Producers

Vertical 'Pinkhouses:' The Future Of Urban Farming?

Architects have come up with spectacular concepts for vertical farms that would grow crops in city skyscrapers. But many horticulturists think the future of vertical farming isn't in skyscrapers, but rather in large, indoor warehouses lit up magenta by superefficient LEDs.

This "pinkhouse" at Caliber Biotherapeutics in Bryan, Texas, grows 2.2 million plants under the glow of blue and red LEDs.

Producers

Washington State Butcher Spikes Pig Feed With Weed

Despite its name, the "pot pig" experiment isn't an attempt to develop a new meaty treat for stoners. Instead, a Seattle butcher is feeding marijuana seeds, stems and root bulbs to swine as a cheeky money-saving measure.

William von Schneidau, who owns the BB Ranch butcher shop at Pike Place Market in Seattle, has made prosciutto from pigs fed marijuana.

Sandwich Monday

Sandwich Monday: The Saltwich

For this week's Sandwich Monday, we celebrate an expert panel's recommendations about salt intake by taking in as much salt as we can, with The Saltwich.

The pretzel shape provides nice little windows through which you can see your poor choices.

Eating And Health

Can A Piece Of Hair Reveal How Much Coke Or Pepsi You Drink?

People are notorious for under-reporting what they consume — they lie, forget or just guess wrong. For researchers who want to know how much soda we're drinking, a high-tech analysis technique could help.

Carbon isotope analysis: a scientific way to know just how much soda kids are drinking behind parents' backs?

Foodways

Giant Renaissance Food People Descend Upon New York

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a 16th-century artist who liked to play with his food, transforming it into the building blocks of many of his fantastical portraits. Artist Philip Haas has taken those portraits out of museums, reinterpreting them as colossal statues that interact with the natural environment.

Autumn

For Foodies

'Picture Cook': Drawings Are The Key Ingredients In These Recipes

Designer Katie Shelly's upcoming cookbook offers 50 illustrated recipe "blueprints" for basic meals — from simple snacks to more hefty dishes like eggplant Parmesan. She hopes they'll inspire any level of cook to improvise in the kitchen.

Eggplant Parmesan for PROMO

Producers

Flaxseed: The Next Superfood For Cattle And Beef?

After years of research, an animal scientist looking for ways to keep inflammation down in cattle came up with a novel approach: feed them flax. The flax in their food helps keep animals healthy and has an added benefit for people who later eat their meat: omega-3 enriched beef.

NBO3 launched its enriched ground beef at the Tops grocery chain in New York in March.

Producers

Congress: Where Food Reforms Go To Die?

As Congress gets to work on the farm bill, two common-sense, bipartisan reform measures seem to have gotten run over somewhere along the way. The first would set minimum standards for housing egg-laying chickens. The second sought to change how the U.S. provides food aid to people in foreign nations.

The U.S. Capitol building

Foodways

No More Smuggling: Many Cured Italian Meats Coming To America

Culatello. Capocollo. Sopressata. It will soon be legal to import a whole new world of Italian cured pork products, thanks to the USDA's decision to end a decades-long ban. Every Italian region and province, and even many towns have their own distinctive salumi.

Even Sophia Loren felt compelled to smuggle mortadella, despite a U.S. ban — well, her character did, anyway, in the 1971 film Lady Liberty.

Producers

How Trace Amounts Of Arsenic End Up In Grocery Store Meat

A recently published study found slightly elevated amounts of inorganic arsenic in samples of chicken meat purchased at grocery stores. Arsenic-based drugs are no longer used in chickens — but they are still used in turkeys.

Roxarsone, a drug linked to elevated levels of inorganic arsenic in chicken meat, is no longer used in broiler chicken farming, producers say. But another arsenic-based drug is still used to raise turkeys.