Other happenings

The US Food Safety blog has a list of brand-name product recalls related to possible Salmonella contamination. Click here for that complete list, which will continue to be updated as new recalls are announced. These products include — but are not limited to — cookies, pastry, sandwich crackers, candy, ice cream or any product containing peanut butter or peanut paste (a blend made from ground roasted peanuts). Supermarket jars of peanut butter have not been found to be contaminated.

To be prudent, avoid eating commercially prepared cakes, cookies, crackers, candies, cereal and ice cream that contain peanut butter, peanut paste or ground peanuts. While these snack products are potentially contaminated, supermarket peanut butter is not. Meaning it is still considered safe to serve your kids a PB&J sandwich. The Food and Drug Administration urges consumers to "postpone" eating peanut butter-containing products and institutionally-served peanut butter until further information becomes available about which products may be affected with the strain of salmonella typhimurium which has sickened 474 people nationwide and is implicated in six deaths. The peanut butter under investigation is potentially in snack products, not supermarket peanut butter. It [...]

Kellogg voluntarily recalled 16 products that contain peanut butter that could be connected to the recent salmonella outbreak. Those products include Keebler cheese and peanut butter sandwich crackers and Keebler and Famous Amos peanut butter cookies. The government is expanding their investigation into other peanut products possibly contaminated with salmonella.  The toll from the recent salmonella outbreak has climbed to 452 people sickened in 43 states, with six possible deaths. For additional information see the full stories on CNN.com, Forbes.com or the Associated Press.

Each year Carolyn Wyman and I — as the authors of our syndicated column Supermarket Sampler — present our prestigious "Golden Shopping Cart" award to honor the best new food product of the year. In our newspaper and online column, we review literally hundreds of new supermarket products each year. For those who aren't familiar with Supermarket Sampler: it's a weekly syndicated column (now in its 23 year) written in two voices—mine, the registered dietitian, and Carolyn Wyman’s, a professed junk foodie, who touts the merits of Spam and other processed foods. From the products we sample all year long, Carolyn and I select one that we deem tasty, healthy [...]