Balance of Food

Temptation of the Week: AYCE at MLB ballparks

Those who obsess about calorie counting likely recoil at the idea of eating 2,200 calories in a day when they really wanted to eat 1,900 calories.

Eating 7,800 calories in one setting — almost 4 days worth of food for an average male — might cause a calorie counter to faint at the thought.

The case study, that's one way to put it, came from a story in The Washington Post a while back on MLB ballparks All You Can Eat offers.

Case in point: Before the first pitch at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore last week, Mark Mirchandani casually announced that he already had gobbled three Esskay dogs. Nearly three hours later, when the Orioles had finished off the Toronto Blue Jays, 2-1, Mirchandani said he had polished off 10 franks — not to mention two orders of nachos, two servings of peanuts, five tiny cups of ice cream, one soda and, apparently to restore order to his battered digestive system, a small container of salad. He had his reasons for the binge, which, incidentally, totaled approximately 7,800 calories, or about three times what the average male needs a day.

This isn't an admonishment or an endorsement of what he did; this is much more about why he ate so much, and what it says about the financial value we place on food.

This gentleman paid $35 to take in this feast in Baltimore. In Maryland's largest city, you could get a nice fresh seafood dinner for $35. Let's say you order a pound of crab legs, a side of fries, a bread basket, soup or salad, and maybe dessert. Most people would enjoy that meal, even if it didn't have as much "value."

We view food value in terms of quantity for money; the more food you can eat, the more value you get. Once you reach equal value, especially at ballpark prices, anything over that becomes free food.

If you don't sit in an AYCE area, you wouldn't order as much food as he did because you would have to pay for it. $35 at a MLB ballpark would likely buy you 5 hot dogs ($17.50), 1 order of nachos ($5.50), 1 bag of peanuts ($4), 1 small helmet full of ice cream ($4), and 1 soda ($4). The free food becomes the other 5 hot dogs, 1 order of nachos, 1 serving of peanuts, a small helmet of ice cream, and the small container of salad — slightly more than half of the food he ate.

The ballpark food bought at face value is almost 4,000 calories — about twice as much as the average male should consume. However, if the goal is calories for the buck, the ballpark dinner beats out the nice crab dinner.

The guy in Baltimore got 2.23 calories per penny. As food-wise bargains go, that would be hard to top.

If you are as young a person as this guy is (25) and you regularly consume 2,600 calories per day, you are still eating 3 days worth of food in one meal. If only we were bears, that would be awesome.

As for the curmudgeon to The Washington Post food chat, you are correct. "If I want to eat 8000 unhealthy calories at a baseball game its (sic) my business."

You might want to know that you are eating 8,000 calories. You might even be impressed with that. You should have an idea about how many calories you would require, as a point of comparison. This isn't anybody telling me what to do/not do. Just letting you know what you are doing to yourself.

My one ballpark meal in Baltimore was a crab sandwich from Ethel & Ramone's at the outdoor market ($9) that I brought into the stadium, a Boog Powell barbecue sandwich ($9), and tap water. Calorie total? Have not a clue. Cost? Slightly more than half of the $35 pigout. Value? Well, not as many calories per penny as the guy did in Baltimore, but the crab sandwich was amazing. Boog Powell knows what he is doing with barbecue. Paying $35 for food at Oriole Park without a Boog Powell barbecue sandwich? Not my definition of value.

Temptation of the Week: 'Play' with your food

Would tacos taste better if they were brought to you on a unmanned drone helicopter?"

Stephen Colbert brought up that question in this week's "Thought for Food." We normally make a big production about the segment, but thought it was better to post on Twitter (#balanceoffood).

One of my Facebook friends posted a picture of vegan, deep fried avocado, tacos. That looked good. Having a good taco — maybe with some grilled fish, a vinegary cole slaw, and a remoulade on a soft flour shell — is more important than how it gets delivered to me.

But you may not care if the tacos came from Taco Bell as long as a unmanned helicopter or a golden retriever brought them to you. The pure thrill might make them taste better.

Crappy strawberries and chocolate bread wrapped in convenience store plastic could taste better if eaten alongside the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I can tell you that the real strawberries and freshly baked pan du chocolate were amazing, though the view made that breakfast taste better alongside that landmark.

Finding an old-time drive-in restaurant can bring back joys of eating in a car, so the burgers and fries taste better being eaten inside your car.

Baseball already started in Tokyo, but most MLB teams start their season next week. Though I live in a city that isn't very adventurous with their ballpark food, people will eat at the ballpark because that is part of the charm. In the last few years, I have had a crab sandwich on sourdough in San Francisco, really good chili in Washington, amazing barbecue in Baltimore, different kind of barbecue with amazing sauce in Detroit, coney dogs in Cincinnati, garlic fries in Seattle and San Francisco, and poutine in Milwaukee. Okay, the baseball was good, too.

