Balance of Food

Cook to 160°F minimum a sign to look elsewhere for meat

We don't think of cooking meat in terms of temperature; we know rare, medium-rare, medium, medium-well, and well. So most consumers wouldn't think twice about seeing that message on a package of ground beef. To the discerning eye, the label screams "Don't eat me. I'm not good."

Before last summer, I wouldn't have figured out right away what 160°F meant. But thanks to the fiasco of the medium-rare burger in Alberta last summer, I know that 145°F is medium-rare and 160°F is well.

So cooking beef to 160°F minimum is not about taste or flavor, but only a CYA maneuver (cover … your …).

You wouldn't be surprised to learn that the label comes from Cargill Meat Solutions and the package was sold at Wal-Mart. I discovered this by poking around the new Wal-Mart out of curiosity, not thinking I would see anything quite this distasteful.

In established circles, my view is very much in the minority. The USDA wants you to cook your ground beef to 160°F and use a food thermometer.

"When a hamburger is cooked to 160 °F as measured with a food thermometer, it is both safe and delicious!"

Safe, yes. Delicious? No thanks.

Cooking meat to 160°F is a way of skating around questionable beef processing practices. This doesn't even factor in what the cows are eating or being injected with or any pink slime problems. This is purely based on what may get mixed into the meat in harvesting cows and processing their meat.

But what gets me about "Cook to 160°F minimum" is the last word: minimum. How far does Cargill and Wal-Mart want us to cook this meat? 170°F? 180°F? 212°F is boiling, so that meat would be ideal for a little Cincinnati chili.

What goes past well? Doesn't sound like a good "meat solution."

We go out of our way to say food is safe even when it isn't, but this label on the package of beef says, "I'm not safe. You have to overcook me. Even if you reach the CYA cut from the USDA, this is only the minimum. You should go beyond well if you want to be sure. This is how crappy our food is for you."

We should be thankful that this product has such a prominent warning label. Very colorful and really stands out. The problem is that the vast majority of consumers don't know what the label means and won't take steps, however draconian they may be, to cook the beef to such an extreme temperature.

As a country that prides itself on eating a lot of meat, we should have beef that would make us proud. We should have beef so well processed that it should have warning labels not to cook this meat above 150°F (medium). Now that's beef that would be worth having for dinner.

Stephen Colbert knows more than Dr. Robert Lustig about high-fructose corn syrup dangers

"Is it all sugar or is it like that, uh, I hear that high-fructose corn syrup's got a couple of skulls and crossbones next to its name." -- Stephen Colbert

"All the data says that high-fructose corn syrup and sucrose — table sugar, cane sugar, beet sugar, the stuff you put in your coffee — are exactly the same. The problem is not that high-fructose corn syrup is worse. The problem is that high-fructose corn syrup is cheaper. And when it became cheaper, it made sugar cheaper and therefore, started appearing in all sorts of foods." -- Dr. Robert Lustig

Stephen Colbert 1, Dr. Robert Lustig 0.

When a comedian playing a pundit is smarter about food than a renowned doctor who has written a book ("Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease"), no wonder people get confused about food information.

Dr. Lustig spent the early part of the interview segment on the "Colbert Report" talking about the impact of our diet on our livers. Lustig is a pediatric endocrinologist, so he should know that extra fructose does damage to livers. High-fructose corn syrup has more fructose than sucrose, ergo, high-fructose corn syrup is not a) the same as sugar and b) is worse for your liver than sugar.

Lustig is correct that "the problem is that high-fructose corn syrup is cheaper." And it appears "in all sorts of foods." But when he says high-fructose corn syrup "became cheaper, it made sugar cheaper," he is literally wrong. Sugar is much more expensive than high-fructose corn syrup. As much as high-fructose corn syrup is subsidized to be cheaper, sugar is artificially more expensive. Lustig could have meant that a cheap sweetener led food manufacturers to put more high-fructose corn syrup in products that normally aren't sweet. But that is about food politics and high-fructose corn syrup, not sugar.

