College isn’t for everyone, and some Chicago high school students are now getting the opportunity to get started in a well-paying job as a forklift driver. In the audio clip above, Olive-Harvey College President, Dr. Kimberly Hollingsworth, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that for the first time, a credit course is being offered at its satellite campus in South Chicago, featuring an inaugural dual-credit class for students from George Washington High School. She says the intensive 3.5-day program prepares students to become safe and effective forklift operators, opening doors to higher skilled jobs. She says students are taught foundational theory followed by practical, hands-on forklift training on-site that can immediately unlock jobs in big warehouses like Amazon, UPS, Coyote Logistics, Walmart, Pepsico and more.

Hollingsworth adds, “This expansion directly aligns with our mission to create clear, accessible pathways to high-demand careers for students. By offering hands-on training right here in our community, we are equipping young people with the credentials and college credits they need to thrive in Chicago’s transportation, distribution, logistics and manufacturing sectors.” Upon completing the course, students will earn a basic certificate from Olive-Harvey College at no cost to them or their families.

Later this summer, the Forklift Operation program will be open to the general public. This class qualifies as Future Ready(www.ccc.edu/futureready), an initiative that helps eligible Chicagoans prepare for in-demand careers at no cost. For more information call 312-COLLEGE or visit www.ccc.edu. 

And President Hollingsworth walks, or rather drives, the talk. She is forklift certified through the Olive-Harvey College program. “It’s a little unnerving trying to pick those pallets up and put them on a shelf 50 or 60 feet above you. It can be a little daunting, but it is fun!”

Without agriculture, there’d be no FIFA World Cup games at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The natural grass turf, installed just for the World Cup, is one example. Another example is in the stands. Thanks to farmers, a company called PlantSwitch has replaced cups and lids and utensils made with petroleum with a plastic made only from byproducts of farming. The stuff that blows out the back of a combine during harvest? PlantSwitch uses that to create 100 percent compostable items for fans to use when they’re eating and drinking.

In the audio clip above, PlantSwitch CEO Dillon Baxter tells WGN’s Steve Alexander the company’s circular process starts at the farm and ends back at the farm. It takes those field leftovers and turns them into a bio-resin, which is then converted into cups, straws, cutlery, stirrers–all the items typically made with petroleum plastic. Once used, the products go back into compost, leaving zero waste and zero microplastics. Even if the user is a litterbug, the items naturally decompose where they land. Unlike other plastic alternatives that require industrial composting, PlantSwitch’s CompostZero^TM actually biodegrades in nature. And it will fully break down in a backyard compost bin. Baxter says performance of his products is better, too: no spoons or forks melting in hot food or snapping in two. And, for the eco-conscious user, no guilt because there are no microplastics going into the body or being left behind in composting.

PlantSwitch is attracting a lot of attention. It has raised 28 million dollars, including a recent $17 million Series A funding round, and is scaling up to be a major player in the sector. Baxter, himself, is getting a lot of attention, too. He was listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 CEO list. Co-founded with Maxime Blandin,PlantSwitch has partnered with clients such as Taylor Farms, Elon Musk’s Starlink, Live Nation, and, a mentioned above, SoFi Stadium.

If you’re a parent or grandparent, you may consider those plastic pouches of food your toddler sucks on contentedly while you drive down the road as the best invention ever. But Lincoln Park mom and baby food company founder Erica Bethe Levin is alarmed by a Greenpeace study finding as much as 11,000 microplastics in each pouch. As she tells WGN’s Steve Alexander in the audio clip above, her concern is that we don’t know what means in the long term for tiny bodies that are developing.

Her solution? Glass containers. Her baby food brand, GloBowl, founded six years ago in her kitchen when she despaired at the lack of variety and flavors in traditional baby food, has always been “canned” in jars. And, to be sure, she has a vested interest in promoting glass as she competes with the big food companies. But she says she is more concerned that our children’s health may be being sacrificed for cost and convenience.

The big food companies called out by the Greenpeace study, Nestle and Danone, claim otherwise. Danone emailed this response:

“Danone is aware of the report released by Greenpeace regarding the alleged presence of microplastics in certain baby food product pouches. We are united in our belief that babies deserve safe and nutritious food, and that more research is needed to help close key gaps around the impact of microplastics on our health. Happy Baby pouches are produced with strict quality and food safety standards and methods, in line with all FDA food safety guidelines and regulations. All Happy Baby pouch food products are safe.”

Nestle provided this response:

“We understand the concerns raised in this report and take them seriously. We want to reassure all consumers that our products are safe to consume. We apply strict controls across our manufacturing, including the rigorous selection and management of packaging materials. We understand and share concerns about microplastics.Microplastics are widely present in the environment and we understand and take these concerns seriously. Eliminating microplastics is a universal, global challenge. At Nestlé, we continuously monitor emerging science and regulatory guidelines, including on microplastics, to ensure our products meet all applicable food safety standards and regulatory requirements. Plastic food-grade packaging plays an essential role in protecting food and beverages, ensuring the food safety and quality of the product, and helping to prevent food waste. We take care when selecting our packaging materials based on our rigorous quality and safety standards and all applicable regulatory requirements.”

The Food and Drug Administration, on its website, points out that the responsibility of producing safe food belongs to the manufacturers. The FDA doesn’t seem to have taken a position on microscopic plastic particles in food, other than to state that current scientific evidence does not demonstrate that they adversely affect human health.  But, it says, if that changes, it can take regulatory action.  

If you like your Italian Beef “dragged through the garden,” you can thank Vincent Formusa. More than a hundred years ago, he started packing chopped veggies in the tradition of his native Sicily–in olive oil. Not only did other Italian immigrants love it, popularity spread, and the V. Formusa Company is still in business with a fourth generation now continuing great-grandpa’s legacy. In the audio clip above, Jeff Johnson, president of V. Formusa Co., tells WGN Radio’s Steve Alexander the company churns out close to two million pounds of giardiniera each year under the Marconi brand. And it isn’t just a Chicago thing: Marconi products can be found all over North America.

Johnson says his great-grandfather came from a family of jewelers and watchmakers and when he came to this country as a young man he set up a small jewelry shop on Grand Avenue in Chicago. He also worked helping other immigrants move from Italy to Chicago, and many of them asked if he could help import some of their favorite foods from the old country such as pasta, oil, cheese and tomatoes. With the aid of family contacts in Italy, Vincent was able to set up an import business in 1898. He became so busy doing that, he closed the jewelry shop and went full time into the food business. Vincent also brought his wife from Italy, and they grew their family in Chicago, including sons Peter and Joseph, who worked with their father in the family business.   

During World War I, when many commodities were scarce and expensive, Vincent began blending imported olive oil with other vegetable oils to make the olive oil go further. He was a pioneer in oil blending and Marconi Salad Oil was found all over the Chicago area. Using imported olive oil to pack veggies led to giardiniera, which loosely translates to “from the garden,” and today, Marconi Giardiniera Relish is on retail shelves nationwide, and is served at nearly every Italian Beef stand, including Portillo’s.

The company has been making and selling a variety of peppers and Italian food specialties, not just giardiniera, under the Marconi label for 75 years, and for the majority of its history was located on Grand Avenue, where Grand, Halstead, and Milwaukee merge. In 2014, it moved to Des Plaines, and while Jeff and his sister, Joey Schramm, run the company now, their mother and father, Robert Johnson and Sue (Formusa) Johnson still pitch in occasionally after more than 50 years in the business.  

For those of us who love to raise food and flowers and anything else that we can grow, this is a difficult time of year. We’re itching to get out in the garden and plant, but the soil temperature isn’t quite warm enough. Even in the middle of May, Chicago-area weather can be unpredictable. In the audio clip above, Jim Fizzell, longtime horticulturalist and WGN contributor, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander there’s still a chance of frost until the end of May, albeit a slim chance. As for soil temperature, he suggests using a thermometer and sticking the tip in the dirt a couple of inches to see whether it’s 50 degrees yet.

And, Jim has some suggestions for what you can plant right now, as well as ideas for gardeners who don’t have a lot of space–an affliction many Chicagoans share.

Forgetting to eat is a real thing for people taking the GLP-1 magic weight loss drugs. But before we get to that, let’s talk about TV dinners. In the 1950s, televisions were a new thing and rapidly became prominent in American homes, so people decided that rather than sitting around the dinner table, why not sit in front of the TV while eating meals? Swanson jumped on the idea and presented three- and four-course frozen meals in tin trays. Just stick them in the oven–this was pre-microwave–and, presto! Dinner was served. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember they were often barely edible. There was usually a gravy-covered meat of some sort in the largest compartment of the tray, with a veggie in another, a starch–usually of a glob of something resembling mashed potatoes–in another, and a dessert. Healthy? Who knows? This was long before fat, salt, and sugar contents were listed on labels.

Today, any PTSD that Baby Boomers may have from those ’50s meals, is gone. The frozen food aisles are full of high-protein, high-fiber meals, many of them tagged with “GLP-friendly” labels as more and more Americans–about 12%–are taking the magic weight loss injections. And more will join, as pills are entering the market for those who have stayed away because of needles.

But for those using Ozempic, Mounjaro, and others, it’s important to remember to eat. In the audio clip above, Bethany Doerfler, senior clinical research dietician at the Digestive Health Institute, Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that the GLP-1s quiet the “food noise”–those voices that tell you to avoid the salad and go for the cake, or to keep eating even if you’re full. “Which means, we eat less,” she says, “and when we are eating a lot less, in order to maintain your muscle mass, protein and produce become the most important.”

And because the drugs result in a lack of desire to eat, she says, “What we eat needs to be much more nutritionally dense than when we weren’t on the medicines.” And she tells her patients to be sure to eat–two or three meals a day. “People have to remind themselves to eat. It isn’t uncommon for calorie intake to go down by 50 percent. As a dietician, I’m focusing on keeping people on that eating schedule. I want you to be eating two times a day or three times a day, and I really want people thinking about protein first, so whether that is a yogurt, or a protein shake, some scrambled eggs, or baked chicken, those are some of the first foods I want you to integrate. And then, I really want fruit and vegetables in there. We need the fruit because constipation is a common side effect of these drugs.”

And bad news for cake and snack lovers (and the companies that make those foods) in the GLP-1 world: “There isn’t a lot of room for starchy foods, or engineered foods, or alcohol.”

While many of us still avoid foods labeled as “diet” in any form, many of the big food makers are pushing ahead with GLP-1-friendly products, and Nestlé says its Vital Pursuit line, developed for GLP-1 users, is bringing new customers into frozen foods whether they’re on a weight-loss drug or not. Some retailers are reported to be considering entire aisles devoted to GLP-1 users. “It’s great that they’ve wasted no time finding products people can include that are smaller amounts, but also importantly, that have been enriched or enhanced with additional protein,” says Doerfler.

Guacamole, the Cinco de Mayo (and Super Bowl, and general party of any kind) staple, wasn’t as common, nor available year-round, prior to 1997. That’s the year a ban on avocados from Mexico was lifted, thanks in large part to the North American Free Trade Agreement approved during the Clinton administration. Now, we have avocados–and guac–every day of the year.

In the audio clip above, Pedro Somarriba, president of Avoworks, one of the big exporters of avocados to the U.S., tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that before NAFTA, we Americans got our avocados from California and Florida. Now, more than 80% of the avocados consumed in the U.S. come from Mexico. His company partners with growers in Michoacán, the Mexican state that grows more avocados than any other area on the planet. The trees grow on lush mountainsides in rich, volcanic soil, allowing the trees to be grown at different elevations, which means they yield fruit at different times year-round. The Michoacán region is blessed with good rainfall that coupled with the warm days and cool nights in the high elevations, make the area an ideal place to grow avocados.

Somarriba says the vast majority of avocado growers in Mexico are small, family farmers; thousands of them with orchards of less than 10 acres, and all avocados are picked by hand. Unlike Midwest corn and soybean farmers, avocado farmers don’t have to replant their crops every year. He says trees begin producing fruit after about five years, and continue producing for many decades, bearing more fruit as they age. “We have trees that have been around 60 years that are still producing. So you can see why the economics make a lot of sense. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.”

Driving U.S. demand for Mexican avocados is geography. He says avocados can be harvested in Michoacán and be at the U.S. border in less than 48 hours, trucked about 12 hours from farms to warehouses in McAllen, Texas. In comparison, he says avocados from South America spend at least a week on a ship before arriving in the U.S.

Avocado love is spreading. He says Canada is developing as a big market for Avoworks. Helping, is the fact that import requirements are generally less stringent than the U.S. because there is no domestic industry to protect. Outside North America, consumers in Europe and Asia are rapidly developing a taste for avocados.

Another reason U.S. demand is up, is the Hispanic population. Hispanics consume about 70 percent more avocados than the rest of the U.S. population. And younger consumers of all ethnicities, both Gen Z and Millennials, incorporate avocados in many meals and were the driving force behind avocado toast.

The demand is also being driven by the fact that avocados are good for us. Somarriba points out the prominent placement of avocados in the most recent food pyramid from the federal government.

Says Somarriba: “It’s a marriage made in heaven between the benefits of avocado and the U.S. consumer’s concerns with health. And interestingly, even the people taking GLP-1 injections are looking for smaller portions and healthier options which puts avocado in a very sweet spot.”

Pedro Somarriba’s favorite way to consume avocados? A smoothie. “I like to put in a little banana, some berries, half an avocado, milk, and some cashews. Put it in a blender and it’s one of the best things you’ve ever had.”

Synthetic fertilizer is arguably the most important life-saving innovation of all time, credited with preventing 2.7 billion premature deaths. In the audio clip above, Susan Stroud, the founder of No Bull Agriculture, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander we have a couple of Germans to thank for that. In the early 1900s, Fritz Haber, a German chemist, figured out how to pull nitrogen from the air. Carl Bosch took it from the lab to commercial scale. That combination — discovery plus scale — is what made modern-day crop production possible. Before that, agriculture was limited by what nature could provide — manure, rotations, and mined nitrogen.

The Haber-Bosch process removed that constraint and tied crop yields directly to energy because natural gas is used to make nitrogen-based fertilizers like urea and annhydrous ammonia.

And that’s where the Strait of Hormuz and the Iran war come in. Stroud says farmers in other parts of the world are more directly and immediately affected, and most U.S. farmers had already locked in their fertilizer buys before the war began, but they are looking at much higher prices going forward. The University of Illinois estimates that urea is up about 41 percent from the week before the war began, and anhydrous ammonia has increased by more than 29 percent. Ag economists at the U of I say that has added roughly $30 to $55 per acre to the cost of this year’s corn crop, which sends farmers deeper into the red. The U of I estimates corn farmers were already facing losses of $40 to $80 per acre losses for this year’s crop.

Stroud also discusses soybean oil’s current rally, which is also influenced by the war. Soybean oil futures are up 44% YTD and Soybean crush futures are up 130% YTD.

Stroud has two levels of subscription to her newsletters, and her subscribers include producers, grain processors, the bio-fuels industry, and investors who are trying to keep track of what’s happening in agriculture, particularly row crops.   

Whether you pronounce it “NUT-tella” or “NEW-tella” doesn’t matter. “We are very accepting of both pronunciations,” says Seth Gonzales, Senior Director of Marketing for Nutella in the Ferrero candy group. In the audio clip above, he tells WGN’s Steve Alexander the origins of Nutella go back to post-World War II Italy, where poverty was rampant, chocolate was scarce, and baker Pietro Ferrero came up with a way to make chocolate go further by mixing cocoa with hazelnuts, of which there were plenty in that region. The initial result was something called “Gianduja,” which became Nutella in 1964.

And for the first time, right here in Chicago (well, actually, Franklin Park), there is a new flavor of Nutella being made: Nutella Peanut. The ribbon cutting for a new production facility on Friday, April 23rd officially kicks off not only the new flavor, but the first time Nutella has been produced in the United States. Until now, the standard Nutella on American store shelves has come from a factory in Canada.

Perhaps sweetest of all, “This investment creates 50 new local jobs, joining the hundreds of workers who’ve been making Butterfinger and Baby Ruth at this same factory since the 1960s,” says Gonzales. He says the rollout began April first, so it may be a while before your favorite store has Nutella Peanut on the shelf.

And, in case you’re wondering about the Nutella Cafe on Michigan Avenue in Chicago’s Loop, he says the remodeling project is continuing with an expected re-opening in the summer of 2026.

