The largest online retailer is an awesome one-stop shop, but while it's very convenient to just order everything from Amazon, it's not always going to give you the best bang for your buck—even if you use "Subscribe and Save" or have Amazon Prime . Kiplinger, via Shopping.com, has highlighted nine items you should probably skip buying on Amazon.
We recently reported about a dealership in NJ that was caught selling flooded cars to consumers without disclosing the damage. Unfortunately this is not some rare anomaly, so how do you know if the used car you're buying was in a major storm?
Sweet corn starts losing its sweetness once it's picked, so it's best to eat it fresh—and also why it isn't available throughout the year. But America's Test Kitchen has a way to store it for up to six months.
We already round up some of the best free online classes in our Lifehacker U series, but the classes we highlight come from a variety of sources around the web that offer tons more than we can feature. Let's build a list of the best sites, schools, and resources for those free classes you can take from the comfort of your desk.
(the justified sinner)
Obeying the correct storage process for ingredients is of the utmost importance when it comes to creating ooey-gooey cheesy deliciousness. And improper storage can spoil your cheese – as one supplier found out now that loads of Kraft Singles are being recalled.
Kraft Food Group Inc announced the voluntary recall of 7,691 cases of some varieties of its Kraft American Singles because a supplier failed to store an ingredient correctly.
The recall was initiated after Kraft found that the supplier did not store an ingredient used in the cheese slices in accordance with Kraft’s temperature standards.
Officials with Kraft say while it’s unlikely, the issue could lead to premature spoilage and/or food borne illness.
There have been no consumer illness complaints associated with the recall.
Affected product is limited to the 12-ounce, two 16-ounce and 64-ounce Kraft American Singles packages and comes with the “Best When Used By” dates of February 20, 2015, and February 21, 2015.
Kraft is recalling a variety of American Singles.
Kraft urges consumers who purchased these products to not eat them. Consumers should return the cheese to the store where purchased for an exchange or full refund. Consumers also can contact Kraft Foods Consumer Relations at 1-800-396-5512.
Grayson Bell over at Debt Roundup rounded up five ways to save money at Amazon that you might not know about. Most of them aren’t even on a similar post on this subject that we published last year! If you did know about them, just sit back and feel smug.
5 Little Known Ways to Save Money at Amazon.com [Debt Roundup]
Pedigree recalled a number of bags of its adult dog food because of possible metal fragments.
If you live in the south and you’re getting ready to scoop out a heaping serving of Pedigree for your adult canine, you may want to double-check the package. The dog food maker is recalling certain bags of dry food that may contain not-so-tasty pieces of metal.
Pedigree announced that it voluntarily recalled 22 bags of Pedigree Adult Complete Nutrition dry dog food because the contents may include metal fragments. While the metal pieces are not embedded in the dog food itself, they can pose an injury risk if consumed.
The recall only affects the 15 pound bags sold at Dollar General Stores in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana.
Consumers should check the back of their Pedigree dog food bags for this product number.
Each bag will have the lot code 432C1KKM03 printed on the bag near the UPC and a Best Before date of 8/5/15.
“At Mars Petcare, we take our responsibility to pets and their owners seriously. We sincerely apologize for this situation,” officials with the company say in a news release.
Consumers are encouraged to reach out to Pedigree at 1-800-305-5206 with questions.
A new report from the Food Marketing Institute, a nonprofit representing the interests of food retailers and wholesalers, details the ways in which consumers have changed their shopping habits from generation to generation, the Washington Post reports.
The report points to a vast difference between the ways previous generations and millennials deal with shopping. For example, millennials are far more likely to build their shopping trips around a particular recipe, instead of simply stocking up on the same staples every week.
Additionally, millennials tend to take a last-minute, rushed approach to grocery shopping with nearly 37% of survey respondents saying they only make a list right before going to the store. And of the items on that list, FMI found that more than 25% of meals purchased by that age group tend to be eaten on the same day.
As for older generations, including Boomers and Generation Xers, they are more likely to actually check their pantry to add items to the list throughout the week. These groups also place an emphasis on special discounts offered at their local stores when considering what items to purchase.
Creating a list is the first challenge for shoppers. The plethora of options facing consumers from the shelves can be overwhelming, but for millennials there are certain qualities in a product that rate above all others.
The latest trends in shopping include looking for healthier options.
According to FMI, millennials are leading the way when it comes to adopting healthier lifestyles. This generation is more likely than any other to seek out food and beverage options that are minimally processed, contain only a short list of recognizable ingredients and locally grown or produced.
To meet this preference, many grocers are moving to incorporate organic and farmer grown products. Earlier this year Walmart announced it would begin rolling out its own low-cost organic line.
