Starbucks has become the kind of American icon that elicits both very positive and very negative reactions. On the one hand, people hate the company because they homogenized the coffee shop experience. On the other hand, folks like Clark's sister love Starbucks and go to the same location everyday.

While Clark is not a coffee drinker, he likes Starbucks in theory because they have a reputation of treating employees better than most other fast-food chains. Yes, Starbucks is essentially a fast-food chain -- even if you don't think so!

The company's business plan has long focused on aggressive expansion. Sometimes they've opened multiple locations within close proximity in high-traffic areas. The goal has been to destroy weaker coffee shop chains and indie shops.

Unfortunately, the expansion proved a bit too extreme. Neighboring locations cannibalized each other's customers and saw a swift drop in sales when the economy contracted.

Now Starbucks is closing around 600 stores and laying off several hundred people. So much for treating their employees well!

Also factoring into the Starbucks squeeze is competition the chain is facing from McDonald's introduction of cheaper high-end coffees.

But Clark thinks the latest Starbucks news marks the end of an era. Previously, we as Americans didn't care about our guilty little pleasures. We just charged the plastic and didn't worry about how we'd pay for it down the road. Now we're worried.

Clark is so excited that the bottled water assault is in retreat. The master marketers at Coke and Pepsi did a phenomenal job of converting soda drinkers to overpriced bottled waters like Dasani, Aquafina and others.

But now Americans are buying less bottled water because of the economic squeeze. Meanwhile, the green movement has been educating people about how bottled water is actually harmful for the environment -- another factor in the sales decline.

Need we remind you that bottled water can cost 1,000 times what tap water costs? Committed bottled water drinkers can spend $1,400 in a year on the stuff. Wouldn't you rather put that $1,400 back in your wallet?

Some people who want to give bottled water the boot say they're not comfortable with the taste of tap water. The compromise is to filter your tap water at home. You can get a cheap external filtration system for around $10 or $15.

Traditional bottled water sales are getting it from another side too. Water drinkers are turning to flavored waters, which opens up a whole new field for the marketers. Clark was recently on a plane and everyone around him was ordering flavored water.

Clark is one of those people who hates going to the supermarket. He's especially bored by the idea of making a grocery list every week. That's where a new device available from Ikan.net can help.

The penny-pincher recently ran out of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! while fixing a bagel for his son at home. If he had the Ikan, he could have used it to scan the barcode on the package. It would then be stored on a list that could be printed out before he went to the supermarket.

But the Ikan is capable of more than just compiling a shopping list. The real payoff comes in the Ikan's ability to electronically send your list to participating supermarket chains in about 10 states. The grocer can then either pull your order and have it ready for you, or deliver it straight to your home.

Several years back, there was a company that Clark's wife loved called Web Van. This startup in the home grocery delivery business wound up blowing through billions of dollars and eventually failed. Peapod is a likeminded company that had some level of success in the market, and they've now partnered with Ikan.

Clark often talks about money-saving grocery strategies like those found at CouponMom.com. But another way to save money is to not go to the store and subject yourself to the lure of impulse purchases. That's where Ikan helps. You might just reduce your bill and your weekly calorie count too!

The Ikan normally sells for $399, but a portion of their stock is available for $99 for a limited time. (Editor's note: Pricing accurate as of 06/20/08.)

The attorney general of the state of New York has gone after CVS and Rite-Aid for repeatedly selling expired goods on their shelves, including OTC medications. This has long been a problem in retail, but this is perhaps the first time that it has ever resulted in a lawsuit.

In 2005, Clark himself found OTC medications that were 5 years past their expiration dates on the shelf of a third chain drugstore. He was so fired up that he brought it to the manager's attention. Unfortunately, the manger was underwhelmed by Clark's complaint and didn't seem to care.

Recently while in a warehouse club, Clark discovered expired soft drinks on the shelf. He found an employee and showed them the items. But when he came back a week later, they were still there.

Clark doesn't believe there's any conspiracy to sell us spoiled food. But you must be your own police officer and check expiration dates before you make a purchase.

In fact, the penny-pinching guru describes himself as "obsessive compulsive" when it comes to checking dates. He routinely digs around on the shelves to get the latest possible date on milk and medications.

One caveat: It's difficult to tell if the date is a "marketing expiration date" or the real deal. Some drug makers put an early date on their products to get you to throw them out and buy more.

Clark had tomatoes as part of his last meal…and he's hoping it's not going to be his last meal! The salmonella scare has shaken a lot of people. It seems like food borne illnesses have become an epidemic in recent years. But Clark thinks it's not that there are necessarily more instances, it's just that there's better media coverage of them.

Business Week reports that the FDA is short of the necessary technology and manpower to do reliable inspections of food plants. In fact, they say it would take the FDA some 1,900 years to check every single food plant just once. Clark doesn't know about you, but he doesn't plan on being around that long!