When Danielle Marshall’s doctor told her she was on the verge of pre-diabetes, it got her attention. Her parents were diabetic and she had seen the difficulties they endured. She took her doctor’s advice to lose weight to heart, began exercising regularly and juicing — as in grinding veggies and fruit into juices that were part of her daily routine.

In the audio clip above, Danielle told WGN Radio’s Steve Alexander that co-workers and friends noticed what she was doing and wanted some of her juice. She started selling it to them, word of mouth grew, and that was the beginning of Danie’s Natural Juice Blends.

Today, not only has Danielle lost weight, her juice business is booming! She opened a brick and mortar in south suburban Park Forest. Her juices are on sale in many Chicago-area Mariano’s stores, it’s the juice of choice at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place Hotel Market, and is available for travelers at several locations inside Midway Airport.

Her cold-pressed juices and juice shots cover a variety of wellness focuses, including daily greens, cleanses, immunity, and energy and focus. Her original drink, the one that got her started, is a mix of pineapple, cucumber, lemon, and lime, and is called “The Bomb.” At first, she named it “Slim and Sassy,” because that’s how she felt as she was dropping pounds, but there was a problem: “Certain people” wouldn’t buy it. Men. The name was too feminine. So she changed the name, and she says men love “The Bomb.”

Juice has truly changed Danielle’s life. She says while running a small business isn’t easy, “Overall, I am grateful for the product and what it has done for me, and the benefits that others receive from it. I’m proud that it’s a product others find value in and contributes to the communities I serve.”

One more thing from Danielle: If you are juicing at home, don’t throw out the pulp! She says it can be composted for your garden, or donated to the community compost pile, and it can be used for baking. She uses it to bake bread, muffins and cookies, even chips and dog food!

When an email from Northwestern University landed in my inbox, I thought I was reading a very early April Fools joke, or maybe something from The Onion.

“I thought it was a joke, too,” says Dr. Fred Turek, a professor in the Departments of Neurobiology and Neurology, and director of the Center on Sleep and Circadian Rhythms.

But it’s no joke.

The Federal Communications Commission is considering whether to grant a license to Reflect Orbital, a Hawthorne, California, company that wants to launch thousands of satellites with giant mirrors that would reflect sunlight back to Earth during the night. Northwestern says while the proposal aims to illuminate solar farms, it potentially could flood entire cities with light that reaches daylight-level intensity. The initial concern of Dr. Turek and his colleagues at Northwestern is what 24/7 daylight would do to humans.

Martha Hotz Vitaterna, research professor of neurobiology at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and co-director of CSCB: “Earth was turning on its axis — causing night and day — when life began. All life forms are adapted to these cycles. Disruption by light at night threatens the well-being of not only humans but the plants and animals with which we share the planet.”

Kristen Knutson, associate professor of neurology (sleep medicine) and preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine: “Circadian rhythms are present in all types of organisms, ranging from bacteria to plants to animals, including humans. These rhythms synchronize physiological function to the natural light-dark cycle, which is important for overall well-being. Light at night will disrupt these rhythms, which can impair health and well-being.”

But, because I do a daily feature called The Business of Food, I was more concerned about the potential impact on agriculture.

Dr. Turek says it could be bad.

In the audio clip above, he tells me “We could have total crop failures for many of the crops that feed billions of people.” He says rice, soybeans and sorghum, for example, “need short days in order to reproduce. So if you had constant light, you essentially would wipe out” those crops, causing mass starvation. And for livestock, “Cows, pigs, all animals, depend upon seasonal changes and the daylight to regulate their reproductive cycle, and if you had constant light, you would have no more reproductive cycles,” he said. Poultry, with far shorter gestation periods, could also be impacted. Wild birds, too. “For example, in the 1930s, people observed that London’s streetlights affected birds’ seasonal reproduction. Light pollution at night disrupts vital seasonal rhythms, such as migration, growth or reproduction.”

Professor Turek said ” That the FCC is even considering it is bewildering to him. “I have no idea how any sane decision makers would even think about creating constant light on the planet Earth.” “I’m sort of shocked that it would get to the point where the FCC would even be considering it, but, OK, they are.”

The New York Times reported that the FCC’s stance is that activities in space — which, by definition, are not on Earth — are not subject to environmental review. If the F.C.C. approves, a test satellite could get a ride into orbit as soon as this summer. “We’re trying to build something that could replace fossil fuels and really power everything,” Ben Nowack, Reflect Orbital’s chief executive, told the Times in an interview. The company has raised more than $28 million from investors.

Reflect Orbital’s website promotes that its satellites — as many as 5,000 in orbit by 2030 –would deliver sunlight on-demand reflected from huge mirrors that unfold from its satellites, could be a tool to reduce the burning of fossil fuels and thus slow climate change, and contrary to Dr. Turek’s concerns, it touts that its sunlight on demand will be able to tailor growth cycles, extend seasons, and boost yields.

Dr. Turek and his colleagues are skeptical. Professor Vitaterna said if animals were to get confused by the extra light, they might breed at the wrong time, when food is scarce. Hibernating insects and migrating birds might also become confused. Light at the wrong times of day could also lead to flowers blooming when pollinators are not active. The implications for wildlife, for all life, are enormous,” she said.

Dr. Turek said Reflect Orbital’s proposal reminds him of a Star Trek episode. “How the planet totally destroyed itself by having light 24 hours a day,” he said.

There’s an additional threat to our nighttime darkness. The FCC is also considering an application from SpaceX, which wants approval for an orbital data center system that could include up to one million satellites in orbit. The Northwestern experts say large numbers of satellites can scatter sunlight, increasing overall sky brightness.

There’s a company in Chicago’s Medical District that has figured out how to replace petroleum in the manufacture of many everyday items, from house paint to bandages to diapers. In the audio clip above, Justin Brown, the CEO of Låkril Technologies, tells how its proprietary technology converts low-cost lactic acid (from renewable sugars like corn, cane, beets, etc.) into a substance that is molecule-for-molecule the same as petroleum-based chemicals, and can be dropped in by manufacturers worldwide. Lakril currently operates four labs, the most recent of which is producing larger quantities of the bio-acrylic acids to be shipped to manufacturers for testing. If all goes as expected, there will be another round of fundraising to build a much larger scale plant, and then the technology would be licensed to end users globally.

Once again, corn is proving it can replace petroleum-based plastics in a commonly-used product: filters for HVAC systems in home and commercial systems. Aerterra (a combination of the Latin words for air and earth), a Chicago-area company, spins fiber for the filters from a by-product of corn. In the audio clip above, Mike Malloy, co-founder of Aerterra, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about the process of using polylactic acid derived from corn, the same field corn grown by the millions of acres across the Midwest, to create fibers that are then made into air filters.

Like most great ideas, Aerterra started with a problem. Or problems. Malloy says In the wake of COVID and the wildfire smoke that settled on Chicago, he and co-founder Curtis Firestone were looking for sustainable ways to make indoor air healthier.

Unlike traditional filters made from fiberglass and petroleum products, the Aerterra filters made from corn are compostable. They are available direct to your home on the Aerterra website in an assortment of sizes and MERV filtration performance levels.

Aerterra won the National Corn Growers Association’s “Consider Corn Challenge 2025” for its new use of field corn.

The City of Chicago has 27 locations where you can take your Christmas tree to be recycled, and where you can later pick up mulch for your garden. The full list and a link to a map are shown below. There are eco-friendly alternatives, though, as noted in the audio clip above with WGN’s Steve Alexander and USDA Extension forester Charlie Barton.

The Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation, in partnership with the Chicago Park District, is hosting its annual Holiday Tree Recycling Program at 27 locations throughout the city. Of course, these are for natural trees only, and can be dropped off inside the designated tree recycling corral at each location.

Please remove all tinsel, lights, ornaments, tree stands, and plastic bags from your tree before placing it in the corral.

The holiday trees will be chipped to create mulch, which will be available to residents for FREE pick up at six of the locations starting Monday, January 5. Thousands of trees are diverted from landfills each year and turned into tree mulch for residents and local parks. Over 22,000 trees were recycled in 2025.

Locations are listed in alphabetical order:

BESSEMER PARK – 8930 S. Muskegon Ave. 

CLARK PARK – 3400 N. Rockwell St. 

* FORESTRY SITE – 900 E. 103rd St. – free mulch available 

GARFIELD PARK – 100 N. Central Park Ave. 

GRANT PARK – 900 S. Columbus Dr. 

HIAWATHA PARK – 8029 W. Forest Preserve Dr. 

HUMBOLDT PARK BOATHOUSE – 1369 N. Sacramento Ave. 

JACKSON PARK – 6300 S. Cornell Ave. 

KELVYN PARK – 4438 W. Wrightwood Ave. 

KENNEDY PARK – 2427 W. 113th St. 

LAKE MEADOWS PARK – 3117 S. Rhodes Ave. 

*LINCOLN PARK – East side of Cannon Dr., north of Fullerton Ave. – free mulch available 

MAHALIA JACKSON PARK – 8385 S. Birkhoff Ave. 

*MARGATE PARK – 4921 N. Marine Dr. – free mulch available 

MARQUETTE PARK – 6700 S. Kedzie Ave. 

MCKINLEY PARK – 2210 W. Pershing Rd. 

*MT. GREENWOOD PARK – 3721 W. 111th St. – free mulch available 

*NORTH PARK VILLAGE – 5801 N. Pulaski Rd. – free mulch available 

NORWOOD PARK (Service Yard) – 5800 N. Avondale Ave. 

PORTAGE PARK – 4100 N. Long Ave. 

RIIS PARK – 6201 W. Wrightwood Ave. 

ROWAN PARK – 11546 S. Avenue L 

SHERIDAN PARK – 910 S. Aberdeen St. 

WALSH PARK – 1722 N. Ashland Ave. 

*WARREN PARK – 6601 N. Western Ave. – free mulch available 

WENTWORTH PARK – 5701 S. Narragansett Ave. 

WEST CHATHAM PARK – 8223 S. Princeton Ave. 

For more information, please email dsscomposting@cityofchicago.org or call 312-744-2413. 

Here’s a link to a map to find a Holiday Tree Recycling location near you: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/chicago-recycles/home/holiday-tree-recycling.html

To understand why Revolution Brewing named its Christmas beer “Fistmas,” look no further than the company’s logo: a raised fist. “Craft beer is nothing short of a revolution,” says the founder, CEO, and self-described Chairman of the Party, Josh Deth. In the audio clip above, he tells WGN’s Steve Alexander, “When we came along, we thought we were going to really change the world of beer in this town and I really believe, in my heart, that we have.”

It took a while. In the mid-’90s, Deth (pronounced Deeth) was brewing beer in his Chicago home when he landed a job in the burgeoning craft brew industry. The now-defunct Golden Prairie Brewing is where he began at the bottom: cleaning kegs and scrubbing tanks. He went on to work for the iconic Goose Island brewery as a cellar man and brewpub brewer. That’s where he got the itch to open his own brewery. After a few false starts, he and his wife, Krista, and some friends opened Handlebar in 2003.

It wasn’t until 2010 that his plans, and fundraising, came together and he began building Revolution Brewing in a cool old building with a nice tin ceiling on Milwaukee Avenue near Logan Square. The brewery and tap room opened in spring 2012, but the big event in Revolution’s young history was the purchase of a production brewery on Kedzie just north of Belmont in 2022. That is where Revolution’s production capacity multiplied, and in 2017, Revolution Brewing became the 40th largest craft brewery and 50th largest overall brewery in the country according to the Brewers Association Top 50 Brewing Companies by Sales Volume, and is the largest independent brewery in Illinois. It currently distributes in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nashville, New Jersey, New York City, and Wisconsin. 

What Deth is proud of the many varieties of beer he produces, he seems just as proud of what’s on Revolution’s roof: solar panels. Lots of them. “We’ve got a big roof. When you have a big building and a big roof, you can have a lot of solar panels. It’s an investment in the long haul, and we plan to be here in Chicago making beer for a long time.” Each spring and summer, when the solar panels are performing at their peak, and demand for beer is at its highest, Revolution brews Sun Crusher. (If you’re into Star Wars, you’ll get the reference. If you aren’t, it doesn’t matter if you enjoy the beer.)

The solar panels, and Revolution has just installed its second set, don’t provide all of the electricity needs for the big brewery, 15 to 20 percent, but “it’s really contributing to save us some money and do the right thing; cut down on carbon emissions and generate a little power here locally. It actually reduces stress on the power grid.” Does it pay for itself? “It does,” says Deth. “It takes about six, seven years.” He adds that various state and federal incentives can help at different stages of operation. “We’ve actually paid off our first system already, and now we’re moving on to the second system.”

Deth says Revolution produces dozens of different beer styles every year. “We bring a lot of interesting flavors and styles,” he says. The list includes IPAs –“Anti-Hero IPA is our number one flagship beer, the best selling IPA in Illinois”– porters, pilsners, Belgian-style ales, pale ales, and barrel-aged beers—including Barley Wine, which he says sits in a bourbon barrel for up to two years and develops “wonderful caramel and toffee flavors that are just exquisite.” And Barley Wine has a kick. He says the ABV runs 14 to 15 percent. “It’ll warm you in these cold days of winter.”

“It’s just great to be making beer here in the heart of the city, using Lake Michigan water, the greatest source of fresh water in the world, the Great Lakes.”

Remember those kids birthday parties where you had to be sooooo careful about serving your child’s friends anything containing peanuts?  The allergies were real. The scientific advice to deal with allergens by total avoidance, it turns out, was wrong.  

Around the turn of the century, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended delaying exposing babies and toddlers to peanut products. That advice turned out to be a little… nutty. Instead of a reduction in allergies, we saw an explosion. Time, and further studies, led science to change its view. In 2015, a study found that giving peanut products to children under three could actually REDUCE their chances of developing a peanut allergy. Allergies are real, no doubt, but researchers found that how the body adapts to the allergens is the key.

That was around the time Erica Bethe Levin was starting a family, and her pediatrician advised her to introduce her babies to peanuts, and all the suspected food allergens so that their bodies immune systems could figure out how to deal with them. Just this fall, a study published in the journal Pediatrics, validated what her doctor’s advice, not just for peanuts, but other food allergens, too.

In the audio clip above, she tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that as she tried to implement her doctor’s directions, she found it impossible to buy baby food that embraced the science. So, in her Lincoln Park kitchen, she started her own company: GloBowl, which she describes as “internationally-inspired baby and toddler meals for future foodies.” She found a market, with hundreds of thousands of jars of Globowl baby food sold nationwide. “We started with Pad Thai for Tots, Veggie Tikka Masala, Baby Spices Bean Bowl, kind of like a chili, and Yaya’s Medi-Bowl. We’ve also added Mini-Strone, and Baby Bibimpbap.”

“It’s time to follow what the doctors are recommending, follow the science. Science is ever changing and that’s OK. It’s because we learn more and more as we go, and now that we know this, I think it’s our duty to do better for our children and Globowl is trying to lead the way in that regard.”

Globowl is sold on line: Amazon, Thrive Market, and Globowl.com, with a TikTok shop coming soon.

When you think of Denny’s, the breakfast served 24/7, the Grand Slam, or the cleverly named breakfast sandwich “Moons Over My Hammy” probably stand out. Any time, day or night, Denny’s is there to sate your appetite.

What you don’t think of when you think of Denny’s, and what I’m confident Harold Butler and Richard Jezak weren’t thinking of when they founded Denny’s (first as Danny’s Donuts in Lakewood, California) in 1953, was selling shoes.

But here we are, 72 years later, and Denny’s is celebrating National Maple Syrup Day on Wednesday, December 12th, by dropping its first drip. (I’m told “drip” is a compliment for streetwear.) In the audio clip above, Ellie Doty, the Chief Brand Officer of Denny’s tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that the diner chain is launching Sticky Kicks – the first-ever sneakers made with real Denny’s pancake syrup. They are a collaboration with famed footwear artist and designer Mache.

As you can see in the attached photo, the shoes have clear pockets where the syrup resides, and where it’s supposed to stay: “Do not puncture the shoes or eat the syrup from the shoes for any reason. These drips are for style only, so leave it that way,” cautions Doty. Even though the syrup is real, do you really want to taste it after it’s been in a shoe? Doty doesn’t think that will be a problem and she doesn’t think many people will actually walk around in the shoes because they are a collectible. Only a limited number are being made, sizes 8-13, and the cost is $195.

If you want a pair, you can order beginning at 11 a.m. Chicago time on 12/17 at DinerDrip.com. You’ll need to be in Denny’s rewards program and Doty suggests signing up before the drip drops so you’re ready to go at 11.

