That Burrito Is Mighty Tempting….

It’s a new year and a fresh start, so you’ll shoot the first person who uses the phrase “healthy eating” or tries to tell you that a beef burrito smothered with melted cheese, guacamole and sour cream could (ital) possibly (unital) be fattening.

An excellent plan, and one that the Healthy Choice food company also endorses (more or less); it says that “bad news” about food in 1994 created headlines, on average, once every 10 days.

So, with the American Dietetic Association, they’re offering a special message called “The Good News about Food,” during the month of January; you can hear it by calling the ADA hotline at (800) 366-1655. You can also sign up for a free quarterly newsletter about food and nutrition. Or you can eat another burrito.

Canine concerns: Are supermarkets going to the dogs?

Absolutely, according to the Food Marketing Institute, which says the largest number of new products introduced in U.S. supermarkets last year in 1993 were different brands of … pet food.

Overall, pet food “introductions” rose 54 percent, new fruits and veggies rose 47 percent and condiments (bring on the salsa!) rose 23 percent.

Losers were processed meat and poultry introductions, down 42 percent, entrees (mostly frozen), down 10 percent, and tobacco products (boo, hiss!), down 16 percent.

On the brighter side, the typical supermarket now carries about 30,000 different products, up from around 13,000 in 1982.

Bad Recipe of the Week: From the Florida Tomato Committee, the consortium responsible for bringing you those really bad, expensive, flavorless tomatoes in the middle of winter, comes a recipe to match: Orange-Couscous Stuffed Tomatoes.

Among the stuffing ingredients: orange juice and frozen peas.

Great moments in food technology:

*A new cereal from General Mills uses Reese’s peanut butter and Hershey’s cocoa. It allegedly tastes like Reese’s peanut butter cups.

*DeLonghi has a new line of espresso machines with an IFD instant froth dispenser. The company describes this as “a revolutionary technology that makes it easier than ever to brew a perfect cup of cappucino or latte … the result of years of intensive research and development.”

For this they paid money?

*According to a survey for Charles Bindo Design Associates, two-thirds of people 55 and older buy cookies regularly.

*According to research for Campbell’s Soup, “people who followed a low calorie diet that included soup lost weight.” (This sounds like it means something, but anybody who genuinely follows any kind of a low calorie diet - with or without soup - will lose weight.)

Food follies: From “Life’s Little Frustrations Book” (St. Martin’s Press), come some examples of how things in the kitchen can go wrong:

You open a can of soup and the lid falls in.

You pour orange juice on your cereal.

You’re running behind schedule with your dinner party and one of your guests shows up a half-hour early.

Do you have any other examples? Drop us a note at the address below and we’ll share the results in a future column.

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