O'Clock Coffee 100 percent Colombian bested Folgers and Starbucks to take the top spot in the magazine's coffee taste test of 19 ground coffees. The results can be found in the March issue of Consumer Reports.

"At the very top was Eight O'Clock -- Eight O'Clock Coffee -- your grandmother's A&P brand," Bob Markovich, the magazine's home and yard editor, tells Slashfood. "And it was also the least expensive, and by that I mean that it was like half the price of the other two that scored at the top."

Bagged greens usually state that they are pre-washed and ready to eat on their labels, but that doesn't mean that they are edible. In their most recent issue, Consumer Reports tested several types of bagged salad mixes for the "yuck factor," the phrase that they used to describe the percentage of the "ready to eat" greens that were wilted or otherwise inedible. It turned out that there was a lot of yucky stuff. Out of the 62 bags that they meticulously tested, inedible greens ranged from .5% to 83% of the salads and "the vast majority had 'off' odors, smelling like rotten vegetables, sauerkraut or chlorine... [or] imitation crab meat." Needless to say, they recommended buying greens and making your own salad mixes, or at least washing the bagged greens before eating them. Besides, as they rightly point out, it is less expensive to chop up your own lettuce - especially if you're going to have to throw away a portion of the bagged stuff that isn't as fresh as it should be.

Consumer Reports always delivers the information that shoppers need to know: what's out there, what is (and isn't) good about it and whether or not it is worth the price or time involved. More often than not, they are evaluating products, but in a recent study, they took a look at some of the stores that sell them.

Based on a survey of more than 20,000 consumers, CR found that the three most important things to grocery shoppers were "short lines, low prices, [fresh] produce," though good service and clean stores were also important. Most shoppers went to multiple stores each week or each month to pick up all the things they needed, shopping for produce at one store and dry goods at another. But using these criteria as a baseline, five supermarkets came out ahead: Wegmans Food Markets, Trader Joe's, Publix Super Markets, Raley's and Whole Foods Markets. All five had a desirable combination of qualities that kept shoppers coming back regularly.

Source

Since Kellogg's cereals are about to go up in price, taking a look at some of the lower-priced alternatives to name brand cereals seems prudent. This month's Consumer Reports happily obliges us with their taste test of store brand frosted flakes (Kellogg's Frosted Flakes), toasted oats (GM Cheerios), and frosted mini wheats (Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats).

Frosted flake cereals are the least nutritious of the bunch, with about 120 calories, 12 grams of sugar and only 1 gram of fiber. Kellogg's well-known brand topped the taste test, tied with the lower-priced Malt-O-Meal version of the cereal. Other brands tasted slightly bitter. CR also noted that a few turned the milk bright yellow. Sounds like it's best to stick to the familiar in this case.