In Hong kong, appointments only for iphone 4shong KONG--It s not too surprising anywhere in the world to see people lining up to buy the iphone 4s.
 While the Hong kong public has welcomed new government initiatives to conserve heritage buildings, debates now rage over what s worth keeping
In India, Mcdonald's to open first ever veggie outlets in sacred spotsdelhi--Fast food giant, Mcdonalds Corp,
. plans to open totally vegetarian outlets near two pilgrimage sites in India. The first restaurant will open in 2013, near the Golden Temple in the northern city of Amritsar,
which is sacred for Sikhs. The second one is planned for the town of Katra, which is the base for Hindus who are visiting the Vaishno Devi cave shrine.
These will be Mcdonald s first vegetarian joints in the world. The fast food giant has been operating in India since 1996.
Rakesh Srivastava 39, frequently visits Vaishno Devi with his wife, who is a strict vegetarian.
Å If it s purely vegetarian food then I will definitely go to it, Â said Srivastava,
who describes the food available near the religious site as a bit bland. Å You can t have any onions
and it isn t spicy. Â Srivastava, who works at a nonprofit organization in Delhi, finds going to Mcdonald s always a bit of fun.
Å It s a religious visit but it is also an outing, Â he told Smartplanet.
Å So why not have different kind of food there. Â Economics no doubt, is the driving force behind the veggie decision.
India with a population of 1. 2 billion people presents a huge market for American fast-food chains.
has made its way to KFC, Subway, Dominoes and Pizza hut. These chains have grown as more Indians can afford to eat out.
Dunkin Donuts also opened earlier this year and Starbucks is expected to arrive soon. But Mcdonald s 270 outlets in India are a small fraction of its 33,000 outlets worldwide.
With this move, the company will open itself up to millions of strictly vegetarian religious pilgrims who visit these two major sites.
A smart move considering much of India s social cultural and tourist activity pirouettes around religious festivals and places.
And nearly 40%of the country s population is vegetarian. Several of these American chains have gradually Indian-ized their menu by offering vegetarian items as well as making their food spicier than
what is served in the West. Beverages, too, taken on a local flavor. Mcdonalds, for instance, already offers potato
and cottage-cheese based items that are hugely popular. It also maintains separate kitchens to prepare vegetarian and non-vegetarian food.
Mcdonald s non-vegetarian menu in India excludes beef and pork. Hindus, who consider the cow sacred
don t eat beef. Muslims, who regard pigs as unclean, don t eat pork. Fish and chicken are safe bets.
The New york times calculates Mcdonald s accounts for 3 percent of beef consumption in the United states, which works out to 1. 37 million cows per year killed for Mcdonald s in the United states alone.
Which is perhaps why some right-wing Hindu groups are creating a fuss about Mcdonald s setting-up shop near religious sites.
Å It s an attempt not only to make money but also deliberately humiliate Hindus, Â S. Gurumurthy,
a leader of a Hindu Nationalist Group told The Daily telegraph. It is associated an organization with cow slaughter.
If we make an announcement that they're slaughtering cows, people won't eat there, Â he said.
Å We are definitely going to fight it. Â India, often described as a country of contradictions,
is also set to become the world s largest beef exporter in the world. A report by the U s. Department of agriculture, released in April 2012,
said that this year India was tapping into Brazil s market in the middle East, North africa and Southeast asia as all carabeef is lower priced
But there is a cow-buffalo distinction. The exported meat is water buffalo. The killing of male and female cows or even milk-giving buffaloes is prohibited by federal law.
Srivastava, however, doesn t see how a Mcdonald s opening up near Vaishno Devi Šhumiliates  Hindus.
Å It s just a foreign company making its investments, Â he said. Gita Arora, a homemaker
ŠSo it s okay to eat at Mcdonald s in Delhi but not in Vaishno Devi  doesn t make sense to me.
 ŠI don t think most people who eat in Mcdonald s are even aware about killing cows in America or wherever,  continued Arora,
a vegetarian who has visited Vaishno Devi. Å Anyway, I don t think the younger generation links food with religion the way it was done in the past.
 But Arora also says that hard-core religious vegetarians may feel more strongly. ŠI became a vegetarian by choice
 she said. There was no religious compulsion. Since Mcdonald s fare is regarded widely as unhealthy, critics see it as a misfit in the healthier vegetarian food club as well as a poor challenge to tradition Indian fast-food.
