I stopped into Safeway the other day for a doughnut. (Sometimes I really like a bad doughnut. Does this happen to you?) On previous visits I’d chuckled at the sign above the doughnut case, which read:

AT SAFEWAY, A DOZEN IS 14

This time, however, I completely lost it, because someone had carefully pasted a square of paper over the “14” and written “12.”

I was all set to come home and write about this, but it occurred to me to Google it first. It turns out I am late to this party:

The Consumerist: Grocery Shrink Ray Unleashes Its Fury On Safeway Bakery

The sign at my local Safeway was more tastefully redone than this. But wow, apparently some genius at corporate sent out a memo to stores telling them to scratch out their generous doughnut policy with a Sharpie. This is so awesome I don’t know where to start. Like, if they had raised the price of a dozen doughnuts by a dollar, hardly anybody would have even noticed, right? Whereas this way it’s more like…

SAFEWAY IS STEALING MY DOUGHNUTS

Would an enterprising culture jammer please mount a doughnut protest at Safeway and post the video? I would so love to see that. And if you, dear readers, were going to attend such a protest, what would you write on your picket signs?

This month on Culinate:

Green Goddess: The subtle pleasures of green tea

> Take a trip to your local supermarket, and you might find Lipton 100% Green, Mighty Leaf Green Tea Tropical, Stash Premium Green, or Bigelow Naturally Decaffeinated. All will assure you that they are loaded with antioxidants. Some, such as Yogi Tea Slim Life, claim to help you lose weight.

> But few will tell you–on the front of the box at least–whether they contain Chinese or Japanese tea. This is a major omission, because to my palate, Chinese and Japanese green teas are as distinct as green and black tea. They’re grown and processed differently, and the difference in the cup is huge.

One dumb fact I ended up cutting: if you want to brew your green tea at a perfect 175°F, one way to do it is to boil your water at Everest Base Camp, elevation 17,700 feet.

I was fascinated by [this recent column](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/health/05brod.html) about the health benefits of coffee, even though I rarely drink coffee. No, the part that grabbed me was this:

> Although caffeine speeds up metabolism, with 100 milligrams [about one cup of coffee] burning an extra 75 to 100 calories a day, no long-term benefit to weight control has been demonstrated.

Upon reading this, I reached for the back of my envelope. (I used to have one of those calculator watches, but the back of an envelope works just as well, don’t you find?) Burning an extra 75 calories per day, all other things being equal, should translate to an annual weight loss of 8 pounds.

But the actual weight loss experienced by people who start drinking coffee (or who switch from decaf to caf) is: 0 pounds. What’s going on?

The simplest explanation is probably correct: drink coffee and you’ll burn more calories. Burning more calories makes you feel hungry. Feeling hungry causes you to eat more.

Just look at what happens when people switch from regular soda to diet. It’s easy to consume several hundred calories of Coca-Cola per day. Switch that out for diet (approximately zero calories) and you should see swift and sustained weight loss.

Of course, diet sodas don’t make people lose weight, any more than coffee does. You switch from regular to diet, you get hungrier. I’m sure the same is true for baked Lays, Olestra, skim milk, stevia, eating off smaller plates, and so on.

Is this an oversimplification? You bet. I doubt our bodies treat every calorie the same. But so much of what’s written about diet and weight seems to assume the body is so stupid it doesn’t know what calories are at all, and our brains will just shrug at Diet Coke and say, “Seems the same to me.”

Hi, I still exist! Did you miss me? I’ve been too busy playing with my new Oxo scale to post.

A couple weeks ago my old Soehnle kitchen scale stopped working. It had served me well in the kitchen for eight years. But I had a few complaints, and I was casting around for reasons to replace it. The Soehnle picked up dirt and was, in places, impossible to clean. You had to flip it over to switch between grams and ounces. And the platform was so small that you couldn’t weigh something on a plate or in a large bowl, because then you couldn’t see the screen anymore.

It turned out the Soehnle was just waterlogged, and it started working again a couple days later. But not before I’d ordered the Oxo Kitchen Scale.

Oxo is known for clever design. They make the mango slicer that cuts the juicy flesh away from the oddly-shaped pit. They make the liquid measuring cup that can be read without kneeling down.

But the scale is–and I realize this is an obnoxious comparison but bear with me–the iPod of kitchen tools. It owns its category. If you’re considering a kitchen scale, don’t shop around, just get the Oxo. They thought of *everything*.

* The grams/pounds button is on the top. (You’d be surprised how often this comes up.)

* It weighs up to 11 pounds. You may never expect to weigh 11 pounds of anything in the kitchen, but the high capacity will come in handy for two reasons: you can weigh a small package for shipping, and you can weigh ingredients in a large, heavy bowl without maxing out the scale. Furthermore, the Oxo has a gauge showing how close you are to 11 pounds, even if you’ve zeroed the scale. This is brilliant.

* The weighing platform is removable for cleaning (not in the dishwasher, though).

* The display has large numbers and an attractive blue backlight in case you’re cooking…AFTER HOURS.

* One of the most annoying things about some scales is the auto shutoff. Sure, I like saving batteries, but if I pause for three whole minutes in the midst of weighing, I don’t want to have to start over. The Oxo blanks the display after five minutes but doesn’t actually shut off until 45 minutes of inactivity.

* Finally, the display *pulls out* several inches, so it can’t be obscured by anything short of a buffet platter. Iris loves this feature. I hope they torture-tested it at the factory. It’s on a retractable cord and snaps back into place with magnets.

Two quibbles. The scale itself is a little large; it takes up more counter space than my old scale. And it displays ounce measurements in 1/8-ounce fractions rather than decimals. (The Soehnle measured in 0.05-ounce increments.) I prefer the decimals.

If you’re not already using a kitchen scale, here’s why you should. And if you want to play with a clever Flash demo of the Oxo, give it a whirl.