Balance of Food

'Daily Show' finds the bliss point with Michael Moss

Part I

Part II

"They don't eat their own products."

We learned in the Michael Moss interview on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" that the people making processed food tastier and more addictive are not evil plotters and they don't eat their own food.

The problem is they are really good at what they do, and the profit principle overrules all.

The profit issue isn't always internal.  As an example, Campbell's worked to lower the sodium in its soups. Moss noted that Campbell's found a way to reduce the sodium and still make the soups taste good. But since only one company in the marketplace was doing so, a cough or hiccup from Wall Street, and Campbell's put the salt back.

Making Cheetos more fun or Dr. Pepper taste better — each individual act in itself, not bad. The problem is that the junk food of a more innocent time (for these purposes, the 1970s) isn't what kids (and adults) are eating now.

Nestle, with 700 scientists, creates products to make you obese and help you once you've had gastric bypass surgery.

Moss noted that the Obama Administration is working to improve the economics by leveling the playing field, since processed food is more subsidized than fruits and vegetables. In the GOP world, we're at balance now since the corporations are the winners.

The segment also allowed those who hadn't picked up on terms such as "vanishing caloric density."

In the extended segment (Part II), they compared processed food to the Manhattan Project and reflect on the former Coca-Cola executive now selling baby carrots (Stewart says he's still going to Hell).

New York City soft drink ban should be complete or not at all

The soft drink ban in New York City was overturned by a New York State Supreme Court justice because the new law was "arbitrary and capricious." Which means that we are as smart about the law as a New York State Supreme Court justice.

For those who are greatly concerned about the impact of soda pop in our society, you should be relieved and upset about the ruling, the same reaction — for different reason — you would have if the law was now in effect.

You could get a large soda pop at a 7-11 but not a movie theater. You can get a large soda pop at a movie theater if it was diet. This certainly qualifies as "arbitrary."

Capricious is the fancier legal word used by the judge. While the word means "given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior," the use fits in with arbitrary in the sense that the randomness of the law doesn't effectively deal with the issue.

Political legislation is a flawed process, no matter how good the intentions of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and advocates for reducing soda pop consumption. Even by those standards, this law had serious holes.

Previous coverage:

Chicago's proposed 'sugary drinks' tax doesn't add up

Temptation of the Week: Fat tax

Bloomberg and New York City can still get the point across without being so arbitrary. If the issue is serving sizes, then you need to ban the serving sizes, whether that be diet pop, orange juice, Red Bull, or regular soda pop.

The fast food calorie boards didn't apply to every New York City restaurant; the law applied to businesses with large enough sales (chains) and not to mom-and-pop places. In other words, you could target Big Gulp sizes but let a local restaurant serve a 20 oz. drink. Fair, no. Legal? Probably.

If the issue is the damage done by high-fructose corn syrup, then set a ban of any serving size of a drink featuring high-fructose corn syrup. You would see a lot of Mexican Coke, er, Coca-Cola in New York City. That law might still be too arbitrary but would be more useful.

Conformity within the law can sometimes backfire as well. Take Chicago's soft drink tax. The tax is supposed to offset the obesity issue by making soft drinks more expensive. Except the drinks with high-fructose corn syrup, which receives federal subsidies, are treated the same as drinks with sugar, which is artifically higher thanks to federal policy. This meets the requirement of equality, but punishes those who choose better options.

Law writing never should be truly easy, but some problems require more complex solutions. Removing federal subsidies from corn products would do more good in New York City than any of Bloomberg's proposals. Since that isn't happening anytime soon, Bloomberg is working with a disadvantage. Just means his quest will take longer and require more thought.

A smartly written law will have a more meaningful impact than one poorly written, and the general public will respect it more. Jon Stewart will miss having this as a target of ridicule, but even he would want a better written law to deal with the impact of obesity caused in part by huge soft drink sizes.

'Daily Show' has fun with Quebec maple syrup heist

Even though the story was pretty old by the time "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" got to the Quebec maple syrup heist, the show still found plenty of laughs.

The heist reportedly contained 18 million pounds of maple syrup. Tim Shufelt of Canadian Business magazine said the value of a barrel of maple syrup is worth almost 20x the cost a barrel of crude oil.

Really expensive pancakes.

Jason Jones, a proud Canadian, treated maple syrup as if it were part of a "Canadian drug war."

You should watch the segment just for Jones' trip to Montréal's Le Gros Jambon diner. I was surprised that Jones specifically showed this place, though the restaurant is on my list for my next Montréal trip.