Kavitha Rao, a Bangalore-based journalist, describes India vegetarian fast-food as Å healthier, tastier, and fresher.
 ŠI can assure you that Indians have many more than a hundred varieties of veggie fast food,
not just a plain one-size-fits-all potato patty, Â she writes in The Guardian.
Andrew Tobert, an environmental activist counter-argues that Indians won t become obese overnight nor will its cuisine disappear.
Å That we live in a world where people can pick and choose the best of global culture,
regardless of where they were born? Mcdonald's is the global emancipator. May its benevolence spread far and wide,
 he writes to Rao s argument. Ritesh Kumar, owner of Ritesh Chat Bhandar, a shop selling Indian fast food in Delhi, doesn t see Mcdonald s as a challenge to his business.
The 29-year-old businessman caters to about 100-150 customers every day. His vegetarian burger consists of a bun and a potato patty with a mix of tangy and sweet sauces available for Rs. 10 (18 cents.
Kumar, who has eaten at Mcdonalds, says his burgers taste different. Å The burger that they serve is quite bland and many times more costly,
 he said. Kumar also boasts of a wider choice of traditional Indian snacks that are available between the price range of Rs. 10 and Rs. 20 (18 cents to 36 cents.
a low-lit basement bar in a back street in the traditional district of Anguk fills up with a cool, 20-to 30-something clientele.
Across town, in a tangle of alleys in Noksapyeong, a foreign-centric district across from the giant U s army base, thirsty patrons crowd into a string of bright, packed pubs.
artisanal ales, porters and wheat beers. Â These craft brews, and the bars which serve them,
are emblematic of changes in South korea s drinking culture and consumer lifestyle. For decades, booze choices nationwide were restricted largely to soju, the local grain-based firewater;
bland, mass-market lagers; and more recently, pricey imported wines. But in recent years, a wave of exciting new beers, both international-style and Korean-style, have washed through the market.
Usually mistranslated as Å rice wine, Â makgeolli is categorically a beer. It is brewed not fermented;
is made from cereals not fruits; and is quaffed, not sipped. Â New trends have placed a traditional brew, makgeolli,
back in the spotlight (Andrew Salmon) Â The addition of expanded liquid choices to Korea s ever-pulsating nightlife makes the nation s drinking scene as exciting as anywhere in the region.
Å Korea has come a long way in its drinking culture, Â said Eric Thorpe, a PR executive and long-term expatriate.
Å I used to live in Tokyo, and Seoul has become as fun a place to go out at night as Tokyo oe in some ways better.
 What happened? Three developments enabled the trend: regulatory change; globalization; and a shift in local tastes toward lower-alcohol, healthier drinks.
Makgeolli was traditionally a peasants drink; the choice for low-income, middle-aged, rural tipplers. Change came when a series of regulations were lifted in the late 1990s,
permitting makgeollis oe whose sales were limited previously to their native provinces oe  to be sold nationwide.
The expanded market, boosted by festivals and competitions, ignited increases in quality and range. Innovative brews oe  some infused with such ingredients as berries
and herbs oe flooded the scene. A range of funky new bars appeared to supply a newly youthful clientele.
Makgeolli, servied with battered prawns, chilis and soy sauce at Sanchez (Andrew Salmon) Â Another factor contributing to makgeolli's trendiness was that it was partly reverse imported oe ironically oe from Japan
where Korean cuisine is hugely popular. Â Å In the early 2000s people in Tokyo were looking for a cheap alternative to the wine trend sweeping through Asia;
a cheap drunk that tasted good,  said Joe Mcpherson, who runs Seoul s  Zenkimchi  blog.
 ŠThe Japanese liked makgeolli, so the trend was bought back to Korea by Japanese oe
even though it is Korean stuff! Â added Park Chang-hee, owner-operator of Anguk bar Sanchez Makegolli,
which serves around 20 varietals. Regarding beer, minimum volume requirements were lowered in 2002, enabling the establishment of craft breweries, rather than the industrial operations that previously defined the market.
