Welcome to Food Week January 12. We hope you are surviving your local weather disaster. A busy week with fun stuff with people love: Kirkland vodka, Lactaid, French fries, Shochu and the Wienermobile, Which are all better than micro-plastics, forever chemicals, ultra processed foods and self checkout. And more. Enjoy!

MACRO

• Snow, rain, tornados, floods, polar vortex. Yippee!

• But the Arctic continues to get hotter.

• Economically, most everyone is doing well especially the big banks with the rate hikes. So of course Citibank is cutting 20k jobs.

RETAIL AND CONSUMER

• How to tell ultra-processed foods.

• Groceries about to become the largest category of e-commerce. People thought food was a poor candidate for digital sales but the volume associated with shopping drives this.

• Is Lactaid hip with the kids?

• The pandemic taught many retailers that there is a limit on choice. Less is more (more or less).

• More on the slow demise of self-checkout.

• Hot car ride? Food still good? If it’s longer than 2 hours…

• Kirkland vodka has an almost cult-like following, even if the distiller remains a mystery. But if change it, people know.

• Baking essentials for your home pantry.

RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE

• Dave’s Hot Chicken is betting that cauliflower is the killer platform for a meatless hot sandwich.

• Wilmette is a toney suburb of Chicago; the nimby forces there are resisting a drive-thru McDonald’s. Maybe an upgrade of their burgers will make them more respectable

• The undertow espresso. From Starbucks.

• Ranking fast food French fries. Surprise winner.

• How a restaurateur gets to a $16 BLT.

FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

• Indian high court allows Pepsico to patent potato variety for its chips. Also, an export ban on onions in India is leading to a lucrative smuggling trade of the produce in Nepal.

• Political crisis shuts down ports in Ecuador.

• Microplastics are present in almost all meat and meat alternatives. And maybe 1000 times more nanoplastics present in bottled water than tap. And forever chemicals (phthalates )in Annie’s Organic and Del Monte

• Groundwater can’t be free; the nature of water means that even propery rights become muddied (!) as it is used and over-used. NYT piece on the attempts to price it because it is quite literally running out.

FOOD WEEK JANUARY 12 LAGNIAPPE

• Clearing up misinformation about gut biome.

• Where distillation meets fermentation: Shochu is an excellent spirit for drinking and mixing. If you prefer Japanese whiskey instead, here’s ten tips.

• The oldest liquor store in America. (since 1686!).

• The tradition of the toast has murky historical connections to…. toast. Speaking of toast, in crazy history, the US once banned slice bread.

• Whither the egg cream soda?

• Wanna drive the Wienermobile