Eliza Barclay

We've survived the stretch between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, when rich, sweet treats come at us non-stop. Now is the season of reform, when gym memberships, cleanse books and weight-loss plans sell like gangbusters.

The cycle has become so predictable, and disheartening, as our collective motivation to change ...

Smithfield, the world's largest hog and pork buyer, announced Tuesday that it's asking the independent farmers with whom it has contracts to get rid of stalls for pregnant sows to improve the animals' living conditions.

To nudge these farmers to make the changes to their facilities by 2022, Smithfield is ...

We look back at the most popular posts on The Salt in 2013. From tips on handling raw chicken to Japanese latte art, the stories spanned the spectrum of the food world.

Google Trends has released its annual Zeitgeist list so that we can mull over the burning questions of the day.

And this year, the most googled diet was the paleo diet. Some have suggested that paleo's Google search triumph means that this is the "year of ...

The past year was a busy one for the animal welfare activists who've turned their hidden cameras on confinement facilities where huge numbers of food animals are raised.

Livestock producers — and the policymakers they influence — were just as busy trying to make it illegal for activists to enter ...

In the U.S., Big Pizza is locked in a battle that's as much a testament to gluttony as it is to food science: How much cheese can you possibly stuff inside of wheat dough?

Earlier this year, Pizza Hut took it to the next level with the Crazy Cheesy ...

To feed all 7 billion of us, address climate change and live longer, we all need to eat less meat. From Al Gore to the Meatless Monday movement to Harvard epidemiologists, that's been the resounding advice offered to consumers lately.

But hold up a minute, says Mario ...

We've long known that the fish we eat are exposed to toxic chemicals in the rivers, bays and oceans they inhabit. The substance that's gotten the most attention — because it has shown up at disturbingly high levels in some fish — is mercury.

But mercury is just one ...

If you tuned in to Wednesday's Morning Edition, you may have heard NPR host/special correspondent Michele Norris' conversation with Melanie Vanderlipe Ramil of Sacramento, Calif., in the latest story from The Race Card Project.

Ramil told Norris about how as a middle-schooler, she preferred Pasta Roni to her ...

A story we ran earlier this week about God and beer by NPR's John Burnett got an overwhelming response on social media. In case you missed it, it was called "To Stave Off Decline, Churches Attract New Members With Beer." You can listen and read it here. (It was ...

Back in April, we described Rob Rhinehart's experiment concocting something that could give him all the nutrition and none of the hassle of food.

Rhinehart, you see, is a 25-year-old electrical engineer in San Francisco who'd grown exceedingly frustrated with the time and effort of purchasing, preparing and consuming ...

Five years ago, a landmark report excoriated the animal agriculture industry's practices and laid out a road map for how it could do better. But in the years since, the problems are just as bad — and maybe even worse.

That's the conclusion of the Johns Hopkins Center for ...

America's relationship with meat is an indulgent one. At 270 pounds of meat per person per year, Americans consume more than almost anyone else in the world. (Mostly, we have our livestock producers' successes to thank for making meat cheap and abundant for us.)

But as we've often reported ...

The region has an alarmingly high incidence of rotted teeth, and heavy soda consumption is a big reason why, dentists and health advocates say. So they're beginning to target the food...

Chipotle is betting that it can sell even more burritos by lambasting Big Food companies that drug animals in the name of profit. That's the message of a new short film and game the c...

It's one of the great paradoxes of our time: Hundreds of millions of people go hungry, and yet we waste a whopping 1.43 billion tons of food — one third of what we produce. Food waste is a problem in rich countries and poor countries alike, and it's happening throughout ...

Should you want to super-size your meal (and boost your social status in the process), plenty of American restaurant chains would be more than happy to have you dine with them. Olive Garden, for one, is currently in the middle of a "Never Ending Pasta Bowl" promotion. According to ...

We've grown accustomed to choosing our food from a spectacular rainbow — care for an impossibly pink cupcake, a cerulean blue sports drink or yogurt in preppy lavender?

But there's a growing backlash against the synthetic dyes that give us these eye-popping hues. And now scientists are turning to the ...

The world of dieting is awash in half-truths and wishful thinking. Just have a look at some of these fad diets to be reminded of how much we are willing to stretch reason in pursuit of weight loss.

David Allison, a researcher and director of the Nutrition Obesity ...

Ask about the foods that have conquered the world and you're likely to hear about Coca-Cola and McDonald's Big Macs.

But the most successful industrial food ever produced flies far under the radar. And it has finally been outed by three anthropologists in a fascinating new book The Noodle ...