04/04/07 Counting Calories & Spinach Sales

Counting Calories & Spinach Sales Up plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Growing up it was a rare treat when we went to a restaurant for a meal. Home cooked meals we filled with fresh vegetables and lean meat right from the butcher shop. But today when about half of the American food budget goes to eating away from home, do we really know what we are eating? A new proposal would require chains of 10 or more restaurants to provide basic nutritional information in the menu similar to the information on food packaging in the grocery stores. I'd like to hear your opinion. Email me at gmartin@aginfo.net and let me know of if having that information on the menu is important to you. The sales of spinach products is slowly making a comeback after the e. coli outbreak in September. Chris Jorgenson a Safeway store manager in Washington says spinach is back on the shelf. JORGENSON: They seem to have gotten it cleared up. Once it's available in our warehouse we started ordering it and it comes into the store. Jorgenson does add that sales of spinach products have been sluggish but says there is no reason for customers to be wary of the product. The Salinas, Calif.-based River Ranch Fresh Foods LLC where the outbreaks stemmed from is launching six new products hoping to bring customers back. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. In a move that is sure to shake up the bottled water industry, some of California's toniest dining establishments, restaurants that not only set the bar for others throughout the nation but also define dining trends like Chez Panissee have opted to serve tap instead of expensive bottled water. For years consumers have been trained to request bottled water when dining, believing that it tasted better and was healthier than tap water. Yet in this new eco/eat local society we are now navigating, bottle water no longer fits . For one, water in bottles is transported great distances to get the restaurant and in the process uses precious fossil fuels not only en route, but also in container manufacturing . Then there is the problem of disposal. Where do all the empty water bottles end up? Unceremoniously dumped along side disposable diapers in our landfills of course and this is just no longer socially acceptable. So the great consumer deception of the 21 century is about to go head on head with an even greater social movement environmentalism. Tap water has just become cool again. Thanks Susan. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.