The best meal I had in Paris was a sesame baguette that I found when I took a wrong turn, roquefort cheese that I negotiated with a fromagerie owner who spoke no English, the aforementioned strawberries, and chocolate from the Marais district. Yes, I found a park to enjoy the meal, but the food was the star.

Now if we can just get some drone copters to deliver some fresh grilled fish tacos … .

Temptation of the Week: Resisting temptation to gorge on Super Bowl Sunday

Super Bowl Sunday is the relatively new eating holiday in the timespan from Thanksgiving to Valentine's Day. For a while there, we weren't sure if we would have a Super Bowl with the impending NFL strike. Unlike the NBA, the NFL played a full schedule this year, and the Super Bowl will be on time. During the uncertainty, I made a mental note to not go crazy food-wise for Super Bowl Sunday.

Whether you count Halloween, the late-fall to mid-winter stretch has a lot of eating holidays. Throw in a January birthday, and you have a lot of potential eating hazards.

I am pretty much required to watch the game since my day job is running an ad in the game. However, my plan is to have a regular dinner on the night of Super Bowl Sunday.

No bag of chips. No multi-layer dip. No pizza. No delivery. No multi-beer tab. Just a simple Sunday night dinner.

I might have kept the tradition if the NFL hadn't struggled with how to split gazillions of dollars. After all, we don't think to have special menus for the World Series, NBA finals, or even the Stanley Cup. The Super Bowl is one February night, so why not? It's too close to my birthday and Valentine's Day, two anxiety and pressure days in themselves.

Having "eating holidays" can be a way to have some fun while doing well most of the time. However, winter is the worst time since you are already tempted to eat more to stay warm. Certain holidays bring a propensity toward junk food, especially Super Bowl Sunday. At least on Thanksgiving, you get a healthy balance of carbohydrates, protein, fruit, and vegetables, even if the amount is unbalanced.

To prove we are fun, you can eat your regular dinner in front of the TV while watching the game. West Coast viewers can treat it as a late-afternoon snack or they can wait until halftime to start dinner. Just make it a normal Sunday night meal … with the biggest football game of the year.

Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl doing even less to fight hunger

Last year, we complained about the ratio of Kraft food ads to the emphasis on the problems in feeding the hungry in the first Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl in San Francisco.

Even though the problem of hunger needs more attention than ever, the issue didn't get much help from this year's Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl.

Last year's efforts contained two segments and the play-by-play announcer read copy concerning the plight of those who aren't getting enough food. If I had known this year would have been this bad, I wouldn't have complained so much about last year.

This year, we have one segment where players from both teams — UCLA and Illinois — go to San Francisco soup kitchens. The segment aired at 8:40 left in the first half. The play-by-play announcer talked us through the visuals without extra copy.

The Matt Damon Feeding America PSA aired first in the next commercial break. Other than the signage on the field, that was it. Ouch!

Previous coverage:
Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl doesn't do much about hunger, except schlep for Kraft products
Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl shows companies can step up to help those who need food

Kraft had its products on display, usually the first spot in the break. In the first half, we heard from Oreo Fudge Cremes*, Oscar Mayer carving board turkey*, Maxwell House* with its Drops of Good campaign, and Ritz Crackers* heading into halftime. The second half featured Velveeta Cheesy Skillets*, Oscar Mayer bacon*, Kraft Mozzarella Cheese with Philadelphia Cream Cheese*, Velveeta*, and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese*.

This year's play-by-play guy, Carter Blackburn, threw in an extra Kraft mention with the video of crabs and other seafood at Fisherman's Wharf. Blackburn mentioned tartar sauce, then corrected himself to say, "Kraft Tartar Sauce, of course."

Groan!

The fighting hunger segment lasted 30 seconds. We saw more of Chick-Fil-A (outside its own bowl game) and Taco Bell than about fighting hunger.

Bowl games are about stories as well as football. You see athletes who get perks and advantages helping those who are down on their luck. Why not talk to the players and get their impressions about hunger and needing food? Why not talk to people who have had to turn to food banks?

We can handle time bought by Kraft if that would spread the word about those who don't have easy access to food. We can handle time donated by ESPN to spread the word on this cause. 30 seconds in the whole game? That's a joke.

Maxwell House, a Kraft product, used its 30 seconds to promote the Drops for Good to rehab community centers. This is a good example of a corporate-sponsored peek into helping the less fortunate. Having 3-4 more such examples, scattered throughout the game, would do a lot more toward having the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl actually fighting hunger.

photo credit: ESPN

Food-related college football bowl games schedule

The naming of bowl games has long ago crossed the line to silliness. But I thought it would be fun to showcase the food-related college football bowl games.

The Kraft Fights Hunger Bowl is back for another round, moving up to New Year's Eve in the afternoon this year. We will have more detailed coverage of the game to see how well the anti-hunger message is being delivered to college football fans.

