Bet You Can’t Import Just One

In the last six years, American exports of snack foods have grown from $155 million to more than $600 million, says the Department of Agriculture. Biggest customers: Canada, Mexico and Japan. Biggest seller: potato chips.

Gilding the Pekoe

More than 80% of all tea is served iced these days, so naturally the Bigelow Tea Co. asked Marlene Sorosky (“The Dessert Lover’s Cookbook”) to improve on success. Among her suggestions: Serve iced tea in wine or highball glasses; put pansies or lilacs in them; spear banana chunks on wooden skewers and freeze them for iced tea stirrers.

Would You Like That Steak Light or Dark?

Q is less like a barbecue grill than a charcoal-fired meat toaster. Instead of lying on a flat surface, the burning charcoal is held in a vertical “basket” and the meat hangs in similar flat cages on either side of it. Since the charcoal doesn’t rest on the bottom, you can actually barbecue on a picnic table or boat deck. Further advantages: no flare-ups, no (faintly carcinogenic) smoke from dripping fat, food is not dried out by convection. Disadvantages: uses more charcoal, you have to put down foil to catch the drippings. Available at Hammacher Schlemmer in Beverly Hills and Bristol Farms in South Pasadena, Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes Estates: $69.95.

Fungle Foods

Fungles Fun Foods are microwaveable meals for eco-youngsters. The packages (recycled paper, printed with biodegradable soy inks) give diet and recycling hints, and the nutritionally approved food is 18-month shelf-stable, meaning it doesn’t have to be frozen--saving energy, though probably not a whole lot unless you unplug your freezer for good. Fungle himself, an eco-gnome with a benevolent smile whose eyes are evidently always closed, is also a children’s story character who battles human eco-villains in a novel by Fungles founder Alan Aldridge, a former rock album designer (one of his partners is the founder of the Hard Rock Cafes). At health food stores, $2.50 to $3.50.

Itch? What Itch?

New medical treatment for chronically itchy skin: a cream containing capsaicin, the hot stuff in chile peppers.

There Must Be a Pattern Here

The Subway sandwich chain is owned by Doctors Associates Inc. Ditka’s Restaurant, owned by Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka, has closed for financial reasons. A diabetic care products company named Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals gives away a video game starring a diabetic super-hero struggling against junk foods.

Transylvanian Mace

An aromatic new wrinkle in the non-butter topping department: Molly McButter Garlic Butter Dairy Sprinkles, for sprinkling over hot foods. They’re four calories per 1/2-teaspoon serving and almost fat-free (so you can’t use them for frying). At supermarkets, $1.69 per two-ounce shaker bottle.