Until Sunday’s loss at Green Bay, the Bears had won eight in a row. Is it a coincidence that the Bears began their winning streak after the co-owners and operators of Kneads and Wants, a Skokie bakery, were featured as a Chicago Bears Small Business All-Pro? Perhaps, but Madeleine England, who runs the bakery with her wife, Maria, and son, Dylan, thinks her war cry, featured in the audio above, which she let loose as the Bears players ran onto the field to play Dallas on September 21st, may have been the spark.

“We were on the field, holding the flag and the players were running out of the tunnel, like, right at me,” remembers Madeleine. “I’m pretty sure my war cries were the thing that turned them around. I’m just sayin’.”

Being named a Chicago Bears Small Business All-Pro meant Kneads and Wants was given the marketing muscle that comes with being featured on the Bears website and newsletter, not to mention the pre-game on-field exposure which included being on the Jumbotron at Soldier Field. “We’re extremely thankful,” says England.

Kneads and Wants Artisan Bakery and Cafe opened six years ago in downtown Skokie, just across from the village hall. England says it is a family bakery that fresh-bakes every day and is known for the croissants and other laminated doughs the French call viennoiserie that Maria makes, including her specialty, Kouign Amann (pronounced “queen-a-mahn”), a croissant-like pastry that is a small luxury from the Brittany region of France. Kneads and Wants features a large menu of other baked items and cafe staples, including breakfast sandwiches and coffee. “Amazing coffee,” she adds.

‘Tis the season and there are a number of Christmas and holiday gift items available (such as Ted Lasso’s Biscuits With the Boss), holiday pies and cakes, and you can order your own Christmas Cake — Bûche de Noël, a yule log of a cake you can decorate at home — for pickup between December 18th and 24th.

And if you go into the bakery, which is open Monday thru Friday, 7 am to 3 pm, and Saturday and Sunday from 8 am to 3 pm, maybe Madeleine will do her now famous war cry for you.

For a National Donut Day edition of the Business of Food, Steve Alexander learned more about Stan’s story and how Rich, “Chief Dough Boy” of Stan’s and Dough Boy Restaurant Group, is carrying on his legacy.

Sponsored by Chevy Drives Chicago.

See how WGN Radio celebrated National Donut Day with Stan’s Donuts here!

We hear a lot about omega-3 fatty acids and most of what we hear is that we don’t get enough of them in our diets. In the audio clip above, Dr. Daniel Robinson, an associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and an attending physician in the Division of Neonatology at Lurie Children’s Hospital, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about a city-wide study of Chicago adults.

Not surprisingly, the study found that parental intake of omega-3 fatty acids falls below recommended levels, with women consuming even lower amounts of omega-3 fatty acids than men. He says this deficiency, especially of two particular types of omega-3s — EPA, and DHA — may have direct negative effects on children’s health, with those impacts beginning during pregnancy.

The fix is relatively easy: eat more seafood. Dr. Robinson says oily fish such as salmon, tuna, sardines, mackerel and trout, provides the “biggest bang for your buck.” There are omega-3 supplements in capsule form, and while they can help increase someone’s levels of DHA, Dr. Robinson said the best way to consume it is in the whole food, where you’ll also get other nutrients, such as protein, vitamins and micronutrients.

You can read the complete study HERE.

As a child, Emilia D’Albero loved cheese. Most kids do, but few take it as far as she did, all the way to the “Olympics of Cheese” — the Mondial du Fromage, a biennial event held in Tours, France, that combines a trade show for dairy professionals with a juried cheese tasting and the World’s Best Cheesemonger competition. It’s a day-long series of challenges, ranging from written and oral tests to blind taste tests and cheese sculpting, giving mongers a chance to show off their skills while representing their country.

In the audio clip above, Emilia tells WGN’s Steve Alexander how she and her USA teammate, Courtney Johnson, made history. Emilia took the gold medal and Courtney the bronze, the first Americans to ever reach the awards podium.

Historic wins for Team U.S.A. 

Emilia, from Philadelphia’s Formaticum, and Courtney Johnson of Seattle’s Street Cheese, became the first all-female American team in the competition, which drew 18 candidates from 14 countries, including Algeria, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Italy, Japan, Peru, Spain, and Switzerland. D’Albero also became the first American to win gold; France’s Matthieu Thuillier took silver.

In the cheese competition, Switzerland’s Le Gruyère AOP Vieux, crafted by Simon Miguet of Fromagerie La Côte-aux-Fées, earned Best in Show among more than 1,900 submissions.

Sunday, October 12, was National Farmer’s Day in the United States. Traditionally, when people think “farmer,” they don’t think of a woman. “It’s usually expected that it’s her husband, or her father, or her brother,” says Kate Huffman. Not in her case. She owns two farms, and was recently honored by the Illinois Farm Bureau as the 2025 Young Leader Excellence In Agriculture Award winner. She’s better known as the Pink Hat Farmer. More about that in a moment.

In the audio clip above, Huffman tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about her journey from growing up on a hog and row-crop farm in Henry County, Illinois, to owning two farms in that county, including her family’s six-generation farm. It wasn’t a direct route. In fact, she snubbed agriculture, not joining 4-H or FFA, and wanted nothing more than to get away from the farm. After getting a finance degree at the University of Illinois, she got a job in the Chicago area. “I lasted nine months up there before I realized that everything I had been chasing had been the farm all along.”

Back in the fold, she bought a small farm near Galva, Illinois, in 2018 at the age of 27, and last year, was able to buy her family’s sesquicentennial farm, a true family farm where her father helps with the farming, her mother does the books, and her brother comes home to help during planting and harvest.

But farming can be hard, and like many farmers, men and women, Huffman also has an off-farm job as an ag loan officer. She also generates income from Harvest Hosts, where RVers are provided water and electrical hookups.

And, she generates income from the sale of Pink Hat merchandise, and visibility for other women in agriculture via her Pink Hat Farmer identity. Her mission is “to promote the life of a female farmer, encourage other female farmers to DREAM BIG and share my passion of agriculture.”

“I love Choco Chimps,” Jane Goodall told Nature’s Path Organic CEO Arjan Stephens. “I’m really proud to partner with you guys,” she told him in 2014 when the company teamed up with her to protect chimpanzees and raise money for the Institute. “She loved that Choco Chimps were vegan,” as she had been since 2015, Stephens says, “and had a picture of a real chimpanzee on the box, not a cartoonish image.” Plus, because a portion of each sale of Choco Chimps is donated to the Jane Goodall Institute, more than $300,000 has been generated for the Institute.

Choco Chimps is part of the EnviroKidz line of organic cereals (Gorilla Munch, Panda Puffs, Koala Crisps, Leapin’ Lemurs and others) with donations from sales going toward protecting vulnerable and endangered animals. In the audio clip above, Arjan Stephens tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that the cereals are big fundraising tools for all of the environmental non-profits we work with, also including Dian Fossey’s Gorilla Fund. “We have an area (on the boxes) where kids can adopt a gorilla, or adopt a chimpanzee, or adopt a koala, with these kids getting involved, maybe doing a lemonade stand outside their house and they’re raising money to adopt an animal.”

Founded and based in Vancouver, B.C., Nature’s Path is North America’s largest certified organic breakfast and snack food company and a pioneer in certified organic cereals, waffles and other foods. Its products are sold in 52 countries and for its largest-ever U.S. sales and marketing expansion, it has opened a corporate office in the Chicago area, joining the largest food companies in the world that have made Chicago the center of the food world. Stephens tells Alexander the origins of the company his dad and mom started go back to his grandfather Rupert, an organic farmer on Vancouver Island, Canada, who established a baseline for his son Arran and grandson Arjan: “Always leave the earth better than you found it.”

For now, the Oak Brook office of Nature’s Path Organic consists of 18 food scientists and some marketing folks, all sharing what Stephens calls his “big, hairy, audacious goal: to become a household brand in all homes across North America.”

In the film The Irishman, Teamsters Union boss Jimmy Hoffa, played by Al Pacino, rallies an audience by pointing out how vital trucks, and the men and women who drive them, are to our way of living. “If you got it, a truck brought it. If you got your food, your clothing, your medicine, if you got fuel for your homes, fuel for your industries, a truck brought it. The day our trucks stop, America stops!”

In the audio clip above, Cheryl Freeman, the College to Careers dean overseeing the continuing education classes for transportation, distribution, and logistics at Olive-Harvey College, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about a donation of two shiny diesel trucks to the college’s Diesel Technology program. Freeman says the donation by PepsiCo not only saves the college more than $50,000 per truck, it gives students experience working on the same type of equipment they could encounter in their careers. And many of those students could end up working for PepsiCo.

To that end, the PepsiCo Foundation has donated more than $600,000 in scholarships to City College students in areas that are important to the company: not only the Diesel Tech program at Olive-Harvey, but the Maintenance Mechanic program at Daley College, the Fork Lift program, and the Supply Chain Management program at other City Colleges.

About 60 students are currently in the Diesel Tech program at Olive-Harvey, with the next semester beginning in January. And you don’t have to give up your day job to attend. Most classes are in the evening. More information, including how to apply can be found HERE.

So there you are, minding your own business as you inspect and squeeze the fresh produce in the supermarket when a robot named Servi, loaded with shelves of bananas and/or pineapples, glides up to you and says, “Hey you. Yes, you.”

It’s happening daily at Jewel stores in Fox Lake, Huntley, and Westmont, Illinois. It’s part of a two-month trial by the stores and Fresh Del Monte. In the audio clip above, Danny Dumas, Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing & Product Management at Fresh Del Monte, tells GN’s Steve Alexander this is the first time the autonomous robot is being used in a grocery retail environment. 

Dumas says customers can grab the bananas and pineapples from Servi’s shelves and engage with the robot as they decide what items to include (or not) in their cart. It’s part of the company’s investment in technology that enhances the in-store experience and encourages healthier eating habits. And, of course, it’s about selling more products. Dumas points out that research shows a 10-20% increase in sales for items that are positioned at checkout. They’re hoping that Servi will similarly prompt higher sales of bananas. You can see and interact with Servi through October at the following Jewel-Osco locations, 6 a.m.- midnight:

• Fox Lake: 1350 US Route 12, Fox Lake, IL 60020
• Westmont: 4 E Ogden Ave, Westmont, IL 60559
• Huntley: 10090 HWY 47, Huntley, IL 60142 

It was just another busy day in the Loyola Medical Center cafeteria in Maywood, Illinois. Cashier Ketzly Angel was helping a line of hungry customers. ER physician Dr. Joan Dimopoulos rushed in to grab a quick bite during a busy shift. While she was eating a chicken sandwich, things got scary: A piece of the sandwich got stuck. In the audio clip above, Dr. Dimopoulos and Ms. Angel each tell WGN’s Steve Alexander what happened then.

Dimopoulos: “I walked over to get a bottle of water and I was in line to pay, and all of a sudden I was actually choking and I couldn’t breathe.”

Angel: “She has holding on to her chest.”

Dimopoulos: “I placed my hand over my throat and the cashier saw me.”

Angel: “She was looking at me, she made eye contact.”

Dimopoulos: “And she asked me if I was choking, and I nodded yes.”

Angel: “And I just knew right then and there.”

Dimopoulos: “And she just came up behind me and performed the Heimlich maneuver twice.”

Angel: “And luckily, I was able to help her get out the piece of food that was stuck.”

Dimopoulos: “And I could finally breathe.”

And that was it. Each went back to their busy days.

Some days later, Dr. Dimopoulos was back in the cafeteria and saw Ketzly, thanked her again, and left with the feeling she needed to do more than just say thanks. She contacted hospital officials who arranged for a hospital-wide event where she publicly thanked Ketzly and gave her a bouquet of flowers. She added, “I’m just so grateful that you were there, and that you had the awareness and the knowledge and the courage to act,” before embracing her. 

Angel, 22, learned the Heimlich maneuver in a health class at Proviso East High School, but had never used it. “I always kept it in mind for any situation that could happen. I’m glad I was able to react quickly and be able to help her,” she said.

Dr. Dimopoulos added, “I think she saved my life.”

An Angel who is a hero.

When Holly Simon gave birth, “The doctors and the nurses all said that they were sorry,” she recalls. Baby Nate had Down syndrome. Right away she knew she had her work cut out for her, not only raising her child but making sure no other new mom has to hear those words.

You may be wondering what this topic has to do with the Business of Food. Fair enough. The answer is pineapple.

As Nate Simon grew up in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood, he developed a flair for fashion, especially brightly colored Hawaiian shirts with pineapples. With mom Holly’s help, he started his own clothing line under the 21 Pineapples brand. She says it isn’t just something to keep him busy, it’s his future.

Why 21 Pineapples? Because, as you’ll hear Holly and Nate explain in the audio clip above, Nate loves pineapples and Down syndrome is a genetic disorder that occurs when a person has an extra copy of chromosome 21. Click here for more information about Nate, Holly, and 21 Pineapples shirts — of which Tom Skilling is a fan (see photo below from Tom) — and for more information about October’s National Down Syndrome Awareness Month, click here.

“We’re halfway through… Spring of ’26,” is how Nilda Esparza describes the reconstruction of Milwaukee Avenue from Belmont Avenue to Logan Square. Esparza is the Executive Producer for the Logan Square Chamber of Commerce. She tells WGN’s Steve Alexander in the audio clip above that the end result will be beautiful. In the interim, though, many of the local businesses that rely on foot traffic are suffering because of the construction and street closures. So, the Chamber is hosting a restaurant and bar crawl on Sunday, August 10, from 1 to 5 pm. Esparza says 21 restaurants are taking part: Andros Taverna, Blazed Bakery, Cafe con Leche, Central Park Bar, Deep Red Wine Merchant, El Cid, Federales Logan Square (which is donating the trolley that will move people around, including to and from the nearby Logan Square Farmers Market), Friendship Chinese Restaurant, Hopewell Brewery, K-Fire Korean BBQ, Kie-Gol-Lanee, La Lunita, Mother’s Ruin, Pure Green, South Loop Market, Spicy Taco, Taco Maya, The Crab Pad, The Harding Tavern, The Whale, and Uprising Theater and Cafe. More information about tickets HERE.

ILLINOIS STATE FAIR RUNS AUGUST 7-17th

Meanwhile, “Adventure Awaits” in Springfield at the Illinois State Fair. In the audio clip above, State Fair Manager Rebecca Clark tells Alexander there are more than 165 hours of free entertainment, plus several hours of grandstand shows featuring some of the biggest names in music. But “at the heart of everything we do is agriculture.” And fair officials have stretched that a little, maybe a lot, with the introduction of the first Illinois State Fair Pickle Ball Tournament. “This is a really big dill, at the Dillinois State Fair.” She says there’s a round-robin doubles tournament with adults and juniors divisions. And for people who don’t play, but are curious, she says there will be demonstration court. No equipment necessary, just maybe some comfortable shoes. More information HERE. And CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE 2025 ILLINOIS STATE FAIR BUTTER COW WEB CAM

When Idina Menzel sang “Let it Go,” she probably didn’t have Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in mind, but those lyrics are the essence of the Health and Human Services Secretary’s suggestion for dealing with the bird flu.

In the audio clip above, Johns Hopkins University researcher Erin Sorrell tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that after hearing of the Secretary’s suggestion, she and four other scientists composed a response, which was published in the July issue of the journal Science. Sorrell says the suggestion of letting the virus spread has no merit, and would be dangerous and unethical, potentially leading to transmission to other species, including humans, and threatening a pandemic. Instead, she says, “We really need to consider how we come together from a one-health perspective, that we incorporate human health, animal health, and environmental health to increase active surveillance, active detection. While cases have been decreasing as migratory birds are essentially out of North America right now, we have the time to regroup, restructure, and be ready for the fall migration.”

Yes, it’s possible we could have a fourth consecutive year of bird flu as the migratory birds–chief spreaders of the virus–return.

Below is the abstract of the article published in the July edition of the journal Science:

As of 20 May, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has confirmed highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in more than 173.1 million birds since the outbreak began in January 2022. The secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr., has suggested allowing the unmitigated spread of HPAI in turkeys and chickens to identify surviving birds—a sentiment supported by Brooke Rollins, secretary of the USDA, which, along with state-level departments of agriculture, has jurisdiction over animal disease outbreaks (1). This approach would be dangerous and unethical. Allowing a highly lethal, rapidly evolving, and contagious virus to run a natural course of infection in poultry would lead to unnecessary suffering of poultry and put other susceptible animals on and near affected farms at risk. It would prolong exposure for farmworkers, which could increase viral adaptation and transmission risks for poultry, other peridomestic animals, and humans.

