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Corporate America can learn a lot from a chicken burrito. As many companies struggle to boost prices without alienating consumers, they may want to study Mexican-food chain Chipotle, which has managed to do both. Companies including Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc (CMG.N), Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and PepsiCo (PEP.N) have shown they're able to take advantage of quality, trendiness, and, in the case of Pepsi's snack foods, market dominance, to maintain high prices or even raise them faster than the inflation rate, now at about 2.1 percent in the U.S. Chipotle raised chicken-dish prices by 5 percent this year after leaving them...

A fish factory worker survived spending more than four days trapped inside an industrial freezer, licking ice to keep himself alive. Mai Thanh Sang feared he was going to die when he was buried under bags of fish fillets after shelving units collapsed as he and three colleagues cleaned the -22C storeroom. Thoughts of his wife and baby helped the 23-year-old keep his spirits up while rescue workers spent 103 hours trying to find him. When they reached him, Mr Sang was suffering from the worst case of frostbite doctors at Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam,...

One of the world's largest food companies says it's about to take a big bite out of global warming. General Mills, maker of Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Wheaties, said Monday that it will set a target to limit air pollution throughout its entire supply chain next summer. This marks the first time the food giant has pledged to measurably rein in greenhouse-gas emissions from its agricultural suppliers of ingredients like soy and sugarcane. Environmental watchdogs say the effort is significant. According to Oxfam, air pollution created by the agricultural industry makes up a quarter of total greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide....

The nation’s food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), provided a record $74.6 billion in benefits to needy Americans in Fiscal Year 2012—paying out $2 billion too much, according to the annual quality control report for FY 2012, the most recent year for which data is available. And only in Washington could that $2 billion in overpayments be viewed as a good thing. […] The data show the payment error rate has declined over time, from 5.64% in FY 2007; 5.01% in FY 2008; 4.36% in FY 2009; 3.81% in FY 2010; 3.80% in FY...

Production of beef is nearly ten times more damaging to the environment than any other form of meat production, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. American scientists measured the environment inputs required for beef production and concluded that beef cattle need 28 times more land and 11 times more irrigation water than pork, poultry, eggs or dairy. […] The scientists calculated that the amount of resources required for all the feed consumed by edible livestock and worked out the amount of hay, silage and concentrates such as soybeans required by the...

A bartender in Lithuania was making a cocktail called "Flaming Lamborghini" - but instead of the drink, she set a patron's face on fire. This footage on LiveLeak shows the dangers of drinking a dangerous cocktail of flames and liquor, with a customer suffering severe facial burns. The incident happened on July 11, according to online reports. The bartender accidentally sets the man on fire at 0:35. Some of the customers near the man helped put out the flames, and the bartender is seen handing the man a towel. According to the video description, none of the staff was able...

Nearly a quarter-century after McDonald’s startled and delighted Soviets with their first taste of American fast-food culture, the company’s now facing a suit that could ban it from selling some of its signature products. The Russian consumer protection agency said Friday it is taking the company to court for selling foods that contain more fats and carbohydrates than are allowed by national regulations. McDonald’s did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The suit comes amid especially high tensions between Moscow and Washington over the Ukraine crisis; the United States has slapped an array of sanctions on Russia over...

Fast food chain McDonald’s has suspended sale of chicken nuggets and some other products in Hong Kong. It said it had imported chicken and pork from Shanghai Husi Food, the Chinese firm that allegedly supplied out-of-date meat to fast food firms. China has suspended operations of Shanghai Husi after local media reports claimed it reprocessed expired meat. McDonald’s had removed nuggets from its menus at its Japanese outlets earlier this week over the same issue. …

Has this ever happened to you? You go to a clean, modern American supermarket and buy some boxes of pasta. You store some of them in you cupboard. And when you cook it, little black bugs are floating in the water. They look like fleas, except that they have snouts. Very gross. And by putting boxes of them in your cupboard, you have now infested your kitchen with them. I was so mad that I e-mailed the company, a popular national brand, and gave them a piece of my mind. I even e-mailed them a close-up photo of the bug...

Austin Goncalves, 15, is recovering after going into a coma. He went into the coma after he got fish poisoning from a snapper in the Bahamas. Austin is finally eating food for the first time in week. “I’m on anti-seizure medication,” he told WTSP. Earlier this month, Austin caught a mutton snapper that his mom cooked for dinner. “I couldn’t eat, couldn’t breath,” Austin told the station. “This was very serious,” his mom, Karen Goncalves added. “It could have ended our lives.” Austin, his friend, Karen, and her boyfriend were all suffering from Ciguatera, which is a potentially fatal illness...

