Creating healthier food choices
Wendy’s is bringing back the thin mint Frosty in partnership with the Girl Scouts of the USA which sell thin mint cookies this time of year.
Wendy’s will launch it thin mint Frosty, with either vanilla or chocolate soft-serve topped with thin mint sauce. The non-heart-healthy offering (sorry, I had to remind you) debuts Feb. 16, two days after Valentine’s Day.
Wendy’s also will be allowing Girl Scout cookie sales at its outlets.
A major food recall, this time from a distributor rather than a processor, is underway. More than 2,000 products are involved.
Minneapolis-based Gold Star Distribution Inc. has recalled food items, pet foods, beauty products and drugs that it distributes in three states, the Food and Drug Administration has announced.
First issued in December, the recall was recently classified as Class II by the FDA. Class II is used for products that “may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote,” according to the FDA’s site.
Among the products recalled are Pringles, Nutella and Cheerios. The original recall was issued in December due to “the presence of rodent and avian contamination,” the company said. Products had been distributed in Minnesota, Indiana and North Dakota.
Amazon is pulling out of the grocery store business, sort of. The online retailing giant plans to close its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores. It will focus instead on expanding Whole Foods and its online grocery business.
Amazon has conquered a lot of retail segments over the years, laying waste to smaller competitors. But food retailing is a different animal.
The modern American supermarket industry began after World War II, operating on the principle that large volume could make up for very low profit margins on items sold.
That model requires careful inventory management and pricing strategies since so much of a food retailers product can rot on the shelf if it doesn’t sell quickly.
In meat and poultry, an industry I wrote about for many years, it’s called “sell it or smell it.” That means if you don’t sell the products soon, they will stink, and lose you money.
Food retailing also requires point-of-sale marketing pizazz; you have to convince people to buy more than sale items to make any money off them.
I visited an Amazon fresh store in my area several times. It was dark and dead-looking inside with none of the excitement of a traditional supermarket.
Walmart has mastered the food retailing business. It ranks as the largest food retailer in the country. Kroger, a traditional supermarket chain, is number two and wants to be the surviving traditional chain when the dust settles in the segment.
Target, which has tried for many years to become a food powerhouse, ranks seventh, noteworthy but not overwhelming.
Amazon seems to think direct online food sales will be its future. Delivery is always the hangup with such sales. Home delivery is labor and cost-intensive. But maybe self-driving electric delivery vehicles will someday change that cost equation.
Until then, it seems that traditional supermarkets, and Walmart, have beaten back Amazon in food retailing, for now at least.
North Carolina-based Spring & Mulberry is expanding a chocolate recall first announced Jan. 12. The expansion, announced Jan. 14, 2026, was prompted by possible contamination of product with Salmonella.
“The affected products were available for purchase online and through select retail partners nationwide since Sept. 15, 2025,” the company said.
“The recalled products can be identified by brand name (Spring & Mulberry), with the following identifiers: flavor name, lot codes, and box color,” it explained.
The table below comes directly from the company recall announcement.
| Product Name | Lot Number | Box Color |
|---|---|---|
| Earl Grey | #025258 | Purple |
| Lavender Rose | #025259, #025260 | Light Blue |
| Mango Chili | #025283 | Orange |
| Mint Leaf | #025255 | Teal |
| Mixed Berry | #025275, #025281, #025337 | Purple |
| Mulberry Fennel | #025345 | Burgundy |
| Pacan Date | #025261, #025265, #025267, #025268, #025339, #025343 | Yellow |
| Pure Dark Minis | #025273 | Blue |
No illnesses had been traced to the products at the time the recall was announced.
Studies in France and Britain estimate lives could be saved and hypertension reduced by even small reductions in daily salt intake.
“Using national diet and health data, researchers in France estimated that modest decreases in bread salt content could cut adults’ daily salt intake by 0.35 grams, lower their blood pressure and prevent more than 1,100 deaths.
“Researchers from the U.K. estimated that similar salt reductions in packaged foods and takeout meals could lower daily British sodium intake by 17.5%, preventing more than 100,000 cases of heart disease and 25,000 cases of stroke over 20 years,” reports ABC News.
How much is 0.35 grams? About the weight of a paper clip; it’s also the same as saying 350 milligrams.
Americans on average consume 3,500 milligrams a day of salt, well above the recommendation of the American Heart Association, 2,300, ABC reports. Those of us with high blood pressure should consumer no more than 1,500 msg of salt daily.