The Business of Food with Steve Alexander is heard Mondays and Fridays at 7:38 a.m. and 12:45 p.m., and Tuesdays-Thursdays at 6:38 a.m. and 12:45 p.m.

Click above to hear the radio edit. Click below to hear the longer version.

Is bacon an ultra-processed food? Some people would say yes, but Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has stated that when he does eat breakfast–he typically skips breakfast as part of intermittent fasting–but when he does, he likes bacon with his eggs. But chips, sodas, packaged breads, chicken nuggets (which Kennedy has called ‘poison’) and a wide variety of other foods Americans eat daily may make the government’s list of ultra-processed foods that Kennedy would like to see limited or eliminated.

In the audio clips above, Helena Bottemiller Evich, founder and editor-in-chief of FoodFix and who previously led food coverage at Politico, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about the government’s efforts to define UPFs. “There’s a big debate about how to define these. Maybe some ultra-processed foods are good for us but there’s a lot of research that shows the higher consumption of ultra-processed foods associates with poor health outcomes like diabetes and heart disease.” She adds that the government’s updated dietary guidelines coming out this fall will likely tell Americans to consume less UPFs.

The food industry is paying close attention and its D.C. lobbyists are no doubt busy trying to get their opinions heard by the decision makers because, in Illinois alone, where many of the biggest food processors are located, thousands of jobs and billions of dollars may be at stake.

“That’s why everyone is watching this so closely. They’re trying to figure out what the government is going to do and how to prepare for it. We are in a Republican administration. Usually, Republican administrations don’t like to regulate, they try to be more deregulatory, and so we’re waiting to see what Make Ameriica Healthy Again, what this movement looks like in a Republican administration. What we are seeing is the states [being] pretty aggressive [against UPFs]. Texas has a warning label law that would actually require certain foods that contain additives to have a front-of-pack warning on them. We’re seeing West Virginia ban all synthetic food dyes as of 2028. The food companies are, in particular, watching what the states are doing because it’s a lot harder to control what happens and now we’re seeing this patchwork [of standards] get created, and there are economic impacts to that, no question.”

You can read more about Helena Bottemiller Evich’s reporting on food and the food industry at FoodFix.co. “You can get on my email list, I have a weekly newsletter. I have a lot of food policy insiders and industry people and, also, a lot of consumers.”

Meanwhile, MAHA is making life uncertain for American corn growers

Nearly every segment of our food industry is watching to see whether their interests are going to be compromised by MAHA. Even Midwest corn growers feel they may be in the crosshairs of the Make America Healthy Again initiative. The following is a release from the Illinois Corn Growers Association and the National Corn Growers Association:

In a new survey, American corn growers say they would face higher costs and reductions in crop yields if they were to lose access to key herbicides like atrazine and glyphosate. The survey comes after the Make America Healthy Again Commission released its preliminary report questioning the safety of the two herbicides.

The survey findings reveal high stakes for the MAHA Commission’s next report, a set of policy recommendations expected to be released in August, which could impact a key constituency in President Trump’s base. The crop protection tools in question have been thoroughly tested by the Environmental Protection Agency and other regulatory bodies and shown to be safe for their intended uses.

“These results are in line with what I am hearing in conversations among farmers,” said Illinois farmer and National Corn Growers Association President Kenneth Hartman Jr. “We are concerned that claims about herbicides in the pending MAHA recommendations could remove access to the tools we need to safely and sustainably produce a crop.”

Hartman added that growers hope the president will intervene and ensure that the MAHA Commission follows the science and defers to the EPA on matters related to pesticide policy and regulation.

The survey, which was sponsored by NCGA, included responses from more than 1,000 farmers and was conducted between June 17 and July 2, following the release of MAHA’s initial assessment, which mentioned glyphosate and atrazine.

Respondents indicated overwhelmingly – 85% – that weeds are the top pest plaguing their crops and that atrazine and glyphosate were their top two herbicides of choice.

The MAHA Commission, a priority of Health and Human Service Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was formed in February through a presidential executive order. The commission released its initial assessment in May. That assessment was challenged by corn grower leaders for questioning decades of science proving glyphosate and atrazine to be safe and effective.

NCGA has spent months sounding the alarms about the MAHA Commission’s focus on herbicides. The group has said that if the pesticides in the initial assessment were to disappear completely, crop yields could decrease by more than 70% due to pests, weeds and disease.

Herbicides and pesticides, including glyphosate and atrazine have been tested extensively. Before these products are approved for use, companies must submit dozens, if not hundreds, of test results for EPA review and consideration, including tests examining potential effects on child development, dietary exposure, and long-term toxicity. The EPA’s reviews, required by law, are repeated at least every 15 years, or sooner if new data becomes available.

“Given that the EPA’s robust regulatory process has found these products to be safe when used according to label directions, there is no reason to suggest that they are harmful,” Hartman noted. “Doing so will come at a great cost to farmers and rural America.”

The Business of Food can be heard on Mondays and Fridays at 7:38 a.m. and 12:45 p.m., and at 6:38 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. on WGN Radio.

Push play for the radio edit above. The extended version is below.

Many Chicagoans remember Emily Hurd. She, her voice and her piano, with occasional accompaniment, played many Chicago clubs: Space, Schubas, Martyrs, and the Old Town School of Music, among them. She played elsewhere nationally and internationally, too, getting rave reviews. How about this praise from the New York Times?

“She sits at the piano, lips to microphone, boot to pedal, and speaks her mind — in song. I became an instant fan.” ––Val Haller,   New York Times

She is a prolific songwriter — now finishing her 20th album — combining soul, folk, blues, and rock, and her songs have been finalists in several international songwriting competitions. Paul Zollo of American Songwriter says that she writes “albums to fall into and swim in forever.” Her songs have been featured on television’s NCIS, 90210, The Good Wife, Melrose Place, and Life Unexpected.

Her music career was going great.

But her life changed in 2013. Her dad died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Emily, an only child raised in Rockford, decided to pack up and move home to be closer to her mother. And then, as she tells WGN’s Steve Alexander in the audio clips above, “I thought I would do something really crazy with my grief energy.” She bought a 100-year old building in an area of Rockford that didn’t have much else going on and decided to turn it into a restaurant which would be a community gathering place and music venue.

Even though she loves working with her hands, working with wood, the old building became somewhat of a money pit. As she was pulling up flooring, she hit asbestos. An abatement company said it would cost nearly $100,000 to clean it up. Emily didn’t have the money so she did what musicians have done for eons: She did a Kickstarter campaign, offering various rewards for different levels of donations. It worked. The community covered not only the cost of the asbestos but a little extra.

The community also pitched in physically when they saw the dumpster out front filling up with debris from the renovation, which Emily was doing while she was pregnant. Not recommended, she adds.

The rebirth of the building took some three years, but the end result is a beautiful, wood-dominated interior (much of it repurposed) with a small stage where local artists regularly play.

As she explains in the extended version audio clip above, the restaurant became something far different than what she had intended. Instead of just being an outlet for her grief, it became what the community and her team, now numbering 32, needed.

Which, it turns out, is what she needed.

“The place is running on generosity and the generosity makes you feel like it’s all just magically happening all the time.”

Something else happened to Emily during all this. She married and now has two children.

By the way, the name, The Norwegian? Emily did her Ancestry.com and found she is Swedish, but zero percent Norwegian. “I just wanted it to be ‘The Something,'” and with her husband, Mark Christensen, being Norwegian, “The Norwegian just kind of stuck.” To earn some Norse cred, Emily took lessons in Minnesota on how to make lefse. How about lutefisk? Yes, but just once a year during a big winter carnival in the parking lot where, among the activities, there’s a herring toss. Seriously.

It’s all happening at The Norwegian in Rockford, where Emily continues to make music. Oh, and about her mother? “She’s here all the time. We’re always asking her, ‘Mom, we ran out of herring, can you run?’ You know, it really never ends, even though you’ve hit adulthood yourself.”

The Norwegian, at 1402 North Main Street in Rockford, is open 7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, with dinner served from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday .

The Business of Food with Steve Alexander is heard at 7:38 am on Monday and Friday, 6:38 am on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and at 12:45 pm each weekday on WGN Radio.

Radio edit above, full-length interview below.

When you’re starting a business, it’s wise to pay attention to others’ opinions. Zach Rash and Brad Squicciarini were studying robotics at UCLA and developed the concept for a more efficient, economical, and environmentally friendly way of delivering food: a robot, or more to the point, a robocourier. Rather than continue to grad school, they decided to start a company. They named it Cyan, like the color, and if not for the advice of an investor, that’s the name they would have given to their robots. “He said that’s the worst name I’ve ever heard, so we looked up cute dog names and Coco was at the top of the list. It was about a 10-second process.”

In 2020, they rolled out Coco, which is a pinkish-reddish (cyan!) insulated cube on wheels that weighs about 100 pounds and can carry several large pizzas or four bags of groceries, or a combination of both. It can carry hot or cold food, or both. Deliveries began in parts of Los Angeles, where the weather is nearly always nice. As he tells WGN’s Steve Alexander in the audio clips above, in December of 2024, they added snow tires, all-wheel drive, and other adjustments to see if Coco could navigate the often icy and snow-clogged sidewalks of Chicago, not to mention the freezing temperatures that limit battery life. It did, and as of this writing, there are about a hundred Coco robots roaming the streets of Chicago.

“The core technology we’ve developed is this ultra-low cost vehicle, it’s compact, it’s lightweight, it’s super-safe, it’s energy efficient, it works really well in these dense urban environments like Chicago where there can be a lot of traffic and it’s difficult to find parking,” said Rash. “So, it’s designed to be the best autonomous vehicle to move goods around these cities, and that’s all powered by a self-driving A.I. technology.” He says Coco uses a combination of five cameras; front, rear, left, and right cameras with LiDAR for 360-degree perception, essential for autonomous navigation. Cameras provide visual detail like signs and lane markings, while LiDAR delivers accurate depth sensing. Together, he says, they create a real-time 3D view of the environment, allowing safe path planning, obstacle avoidance, and reliable operation in complex urban settings.

But even with all their A.I. and cameras, the robots can get bogged down. That’s where humans come in. “We have drivers who work remotely and can oversee the fleet and step in when the robots are having trouble making a decision.” Rash adds, “You know you can think about it going down the sidewalk autonomously, it can cross the basic intersection autonomously, but then you have a lot of different situations where you have snow all over the ground, the traffic light’s out, it’s gridlock traffic, or there’s a construction zone. The system won’t know what to do itself, it can ask for help, and our human operators (who may be thousands of miles away) are trained on how to handle those scenarios.”

Rash says the robots complement, not replace human delivery drivers. “When it’s freezing cold, snow all over the ground and it might be miserable to be outside and be a delivery courier, those are also the same times people want to order food or groceries the most. They don’t want to leave their house, they want things brought to them, but it’s hard to get drivers on the road during those times. So robots can provide a really helpful service to people in the most extreme weather conditions.” Even in good weather, some restaurants have trouble getting enough drivers.

Most of the food delivered by Coco is pizza. “It’s about 70% hot prepared food, and 30% groceries,” says Rash. To order food delivered by Coco, a customer uses the restaurant’s app or delivery apps DoorDash or Uber, places the order. The restaurant places the food in Coco’s box, punches in a code to lock it, and Coco takes off to its destination. Customers can track the robot on their phones, much like we do with ride-share cars, and are notified when Coco arrives. They punch in a code and the lid opens. Rash says the deliveries take at most 15 minutes, and Coco makes no stops along the way.

Any problems with thieves? Rash says no. He says it would take special tools to get into the locked Coco food compartment, and at 100 pounds, it would be difficult to haul away. There are cameras all over it and alarms and pre-recorded warnings and messages the remote drivers can activate. Plus, he says, “People generally understand that it’s transporting food from a local business to a family for dinner. People treat them with a lot more respect than you might have seen with some other devices.” He may be referring to the EV rental scooters, which are often dumped willy-nilly after their use, blocking Chicago’s sidewalks. Those, too, along with tree roots and broken concrete and other impediments that make just walking on the sidewalks difficult, present a challenge to Coco’s mobility, but Rash says the system keeps track of such things and Coco, in its A.I. way, knows how to avoid them.

The Business of Food with Steve Alexander can be heard Mondays and Fridays at 7:38 am and 12:45 p.m., and Tuesdays-Thursdays at 6:38 am and 12:45 p.m. on WGN Radio.

Radio edit above. Extended interview below.

Chicago is a restaurant city, one of the world’s best, and at the top of the list of Windy City restaurateurs is Alex Dana. In 1973, he opened his first restaurant on the corner of Washington and Wacker in the heart of the Loop. It was across from the Opera House, and his recipes won the hearts and palettes of opera fans and performers. A year later, he began building what would become the first of the Rosebud Restaurant Group.

Located on Taylor Street in Chicago’s Little Italy, it was originally named Bocciola della Rose (Bud of the Rose). Wisely, he changed the name to Rosebud, which opened in 1976 and it quickly became known for its delicious, authentic, Italian cuisine and as a hot spot for celebrity sightings. In the audio clips above, Dana tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about late night visits from Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and others after they performed, and he talks about his special friendship with Tony Bennett. More contemporary stars became fans, including Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Oprah Winfrey. Rosebud on Taylor St. is where Rosebud traditions were born 51 years ago and it remains open today.

Over the decades, the Rosebud Restaurant Group expanded to include Rosebud on Rush (1992), Carmine’s on Rush (1995) which opened as Carmine’s Clamhouse. “Actually, that was a laundromat, then El Cerrito came and put an addition on the top and made it a restaurant. Carmine’s, with its patio dining, became one of “the” spots in Chicago to see and be seen. “What made us there was the outdoor seating. That’s what that street’s known for. That outdoor, in the evenings, people wanted to hang out” and people watch. In 2023, Dana decided the old building had given as much as it could, and he leveled it and built a brand-new Carmine’s, which is opening this summer. There will not be sidewalk seating. Instead, there will be a second-floor outdoor terrace/patio that will be outstanding. It seats 100-125 people and you overlook Rush Street and everything, and you feel so comfortable and safe up there. You’re not on the street, but yet, you’re there, you know? And at 10 o’clock, the police close up the sidewalk seating, but we’ll be able to stay open (with our outdoor seating) till two in the morning.”

Another Carmine’s opened in Rosemont, with more Rosebuds added in Deerfield, Lemont, and Naperville, and Rosetta Italian in Chicago’s Theater District, and Mia Rosebud in Boca Raton, Florida.

Dana tells Alexander the key to success and longevity in a very difficult business is passion. “I love what I do. I love what I do. And my father and mother loved what they did. They were great restaurateurs because they worked hard, like I do. We’re back-of-the-house people. I’m in the culinary world. Management is beautiful with the guests and waiters and all of the people who take care of the customers, but I still like being on top of the red sauce and making sure it’s what people want everyday.”

Labor–finding and keeping good workers–has been an issue for the restaurant industry. “But you know what?” asks Dana. “If you make the people feel like they’ve got a home, and they’re happy, and you pay them well, it’s good.” He concedes that it isn’t a business for everyone and is hard on families. Six-day weeks, and the notion of spending weekends with your spouse and children like people in other industries do? “You don’t do that in this business. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, where are you at? Saturday night at five o’clock, you know what that’s called? Showtime, here they come!”

One of Dana’s tenets is: “You can’t look back if you want to move ahead.” That may have propelled him over the past half-century, but you can’t blame the guy for revisiting some of the many memories he has assembled in an iconic career.

Even though he did skydive recently, it’s hard to imagine what WGN legend and meteorologist emeritus Tom Skilling could have in common with Superman. In the audio clip above, WGN’s entertainment reporter Dean Richards, in his regular 8:10 a.m. segment with Bob Sirott, mentions the name of the actor playing Superman in the new movie: David Corenswet. It’s pronounced “corn sweat.” WGN’s Steve Alexander, with the help of Chicago’s very own Superman, takes the story from there.

The Business of Food can be heard on WGN Radio Monday-Friday at 12:45 during the Wintrust Business Lunch with John Williams, and during The Bob Sirott Show Mondays and Fridays at 7:38 am, and Tuesday-Thursday at 6:38 am.