With a number of retail options available, from super centers to health food stores, younger shoppers are no longer loyal to just one local supermarket, according to FMI.
While a study earlier this year showed that consumers are increasingly turning to big box stores like Walmart and Target to meet their grocery needs, FMI found that traditional grocery stores still reign supreme.
Nearly 85% of shoppers say they shop at traditional grocery stores fairly often, while 46% of respondents shop at a supercenter with the same frequency.
However, FMI found that what was once a traditional once-a-week major shopping trip has evolved into one trip every two weeks with “fill-up” stops at drug stores and convenience stores in between.
No matter how much the shopping experience evolves, consumers should make sure they go prepared with a list and the latest tips and tricks to a better shopping experience, from how to pick the best produce to choosing a shopping cart wisely.
How we shop for food is changing, in three charts [The Washington Post]
Got a hankering for a Big Mac but don’t want to spend the money? Your recycling bin may hold the key to sating your special sauce craving… or it would if you were living in Sweden.
Fast Company reports on a campaign by McDonald’s in Sweden that not only encourages customers to turn in empty cans for burgers, but also provides the bags in which to collect the cans.
Small billboards in Stockholm advertise the program — which gives customers the option of a free hamburger or cheeseburger for 10 cans, or a Big Mac for a whopping 40 cans — on large rolls of black plastic bags that can be taken and used to tote one’s can stash to the Golden Arches.
“Youngsters don’t always have so much cash, but sometimes they can get empty cans,” says a rep for ad agency DDB Stockholm that created the idea with McD’s. “So, accepting cans in return for burgers gets them to McDonald’s and the cans to the recycling depot. Everyone’s happy.”
People who enjoy beverages were horrified two weeks ago when we shared the story of a woman in Utah who drank sweet tea laced with degreaser when a restaurant employee mistook a lye-based cleaner for sugar. Now something similar has happened in Colorado, where an employee mistook cleaning solution for vanilla syrup and served up a cleaning chemical shake to a 7-year-old boy.
A mother and son stopped at the drive-thru at the Dairy Queen in Thornton, Colorado, and the boy said that his shake tasted funny, like his tongue was burning. His mom took a sip and discovered that the kid was right. He was right: it was definitely not vanilla-flavored. “I took a drink of it and tasted something very ‘chemically,’ and then my mouth and throat started burning,” she told the local Fox affiliate.
She returned to the store, where the manager refused to issue a refund for the contaminated shakes. That was just as well: the family’s next stop was the hospital. Later, a district manager contacted them and explained that someone mixed up a vanilla syrup bottle that was being cleaned with a full one, and that’s where the degreaser shakes came from.
It gets even worse: other customers contacted the TV station in Denver that originally covered this story, claiming that the same thing had happened to them. Maybe that’s why the Dairy Queen imposed their “no refunds for degreaser shakes” policy?
By the way, the woman in Utah who drank lye-laced iced tea has recovered, and was released from the hospital earlier this week.
We really hope that this doesn’t become the next accidental trend in food service, like when restaurants served booze-laced beverages to by accident children over and over in 2011 and 2012.
Dairy Queen management: Cleaning solution got into customers’ vanilla shakes [Fox31 Denver]
Yesterday, the Grocery Manufacturer Association, a trade group representing hundreds of the nation’s biggest food and beverage makers, announced a five-part initiative aimed at removing some of the mystery from the GRAS process and ingredients.
Among the key items in that plan is a new GMA-sponsored database that will list information on all GRAS assessments conducted by the food industry. So now, after 17 years of letting the food industry pretty much do what it wanted so long as it promised to be safe, the FDA will be able to see what these companies have been up to.
“FDA has become too reliant on the corporations’ own safety evaluations,” says Laura MacCleery, Chief Regulatory Affairs Attorney at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, who adds that companies rarely follow existing FDA guidance on how to conduct studies to determine if an ingredient is safe. “A voluntary submission fails to fix the core problem, which is that there are no appropriately stringent scientific standards for companies’ private safety determinations on food additives, and insufficient review and oversight of those evaluations.”
Tom Neltner of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has also been critical of the GRAS process tells Politico that the GMA initiative, is “certainly a step forward,” but adds that the NRDC thinks the FDA should be responsible for reviewing or signing off on new food additives, rather than continuing to allow the industry to decide for itself.
“That this is seen as a step forward neatly illustrates the dysfunction built into the current system,” says MacCleery. “It is outrageous that FDA doesn’t already have the identity, much less the safety data, of all substances added to the nation’s food supply.”
What remains to be seen is how transparent this database will be to consumers, who should have the ability to judge the science for themselves. The GMA announcement said it will be made available to the FDA and to stakeholders, which implies that only certain parties will have easy access to the GRAS information.
