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SCOTT JAGOW: All this talk about food is making me hungry for more stories about food. Yahoo launches a new food website today. From the Marketplace Innovations Desk at North Carolina Public Radio, Janet Babin reports.

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JANET BABIN: There's evidence that the appetite for food websites is growing.

Audience measurement firm Hitwise says the Food Network, and sites like Cooks.com and AOL Food are where web users turn to perfect their soufflés.

But the group found that online food sites are fragmented, providing an opening for Yahoo.

Food marketer Al Hamman says Yahoo's food site should be able to attract lots of advertisers. He says 18,000 new food products will be introduced this year, and it's difficult for producers to reach potential customers:

AL HAMMAN: "Look at the number of publications that are out there, magazines, and TV advertisers, they're all over the map. So here you have a place where you can consolidate all of the people that are going to be interested in that kind of a niche in one place."

The new lifestyle website will launch first in US markets, then be introduced in other English-speaking countries next year.

I'm Janet Babin for Marketplace.