In the audio clip above, famed Chicago-grown chef Joe Flamm tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about his participation in the recent Taste of the Nation for No Kid Hungry event where more than 500 people got together to have fun and donate money to tackle food insecurity in Chicago. The sold-out event was at Rockwell on the River, hosted by Flamm and Diana Davila, the Chef/Owner of Mi Tocaya Antojeria. Fifty of Chicago’s top eateries brought out their celebrated chefs and mixologists to support No Kid Hungry’s work. (Missed it? You can still donate at the website.)

Flamm has been involved in No Kid Hungry for several years and tells Alexander about going to Chicago schools where No Kid Hungry donations pay for kids’ breakfasts. He says each dollar donated provides up to 10 meals for kids in need, and across the country one in five children are living with hunger. In addition to Flamm, fellow Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard cooked and Michelin Star restaurants such as Sepia and Galit, and multiple James Beard Award winners and finalists were there to serve the crowd.

Flamm also tells Alexander how he got into the restaurant business as a teenager, and what the business is like right now in Chicago.

“Hold my beer!” has become a popular comeback to try to “out do” another person’s story. But in the audio clip above, researcher Jennifer Hoponick Redmon at RTI International tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that PFAS, so-called “forever chemicals” because they last forever and are nearly everywhere, including our blood.

PFAS are human-made chemicals discovered nearly 100 years ago by accident. They became widely used because of their water-, oil- and stain-repellent properties. Over the decades, they have have been found in surface water, groundwater and municipal water supplies across the U.S. and the world. Hoponick Redmon and her team wondered if there are PFAS in our beer, too. Yes, they are.

Hoponick Redmon and her colleagues tested 23 beers. The test subjects were produced by U.S. brewers in areas with documented water system contamination, plus popular domestic and international beers from larger companies with unknown water sources. They found PFAS in 95% of the beers they tested.

Although breweries typically have water filtration and treatment systems, they are not designed to remove PFAS. It is possible to filter out the bad stuff through techniques such as reverse osmosis and activated carbon, but she says that is expensive and there’s debate about who would bear the brunt of those costs.

There’s a health cost. Recent studies show that PFAS exposure can lead to adverse reproductive, developmental, cardiovascular, liver, kidney, immunological, and carcinogenic health effects. And, the PFAS can remain in the body for years. Ironically, beer has been a staple beverage since premodern times, when it was actually considered safer than water given the destruction of waterborne pathogens during brewing. Today, beer is the third most popular beverage around the world, behind only water and tea.

If you’re a brewer–and it doesn’t matter how big or small you are, PFAS are a problem for all–RTI International is offering help on its website. If you’re wondering about your tap water, you can contact your state’s Department of Public Health.

Click above to hear the extended 16 and a half minute interview; click below for the 2 and a half minute radio version.

First things first: Where did Meathead get his name? In the audio clips above, he tells WGN’s Steve Alexander his dad gave it to him. Not at birth, though. It was after he and his dad watched “All in the Family,” the ’70s TV series where Archie Bunker dubbed his new son-in-law “Meathead” because of his polar opposite political and social beliefs. “Dad and I were on opposite sides of the political fence,” says Meathead. “He was no Archie Bunker–he wasn’t a bigot–but I was a young, liberal college kid, and when I got into cooking professionally, Meathead just kind of stuck.”

Chicago’s very own Meathead has a new cookbook, his second. The first was the bestselling Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling. His new book is The Meathead Method: A BBQ Hall of Famer’s Secrets and Science on BBQ, Grilling and Outdoor Cooking. He sees it as much a science book as it is a cookbook. In its 400 pages, he teaches why and how to elevate all your cooking, outdoors and indoors. He busts myths, teaches science, shares hot tips, and introduces new methods, tools, ingredients, and recipes. And he isn’t kidding when he says “Almost anything you can cook indoors you can cook outdoors–only better.” One example: fried chicken. “It’s a bloody mess. It spatters all over the counter top, it gets all over the floor, it sets off the smoke alarm, the house stinks for a week.” Instead, he says, “You go out back, turn on your gas grill. Turn one burner on high, leave the other burners off. Put a Dutch oven on the side with the burner, put in two inches of oil. When it hits 350, you put in your chicken. You want to roll it around in flour, or corn starch or egg white, do all that. After about 15 minutes, you’ve got beautiful fried chicken, and who cares if it spatters, who cares if it smokes?”

Among the many myths he busts is the popular Chicago Beer Can Chicken. “No doubt about it, a whole golden chicken sitting on its butt like Buddha is delicious looking. And it absolutely is delicious, because it is a roasted chicken and roasted chicken is a culinary wonder. But the beer can has nothing to do with its wondrousness, and in fact, it keeps the chicken from reaching its pinnacle.” He goes on to explain why and concludes with: “Whoever thought this up musta had one too many.”

Along with the science, the “why,” there’s plenty of “how.” There are dozens of recipes for beef, bison, pork, poultry, veggies, fruit, side dishes, bread, soup, sauces, rubs, desserts, and more. Plus, he includes instructions on how to cook on every type of grill, including charcoal, gas, wood, wood pellet, and electric, and the various types of implements you’ll need to be the master of your backyard BBQ domain.

It’s beautifully illustrated. “Ooh, ooh,” exclaimed Meathead. “Can I tell you something? I did all the photography. I got my Masters at the Art Institute of Chicago. I’m a photographer. I’m very proud of that.”

Meathead is the founder of AmazingRibs.com.

Click below to hear the audio.

Whisk and Wonder, where baking meets science. Kids will create edible experiments while learning how chemistry, physics, and biology make baking magic happen.

Decorating Adventure Camp: Kids will learn the art of cake decorating, including creative techniques like piping, frosting, and working with buttercream frosting, royal icing, and fondant to decorate their own summer-themed desserts.

Is It Cake?: Campers will explore the art of illusion, transforming cakes and treats into everyday objects — like popsicles that are actually cake and realistic edible sandcastles.

The camps are 1/2 day, week-long sessions. More information at Wilton.com.

By coincidence, and not related to the baking camps, Steve found out he and Declan are related, by marriage. Steve asked Declan — who has a distinct Irish accent — what part of Ireland he’s from. Declan said, “I’m a West Cork man.” When Steve said his wife Diane’s family is from a tiny farming village of Kealkill, Declan said his family is from the same area. When Steve said Diane’s late uncles were John and Ted O’Leary, Declan exclaimed, “They were my second cousins!” Small world.

In the audio clip below, Bill Durbin, the head of North America logistics and planning at Kraft Heinz, which owns the Claussen’s brand, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about the history of Claussen’s — started 150 years ago in Chicago by German immigrant Claus Claussen when he had a load of cucumbers he couldn’t sell, so he turned them into pickles. (When life gives you cucumbers, make pickles?) The Woodstock plant processes approximately 60 million pounds of cucumbers annually to make roughly 42 million jars of Claussen, the country’s top-selling refrigerated pickle brand.

The thing about cukes is they aren’t all the same size and shape. Sorting had been human job, but artificial intelligence is now lending a hand. Durbin says a series of cameras feeds information into the plant’s A.I. system which has been trained to detect different types of defects and different types of sizes. He says makes the process of turning cucumbers into pickles–and, by the way, it’s a fast process; only 10 days on average between the cucumber being picked to the pickle being packed. Durbin says since A.I. has been implemented, the Woodstock factory has seen a 12% increase in efficiency.

But what about the fear that A.I. will replace humans and jobs? Durbin tells Alexander that just the opposite has happened, with increased efficiency in sorting the cukes leading to more pickles being made and packed.

Here’s the text of my phone interview with Wallace:

Joe Maxwell: First, we applaud DOJ for taking action. Consumers have been ripped off at the grocery store for far too long as it relates to the price of eggs, so hats off to them for taking a deep dive into these dominant firms and their pricing structure, looking for anti-trust violations. We are confident that the actions being taken by DOJ are a result of our analysis of this market and then the letter and the factual details we sent to them and the Federal Trade Commission.

Steve Alexander: What happens now?

JM: In that a formal investigation has been opened by the Department of Justice, everything will be quiet from them for a while. It is possibilities of criminal action and, clearly, civil actions, DOJ will approach this as any other regulator or law enforcement office, and do a detailed investigation. We expect they will be gathering data from individuals in the industry, from individual consumers, from grocery stores, retail grocers, on what they had seen and how they had been treated in this market. Following that they will make a determination whether laws were broken, and second, even though were broken, can they make a case? Can they bring that case against the power of these big firms and bring them to justice. And, if so, they’ll file a complaint against them.

SA: And how long will all this take?

JM: From our experience in other cases in working through these types of actions of market abuse, it can take up to a year. It depends on the complexity and how willing the dominant firms are willing to respond. They can drag their feet, slow it down. But we trust that DOJ will be very diligent, like a dog with a bone, until they unravel the abuses that have been created and the gouging the consumer has felt at the grocery store when it comes to egg prices.

SA: The DOJ is under a new administration now. Is there any indication their fervor will be different?

JM: The Biden Administration was very aggressive on anti-trust cases. They passed and adopted new rules for reviewing acquisitions and mergers to try to stop continued concentration of monopoly power in the market. Right out of the gate, the Trump administration and the DOJ and FTC acknowledged they are going to keep those rules. So we feel very good that the DOJ in the Trump administration will be very diligent in this review, and we wish them well.

SA: Is it possible we’ll see a drop in egg prices as a result of the DOJ just launching the investigation?

JM: What we have seen is that often times these firms, when regulators, government agencies like the Department of Justice or the FTC begin to take action, suddenly they reverse that behavior in order to lower the price so that everybody kind of breathes a sigh of relief and goes away. That is not an uncommon response by an industry that’s been abusing the market, and so we really hope DOJ and the people stay at it and get to the bottom of what happened, what is happening, since the outbreak of the Avian Flu in 2022.

NOTE: Although not named in this report, Cal-Maine Foods, has been among the targets of Farm Action’s efforts. Farm Action says Cal-Maine Foods, which controls 20% of the egg market, increased its gross profits by 237% between FY21 and FY24, and between FY21 and FY23, its gross profits shot up by 646%. A call to Cal-Maine for comment has not been returned.

In the audio clip below, Mariah Hadler, Jones Dairy Farm company store and customer engagement manager, tells WGN Radio’s Steve Alexander that the farm in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, goes back to 1832, before Wisconsin was even a state. Milo Jones and his family made their living with a dairy farm, but in 1889, Milo’s son, Milo C. Jones, was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and could no longer operate the farm, but he still needed to support his family. So, he made breakfast sausage using his mother’s recipe—just pork, salt and spices—and started selling it to friends and family. Soon enough, he was shipping it by rail to customers near and far. And that’s how Jones Dairy Farm got into the pork business. The tipping point came In the 1980s when the farm sold off its dairy herd to focus on its meat processing business. It specialized in pork that is found in retail stores nationwide, and by mail order, where the number one product is scrapple. In the clip, Mariah explains what’s in scrapple, and if you’re among the uninitiated, you may find its description is not as appetizing sounding as its many fans say it is.

But why is it still Jones Dairy Farm? Hadler says the brand is so strong that when the 137-year-old company considered a change, customers surveyed made it clear that they liked it as it is. 

So, Hayes is helping raise money with a video publicizing a raffle for Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon, which is described in the audio clip by the donor, Glen House board member Jim Burket, as hard to find because of its unique shape, featuring brass horses atop each bottle which fans of the brand like to collect.

To participate in the raffle, visit www.GlenHouseFoodPantry.org, click on the “Donate Now” button in the upper right corner of the page, type in the $10 increment corresponding to how many tickets you’d like, and choose “Bourbon Raffle” in the 2025 Pantry Support drop down. Once you receive your emailed confirmation receipt from the Pantry, forward it to Pantry board member and raffle organizer, Jim  Burket, at Jkrcburket@sbcglobal.net. He will make your tickets and send you your number. 

Participants must be 21 years of age or older. Chances of winning are determined by the number of entries. Winner will be chosen in a random drawing of all entries and a video showing Sean pulling the ticket will be posted on the Pantry’s website and Facebook page by mid-March. 

The Glen House Food Pantry provides essential groceries and support to people at risk of hunger through a collaboration of local churches and the broader community. The Pantry’s services are available to neighbors who live, work, or attend school in DuPage County. In 2024, the Pantry distributed  nearly 870,000 pounds of groceries to more than 8,500 neighbors, including 764 families who visited for the first time. Located at 55 N. Park Blvd., Glen Ellyn, the Pantry was founded in 1979 and is a registered 501(c)(3) organization, privately funded through grants and donations. For more information visit www.GlenHousePantry.org or call 630-469-8668.

After high school, he went to the University of Illinois to study agriculture and “learn a couple of things to bring back to the farm and continue to grow and improve our operation.” As a freshman, he joined the FarmHouse agricultural fraternity, where one of the programs sponsored was Be the Match.org, a stem cell donor registry which is now known as NMDP.org. After signing up and getting his cheeks and gums swabbed — which he says took all of about two minutes — he was in the donor base. About a year later, Nathan’s phone pinged. He was a match for a 24-year old woman with a rare auto-immune disease. In the audio clip below, Nathan tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that after a bit more vetting, he and his mom, Prairie Farmer agriculture reporter Holly Spangler, were on a plane to West Palm Beach, Florida. Over a period of about 7 hours, Nathan’s blood left his body via an IV in his left arm, passed through a machine where the stem cells were harvested, and then the blood went back into his body via an IV in his right arm. Uncomfortable? “No, not really,” says Nathan. He said his left arm had to remain immobile for most of the day, but he had pretty much full movement with his right arm. “I was able to eat with it and do a little schoolwork with it.”

Nathan is an enthusiastic supporter of the NMDP.org program and urges anyone who’s eligible (18-40 years of age and in good health) to sign up and get on the registry. “It’s wild it all started with taking two minutes out of my day to sign up for the registry. It’s unbelievable the amount of good you can do through it and you never know whose life you’ll be able to save.”

As mentioned, Nathan’s mother is a journalist with Prairie Farmer Magazine, where she wrote about the experience.

Taylor and her co-authors say the link between traffic and unhealthy food choices is just one more reason policymakers around the country and the globe should prioritize infrastructure reforms to ease congestion. “Our results contribute to the literature suggesting time constraints are really important to the food choices people make. Any policies aimed at loosening time constraints — and traffic is essentially lost time — could help battle unhealthy eating,” Taylor said. “That could mean improvements in infrastructure to mitigate traffic congestion, expanding public transport availability, and potentially increasing work from home opportunities.”

Meanwhile, she says packing healthy snacks to keep in the car could keep you from pulling off the highway for fast food when you hear on WGN that the drive home is going to be much longer than usual.

The study, “Slow traffic, fast food: The effects of time lost on food store choice,” is published in the Journal of Urban Economics [DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2025.103737]. Authors in addition to Taylor include Panka Bencsik of Vanderbilt University, Lester Lusher of the University of Pittsburgh and IZA.

Here’s the transcript of the conversation with Brooke Bestwina of The Feed Store:

Steve: People who have had it with the cost of eggs are thinking they can beat the system and buy some chickens and put them in the backyard and raise their own. They’re not alone are they? 

Brooke: Yes, a lot of people think the same thing, and we’ve seen a lot of people wanting to find out where their food is coming from in the last few years as well, not just wanting to get their own eggs .

Steve: I suppose some of the questions prospective chicken farmers have include: How much will this cost? How long will it take before I get my baby chicks to grow up and start laying eggs? 

Brooke: That’s correct. When we receive chicks from the hatchery they’re about one or two days old, and are shipped through the mail. They will not start laying till about six months of age, depending on the breed of chicken, and it’s not going to be cheap. You’re really not gonna supplement your groceries, reduce your egg bill, by raising backyard chickens, depending, of course, on how many chickens you raise. You do have to house them, feed them, take care of them, so the labor and the cost involved are not quite worth it, you know, depending on how expensive eggs get! 

Steve: So you can’t just by a hen and get eggs on day one?

Brooke: No, correct. I mean, you can maybe find adult chickens, but any we get in are ones that would be surrendered. We don’t buy adult chickens. I think, personally, raising them up from babies is better. But you’re not just gonna go out and grab a hen and she’s gonna lay, you know, 10 eggs a day.

Steve: OK, well that brings up another question: Once my babies start laying, how many eggs will I get per day? 

Brooke: That depends on the breed, as well, so different chickens lay at different times, and all different colors of eggs as well as different scheduled for laying. So you may get a chicken that can lay one egg per day and that’s probably the most you’re going to get from a breed like an Isa Brown or White Leghorn. Otherwise, if you want colorful eggs, those hens are gonna lay a little bit less, maybe 150 eggs per year up to about 200 eggs per year 

Steve: The math is looking worse. And there’s another issue that’s entered the equation: the bird flu.