Blames overweight wife for refusing to compromiseA 40-year-old Yemeni citizen, identified as Yassin, divorced his wife because of her snorting, the ‘Al Rai’ newspaper has reported. The husband said that his wife used to eat many nuts and chocolates till she now weighs more than 80kg, up from her original 50kg, the paper reported. He added that she refused to undergo any diet or weight- loss programme. However, the final straw for the man was her snoring at night, which he attributed to her weight. The report quotes the man as saying: “We have three children, but she does not...

Thousands of litres of beer were spilled on a motorway near Duisburg in western Germany on Monday night, when a truck carrying several hundred crates of Bitburger toppled over, shutting the Autobahn. Germans damage World Cup trophy at afterparty (21 Jul 14) Police find cannabis growing on motorway (18 Jul 14) Burglars steal 300,000 litres of beer (15 Jul 14) The truck was on the A40 motorway heading towards Dortmund and was approaching the A3 motorway towards Arnheim at the Kaiserberg interchange. The 66-year-old driver then lost control of the vehicle and slid off the road. Hundreds of bottles were...

For two Harvard University undergrads, what began as "an excuse to eat a lot of cake" may turn into the invention of a lifetime. John McCallum, a 20-year-old from Louisiana, was daydreaming about cake his freshman year during his “Science of Cooking” class when he happened to see someone spraying whipped cream and thought to himself, why not spray cake? Is that possible? He and his girlfriend and fellow student Brooke Nowakowski went on to prove that it is, winning first place and $10,000 in the 2014 Harvard Innovation challenge, reports ABC News. Their "Spray Cake" involves spraying cake batter...

While we regular, cash-strapped taxpayers concerned about the well-being of our country stood on the overpasses Saturday protesting the total breakdown of our borders, where were a few of our stalwart conservative spokespeople and politicians? Were they holding anti-illegal immigration signs with ‘we the people’ on the National Day of Protesting Against Immigration Reform Amnesty and Border Surge?

McDonald’s Corp. and Yum Brands Inc. are facing a new food safety scare in China, denting the fast food giants’ efforts to shore up reputations and businesses that were hurt by a 2012 safety scandal in one of their biggest markets. McDonald’s and KFC-parent Yum apologized to customers on Monday after Chinese regulators shut a local meat supplier following a TV report that showed workers picking up meat from a factory floor, as well as mixing meat beyond its expiration date with fresh meat. The firms said they’ll stop using the supplier. The report, which focused on McDonald’s and Yum,...

Here's what he (and we) have learned from his oddball diet.As the saying goes, pizza is like sex. Even if it’s bad, it’s still pizza. And just like sex, there are people out there addicted to pizza. Meet Dan Janssen, a Maryland man who has gained a minor level of fame for eating pizza every day for 25 years. In a mini-documentary produced by Vice, Janssen talks about the repercussions of his oddball diet. Here are five key lessons. Pizza obsession is deeper than just a food preference. Janssen says his picky diet likely stems from a few traumatic experiences...

We think Cheryl Cole’s missed a trick with her quickie wedding on Macaroni Beach in Mustique. Just look at what she could have had – her very own McWedding (Drive Thru or marry in). Yes, McDonald’s has the answer for all those normcore brides out there. Well, at least the ones willing to travel to Hong Kong. The fast food chain has been slowly expanding its wedding party program since 2011 and now boasts 11 restaurants that double up as budget wedding venues, all in Hong Kong. And not only can you have the wedding ceremony there, they’ll also host...

“I will really miss drinking sobia now that Ramadan is coming to an end.” This was the lament from Hassan Al-Amoudi, a local resident, here recently. “It is the main drink at the dinner table during Ramadan at our house. I usually drink it as soon as I hear the call for prayer.” Al-Amoudi typically buys between four and five large bags of sobia for his family of eight, many of whom are addicted to the drink in Ramadan. “Sobia has a lot of health benefits,” he said. "For example it helps relax and calm the nerves, and is considered...

Any former Girl or Boy Scout knows it’s dangerous to just pluck a berry off a bush or grab a random green and stuff it in your mouth (hello, poison ivy!) So proceed with caution and only sample something if you’re quite sure it’s safe: Brill’s app is a good starting point, but it, too features the caveat that there are some poisonous wild edibles out there! There’s also a whole world of tasty stuff. We asked Brill for his top five low-risk foraged finds (read: wild plants that don't have poisonous doppelgängers) around America, all of which are listed...

A mob of angry villagers in the northern province of Thanh Hoa set fire to two motorbikes that dog thieves abandoned in an effort to save their skins on Thursday morning. Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper cited Pham Van Chuong, a police officer in Thach Dong Commune, Thach Thanh District, as saying locals had noticed four strange man riding around on a pair of motorbikes at 5:30 a.m. Bui Van Quy, a dog owner, caught the thieves red-handed electrocuting his animals with a stun gun and cried out for his neighbors' help, the paper reported. The thieves immediately fled the scene,...