Later, Lustig said about high-fructose corn syrup, "And in fact, it does exactly what the natural sugar does, too." Uh, no, it doesn't.

The doctor does point out that we consume on average 22 teaspoons of "sugar" per day, as opposed to the recommended 6-9 teaspoons/day. And he is correct that we consume too many sweeteners in our diet. But Lustig is absolutely wrong about high-fructose corn syrup and its impact on the American diet.

Dr. Lustig should know better; Stephen Colbert already does.

Temptation of the Week: Yogurt for men

Men are allowed to eat yogurt even if food advertising tells us yogurt is for women. Men are even allowed to eat yogurt in public, and don't have to be gnawing on a medium-rare steak while eating yogurt.

But Powerful Yogurt, a zero-fat Greek yogurt, is aimed and marketed to men as a yogurt for men.

Unlike Dr. Pepper Ten and other "men-only" products, this yogurt doesn't do anything "male." The flavors aren't particularly male: apple cinnamon, banana, blueberry acai, mango, plain, and strawberry. What no chipotle treebark?

Powerful Yogurt's tagline is "find your inner abs" — so maybe this yogurt isn't being aimed at most men. I'm in better shape than most American men, and even I can't find my inner abs, or any other abs.

Besides the alleged abs men will get by eating the yogurt, the packaging is certainly aimed at men with Powerful Yogurt's larger size (8 oz. vs. 6 oz.) and certainly looks less sleek and more masculine with its black and red pattern.

Thanks to Atlantic magazine, we know the company tried to promote its manly yogurt as improving the quality of sperm (think of that next time you are looking at yogurt).

Yogurt is yogurt, regardless of gender. Same goes for Greek yogurt. But if insecure men are avoiding Greek yogurt based on some "girly" stereotypes, here is how you can make your yogurt more "masculine," or gender-neutral at minimum.

Yogurt single-serving containers are small and sleek and are designed with women in mind. If you pour yogurt from a larger container, such as the gender-neutral 32 oz. size, into a container from home, and you eat the yogurt in public, you can serve an 8 oz. size as easily as a 6 oz. size.

Yogurt single-serving containers are also packed with a lot of sugar and/or high-fructose corn syrup because women tend to want sweeter things more than men. Even fruit-based yogurts often come with extra sweeteners on top of already sweet fruit. Take that container from home, put in 8 oz. of plain Greek yogurt, put in jalapenos or barbecue sauce or bacon, and you have a truly masculine yogurt.

In no other species do genders subdivide food. Men can eat salads; women can eat steak. And everyone can eat yogurt. You have every right to modify a food to fit your personality or suit gender stereotypes, but you are also allowed to ignore the temptations of basic stereotypes and tempt yourself in a good way to make your food your own. This is the beauty of taking plain yogurt, Greek or regular, and adapting it; you are only limited by your imagination. Though if you go the chipotle treebark route, make sure your teeth are in good shape.

photo credits: Powerful Yogurt and NPR

Temptation of the Week: Aspartame in milk

A number of people posted it on Facebook. A dietitian friend of mine posted a rebuttal, also on Facebook. Two dairy groups wanted to put aspartame in milk and market it to children and parents as milk.

Yes, the groups want to do exactly that. The catch is you can already put aspartame in milk: you just have to label the milk as "artifically sweetened." The groups, International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), have petitioned the FDA to remove that label that might make parents not buy that beverage.

The disgusting part isn't that dairy groups are behind this, though that is pretty disgusting. The aspartame in milk beverage is being marketed as a healthier product to reduce childhood obesity by offering a low-calorie "milk."

Milk sugar and fruit sugar are healthier for our bodies because of how we process those sugars. Even though milk and fruit have sugars, they are good, healthy sugars. Our labeling system doesn't discern between milk and fruit sugars vs. other sugars. A processed container of fruit-based yogurt screams out for a label breaking down the difference.

So these dairy groups, concerned that people aren't drinking enough milk, theoretically due to "too many" calories, don't want to educate the masses about the importance of milk sugars in the growth of children. They would rather sucker convince people to buy low-calorie "milk" as a "healthier" option even in the face of stories about artificial sweeteners as a cause of obesity.

