Crumbs & Dregs

Where to begin? Morning news & inbox full of depressing stuff.

• Wall Street Journal reports on a study showing convenience foods don't really save time. Maybe not, but they'll turn you and your family into fat, lazy slobs.
  
• Stanford study reported in Seattle Times shows that kids will eat anything if they think it comes from McDonald's, even carrot sticks. Conclusion: Mickey D does a fantastic job! Wanna sell more carrots? Hire Ronald McDonald.
  
• Times also gets around to running Associated Press piece on those new standards for chocolate (you read it here two months ago). Chocolatiers are divided; weaker standards could make their jobs easier, their products less delicious, more fattening but cheaper.
  
• Trader Joe sells shrink-wrapped produce (longer shelf life, one assumes) and gloats that its intermittently decent Two-Buck Chuck came out on top at the California State Fair. Attempts to duplicate the results failed, however. If you live too far from a Trader Joe, buy Franzia's boxed white at your local Rite-Aid, pretty much the same stuff inside.