That’s harder than it sounds since salt is in everything we eat, literally. My advice — use a digital food diary like LoseIt! to track your daily salt intake and then, when the results startle you, cut back. Your heart will thank you for it.
The U.S. food scene is in a world now where up is down and black is white — namely everything science tried to tell us the past half century or so about healthy eating just got stood on its head with new dietary guidelines backed by the non-scientist, non-doctor now in charge of America’s health.
Avoid high-fat foods? No, no, drink that whole milk again, the new guidelines say. Limit red meat intake? No, no protein is good, gobble that red meat down.
About the only point of agreement with the past is to avoid processed foods, although that term — along with others like highly processed and ultra-processed — remain undefined.
So how should you eat?
We’re in an age where you have to find your own way. Start by knowing your body and discussing your specifics with doctors, nutritionists, even friends and relatives searching for answers as well.
I know, for example, that consuming lots of salt sends my blood pressure higher.
I’ve seen it over and over again. So I am committed to a low-salt diet.
I also know that when I eat high-fat foods, I have heart attacks — I’ve had two, — that’s enough to keep me on a low-fat Mediterranean-like diet.
Continue reading “New U.S. dietary guidelines mean you’re on your own finding healthy ways to eat”If you’ve started your Thanksgiving food shopping, you know food prices are through the roof. One store I shop that sold romaine lettuce hearts for $2.99 last year has them for $6.99 this year for example. Its likely imported.
So how do you survive, and enjoy, this Thanksgiving? Track down every bargain you can.
I spent roughly $70 today at a local Jewel, for example, but everything I bought was on sale and so I saved $40 on my bill.
I’m headed to a second store Tuesday to find more bargains, you can’t buy everything you need at one store and expect to save money this year.
Look non-traditional places too. I found light mayo at a dollar store for $1.25 for 10 ounces, for example.
A 20-ounce bottle at my local Jewel was on sale for $3.99, or $2 for 10 ounces if you do the math. This year, more than ever, DO THE MATH.
Good luck.
Costco is sporting a new salad on its food court menu; avoid it like the plague, it simply stinks and is not worth the money being charged for it.
What a sad day for Costco food court customers. The salad there was once not only a meal for one, but possibly two people in its pre-covid heyday.
But since Covid, Costco just like other fast-food purveyors, has been downsizing. This latest version, the rotisserie chicken chef salad for $7.99 in my
Chicago-area Costco, has barely any lettuce. The small container is filled with a dressing packet, likely the bulk of the 840 calories listed for the salad, a packet of hard-boiled egg bits, and a packet of croutons. Take all those off and the container is less than half-full of lettuce as my pictures show.
The sale is not worth the price. Costco broke my heart when it dropped fat-free frozen yogurt from its menu. Then, during the pandemic, it dropped salads all together as well. I think I could live with no salad easier than with this abomination of a salad.
#Shameofcostcosalad
Suddenly I’m getting a lot of emails about using weighted vests for weight loss. Add weight to lose weight? It’s a thing right now. But does it work?
Exercising with more weight on can help you burn more calories and strengthen muscles. Anyone else wear ankle weights years ago to build up leg muscles for sports like soccer? I did, I did.
“Adding a weighted vest to walking, hiking, or mat-based cardiovascular activities like aerobics allows you to reap the benefits of low-impact exercise while ramping up the intensity,” Time magazine quoted one expert as saying.
“Wearing a weighted vest is a “great way to, at the very core element of it, increase the difficulty of whichever exercise you’re doing,” says Mathias Sorensen, an exercise physiologist at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Human Performance Center,” Time reports (this source is a different one than quoted above).
Food diary/weight loss app Lose It explains that “a 155-pound person can burn about 351 calories running at a speed of 6 miles per hour (a 10-minute mile) for 30 minutes without wearing a weighted vest.
Continue reading “Weighted vests having a weight-loss moment”While I try to avoid generalities, one I do use is that the less processed food is, the healthier it likely is as well.
That’s why sushi has become an even larger part of my diet than it was before my two stents were put in to unclog my arteries.
Nutritionists do raise a red flag about eating a lot of white rice, but sushi can be found with brown rice and there’s also sashimi which is sushi’s rice-less cousin. But sushi can get expensive.
So I was excited to try a Chicago sushi lunch spot that sells sushi by the pound ($1.25 an ounce) rather than the piece. Grain & Sea is a very neat-looking spot with an almost limitless sushi buffet.
You walk the food line, taking whichever you want and have it all weighed at the end of the line.
Continue reading “A healthy lunch spot & sushi by the pound”