Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Best Not Read This on an Empty Stomach

Like a roadside car wreck, I could not tear my eyes away from this horrifying story about a woman who encountered more than she bargained for in her granola. I have found weird things in my food before, but the worst has been slugs or spiders in organic salad, which while not great, is not so bad because at the very least the presence of bugs is visual evidence that your food has not been drowned in pesticides. Once while working for a bagel company which shall remain nameless, I lost a bandaid in one of the batches, so some bagel-eater out there has me to thank for the unhappy memory. Sorry! But this really, REALLY takes the cake.

This story reminded me that it's been a while since I visited the FDA site and as usual, it did not disappoint. If you are a person with serious food allergies, you may want to bookmark the warnings and alerts page. I was surprised by how many recalls and alerts are related to "undeclared" ingredients, i.e. those that do not appear on the ingredients list, a potentially deadly mistake for those with serious allergies.

For the very first time, I saw a warning letter issued to an airline. If you've ever worried about the quality of airline water, you've been right to do so. Southeast Airlines was recently busted with a water tank full of paint chips.

Though I deplore the use of hokey Comic Sans font, this cosmetics quiz is actually jam packed with good information about cosmetic safety and FDA oversight of the industry. Hint: there isn't really any, and though it's confusing as all get out, this page explains it all.

Enough of all this seriousness! Madonna's new single and video "Give it 2 Me" kicks "4 Minutes to Save the World" to the curb.

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