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It's 's a pizza lover's dream come true. A convention center full of every cheese imaginable along with pepperoni, sausage and hundreds of ovens manned by pizzaiolos in chefs' whites turning out pies with blistered crust. And there's craft beer to wash it all down. More than 10,000 pizza enthusiasts, pizza buyers, pizza restaurant owners, pizza makers and more turned out this week for the 31st annual International Pizza Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Attendees sampled doughs, sauces, toppings, chicken wings and even new soft-drink machines. And if you needed a break from eating, you could watch one...

It is in this environment of extreme financial risk and perpetually spiraling food prices where we consider the proposition of food as an investment asset class. We begin by looking at the “fundamentals” of this market/investment class. And what we see (from this perspective) is extremely encouraging: food prices consistently soaring by roughly 20% per year, and significantly more for some categories of food (notably meat products). With soaring food costs being a serious drain on the budgets of most families, our challenge is to find some way of turning this financial drain into a means of preserving/protecting our wealth:...

Los Angeles residents can now dine from the hands of the "Machete" man himself. Our friends at Flama report that Danny Trejo, the actor known for his hard persona and movie roles as a villain, will open up Trejo's Tacos , a Mexican restaurant. Expected to open sometime in the Spring, the restaurant promises to bring, "the best tacos and craft beer," according to their Facebook page. Formally a Taco Bell, the newly designed location will give a real Southwestern feel, with blackened steel and blacked leather upholstery, according to LA Eater. Trejo took to his Twitter to announce the...

By now, everybody knows we are in the midst of an epidemic of overweight and obesity in Canada and around the world. There is a horrifying series of maps showing the rate of obesity spreading like a red stain across Canada over the past 30 years. In its latest fact sheet, the World Health Organization reports that “worldwide obesity has nearly doubled since 1980” and that “35 per cent of adults aged 20 and over were overweight in 2008, and 11 per cent were obese.” In Canada, it is much the same. The Public Health Agency of Canada reported in...

Heinz is buying Kraft Foods to create the world's fifth largest food and beverage company, with sales of about $28 billion. Kraft shares surged more than 33% Wednesday. Kraft owns popular brands such as Jell-O, Maxwell House coffee and Planters peanuts. Heinz, of course, is famous for its ketchup, and also owns Lea & Perrins and Ore-Ida.

Jamie is believed to have left school at the age of 16 as an undiagnosed dyslexic with just two GCSEs before finding fame after an impromptu appearance in a 1997 BBC documentary about London's The River Café, where he was working at the time. With his fortune estimated at a staggering $450 million, he is one of the richest celebrity chefs in the world. And on Thursday morning Jamie Oliver lamented on his rags to riches story as he spoke about how he feels that the public is his boss on Australian breakfast show, Sunrise. Still very aware of his...

A jury today found a Michigan woman guilty of firing a shot into a McDonald’s drive-thru window after employees failed to put bacon on a cheeseburger she ordered.

This week's thread is dessert - starting with: Carrot Cake! I first tasted Carrot Cake in the 1970's. I'm sure it was a standard recipe before then, but it seemed to gain a great popularity in the 'hip' 70's. This recipe, which comes from an old friend's mother ca. 1975, is still the very best I've ever eaten, and is very easy to make. Again: Grate The Carrots By Hand, on a box grater! Doing it in a food processor will probably release too much liquid, and the cake won't be the same. The only difficulty you may have is...

A Chinese restaurant in the Kenyan capital Nairobi has been shut down and its owners summoned by authorities after it emerged it was barring black patrons, reports said Wednesday. The restaurant became the focus of city authorities after furious residents took to social media to denounce an apparently racist policy of not allowing African patrons to eat there after 5pm -- pushing #RacistRestaurant, #NoBlacksHere and #TheChineseInvasion to be top trending topics.

Millbrae's Wonderful Chinese Restaurant has video footage that disputes one Yelper's written complaint. According to Eater SF, a Yelp member from San Bruno named Dan W. wrote that Wonderful would not seat him and awarded the restaurant one star. The review, since removed, reportedly said, "It's not that classy of a place, but they wouldn't seat me." The restaurant posted a video called "Lying Yelp Reviewer Caught by Wonderful Chinese Restaurant" to YouTube Monday showing the man entering the front door, lingering for just over 30 seconds, talking to no one, and leaving. Wonderful also posted a response to Dan...