One older guy in the diner told Jones he puts maple syrup on his ice cream. Too much sugar, but that does sound good.

Maple syrup, like honey, can serve as a nice alternative to sugar, especially when using less of it (3 parts instead of 4 parts) gives you more flavor with fewer calories. Next time, someone tries to push maple syrup on you, proceed with caution but go for it.

Simon Trepanier, head of the Quebec maple syrup producers, recommends a bit of maple syrup in your coffee or tea before you go to bed.

For more on this sticky topic, check out this story from our sister blog, CanadianCrossing.com.

 

Temptation of the Week: 'A Place at the Table'

Daily Show Part I

Daily Show Part II

Food budgets are tricky, but many people feel like they can save money on food and still eat pretty well. If we looked at the way the United States spends its food budget, we would find too much money spent on corn subsidies and direct and indirect payments to large conglomerate farms. We have matching issues of starvation and obesity.

"A Place at the Table," opening this weekend, helps us to visualize what it means to be hungry.

The statistics cited are startling: 50 million people in the United States, including 25% of children, don't know where they will get their next meal. So many wonder: where is the disconnect and why?

Since the economy is better than it was, society has less sympathy for those who struggle to find food. Then again, the invisibility increases because people are reluctant to admit that they are hungry.

Directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush take us to Collbran, Colorado; Jonestown, Mississippi; and Philadelphia to give us three stories about the different ways people are hungry in this country.

"This is really solvable," Silverbush said on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." "We know what causes hunger; we know how to fix it."

The film points out that hunger in the United States was pretty much solved by the late 1970s. The "Hunger in America" film that aired on CBS in 1968 is referred. Within two weeks, Congress passed bipartisan legislation. CBS followed up 10 years later to see that the hunger problem got better (yes in pre-cable news, TV journalists would follow up on complex topics).

Why did things change? "In a word, Reagan," Silverbush said to Stewart.

The directors pointed out that this country went from 200 food banks to 40,000 food pantries and banks, yet the hunger problem was "too big for those groups to handle," Jacobson said to Stewart.

They point out that 80% of people on SNAP are working poor. "Poor people need a better lobby," Stewart said.

The timing of the release of the film obviously wasn't scheduled as the same day of the sequestration, but the directors did point out that the government cuts means that 600,000 mothers and infants will lose formula.

The hope from the directors and everyone involved in the film is for as many people to see this film as possible. But the underlying purpose is to get people involved in helping those who don't have enough to eat, and getting people with food to be able to afford better choices.

At a dinner table around the holidays, we always say that there is room for one more. Well, America has a table and 50 million in the United States are looking for a place at that table.

"A Place At The Table" opens today in theatres. If you don't live near one of the theatres, the film is available on iTunes and OnDemand.

Editor's note: My plan is to see the film and review it for you in the near future. Feel free to let you know what you think if you see the film.

850 calories argument makes for good TV, but falls short on honesty

At least these kids are not afraid to tell big brother that enough is enough. Hopefully through this rather innocent event they learned that just because somebody is trying to make a difference in their lives doesn't mean it's always good, and neither should you accept it. Maybe this will inspire them to bring their own lunch, and be independent, rather that tolerate the vile socialism that is being shoved down their throats.

If you knew how many calories school lunches had in the spring of 2012, you would have to be a policy wonk on a very high level. The major problem is that no one fighting these calorie changes have produced any evidence that the school lunches were bigger. "Hey, they used to be this, and now they're 850 calories."

We do know, thanks to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, that "Nightline" became very impressed based on a YouTube video from a Kansas school to do a story on the new 850-calorie high school lunch. Wonder how many stories "Nightline" did on the unhealthy nature of school lunches.

The above comment was in response to last week's story on the school in Wisconsin. This seems typical of the reaction I've read online, not just from Wisconsin and Kansas, over why these new rules are so terrible.

The video from the school in Kansas featured elementary school children, who are limited to 650 calories, and middle school kids, who have a 700-calorie limit. So far, the focus hasn't been on the younger kids, just the high school children. We haven't heard complaints from the smaller children, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

We also that the parody song in the Kansas video was written by an English teacher. So the idea that this is just about the children isn't quite true.

None of these excuses the perception that kids think they are hungrier after these school lunches than they were last year. But why do they think that?

The research shows that students are being offered a similar amount of calories between last year and this year. The breakdown is vague and the amount of calories that students actually take is less than what is offered. As Jon Stewart noted, kids can get extra fruits and vegetables to make up the difference.