Just some of the cats available for a 2-hour visit to qualified borrowers’ new homes.
BusinessWeek reports that Sberbank, whose majority owner is the Central Bank of Russia, recently launched the offer, which will deliver 30 loaner cats to qualifying mortgage borrowers until mid-December.
A rep for the bank tells BusinessWeek that the cats — borrowers get to choose from an array of 10, including a hairless — are being lent out by individuals, including some Sberbank employees, “who agreed to let their pets participate in special projects.”
The new homeowner must take out a mortgage worth at least $116,000 during the promotion period and they only get to let the cat do its thing for two hours before it is returned to its owner.
Meanwhile, a mortgage from Sberbank will currently burden you with a 12.5% interest rate, so you might need all the lucky cats you can get your hands on.
Here’s Sberbank’s promo video for the offer:
As if we need further proof that redheaded folks are smooth, savvy and otherwise generally awesome, one flame-haired fellow in Scotland is taking advantage of his coif’s color by flashing a homemade “Ginger Discount Card” to save on tabs at the bar, restaurants and anywhere he can buy stuff.
It all started when his body made the card for his 30th birthday as a joke, reports The Scotsman, laminating an orange piece of paper bearing his photo and the words “Ginger Discount Card.”
Figuring he might as well roll with the gag, he started trying to use it at local retailers, and was surprised to find many would slash his bill.
“People have always given me stick for my hair colour but now I’m going out three nights a week and saving a fortune. The joke’s on them,” the man said, estimating that he’s saved hundreds of pounds by using it.
“I ask if they do the ginger discount and when they look confused, I slide across my card.”
And a lot of the time, it works.
“The first time I saw the ginger discount card, I thought it was brilliant and gave him the same discount that we would for students just because it looked so real,” one local barman admitted.
Boom. It’s that easy to be that smooth, folks. If you’re a ginger with the right card, of course.
Scot cashes in with fake ‘ginger discount card’ [The Scotsman]
(KHOU-11)
Finding one coin among all the others filling the coffers of toll booths is kind of like finding a needle in a haystack. Or really, it’s like finding one particular coin out of a bunch of others. But that’s just what one husband did after his wife had to use a coin with sentimental value to pay a toll.
The Texas woman was driving a rental car that day and thus, didn’t have the EZPass she was used to, reports KHOU-11 News. But when it came time to pay the toll, she was told the $10 she handed over was a counterfeit.
In her bag was the only coin she had — a Bicentennial dollar coin that she found in her late mother’s purse. It held a lot of sentimental value for her, but what was she going to do? So she used it to pay the toll.
Her husband then made a bunch of phone calls and got in touch with the manager of the toll plaza, who was able to track down the toll booth operator. That attendant remembered the coin and still had it, as it was the only Bicentennial dollar in the lot from the morning.
The husband explains that he also keeps a coin as a reminder of his deceased father.
“I keep it with me all the time, so I know how much it meant to her to get hers back,” he said.
Woman uses special coin at toll booth, gets it back [KHOU-11]
(kozumel)
Regional grocery store chain Market Basket, which has 71 locations in three states, is the stage on which the latest act of a forty-year-long family feud has played out.
The TL;DR version of the story (which we outlined here in July) is that two brothers owned the company and eventually their sons, cousins both named Arthur, inherited. One family played shenanigans with the money, the other family sued, and relations have been acrimonious for quite some time.
One of the cousins, Arthur T. Demoulas, was named CEO of the company in 2008. Since then, he has had a reputation for being a good, honest boss and the company has become known for providing its workers good pay and benefits. The chain has also kept prices down in stores and remained financially healthy.
The other cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas, gained control of the company board and threw out Arthur T. earlier this year. Employees at every level, both in the home office and also in the stores, walked off the job in protest of the new regime. Despite firings and even more threats of firings, shelves have remained empty and business at Market Basket more or less ground completely to a halt as protests continued. Workers and some customers had exactly one demand: bring back Arthur T.
The workers won. In a statement today, Market Basket confirmed that Arthur T. Demoulas and his siblings will be buying the majority shares of the company back from Arthur S. and his family, and effective immediately Arthur T. is back at the helm. Employees who were fired over the protests will also be restored to their positions, the Boston Globe reports.
It will take time for operations to return to normal, as the Boston Globe reports. After six weeks off, suppliers will have to scramble to get everything running smoothly again.
The sustained protests — and their success — are noteworthy for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s uncommon for low-ranking workers to care that strongly about which executive is at the helm. Employees were not advocating for pay raises or changes to working conditions, but for change at the very top level of the company. Secondly, Market Basket employees are not unionized. As such, they had no legal protection for a strike. En masse, many went without pay and put their jobs on the line for Arthur T.