Specialist pubs sprouted, with the most influential appearing in the expatriate quarter of Noksapyeong. Internationalization was a concurrent enabler,
with fashion-savvy Koreans reacting to and adopting overseas trends. The first and most influential craft pub in Korea, Noksapyeong s Craftworks was established by Canadian Dan Vroon in 2010,
originally to serve the expatriate community, though Vroon was sure locals would catch on. Å Koreans look to trends overseas,
 Vroon said. ŠThey knew that craft beer was taking the world by storm.
Å Â Owner Dan Vroon pulls a pint at Craftworks (Andrew Salmon) International trade also played a role.
Korean free trade agreements implemented with Europe and the U s. in respectively, 2010 and 2012 increased imports of oe and taste for oe  quality beers.
Global media, too: The nascent, expat-focused craft beer scene was boosted massively in 2012 when The Economist attacked Korea s bland, mass-market lagers,
but wrote approvingly of Craftworks locally brewed ales. The article was reported widely by local media;
curious locals poured in to taste the beers of Noksapyeong. Â Vroon estimates his clientele pior was around 50 percent foreigners, 50 percent locals;
now the ratio is 80-20 in favor of Koreans. Craftworks today boasts four locations,
including one in trend-setting Gangnam, and sells to some 40 locations nationwide, including top hotels such as Seoul s boutique W. Vroon oe who, like other Noksapyeong publicans, sources his beers from an out-of-town brewery
which is having difficulty keeping up with surging demand oe  is planning to establish his own dedicated brewery at year end.
The writer of The Economist article, Daniel Tudor, subsequently retired from journalism and is now a partner in the ŠThe Booth  a chain of craft beer pubs with its flagship in Noksapyeong.)
A third factor has been a move toward tipples that are lower in alcohol than Korea s customary libation, soju.
Å In the past when the economy was bad, my father said there was a taste for stronger alcohol,
 said Kang Ju-jin, an attractive, 20-something marketer drinking corn-infused makgeolli in Sanchez.
Å Nowadays, with the economy better, people prefer lighter drinks. Â A glass of Craftworks IPA, fresh from the keg (Andrew Salmon) Å People want natural products and makgeolli and craft beer are said natural,
 Vroon. ŠYoung women in their 20s and 30s are leading this trend they are embracing this stuff more than men:
They don t have to go to the military, so graduate two years earlier than males and have disposable income.
 Indeed, clientele in both Sanchez and Craftworks is largely 20-to 30-something local females.
Korea s duopoly of big brewers, whose products have thus far been limited to American-style lagers,
are upping their game: Jinro-Hite produced an ale last year, and OB is planning an imminent launch.
It could also go international. Seoul s top traditional alcoholic producer Kooksoondang, launched a canned,
spritzer-style grapefruit makgeolli last year that appears tailor-made for Western markets. And Vroon hopes that once his own brewery comes online, he,
too, will be able to export.
In Paris, expat brings superfood back to the tableparis oe In third grade, when asked to associate the first letter of her name with what she most identified with,
 A longtime vegetarian with a macrobiotic mother, Beddard grew up familiar with the health food scene in the US.
Beddard launched The Kale Project earlier this year to reintroduce the forgotten vegetable to the Parisian food scene.
or as feed for livestock, there is no clear cut explanation for why the green fell out of favor.
 Pastry chef and Paris food blogger David Lebovitz has written about the trials of finding kale in Paris.  Å
 She hopes that the trendiness of the plant in restaurants from New york to Los angeles will help to attract Parisian consumers.
Å I think it s a huge opportunity to bring something to this country where food is so important
She has reached also out to popular restaurants in Paris like Verjus and Coutume Cafã Â, creating excitement among chefs who are eager to use the green.
and recipes to help show consumers how kale can be used in daily meals. Far from a food trend like hamburger or bagels in Paris
Beddard hopes that kale will go the way of the parsnip, becoming widely accepted in French cooking and in markets across the country.
 ŠIf the idea of kale education and me telling the story is irrelevant in two years, then
trees and cakes that are included in the display and borrowed from booth partners as far away as England.
India sets in motion the world's biggest food subsidy programa child begs on the street in Kashmir DELHI--With less than a year left for national elections,
Earlier this month, the government used its emergency powers to force through the Food security Ordinance,
which it says will help legally codify the right to food. This is seen as the first step to implementing a law that will allow 800 million Indians to buy food grain at incredibly low prices--the world's biggest food subsidy program.
