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Bet you thought you knew who the world's biggest drinkers are.  I don't mean, among your neighbors, but in the world.  Used to be, any time you saw an outdoor cafe in a movie in Paris, or Rome, or Madrid, or Berlin, the actors would be quaffing down drink after drink, or always holding a wineglass in one hand. And yes, Europeans used to be the biggest drinkers.  But consumption there has slowed, according to a story at smartplanet.com.  However, liquor companies, don't despair.  The Asia-Pacific region is taking up where they left off. Who's doing a lot of the imbibing?  Would you believe China?  "China alone now accounts for 38 percent of global spirits consumption, according to data released this month by International Wine & Spirits Research (IWSR), courtesy of The Economist ." Kirstin Korosec reports.  She adds that the IWSR data shows seven of the top 10 growth markets are in the Asia-Pacific region. People in China love "a heady ...

I've never been an adventurous eater.  To me, trying tilapia was about as far as I was willing to go (hey, it has a weird name). But The New York Times every week has all these exotic recipes calling for things like tofu fingers, pancakes made with spinach, ice cream with eggs. Pork with lemon, ginger, citronelle (isn't that for mosquitoes? Oh wait, that's citronell a .) But in China this week, gourmet eaters may have gotten the biggest surprise of their lives when they found out the lamb they thought they were eating was . . .well, rat. But China didn't take this sitting down (at least, to a meal of rat). "... China's top court on Friday issued guidelines calling for harsher punishment for making and selling  unsafe food products  in the latest response to  tainted food scandals  that have angered the public," the AP reported, according to the NYT. "The Supreme People's Court said the guidelines will list as crimes specific acts such as th...

Thinking of banning video games in your home?  Hide your pesticides.  A 14-year-old boy in China allegedly poisoned his parents when his mother forbid him to play video games. As a result, "China has announced plans to define Internet addiction in young people and to devise methods for preventing it, China Daily is reporting," according to a story by Mark Harper. “The unhealthy content online, such as violence and obscenity, has damaged young people physically and mentally,” Harper quoted Wang Ping, managing director of the Chinese Society for Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Research, a non-governmental organization. “But what symptoms define Internet addiction? How to diagnose young addicts, and at what level of addiction, is still vague.” Apparently the boy used farm chemicals on food his mother and father, brother and sister-in-law were eating. All were treated and released from an area hospital.  http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/china-t...