Processed Foods

Thousands of Boy Scouts will go door-to-door today, hoping to find the orange-and-white bags that they dropped off last weekend filled with canned goods. Last year, the Scouts collected more than 810,000 cans of food. This year, the goal is a million cans. Scouting officials believe their food drive is the largest ever held in Orange County.

A canned-food drive aimed at helping the county's hungry will be held Oct. 15 to 19 to coincide with "National Hunger Week." Organizers say one goal of the food drive is to increase awareness of a problem that affects thousands of county residents each month. "It's very difficult to alleviate hunger before you make people aware that the problem exists," said Dina Weaver, a resource specialist at the nonprofit Food Distribution Center in Orange.

Scientists are working on a safe-to-eat, nearly invisible coating made from milk that could dramatically extend the shelf life of fruit and vegetables, the California Agriculture Department announced last week. Chemist Attila E. Pavlath of the department said that in tests of an experimental coating made from the milk protein casein, small pieces of sliced and peeled apple dipped in the coating stayed fresh for several days while unprotected pieces shriveled and turned brown within a few hours.