Libertarians would say that the food industry should be self-regulated. But since it is not, Clark believes government should reasonably be expected to step into this role. It is sheer madness that we live in a wealthy developed nation and can't routinely ensure that our food supply is safe.

Some people say that we should just grow our own food on a household level. But that's not a practical solution for everyone. So we either need to set the challenge up to industry, or assess the industry a tax so that that FDA can hire more people and buy the right equipment to get the job done.

Clark knows people will take issue with him on this, but he wants to know that something his children or his mother eats is not going to harm them.

Clark is a devout fast-food consumer. Years ago, he even earned the nickname "The Carryout Kid" from his brother. Today, the penny-pinching guru favors the value menus at the major chains. But right now McDonald's has a civil war on its hands with franchisees upset about the dollar menu.

The franchisees are trying to pressure corporate to change the name of the dollar menu to the "McValue Menu," similar to what Wendy's did. With costs increasing, franchisees are not able to make a profit when they sell an item for a dollar. So The Wall Street Journal reports that some have already raised the prices on select dollar items. For example, they're charging $1.09 or $1.29 for a double cheeseburger.

Clark saw someone order 2 double cheeseburgers (at $1 each) and a complimentary cup of water at McDonald's -- a sure sign of inflation. Franchisees lose money every time that happens.

The dollar as a magic price point is under assault. What will the dollar stores do? Chinese goods cost more because of international inflation. They could raise prices, but the "two-dollar store" doesn't have the same ring to it!

Meanwhile, beware of hidden price increases at the dollar stores. Clark was recently shopping for shaving cream and noticed they shrunk the size but charged the same price.

The city of New York requires chain restaurants to post calorie counts by every item on their menus. Recently, it was big news when 5 restaurants were cited for not following this protocol.

This is one issue that galvanizes people to no end.

On the one hand, Clark applauds restaurateurs for having the marketing savvy to spotlight healthy choices on their menu. But if someone orders fettucini alfredo, isn't it self-evident that the meal will be a heart attack on a plate, as some cardiologists might say?

Meanwhile, there's a disturbing connection between education level and weight issues. The less education you have, the heavier you'll tend to be. Yet if you go back to the Renaissance, the wealthy (and educated) were the ones who grew fat, as we can see from portraits of the period. The poor, meanwhile, had to deal with the possibility of starvation and famine.

Today, access to food is not an issue; it's the quality of what we eat that's become the concern. Go in to any convenience store in a lower-income area and you'll see a variety of unhealthy food choices available.

This, unfortunately, is not a problem that can be addressed by putting calorie counts on menus.

After years of Clark's prodding, Christa has finally made the switch from bottled water to tap water. What finally made her cross over from the dark side? She got hold of the Watersafe All-In-One Test Kit at Whole Foods.

For just about $20, she was able to test her family's tap water for bacteria, lead, pesticides, nitrates, nitrites, chlorine, pH and hardness. Well, the water passed with flying colors, and her brood has been drinking from the tap ever since.

Bottled water will run you about $1,400/year, not to mention that it's an environmental disaster because of all the plastic. That price alone is about 1,000 times what tap water costs! Meanwhile, 1 in 3 brands are just filtered municipal water, which is essentially glorified tap water. So why pay all the extra dough? Try a home-testing kit if you're still concerned about safety.

People are constantly looking for ways to stretch their money in the wake of rising food prices. During sweeps week on TV, one of the big stories was about ways to save on groceries. Clark’s already shared ideas about couponing, brand substitution and more at the supermarket.

But people who know how to cook can save even more. Recipe websites that teach you how to make easy meals from cheap ingredients are becoming increasingly popular. Suddenly, cheap is chic!

To Clark, “cooking” simply means putting something in the microwave and changing the temperature of it. The Los Angeles Times, however, reports many recipe blogs have seen their page views more than double in a year. These are the kinds of sites that were routinely being ignored during better economic times.

Christa has long used sites like Epicurious.com and Recipe.com. But now there’s a huge network of stay-at-home moms who share their money-saving ideas on the web. See below for Clark’s guide to the cheap food preparation blogs!

Just remember that even if you can’t figure out how to make a masterpiece worthy of Julia Child, simply making food at home costs a fraction of what it takes to eat out. For those who can't cook, you can always be like Clark and buy your favorite frozen meals on sale. He recently picked up a slew for $1 a piece. They’re not anymore unhealthy than his normal fast food fare, but instead of $4 he’s just spending $1/day.

