The B at Peppone restaurant doesn't stand for Britney
Being an avid fan of stalker-esque gossip sites, I was interested to see the popular celebrity eatery Peppone appear in my Google Alerts this morning. The likes of Britney Spears and Mark Wahlberg have dined at the Brentwood, California restaurant, and in the past the A grade at the restaurant didn’t just invite A-list celebrities.
A recent inspection, however, revealed a drop from A to B, reports Brentwood Blogged. Included in the inspection findings was evidence of a major cockroach infestation.
Will the drop from A to B cause a drop in patronage as well?
Food is the new fur for the celebrity with a conscience
Jay Rayner writes in the U.K. Observer today that, really bad food, is hot.
Greta Scacchi, who is pictured clutching a cod to her naked body (right, exactly as shown), will doubtless come to be seen as the seminal image for a particular moment, when the gruelling, knotty business of campaigning around food issues finally became sexy.
Where celebrities are concerned, it seems, food is the new fur. … Tomorrow, Paul McCartney and his daughters Stella and Mary are launching a campaign to convince the public to go meat-free for one day a week. Another movie, Food Inc, which looks at the excesses and foul side-effects of industrial food production has just been released in the US and will shortly arrive here. Plus there is a major investigation by environmental campaigner Tracy Worcester into the dark underbelly of the global pig-rearing business which is about to be screened on digital channel More4.
What marks out these campaigns is their sophistication. It began a couple of weeks ago with the news that Nobu, the global high-end chain of Japanese restaurants favoured by the glitterati, was still serving bluefin tuna despite it being an endangered species.
Gordon Ramsey says he got food poisoning from a virus; penicillin fixed him
Food buffoon Gordon Ramsey has once again demonstrated why celebrity chefs may be entertaining but really know nothing about biology – especially food and food safety.
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The Daily Telegraph reports that celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, the face of Melbourne's Good Food and Wine Show this weekend, was forced to spend his first night in Melbourne after the 16-hour flight barfing in his hotel room because of food poisoning.
"I have had a severe food virus and I was constantly vomiting. But I had a jab in the butt and had some penicillin and I felt a lot better at three this morning."
Penicillin is an antibiotic, and completely useless against a food virus or whatever Ramsey thinks made him barf.
Thanks to the food safety dude in Dubai who forwarded the story, one of the tens of thousands of inspectors around the world who actually do know what they’re talking about.
Jamie Oliver: Slaughtering chickens to raise awareness about slaughtering chickens
The show serves up a giant dose of shock and awe as chicks are gassed to death and an adult chicken is killed for the meal. Yet throughout the show Oliver insists that he is trying to raise awareness about how chickens are treated in the poultry industry.
"I don't think it's sensational to show people the reality of how chickens live and die at the moment. It may be upsetting for some people but that's how things are. And if seeing some of the practices helps to change the shopping habits of just 5 per cent of people watching, then it will be worth it.”
Channel 4 factual entertainment boss Andrew Mackenzie said: "Jamie's simple message, in quite an overt way, will be: 'If you know what happens to a chicken before arriving on your plate, would you change the way you think about chicken? Would you still eat it?'"
Oliver had criticized Sainbury’s supermarket over its involvement on his show and has since apologized for it. It appears that his main goal to is encourage people to purchase free-range and organic chicken raised in less intensive facilities. However I found that most of the program depicting the slaughter of chickens seems to push people towards vegetarianism rather than purchasing their chickens from another source. You be the judge.
UK TV chefs 'fail on basic hygiene'
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"I really get frustrated, I've seen it so many times. They bring in the vegetables, they open the bag and they make the salad straight from unwashed vegetables. They do it for the sake of expedience, but these programmes are watched by millions of people."It's irresponsible. If they are going to do something that's not healthy they should say: 'We are in a hurry but please wash the salad and vegetables before you serve it'."
A spokeswoman for Ready Steady Cook said the programme followed the "very highest standards."
Celebrity Masterchef stated,
"Before contestants are allowed to cook they are thoroughly briefed by our qualified home economists on all aspects of hygienic food preparation. In addition they are also monitored whilst cooking as we take the health of everyone involved in the programme extremely seriously."
The problem is the highest standards sorta suck. And for the apologists who say that cleaning and handwashing occur off-camera … I doubt it. It’s easy to mention hygiene without preaching. Who wants to eat poop?
