Th e Food and Drug Administration on Thursday released a preliminary report on the safety of meat and milk from cloned animals. Their verdict: that these food products are no different from those derived from conventionally bred animals, and are therefore safe to eat. But don't expect your local butcher to be selling hams or rib eyes from cloned animals any time soon. The FDA's report is now available to the public and open for a 90-day comment period. ...

If you want to understand the disconnect between watching cooking shows and wanting to cook, get this: Schwan's Home Service is offering Top Chef--branded frozen meals. The idea that hard-core fans who study contestants' knife skills every week would choose to order from a giant company that's been delivering frozen food to rural America for 57 years doesn't surprise Harry Balzer, who tracks food trends for the market-research firm NPD Group. "You're going to eat four to five times ...

Too much sugar will make you fat, but too much artificial sweetener will ... do what, exactly? Kill you? Make you thinner? Or have absolutely no effect at all? This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration's decision to ban cyclamate, the first artificial sweetener prohibited in the U.S., and yet scientists still haven't reached a consensus about how safe artificial sweeteners may be. Shouldn't we have figured this out by now? The ...

It is midday and Geoff Lawton is hard at work at Zaytuna Farms in New South Wales, Australia. But the real work, he says, is going on inside the center of the compost. "There's lots of things breeding in there," Lawton says. Compost may not seem a sexy subject, but within this steaming pile, life is being created. "There's organisms breathing and dying and reproducing very quickly," he says. "It's all very hot and steamy." That rich soil lays the ...

A suicide attack at the offices of the World Food Program in Islamabad killed three employees and wounded five others Monday, an agency official said.

It's just before noon on a Tuesday, and despite the rain, a few dozen schoolgirls in white uniforms and navy cardigans are milling about the 7-Eleven on Tong Chong Gai, a bustling Hong Kong side street of restaurants and cafs. A few of the teenagers grab chocolate milk and sushi rolls from the open chiller. The others queue up to order a hot lunch at the brand-new food counter that is manned by half a dozen employees in bright ...

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to seek out covert items at fast food chains around the country. Be warned, this mission includes very real dangers such as hardening arteries and skyrocketing cholesterol. We've compiled a list to get you started. 1. If you're at Starbucks and in need of just a little caffeine, don't worry -- there's a tiny option for you. It's the Short size, and they don't advertise it. It's like a little ...

Fourteen women were killed Monday in a stampede during a flour giveaway in the Pakistani city of Karachi, police said. Another 19 people were injured, regional police chief Abdullah Shaikh said. The stampede happened when hundreds of people tried to race into a compound to get flour as part of the giveaway before doors closed. A man named Chaudhry Iftikhar had organized the giveaway at his compound to help the poor. Police said Iftikhar has been arrested because he did ...

Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has declared a state of national calamity because so many citizens do not have food or proper nutrition. Speaking in a nationally televised address late Tuesday, Colom said his declaration will make it easier to get food to the thousands of Guatemalan families who are in dire need. "This will help us access resources from the international community that are generously offered for this type of situation and to mobilize national resources more rapidly," he said. ...

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has agreed to pay a record $2.3 billion settlement to resolve criminal and civil liability for illegally promoting certain pharmaceuticals, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. Officials from the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services said the world's largest drug company promoted four drugs for use on certain ailments or at dosages that were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. One of those drugs was the anti-inflammatory medication Bextra, which Pfizer pulled ...