Svati Kirsten Narula

What to watch for today

Two kinds of models besieged New York City this week. A pack of top runway models are in town for New York Fashion Week, and a cast of impeccably groomed purebred canines are hovering around midtown for the Westminster Kennel Club’s Annual Dog Show, which concluded last night.

The most popular combinations of beans, rice, and meat that people order from Chipotle, America’s favorite fast-casual burrito chain, all contain close to 1,000 calories—as the New York Times so helpfully informs us. The implication is that, if you’re anything like the average burrito-lover, your meals at Chipotle are indulgences; they’re too rich in fat, carbs, and sodium to be a regular part of a healthy diet.

The year 2015 is perhaps a little late for the launch of Red Velvet Oreos, a limited-edition, Valentine’s Day version of the world’s favorite cookie. Red velvet (the flavor, not the classic style of cake that inspired it) is at this point neither retro nor innovative. In fact, it’s starting to look as trite as pumpkin spice—but without the deliciously pungent, emotionally powerful aroma. Here’s how red velvet became the flavor of the moment, and why it’s already starting to look overdone.

The packaged foods company Mondelez International was born in 2012, the result of a Kraft spinoff. Along with famous snack brands such as Ritz crackers, Trident gum, and Cadbury chocolate, the new company also took over Oreo, which had been born 100 years earlier, in 1912.

When a city like Boston gets buried in snow, as has occurred in epic proportions this year, there’s more to be done than simply plowing the streets.

Along with the news that fourth-quarter revenue increased by 50% year-over-year while profits have quadrupled, GrubHub announced today that it has acquired Boston-based delivery service DiningIn and California-based Restaurants on the Run.

Chocolate lovers, or at least a certain British-influenced subset of them, are outraged that The Hershey Co. has forced a ban on US imports of Cadbury’s chocolate manufactured in the UK. The ban doesn’t preclude Americans from getting their hands on other Cadbury chocolate, though—as long as it’s the made-in-the-USA kind.

Amid all the flashy commercials for beer, burgers, lingerie, and cars, mostly from deep-pocketed corporations who can shell out millions for precious airtime during the Super Bowl on Sunday, there will be one 60-second spot for a humble fruit.

There’s plenty of information out there about Steve Easterbrook, the 48-year-old Briton who will become the new CEO of McDonald’s on March 1. Profiles by the BBC, Business Insider, and the Financial Times tell of the man’s cricket-playing days at Durham University, his tenure as the head of McDonald’s UK and then McDonald’s Europe, and his recent successful CEO stints at the British restaurant chains PizzaExpress and Wagamama.

The C-suite at McDonald’s just got shaken up like a McFlurry. Current president and CEO Don Thompson will retire on March 1 after 25 years with the company. His replacement is Steve Easterbrook, currently the fast-food chain’s chief brand officer. The company’s CFO has been promoted as well, to chief administrative officer, and will be succeeded by another in-house executive.

This post has been corrected.

For 25 years, American airline passengers have been able to count on SkyMall, a quirky catalog tucked behind every seat, as a source of in-flight entertainment. Whether one was in the market for an $80 automatic cereal dispenser or not, in the days before iPads and onboard Wi-Fi, flipping through SkyMall was, to some of us, “one of the few pleasures left in commercial air travel.“

In 2009, climate scientists devised a framework to monitor Earth’s vital signs based on nine “planetary boundaries” within which human civilization can continue to thrive. Three of the nine boundaries had already been crossed: There was too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, too much nitrogen had been removed from the atmosphere, and biodiversity was declining too quickly. Let’s keep an eye on all of these measures, they said (paywall), to predict when our time here might expire.

Americans love popcorn as much as, if not more than, ever. They just don’t like making it in microwaves.

Pizza Hut has been trying to recharge its business in the US for quite a while. The Yum! Brands chain has seen eight straight quarters of declining domestic sales; meanwhile, its smaller competitors, Papa John’s and Domino’s, have been munching on wider and wider slices of the market.

Ocean acidification, the phenomenon that some call global warming’s evil twin, might be ravaging the world’s fisheries faster than zombie fishing boats. Scientists continue to discover new ways that marine ecosystems are being re-shuffled by the changing pH of the sea—a consequence of increased carbon dioxide emissions, 30% of which are absorbed by the ocean. Some of these discoveries are sad. Others are downright alarming. Those poor snails and their dissolving shells! Centuries of oyster farming in the American Northwest are coming to an end. The Great Barrier Reef is shrinking.

Nordic countries do everything better, as Americans commonly note. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden have better pop music, better prisons, better schools, better working conditions for women, better healthcare, and so on; who’s to say a Nordic diet wouldn’t be better, too?

Some things in life that are fun are also dangerous. Sliding down a snow-covered hill on a sled—or a toboggan, or an inner tube, or a cafeteria tray—is one of those things. Sledding is particularly fun and dangerous if the bottom of one’s sled is slick (video) or the snow is icy.

Japan’s first bluefin tuna auction of the year took place this weekend at the famous Tsukiji fish market, which has been in business since 1935. It’s been called “the Wall Street of Fish.” Historically, the first bluefin sold there each January has been the year’s most expensive, as a matter of ceremony. The price peaked in 2013 when a 489-lb specimen went for $1.76 million, provoking outrage among conservationists who viewed the sale as a publicity stunt symbolizing man’s ruthless plunder of the seas.

A multinational team of scientists has been excavating the Sheikh Abd el-Qurna, one of many mortuary complexes on the west bank of the Nile, near Luxor, Egypt, for several months. This is an area rich in archaeological treasures, and a bunch of artifacts—such as a mummy that wore jewels, and a mummy that was once a singer—have been recovered in the past year.

In 2014, Americans consumed nearly 260 eggs each on average, more than in recent years but fewer than in 1945, when consumption peaked at 402 eggs per person.

White Castle, the American fast-food chain famous for its small, square-shaped beef patties, or sliders, has been experimenting with a vegetarian version of its signature menu item all year. The new veggie sliders had been set to go on sale at all White Castle locations on Jan. 1, but the company has decided to unleash the new sliders two days early, and is making them available today.

“America runs on Dunkin'” is one of the least-true marketing slogans in history. Some 64 years after its founding in Massachusetts, the Dunkin’ Donuts chain—which gets about 20% of its revenue from outside its home country, mind you—hasn’t even set foot in several US states stretching from the Pacific Northwest to the Upper Midwest, and barely has a presence in important US markets like California and Texas.