Market Basket deal ends bitter feud [Boston Globe]
Reddit user The_Motivated_Man tallied up the various ingredients in the Meat Mountain to reach this unofficial calorie count.
Redditor The_Motivated_Man took on the challenge of breaking down the components of the Meat Mountain to see what it would all add up to. You can see his results above.
If accurate, the Meat Mountain is indeed a massive amount of calories (1,275), but that’s only about 2/3 of the recommended daily calorie total for most people. But it wouldn’t even put the sandwich on this year’s list of the most calorie-filled chain restaurant items.
CHECK OUT OUR ROUNDUP OF READER-SUBMITTED MEAT MOUNTAIN PHOTOS!
The lowest calorie count on that list was 1,500 (for the Reese’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake Cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory), while some items, like Joe’s Crab Shack’s The Big “Hook” Up meal, crossed the 3,000 calorie line. By comparison, the Meat Mountain looks like light fare.
While 1,275 calories is nothing to sneeze at, the bigger concern for some Arby’s customers may be the sodium count. At 3,536mg, that’s significantly more than the recommended daily maximums.
Of course, this is all very unofficial an unscientific. The Mountains will likely vary greatly from Arby’s to Arby’s. So don’t take these numbers as gospel.
Who could issue such a life-changing pronouncement? An anthropologist who’s spent years studying the Sanrio character, Christine R. Yano. As part of her upcoming gig curating “Hello! Exploring the Supercute World of Hello Kitty,” opening in OCtober at the Japanese American National Museum, she shed light on a few things about Hello Kitty to the Los Angeles Times and promptly freaked everyone out.
Yano says she was right there with the rest of the world — describing Hello Kitty as a cat in the written information for the exhibit.
“I was corrected — very firmly,” she says. “That’s one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat.”
Here is where we pause for effect.
SO WHAT IS SHE?!? She has funny ears and whiskery things and she sure seems like, well, a kitty cat who might like to purr and hang out on your lap right at the moment you need to get up and do something.
“She’s a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat,” explains Yano. “She’s never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it’s called Charmmy Kitty.”
Note to cat owners: If Mr. Fuzzybottomsnuggletimes starts carrying a purse and asks for his own pet, something is afoot. It’s only a matter of time, now that everything has changed.
Hello Kitty is not a cat, plus more reveals before her L.A. tour [Los Angeles Times]
Data from SNL Kagan shows that ESPN is by for the most expensive channel for cable providers to broadcast.
In recent years, cable companies and broadcasters have squared off in nasty, public spats that sometimes result in blackouts for millions of viewers. The broadcasters say they aren’t being paid properly and the cable companies claim they’re on our side, trying to keep costs down (though we always end up paying more). These battles will likely only get worse, with analysts predicting that the cost of content will continue to increase.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the average amount of our cable bill that goes to pay carriage fees to broadcasters is expected to increase 36% by 2018, according to estimates by media research firm SNL Kagan.
Currently, providers pay $28.32 for about a dozen channels, but that cost is expected to increase 36% by 2018 according to estimates by media research firm SNL Kagan.
Which network charges cable providers the most each month per customer? ESPN with an estimated cost of $6.04. That figure doesn’t include ESPN 2, which is also among the 10 most expensive channels at $.74 per customer. By 2018, SNL Kagan estimates providers will pay $8.38 per month to air the sports network.
The cost for ESPN is nearly 43-times the median average price of 14 cents paid for each channel a subscriber receives. The next most expensive network is TNT, which charges $1.48 per month per customer. Among the least expensive networks are Nick 2, Hallmark Movie Channel, MTV Hits and CNBC World.
It’s worth noting that Comcast-owned NBCUniversal is responsible for three of the 10 most costly cable channels. USA clocks in at $0.83, SyFy costs $0.27 and Bravo costs $0.25.
While Kagan predicts steep increases in the cost of content, the analysts expect that consumers’ cable bills won’t increase as dramatically. The average basic service currently costs $54.92 per month for consumers, while Kagan’s data expects the cost in 2018 to reach $61.76, a 12% increase.
That figure is generally in line, if not a bit lower, than what was detailed in a FCC report earlier this year. That report found the most basic cable package increased by 6.5% in 2012 alone.
If cable companies aren’t astronomically increasing our cable bills by 36% to make up for the amount they pay to networks, how are they making ends meet?
There’s no need to worry about the poor little cable companies, because WSJ reports most generate hefty profits through bundling cable with phone and broadband service and charging fees for equipment.
How Much Cable Subscribers Pay Per Channel [The Wall Street Journal]
