Grocery Stores

As part of its expansion in Southern California, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is opening a hiring center for its Neighborhood Market under construction in Chinatown. The temporary hiring office, opening Thursday on Hill Street in Chinatown, will ultimately hire 65 mostly full-time cashiers, stockers and supervisors at the grocery store, store manager Kenney Tran said. "We're going to provide good jobs and bring accessible groceries and affordable options to the community," he said. The new market, set to open early next year at Cesar Chavez and Grand avenues, is one of 21 new Wal-Mart grocery stores announced in California.

SPRINGDALE, Utah - There comes a moment when you step backward off a cliff, clinging to a rope the width of your pinkie, and ask yourself, "Why am I doing this?" It's inevitable. Fear of heights (and its close cousin, fear of falling) is as deeply ingrained in most of us as fear of sharks or snakes. Sometimes, though, confronting these fears is the first step to discovering a new world - a coral reef, the Amazon rainforest or the convoluted landscape of southern Utah, near Zion National Park, revealed through the fast-growing sport of canyoneering.

A two-year study of more than 1,200 seafood samples by Oceana, an environmental advocacy group, found that a third of seafood sold in grocery stores and restaurants is mislabeled, the group announced Thursday. DNA testing of seafood samples between 2010 and 2012 found that 33% were mislabeled according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines. The most commonly mislabeled fish were snapper and tuna. Of the samples labeled as snapper, 87% were mislabeled. More than 30 different species of fish were found to be substituted for snapper, but the most common were rockfish and tilapia.

Reporting from Fresno -- It's hard to pinpoint exactly when Fresno State sweet corn went from best-kept secret to Central California icon. But a good bet would be this summer. The first day the corn was picked, people lined up at 6 a.m. outside the university's farm store, the same as they have for five years. This season, however, a line stretching all the way to the parking lot was there at dawn the next day. And the day after that. "It took me five times coming to get my first corn this year," said Rosemary Rendon, 76. "But I kept coming because I'm stubborn and because this corn is really something else.

Starbucks Coffee Co.'s foray into juice is bearing fruit (and vegetables), with its first Evolution Fresh store now open and selling “wholesome products” in Bellevue, Wash. The Seattle coffee giant, hoping for an entryway into the burgeoning healthful lifestyle industry, bought San Bernardino-based Evolution Fresh Inc. in November for $30 million . The juice company, created by Naked Juice founder Jimmy Rosenberg, uses fresh fruits and vegetables and employs a process called high-pressure processing that produces the juice without heat to retain more nutrients and flavors.

Better access to supermarkets — long touted as a way to curb obesity in low-income neighborhoods — doesn't improve people's diets, according to new research. The study, which tracked thousands of people in several large cities for 15 years, found that people didn't eat more fruits and vegetables when they had supermarkets available in their neighborhoods. Instead, income — and proximity to fast-food restaurants — were the strongest factors in food choice. The results throw some cold water on the idea that lack of access to fresh produce and other healthful foods is a major driver in the disproportionate rates of obesity among the poor, or that simply encouraging grocery chains to open in deprived areas will fix the problem, said study lead author Barry Popkin, director of the Nutrition Transition Program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Re "Ralphs to Pay $70 Million for Illegal Hiring Scheme," July 1 The cowed words of Ralphs President Dave Hirz and the $70 million in fines and restitution are but small payment for having so publicly humiliated and fiscally destroyed unionized grocery workers, not just here in Southern California but, because this was such a precedent-setting strike, throughout the country. The payments will not begin to equal the money that Ralphs and other grocery stores will save, here and elsewhere, as a result of the contract that the union was finally forced to sign, nor will it make the national labor movement whole for the illegal and unfair tactics used by the grocery stores.