Since the idea is to trick consumers into drinking the alternative milk, then kids consume the extra aspartame. And if they get fat, no one would suspect the "milk."

And these groups are trying to trick the general public. After all, you can put aspartame in milk right now, sadly. The difference is that you need a label recognizing that fact.

Only the ardent dietitians and dairy groups would justify chocolate milk as a healthy snack vs. regular milk: the adage being that drinking the milk is more important even with the added sugar or high-fructose corn syrup.

This isn't to say chocolate milk is bad: in moderation and with sugar, chocolate milk can be a nice treat. The high-fructose corn syrup version is harder to justify, but the aspartame version would almost have to be R-rated, no one under 17 without parent or guardian.

Buying this aspartame "milk" in the store is bad enough; wait for school districts to being pressured into buying low-calorie "milk" and forcing school kids to get it, despite parental concerns. After all, if the FDA decides this is "milk," then the beverage falls into an acceptable category that could potentially end up in school lunches.

Yes, dairy companies have a right to promote its products. But the dairy people might want to start with the truth. Milk sugars have a healthy part to play in a child's development. Chocolate and strawberry milks are okay as an occasional treat, preferably with sugar and not high-fructose corn syrup. Artificial sweeteners in milk is a dangerous precedent, especially for children. Marketing that as "milk" is the last thing dairy folks need to be doing. Talk about undercutting a good product, as is.

Colbert Report's Thought for Food: Can't stop at one?

Jays potato chips has had the slogan "Can't stop eating 'em" for as long as I can remember. Lay's potato chips (no relation) had the slogan of "betcha can't eat just one."

This goes back well before food science tried to find the "bliss point" as profiled in "The Extraordinary Science of Alluring Junk Food" in The New York Times and on the Colbert Report's "Thought for Food."

The article, from Michael Moss, notes the careful work done by food companies to produce "complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don't have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating."

Colbert poked some fun at that using Tostitos scoop chips. He professes to being able to eat just one chip out of a huge bowl of Tostitos. Feeling very proud of himself for eating one chip, he proceeds to bring out an oversized chip as his "second chip." And since these chips are designed for dipping, Colbert scoops up the smaller chips as the "dip" and eat the chips.

At the end of the show, Colbert has the bowl of chips in front of him, running the chips through his hands but not actually eating one of them.

Food companies have always wanted us to eat and drink lots of their products; the difference is that the science is better. Anecdotal evidence has skyrocketed that consuming high-fructose corn syrup causes you to eat more. And if those salty snacks are designed to get you to eat even more of them, then washing it down with high-fructose corn syrup kicks in the cycle.

Colbert starts out the segment in an attack on New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for the impending drink size bans because Colbert thinks Bloomberg thinks people can't control what goes into their mouths "Well, he's wrong. We can control our mouths, or at least, the snack food scientists can."

"Vanishing caloric density" is a popular term describing the ennui of eating something with taste yet that feels like you aren't consuming a whole lot of calories. While I can't say I thought of that at the time, I do see that when I experimented with Flamin' Hot Cheetos. I loved the taste in the first few bites. After all, I grew bored with the taste, but still kept eating them.

Snack foods are supposed to be fun, a loose relationship between human and processed food. Snack foods aren't supposed to be your friend. Colbert and his writers came out with a Doritos flavor that parodies finding that bliss point: Blazin' Buffalo Bottomless Pit of Unfulfilled Longing.

The best solution is to eat foods that provide taste where a little bit goes a long way toward fulfilling what it is that you need. A little bit of Gruyere, a cheese can is higher in fat, can be better for you than a pile of low-fat mozzarella cheese.

Snacking can be fun as long as you aren't using the food for solace. Food is not a therapist. Food is food. That really is a Thought for Food.