We also found out that some school districts were offering more calories and extra servings of higher-calorie items. So those school districts were "going rogue" in the spirit of former Alaska governor and GOP Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

To paraphrase Paul Simon, last year's floor is this year's ceiling.

These students are upset that the new rules don't allow the extra calories that were breaking the rules in the first place. The long-time rules allowed for approximately the same number of calories the students currently get, but they're complaining about that number of calories.

The complaint is about "big brother" and "vile socialism that is being shoved down their throats" yet the differences aren't as significant as the hype that surrounds the protests.

We would be majorly disappointed if students weren't protesting the new rules. Despite the theatrics and the clear adult participation, there is a core issue, but not the one that we are hearing about.

The kids are also complaining about the healthier foods and how the more unhealthy foods have disappeared. Those complaints would make sense. But they aren't phrasing them that way. They say, "Oh, we're complaining about that, too. But we're really upset about the 850 calories."

Why the focus on 850 calories? Because the complaint sounds less like whining and ties it to the First Lady trying to ruin the lives of innocent schoolchildren.

"Our food is too healthy." That is a complaint that wouldn't be taken seriously. So they don't emphasize that. But it would be a honest complaint.

The 850 calories talking point attracted the "Nightline" crew and drew interest from The Daily Show. The problem is the facts don't support the argument.

We have said on many occasions that school lunches shouldn't be political on either side. These kids are either uninformed or being manipulated; we're leaning toward the latter with a mix of the former.

We should have an honest discussion about the future of school lunches. As long as kids harp on the 850 calories talking point, we'll have to wait a little longer for a lot more honesty.

Temptation of the Week: Reducing drink sizes

If you like Mayor Bloomberg's proposal to limit drink sizes in New York City, know that the rule has a lot of loopholes (Big Gulps, orange juice has no limit).

If you don't like Mayor Bloomberg's proposal to limit drink sizes in New York City, learn to love those exceptions.

"It's about doing something. I think that's what the public wants the mayor to do."

Something. This is something.

Let's not pass good laws or just laws. Let's pass laws.

The temptation is to address the excess calories and sweetness consumed through liquids. "Empty calories." But this proposed legislation addresses the issue in a half-assed way.

16 ounces is the limit at restaurants, movie theaters, street carts, and bodegas but not grocery stores or convenience stores. So if you can smuggle your Big Gulp into the movie theater, same as it ever was.

"Colbert Report" take on Bloomberg's supersized soda scheme
"The Daily Show": Drink Different

The legislation does separate out "sugary drinks" such as pre-sweetened ice teas, sports drinks, energy drinks and soda away from diet/near-diet soda, fruit juices, alcoholic beverages, and dairy-based drinks.

If you order a large enough diet drink at a fast food restaurant (McDonald's, Burger King), would what prevent you from putting the cup underneath a full-sweetened soft drink? Maybe you know your server at a restaurant, and the server brings you a large "diet coke" when in reality you have a regular Coke. Same goes for a movie theater employee.

Will we have drink inspectors who will check to see if your large drink has artificial sweeteners?

Starbucks can serve you a [whatever they call large these days] drink if there is enough dairy in it. You can order a 24 oz. milkshake but not a 20 oz. soft drink.

Mayors do have a rough time. They can't exert much control, given federal and state standards. Until the handgun bans were overturned by the right-dominant Supreme Court, they were useful up to a point, since anyone with access to the suburbs could get around the law.

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley decided to ban foie gras (an even sillier idea) in Chicago a few years back. In the fine print, we found out you couldn't sell foie gras, but you could give it away. Hot Doug's did sell foie gras (bless their hearts) and got fined. Soon after, the ban was lifted.

You get the negativity of the Nanny State without the effectiveness of a good law. And that message is delivered only to those people who would follow the law only because they are not likely to be drinking 24 oz. of Mountain Dew from one cup.

Noble ideas can make for crappy laws unless you construct something that people can respect, even if they don't agree with it. The proposed NYC law has so many holes you could fit a Super Big Gulp through them.

Michelle Obama talks of vegetable feasts on 'Daily Show'

"Usually, with the harvest, we end with a vegetable feast."

"Is there a cheese faucet for this vegetable feast?"

-- Michelle Obama with Jon Stewart on the "Daily Show"

Jon Stewart noted that Michelle Obama had better odds as a First Lady to establish the colonization of Mars than getting kids to eat vegetables. "Unless this garden spouts cheeseburgers …"

Stewart seemed too anxious to introduce the comedic elements in the interview. His theme was "getting kids to eat their vegetables" is hard. Duh!

