Whole Foods Market
This is the web version of a list we publish twice-weekly in our newsletter. It comprises the most noteworthy food stories of the moment, selected by our editors. Get it first here.
Nothing cheap can stay. Price increases are coming to a Whole Foods near you, according to a Wall Street Journal review of internal emails. Consumer products—550 of them in total—from nut milks to soaps, are getting a price hike to account for what producers say are rising labor, packaging, and materials costs. Customers might not be pleased with the price increases. Will they help boost sales of Whole Foods’ private label products? Perhaps that’s exactly the point.
Brucellosis blues. One person in New York state has contracted an antibiotic-resistant strain of Brucellosis, an infectious disease caused by bacteria, after drinking raw (unpasteurized) milk. The product in question came from Miller’s Biodiversity Farm, a Pennsylvania company that markets itself as a “private food club,” Food Safety News reports. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that people in 19 states may have been exposed from drinking milk from Miller’s, even though raw milk sales across state lines are technically illegal. We covered the last known case of Brucellosis in a human here.
Not saved by the bell. At Susan E. Wagner High School on Staten Island in New York, students eat lunch as early at 8:58 a.m. That’s earlier than some of us even get up in the morning. In the five boroughs of New York City, preposterously early lunch times are prevalent because many high schools have to share a single building with just one cafeteria, City Limits reports. The issue, however, is more prevalent in areas that serve black and brown students, City Limits found. And it comes with adverse consequences, too, including hungrier kids and more food waste.
One order of IPO. Food-delivery app Postmates has filed to go public later this year, Bloomberg reports. Founded in 2011, Postmates was one of the early food-delivery startups. Not that it ever limited itself to food. Users can employ the app to buy groceries, sex toys, medicine, and even American Apparel (until it went under). The future will be delivered by a contracted courier.
Insectageddon, again. Pesticides are causing a mass insect extinction, according to a new analysis that found more than 40 percent of the world’s insect species are on the decline. That development spells an impending collapse of the global food system, The Guardian reports. Or does it? An entomologist says the threat is real, but points out the data behind most doom-and-gloom scenarios are collected “piecemeal, without a coherent standard design.”