MNN - Mother Nature Network

It’s Friday afternoon, and that means it’s time for me to give you a little weekend reading from around the web. Here are a few food related items that I thought might interest you.

Consumers are now taking into consideration what their beverages are packaged in when they chose a drink, not just what’s inside the package.

 

Recyclable and recycled content are the most important environmental attributes consumers look for in beverage packaging, and many have changed what types of packaging they buy based on environmental impacts, says a new survey.

In a bold and expensive branding move, Kellogg’s has leased 3000 square feet of  prime real estate in New York’s Times Square to set up a Pop Tarts store.  From the company press release:

 

Customers will be able to eat Pop-Tarts “sushi,” order a customized pastry or create a custom box filled with a mix of their favorite flavors. They can suggest new types of Pop-Tarts, select a Pop-Tarts T-shirt made by specialty artists or get “frosted” and “wrapped in foil” by a light show.

The farm stand is becoming the new apothecary, dispensing apples — not to mention artichokes, asparagus and arugula — to fill a novel kind of prescription.

 

Doctors at three health centers in Massachusetts have begun advising patients to eat “prescription produce” from local farmers’ markets, in an effort to fight obesity in children of low-income families. Now they will give coupons amounting to $1 a day for each member of a patient’s family to promote healthy meals.