Buying a piece of meat can be a bit confusing. After all, is a pork butt actually a pork butt?

Consumers may never know because the pork and beef industries have teamed up on a two-year study and are now renaming more than 350 different cuts of meat to make them more accessible for consumers, Reuters reports. The chicken industry has decided to stick with its current naming conventions, but the new pork and beef monikers should be in stores by the summer.

It may take some time, of course, for consumers to stop looking for “pork chops” and instead keep their eyes open for "porterhouse chops," "ribeye chops" and "New York chops." Packaging for meat will change as well, the wire service notes, and consumers will be able to quickly see from what part of an animal’s body the meat comes from and also be given cooking suggestions. While the name changes are supposed to help consumers better understand what they're eating, some think the new monikers sound more like a meat "identity crisis."Continue reading...

McDonald's continues to look less and less like a food-police "Most Wanted" corporation with a rap sheet to match its notoriety. Instead, the global fast-food leader keeps adding to its shift toward better-for-you fare and toward making healthier food not only accessible to its customers but palatable as well — even including the health of its own employees.

Today, McDonald's USA announced a number of nutrition initiatives, including the news it's adding calorie counts on restaurant and drive-through menus nationwide starting Monday and introducing menu items next year in line with the latest obesity-targeting federal dietary guidelines.

"We recognize customers want to know more about the nutrition content of the food and beverages they order," McDonald's USA president Jan Fields stated in a press release. As the Associated Press notes, "The move comes ahead of a regulation that could require major chains to post the information as early as next year. 'We want to voluntarily do this,' Fields told AP. 'We believe it will help educate customers.'"Continue reading...

News Corp. board approves company split, with Rupert Murdoch serving as chairman of both entities.

JPMorgan Chase may reach $9 billion in trading losses, New York Times reports.

RIM is expected to report an operating loss as missteps trip up BlackBerry brand.

Airbus plans to build first U.S. factory in Alabama.

Apple plans to overhaul iTunes to improve sharing.

Barclays hit with massive fines for rigging derivatives.

CBS to use neuroscience techniques in new show promos.Continue reading...

The general public got its first glimpse of "finely textured meat" (aka pink slime) almost a year ago, when Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on ABC raised the issue with moms in a Los Angeles school district, but since then the hue and cry against the ammonia-treated filler has beent aken over by parents and nutritional advocates using, deftly, the free social media tools at their disposal.

The issue certainly caught the eye of Houston resident Bettina Siegel, who writes about kids and food on her blog, The Lunch Tray. Siegel posted a petition on Change.org on March 6th, rallying support to lobby Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to “put an immediate end to the use of ‘pink slime’ in our children’s school food.”

By the next day, more than 220,000 names had been added, rare for the site which launches 10,000 petitions on average each month. "It was incredible," said Brianna Cayo Cotter, communications director of Change.org, regarding Siegel’s petition. "In 10 days she made the USDA, the meat industry and major retailers all back away from it. Now the demand for pink slime has dropped so dramatically that some of the factories are starting to shut down."Continue reading...

Frank Zappa once told his fans not to eat the yellow snow. Now a whole lot of folks are deciding not to eat another colorful item: pink slime.

It's a substance that many Americans (well, the few who watched) Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution last April would have seen in the series' premiere episode on ABC. That's when the British chef, accompanied by a bovine companion, demonstrated what goes into the 70% of America's ground beef that contains leftover cow parts (a.k.a. "pink slime"), meaning meat that has been treated with ammonia to banish bacteria such as e.coli and salmonella. It's also used to convert the fatty beef offcuts into a beef filler for burgers.

Ammonia-treated meat can be found in virtually all U.S. grocery stores, fast food restaurants, many national restaurant chains, and school cafeterias, but a backlash has been forming over fears that it is unsafe — and now the company that produces 'pink slime beef' has suspended operations at three of its four plants.Continue reading...

Pretty much everybody is hurting for cash these days. And that has led to the U.S. government’s food-stamp program having a fresh influx of members. 

In August, a new record was set of participants when it reached 45.8 million Americans, an increase of 8.1 percent form 2010. Way to go, America! In 2010, the program “distributed a record $64.4 billion,” according to Bloomberg. So there are plenty who’d like a piece of that pie.

The United States Department of Agriculture runs the food-stamp program and folks there were apparently none too pleased when they heard the news that Yum! Brands Inc. was planning to let its KFC and Taco Bell franchises accept food stamps. Now, the USDA “is encouraging states not to give Yum a green light," Bloomberg reports.Continue reading...

On the day that the Obama administration had to ruefully acknowledge that the unemployment rate is rising again – to 9.2% in June – the US Association of National Advertisers tried a clever tactic that attempted to leverage renewed fears about joblessness to advance what probably ranks as the ANA’s No. 1 public-policy concern these days.

The ANA produced a study purporting to show that a cross-agency federal proposal to curtail marketing of certain products to kids could translate to the loss of at least 74,000 American jobs in the retailing, marketing and manufacturing of foods and beverages that the government believes contribute to childhood obesity.Continue reading...

It’s a long-running conundrum for better-for-you food and beverage marketers: How do you leverage a “natural” positioning for new, healthful products compared with marketing new “organic” items?

USDA standards have defined and regulated organic labeling for several years now, but the meaning of “natural” is something that still remains unaddressed by regulators and, consequently, by marketers.

American consumers remain vastly confused by the two terms, with studies showing that they tend to credit many more important nutrition and health attributes to products labeled “natural” than they do to those labeled “organic” – even though the latter are the only ones consumers really can count on.Continue reading...