"The Garden is a way to begin the conversation … if kids are involved in the growth process of food and they get a better understanding of where their food comes from, and they're engaged, they tend to be more likely to be excited about it," said Mrs. Obama.

We often talk about the quality of vegetables from the White House garden and other organic/near-organic gardens. Obama broke it down to the taste of the veggies.

"We've served everything from flatbread veggie pizza that many kids have said is better than take-out. Because the truth is that vegetables grown fresh taste much better." 

The First Lady was on the program to promote her new book "American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America." Food and the garden took up the first segment (video above). Politics and the upcoming election took up segment 2 (not shown).

The direct effect is for the hundreds of kids working in the ground at the White House Organic Garden. The kids who watch and learn and see get the indirect effect of one of the nation's most popular people — more popular than her husband, as Stewart noted — being heavily in support of fresh vegetables and getting kids to eat more of them and move more.

The Obamas are the first president family to have school-age childen since Jimmy Carter from 1977-1981. For all the messages children and adults receive about food, the most powerful pro-vegetable message still comes from Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States.

'Pink slime' conversions prove that food quality battle is all about PR

 

Jamie Oliver has to be a little pissed off these days, and rightly so.

Oliver demonstrated how pink slime is produced, and did all of this on U.S. broadcast television … in April 2011.

Okay, so most Americans weren't paying attention. And Oliver wasn't even the first person who has brought this up. Oliver, though, is famous and showed us on TV, where we get most of our news.

In the premiere episode of Season 2, Oliver demonstrated the process in Jamie's Kitchen, washing machine and all. My take at the time?

"The bits and trimmings of the inedible meat, then separated in a washing machine, and mixed with water and ammonia — boy that was hard to watch, even if you are an omnivore."

Jamie's words got lost due to poor ratings, a key reason for the gap between the first two episodes and the rest of the show. By the time the momentum kicked in for the series during Friday airings in June, Oliver's pink slime demonstration was lost in the shuffle.

The recent push of events that has had so many companies run screaming away from "pink slime" demonstrates why getting better food quality has to be an ongoing battle.

Previous coverage: USDA needs better reasons to avoid telling us that we're eating pink slime

"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" took on the topic last week, coming late to the party. But as often happens, Stewart put what we were eating in perspective, and why we'll eat whatever is in front of us.

"McDonald's walked away from it? McDonald's doesn't think it's an appropriate thing to eat? These are the people that molded a pork disk into a rib-shaped sandwich that contains no ribs. But this stuff, pink slime, that's too fake for McDonald's."

Ask any of the school systems, chain restaurants, and grocery stores whether they thought pink slime was a big deal, they know the key issue is public relations. Companies ran away from high-fructose corn syrup not because of the nuances of sweeteners, but as a way to stand out in the marketplace and pressure from the public.

The beef industry isn't thrilled with this change of events, because it was winning the Orwellian war. Calling ammonia-treated bits and trimmings of inedible meat "lean, finely textured beef" instead of "pink slime" — PR genius, unless you have to eat it.

Iowa State Sen. Brad Zaun (R) tried to get the PR advantage in writing a letter to the editor in the Des Moines Register. However, Zaun was unscrupulous in disparaging BalanceofFood.com friend Michelle Simon. You be the judge.

Simon: "So let’s hope this week’s groundswell of interest in pink slime inspires Americans to demand labeling, buy organic, or stop eating ground beef all together."

Zaun: "So let’s hope this week’s groundswell of interest in pink slime inspires Americans to … stop eating ground beef all together."

Simon's point is that consumers should know what they're eating. Zaun's point was to be deceptive to try and discredit legitimate concern over what we're eating.

Despite what we think sometimes, the Daily Show is about comedy first. So in search of a punchline, Stewart admitted what we all fear. If it's in front of us, we will eat it.

"Pink slime. Face it. It's probably no worse than the shit you already eat."

Let's hope from now on, we'll be eating less pink slime and less of the other … er, well, crap.

American school kids deserve better than 'pizza as a vegetable'

When we mocked Ragu last spring for its vegetable emphasis, the company pointed out that "Ragu has more than a full serving of veggies in every ½ cup." Now the spaghetti sauce manufacturer says it's 2 servings in every ½ cup.

