The fascination with food isn’t just for foodies anymore – what else to take away from Amazon’s $13.7 billion offer for upscale grocery chain Whole Foods? Ajay Patel, associate general counsel of Amazon Studios, Movies & TV in Santa Monica, added some humor to all the prognoses being floated in the wake of the sudden bid while accepting the 2017 Pro Bono Counsel award on behalf of his colleagues, who were honored by the Association of Corporate Counsel Southern California’s annual gala on June 16 at the Bonaventure. “For you M&A folks out there, it happened in a matter of a day or two,” Patel told the ballroom packed with more than 1,000 guests. “Jeff Bezos got up one morning, got on the Echo device and said ‘Alexa, order me some things from Whole Foods’ – and she screwed up the order and bought the whole company,” said Patel, picking up on a joke making the rounds on Twitter. … Plenty more food for thought in our Deals & Dealmakers special report, which starts on page 1 and ranges from a story about an El Segundo-based meal delivery outfit that looked mmm mmm good enough to draw a $10 million investment from Campbell Soup Co., to a piece on page 5 about a fellow in Venice who’s got Leonardo DiCaprio behind his chickpea puff snacks, and a page 6 story about a mom who has gone into business with pizza on a cauliflower-based crust – which she developed as a gluten-free labor of love for her two boys who have celiac disease. … Food and health took center stage when Michael Milken spent the recent Father’s Day in the numerous broadcast booths down at Angel Stadium, joining home and away crews of radio and TV announcers to pitch Home Run Challenge, a joint-venture, awareness-raising project of his Prostate Cancer Foundation and Major League Baseball. Milken spoke eloquently about gene sequencing and other scientific stuff, and spent about as much time on basics such as immune-boosting broccoli and tips on grilled burgers – flipping them four times will get rid of about half of the carcinogens, he says. All of that was woven deftly between the action on the field, even with the bases loaded in what was a one-run game when he was with the home team’s radio crew. … Milken plays more than one sport, as you’ll see in our front-page story on AEG’s recent investment in e-sports. … Back to deals – anyone else notice that the City of L.A.’s recent move to drastically trim permit costs for short digital films came just a week or so ahead of the $100 million deal that will have Time Warner produce shows of three to five minutes in length for Snap Inc.? … From Silicon Beach to the Seine: Snap reportedly ponied up anywhere from $250 million to $350 million a short while later to acquire Paris-based Zenly, a social mapping startup that uses constant GPS to let folks figure out how to hang out together. Here’s guessing that some creative minds will take advantage of the lower permit costs to make short, Snap-style videos – and use Zenly as a way to gather up crews on a gig basis. … Sullivan Says: Credit the Craft & Folk Art Museum on Wilshire for living its mission.