General Mills' VC arm invests in breakfast food startup

301 Inc. has selected its eighth portfolio company—breakfast food purveyor Purely Elizabeth. The $3 million financing is the first outside capital Purely Elizabeth has taken in and will help the startup continue product development. 301 Inc. says it sees Purely Elizabeth expanding beyond oatmeal, muesli, cereal and other breakfast foods. Read more at Fortune...

The little Canoga Park vegetarian restaurant that created the natural foods industry

Back in the 70s, it was the little health food store that could. Follow Your Heart started as a store just north of LA that was founded by hippies and sold avocado sandwiches for 95 cents. The owners bought the store in '73 for $15,000 and decided they wouldn't sell meat—a somewhat controversial move at the time. In '88, its tofu salads caught the eye of Trader Joe's, which started selling packaged versions, and then the founders launched a plant-based mayonnaise in the early '90s. Read more at LA Weekly...

Forcing people at vending machines to wait nudges them to buy healthier snacks

An associate professor of preventative medicine at Rush University Medical Center designed a clever (or annoying, depending on who you are) device that goes inside vending machines and controls how long it takes certain snacks to drop. He conducted an experiment where he set the device to delay the delivery of unhealthy snacks by 25 seconds; healthier snacks dropped instantly. It's kind of a "time tax," he said. The implementation of a time delay triggered a 5 percent change in the proportion of healthy snacks sold. Read more at NPR...

Publix putting GreenWise stores back in plans

These stores are slightly smaller but carry a larger selection of organic, natural and specialty diet foods. The retail chain last built a GreenWise store in 2008 but says it "continues to aggressively look for additional GreenWise locations throughout its operating area." Read more at Orlando Sentinel...

Could General Mills be a buyer for Stonyfield?

Analysts seem to think so, as the company has struggled in the yogurt category and is looking to boost its sales of natural and organic products to $1 billion by 2019. Danone said last week it would offload Stonyfield to avoid antitrust issues and have its purchase of WhiteWave approved quickly. Read more at StarTribune...