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The Washington City Paper criticizes "Fresh Fields" grocery stores for using the groundless paranoia generated by activists on issues like food coloring, pesticides, and genetically engineered foods as the basis of their marketing plan.

The radical vegetarian group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is petitioning Maine Governor Angus S. King against allowing the state to restore a lobster motif to its license plates. "We hope you'll agree that the state's license plate is no place to put the image of an animal who has been boiled alive," said a PETA letter to the governor. ("PETA fights lobster plate resurrection," Bangor Daily News, 1/20/00, No link available.)

Columnist Terence Corcoran rages against anti-genetically engineered food activists, rightly noting that these special interest groups have no qualms about using junk science to prove their point. "Greenpeace, for example, is making the rounds of newspaper editorial boards and using its usual technique: If the science isn't there, then make it up," said Corcoran.

Prompted by environmental groups, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is forcing farmers who plan on growing GE corn next spring to plant up to 50 percent of their crop with conventional seed. The EPA bases its unprecedented action on a controversial Cornell University laboratory study that found pollen from GE corn could kill Monarch butterfly caterpillars, despite the fact the author of the study maintains that the conditions created in the laboratory are extremely unlikely to be duplicated in nature.

The director of the University of Pennsylvania's Weight and Eating Disorder Clinic blames the fast-food industry's marketing practices for causing obesity: "You don't see them giving away toys with health meals… When you look at all the fast-food marketing to children, it's analogous to tobacco marketing. Super-sizing. Big Gulp. It's absolute junk food… People should have ethical standards when they promote products to children." ("He'll let you eat fast food, but fie on the French fries," The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/15/99, No link available.)

U.S. News & World Report treats millions of coffee-lovers to six java-jivin' websites, including a "Wine Spectator" style review site and dozens of inexpensive gourmet blends.

One of the latest rages among vegetarians is to force their dogs to go vegetarian too. Vegetarians claim an all-plant diet will transform Fido from fat to fit. However, Dr. Andy Turkell of the American Animal Hospital Association says, "The obesity issue has nothing to do with too much meat… A dog's closest relative in the wild is the wolf. Wolves kill plant eaters like rabbits and eat their intestinal contents, which contain carbohydrates. You have to respect your dog's ancestry and anatomy."

The power of the internet to perpetuate urban legends is being felt by KFC. A recent e-mail claims that Kentucky Fried Chicken had started calling itself KFC because it no longer uses real chickens. Instead, the e-mail claims KFC uses genetically altered organisms that are kept alive by tubes that "have no beaks, no feathers, and no feet." The University of New Hampshire, mentioned as having done a study on the KFC "chickens" in the e-mail, set up a web page to handle the hoax which is getting about 15 to 18 hits per minute per day.

Nannies on the editorial staff at the Capital Times (Madison, WI), are calling for labels on genetically modified foods, including foods in restaurants. Noting that some chains, including McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut and Domino's, have removed genetically engineered ingredients from their menus in the UK, the Times asks, "Do those corporations continue to dish out genetically modified foods at their restaurants in countries that do not label-most particularly the United States? Of course. …It's time for the United States to require the labeling of all foods sold in this country."

Calling obesity “a full blown health crisis and truly a national epidemic,” Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) promoted her “Lifelong Improvements in Food and Exercise Act” at a press conference…