There are a lot of not-so-nice things that one might say about KFC. But at least this factory for dispensing fried chicken serves food that sometimes, sort of, actually resembles food -- chicken with bones in it. Because, yes, chicken doesn't come in nuggets or in strips or boneless, skinless chicken breasts. It comes from a chicken, and chickens have bones.

And that idea, to customers of a certain age, is just too freaky. So KFC is going to start selling "off-the-bone chicken." Time reports:

Marker acknowledges that the chain’s customer base is aging, and that off-the-bone chicken is critical if the brand is to stay relevant and contemporary. “We joke a lot that young people today barely know that chicken has bones in it because of all the forms and formats that we eat it in,” he says. “

There comes a time in every would-be vegan’s life when the question arises: to fake it or not to fake it? I’m talking about meat, and not meat meat, you guys -- fake meat: various slurries concocted from beans, soy, mushrooms, and vital wheat gluten and shaped to resemble burgers, hot dogs, meat loaves, and sausages. And we mustn’t forget the other substitutes, either: vegan mayonnaises, butters, eggs, milks, and (shudder) cheeses.

So, to fake it or not to fake it? Do I need them as a protein source? Do they taste remotely like my ham ‘n’ eggs from the days of yore? Or is that missing the point of these convenience foods entirely?

Before I set out with three friends to eat a strictly vegan diet for a month, my position on fake animal products was mixed at best. I’ve been known to order a veggie burger just because I didn’t feel like beef that day, and I actually like pretty much every variety of milk substitute out there. But imposter hot dogs? Tofurky? What’s the point? I’d rather just enjoy the essence of grains, beans, and fungi for themselves. Otherwise, if you’ll pardon the expression, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig, then also putting that pig in a pair of Spanx and a sequined dress and making her trot around on Dancing with the Stars. Is it any wonder if she doesn’t make the final round?

No matter how simply you try to live, you will eventually accumulate strange food items that sit in your cupboard or refrigerator forever. Possibly some kitchens generate them spontaneously. (For about a year, mine was a jar of Manischewitz Moroccan fish balls. They were a gift. We never ate them.) Thankfully, NPR has a new project called “Cook Your Cupboard" that's trying to help home chefs actually use these orphaned products.

To participate, you submit a picture of one to three of these mystery items to this site and wait for the advice to flow in. A few lucky cooks will get their problem featured on the radio and solved by a famous chef.

Some of the ideas are good -- one entry suggested turning artificial Orange Crush-flavored dessert topping, which really should have been thrown out BEFORE being bought, into a genuinely edible-sounding frozen daiquiri. Others are not.

Manure is a very popular fertilizer. We all know about manure and how well it fertilizes things. But as it turns out, urine may be a good fertilizer too. What we're hearing is that we'd be doing the world a favor if we stopped using toilets and just dropped trou in a field.

We all know what Bad Fast Food looks like (I’m looking at you, KFC Double Down!) And we all know that tens of millions of Americans eat the stuff anyway -- whether out of choice or necessity. So can there be such a thing as “Good Fast Food”? There had better be -- or else the fast food biz is in real trouble.

Here’s food writer Mark Bittman, writing in the latest issue of the New York Times Magazine:

Soda consumption is down; meat consumption is down; sales of organic foods are up; more people are expressing concern about G.M.O.s, additives, pesticides and animal welfare. The lines out the door -- first at Chipotle and now at Maoz, Chop’t, Tender Greens and Veggie Grill -- don’t lie. According to a report in Advertising Age, McDonald’s no longer ranks in the top 10 favorite restaurants of Millennials, a group that comprises as many as 80 million people.

Fast food companies understand that Bad Fast Food might be approaching its expiration date. Rather than clinging ever tighter to their fattening products like Coca Cola did, they’re remixing them. Some of it is just window dressing: Bittman offers the example of McDonald’s heavily sweetened yogurt parfait, which just replaces fat with sugar. Other outfits toss a few salads at customers, or push healthier items off to the side as if embarrassed by their existence. After all, having healthier options means admitting your main offerings aren't, well, healthy.

