It looks like the news is already out that vegetarians are smarter than the average omnivore because those with higher IQs are more likely to choose to follow the lifestyle. But will switching to a vegetarian diet improve your IQ, as well? This seems unlikely, but if all it takes is gradually increasing your vegetable intake (since some of the "vegetarians" in the study still ate meat), it could be worth a try. Not content to wait for gradual results, it looks like one person took matters into his own hands. He (or she) stole a refrigerated semi-truck filled with $50,000 worth of broccoli. The trucking company seems to think that the truck itself - and not the broccoli - might have been the target for the theft, but if this turns into a trend and trucks full of spinach, squash and other veggies turn up missing, maybe the IQ-theory won't seem so far fetched.

While one would expect that diamonds are a big draw for thieves, wines seem like a much less likely target. Luxist reports that one of the top restaurants in Sweden had its entire collection of French Bordeaux wines stolen - over 600 bottles of wine. The reason that this particular collection is so significant is that it holds the Guinness World Record for the most unique wine collection in the world. It included bottles from the six Grand Cru vineyards: Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Chateau Lafite Rothschild, Chateau Margaux, Chateau Haut Brion, Chateau d'Yquem and Chateau Latour. All totaled, the value of the stolen bottles is around $500,000.

It seems likely that the bottles will be resold gradually over time and because a bottle of Mouton Rothschild is probably more difficult to track than diamonds are, the restaurant may not be able to recover its collection.

Three people were charged yesterday by federal prosecutors for stealing confidential information from the Coca-Cola Company's Atlanta Headquarters. Joya Williams, administrative assistant to a top executive, Ibrahim Dimson and Edmund Duhaney "were arrested on charges of wire fraud and unlawfully stealing and selling Coke trade secrets," federal prosecutors said. Specifically, they stole insider documents and a bottled sample of one of Coke's newest, unreleased products and were planning to sell them to Coke rival, PepsiCo.

Dimson contacted Pepsi via a letter, mailed in an official Coca-Cola envelope, and asked for more than $80,000 for the stolen documents and drink sample. Pepsi contacted Coke and the authorities were brought in. The investigation culminated when an undercover FBI agent offered to pay $1.5 million for other trade secrets from Coke.

Both Coke and Pepsi complied with and assisted the FBI and other authorities during their investigation. Coke says that it will be difficult to overcome this "breach of trust" from Williams, who "[rifled] through corporate files and [stuffed] documents and a new Coca-Cola product into a personal bag" - actions which were caught on the company surveillance videos - and that they will review its "review its information protection policies, procedures and practices."

A few weeks ago, we heard about a child being disciplined for eating lunch with a spoon, instead of a fork and knife. Continuing the trend of what seems to be huge overreactions, a student in a Virginia school was suspended for taking a cookie. Jeremy Maitland, an 8th grader, was filling up a water cooler after his team's baseball practice and saw that someone had knocked over a container of cookies near the fountain. He picked them up, putting them back into their container, and ate one as he did so (the 5 second rule in action!). The cookies, as it turned out, belonged to a teacher and the boy was suspended for violating the school's no-theft policy. He was also kicked off the baseball team.

Making the situation even stranger is the fact that another child was suspended, as well. Convicted of cookie conspiracy? It doesn't appear that anyone else consumed any cookies, though a superintendent said that the punishment was reasonable under the circumstances.

One would assume that if there was a valid reason for this boy's suspension, like a fight or the theft of a non-baked good, that it would have been cited as the reason for the discipline, not eating a cookie.

 

Last week we heard about a man who stole 27,000 pounds of steak. But after uncovering some more food thievery, it seems that some people will steal just about anything that isn't nailed down. And that means that even roots aren't secure enough:

Thieves stole 150 plum trees from an orchard in Hungary. They were uprooted and removed from the site during the off-season. The trees were valued at approximately $9,500.

In Tennessee, a 53-foot trailer containing 2,880 cases of Red Bull was stolen by thieves who really must have taken to hear the message that "red bull gives you wings."

In a possibly related theft, a trailer containing $100,000 of Kraft sauces was stolen in the same city in Tennessee. The trailer was later recovered, but the sauce was gone. We'll have to wait and see whether anyone reports a truck of stolen chicken wings, which might explain the disappearance of the sauce.

The theft of beer kegs from pubs and breweries is on the rise in the UK, according to a recent story in The Publican. Apparently beer isn't what the thieves are after, however. High prices of aluminum and steel are to blame, with kegs being worth around £50 (approximately $90). One brewery actually reported a theft of 100 kegs in 13 minutes one night. Some thieves are even posing as beer distributors collecting empties. Local police are urging pub owners to keep their kegs in more secure locations for now.

Early Christmas morning, the Bongo Java coffee shop in Nashville, Tennessee, suffered a break-in. While the shop and register appeared to be undamaged, it's famous NunBun was missing. The cinnamon bun, discovered by the store manager in the 1996, was said to have the likeness of Mother Teresa in its cinnamon-glazed layers of pastry. The bun was preserved in the freezer until a local crew made a short film about it, after which the story was picked up by the city paper and propelled into the national spotlight. After having received so much attention, the bun was coated in shellac and put on display in the shop, where it has enjoyed attention as a local novelty for 9 years.

The shop owner fears that the Immaculate Confection may have been destroyed, since it was so clearly the target of this crime.

[Thanks to Tracy for the tip]

Certainly not 'the milkman of human kindness,’ a dairy thief has been agitating members of a Berkshire, England neighborhood for several weeks. Many elderly residents have come out to collect their morning milk only to find poorly penned notes with messages such as “Do you like dry cerial? Hope so because we've drunk your milk. Yours Sincerely, Your Neighbourhood Milk Thief.”

A slightly more poignant note read: “You don't know how lucky you are to get the things you want, they are taken for granted.”

Milk supplier Dairy Crest is urging residents to contact local police if they feel that they have been victims of the milk thief.