Seems like Ragu took a lesson from the USDA or vice versa, as the GOP-led House has pushed through a spending bill that peels away some of the gains made in the school lunch program. The press and comedy shows had fun with this GOP-led House bill making pizza into a vegetable. What got missed in the humor and depression is that the USDA has virtually made pizza into a vegetable already.

The USDA counts tomato paste as a vegetable now, but to be fair, the organization has "standards." The requirement for the USDA was to count a ½ cup of tomato paste as a serving, something where pizza currently falls short. The House bill wanted to change that to make the tomato paste in pizza count as a vegetable, even at less than ½ cup.

Tomatoes and cooked tomatoes should certainly count as a vegetable, unlike potatoes, especially French fries and, dare we say, tater tots. The argument that Ragu and the USDA make is tomatoes count, no matter in what form and what might be alongside.

After all, if we were to drop our hypocrisy for a second, we don't like vegetables unless they're covered in something, and we do use sugar as a way to eat our veggies. "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down in the most delightful way."

Common salad dressings have sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. Candied carrots. Sometimes, the pacifier isn't sweet, but salty. Processed dip mixes. Or buttery, as in asparagus in butter sauce, or cheesy, as broccoli either covered in cheese or smothered in a "cheese" sauce.

So we have accepted that vegetables need a little push to get them through our internal systems. However, this doesn't let the USDA or the Republicans in Congress off the hook.

In mocking Ragu, at least the spaghetti sauce is healthier for you than the pizza in school lunchrooms. Sure both the spaghetti sauce and the pizza sauce is loaded with high-fructose corn syrup and salt, and they are used on white flour products. However, the fat content of the mozzarella cheese on top of pizza and the nitrates in the meat usually featured on a school lunch pizza outweighs the parmesan cheese, even the kind from the green can, on spaghetti.

Feeding kids in the home (the Ragu commercial features a kid) deserves a modicum of protection, but somehow, feeding kids in a public school would demand higher standards. So even if ½ cup of tomato paste counts as a serving of vegetables, the USDA has the power to make that tomato paste mean more than the minimum standards it insists on setting. No amount of political pressure should reduce that even further.

Since the rule would need to be written in bureaucraticese, this is what we have in mind:

"If the only vegetable in a school lunch item, as noted in Section 1-6, Article 2, paragraph 4, meets the minimum standard of ½ cup of tomato paste, then the school lunch item can only count as a "vegetable" if the school lunch item also contains ½ cup of vegetables in solid form, only ¼ cup of which can be carrots, in solid form only, as noted in Section 1-3, Article 5, paragraph 2."

In English, what this means is that if you want to count pizza as a vegetable, you have to have real solid vegetables on the pizza. Yes, that pizza would still have too much high-fructose corn syrup in the sauce, too much starch in the crust, too much fat in the cheese, and too many nitrates in the meat, but you would be able to look at it and say "that has vegetables." or as Herman Cain would put it "a sissy pizza." And ketchup wouldn't be counted as a vegetable. Neither would French fries or tater tots.

The Republicans in these circumstances say "we don't want the government telling us what to eat." In the regular world, this isn't an issue. If you are a 10-year-old in a public school and your parents didn't pack you a lunch, the government is going to set guidelines on what happens in the school cafeteria, so the government will have some influence. Unless you want to get rid of publicly funded school lunches.

Until the GOP dumps the Department of Education and the school lunch program, those who want better school lunches will have to fight tooth and nail for our children to have better standards in the school lunch room. The late-night comedians can only do so much.

photo credit: Ragu

'Daily Show' tells us we are getting just a little fatter

"The Daily Show" acknowledged National French Fries Day as a lead-in to the latest state-by-state obesity numbers. They were similar to last year in that 1 state (Colorado) is under 20% obesity-wise, and several states (i.e., Southern) have over 30% obesity levels.

In fact, we first heard those numbers last year from Jon Stewart's counterpart, Stephen Colbert. The relatively good news is that the numbers didn't get too much worse in 2011.

"America's only growth industry is growth," said Stewart. 38 states have an over 25% obesity level. Stewart followed up with media clips on why we are getting fatter, including a lovely graphic on the Wendy's Baconator Double Meal with fries and a milkshake at 2,530 calories.

The closer was the newest generation of large people, including a 16+ lb. baby born in Texas.

Then again, the last 2 commercials before the segment were Domino's Pizza and Hot Pockets Snackers, and a spot after the segment featured a Burger King Bacon Cheddar Ranch Tendercrisp tied in to the latest Transformers movie.