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The Walking Dead?

​Everything from pesticides to cell-phone towers has been posited as the cause of colony collapse disorder, which since 2006 has dramatically reduced the population of honeybees, whose pollination is vital to the agricultural system.

(Riverfront Times has been following this story from almost the beginning: In 2007, former staff writer Malcolm Gay looked at colony collapse disorder in his feature story "Buzz Kill.")

Now scientists at San Francisco State University have offered a new theory.

Zombies.

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courtesy Playing With Pigs

It's about to be playtime for these piggies!

​In certain circles, it's come to be accepted that a happy pig will not get bored and attack its fellow pigs or feel undue amounts of anxiety. And a happy pig is not one that wallows in shit all day -- pigs are actually very clean animals -- but one that gets to play.

For the past decade, under European law, it's been compulsory for pig farmers to provide their charges with "entertainment." On most farms, this means a few toys tossed into the pigsty. But a group of philosophers, animal welfare specialists and designers in the Netherlands banded together on a project called Playing With Pigs in order to improve on porcine playtime. The best way, they decided, was to get humans involved.

The result: an interactive iPad app called Pig Chase.

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​We're going to predict right now that 2012 will be a joyous year for chickens all across Missouri: There will be not one, but two soy chicken products on the market! Little birds, rejoice.

Nearly two years ago, Gut Check learned that Fu-hung Hsieh, a professor of biological engineering and food science at the University of Missouri, had developed a way to make a chicken breast without harming any chickens. Hsieh's chicken breast was made from soy protein and looked a lot like a skinless, boneless chicken breast, provided you ignore that it comes from a metal extruder.

The concept was a familiar one to us, since a few months earlier Riverfront Times had run a feature story about Alison Burgess, the creator of Match, a line of soy- and wheat gluten-based meat-like products that included -- you guessed it -- chicken. The Match product simulated ground chicken, not the whole breast, and it tasted -- there really is no other way to say it -- like chicken.

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careered.com

CEC's website shows off happy graduates.

​The corporation that runs fifteen culinary schools in the United States under the name Le Cordon Bleu, including a branch in St. Peters, is under scrutiny for possibly misrepresenting the employment rates of its graduates. (Here in St. Louis, the Chicago-based Career Education Corporation also operates several Sanford-Brown business schools as well as Missouri College, an institute for dental assistants.)

This fall the New York Attorney General's Office subpoenaed documents from the for-profit CEC to see if the company followed state laws regarding consumer protection, securities and finance.

Last week CEC admitted that its own internal review of career placement after graduation discovered that several of its schools used "improper placement determination practices." Specifically, only 13 of its 49 ACICS (Accrediting Counsel for Independent Colleges and Schools)-accredited institutions had acceptable numbers of graduates finding work after receiving a diploma from one of its schools. The ACICS requires that at least 65 percent of graduates find work in fields related to their study. Dipping below that benchmark can cost a school accreditation and its students access to federal loans.
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​After a recent lunch at a Chinese hog trough buffet where we were lulled into stupor by the gentle tones of "Rock-a-Bye-Baby" on the sound system and one too many sticks of chicken meat, we've been thinking a lot about music and food.

Turns out we're not the only ones. Around the same time we heard about Turntable Kitchen, a blog where San Francisco couple Kelsey and Matthew write about food and music pairings. And for a $25 monthly fee, the couple will send you "a curated food and music discovery experience" in the form of a 7" vinyl single, a digital mix tape, three original recipes, a few dried specialty ingredients and the pair's thoughts on it all.

Brooklyn band One Ring Zero's taking it step further. They've released The Recipe Project, a book and CD inspired by celeb chef recipes. See (below) John Besh sing the band's song about his shrimp remoulade!

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Wikimedia Commons

Marijuana can't stay out of food news.

​There aren't many rules regarding marijuana consumption, except for those laws that make it illegal. In the past week, though, marijuana keeps appearing in food news. And it's not just pot brownies giving people the munchies.

Well, in one case it was pot brownies. Last weekend in Huntington Beach, California, three elderly people were sickened after unknowingly eating marijuana-laced brownies at a funeral. The pot came from the deceased's leftover medicinal marijuana, which the man's daughter announced, but apparently two 71-year-old women and an 82-year-old man missed the message. They went to the hospital with nausea, dizziness and difficulty standing. (For the record, the venue that hosted the memorial claims the incident didn't happen there.)

Pot food's not just for old people. The kiddies love it, too!

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​Whether you like your peanut butter smooth or creamy, organic or conventional, Skippy or Jif or Peter Pan, you're about to pay a lot more for it.

According to a report in today's Wall Street Journal, the wholesale cost of peanut butter will rise anywhere from 24%-40% next month. Since last year, the Journal says, quoting USDA figures, the cost of a ton of the unprocessed peanuts used in most peanut butters has risen from $450 to $1,150.

A hot, dry summer is the main factor in the peanut shortage and subsequent price hike.

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Frito Lay

Arch West, inventor of Doritos, passed away last week.

​As Ian reported yesterday, Arch West, the 97-year-old Texan who blessed the world with Doritos in 1966, passed away last week. His family plans to sprinkle Doritos into his final resting place.

While we wish no disrespect to West or his mourning family, we hope they won't be burying these beloved, discontinued Doritos flavors with him. If ever there was a time when Americans needs to stress-eat their long-gone nostalgic favorites, it's now.

Just look what happens in a world without Doritos. (Especially weirdly flavored ones.) it's not good!

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We're bummin' too, Mr. Pumpkin.

​This summer's freaky weather -- floods to droughts and the scorching heat -- has done a number on the local pumpkin harvest.

Last night FOX 2 reported that the St. Louis area's pumpkin crops are smaller this year, both in crop and fruit size. Harvest times are running late because the excessive rains last spring prevented farmers from planting their pumpkins on time.

 

See? No problem. We can ship pumpkins in from elsewhere.

Except the Northeast is experiencing an even bigger pumpkin shortage, thanks to Hurricane Irene.

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​Gut Check ain't exactly nostalgic for the good ol' days of the George W. Bush administration. Still, a phrase that Dubya once used has stuck with us over the years: "the soft bigotry of low expectations." He was talking about education, but you can apply it to all sorts of things.

Like, say, the hoopla surrounding Darden Restaurants' announcement that it would cut the calorie count in the food served in its  chains -- Red Lobster, Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse among them -- by 20 percent over the next ten years.

Michelle Obama, who has made healthier eating the hallmark of her time as first lady, hailed the announcement as a "breakthrough moment in the restaurant industry."

Seriously? This is what passes for a "breakthrough moment" these days?

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