Burger King Releases New Meat Scented Cologne

This holiday season Burger King has released a men's body spray called Flame. It is meat scented and is being promoted as "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat." It is being sold online and in some stores in the United States at the price of $3.99. It even has its own website at firemeetsdesire.com.

Busboy Sues Justin Timberlake

A busboy in New York is suing the singer Justin Timberlake claiming that Timberlake's restaurant, named Timberlake's Southern Comfort, didn't pay him a legal wage. The busboy states that he and the other staff didn't get the right amount of gratuity charge that the restaurant automatically collects from parties of six or more customers. He also states that he worked more than 40 hours per work without getting paid overtime. A manager at the restaurant says that the staff members received all of their tips and the busboys were paid more than minimum wage.

California Bans Restaurants From Using Trans Fats

On Friday, California became the first state to ban the use of trans fats in restaurants . Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a legislation that will ban restaurants and other retail food establishments from using oil, margarine, and shortening that contains trans fats.
This legislation would start to take effect on January 1, 2010. Restaurants that violate the ban could face fines between $25 and $1,000 and the only exception would be food that is sold in manufactures' sealed packaging. Both California and Oregon already have laws that ban trans fat from being served in schools.

Trans fats are naturally in meat and dairy products in small amounts. Most trans fats are made when vegetable oil is treated with hydrogen to make baked and fried foods have a longer shelf life. Trans fats are considered bad because they are supposedly linked to coronary heart disease.

Rapper 50 Cent Sues Taco Bell

The rapper 50 Cent is suing Taco Bell because he says that the restaurant has used his name without his permission in their advertising that asks him to call himself 99 Cent. In a federal lawsuit, he also claimed that the Taco Bell print ad features him asking to change his name to 79 Cent, 89 Cent, or 99 Cent. The ad is part of a Taco Bell "Why Pay More?" campaign that promotes items that cost less than a dollar.

The company supposedly sent a bogus letter that requested the name change to the news media but not to 50 Cent. He didn't find out about the letter or that he was featured in the ad campaigns until he saw a news report about it. He wants $4 million in damages.

Restaurant Smoking Bans Decrease Teen Smoking

A recent study shows that restaurant smoking bans help to persuade teenagers not to become smokers. Teens who lived in towns with strict bans were 40 percent less likely to become regular smokers than teens that lived in communities without bans or that had weak bans. Smoking bans discourage tobacco use and sends out the message that smoking is not healthy. The ban also reduces the amount of smoke that teens are exposed to in public places.

Having a parent or close friend that smokes can be an influence as to whether or not a teenager experiments with cigarettes but strong bans in public places play a bigger role in whether a not the teen will develop a smoking habit. The study also found that the bans had a greater effect on younger teens than older teens.

France Not Promoting Extreme Thinness

France might make it illegal to promote extreme thinness. The French parliament’s lower house adopted a bill that would make it illegal for anything and anyone, including fashion magazines, advertisers, and Web sites, to promote extreme thinness. Judges would be given the power to imprison and fine offenders of the crime up to $47,000 if they are found guilty of “inciting others to deprive themselves of food to an excessive degree.” Judges can also sanction the people or places responsible for a magazine photo of a model whose extreme thinness alters another person’s health.

The National Assembly approved the bill in a series of votes after the legislation won support from the ruling conservative UMP party. The bill is going to the Senate very soon. Last week, French lawmakers and fashion industry members signed a nonbinding charter on promoting healthier body images.

Leaders in the French couture are against having legal boundaries on beauty standards but some people also feel that encouraging anorexia or severe weight loss should be punishable in court. Doctors and psychologists that are treating people with anorexia nervosa are in support of the government being involved in the fight against the disease.

Next Biggest Diet Craze

The drug Taranabant is known to be apart of the next biggest diet craze. The drug is considered the “anti-marijuana” and works by erasing food cravings by blocking the same receptors in the brain that cannabis stimulates, causing appetite suppression. A 12 week study found that obese patients consumed 27 percent less calories when they were taking the drug. The downside of the drug is that it can possibly make a person feel nauseous, irritable, or anxious.

Yahoo Launches Site for Women

On Monday, Yahoo Inc. launched a site aimed towards women age 25to 54 called Shine. The site is made to give Yahoo Inc. more opportunities to sell advertising targeted towards women. Advertisers in consumer-packed goods, retail, and pharmaceuticals have requested that there be more ways to advertise to women and many women are looking for a site to combine various content and communication tools.

The site Shine offers content and services in parenting, love, healthy living, food, and career and money, entertainment, fashion, beauty, home life, and astrology. The site is in blog form and will have the newest items at the top of the page and commentary from an editor.

Visit: http://shine.yahoo.com

The High Costs of Raising Children

It is found that the average cost of raising a child to the age of 21 is $338,000. Providing shelter will cost about $105,000 until the age of 18. Food will cost about $41,400 and health care costs will be about $17,400. The overall average cost also includes the cost of college.

McDonald’s Tries New Feng Shui Design

In California, a McDonald’s restaurant has gotten rid of the plastic furniture and red and yellow design to go for a Feng Shui style with leather seats, earth tone colors, bamboo plants, and water trickling down glass panels. The change is supposed to help their customers achieve happiness and fortune. Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese practice of arranging things and numbers to promote health, harmony, and prosperity.

The design is suppose to create a soothing setting and encourage customers to return. The new design has doors positioned in a way to block out bad spirits and keep good spirits inside. There are eight rows of red tiles near the food counter that symbolize fortune because the number eight is considered auspicious. There are metal sculptures of a crane and Koi fish on one wall that represents fertility and prosperity.

