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Oh, thank heaven for drones. 7-Eleven, one of the world's largest chains of convenience stores, has completed 77 delivers via drone to customers in Reno, Nevada. The deliveries were made in collaboration with Flirtey, a commercial drone startup that began working with the retail chain over the summer. In November, Flirty made regular deliveries from a 7-Eleven store in Reno to a dozen select customers who used a custom app to place orders, the company said in a release Tuesday. Popular items for drone delivery included hot foods, cold beverages and over-the-counter medicines, said the company. On average, orders were...

A 43-year-old Tamarac mother is charged with beating her 7-year-old son with an aluminum baseball bat because he ate cake frosting without permission. The Broward Sheriffs Office says the child has severe injuries to his buttocks. The mother, Tricia Banner, was ordered by a judge in bond court to not go within 500 feet of her son and have no contact with him whatsoever, and that includes through e-mail or social media. She was held on $5,000 bond and broke down in court during questioning. The judge found probable cause for the charges against her. When she was asked if...

CHICAGO -- A suburban Chicago man is suing McDonald's restaurants in two Illinois counties, arguing cheeseburger "Extra Value Meals" are actually more expensive than when the items are purchased separately. James Gertie, of Des Plaines, tells The Daily Herald that bundling two cheeseburgers, medium french fries and a drink at $5.90 is 41 cents more than when individual items are purchased.

Michelle Obama will be ceding the title of first lady to Melania Trump next month, but she may hold for some time the other distinction she earned during her time in the White House: America's best known advocate for healthy food. The non-profit organization she helped create as first lady, Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), where she is honorary chair, will continue its work convincing food companies to improve nutrition content and labeling of products, the group said. "Michelle Obama has been a tremendous leader in this space," said Larry Soler, president and chief executive of the group. "That...

“Alligator Pears” Are China’s Newest Superfruit

Avocados have never been more prolific: on toast, with eggs, in sandwiches, on salads, and, of course, guacamole. In the past few years the avocado has been crowned the king of fruit. In addition to our ruinous ecological impact overall, it seems we’re also wasting a large portion of the fruit (26% according to studies): the skin and the pit. The pit of the avocado doesn’t provide any nutrition, but scientists have discovered that it could be the perfect fuel. The Universities of Córdoba and Almería recently conducted a study on the pit, which has historically been difficult to recycle....

•CBRL reported a decent Q1. •Comps were positive but only because of strong pricing; traffic and the retail stores were weak. •Margin growth continued but at nearly 21 times this year's earnings, the stock is way too expensive. Cracker Barrel (NASDAQ:CBRL) has long been an example for others in the restaurant sector. The company has bucked weak trends in casual dining and its retail stores have helped shoulder the burden as well. CBRL's unique model has worked extremely well over the past few years and it pays a sizable dividend to boot. After a nice Q1 report, the stock is...

The food supply has already shown itself to be alarmingly adept at vectoring superbugs into the human body, but a new report suggests maybe China really wants to see if it can push this to the next level. While the rest of the world finally understands antibiotics in meat are causing an epidemic of multidrug-resistant bacteria, China’s aquaculture industry apparently remains a place that, to quote Bloomberg’s story, “exposes the fish to almost the same doses of medicine the livestock get,” plus whatever drug cocktail gets tossed into the water to fight aquatic disease. This industry currently accounts for about...

Last year I was visiting a rural hospital in Chhattisgarh, one of the poorest and hungriest states in India. The patients waiting in the corridors were thin and bony, with dangerously low blood counts and anemia. So I was shocked when I watched the doctors at Jan Swasthya Sahyog clinic treat patient after patient for diabetes and heart disease. The public perception of type II diabetes is that it’s a disease of excess—the result of too much sugar in our diets and a sedentary lifestyle. But a documentary by executive producer Elliot Kirschner, director Adam Bolt, producer Jessica Harrop, and...