Death of the Canadian Twinkie: Alive in name only

When you were thinking of "death" and "Twinkie," your mind likely went to the apparent demise of the Hostess company over a potential strike by bakery workers. Somehow, Twinkies will live on in some form under the branch of a different company. So the fears of loss over the death of Twinkies are a bit exaggerated.

What isn't up for dispute is that the once glorious Canadian Twinkie has been reduced to … dare we say it … an American Twinkie.

The irony is that unlike the threat to American Twinkies, the Canadian Twinkie was never in danger since the trademark and rights to the Hostess products belongs to Saputo Inc.

Unfortunately, I found in my latest trip to Windsor that the once-heralded Canadian Twinkie no longer exists.

I checked the label. Glucose-fructose. Bastards.

I saw the expiration dates. March. February. 2013!! Oh, the humanity.

Summoning up all the denial I could, I bought a box of Twinkies. Cup cakes too. Didn't see any King Dons; haven't found those in a while.

Canadian Twinkies had a lighter color (colour?). These Twinkies had the golden brown color of … sob … American Twinkies.

Colo(u)r. Taste. Expiration date. Glucose-fructose. All the signs were there. Canadian Twinkies dead of neglect by corporate management.

The death of Canadian Twinkies could be seen as trying to save a few pennies. Fall in line with American goods thanks to pressure from new trade deals. Coming so close on the heels of the apparent death of the American company is just ironic. As soon as I saw the danger signs of the changeover, Canadian Twinkies were dead to me.

I couldn't find them in Montréal or in Alberta on my earlier trips to Canada this year, but have always counted on Windsor to come through with a dessert that looks and tastes like sponge cake and cream filling. Now those days are over.

I loved the faces of people when I would tell the story about the differences between American and Canadian Twinkies. They would have that cynical look about the likelihood of a difference.

"What do Canadian Twinkies taste like?" they would ask. "Sponge cake and cream filling," I would reply.

Canadian Twinkies were from a time machine, not just across the border, but back in time to my childhood. They really did remind me of the Twinkies I ate as a child as I collected Hostess baseball cards from the bottom of the Twinkies box.

They were light and creamy and not that exciting, but in a good way. Canadian Twinkies were nothing fancy, very simple, and really tasty.

For some time, I used to make the Windsor run twice a year, getting Canadian Twinkies each time. The border guards thought it was amusing; telling them the story of the difference made them shake their heads. If nothing else, the conversation was as light as a Canadian Twinkie.

So I don't know exactly when the changeover occurred. There were there in November 2011 but were gone by November 2012.

Hostess Canada or Canadians with Hostess should be commended for keeping Canadian Twinkies alive as long as they did. While my memories are just that, I do remember as an adult what Twinkies should taste like.

Canadian Twinkies remain alive, American Twinkies will likely follow suit. But with high-fructose corn syrup and glucose-fructose and long expiration dates, Twinkies, from both sides of the border, are dead to me. RIP.

Temptation of the Week: Postponing farmers market purchases

"I won't get mushrooms today at the (Saturday) farmers market. I'll just wait for the market on Tuesday."

You try to buy at just the right time to get the freshest possible produce and not to have too much in your kitchen. Sometimes, you can overthink the process.

I really did want to stop by the Tuesday market, the final market downtown where I live. So I pushed off the mushrooms to Tuesday.

Well, the winds from the after effect of Hurricane Sandy brought the local farmers markets down for Tuesday. One vendor made it out to the downtown market. One. No, the mushroom people didn't make it on Tuesday.

"Never put off for tomorrow, what you can do today." -- Thomas Jefferson

In summertime, you have much more of an error margin. If you miss a Tuesday market, Wednesday and Thursdays have their own markets. Where I live, Monday and Friday are the only days where I don't know of a market.

I ran out of mushrooms before tomorrow's market, having to buy mushrooms at the grocery store. A decent substitution, but not as wonderful as the fresh produce from the farmers market.

You don't know a hurricane from a 1,000 miles away is going to affect a trip to the farmers market. But a thunderstorm could, or simple rain, or you get an emergency at work, or you sprain your ankle before the next market and can't get there.

