Caitlin Dewey

Caitlin Dewey is The Washington Post抖阴ap digital culture critic. Follow her on Twitter @caitlindewey or subscribe to her daily newsletter on all things Internet. (tinyletter.com/cdewey)

A kitchen worker sets up the salad bar at the FDA cafeteria. According to a new report, inspectors at the agency have failed to follow up on serious food-safety violations by food manufacturers.

Report: 20 percent of serious food safety violations go ignored

September 30, 2017 at 12:27 a.m.

Government inspectors failed to take action on one of every five serious food-safety risks identified in manufacturing facilities, according to a report released by federal auditors Wednesday. In the remaining...

Fruit sits on the ground below an orange tree at the Alico Inc. Lake Patrick Grove in Frostproof, Florida, on Sept. 11, 2017.

Irma may speed the end of orange juice

September 21, 2017 at 8:11 a.m.

Hurricane Irma plundered Florida's orange belt, leaving a trail of uprooted trees, downed fruit and flooded groves worse than anything growers say they have seen in more than 20 years.

Clockwise from top left: coconut kefir, cranberries, zucchini "cheese" with liver pate, baby bananas, ginger root and broccoli.

The raging legal battle over what makes a food “natural”

August 30, 2017 at 11:51 p.m.

More than a year after the Food and Drug Administration signaled that it would soon nail down exactly what the word "natural" means, the agency has yet to provide any...

This miracle weed killer was supposed to save farms; instead, it’s devastating them

August 30, 2017 at 12:13 p.m.

Its leaves curl downward and in on themselves like tiny, broken umbrellas. It's the telltale mark of inadvertent exposure to a controversial herbicide called dicamba.

Vanessa Briones serves fruit to first-graders during lunch at Laredo Elementary School on Aug. 16, 2017, in Aurora.

A multimillion-dollar federal research program can’t get children to eat vegetables, critique says

August 25, 2017 at 12:29 a.m.

The Department of Agriculture has invested seven years and several million dollars in a popular program that claims it gets students to eat significantly more fruits and vegetables.

For decades, Melania Trump's grandfather was ...

Melania Trump’s grandfather was an onion farmer. This company wants to make his onion famous.

July 23, 2017 at 11:55 a.m.

It just took a devoted seed executive and a glamorous first lady who's expressed little overt interest in the famous White House Kitchen Garden that her predecessor left.

An employee delivers cases of Coca-Cola ...

This is why two black pastors are suing Coca-Cola

July 13, 2017 at 1:34 p.m.

William Lamar, the senior pastor at D.C.'s historic Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, is tired of presiding over funerals for parishioners who died of heart disease, diabetes and stroke.

A bartender pours a beer at The Sovereign in Washington, D.C.

Lots of “craft” beer is brewed by Anheuser-Busch — here’s how to spot the real stuff

July 11, 2017 at 10:46 a.m.

More than 800 breweries - including Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada and New Belgium - will soon begin printing seals on their beers that identify them as "Certified Independent Craft." The...

The surprising number of American adults who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows

June 16, 2017 at 11:54 a.m.

Seven percent of all American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, according to a nationally representative online survey commissioned by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy.

Piglets in a farrowing pen at the Iowa Select sow farm outside of Humeston, Iowa. A new litter is born in one of these pens every 25 minutes, and the piglets remain from birth to three weeks.

Why Americans are eating more pork now than they have in decades

May 30, 2017 at 3:09 p.m.

The Iowa Select pig farm gives its visitors headphones, because the squeal of hogs is deafening. This is either a chorus for the damned -- or the sound of pork's...

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