Eliza Barclay

Remember Pie Week? That series of stories, produced with our friends over at Morning Edition in July 2012, was a hit here on The Salt.

Well, thanks to the wonders of Internet search, we have an excuse to revive Pie Week and celebrate the creativity it inspired once again.

Recall, if you will, some of the biggest foodborne illness outbreaks of the past decade. There was the nasty outbreak of listeria from cantaloupe in 2011 that killed 33 people. And the ugly Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak from Foster Farms chicken, which has sickened 481 people in multiple ...

Here at The Salt, we get a lot of emails from public relations firms hawking newfangled food products and services. Sometimes it's difficult to discern whether they're for real.

So when we got an email from the San Francisco Cooking School on Tuesday shilling a one-day class on How ...

It's a pretty bold move to blast Girl Scout cookies, those precious sugary treats whose limited run from late winter to early spring is just about over for the year.

But a few brave voices argue it's no longer all that delightful to see little girls peddling packaged cookies, or ...

Last week we reported on a new campaign from the Center for Biological Diversity that hopes to persuade Americans to cut back on their meat consumption. Their pitch? Eat less meat and you will help save wildlife.

Take Extinction Off Your Plate argues that the livestock industry has ...

Leave it to the folks at Reddit to uncover the hidden treasures of the Internet. Recently, they were gabbing about Google's nutrition comparison tool, which was quietly launched at the end of 2013 and escaped us here at The Salt.

Using this clever little tool is as simple ...

Many animal lovers have made peace with their decision to eat meat.

But the Center for Biological Diversity has a new campaign that hopes to convince them that a hamburger habit does wildlife a disservice.

"We need to see a drastic reduction in meat consumption to protect land, water ...

One of the great joys of camping out in a national park is chowing down by the fire. But campers aren't the only ones drawn to burgers and s'mores roasting over an open flame, beneath a mass of twinkling stars.

Those rich aromas can also prove irresistible to the local ...

Earlier this month, reporters at Bloomberg and the Financial Times suggested that we might be nearing "peak salmon" — a play on peak oil, in which we theoretically reach maximum production, and the only direction left to go is down.

Their logic? The price for a kilogram (2.2 ...

The sheer volume of food wasted in the U.S. each year should cause us some shame, given how many people are hungry both in our own backyard and abroad.

Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided us with a way to understand our flagrant annual waste in terms of ...

We Americans are heavy consumers of meat, and we're increasingly reminded that eating less of it will shrink our carbon footprint. Growing the crops to feed all those animals releases lots of greenhouse gases.

But a new study argues that eating less meat isn't a very practical climate-protection recipe ...

Animal welfare groups go to great lengths to show us how "the sausage" is made inside the factory-style farms that produce most of our meat. For the past few years, they've armed activists with video cameras and sent them undercover to document alleged abuses or risky practices.

On Thursday, the ...

When we imagine Olympic athletes at the table before the most important competition of their lives, we might picture a huge plate of pasta, with Gatorade to wash it down and a well-deserved ice cream sundae for dessert.

Turns out, they might be preparing with a salad, a glass of ...

Generations of little girls have watched the ebullient Shirley Temple light up Depression-era black and white films, her glossy curls bouncing and her voice chirping. Generations, too, developed a taste for the Shirley Temple drink — traditionally, ginger ale with a dash of grenadine, maraschino cherry and lemon for garnish.

Remember those ballot initiatives in California and Washington that aimed to get food companies to label products containing genetically modified ingredients?

They failed, in 2012 and 2013, respectively, thanks in part to the tens of millions of dollars lavished by the Grocery Manufacturers Association and other food industry ...

California's drought is getting very serious — so serious that even those water refills you didn't ask for at restaurants are now under scrutiny.

"We have not had this dry a time period in all of California's history since we've been keeping records — that's how bad it is," Rep. ...

Scrounging to feed yourself and your family can be brutal. But add the bone-chilling cold to it and it's a whole other level of misery.

Unfortunately, many American families are suffering from the double whammy this week as a deep freeze descends on most of the nation.

Anti-hunger organizations ...

If you've ever shopped at Whole Foods, you've probably noticed that some of the foods it sells claim all kinds of health and environmental virtues. From its lengthy list of unacceptable ingredients for food to its strict rules for how seafood is caught and meat is raised, the company ...

Last week, I reported that scientists are working their way toward a consensus that sugar is addictive. While some researchers are still hesitant to liken sweet stuff to drugs or alcohol, the evidence is accumulating to explain why some of us really struggle to resist or moderate our sugar ...

Last week, we reported on the correctional industry's enduring practice of punishing certain inmates with a bland, lumpish food known as "the loaf."

Fortunately, there are also more encouraging stories to tell about prison food.

It turns out there's a pretty vibrant movement of prison vegetable gardens across the ...