Grocery stores are open year-round every day. You can even find some stores open on Christmas Day. Farmers markets come quite often when the weather is warm, occasionally when the weather is cold.

Farmers markets purchases have to be treated as special, especially when the weather isn't special. If you have to ask yourself whether you need to buy something at a farmers market, go ahead and buy that food.

XL Foods recall reminds us that steaks and roasts need to remain intact

Hamburger and steak both come from beef, but burgers are the panacea when it comes to the scare from e-coli. However, as we've discovered in the XL Foods recall, steaks and roasts have also suffered, spotlighting a practice that can turn a steak into a hamburger-type threat.

Steaks and roasts are intact cuts of meat. Since any contamination would be on the outside, a good searing will do the trick, allowing for the beauty of medium-rare beef.

If the steak or roast has been mechanically tenderized, or pierced in any way, that beef becomes more of a risk, provided that e-coli is in the mix. This also applies if you penetrate the surface of the meat with a fork.

According to USDA estimates, 18% of all beef steaks and roasts in the United States are mechanically tenderized. And this doesn't count imported meat, even from Canada.

As for how to look out for this, well, there is no labeling right now, there is a rule proposal to do just that. From what we've heard, mechanical tenderizing is done to make cheaper cuts more tender. If nothing else, watch for the cut of steak you buy, in the short-term.

As horrible as the latest wave of e-coli problems have come from the XL Foods recall in Canada as well as the United States, the strain hasn't been too bad (by e-coli terms, not in human terms). And the usual message about the very young, the very old, and those with reduced immune systems need to be more careful. Still, associating a few days of feeling really bad shouldn't be the byproduct of eating beef.

Time for a gentle reminder that knowing where your food comes from makes a difference. Buying from local farmers reduces that risk. Having a good butcher reduces that risk.

None of this applies if you eat turkey, chicken, or pork since you don't want color on the inside. And this doesn't apply if you like your beef to cook while you watch an hour-long drama.

Still, food safety isn't going to mean a completely safe food supply. But the way meat is handled from slaughter to the store is designed to save companies money. It's time to have a meat supply that is consumer-friendly. And if we have to pay a little more to get that, people will be more inclined to eat beef, in whatever form.

Not going bananas for spraying seafood shells on bananas

We know we can't compare apples to oranges, especially when fruit is no longer purely fruit. The newest idea is to protect bananas by making them non-vegan and non-Kosher.

To make the bananas last longer, they will be sprayed with a substance made from shrimp and crab shells. The spray helps the bananas last two weeks longer.

The "old school" concept of food just being food is being taken over by "food innovation" — a term that should bring excitement but instead brings panic and concern by food consumers. We don't want to monkey around with our food supply.

Extended shelf life led to using trans fats to make sure cookies and crackers last much longer than they should. This was marketed as "food innovation."

Bananas have a built-in system to let us know when we should throw them in the freezer to make banana bread. Green, yellow, black: even a child knows the clues.

Extending shelf life helps grocers and food companies protect financial margins regardless of what that might do to those who suffer from allergies, have religious concerns with food, or otherwise are freaked out by the idea of combining seafood with bananas.

So what about those consumer concerns. Let's see a few of them.

If the bananas are sprayed on the outside, will that affect the inside?

Would the spray penetrate to the inside part of the banana? Sorry to answer your question with a question. If you spray an apple with seafood, you will definitely be eating that seafood spray. Keeping the skin yellow helps the appearance of the banana stay "normal," but to last two weeks longer, you would think the spray makes some impact on the inside, but we don't know.

Will we know which bananas are being sprayed?

Given the history of lack of information on food labels, somehow the answer will be "no." Unless people stop eating bananas if they aren't sure. Short of that, you'll be on your own to ask, and hope your grocer knows. And your grocer probably won't know.

What if sprayed bananas touch non-sprayed bananas? Should we wear gloves?

You might be at that point to wear gloves anyway. If grocers won't know which bananas are which, they certainly won't know what bananas touched which ones in the food handling process.

