For over 16 years, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida have been demanding better working conditions and a living wage in exchange for their backbreaking tomato picking labor. And the group just scored a major victory: after a year of protests, it persuaded Trader Joe's to join with places like Whole Foods, McDonald's and Burger King, in accepting the CIW's fair food agreement. more ›

Finally, the United States has overhauled school lunch rules for the first time in 15 years, forcing cafeterias to do things like "Offer fruits and vegetables as two separate meal components" to help with the childhood obesity epidemic. Thanks goodness Big Pizza, Big Salt and Big Potato succeeded in getting pizza and French fries classified as vegetables. more ›

A new Gourmet article by Barry Estabrook explains how migrant farm workers in Florida often end up in positions of involuntary servitude, essentially over the production of crappy wintertime tomatoes destined for supermarket bins or as garnish for some jumbo/burger/gordita concoction plucked off a dollar menu. That includes most restaurants in New York City—fast food or otherwise—that buy tomatoes; more information can be found here. Estabrook writes about one worker in particular who was locked up and beaten by a handler, but it’s no isolated case: "Law-enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women in seven different cases" since 1997, and it’s not just the tomato growing industry. The piece has so far provoked a predictable cavalcade of xenophobic comments, such as, "I wish I could feel sorry for them, but when you go to a foreign country illegally, can't speak, read nor write the common language, then you're asking, no, BEGGING to be taken advantage of like this man was." more ›

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the Center for Disease Control is looking into other causes of the salmonella outbreak that has affected hundreds of Americans across the country. more ›

Bruni hits Jean Georges' "fringe players," Mercer Kitchen and Vong. Between the two, Vong emerges victorious with one star: "you keep wondering if the food they deliver is really as it should be and all that it could be, if the restaurant is receiving Mr. Vongerichten’s most considered judgments . . ." while Mercer Kitchen rates a mere "satisfactory": Bruni calls their menu an "ethnically indistinct assortment of dishes with enough pro forma salads and... more ›