If there's one thing our friends at Food & Wine do even better than throwing fabulous festivals all around the country, developing stellar recipes and generally making our lives more appetizing – it's identifying up and coming talent from around the country.

Since 1988, the editors of Food & Wine have feasted their way from coast to coast, seeking out 10 innovative chefs, each with a distinctive vision, creating exceptionally delicious food. They've bestowed upon these shining stars the title of Best New Chef.

And this year's winners are:
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5@5 is a daily, food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe.

Christine Romans, host of CNN's "Your Bottom Line," recently caught up with Top Cheffer Angelo Sosa at his new restaurant Social Eatz to talk about what spices spicez make his food sing.

The eels didn’t manage to slip through.

After a haul turned up last Friday off the coast of Ibaraki Prefecture, with levels of radioactivity double the current standards set for vegetables, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano announced that the nation’s authorities would begin regulating the radiation levels in seafood.

Water samples taken Tuesday from concrete pits outside the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station showed radiation 5 million times the legal limits – down from a Saturday reading of 7.5 million, according to an official with the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the plant. Groundwater outside reactor No. 6 was similarly affected. The levels dropped steeply just several dozen meters out, but still remained several hundred thousand times above legal limits.

Radioactive iodine-131 is at the center of health experts’ concerns. The element iodine, in its non-radioactive isotopic form, is an essential part of thyroid regulation in the human body. Chronic exposure to its radioactive form, such as iodine-129 or iodine-131, can, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, cause thyroid problems such as nodules or cancer. Iodine-131 loses half its radiation every eight days and is further diluted by active ocean waters. Still – it’s making its way into seafood at levels exceeding those the Japanese government have deemed safe for consumption.
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Hybrids and electric vehicles were just the beginning. Next up: the mushroom mobile.

Ecovative Design, a startup in Green Island, N.Y., is collaborating with the Ford Motor Company (F, Fortune 500) to develop a fungus-based, biodegradable foam for automotive bumpers, side doors and dashboards.

"You would be able to compost your car," says Gavin McIntyre, 25, chief scientist and co-founder of Ecovative.

Read the rest of "Car parts made of mushrooms" on CNN Money.

Sink your teeth into today's top stories from around the globe.

• Guess who's back? Back again? Ronald's back...in the new McDonald’s ads - tell a friend. - Nation's Restaurant News

• Cue the warm and fuzzies: an engagement dinner through the eyes (and tears) of a waiter. - Well Done Fillet

• An open letter to Chef Damian Cardone about misleading gluten-free customers. Conclusion: not cool, dude. - The Daily Meal

• Leaving stock out to simmer. - Ruhlman

• Mmm, cod heads. - New York Times

(Health.com) - Ice cream and other tasty, high-calorie foods would seem to have little in common with cocaine, but in some people's brains they can elicit cravings and trigger responses similar to those caused by addictive drugs, a new study suggests.

Women whose relationship to food resembles dependence or addiction - those who often lose control and eat more than they'd planned, for example - appear to anticipate food in much the same way that drug addicts anticipate a fix, according to the study, which used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans.

When these women saw pictures of a chocolate milk shake made with Häagen-Dazs ice cream, they displayed increased activity in the same regions of the brain that fire when people who are dependent on drugs or alcohol experience cravings. When presented with the same milk shake, women who don't feel addicted to food showed comparatively less activity in those regions.

Read the rest of "Addiction to food, drugs similar in the brain" on CNN Health.

iReporter Chris Morrow stumbled upon a Sustainable Feast for Kids on her way to the Little Italy Mercado in San Diego.

She says, "Set in the heart of Little Italy’s Mercato, the Sustainable Feast - a free event open to the public - was a one-of-a-kind happening, where local farms and chefs were the stars. Farmers paired with some of San Diego's top chefs and Edible San Diego to create a variety of delicious dishes, prepared up close and personal. Sustainable Feast benefits the Outdoor Education Foundation’s scholarship fund."

Get more food assignments at iReport

It wasn't just rotovap tricks and mastery of the sous vide machine that cinched the elusive Top Chef All-Stars win for Richard Blais. Plain ol' butter, salt and classic cookery shared the spotlight - along with some on-the-job experience he acquired under the Golden Arches.

See his recipes for romance, game day snacks and some very festive - if unconventional - holiday entertaining

While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday and the most delicious finds on TV.

If you've got sugar and fire, then you've got a celebration: April 5 is National Caramel Day.

In its simplest sense, caramel is a confection made by boiling sugar to around 240 degrees Fahrenheit.

And yes, we purposefully picked the above caramel corn picture as an edible Rorschach test. Now, tell us what you see so we can properly diagnose you.

What's on TV?
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