This effort of the government may look egalitarian but there are remaining questions, concerns and divisions within India on the form of this proposed law,
Poor children between the ages of six months to 14 years will be provided with free lunch.
Biraj Patnaik, an adviser to a commission appointed by the Supreme court of India to oversee existing public food distribution schemes,
It also runs free daily food camps for poor students in government schools under the Midday Meal Scheme.
The Midday Meal scheme is the biggest school feeding program in the world. It feeds 120 million children in over 1. 26 million schools and centers across the country.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has been a vocal advocate of the food security bill and he also wants it to be universal.
Kavita Srivastava, a member of the Right to Food campaign, a coalition of non-government organizations, said that the national food security bill is a crucial opportunity to end hunger and malnutrition in India.
Srivastava noted that apart from food security, the bill should also provide nutritional security. The Rome-based Food and Agricultural organization estimates that between 2010-12 India had 217 million people at risk of undernourishment.
Å The bill only provides cereals which does not ensure that the targeted population will get adequate nutrition.
The government should also be made accountable for the nutritional needs of the people, Â she said.
and suggested that special entitlements of food or cash should also been given to the aged, disabled, widows, migrants and destitute.
whether the Indian government can afford to pay for this subsidized food. It is estimated that this scheme needs an addition 200 billion rupees or ($33. 3 billion) to the existing one trillion rupees food subsidies currently cost.
Reetika Khera, assistant professor of economics at the Indian Institute of technology, Delhi noted that India should be able to afford the scheme.
The food security bill is still being discussed at a policy level. Debate over its feasibility has percolated not down to the people who may benefit from it.
or $10 as support from the government to buy food. Ram does not even know that the government is planning to change this policy
The Indian government says that livelihood is already a component of its plans to conserve biodiversity.
but that's pie in the sky for now. Back to the present and the ipad.
With his recent liver transplant Apple CEO Steve jobs had a serious brush with his own mortality.
and expose notebook innards to bagel crumbs and spilled coffee. Â The ipad's soft keyboard is on screen
The Food and Drug Administration seems set on regulating the software that runs on the ipad, not the device itself,
and the resources to recycle sewage until it's as pure as our drinking water--a process known as toilet to tap.
Aquaponics are closed-circuit food production system. Simply put, fish are raised in a tank of water that circulates from the plants and back into the tank.
which provides nutrients for the plants. In turn, the plants clean up the water for the fish.
and a handful of startups are growing food to supply local restaurants. Governing explains how a larger-scale aquaponics industry would play out in Milwaukee:
providing jobs and a supply of nutritious, locally produced food for residents. In the bigger picture, proponents want Milwaukee to develop industry leading expertise in technologies,
If successful, it could be a good model for cities that are struggling with water quantity and food desert issues.
food packaging design goes high-techas shoppers at Barnes and noble in Manhattan s Union square peruse the latest issues of Esquire and Glamour on a recent afternoon,
a production company just a floor above them is creating food packaging using some of the highest-tech tools to date.
The process starts with a 3-D image of a juice bottle, a sketch of simple white lines, popping up on a computer screen in the offices of the Visualizer Team at the production company GSG.
The nondescript shape becomes a bottle of Creative Juice, which is sold at Equinox gyms throughout New york city.
The seven flavors of Creative Juice are lined up next to each other to compare colors. Is the green shade of Green Means Go, a juice with kale, spinach and ginger
too much like the green hue of another flavor? Once the colors are finalized, the entire collection is transferred to Store Visualizer, another Esko software product.
The blank background of the previous program is replaced with a grocery store shelf. The bottles are shifted around the shelf in the same way the move in space,
helping the Creative Juice team decide whether their products will stand out from the crowd. An evolving industry From software products that can take a juice bottle from sketch to virtual store shelf in a matter of hours to innovations that make frozen dinners safer and more sustainable
food packaging design has gone officially high-tech. More than half of the sales in the packaging industry go to the food industry,
said Joseph Hotchkiss, director of the Michigan State university School of Packaging, the oldest academic institution teaching packaging.
And, in virtually all food products, he said, the packaging costs more than the food ingredients. Å You wouldn t have a packaging industry
if you didn t have a food industry, Â Hotchkiss said. Å The volume of food products sold in packages is so large it s almost beyond comprehension.