Mississippi Restaurants Banning Fat People

The Mississippi legislature is seriously considering a bill that would ban restaurants from serving food to very overweight people. The law would revoke the license of any restaurant that continues to serve the people. The state currently has a 30 percent obesity rate and they think that they could reduce that by not serving people that are very overweight.

Poor Haitians Having to Eat Dirt

Due to rising food prices, many poor people in Haiti can’t afford food and have to resort to eating mud and dirt. A traditional Haitian remedy for curing hunger pains involves making cookies from dried yellow dirt from Haiti’s central plateau. For a long time the mud has been used by pregnant women and children as an antacid and a source of calcium.

Food prices around the entire world have increased due to higher oil prices and oil is needed for fertilizer, irrigation, and transportation. The increase in demand for biofuels is also affecting the food markets. The Caribbean islands depend heavily on imported goods and food prices have risen 40 percent in some areas.

The 2007 hurricane season caused floods and crop damage so bad that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency had to declare states of emergency in Haiti and other Caribbean countries. Leaders in the Caribbean held an emergency summit in December to talk about reducing food taxes and making large regional farms to decrease the dependence on imported goods.

The cost of the dirt isn’t free. The dirt to make 100 cookies costs $5. About 80 percent of the Haitian population lives on less than $2 per day. Merchants would bring the dirt by truck from a central town to the food market. Women would buy the dirt and then process it into mud cookies. They would have to strain out the rocks and clumps from the dirt on a sheet and stir in shortening and salt to make the cookies. The cookies would be left out in the sun to dry. Some people sell the cookies in the market or on the street to make money.

It is not safe to eat the mud cookies because dirt can have deadly parasites or toxins. The cookies can also cause malnutrition. A positive thing about the cookies though is that they can strengthen the immunity of fetuses in pregnant women.

Actor Danny Glover Convicted of Trespassing

The actor Danny Glover was convicted on Thursday of trespassing in a hotel in Niagara Falls, Ontario during an union rally in 2006. He was convicted along with UNITE HERE union representative, Alex Dagg, and Ontario Federation of Labour President, Wayne Samuelson.

The three people were charged with trespassing at a Niagara Falls hotel during a Sept 16, 2006 protest. The protest was part of a larger campaign to increase salaries and improve the working conditions for hotel workers in the U.S. and Canada. The UNITE HERE organization represents 50,000 hotel, food service, garment, and manufacturing workers in Canada and 450,000 in North America.

Food Poisoning Causes Long-Term Health Problems

It is known that food poisoning, E. coli, and other food borne illnesses can cause serious health problems for months or years after the person survives through it. High blood pressure, kidney damage, and full kidney failure could happen even 10 or 20 years later in people who had a severe E. coli infection as a child. Arthritis could happen after suffer from Shigella. A mysterious paralysis could happen to people who had mild symptoms of campylobacter.

The late effects make up a small amount of the 76 million annual food poisonings in the U.S. Other illnesses could possibly be linked to food poisoning. Some people that had food poisoning earlier in their life have to get kidney transplants later in their life. Some people get scarred intestines that cause long term digestive problems. About 10 percent of people that have suffered E. coli develop a very severe problem called hemolytic uremic syndrome, where their kidneys and other organs would fail.

Some people who suffer from campylobacter, which is a diarrhea-causing infection that is spread by raw poultry, develop Guillain-Barre syndrome at least a month later. Their body would attack their nerves and cause paralysis that would require intensive care and a ventilator to breathe.

Some people develop reactive arthritis at least six months after they have salmonella. It would cause joint pain, eye inflammation, and possibly painful urination. It could also cause chronic arthritis.

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Bill Nye the Science Guy Seeking Restraining Order Against Ex

Bill Nye, who hosted the PBS series “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” is seeking a permanent restraining order against his ex-fiancé, Blair Tindall. He claims that she tried to poison his vegetable garden. He says that she went to this home on September 3^rd dressed in black and carrying two plastic bottles filled with a solvent and thinks that the solvent was poured on his garden, from which he eats the food he grows. He wants the restraining order to keep his ex away from his house and to keep her from contacting him.

His ex-fiancé is the author of “Mozart in the Jungle” and a former concert oboist. She admitted to pouring two bottles of weed killer in his garden. She says that she only meant to hurt his garden and not him. She also says that she has started counseling and is not a threat to Nye. A hearing is scheduled for December 20^th for the case.

New York Restaurant Offers Dessert Costing $25,000

A New York restaurant, called Serendipity 3, is offering the most expensive dessert in the world. The dessert is called the Frrrozen Haute Chocolate. It is a frozen and slushy mix of cocoas from 14 countries, milk, and 5 grams of 24-carat gold with whip cream on top and shavings from a La Madeline au Truffle. It is served in a goblet with a band of gold and decorated with 1 carat of diamonds. It is also served with a golden spoon that you can take home with you.

Ground Beef Recall Over E. Coli Scare

Cargill Inc. is recalling more than 1 million pounds of ground beef that might be contaminated with E. coli. The ground beef was made between October 8^th and 11^th at the Cargill Meat Solutions’ plant in Wyalusing, PA and distributed to places that include Giant, Shop Rite, Stop & Shop, and Wegmans and Weis. They learned that the meat might be contaminated after the Agriculture Department found a problem with a sample of the meat produced on October 8^th.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,307877,00.html