Renaming vegetables for your kids and other top headlines

Why didn't we think of this before? Cauliflower by any other name may be better liked by your kids, says this story from Inventorsspot.com. From the story:

In a recent study, 186 four-year-olds were given carrots in their lunch on some days. For the other days, they were given the same carrots, but they were renamed to X-ray Vision Carrots. On the days of the renamed carrots, the children ate twice as more of them.

Also observed afterwards was that the kids continued to eat 50 percent more carrots, even when they didn't have a cool name.

Other headlines tonight....

Tesco's market share falls to three year low Bloomberg

Cheshunt, England-based Tesco last month cut prices for a second time this year as it battles to prevent more shoppers from defecting to discount retailers, such as Germany's Aldi and Lidl. The chain this month also increased its range of low-price branded products as shoppers curb spending during the recession.

Senators see better way to curb subsidies Reuters

It's organic Does that mean it is safer? NYT

The national outbreak of salmonella in products with peanuts has been particularly unsettling for shoppers like her who think organic food is safer.The plants in Texas and Georgia that were sending out contaminated peanut butter and ground peanut products had something else besides rodent infestation, mold and bird droppings. They also had federal organic certification.

Stretch your grocery dollar and eat healthy too Examiner Good advice from yet another story about food and budgets

Soda, energy drinks and potato chips are extras that can blow your budget and your healthy diet. As much as possible, stick to whole food purchases like fruits and vegetables and choose good old-fashioned tap water – it's good for you and it's free.


Food safety remains focus for California growers Coverage from The Packer

Produce companies in California are embarking on a three-year plan to bolster traceability of their products throughout the supply chain.Companies are working on the Produce Marketing Association's Produce Traceability Initiative, a plan that calls for uniform protocols between growers, shippers, distributors and retailers to trace where leafy greens and other items originate.


Watermelon group to publish guidelines in Spanish Coverage from The Packer

Credit card companies cut credit limits, lower scores Bloomberg
About 45 percent of U.S. banks reduced credit limits for new or existing credit-card customers in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to a Federal Reserve January survey of senior loan officers. Financial institutions may slash $2 trillion in credit- card lines in the next 18 months, Meredith Whitney, a former Oppenheimer & Co. analyst, wrote in a Nov. 30 report.

Orlando Sentinel: Congress should approve Obama's plan to reduce farm subsidies
Members of Congress from other states — including Florida, whose fruit and vegetable growers get only a pittance under federal farm programs — should be eager to back the president

Trucking schools fill up as demand for drivers declines Newschannel 3
As unemployment lines continue to grow more people are going back to school to learn a new skill.A local truck driving school saw more people enroll in three months than all of last year. But the trucking industry is not doing much better than other industries right now. Almost 25,000 truckers lost their jobs in January and the economy drove 70,000 others off the road in 2008.

 

Cross border trucking may be run off the road by Democrats Washington Post

The Senate is close to passing a catch-all spending bill that would seal the U.S. border to Mexican long-haul trucks, ending a 15-year project whose goal was to let U.S. and Mexican trucks carry products from Albany to Acapulco.Barring a last-minute reprieve, the cross-border trucking project will be killed by a provision entombed in the $410 billion legislation that the Senate began debating yesterday. The project, inspired by the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, was intended to ease the flow of the $230 billion in U.S.-Mexico trade carried by trucks, while deepening the relationship between the two neighbors.

Limp February retail sales expected Reuters

For February, analysts expect retailers to post a decline of1.3 percent in same-store sales, according to Thomson Reuters Excluding Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, same-storesales are expected to be down 5.1 percent.