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“For Some Ohioans, Even Meat Is Out Of Reach” is the title of a recent NPR topical personalized report. Not because people in Ohio are getting shorter, but because they don’t have a job and are suffering the squeezes of a tight budget.

“The Nunez’s van broke down last fall” begins the sob story. Now, Gloria Nunez’s 19-year-old daughter has no reliable transportation out of their subsidized housing complex in Fostoria, 40 miles south of Toledo, to look for a job.

Nunez and most of her siblings and their spouses are unemployed and rely on government assistance and food stamps, says NPR. “Some have part-time jobs, but working is made more difficult with no car or public transportation” they report, which doesn’t sound quite right in the context of the full story which is an attack on the state of the economy.

Nunez, 40, has never worked and has no high school degree. She says a car accident 17 years ago left her depressed and disabled, incapable of getting a job. Instead, she and her daughter, Angelica Hernandez, survive on a $637 Social Security check and $102 in food stamps.

NPR does’nt say if the reason 19 year old Hernandez has a different last name than her mother because she is married to some bum who can’t support her already or what, so who knows, but this part of the report is… interesting:

People tell Nunez her daughter could get more money in public assistance if she had a child.

“A lot of people have told me, ‘Why don’t your daughter have a kid?’”

(more…)

AOL Food lays the slamdangle down on McDonald’s Third Pounder Angus Mushroom and Swiss today.

Grade: F
Our food editor’s husband proclaimed that he’d just had the worst burger in all the land, so naturally, we had no choice but to sample for ourselves. Turns out he was wrong. It was in fact the absolute, most extremely, terribly, awfully horrible burger in the known universe.

The industrial mushrooms had the flavor and mouth appeal of a sneaker insole, while earwaxen Swiss cheese and globbed-on mayo formed a thick slick which was, truth be told, necessary in order to moisten the throat sufficiently to swallow the spongy gray mass that was being hawked as an Angus patty.

Bad things happen when McD’s tries to get schmancy, and they beefed this one badly.

Roscoe’s House of Chicken ‘n Waffles is a Hollywood, California-based soul food restaurant chain founded by Herb Hudson, a Harlem native, in 1976. It is best known, as the name states, for serving chicken and waffles, both together and separately.

This song will explain it all to you really…

Roscoe’s House of Chicken ‘n Waffles has five locations throughout the Los Angeles metropolitan area. :

* Hollywood (1514 N. Gower St)
* Los Angeles (5006 W. Pico Blvd)
* Pasadena (830 N. Lake Ave)
* Inglewood (106 W. Manchester Blvd)
* Long Beach (730 E. Broadway Blvd)

Best part is near the end when the field reporter takes a bite of a cupcake before the transition back to the school official. Hilarious and very dry. Daily Show-esque gag slipped into legitimate news. Kindov like that time Glenn Beck was sneaking bites of fast food hamburgers in between questions to a health food expert he was interviewing on his CNN show.

Fox Business Network’s morning show Money For Breakfast gets the skinny on the fat. McDonalds is changing their menu and this chick talks to the guy responsible for the new stuff. You will learn that toasted pumpkin seeds were a failure (later replaced by tortilla chips) and it took 3 years to get a Mcgriddle from idea to sale. yeesh.

Part 2 is more casual and ‘Today Show’ type personal story of the chef and the actual food preparation for a new food product idea:

Check at the end where she explains that another idea that got shot down was having shrimp in one of the salads, and was deemed impossible because McDonalds would then wipe out the shrimp market across the world (or don’t cuz I just told you).

HAM BUR GERS! HAM BUR GERS!
oh, and also: Dog impersonates boozy Orson Welles.

In response to kids not liking their vegetables, Dr Jane Wardle says “Children could actually blame their mothers for this.” That’s because according to a study published this month in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (co-authored by Wardle), neophobia - the fear of new foods and a condition I guess I suffer from - is mostly in the genes.

Identical twins, who share all genes, were much more likely to respond the same way to new foods than non-identical twins, who like other siblings only share about half their genes. Researchers concluded that genetics played a greater role in determining eating preferences than environment - since each pair of twins lived in the same household.

Wardle said food preferences appear to be “as inheritable a physical characteristic as height.”

Unlike nearly every other phobia, neophobia is a normal stage of human development.

Scientists theorize that it was originally an evolutionary mechanism designed to protect children from accidentally eating dangerous things - like poisonous berries or mushrooms.

The study also sheds light on why I have never had any idea what “bitter” is supposed to taste like.

Other taste-related traits - like the ability to taste bitterness - are also inherited. Scientists have already identified the gene responsible, and have found that approximately 30 percent of Caucasians lack the gene and cannot taste bitterness.