This Week in Food News: Bird Flu, Cocktail Glasses, and Michael Pollan

How I love January! Once the end-of-year and the resolution stories end, the nation's food sections aren't taxed with writing about holiday foods or overabundant gardens, freeing them up to come out with some interesting stories:

Leading the food news this week is Michael Pollan, whose newest book, In Defense of Food, came out January 1. I have my own thoughts on the book to gas on about in some post or another, but here are a few of the most interesting Pollanmania stories to come out so far: NPR interviews him. Carol Ness at the San Francisco Chronicle goes to a restaurant with him and tries to find something to order. And, in a reprint from a response to the NY Times Magazine article at the core of Pollan's new book, Slate's Daniel Engber disses Pollan mightily.

NY Fears Bird Epidemic by Delthea Ricks (LA Times; thanks to the Ethicurian for the link)
It�s one thing to get paranoid about the virulent strain of H5N1 influenza, but chickens in California and New York have other diseases to worry about. Not to plug myself, but here's a story I wrote about this very topic back in 2005.

At Least the Chickens Have Jamie Oliver by Mary Riddell (Guardian UK)
Speaking of chickens, this week Jamie Oliver hosted a TV special in Britain on the horrors of commercial chicken/egg production. One critic wants to refocus the debate. God, this op-ed would never run in a US publication.

A Maligned Meat Gets a Makeover by Paul Lukas (New York Sun; thanks to Grinder for the link)
Perhaps I should subtitle this week's post "The Meat Issue." Here's a profile of a man who's raising calves for veal outside the crate and trying to market it to a public turned off veal by one of the animal rights movement's first successes: getting people to avoid "milk-fed" meat back in the 1980s.

To Pour Right-Size Cocktails, Make Some Clear Choices by Jason Wilson (Washington Post)
Why are we so infatuated with the megamartini?