"wal-mart" news and stories

This is probably (hopefully) the only time you'll see the words "straws" and "penis" in the same story here at Slashfood.

The mom of a 3 year-old Kentucky is upset at Wal-Mart for selling what she says are obscene straws. Some of the straws in the package (ahem) she bought are shaped like...well, a penis. Or so she thinks. I'm not sure if I would have thought that at first, especially since the two straws in question are mixed in with other random shaped straws.

You can watch the video from WSAZ-TV here.

So, Slashfoodies, what do you think? Does the mom have grounds to be mad about the straws, or is it just a fun shape (like a rocket ship!) and she's seeing what she wants to see in them?

[via Boing Boing]

And no, this isn't connected to the massive recall announced recently by United Food Group. This is a whole new possible E. coli contamination. Weeeeeeeee!

Tyson Fresh Meats has recalled 40,000 pounds of ground beef that was shipped to Wal-Mart stores in 12 states. The states include Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. There have been no reports of illness, but test results came back positive.

This is happening so much now that I should probably put this under our "Trend" category.

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A few months ago Nick mentioned that Fizzy Fruit may be introduced into some schools. Well many years before it made the news I tried my hand at making my own fizzy fruit at home. I had heard about the idea a few years earlier from people in the brewing industry when I was an assistant brewer during grad school in Seattle. It's pretty easy to do. I used an empty soda syrup keg, filled it with assorted fruit, added CO2 under pressure, and chilled it overnight. This carbonated the fruit, the same way soda is carbonated, so that it fizzed with tiny bubbles like champagne when you ate it.

Looking back, it was fellow blogger Joe D who taste tested that first batch with me in the winter of 1996/1997. Personally I didn't think much of most of the fruit. They all tasted good, and the fizz was fun, but except for the grapes, the fizz was more annoying than anything else. With the grapes it was actually enjoyable. I guess because they were small, sweet and tart, and you could pop whole ones in your mouth. I never thought the idea was going to go anywhere, but I guess it has.

Source

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. may be getting a little overzealous in its push to include more organic products on its shelves, according to the Cornucopia Institute. The group, which represents small farmers recently filed a complaint with the USDA alleging that the megadiscounter had falsely labeled some products as organic.

Cornucopia alleges that several Wal-Mart stores mislabeled Stonyfield Farm all-natural yogurt as organic. It also claims that nonorganic items like tofu and juice in a cooler used for organic produce. Wal-mart has countered these claims by noting that one of Cornucopia's founders, Mark Kastel, used to work for Organic Valley, a national farming cooperative that competes with several of the discounter's suppliers.

I'm not really a big buyer of organics and I'm not sure what to make of this case. I am pretty certain that I'd never buy anything labeled organic at Wal-Mart.

Source