Mathiasen, L.A., Chapman, B.J., Lacroix, B.J. and Powell, D.A. 2004. Spot the mistake: Television cooking shows as a source of food safety information, Food Protection Trends 24(5): 328-334.
Consumers receive information on food preparation from a variety of sources. Numerous studies conducted over the past six years demonstrate that television is one of the primary sources for North Americans. This research reports on an examination and categorization of messages that television food and cooking programs provide to viewers about preparing food safely. During June 2002 and 2003, television food and cooking programs were recorded and reviewed, using a defined list of food safety practices based on criteria established by Food Safety Network researchers. Most surveyed programs were shown on Food Network Canada, a specialty cable channel. On average, 30 percent of the programs viewed were produced in Canada, with the remainder produced in the United States or United Kingdom. Sixty hours of content analysis revealed that the programs contained a total of 916 poor food-handling incidents. When negative food handling behaviors were compared to positive food handling behaviors, it was found that for each positive food handling behavior observed, 13 negative behaviors were observed. Common food safety errors included a lack of hand washing, cross-contamination and time-temperature violations. While television food and cooking programs are an entertainment source, there is an opportunity to improve their content so as to promote safe food handling.
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Celebrity jackasses jailed, now a donkey
Nick. Kid. Hugh.
A donkey.
In an apparent logical extension of the latest Hollywood fad of acting like an ass and doing time, Blacky the donkey was incarcerated for three days in a Mexican jail that normally holds people for public drunkenness and other disturbances after biting and kicking two men near a ranch outside Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of the southern state of Chiapas.
Blacky was freed last week after its parents owner paid a fine of $36 and the $115 hospital bill of the men, who suffered bites to the chest and a broken ankle. Authorities say the owner must also pay $480 to each man for missed work days.
Tennis star Federer forced to withdraw
I think I had noro back in November.
UK celebrity chefs focus on animal welfare: at some point they may focus on their own food safety practices
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celebrity chefs, are launching a campaign get consumers to eat more welfare friendly reared chicken by revealing some of the welfare issues in poultry production.ThePoultrySite reports that on January 11, Jamie Oliver will host a gala dinner to demonstrate the reality of how chickens live and die.
The program is part the Big Food Fight, a season of programming that aims to raise awareness and encourage debate about food production, animal welfare and healthy eating.
That's great. I eagerly await the day Jamie and other celebrity chefs pay attention to their own food safety habits. A 2004 paper we published based on 60 hours of detailed viewing of television cooking shows -- including Jamie Oliver's - found that an unsafe food handling practice occurred about every four minutes, and that for every safe food handling practice observed, we observed 13 unsafe practices. The most common errors were inadequate hand washing and cross-contamination between raw and ready-to-eat foods.
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Guess we can't expect much of U.K. celebrity chefs when the best their own, taxpayer funded food safety group can come up with in terms of advice is cook your holiday bird until it's piping hot.Jamie, Hugh, let's see you stick it in.
Paging Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
TMZ has confirmed that Jane Seymour did not participate in Tuesday's "Dancing with the Stars" extravaganza -- because she's got food poisoning.Apparently she'll be back next week.
People don't wash hands on television
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Tracy Hughes has a bone to pick with television shows.People rarely wash their hands
Hughes writes in British Columbia's Salmon Arm Observer that,
on medical dramas, you almost never see hand-washing unless it is a top-notch surgeon scrubbing up before he goes into the operating room and a nurse whispers some tragic secret to him just before he has to complete the first-ever super-duper, resection of the quadruple nerve -ending bypass.
What really gets Hughes is the number of scenes that place characters in washrooms and they don’t wash -- even after they use the toilet.
I agree. When we looked at TV chefs a few years ago, very few washed their hands. There was a food safety infraction on average every four minutes.
Bad seafood fells Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas
The Black Eyes Peas need new caterers, or food poisoning works as an excuse for celebrities just like mere mortals.First, Peas rapper, Taboo, was sent to hospital with food poisoning Sept. 13, 2007 in Stockholm.
Perez Hilton reports that last night, lead singer Fergie was noticeably absent from the group's show in El Salvador.
The group’s singer did come out briefly in sweats, a cap and dark sunglasses (left, exactly as shown) and told the crowd that she ate some bad seafood and was not well. She sang one song and back to the vomitorium.
The band has already said they will make it up to the Salvadorian people with another concert real soon.