How would you like to go in the store and buy meat that looks good yet is actually very old? Meat producers have figured out that by injecting packaging with carbon monoxide gas, they can make meat look perfect even way past its expiration date. Supermarkets have long wrestled with the problem of meat that looks spoiled even when it's good. But now that the processors have this new method, Clark thinks this is taking things one step too far. The Washington Post reports that there's also corruption at play here. Internal memos from the big meat handlers show that this process hasn't been proven safe. This, of course, embarrasses the FDA, which seems to be failing in its mission to protect consumers. Target is one retailer that sells meat that may be packaged with carbon monoxide. Target says it's looking at adding labels to the packaging that would disclose the treatment. But Clark says this is not enough. He still bristles at the idea of using carbon monoxide to make meat look good.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission and its current head, Nancy Nord, have emerged as villains for Clark in recent weeks. The job of a safety regulator is to ensure that safe products are on the market, right? So do you think it's a good idea for regulators to be wined and dined by the very people they're supposed to be monitoring? "No way not any day," as Clark says. But Nord has been taking all kinds of freebies from the companies she regulates. Clark issued a recent call for Nord to appear on the show and defend herself, but so far her press people haven't been receptive to the idea.

Now the White House is stepping in with new initiatives to keep kids and adults safe in the wake of some highly publicized food and product recalls. Most capitalists would not want to knowingly harm another human being through their business practices. But we still need a cop on the beat to ensure safety. Clark thinks Nord has such resentment toward government that now that she's in power she's trying to curtail government at every step. That's why Clark thinks she's been so lax in her duties. Once again, Clark wants to reiterate that he doesn't think Nord gets up in the morning and says, "How can I harm people today?" But wouldn't you want to know that toys you buy for your child are safe? Of course you would -- and the same goes for the food you give to your family. These are only reasonable expectations.

Clark recently trashed the U.S. Department of Agriculture for keeping mum about a known E. coli infestation at a food-processing plant. The case involved a New Jersey food supplier that churned out tainted products for weeks even though the DoA was fully aware of what was going on. There were no fatalities linked to this particular E. coli outbreak, as far as Clark knows. Now the DoA has issued a public apology and vowed to speed up the recall process and increase its number of inspections by 50 percent. We are the wealthiest country in the world -- our standards shouldn't trail behind dozens of other countries.

On a lighter note, the North American Association for the Study of Obesity recently released a study that examined fast-food eating habits. The study found that those who eat fast food five or more times a week -- such as Clark -- have more health problems and weight issues than those who don't. But Clark also believes that eating at a high-end restaurant five times a week will probably make you obese too. Meanwhile, Clark recently read that fast-food restaurants are installing robots to take your order. He's even used one at a Burger King. The funny thing is that a robot sells up so much better than a human. Customers are more likely to order huge portions from a machine than from a human -- because the robot won't guilt them in any way!

Clark was surprised when he recently read an article written by Greg Karp that details how much you can save on groceries at Walgreens, CVS and Rite-Aid, which are the three major drugstore chains. Clark typically thinks of these places as convenience stores that happen to sell prescription drugs. He'd rarely think of buying groceries at them. But in the article, Karp challenged Coupon Mom Stephanie Nelson to see how well she could do buying groceries at drugstores. When the dust settled, Nelson bought $266 of merchandise for $5.63! It's very unlikely that anyone other than Nelson could save that much, but the article really prompted Clark to adjust his thinking. Be sure to check Coupon Mom's site for her for tips on saving at the drugstore chains.

Restaurants often put healthy selections on the menu and then report that no one orders them. People claim they want healthy food, but what they say and what they order are two different things. Think about the frozen yogurt craze. People took what should be a low-fat healthy meal and then piled on hot fudge, nuts and syrups to make it fattening! But now there's a supermarket chain in New England that may be proving people really do buy healthy things.

The Hannaford Bros. chain has launched a new nutrition-labeling program that aims to help make healthy shopping easy. The New York Times reports that Hannaford has gone through some 20,000 food items in its stores and labeled each of them with zero to three stars. Foods with zero stars are processed, fatty and sugary. Foods with three stars are things like vegetables, lean meats, beans, whole grain items and more. Sales of items with multiple stars have skyrocketed while those with zero stars have plummeted. Clark loves that people have access to easy-to-understand information for making better choices -- even if he still would prefer to eat foods from the zero stars group! But to his credit, Clark has gone from eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream nearly 365 days/year to about 25 days/year. He credits his doctor with helping him cut back instead of just going cold turkey and relapsing. And for those of you wondering about Clark's favorite flavor, it's Ben & Jerry's Vanilla Caramel Fudge!

This year, we are experiencing the greatest oversupply of wine ever. At the same time, wine is getting better. So, if you like wine, you are loving it right now! Wines are much less expensive and of much better quality these days. There is a twist you need to know about though. Vineyards that normally sell expensive, high-quality wines don’t want to lose their cache or the reputation of their good name by selling their bottles for much cheaper. But they need to make money. So, they are rebottling and relabeling these expensive wines and selling them for much less. Bottles that normally cost $100 are being repackaged and sold for $10 or $15. So, try something new these days that costs much less. It could actually be a fine wine concealed with a different label.