Airlines get into cocktail making, tattooing food, foodies vs. “foodiots”

Airlines get into cocktail making, tattooing food, foodies vs. “foodiots”

Mile high club soda: airlines consider signature cocktails for their flights (Photo by Russell James Smith)

• In an effort to improve the labelling of food, the American Food and Drug Administration is considering allowing fruits and vegetables to be tattooed. Any information that can be etched into the product’s flesh—like the country of origin or producer reference number—is fair game. Part of the reason behind the practice is to eliminate those tiny, annoying stickers: adhesive labels peel off easily, but ink is forever. [Chicago Tribune]

• As seats get smaller and fares get higher, airlines are concocting creative ways to keep the masses happy. The magic method? Booze. Mexicana Airlines has started with seasonal cocktails with such names as Flying High, Sweet Turbulence, Black Wing and Smooth Landing. U.S. Airways is also getting, er, on board with boozy libations made with real fruit juice, triple-filtered water and cane sugar. Air Canada, take note. Dealing with hellish waits on Pearson runways would be more bearable with a designer drink. [Village Voice]

• Too much discourse about eating habits can switch someone from foodie to “foodiot,” according to Joe Pompeo of The New York Observer. A person who is constantly updating their on-line status with food news and pictures is a foodiot, he says, and points out that the fine art of the Facebook status update is under attack by those constantly alerting friends to what they are “shoving down their pie holes.” Ditto Twitter, which is now overrun with tweets about where people dined and what they threw together for dinner. [New York Observer]

• Los Angeles is considering using the leftovers from conventions and other events to feed the hungry. Councilman José Huizar has filed a motion to get food from banquet tables to struggling families. Similar bills have stalled elsewhere, including in the California state senate. [L.A. Times]

• Wiki-style recipe Web sites are on the rise. These are interactive Internet destinations where users post a recipe and then an army of Nosy Parkers and know-it-alls tweak it based on their own cooking experiences. Sites like Foodista and Wikia are places where foodies can come together and create the world’s best dishes. But as chef Michael Smith says, isn’t the most fun cooking without a recipe? [New York Times]