• The Fair Food Foundation, an organization promoting urban agriculture in the Bay Area and Detroit, was one of the victims of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme. [Diner's Journal/NYT]

• A survey of over 900 food writers finds the rise in food prices to be the top food story of 2008, followed closely by tainted products from China. [PR Newswire]

• FreshDirect will soon start sending nutritionists to regular corporate customers to give lunchtime briefings on healthy eating. [NYT]

• New details emerge about the Adam Perry Lang–Jamie Oliver project: It will be a chain of live-fire barbecue restaurants across Europe serving everything from Brazilian churrasco to medieval cauldron cooking. [Feedbag]

• Roughly one out of every two New Yorkers is having trouble paying for groceries. [NYO]