Brooke: So it’s been around for a couple years and it really hasn’t impacted us personally so much here at The Feed Store. It isn’t as big an issue for backyard flocks which may be less susceptible to migratory fowl. Keeping them out of contact with wild birds is the most important thing right now, which is kinda hard to do unless you have them completely sealed up in a coop. A lot of these birds are free range and things like that, and the risk is greater if there’s a pond or other body of water nearby. In the surrounding area here, there is a lot going on right now, we’re losing birds left and right. If the flu turns up at a hatchery or farm, they have to cull all the birds. There was an uptick of it in the area near one of the hatcheries we buy chicks from, so there may be a quarantine on some birds for 21 days, but it hasn’t affected us so far. We have chicks for sale today, but I can’t say what the future holds. 

Steve: I’m not trying to talk to anybody out of being going into the backyard chicken business but they should go in knowing all of the facts.

Brooke: Exactly, because it is something that people do get enjoyment out of. Watching them is better than watching TV! Many people consider them their best friends and they even name them. We named ours and know that they can be very, very fulfilling pets. 

Steve: Did you name any of them Steve? 

Brooke: (laughs) I do not have a Steve out there, but maybe I’ll consider that next time. 

Steve: (laughs) I guess it would have to be Stephanie. 

Brooke: If it’s a girl, but I have two roosters outside as well, so… 

Steve: Oh, well there you go. Cock-a-doodle-do! But back to the topic: Sum up your advice to people considering backyard chickens, please. 

Brooke: I wouldn’t discourage anybody from raising backyard chickens right now, even with the bird flu. They have to be inside for a month or two when they are babies anyway, so you’re going to get some bonding time in there to start with. But just remember these are animals, so things can happen to them. They can get sick. They can break legs. They can have heart attacks. But I wouldn’t dissuade anybody from doing backyard chickens. They make wonderful pets and we’ll give folks a lot of information if they come in to The Feed Store to help you keep your birds healthy and happy. 

Steve: And where do they find you? 

Brooke: We’re at 5408 S. Harlem Avenue, one block off of I-55 on Harlem Avenue in Summit, Illinois 

Steve: And, it’s important to check with your city or village.

Brooke: Yes, I would definitely check with your local ordinance at your local village. They’ll let you know right away if it’s legal. That’s important, because you don’t wanna get attached to these birds and then have to get rid of them. 

The university added this information:

How was the study conducted?

Northwestern scientists studied three groups of healthy adults. One group consumed only juice, another had juice with whole foods and a third ate only whole plant-based foods. Scientists collected saliva, cheek swabs and stool samples before, during and after the diets to analyze bacterial changes using gene-sequencing techniques.

What the scientists found

The juice-only group showed the most significant increase in bacteria associated with inflammation and gut permeability, while the plant-based whole food group saw more favorable microbial changes. The juice plus food group had some bacterial shifts but less severe than the juice-only group. These findings suggest that juicing without fiber may disrupt the microbiome, potentially leading to long-term health consequences.

“Most people think of juicing as a healthy cleanse, but this study offers a reality check,” said senior author Dr. Melinda Ring, director of the Osher Center for Integrative Health at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine physician. 

“Consuming large amounts of juice with little fiber may lead to microbiome imbalances that could have negative consequences, such as inflammation and reduced gut health,” Ring said.

Why fiber matters

Juicing strips away much of the fiber in whole fruits and vegetables, which feeds beneficial bacteria that produce anti-inflammatory compounds such as butyrate. Without fiber, sugar-loving bacteria can multiply. The high sugar content in juice further fuels these harmful bacteria, disrupting the gut and oral microbiome. The study also suggests that reduced fiber intake may impact metabolism, immunity and even mental health.

The oral microbiome responds quickly

Unlike the gut microbiota, which remained relatively stable, the oral microbiome showed dramatic changes during the juice-only diet. Scientists found a reduction in beneficial Firmicutes bacteria and an increase in Proteobacteria, a bacterial group associated with inflammation. 

“This highlights how quickly dietary choices can influence health-related bacterial populations,” said Ring. “The oral microbiome appears to be a rapid barometer of dietary impact.”

Next steps

The findings underscore the need for more research on how juice and other diets impact the microbiome, especially in children, who often consume juice as a fruit substitute.

“The nutritional composition of juice diets — specifically their sugar and carbohydrate levels — plays a key role in shaping microbial dynamics in both the gut and oral cavity and should be carefully considered,” said first author Maria Luisa Savo Sardaro, a research associate in the Amato Lab at the department of anthropology at Northwestern University and a professor of food microbiology at San Raffaele University in Rome.This study also highlights the importance of prioritizing fiber in dietary guidelines and food production. For now, Ring says, “If you love juicing, consider blending instead to keep the fiber intact, or pair juices with whole foods to balance the impact on your microbiome.”

Part of Duke’s effort to expand its brand is the sponsorship of a college football bowl game in Charlotte, NC, called, appropriately, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. And the winning coach is treated (?) to a post-game bath of mayonnaise. She says the first three winning coaches seemed to accept it as a necessary evil of winning, keeping their hats on, but the 2024-25 winning coach, P.J. Fleck of Minnesota’s Golden Gophers, was all in, ripping off his cap and embracing the mayo.

Oof!

There are four main reasons, according to Marc Dresner of the American Egg Board:

1. The Bird Flu: In the past year, more than 40 million laying hens have been culled because of the H5N1 avian influenza and, since 2022, nearly 150 million.
2. Inflation of input costs faced by farmers: fuel, feed, equipment, labor, etc.
3. Demand: Contrary to the way it typically works–prices go up and demand goes down–prices went up and so did demand. Americans love their eggs and are willing–with a good amount of griping–to pay the higher prices.
4. California’s Proposition 12 and other efforts to require hens to be kept cage-free. Even though egg producers may be located in other states not requiring cage-free, in order to sell into cage-free states, they need to invest significant capital to satisfy the standards.

But, as Dresner says in the audio clip below with WGN’s Steve Alexander, don’t blame the farmers. They have nothing to do with the higher egg prices, and having to destroy their flocks because of the bird flu exacts a heavy toll, both financial and emotional.

On LinkedIn, Erica Bethe Levin wrote this about her Ozempic experience:

“I’ve always scoffed at the whole “you have to put your oxygen mask on first” trope. If the worst were to happen, those masks are going on my kids. Period. I can’t even fathom a situation where that wouldn’t be the case, but I UNDERSTAND the philosophy.

That being said, I haven’t been taking enough care of myself. I start my day with work (hours before the kids get up), school drop-off, work, afternoon activities, work, “feeding time at the zoo” (dinner with two kids), mom-time, more work if I don’t fall asleep reading books to the kids. There were never enough hours in the day for even a 30-minute yoga practice. So my curiosity, and dare I say – vanity? – got the best of me, and I decided to start Ozempic to lose the final 5/10 pounds that almost every single woman I know tries to lose her. entire. life. (The unique pressure women experience in ALL things, including physicality, is a very serious problem that deserves another post.)

I opted for easy. Well, it was anything but. Ozempic + gamechanging new migraine meds (gifting me a new lease on life!) + stress that’s been oozing out of me for 20-ish years = a near death experience. As much as I wish this was my theatre major histrionics talking, it’s not. Six nurses and 2 doctors told me I was lucky to be alive after my blood sugar dropped to 20 and my heart rate to 40. If I had passed out – inevitable if my dad and husband hadn’t rushed home when I called them incoherently trying to explain how I felt – I would have gone into a diabetic coma.

I spent days in the hospital, no one understanding why I would “do this to myself” (this rhetoric made my sky-high “mom guilt” way worse). After returning home and taking a doctor-mandated week off, my entire family got hit with the flu and my parents with COVID. It’s been a rough month for the Kanes, BUT…..it sure has shed light on what we’re going to be doing more of in 2024: time together, physical activity (not watching the kids play tennis or hike, but actively joining them), sit-down dinners, books, me-time (yoga, or my new favorite way of killing two birds with one stone: conference calls on walks), less unnecessary stress, iPhone attachment, and more un-missed therapy appointments.

All of this to say…we do need those oxygen masks first. And if that looks like a book before bed instead of another article on industry trends, or a simple morning yoga flow, then that’s it. We need to stop putting pressure on ourselves to be perfect, to always be on-time, to “have it all.” We have more than we realize, maybe even “all” of it, and if we’re not here to enjoy it, what’s the point?

My family has forgiven me; I haven’t quite yet. But I’m working on it as part of my new commitment to physical and mental health. 2024 is about sustainability. In life, love and work. If I can’t sustain my own health, then I can’t sustain anything else. I wish sustainability for all of you. And, in case no one has told you recently….you’re perfect the way you are.”

My name is Heather Van Vorous. I am the founder and CEO of Heather’s Tummy Care and the author of two books about dealing with the disorder.

Steve:

What are the names of the books? 

Heather:

Eating for IBS and The First Year IBS 

Steve:

How did how did you get into the peppermint tea business?

Heather:

The company was founded to help people manage the symptoms of IBS, and the peppermint tummy tea is the direct hit for heading off things like pain, spasms, cramps, urgency, bloating, and gas. And I basically fell into the business because I’ve been a patient. I’ve had IBS since I was a child, about nine years old, and was not really given any help for that at all, and wasn’t diagnosed for a very long time as well. In the end, when I figured out what would help me and realized that it would help other people as well, that expanded into emails to people way back in the ‘90s that became books and finally to a website that became the Heather’s Tummy Care company dedicated to helping people manage IBS and live successfully and happily by being able to manage the disorder. Peppermint Tummy Tea is a key part of that, particularly if people are prone to the pain and spasm side of IBS. By huge coincidence, the best peppermint in the world actually grows in my own backyard—or just across the mountains from where I live in Seattle—in eastern Washington. We have the Columbia River Valley with its volcanic soil and the right climate that produces the highest menthol and other volatile oil levels of peppermint in the world, so that makes it particularly helpful and effective for the symptoms. 

Steve:

What’s your personal story with IBS?

Heather:

Well, it was unfortunate. I was nine years old when I had my first attack and I was a happy, healthy little kid playing on a beautiful summer day in the neighbor’s garden and all of a sudden was doubled over in pain so severe I couldn’t breathe, actually blacked out from it. I thought I was dying. My pediatrician couldn’t find any reason for it and basically told me to stop whining. From that point on, I continued to suffer, and it was really more than another 10 years before I even had a rough diagnosis, and even then I didn’t have help. Even once I had a diagnosis, it was just sort of “Here you go, now good luck. Hope you can figure out a way to live with it.” It took another 10 years for me to figure that out what I could eat and what I couldn’t and what would set it off and what were my safe foods and trigger foods. So I decided to try to help other people who suffer and not just give information but give them the products to help and physically manage the symptoms 

Steve:

Tell me about what your company is like now. 

Heather: 

Oh my goodness! What started as a little operation out of a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood where we had to haul things up three flights of stairs and the boxes filled the bedroom has turned into a 25,000 square-foot certified organic manufacturing facility that is robot-driven, highly automated it looks like Willy Wonka’s factory in here. It’s crazy. So yeah, I turned literally something that started as an email list to people 25 years ago and became a little website into this. 

Steve: 

This is a common disorder. What are your thoughts on why so many people suffer?

Heather: 

It’s such a common chronic disorder, so often undiagnosed or misdiagnosed or people just live with it. But I know about one and five Americans are walking around with IBS. A lot of people out there need help. They don’t really know the underlying cause at this point. Some people seem to be born with it and some people have an insult to the gut and they can point to what triggered it, such as food poisoning abdominal surgery. Some people just developed one day out of the blue, but it’s very common and it’s a disorder. It’s not a disease. It’s defined by its symptoms. It’s not just a garbage can disorder that you should be dumped into if they can’t figure out what’s wrong with you. But they don’t really know the underlying pathology details at this point, there’s a lot of research still to be done 

Steve:

And you were dealing with your symptoms, basically using trial and error determining what you could have and what you could not have or what made you feel better and why didn’t? 

Heather:

Yes, a great deal of years of trial and error, often times a painful learning experience and then just a lot of reading and research on my own to try to figure out what was going on with me and particularly what the tie was with foods. Why were certain food making me sick, why were other foods my safety net, things I knew would help me? Trying to understand, underlying nutritional reasons for that, and that became my goal, realizing over the years, there were very clear logical biological reasons why certain foods would trigger symptoms and other ones would help prevent them and that took me down the road into things like soluble versus insoluble fiber: One is a stabilizing force, and one is a possible likely trigger in the G.I. track. Stimulants, for a lot of people with IBS, irritate like caffeine or coffee, artificial sweeteners, soda pop, carbonation, a lot of things that people with IBS need to eliminate to regulate the gut. You’re trying to keep motility stable, rhythmic, calm. You’re trying to gently force your gut into normal motility, and that became my goal with what I was eating every day. How do I eat things that keep my gut functional, normal, stable and how do I avoid the things that disrupt that, and then how do I take that information and eat really well and have really good food and recipes? I’m someone who lives to eat so I gotta have good food, but I don’t want it to make me sick. And that was my jumping off point and it took like I said about 10 years for me to put all that together for myself and thinking the whole time I was the only person in the world with this, having no idea there were other people out there going through the same struggle. 

Steve:

There’s so much more information on your website about ways people can calm their guts and you do stress the importance of not trying to self-diagnose IBS.

Heather:

No, it can not be self-diagnosed. Medical tests must rule out other illnesses. But symptoms can be self-managed.

Steve:

How did you find out there were other people suffering? 

Heather: 

That was a total surprise, yeah, very early on in the late 90s. There were some support group websites that popped up for people with IBS, and at that point I had figured things out for myself and had a recipe collection and knew what things I could buy that would help me or hurt me, so I just started posting that on the sites and saying, you know, email me and I’ll tell you what helps me. I don’t know if I’ll help you. I hope it will but here’s the guidelines and here’s what you know you should eat and what you should need and how you should eat as well because that affects your gut not just what you eat. And people wrote back with questions. The email grew to a 200-page plain text file and started crashing people’s email servers, so I had to put it up as a website and send people a link, and the website literally grew into the books. I had such a huge response from people who had not figured it out for themselves and had no idea that this information was out there. I was learning in return that there were so many other people out there with the same problems I had, and they weren’t being given this information from any other source. And that frustrated me and upset me and eventually came to enrage me, and that was when I became determined to get this information out there and then to get the products out there for people, as well, so that they have some concrete help can help real help in their hands that they could put in their guts that would make them feel better. 

Steve:

What are some of the products other than the peppermint tea?  

Heather:

Yes, peppermint is actually my personal favorite and it really is, I think the best peppermint tea in the world, very high oil and things like menthol in it which physically help relax the gut, calm down pain, spasms, cramps. We also carry a high volatile oil fennel, which is a great carminative for people who have the bloating and gas side of things or who have heartburn and can’t always use peppermint, so fennel is their safety net. Anybody who is helped by things like high oil peppermint and fennel probably is going to get even more success with the peppermint oil capsules that we have. Those are the super-duper tummy taming version of your tummy teas, much more potent, but you have to use them as a preventative, always on an empty stomach. They will work better to head off pain, spasms, cramps, bloating, gas, so those are things you’d use on an empty stomach before you eat last thing at night before you go to bed to head off morning problems. 

Steve:  

What about people suffering from the things most of us don’t want to talk about: diarrhea and constipation?

Heather:

Those are the folks who have to use something like the Tummy Fiber. That’s a pure, soluble fiber if you want a prebiotic, slow fermenting soluble fiber that will regulate bowel motility from either extreme. That’s something that’s key for just about everybody with IBS trying to stop the diarrhea the constipation to keep us from flipping from one to the other and getting that motility under control. That’s where something like our Tummy Fiber, which is a certified organic Acacia senegal that’s quite special and is a perfect fit for people with digestive in orders like IBS. Sometimes people need one thing more than another. Sometimes they have to throw everything against the wall. It’s really up to the person and their specific symptoms. 

Steve: 

It seems like sufferers will have to give up a lot, if not most, of the foods they really enjoy.

Heather:

That’s another frustration, but there are a lot of substitutions you can make so you’re not feeling deprived, ways to minimize trigger foods, and ways to make adjustments, up your soluble fiber to keep your gut calm in the face of the trigger. I always like to tell people, don’t think you have to give up all your favorite food, you might just have to modify them a little, but you can certainly work around that. You don’t have to live a life of boring or bland or depressing foods at all, and you don’t have to eat weird meals and make the rest of your family eat them, too. 