The definition of natural has been thrown out the window, twisted by humans for financial gain. Sure, the seafood shells are natural, even if spraying them on bananas isn't natural. Castoreum is natural, as in natural flavor, but beaver anal gland is only natural to the beaver.

This wouldn't be as major a concern if bananas sprayed with shells were kept separate from other bananas, and those "new" bananas were properly labeled. But that hasn't seemed "natural" by the FDA, USDA, and food companies in the United States. Pardon us if we don't go ape for that philosophy.

You shouldn't eat enough dark chocolate to care whether milk hinders antioxidants

"Separating out the help from the hype" isn't just a mantra from BalanceofFood.com; that is also on our business cards. So when we ran across a food conflict that went against everything we had been taught, red flags and sirens were the least of the troubles.

"In fact, dark chocolate has more flavonoids than any other antioxidant-rich food such as red wine, green and black tea, and blueberries. However, consuming milk chocolate or white chocolate, or drinking milk with dark chocolate appears to largely negate the health benefits." -- ChemistryDaily.com.

This isn't the only link to this advice.

The concept of combining carbohydrates with protein into a snack has been pounded into my head by thoughtful dietitian friends and acquaintances. Most often, this gets accomplished by adding milk to a carbohydrate on my list.

I turned to one of my trusted sources: dietitian Melissa Joy Dobbins. She asked a Hershey corporate scientist. This is what she told me:

"No, that is not true. There were a few studies earlier that indicated this but newer studies are looking at better science (they didn't know what to look for before and now they do) and they are not seeing this. However, there was a lot of talk about the science emerging to say that the flavonoids in chocolate really don't have antioxidant properties once they are ingested. They are still good for us, but it appears 'antioxidant' is not the best/correct term. Stay tuned as more science emerges."

You could argue that getting that news from a Hershey employee via a dietitian isn't separating out the help from the hype. But this doesn't mean that ChemistryDaily.com is correct either.

Science is an ongoing field where new and better discoveries are made. Some scientific conclusions are more obvious than others; always has been there, always will be there. Mankind clinged incessantly to the idea that the Sun revolved around the Earth; we know now (thanks Galileo) that the Earth and the other planets revolve around the Sun.

It would be nice to declare the effects of chocolate to be as absolute as the Earth's rotation, but we can't. We are a lot more sure that dark chocolate is better for you than milk chocolate, because of flavonoids and the reduced sugar. We also know that huge amounts of dark chocolate can be troublesome not because of health issues but the grams of fat involved at that high level.

That little square of dark chocolate can also soothe tension, which, if otherwise not treated, could lead to excessive late-night snacking. Unintended consequences, but useful nonetheless.

We have milk chocolate and chocolate milk on our shelves, but no one is pushing either as a strong source of antioxidants and flavonoids.

Some of this research says milk and chocolate don't mix, but we don't know how long to separate the two. Should we wait 30 minutes after drinking milk to then eat dark chocolate? This is part of why science can be incomplete.

Dark chocolate definitely has carbohydrates and some protein. If you are greatly concerned, you could substitute almonds or peanut butter in your snack to give you protein with the carbohydrates.

The question also in the Internet spectrum is that even if the science changes, you can always find older information telling you something is true, which could have been true at the time. Notice the date on what you are reading, and if no date is listed, be a little more suspicious.

The ultimate answer to the question is that if you are doing it properly, you aren't eating that much chocolate to make much of a difference. Given most Americans eating habits, the chocolate they are eating wouldn't qualify as antioxidant rich. If you are greatly concerned, and eating chocolate solely for the antioxidants, experiment. If you eat chocolate while drinking milk, try a different option. Eat it by itself. Try it with another non-dairy source of protein.

Most of what we write about and talk about is clear cut. This is one of those few instances where the research isn't clear. That's life. This teaches us to not fall in love with something as the end all, cure all. Blueberries are high in antioxidants and don't have these issues. Red wine in moderation also doesn't have issues. Dark chocolate without milk is also a very good source of antioxidants. If you worry that your glass of milk with your dark chocolate is killing those benefits, then try an alternative solution.