 With the sheer volume of food packaging on the planet plus the stringent safety and health regulations surrounding edible products, it seems only natural that high-tech packaging design innovations would begin with food.
Since packaging is meant to help food products stay fresher longer, the industry is constantly dreaming up new ways to improve shelf life
while using fewer additives, said Kay Cooksey, Cryovac endowed chair at Clemson University. Fresh, refrigerated pastas, rather than the dried kind found in the pasta aisle,
are only available because they re blown with a gas that keeps them fresh, she said.
Å Being able to get products in markets we never could before is part of it
 Cooksey said. Specialty packaging called ripesense, once used to package pears in Wal-mart stores,
whether that food is harboring a dangerous pathogen. Researchers are designing packaging that could alert consumers to a pathogen in the food
or to a food product that s nearing the end of its shelf life, Cooksey said. A French company has developed a sensor that can detect
if food has been abused Å temperature, Â or stored at an inappropriately cold or hot level.
If temperature abuse is detected, the sensor will block out a portion of the product barcode, prohibiting a customer from purchasing it.
it s especially relevant in food packaging, said Susie Stitzel, solution manager at Esko. That s because of the pressure that comes with consumers constantly buying
--and discarding--food packages. Some parts of the world, such as China and Africa, don t have the infrastructure capacity to handle the millions of food packages crossing their borders,
Hotchkiss said. And some states in India are even working to ban certain types of packaging.
has lead to some high-tech food packaging tool and solutions to be used for increasing sustainability.
Conagra Foods for example, was the first North american company to incorporate post-consumer recycled plastic into its frozen meal trays.
Preventing food waste can also help achieve sustainability through food packaging. Many food products are thrown away because consumers believe--falsely--that they ve gone bad.
Printed electronic sensors that make it clear when food is still safe to eat could prevent such waste,
Cooksey said. But to follow through on the sustainability mission, she added, the sensors themselves would have to be recyclable.
Another option is to remove and sort the sensors, which would likely be small enough to be melted down and remade.
Despite the move toward safer and more sustainable packaging, there are potential downsides to high-tech food packaging design, Young Teck Kim,
And consumers might need to be educated on complicated new food packaging like bioplastics. For instance, if consumers don t know to separate compostable food packaging from other landfill waste,
Kim said, they could generate an even worse environmental impact than if they were using traditional packaging.
And just because a high-tech food packaging idea works in the lab doesn t mean it s easy to scale up,
Researchers are working on an antimicrobial film that would go inside food packaging to provide an extra barrier against pathogens.
that mandate packaging components don t interact negatively with the food product. It s also tough to tell just how high-tech consumers want their food packaging to be said,
Cooksey. It might be too soon for an interactive jar of pickles. But the future of food packaging looks toward even more interactivity, Cooksey said.
There are efforts to let food packages and appliances, like microwaves and refrigerators, Štalk to each other  through information from scanned barcodes.
Å Even more so, we re going to have things that are more interactive, Â she said.
Back at GSG the production company in Manhattan, president Ken Madsen described how the high-tech Esko products cut the time to market in half
à  Instead of viewing the product on a virtual grocery store shelf on a computer screen, he said,
clients could enter a virtual grocery store wearing 3-D glasses and a glove that lets them pick up
So it might not be long before the sophisticated Esko Visualizer programs are rendered obsolete by yet another innovation in food packaging design.
GSG/Creative Juice
Jack Hanna on the one word in global warming that everyone's avoidingjack Hanna is an animal expert, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium,
Some kids are afraid to see the chickens in the petting zoo. Teachers ask what can we do,
Kraft surpasses several sustainability goalsnext time you're wondering which brand of hot dogs to grab for the summer barbecue
Kraft Foods Campbell, N y.,plant offsets 30%of its natural gas needs. Kraft has invested heavily in technology at the two of its plants
New electric car may signal the end of the road for gas guzzlers
Laser-etched'tattoos'an alternative to sticker labels on fruityou'd think there would be a better way to label
Better still, the permanent etching-hence tattoo--does not increase water loss, nor the entrance of food pathogens or postharvest pathogens.
stopping decay and food pathogens. Wax coverage is recommended still to prevent water loss. To test for decay, the fruit was inoculated with decay organisms and then etched with the laser.
Naturally, the process still must be approved by the U s. Food and Drug Administration before it could be used commercially
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