Steve:

What’s the science behind your products? 

Heather:

Everything is based on managing symptoms because there’s no cure at this point for IBS, for the underlying pathology, but you can manage the motility of your gut with dietary management and adding things like Tummy Care products. The gut peppermint is a powerful antispasmodic, a smooth muscle relaxant. It really affects both the brain and the gut in terms of pain and there’s a wealth of clinical studies on this. Peppermint capsules have actually been called the drug of choice for IBS, even though they’re obviously not a drug at all, There’s great scientific research behind soluble fiber as a motility regulator, and behind peppermint and peppermint oil as an antispasmodic painkiller. Then the fennel tummy tea as a carminative to help reduce bloating and gas has really good research on it. 

Steve:

Regarding fiber, we’re always hearing we need to get more fiber in our diets. But you say that depends on the type of fiber?

Heather:

You want to be focused on soluble fiber, being careful with insoluble fiber. It’s very well researched as a G.I. stimulant, whether you have IBS or not. It’s going to set off your digestion, speed it up and if you have IBS, maybe cause spasms and cramps you. Mitigate that so it’s a combination of different things that you want to target to your symptoms. You want to focus on regulating that motility and I would add you only want to use things that are going to be helpful and gentle and coax you along. You never wanna try to beat it into submission with IBS. There’s nothing that you can detoxify or get rid of with IBS that’s going to force your bowels to behave. You have to be kind and gentle to it. 

Steve:

Well, I guess that rules out the colon cleanses and other detoxs that people often try. Diarrhea and constipation are chronic problems for a lot of people.

Heather: 

People really struggle to get those under control and there is no good way to do that overnight or in a few days, you can absolutely do it with your Tummy Fiber, but it might take several weeks, even several months, as you gradually work up your dose. That’s where you gotta start heading down the road in the right direction and just keep going. You’ll see improvements along the way, but that is a frustration: there’s no such thing as overnight relief for that with IBS. There’s no magic pill. 

Steve:

Is IBS hereditary?

Heather:

There is a genetic component. It does tend to run in families. Researchers don’t have anything black and white like genetic testing for it and it’s not perhaps 100% genetic they know they can be an environmental component for sure the people who have the insult to the gut that set up IBS may not have a genetic aspect at all, so it’s kind of combination. You may have a genetic accessibility. It might take an environmental trigger to set that off. There’s still so much research to be done 

Steve:

What is some of the feedback you’ve gotten from people? 

Heather: 

Oh, phenomenal! I am brought to tears a lot of times by the letters people send me — day in and day out, stacks and stacks, notebooks full of letters. They’re so grateful to have someone who can give them helpful guidance and dietary information and there’s a diet cheat sheet that people can download for free. People have told me how the products have changed their lives, like I can’t even tell you how many people have told me that they were housebound and now they’re not; they couldn’t work and now they can; they couldn’t go to school and now they can; people who have children with IBS that are really struggling. I hear from nurses, teachers, I hear from cops, I hear from truck drivers about how much of a drastic difference it has made for them to have products they can turn to that actually work and give them their lives back and that’s not an exaggeration. You really you can lose your life to IBS and the tummy care is a way to get it back. 

Steve: There’s so much more information on your website about ways people can calm their guts and I understand you have a treat for WGN listeners.

Heather:

Yes, we can offer a promo code for your listeners only and give them a discounted price. We have a lifetime happiness guarantee as well. They are here: https://www.heatherstummycare.com/p/suplmts_pmintcaps/tummy-tamers-peppermint-oil-caps-2-bottles/?discountcode=THANKSSTEVE

Steve Alexander: Thanks for joining us Marc. Let’s begin at the grocery store. What kind of roast do we look for? 

Marc Lupino: It depends on how many people you are serving, that’s going to be the first thing. If I’m gonna have a bone-in rib, I’m going to go a pound per person. You’re going to lose a little bit of weight when it comes to the bone and you’re going to have a tiny bit of shrinkage cooking it, but not too much — most of the stuff that’s coming out is fat and you’re going to use that for au jus or gravy anyway. On a boneless rib, I say 14 ounces per person, so if you just use that pound-per-person, you’ll be in the right range. If you want to have leftovers, then get a full rib. A full rib will be 12 bones. If you want to get a smaller one they sell half ribs. I was in the grocery store not too long ago and I saw ones with three ribs.

Steve: Do you prefer bone-in or boneless?

Marc: My personal preference would be to get bone-in, but it’s important that when you look at the bottom of it, you want to be able to separate those bones by bending them. If I can’t separate the bones by bending them, that means that they left the chine bone, which is part of the spine, on it and you’re not going to be able to cut through it with a knife and you won’t be able to go bone-for-bone when you’re ready to serve it. I always like to see that separated and if it isn’t, a lot of times the butcher in the grocery store or wherever we will take that piece of chine bone off for you.

Steve: What about that layer of fat on the roast? How much should there be?

Marc: That’s the fat cap. You don’t want a lot of it, like two inches, because you’re going to trim that off anyway, so no use paying for it. A half-inch fat cap, maybe a little less, on the top part of the roast is pretty much perfect.

Steve: And what cuts are we looking for at the store?

Marc: Most places are going to label them a rib roast of some kind. Standing rib, boneless or bone-in rib roast, those are pretty much the names you’re going to see. 

Steve: I know it’s called “prime” rib, which refers to the grade, but can you save a little money without sacrificing taste by going with a lesser grade?

Marc: I’m looking for the best quality prime rib I can find, but that’s me personally. The one thing about cooking the roast slowly is that it breaks down the meat and gives it a more palatable, soft texture. You can go with a “select” graded roast and it’s still going to come out great. “Prime” will come out that much better, but I’d say stay within your price range, and, at the same time, keep that pound-per-person in mind.

Steve: OK, we’ve got the roast at home. What’s next?

Marc: Let’s being with the rub. I like a salt-based dry rub. This is the best way to get a nice crust on the outside of it. It’s also the best way to get a nice seasoning on it which will also help with the drippings to make to a fantastic au jus or gravy at the end. I have a proprietary rub that I would use, but at the core is salt. Coarse salt, coarse pepper, granulated garlic, granulated onion, paprika, maybe a little bit of light cayenne is perfect. If you like, a little bit of ground rosemary or ground thyme will work, too, but I definitely would go very easy on those because they tend to take over the flavor. That salt and pepper crust is going to be the main focus that you want to have. And I go very liberal with it. I’m not talking about pouring cups of it on there, but I want to really feel it, I want to rub this rib roast down on all sides and make sure it’s all covered perfectly. Then, put it on a rack in the roasting pan, and put it in the fridge, uncovered, and let it dry for at least four hours maybe overnight. The refrigerator is going to pull a lot of moisture out of it.

Steve: Using a rack is important?

Marc: Yes. That’ll lift it up. The roasting rack is a key to getting that rib cooked perfectly all the way around, nice and evenly. If you just put it on a sheet pan, it isn’t going to come out as well..

Steve: OK, the roast has been in the fridge all night. It’s showtime! What’s next?

Marc: On the day you’re serving it, pull it out of the fridge and let it sit out at room temperature for at least an hour. You’ll be taking some of the cook time off of it when you do that. Turn the oven on to 400° and get it nice and hot. Let it heat up for a good 30 minutes. Before you put it in the oven, pour a half cup of water in the bottom of the pan so when your juices are dripping off of the rib, the fat and everything, it doesn’t burn. It’ll actually make a nice base for your gravy in there. Then, I throw the roast in there, still on the rack in the roasting pan, putting it in the middle of the oven. After about 30 minutes, you’re going to see a nice browning on the outside. Turn the oven down to 200°, maybe 225° depending on your time, but at 200 ° it’s going to take you about 20 minutes per pound to get it to where you want it. For me, that’s 115° in the center. Unless your family likes to eat well done, or medium well, you wanna pull it at 115°. Set its on the counter, take a piece of aluminum foil and tent it over the top, and leave it alone for 30 to 45 minutes. That allows all the juice to get absorbed back into the muscles. If you just take the roast directly out of the oven at that temperature and start slicing it, all the juice is going to end up on your cutting board and be wasted.

Steve: What does the roast look like at 115° when you slice it? I like mine kind of pink.

Marc: It’ll be medium rare in the center, and the outer edges will be probably medium to medium well. Remember that once you pull it from the oven and tent it with aluminum foil, it’s going to cook up. The temperature will jump 10° easy, maybe even 15° so you wanna pull it out at 115°. Otherwise, you’ll have an overcooked rib. In my family, I like medium rare, my wife likes medium, and my mother-in-law likes medium well so when I pull it out at 115° it’s always perfect. 

Steve: You make everybody happy! 

Marc: Yeah, the end cuts are always going to be just a little bit more done and the center is going to be the rarest, and there’s something for just about everybody.

Steve: Got it. OK, what about the au jus, or gravy?

Marc: With the pan drippings, you’re going to want to whisk it up with a little bit of butter and flour, make it a roux, and that’s going to make exactly what you want. The salt rub, the fat drippings, it’s an all encompassing flavor. You can thicken it to your taste. If you want it to be thinner more of like au jus, you would add just a tiny bit of water to it. If you want a gravy, then I’d make a roux which is equal parts flour and butter, whisk it up and put the pan back on the burner until I get it the right consistency.

Steve: What about side dishes?

Marc: Mashed potatoes. That’s just something I always do because you make the little volcano in the center and you have some gravy on there, that’s always great in my family. Brussel sprouts with some bacon are great. I’ll just take some brussels sprouts, halve them up, add raw bacon with some butter in the pan, and cook it all together with a little bit of chicken stock until all the chicken stock is burned out of it. Season with salt and pepper. Very simple always really good. Sweet potatoes are always fantastic, bake some ahead of time, and with a little bit of mascarpone and then add some egg into it and salt and pepper and bake it off. It’s almost comes out like a sweet potato soufflé. Real, real easy, and you can top it with some maple syrup. Yorkshire pudding or popovers or rolls whatever your family is really into are always good; biscuits work really well too. I always feel like I need to have some kind of roll with it too. It just seems to complete the dish.

I try to do a veg, a starch, and then a starch that’s on the sweeter side, so whether it be a sweet potato or let’s say I was going to do a green beans with sweet Thai chili sauce or something along those lines that’s going to add a little bit of sweetness to it and kind of round out the flavor so it’s not all just beef and gravy. Break it up and give your palate everything it needs. 

Steve: Mushrooms? 

Marc: Definitely. I usually try to mix three different types of mushrooms so they have different textures because mushrooms can be very one dimensional. At the grocery store you can find portobello mushrooms, button mushrooms, shiitake or whatever they have and throw them together. Cut them the same size they have a tendency to cook the same rate so you can sauté them all together with a little bit of olive oil and garlic and some fresh thyme and they come out super. A simple side, for sure 

Steve: Man, I, my stomach is growling and my mouth is watering. I’m ready to go. 

Marc: Haha, I know what you mean. We were going to do steaks and lobster tails this year, but after talking with you, I think I’m going to make a prime rib also. And that’s something else to bring up. I rarely make just one thing. Prime rib is great but, for me, I’m going to put some seafood with it. Maybe I’ll do some salmon or lobster tails or definitely some sautéed shrimp They always go well with everything else I like to have a bunch of proteins sides are good but I’m more of a fan of having a bunch of proteins on the plate and available especially if we have a lot of people that are coming over. You get a little something I’m on your plate. A little bit of everything seafood for me pears really well with it and usually I’ll do a shellfish. Salmon is always always good just because it’s a it’s one of those great fish where you can buy a whole side and cook it and some of this rare and some of it well done it kind of is that same range of you know you could please a lot of people that like things different ways. 

Steve: Wow… so what time did you want me to come over? 

Marc: Haha… we’ll be eating around 3 o’clock.

Steve: Do you serve prime rib at Steak 48? 

Marc: We do not, except for certain parties.

Steve: Why is that? 

Marc: Demand. It’s kind of fallen off in popularity. Prime rib used to be a big thing, in fact Lawry’s built a chain based on prime rib, but they’ve started to disappear, including the one in River North. There are a couple left in Los Angeles, but prime rib houses nationwide are disappearing.

Steve: It’s still popular for holidays. 

Marc: Absolutely, that’s why every grocery store you’re in till the end of the year is going to have a deal on some sort of rib roast. 

Scheyett said. “If we don’t support these families, we’re in big trouble as a country because we won’t be able to generate our food.” She says the women in her study weren’t looking for pity, but a little recognition would be nice. As one farm spouse told her, “It’s a great life if you can stand it.” You can read more about the study here.

She learned, though, and four of Sarah’s older brothers came back to the farm to help her grow the business. Today, Frey Farms is recognized as the nation’s largest producer of pumpkins, but Sarah says they actually grow more watermelons than pumpkins. And while Frey Farms grows the traditional orange Halloween pumpkins by the millions, Sarah has had her eyes set on another market. She has grown to believe that America is ready to cook, not just carve, pumpkins, and heirloom pumpkins have become a thing. She is hoping that eating pumpkin year-round, like much of the rest of the world does, also becomes a thing in the U.S. To that end, she started Pumpkins of the World, a line of the heirlooms (which, much like heirloom tomatoes, come in many different colors and odd shapes). She notes that in Australia — the origin of her favorite variety of eating pumpkin, the Jarrahdale, a blueish-gray savory pumpkin — people eat pumpkins much the way we Americans eat potatoes.

Sarah was crowned, so to speak, as the “Pumpkin Queen of America” in an article about Frey Farms in the New York Times.

“If you’re ever at a craft show or a farmers market, you will likely see a smiling face behind the table, with lots of neat products. What you do not see is:

Days, and sometimes months, it took to grow, make or design the product; Time spent figuring the label; Staying up late (a lot) to make more product; The constant setting up and taking down of that damn tent; Praying someone will buy your product; Later-praying people will stop buying your product so you can eat a bite of food because you are starving; Missing family parties over and over because you are working weekends; Business–just one more thing to disagree about as a couple.

“So when you see folks standing there under a 10×10 ten on the weekend, please take a moment to understand that what is on that table is not just a product. It is likely their heart and soul for the world to see, acknowledge, appreciate, or dismiss.

“Fellow vendors, farmers and small business owners….THANK YOU.”

Sharon and Tony were working in the aviation software business when they spotted a small farm near Elburn in 2015, “a micro-farm,” and decided to become garlic farmers, and settled on the catching name Garlic Breath Farm. The farm motto declares: “If everyone had garlic breath, no one would be offended!” 

In the audio clip below, Kim Chappell, chief brand officer for Bobbie, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about the new billboard in Times Square featuring Ms Baz. It shows her lying on her side on her kitchen counter, shaking a bottle of Bobbie organic formula while at the same time her baby is nursing on her bare breast. The ad censors said that was OK. “The only thing we were told was no nipple. We said, OK, that’s fine, we can show breastfeeding without showing a nipple.”

The ad was designed in-house at Bobbie and filmed at Baz’s home in Los Angeles. It reinforces two key statistics: one in five mothers feel ashamed or judged for breastfeeding in public, and 70% of parents use some combination of formula and breastfeeding. But Bobbie is a formula company and knowing that not every mother can or wants to breast feed, Chappell says, “When that mother or parent, for whatever reason–whatever reason, they’re all valid–has to turn to formula, they should never feel an ounce of guilt or shame.”

Chappell says the response has incredible, with more than a million views in the first few days. It’s a big splash for a small company that was started by a group of moms in 2021. Bobbie sells its formula to subscribers, and Chappell says the company never sells more formula than it can make: A certain amount is set aside for each subscriber, guaranteeing there won’t be a shortage, such as the major formula companies saw happen in 2022. “We were the only formula company in the U.S. whose customers did not face an infant formula shortage,” says Chappell.

Fast-forward to October 9, 2024, and Donnell Digby opened the first Black-owned restaurant in that buildings doing to the Cultural Center’s offerings for the community. In the audio clip below, he tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about the sense of obligation he feels to the Black community in opening the restaurant he named NAFSI 1916. NAFSI means “soul” in Swahili. He says that’s the value around which NAFSI’s was built. He describes the food as a luxurious spin on classic soul food dishes such as shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes, surf and turf, beignets, chicken and waffles, and more, designed by Executive Chef Dondee Robinson, formerly of the Bronzeville Winery. “That kid knows his way around the kitchen,” said Digby. The full bar will offer wine, beer, and spirits, leaning heavily on local and minority-owned brands. Digby says prices for appetizers range from $9 to $21 and entrees range from $19 to $55.  

