Food

There’s no question that fresh herbs taste better than their dried counterparts, nor is there any denying that garden-fresh veggies are preferable to ones that have spent the past several days in a truck or on a supermarket shelf. People who are lucky enough to live in warmer climates can keep the fresh greens coming year-round, if they plant a garden. For those of us in colder regions, however, things get a bit more challenging come winter. We can rig up indoor herb gardens on windowsills or using full-spectrum fluorescent lights, but that can sometimes get a little complicated. If you can justify its price, however, there is an alternative – the Urban Cultivator. Read More

Let's say you had a sweet dessert that you wanted to market specifically to adults. Now to spice things up, let's say you're also a Scooby Doo villain and can't stop wringing your hands over all the "meddling kids" who are going to ruin your campaign trying to steal delicious treats from your intended audience. Well, what can you do about it? Make a vending machine that detects the age of its users and tells any approaching children to get lost? Apparently yes, as Kraft Foods has introduced a new machine that scans a person's face to determine their age and dispenses free samples of their Jell-O Temptations dessert only to adults. Read More

How much would you pay for a hamburger? How about US$345,000? No, it's not wrapped in edible gold leaf and held together with a skewer made out of a diamond stick pin that you get to keep. It's an ordinary burger that doesn't include the bun, lettuce, pickles or onions. It isn't even super-sized. This may seem like price gouging on a monumental scale, but it's actually the cost price for this particular burger. That's because even though it is a real hamburger made from real meat, it doesn't come from a cow at all. So where is all this heading? David Szondy investigates the past, present and future of lab-grown meat. Read More

Are you trying to lose weight, but don't like keeping track of your food intake? Well, there may or may not be an app for that, but there is a button. An eButton, to be precise. That's the name of a wearable device developed at the University of Pittsburgh, that incorporates a camera, accelerometer, GPS, and other sensors. These all work together to maintain a profile of not only what the user is eating, but also how much exercise they're getting, how much time they spend sitting around, and other factors that can affect weight gain. Read More

New York based electrical engineer and designer Scott Amron has come up with an idea that could transform the way industries label fruit and vegetables. You may not pay much attention to that fruit sticker on your apple or orange - though it's often frustrating to remove - and it usually just ends up in the trash. However, Amron is a man who has put considerable thought into that sticker, creating the Fruitwash label. Just as the name suggests, the new label dissolves into organic fruit soap that helps remove water-resistant wax, pesticides and fungicides. Read More

While there are a great many people who want to lose weight by dieting, there aren't too many who can afford to have a nutritionist assess the caloric value of all their food choices. Using the PlateMate system, however, members can get an online community of laypeople to do exactly that - and for considerably less money. Although taking such an approach to nutrition might sound kind of iffy, calorie estimates generated by the crowd-sourced system are apparently just as accurate as those provided by trained nutritionists, and more accurate than self-kept logs. Read More

If James Bond ever went on a cook-out, it probably wouldn’t be too surprising if he were to open up an aluminum briefcase, to reveal a miniature fully-functioning rotisserie inside – that Q is so clever! Well, if you want to exercise your own “license to grill,” you can actually buy such a device. The Carson Portable Rotisserie Grill automatically rotates up to seven skewers of meat or veggies over a charcoal fire, but folds into a compact case when not in use. Eat your heart out, Blofeld! Read More

German-based company The Deli Garage has introduced a new addition to its lineup of edible products. Perfect for when you're expecting a Bond villain for dinner or just want to give that roast chicken a truly golden finish, the company is now selling Food Finish coloring spray that lets you coat your meal in a varnish of gold, silver, red or blue. Read More

There’s a reason that the oranges you see in the store usually aren’t rotten – someone at a sorting facility has already looked over all the oranges coming in from the fields, and taken out the spoiled ones. This is typically done with the help of ultraviolet light, which illuminates the essential oils in the rinds of rotten oranges. Such an approach is subject to human error, however, plus workers can only remain in the vicinity of the harmful UV light for limited periods of time. Now, scientists from Spain’s Valencian Institute of Agrarian Research (IVIA) have created a machine that does the same job automatically. While they were at it, they also came up with one that sorts oranges according to aesthetic appeal, and one that sorts mandarin segments. Read More