FoodBozo.com

Italian police confiscated some 70,000 balls of mozzarella in Turin after consumers noticed the milky-white cheese quickly developed a bluish tint when the package was opened, authorities said Saturday.

Agriculture Minister Giancarlo Galan ordered ministry laboratories to investigate what he called a “disturbing” development.

State TV said a woman in Turin called police after noticing that the mozzarella, made in Germany for an Italian company, turned blue after contact with air, and that several merchants in Turin had received similar complaints. Later in the day another consumer, in Trento, a city 200 kilometers (125 miles) to the east in northern Italy, made a similar discovery, authorities said.

Read more here: Mozzarella gets the blues in Italy

Well-loved Italian cuisine isn’t all creamy pasta and Parmesan. Italian cooks rely on fresh produce to create flavorful dishes for the everyday dinner table. Get healthy pantry tips and meal ideas from Giada and Ellie, then learn to make magic with marinara sauce.

Read more here: Italy, Plate by Plate

By Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press

ROME – Italy’s agriculture minister is defending his sponsorship of McDonald’s new all-Italian burger amid criticism that he is selling out to a multinational corporation and sacrificing Italy’s culinary reputation in the process.

Minister Luca Zaia has argued that McDonald’s new McItaly burger – using all Italian beef, Asiago cheese and artichoke spread – will pump C3.5 million ($4.8 million) more a month into the pockets of Italian farmers grappling with tough economic times.

But for a country that gave birth to the Slow Food movement a quarter-century ago and prides itself on its varied, delicious and healthy cuisine, Zaia’s enthusiastic support of McDonald’s has been hard to swallow.

It didn’t help that Zaia and McDonald’s executives launched the new burger last month at McDonald’s flagship restaurant in Rome’s historic centre near the Spanish Steps, the chain’s first Italian outpost.

The opening of those Golden Arches in 1986 famously inspired a relatively unknown Turin foodie, Carlo Petrini, to launch what became Slow Food – the international movement that embraces local, organic food and home cooking over fast food and the industrialized food chain.

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