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Starbucks is under assault not only by a foray from McDonald's into high-end coffee drinks but also from smaller rivals like Peet's and from the trend of people brewing more coffee at home, according to a note issued Monday by Stifel Nicolaus analyst Steve West.

It's not news that the nation's food-safety system is broken. From preventing disease outbreaks to tracking them when they occur, the system is full of holes, leading not only to death and illness but also to immense financial costs.

But two new reports—one from the government, one from a health-advocacy organization—put some disturbing numbers to the problem.

When claims that a particular food is particularly good for you start showing up in your spam filter, that's a good sign you should be wary.

So it is with the acai berry. Acai juice contains lots of antioxidants. It's good for you, no doubt. But all fruit juices, and lots of other foods, contain antioxidants. There's no reason to think that acai is some kind of magical elixir.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is worried that Frank M. Torti, the FDA's acting commissioner, is going way too far to protect information that the agency deems "confidential."

In an example of how self-regulation could work, Nestle USA reportedly decided against buying peanut butter from Peanut Corporation of America, the company responsible for the recent, deadly salmonella outbreak. Nestle inspectors visited the company's plants in Georgia and Texas, witnessed how awful they were, and took their business elsewhere.

Video of Starbucks' annual shareholders meeting, held earlier Wednesday in Seattle, is now up on the company's Web site.

Economic calamities sometimes have a way of bringing out the worst in governments. China was already looking askance at Coca-Cola's $2.3 billion bid to buy China Huiyuan, the country's largest juice maker. Now it has formally rejected the bid.

Sara Lee CEO Brenda Barnes' timing on trying to sell the company's European household-products unit, which accounts for 15 percent of the company's sales, may seem off.

After all, she came to Sara Lee in February 2005 bent on focusing the company on its core food businesses. She's long been under pressure to dump the unit. And the mergers and acquisitions market isn't exactly robust just now.

The most bafflingly tasteless headline I've seen in some time is on a blog item published Tuesday by the San Francisco Chronicle. "Lexus v. Girl Scouts: Lexus Wins," is about a guy who accidentally plowed into a group of Scouts selling cookies, injuring several of them.

McDonald's is doing great, but it has nothing to do with the global recession, insists president and COO Ralph Alverez.  

Want to know why you're fat? If you haven't seen it yet, This is Why You're Fat (where dreams become heart attacks) will tell you, pictorially. And the answers are disturbing, such as the item devoted to Armour Pork Brains in Milk Gravy. If the product itself doesn't put you off, how about the fact that it contains an incredible 1,170 percent of the daily recommended allowance of cholesterol per serving?

On top of the punishments imposed Wednesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission on three former executives of Krispy Kreme came an order that the company must never again commit the financial crimes of which the men were accused—cooking the books to inflate results.