You May Already Have One!

This month Frito-Lay, Inc. is sending out 13 million free samples of the redesigned Doritos tortilla chips. The new chips are larger, thinner and spicier than the old.

Latte Jerks?

Connoisseurs of pungent slang bemoan the disappearance of the old-style soda fountain and its slang-slinging soda jerks. But take heart. Espresso bars may be the soda fountains of the Nineties, to judge from expressions being used there such as “on a leash” (an espresso to go) and “W.O.T.” (a decaf latte made with non-fat milk--it stands for “waste of time”).

The Fizzics of Wine

In France, some people believe that if you stick the handle of a silver spoon in the neck of a Champagne bottle, the wine will keep its sparkle overnight. Food science writer Harold McGee and Stanford chemistry prof. Richard N. Zare decided to do a test. They put a silver spoon in one opened bottle of sparkling wine, a stainless-steel spoon in another and nothing in a third. For good measure they recorked a fourth bottle. The next day they found no real difference between the bottles (except that the recorked bottle had developed an off flavor). So much for the spoon theory.

Another discovery: After a couple of glasses, one of the tasters, a lawyer, declared himself “unable to disaggregate the Gestalt of the wine.”

Coffee Up

As the year ended, March coffee futures rose 7.5% on the New York Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange, following reports that some Latin American nations were going to withhold as much as 20% of their coffee bean exports beginning Jan. 1.

Go West, Young Tuna

A big bluefin tuna from the West Atlantic can fetch up to $10,000 on the Japanese market. Environmentalists have claimed that as a result, the population of large West Atlantic bluefins has plunged as much as 85% since 1975. But a report from the National Research Council says these reports have been exaggerated, and stocks have actually been stable since 1988. The estimates of decline were based on the idea that East Atlantic and West Atlantic tuna were totally separate populations, but it turns out that significant numbers of tuna cross the ocean every year, and that twice as many head west as east.

Vitamins, Vitamins Everywhere

Look for anti- carcinogenic additives in the new year. Prepared Food magazine recently interviewed 736 food company Research & Development execs about the possibility of adding antioxidant vitamins to food; 22% were weighing the idea for the near future.

Veal Try

Hey, the grand prize in the 1995 Favorite Veal Recipe contest is $3,000. It can’t be just any veal recipe, though--it has to be one prepared on the outdoor grill in 60 minutes or less (not counting marinade time), calling for eight ingredients or fewer (not counting water, salt and pepper). Send it to Favorite Veal Recipe Contest, P.O. Box 530, Barrington, Ill. 60011, postmarked by midnight, March 1.