Andrew Simmons

Late last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that some Girl Scout councils are tightening their sashes this cookie season -- by bailing on a few peripheral varieties and cutting back on excessive packaging. Cookies sales garner the Girl Scouts of America a staggering $714 million annually, accounting for a......

From offal to potted preparations to in-house butchering to fabricated cuts, meat has been at the forefront of many recent food world trends. Anyone who has spent a few hours grazing at one of L.A.'s popular gastropubs can attest to this. In our case, the breaking point coincided with a......

The local food movement hasn't broken into the corporate world like a wall-crashing Tasmanian Devil just because supporting local producers is the right thing to do. There's demand for it, and companies stand to make serious scratch. A few weeks ago, sustainable food service provider Bon Appetit Management Company--the instigator......

The irony of cubicle-bound office drones obsessing over their pixelated Farmville plots always seemed sweet to us. For the uninitiated, the Farmville game lets Facebook users preside over a virtual farm. However, over at The Atlantic, David Thier casts game designer Zynga's sensation in a harsh light: "n June 2009........

Wal-Mart has long been one of American citizens' most reliable suppliers of unhealthy packaged foods. Today, as The New York Times reports, the company has proclaimed its intention to, over the next five years, reduce the levels of sodium, fat, and sugar in thousands of its products. And, interestingly, to......

Last Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported on what it may have perceived to be a case of irony: In Japan, where citizens traditionally eat a healthier diet, live longer, and weigh less than their American counterparts, McDonald's has launched Big America 2, a marketing campaign featuring four brawny, drippy......

One of the perks of writing about food is that you get your mitts on review copies of cookbooks (as well as food-focused cultural anthropology texts and so forth). More often than not, publishers are delighted to send along a book you plan on reading and reviewing. Sometimes, however, one......

It's 2011, and backyard chickens and plots of mustard greens and kale hemmed in by concrete are still as hip as limited edition Japanese high tops. From L.A. to New York, the farmers' market remains the new record store; the city garden is still the new band practice. Last week......