Panettone is an Italian cake filled with raisins and sultanas, and is a typical Christmas treat. But the seemingly harmless dessert has led to backlash after some vegan activists claimed a famous cake-maker was mocking the plant-based diet. It’s all because of a TV advert created by Motta, a company which has been churning out panettone since 1919 and intended to celebrate Christmas culinary traditions in its festive ad campaign. The 30-second clip shows the preparation of the typical cake, and as eggs are cracked and dough kneaded, the voiceover says:“To make our panettone, we could have used tofu, papaya,...

NEW YORK (FOX5NY) - Imagine going out to eat and never interacting with a server or cashier. You can do that at a new restaurant in New York City. Eatsa is an automated restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. It opened as an East Coast anchor for a small chain that started in California. There are no cashiers and you order on an iPad or your phone. The meal appears in a little locker. Customers tap to open the door for their meal. You'd better love quinoa. The food is all vegetarian. Bowls cost about $7. The restaurant opened this week at...

A fun thing to do for the Holidays, especially with kids, is to make paper snowflakes. I once decorated the picture windows in my office building with these, and everybody wanted to know how to make them – I guess they hadn't learned this important skill in school ;-) Searching around the web, you can find many patterns; but I like doing them free-hand, and being surprised by what comes out. Here is a ‘refresher course in paper snowflakes’, but there are many other instruction pages on the Web. Once you've got the folding of the paper down, it's all...

The following are my preliminary thoughts on import duties and reindustrialization: I believe we should abandon (officially denounce) trade treaties and go to a generally duty/barter-based system which would be updated from time to time by the Congress. Congress should try to steer global trade into a generally financially balanced system with some exemptions for consumer friendly producers. My proposal allows low-income countries to earn US dollars to pay for American drugs and other necessities. In brief: 1. financially balanced trade in motor vehicles and their parts, with cheap electric car exemptions until January 2024 2. US-only for building supplies,...

I'm almost retired!

Do a few evening beers make your mornings un-beer-able? Does a vodka martini make your brain feel shaken, or stirred? Has a Dark ‘N’ Stormy been clouding your thoughts? For most people, the occasional night out is not a big deal — but when a hangover becomes a regular part of your weekend routine it’s a sign something might not be right. It’s an alarming statistic that one in five Australian adults regularly drink harmful amounts of alcohol. This chronic alcohol use can cause liver failure, stomach ulcers, bleeding problems, damaged nerves, injured brain cells and an increased risk of...

My dad used to be a chef and had his own vegan restaurant in Breda (a city in the Netherlands). Back then, a girl named Babbe Hengeveld used to work in the kitchen. That girl is now a young woman and a progressive chef in her own restaurant called Food Guerilla. I went to see her with my father in the Stek area in Breda—a creative breeding ground for conscious citizens and radical ex-hippie squatters—to eat a “My Little Pony burger.” That’s a burger made from aging ponies from amusement park Slagharen. Although this dish might make the hair on...

A “Marxist” “collectivist” “worker-run” restaurant in Grand Rapids, Michigan, closed its doors this week after customers complained that they could no longer tolerate the bizarre hours, high prices and long lines.

A Milwaukee brewing company asked customers to help name its next craft brew — and then it all went horribly wrong. MobCraft Beer, which regularly asks customers to name their new concoctions, crowd-sourced for suggestions for an upcoming brew that includes grapes and dates. “Date Grape” made the top eight before the company realized that having fun with the name of a type of sexual assault wasn’t a good idea.

What was supposed to be a happy visit with Santa left a bad taste in the mouth of a 9-year-old boy in North Carolina. That’s because the jolly old fat man reportedly shamed the child by telling him to “lay off the hamburgers and french fries,” local station WLOS TV reports. On Saturday, Anthony Mayse of Rutherfordton went to a Christmas event in nearby Forest City. The family enjoyed a carriage ride and ice skating before ending the night with a visit to Santa.