Another day, another mega-M&A deal taking advantage of abnormally low bond rates, this time however not involving biotechs or a specialty pharma seeking to purchase a debt-free balance sheet, but one involving the Oracle of Omaha himself, and his Heinz investment, which will merge with Kraft Foods whose market cap was over $40 billion this morning on the news of the merger, and create the third largest food and beverage company in the US, and 5th largest in  the world. And while the resulting company will certainly be an unprecedented food giant, one which leaves the US food industry even...

A new report says that the federal government plans to keep track of how healthy children are by weighing and measuring them in daycare. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will weigh and check the height of roughly 3,000 children as part of a study mandated by First Lady Michelle Obama’s Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. According to a report by Free Beacon, the USDA published “a notice in the Federal Register on Friday proposing data collection on what meals are served in professional and home daycare facilities and how much physical activity children perform.” …

MANY people have been making the case that Americans have grown fat because they eat too much starch and sugar, and not enough meat, fat and eggs. Recently, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee lifted recommendations that consumption of dietary cholesterol should be restricted, citing research that dietary cholesterol does not have a major effect on blood cholesterol levels. The predictable headlines followed: “Back to Eggs and Bacon?” But, alas, bacon and egg yolks are not health foods. Although people have been told for decades to eat less meat and fat, Americans actually consumed 67 percent more added fat, 39 percent...

As Americans have become more aware over the years of nutrition-related health issues, salt has emerged as a major villain in many people’s minds. So much so that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes reducing the U.S. population’s consumption of sodium as “a national priority.” The CDC warns that too much salt can raise people’s blood pressure, putting them at greater risk for heart disease and stroke, among other evils. But some skeptics believe the threat posed by salt is overblown. Indeed, some say too broad a drive against salt poses its own health risks. Arguing in favor...

Artificial sweeteners are typically used by people who want to enjoy the sweetness of sugar without the calories that come with it. However, new research suggests that a popular sugar substitute could be used to fight cancer as well as expanding waistlines.

San Francisco is not a kid-friendly city, as evidenced by the lack of kids living in this city. But that's not to say we don't have a practical need for our very own baby stroller. The average San Franciscan would happily admit that beer is their baby — and day drinking at Dolores Park is the perfect "family outing." Sure this person might be considered drunk, or lazy, or drunk and lazy, but to be fair, a 12-pack of bottled beer is heavier than a small child.

...Although bread is one of the easiest, most reliable items for which to dumpster dive — it’s thrown away all the time, it’s dry, non-perishable, and relatively non-pathogenic — I also scavenge produce, chocolate, and flowers from the garbage. Sometimes it can be pretty icky; various slimes attend the decay of vegetables and fruit, and dumpsters are occasionally coated in unidentifiable goo.... Although I’m not by any means rich (after earning an expensive college degree, I am, like many of my generation, right back to where I started: in the service industry... But, you might protest, (as have many of...

Great surprise and saddened shock rocked San Diego’s Ocean Beach on the afternoon of Thursday Feb. 5. Beloved owner of Hodad’s and the man credited with “best burger in America,” Mike Hardin, died of a heart attack in a hotel in Chowchilla, Calif. He was making a trip to visit his daughter in Oregon. Hardin took over the family business in 1967 from his parents. After a while, he moved it to it’s current location on Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach. Hardin influenced many lives, he took the time and went out of his way to help community members solve...

It's time for you FReepers to get the real deal. Here is a recipe that will always be a winner.

San Francisco is always known as being one of the leaders in culinary trends in this country. One that has recently popped up is savory cocktails with a rather unique twist – they have some variation of meat in them. “Cocktail culture has never seen more creativity than right now. No ingredients are off the table as long as they bring flavor and balance to a drink,” said Jon Gasparini, who along with Greg Lindgren, of Rye on the Road, has designed the new cocktail menu at Belcampo Meat Co. in San Francisco. In that vein, Gasparini and Lindgren have...