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Birdseye's original multiplate freezing machine froze food fast — the secret to maintaining fresh flavor

USPTO

Birdseye's original multiplate freezing machine froze food fast — the secret to maintaining fresh flavor

There's a particular pleasure in being reminded that the most ordinary things can still be full of magic. Frogs may turn into princes. Lumps of dirt can hide sparkling gems. And having just read Mark Kurlansky's new biography of Clarence Birdseye, I now see the humble fish fillet in a whole new light.

For as Kurlansky tells it, when Clarence Birdseye figured out how to pack and freeze haddock, using what he called "a marvelous new process which seals in every bit of just-from-the-ocean flavor," he essentially changed the way we produce, preserve and distribute food forever.

Today, tiger shrimp from Thailand, Japanese edamame and blueberry cheesecake outshine the plain white fillets in the freezer case, but those packs of haddock launched the freezer revolution: They embody the magic combination of size, shape, and packaging.

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May is the month we see strawberries explode in the market. There are strawberry festivals in every corner of the nation celebrating the juicy ruby beauties, and Strawberry Queens crowned galore. Those traditional harvest time festivals make us think our strawberries are mostly grown on the farm just down the road.

But in fact, one state — California — supplies 80 percent of America's strawberries, and the percentage is growing.

The reason? California's fields are stunningly productive. They yield ten times more strawberries, per acre, than strawberry farms in Michigan; twenty times more than farms in the state of New York. And there's a complex web of reasons why.

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Dried beans and legumes are healthy and cheap.

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Dried beans and legumes are healthy and cheap.

If you're already a kale and lentils kind of person (we know there are a lot of frugal foodies out there) — you won't be surprised by this finding: According to a new study from some economists at the USDA, eating a healthy diet isn't necessarily more expensive than a diet loaded with sugar and fat. In fact, fruits and vegetables are often cheaper when you calculate the cost in a smarter way.

Cost is often cited as a barrier to eating well. But USDA's Andrea Carlson and her colleagues analyzed the cost of more than 4,000 foods using three different measures: Price per calorie (or food energy), price by weight, and price per average amount consumed.

By using this last measure — which is a good proxy of what actually makes it onto our plate — the news is good.

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Ethan Brown, founder of Beyond Meat, holds a chicken raised on his family's farm. He says childhood experience with farm animals was the inspiration for starting his company.

Yuki Noguchi/NPR

Ethan Brown, founder of Beyond Meat, holds a chicken raised on his family's farm. He says childhood experience with farm animals was the inspiration for starting his company.

Beyond Meat, a new company based in Maryland, has come up with an alternative to chicken meat that it claims is a dead ringer for the real thing. And unlike other meat alternatives on the market, this one aims to be cheap as well as tasty.

The inspiration for Beyond Meat (formerly known as Savage River Farms) started, oddly enough, in "chicken country." Founder Ethan Brown grew up spending weekends on his family's farm in Grantsville, Md., near the Pennsylvania border.

Growing up around farm animals, Brown says, he became increasingly concerned about their welfare. He eventually became a vegan but was frustrated by the "fake meat" options available, so he started his own company.

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Bring on the caffeine — maybe.

antwerpenR/Flickr.com

Bring on the caffeine — maybe.

It seems like every day there's some new research about whether our favorite drinks are good for us. One day, science says a glass of red wine a day will help us live longer. The next day, maybe not. It seems journalists are pretty interested in wine research, as Deborah Blum over at the Knight Science Foundation recently pointed out, and the same might be said for coffee.

In fact, the latest installment in the long saga of coffee just came out, and of course, we're on it. It's a big new study that found that people who drink java appear to be less likely to die prematurely than those who don't.

Now, there's been a lot of research into whether coffee's good for our health. "The results have really been mixed," acknowledges Neal Freedman of the National Cancer Institute, who led the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine today. "There's been some evidence that coffee might increase the risk of certain diseases and there's also been maybe more recent evidence that coffee may protect against other diseases as well."