But Taco Bell just announced a new effort to remake its menu along healthier lines. And Chipotle, which has been called the Apple of fast food, is nipping at the big dogs’ heels. The company bills itself as serving “food with integrity,” cares about animal welfare and to some extent the plight of farmworkers, and yet has $3 billion in annual sales with double-digit annual growth. Other fresh competitors are popping up like superweeds.

This will surprise and shock you: It is sometimes hard to stay positive and be an environmentalist. Between Big Oil prematurely ejaculating over suburban lawns, the goddamn weather taking aim at my precious Russian River Pinots, and the very ocean dusting the Great Barrier Reef before I can afford to go there, can you blame me? Kermit -- chemically sensitive amphibian, browbeaten husband, and dolorous crooner that he is -- perhaps gives us the patron cliché we deserve.

All of which means I approach our theme this month -- Happiness! -- with some trepidation. It's not that we Gristers aren't adept at handling looming catastrophe; we just often swallow it with sarcasm and a black humor more cold and remote than the love of God. When it comes to dancing to the tune of the apocalypse, we've got moves like a teenage Blue Ivy Carter, and an f-bomb or 75 never hurts. When things get really bad, we can just report as-is and do this:

But this month is not about that!

Tanya Fields is a Bronx food-justice advocate who has come into possession of a used school bus that she wants to use to bring produce to underserved communities. It already runs on vegetable oil, but it needs a new transmission. And shelves to store fresh veggies. And solar panels to provide energy for cooling and heating. And blenders to make smoothies for vegetable-wary kids. So she’s working to raise $15,000 online to make this a reality. If you donate $50 you can get a banana cream cake!

The grand plan is to create a moving feast of good veggies for a neighborhood that lacks them. DNAinfo reports:

She and her partners want to transport fresh produce from a sustainable upstate farm to the South Bronx, where they’ll sell it on street corners, all the while educating residents about the food system and providing solid jobs.

And, just to make sure no one confuses this for any old farm stand, the "Veggie Mobile Market" will operate out of a playfully painted former school bus that runs on vegetable oil.

What’s great about this project is that Fields is from the Bronx, living in the same areas she wants to serve. So she knows exactly what challenges she’ll face -- which are not really problems of supply, but quality.

OK, we know that it's hard to think about eating this:

But what about this?

Four graduate students in London are betting that you'll eat those nugget-y morsels -- even though they're made of bugs. After all, you already eat lots of weird things. Like raw fish. FastCoExist reports:

"Sushi was a very inspiring story for us," says cofounder Julene Aguirre-Bielschowski, who met her cofounders at the Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc double masters course at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London.

Ronnie Jacobs last week became the fifth Butterball employee to plead guilty to cruelty-to-animals charges after workers at a North Carolina factory farm were filmed kicking and beating turkeys in 2011. The animal rights activists who filmed the abuse provided evidence that triggered a law enforcement raid and led to six people being charged.

From a 2012 ABC story:

Mercy for Animals, the animal rights group that shot the undercover video, said there had been no insider information about abuse at the facility before the tape was made. "Unfortunately, every time we send an investigator they emerge with shocking evidence of animal abuse," said MFA executive director Nathan Runkle.

Are these activists being showered with accolades and gratitude for doing the work that law-enforcement agencies apparently don't care to do? Hell no! The North Carolina legislature is trying to criminalize their activities.

Swallow Magazine calls itself "the anti-foodie food magazine" and says that "each issue is akin to the perfect dinner party where the food is central to the event, but the conversation veers wildly around the table from topic to topic." In the past, the magazine has covered Scandinavian food and "points along the Trans-Siberian express." It took more than a year for the latest issue -- which covers Mexico City -- to come out. And that is in part because it smells.

The New York Times explains:

This issue of Swallow includes 20 scratch-and-sniff stickers throughout that are imbued with the aromas of one of the city’s many colonias, or neighborhoods.