But Who Gets the Candy?

On Sept. 11, the three West Coast states (plus Alaska, Hawaii, western Nevada and, for some reason northern Idaho) got their first shipments of peanut butter-flavored M&Ms;, the first new flavor for the candy since chocolate M&Ms; were introduced 36 years ago. To celebrate, the company offers to give a $50 U.S. Savings Bond to every baby born that day in these areas. A photocopy of a hospital-issued birth certificate along with a parent’s name, address and Social Security number must arrive at Stork Headquarters, 79 Madison Ave, 3rd Floor, New York, N.Y. 10016 no later than Oct. 15.

Next: Designer Greens

Oscar de la Renta now puts his trademark on papayas--not just any papayas but the ones grown on his papaya farm in the Dominican Republic.

The Wriggling Riddle

Little American boys horrify little American girls by threatening to eat worms, but not everybody finds the idea so horrifying. In Italy people eat the tiny worms that infest the best fresh porcini mushrooms, arguing that since they’ve eaten nothing but porcini all their lives they must taste good. In Egypt, an ancient cheese called mish sometimes develops worms when it’s been aged in salted milk for a month or so.

Now here’s the riddle: If you eat a worm that’s been living on a luxury food, are you eating high or low on the food chain?

The Sizzling Puzzle

Who would you suppose was the biggest supplier of potatoes to the potato-chip industry? Take a guess.

According to the Wall Street Journal, it’s probably a 5,000-acre high-tech potato farm near Farmington, N. M.--on the Navaho reservation. Every year Navaho Agricultural Products Industry sells about 130 million pounds of potatoes to the chip industry; last year it provided 30 million pounds to Frito-Lay alone.

Where Coffee Crystals Go to Heaven Last week marked the 150th anniversary of the New Orleans restaurant Antoine’s, famous for inventing pommes souffles and oysters Rockefeller and for substituting Folger’s Crystals for the fine coffee they usually serve.

The Aroma Is Strangely Complex

McCormick & Co. has introduced flavored coatings that could ostensibly be put on anything. You could have beef popcorn or hickory-smoked M&Ms.; Now, if you could only print an image on the flavored coating: for instance, “Warning: Salmon-Flavored Cookie.”

Tattooed Food

It’s not approved for US use yet, but Hayashibara Biochemical Labs of Japan has developed a sort of edible film that can put the impression of a printed image on food. It’s more or less a decal with edible inks, and it can also be used as a biodegradable food wrapping.