DIgby says NAFSI 1916 is opening the doors to a once forbidden space that all people will be able to enjoy, with beautiful and luxurious spaces, including a year-round patio bar, just a stone’s throw from Lake Michigan.

Gilster-Mary Lee, an Illinois-based food manufacturer with 2500 employees making private label food at plants in southern Illinois and Missouri, embraced the idea of hiring neurodiverse adults, and currently has 18 who are thriving in their roles, working alongside neurotypical employees. Gilster-Mary Lee was honored October 1, the beginning of National Manufacturing Month, as the first company to be designated as a Spectrum Certified Employer. Schatzel says Gilster-Mary Lee has taken on the challenge of creating competitive, integrated employment opportunities for the neurodiverse, rather than the sub-minimum wage, pay-per-piece type of work most often seen in neurodiverse hiring at other companies. Gilster-Mary Lee CEO Tom Welge tells Alexander there are currently 18 neurodiverse employees who are valued members of teams making products like macaroni and cheese dinners, baking mixes, and other products right alongside employees who are not neurodiverse. Welge says they are great employees who typically have great attitudes and want to be successful and do a good job every day, and are full-fledged members of the company.

Agriculture is not only our most essential industry, it is our most dangerous. The National Education Center for Agriculture Safety notes the number one cause of fatalities and injuries are tractors.

John was alive, but thought he was paralyzed. He couldn’t move is legs. But the gate was open and the cows were coming, so he dragged himself to the gate and pulled it shut before they could get out. And then he waited. He didn’t have a cell phone, and the country road–not heavily traveled any time of day–was especially quiet during mid-morning when neighbors had already gone to school and work. But John knew that eventually the mailman would come, and an hour or so later, Allen Dix drove up in his mail truck, just as he had day after day for the past 18 years, saw John’s tractor, but didn’t see John. Allen got out to investigate and found John lying in a ditch. “John, are you OK?” he asked. Dix says the farmer replied in a matter-of-fact manner, “No, the tractor ran over me.”

Dix did have a cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. and then dialed John’s wife, Debbie. The mailman says John was being very nonchalant, asking Debbie what she was doing, and carrying on as if he were just calling to check in. That’s when Dix took the phone back and explained what had happened and that rescue crews were on their way. While they waited, a neighbor happened by and he and Dix fixed the fence the tractor had torn down, and Dix drove the tractor back to John’s farm yard.

The local hospital wasn’t able to deal with all of John’s injuries, which included a right leg broken in two places, his pelvis was fractured in three places. Because of the accident he had to have a hip replaced. Where the weight of the tractor ground him into the gravel, a big rock went into his knee, which had to be cut out and left a hole in his knee. Doctors theorize that the reason John isn’t dead is that when the tractor ran over his mid-section and leg, it changed directions slightly and spared the rest of his body. The local hospital realized John’s injuries were too severe for them to deal with and flew him to Wake Forest Baptist Hospital in North Carolina. He spent 15 days there.

When John went home, neighbors did what neighbors do, especially in rural areas, it seems. They fed his cattle and did other chores around the farm; they brought food and supplies to John and Debbie; and in one instance that still gets John choked up when he describes it, a neighbor built a ramp into the house for John’s wheelchair. The injury forced John out of the cattle business, but he admits that he had been thinking about it anyway.

As for Allen Dix, he was honored at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. with the United States Postal Service Hero Award, and his name was added to a wall of heroes at the USPS headquarters. In the audio clip below, Dix says he doesn’t like being called a hero. He says he just did what anybody else would have had they come by and found John.

Dix continues the same 75-mile mail route six days a week, and says he, and all mail carriers, notice things when they’re making their rounds: mail piling up and other signs that something may not be right. “Are we being nosy? Well, maybe a little bit but we can kind of do a wellness check to make sure people are OK.” He often sees John, who is back in the cattle business. John says it got lonely without the animals on the farm, so he bought a few.

And as we mark National Farm Safety and Health Week, John Moody says: “Don’t do what I did.”

In the audio clip below, Tremaine Atkinson, CEO of CH Distillery, the current maker of Malört, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that Malört blossomed during Prohibition because of its medicinal qualities: It killed intestinal worms, a problem in the days before refrigeration and other food safety advances. Also helping Jeppson skirt scrutiny of the enforcers was their conclusion that nobody would drink his bitter concoction recreationally.

Atkinson describes the “Chicago Handshake,” a shot of Malört andand talks about unsuspecting visitors are told, “This is a very Chicago thing to do, and then getting the fun of watching people’s reactions to this very unusual, bitter liquid.”

Atkinson says Malört is more popular than ever thanks in part to social media where people have posted Malört-isms, such as “Malört, when you want to unfriend somebody in person,” and, “Malört, for when you know you’re not getting your security deposit back.” There are many that are not suitable to be posted here.

Malört is still made the way Carl Jeppson did, soaking wormwood (which CH Distillery imports from Sweden) in alcohol. Atkinson says wormwood is more like a stalk of wheat than it is a “wood” or tree. Atkinson says Malört is often used in cocktails, much as bitters are. He especially likes it in Pina Coladas. (Cue a Malört version of Rupert Holmes “Pina Colada Song” where you insert your own Malört-influenced lyrics.)

When asked if he knows anyone who actually likes Malört, Atkinson said he does. “Its funny to talk seriously about the flavor of Malört, but it’s got a little sweetness up front, and then its herbal and citrusy, very much like a grapefruit, and maybe five seconds in is when you start to get the bitter, and if you don’t have anything else that bitter hangs out for a good 15 minutes, and I kind of enjoy that journey.”

CH Distillery makes more than Malört. It uses rye and wheat grown in nearby Kane County to make CH Vodka, the only vodka that is handmade from Illinois grain. Atkinson’s decision to buy Malört from a family that had owned the Jeppson brand for nearly 100 years and had moved production to Florida was brilliant. Malört is stocked in virtually every bar in Chicago and is a great door opener to get CH’s other products into bars and liquor stores.

Hall says a glance through the rest of the roster found Miles Purchase and Tyler Moore, so they now had “Purchase, Moore, Hamman, Bacon.” And a deeper dive found players Alec Cook and Zach Lovett. “So what do you do after you purchase more ham and bacon?” asks Hall. “You cook it and love it!” The video went viral — although that’s not a word pork producers who are constantly fighting to keep their herds bio-secure are fond of — and had more than two million views in 12 hours. Altogether, the campaign reached more than 20 million people just on social media, with traditional media coast-to-coast picking up the story. Tee-shirts were printed. It was a huge response that marketing execs can only dream of.

That was last year. Will the IPPA be able to pull off a repeat? Hall says all the players are back, except for Tommy Hamman, who gave up football to focus on his engineering degree but will still be part of the campaign.

In addition to paying each players for his name, image, and likeness, the IPPA donated a total of $10,000 worth of pork to food pantries selected by the six players. The combination of philanthropy, fun, and creativity won the NIL Deal of the Year award from Sports Business Journal. Hall said the campaign was even bigger than the IPPA had hoped for, and was not only a win for the players — whose NIL money is being doubled this year — but for their local food pantries, Iowa State University and pig farmers.

By the way, I resisted clever wordplay around “pigskin,” a common nickname for the football. The history of that is a bit disgusting, but early “foot” balls, likely used for soccer matches long before the first college football game in the U.S. in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton, were made of inflated pig bladders, which were more round than elliptical like today’s football. That is why footballs got the nickname “pigskins.” Pig bladders fell out of favor (no doubt to the delight of the people who were tasked with blowing them up for each game) later in the 1800s when inflatable rubber balls came along, followed by the leather from cowhides used today.

GoodSport is also the Official Hydrator of the WNBA Chicago Sky, and other pro teams, athletes, and trainers.

It isn’t just better hydration that Michelle is passionate about. As a sports mom, she has seen too much bad behavior, especially by parents and coaches. So, partnering with other organizations, GoodSport is getting the word out that youth sports is not all about the win. Sports develops life-long lessons that are so important, and youth sports should be a safe place for children to learn, fail, and get back up and try again.

If you can’t make it to Springfield, here is a LIVE PIGLET CAM where you can watch what they’re up to, 24/7. (Spoiler alert: They don’t do much other than eat and sleep, much like human babies, but cuteness abounds.)

If you do go to the fair, the Pork Producers are again hosting their Pork Patio, a tradition for over 30 years. Fairgoers can get their favorite pork products from August 8-18^th. The menu will feature the classics, including chop on-a-stick, pork twister, pork burgers, pork chops, and BBQ pulled pork sandwiches. 

In the audio clip below, King tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that a grand staircase now connects the space that was Dick’s with the level above once occupied by a Subway. The upper level is an oyster and sushi bar, the lower level is a 10,000 square foot restaurant seating more than 300, including 60 outside along the river. This is the first Legal Seafoods restaurant not on the East Coast. King says the Berkowitz family started Legal in 1950 as a market in the Boston area where people could get stamps that were a legal tender, similar to what became food stamps. The Berkowitz family sold its restaurants in 2020 to the company that owns Smith and Wollensky, which occupies the space adjacent to the new Legal Seafoods. In fact, during the pandemic, the seafood company tested a virtual kitchen in the Smith & Wollensky kitchen for pickup and delivery. It went so well that the chain was sure that the Midwest was ready for its clam chowder, lobster rolls and a full menu of fresh seafood. When asked how fresh, King cited the restaurant’s motto: “From boat to plate in 48.”

CHOWTOWN Bacci Pizzeria, BaseHit BBQ, Beat Kitchen on the Riverwalk, Benjyehuda, Billy Goat Tavern, BJ’s Market & Bakery, Boxcar Betty’s, Broken English Taco Pub, Cafe Tola, Carnitas Don Alfredo, Castaways Beach Club, Cheese’s Grilled Cheese, Chicago’s Doghouse, Chicago’s Pizza, Chubby Wieners, Cleo’s, Connie’s Pizza, Dark Matter Coffee, Doom Street Eats, El Campeon, El Taconazo Express, Epic Burger, Esperanza, Fatso’s Last Stand, Frannie’s, Harold’s Chicken, Haus Of Sausage, Joey G’s Mac N Cheese, Josephine’s Cooking, Kamehachi, Koko’s Bavarian, Lito’s Tacos & Empanadas, Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria, Novi’s Italian Beef, Pasta Fasta, Prime Tacos, Robinson’s No.1 Ribs, Shake Shack, Shawarma Point, Taco Pros, Tacotlán, Tandoor Char House, Tecalitlan Mexican Kitchen, The Budding Southern Chicken, The StopAlong, The Tamale Guy, Uncle Bud’s, Wow Bao.

DESSERT ISLAND Candy Cloud World, Chills Italian Ice, Cloud Cookie, Dat Donut, Dippin’ Dots, Donut Dudes, Eiffel Waffle, Gaby’s Funnel Cakes, Ice Cream Social, Ida’s Artisan Ice Cream & Treats, Lorenzo’s Frozen Pudding, Normita’s Conchas & Café, Pretty Cool Ice Cream, Rolling Chicago, Silver Spoon Desserts, The Original Rainbow Cone, Vero Gelato, Windsor Ice Cream Shoppe, Winston Snow Cones, XO Marshmallow, Xurro.

PLANT BASE   Alice & Friends, Banato, Blue Agave, Elephant & Vine, Fons Empanadas, Glow Superfood, MeetStop by SteMartaen, Penelope’s Vegan Taqueria, Soul Veg City, Vegan Plate Chicago.

VIBE VILLAGE Candy Cloud World, Kong Dog, Kurimu, Matcha Cita, Sugar Bliss, Taiyaki Chicago.

GA+ LOUNGE  Mr. Chilaquil, Stix & Noodles, The Original Uncle John’s Barbecue, Uncle Remus Saucy Fried Chicken, Zaza’s Pizzeria.

VIP LOUNGE Bad Johnny’s Wood-Fired Pizza, Fatso’s Last Stand, House of Meltz, Latin America Cravings, Pretty Cool Ice Cream, Slice Factory, Sugar Bliss, Thlaco Taco Tijuanense.

Matoian raises fruit on a fourth-generation farm near Reedley, CA. He’s part of a group of family farmers who pooled their marketing muscle under the Mountain View Fruit Sales banner. Their Estate Vineyards brand of table grapes are available in black, red and green grape varieties and Matoian says, “This year’s harvest promises to deliver exceptional quality grapes, with maximum berry size on the first varieties to be harvested.” He estimates the crop will come in at about 94.5 million boxes, with each box containing 19 pounds of grapes. That works out to just under 1.8 billion pounds of grapes.

He says 30-35% of the crop will be exported to Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, Central America, and Singapore. There is competition from other countries, such as Chile, and while grapes are available year-round in Chicago stores, there’s a good chance summertime grapes are from California. Matoian adds that he and his fellow farmers would appreciate it if you would “support the California growers.”

Matoian says 100% of the grapes are picked by hand, and the growers rely on immigrant farm workers do to the work. “We love them,” he says, adding, “it’s almost like a partnership. They feel like they’re involved in the company and have a real sense of pride in the end product as they pack those bags and boxes of grapes.” It isn’t easy work, and right now, it’s hot work. Temperatures have routinely been above 100 degrees in early and mid-July, so the vineyard work begins at sunrise, around 5:30 a.m., and ends before it gets too hot, around 10 or 10:30 a.m. Matoian says fruit growers in California, as did farmers across the Midwest and nationwide, struggled with finding and keeping workers through the visa programs. But he says over the last couple of years the process has become easier and there’s now a good balance of work and workers.

Included in the feeding frenzy is 53 million pounds of guacamole, most of it made from avocados grown in Mexico. That got WGN’s Steve Alexander wondering where avocados are grown in the United States (mostly in California) and how they are grown. In the audio clip below, Rachael Laenen – Director Farming & Operations and part of the family at the Kimball Avocado ranch based in the Heritage Valley outside of Santa Paula, California, northwest of Los Angeles, tells Steve about the farming of 20,000 trees spread across 150 acres, which is a bit foreign to Midwest farmers who mostly plant seeds in the ground, fertilize, spray, and hope for the best. She tells how large the trees grow and how many avocados each tree produces. They do need irrigation but she says avocados are quite efficient water users, with a very high nutritional content per drop of water. She says that the avocados are picked by hand, either at ground level using a hand clipper, or with long poles that have a stem clipper and bag attached, or, for the fruit way up high, on ladders. And yes, they are fruit. Not, though, as Rachael notes, the kind you’d want to put on your cereal.

Much of the Kimball Ranch burned to the ground in a 2017 wildfire. Included in the losses were the destruction of his parents’ home and everything in it, including decades of memories, the farm’s barn, the office, a good chunk of the ranch’s irrigation system, and approximately 60 percent of its avocado trees. But rebuilding is underway, new trees were planted and the ranch is back in business. Rachael came back to the family business after many years working for the Mercedes Formula One team, and has ramped up the ranch’s subscription service, where you can order avocados delivered to your doorstep during the season, which is roughly March through August. By the way, demand for California avocados is so great that exports barely make it out of the state. And it’s unlikely any make it to the Midwest. For Chicagoans wanting to buy California avocados, there’s the Kimball Ranch mail order.

“My daughter was incredible,” says David. “She wanted to go to med school, she was actually working her dream job in the ER at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. She loved helping the underdog and always found herself in situations where she was helping others, both humans and animals.”

To honor Hallie, David and his family started a foundation to find ways to give back and try to live life “the Hallie way.” The Hallie225 Foundation is named after significant numbers in her life. She was born 2/25 at 2:25 p.m., and she lived until she was 25. “Every Epic Burger is committed to donating money to Hallie225, which will be donated to each high school in areas in which we operate. We want to offer scholarships to high school students and try to help improve others’ lives, and focus on education to help people fulfill their dreams.”

Meanwhile, Epic Burger continues to grow. Today, February 5th, the sixth store will open in Northbrook’s Willow Festival Shopping Center, 1036H Willow Road. “Epic is thrilled to be a part of the Northbrook community,” said Grossman. “My love for the food biz started as a teenager when I was delivering pizzas around town. Now I’m bringing my favorite burgers, chicken, fries and shakes back to where it all began for me.” 

In September 2023, Epic Burger acquired all Illinois Meatheads’ locations. The Northbrook location is the first of six Meatheads take-overs, and Grossman expects locations in Barrington, Bloomington, Champaign, Lake Bluff and Naperville will be converted to Epic Burgers by summer 2024.