Previous coverage:

Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl doesn't do much about hunger, except schlep for Kraft products
Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl shows companies can step up to help those who need food

The last two bowl games on the list are long-standing food-related titles; doesn't get much simpler than Sugar and Orange when it comes to bowls. The others are corporate-sponsored.

College football has nothing to do with food companies other than an occasional snack while watching. But that doesn't stop food companies from using sports to get consumers to notice them.

All times Eastern.

Date	Game	Teams	Stadium/City	Network	Time
12/17/2011	Famous Idaho Potato Bowl	Utah State Ohio	Bronco Stadium, Boise, ID	ESPN	5:30 pm
12/27/2011	Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl	Purdue Western Michigan	Ford Field, Detroit	ESPN	4:30 pm
12/31/2011	Kraft Fights Hunger Bowl	UCLA Illinois	AT&T Park, San Francisco	ESPN	3:30 pm
12/31/2011	Chick-Fil-A Bowl	Virginia Auburn	Georgia Dome, Atlanta	ESPN/ ESPN 3D	7:30 pm
1/2/2012	Tostitos Fiesta Bowl	Oklahoma State Stanford	University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, AZ	ESPN	8:30 pm
1/3/2012	Sugar Bowl	Virginia Tech Michigan	Superdome, New Orleans	ESPN	8 pm
1/4/2012	Orange Bowl	Clemson West Virginia	Sun Life Stadium, Miami	ESPN	8 pm

Temptation of the Week: Poutine at the ballpark

Canadian cuisine is barely visible within Canada, much less the United States. However, Canada has one dish that is gaining prominence below the 49th parallel, even if people aren't quite sure what it is.

Poutine is spreading across the United States, and I hit the road to a land known for cheese to see its take on the Quebecois dish.

As I mentioned earlier, Miller Park in Milwaukee had a contest over last winter to add new food items to the ballpark menu. Poutine came in 2nd to a kebab featuring the 5 prominent sausages.

One piece of advice that I unfortunately ignored was looking up online the location of the obscure food item. I started in the 2nd deck, the poutine was in the 1st deck, and my seat was in the 4th deck. Several concession workers had no idea what I was talking about.

Turns out, the Brewers have the poutine in the Pommes Frites area near Section 129, in case you are headed to see the 1st place Brewers. The item isn't listed on the menu under "poutine" but "Montreal." Once I saw "Montreal," I knew I reached my destination.

Wisconsin is known for cheese and cheese curds, so I was looking forward to see the cheese impact of the Miller Park poutine. While Quebec is proud of its cheese curds, Wisconsin celebrates cheese in all forms. So in multiple ways, poutine has a kinship with cheeseheads.

So let's go to the scorecard to see how this Wisconsin version of a Montréal classic looked on the plate (get it, home plate):

On the negative side of the sheet, poutine purists will point to the obvious difference: waffle cut fries certainly aren't traditional. And the cheese was lightly scattered, and tiny in size, making little impact in the dish. And the poutine at the ballpark sets you back $7.

On the plus side, the dish smelled liked poutine when it was placed in front of me. The concessionaires used plenty of gravy. And the poutine did hit the spot.

This was the second ballpark where I have seen poutine. In 2002, I saw three Expos games at Olympic Stadium in Montréal, but I didn't order it then. This was back before I discovered what poutine could do to the palate.

The Expos traveled to Milwaukee from 1998-2004, but poutine wasn't well-known at that time outside Canada.

This version of poutine won't make the Temptation Hall of Fame. It would have scored more with a little bit more cheese and $2 off the final bill. Miller Park's poutine wasn't a home run, more like a bloop single.

picture via me

Food dominates MLB Extra Innings peek into Toronto Blue Jays telecasts

One task for CanadianCrossing.com is to monitor Canadian commercials during free previews of sports leagues on cable: MLB Extra Innings and NHL Center Ice. Our job at BalanceofFood.com is to find amusing and intriguing food marketing trends from the Great White North.

McDonald's brought back the McRib in Canada, and the commercial is a lot more pleasing to watch than the sandwich itself and the U.S. ads to promote the sandwich.

Subway uses a monkey in its ads up north, and that isn't the only difference. Both sides of the border have sandwiches with egg white omelets as part of the breakfast mix. One line in the ad shows off the difference: "Add lots of vegetables to build a better breakfast." Aaaah. Adding vegetables to a carbohydrate and protein dominant sandwich; you wouldn't hear that in a U.S. ad unless you count the side of hash browns, and we don't.

Kellogg's sells a "meal replacement" breakfast cereal called Vector that is aimed at athletes. You get 13 g of protein per serving plus 22 vitamins and minerals. Its ad was plastered with athletes doing their thing.

The slogan is "You Get Out What You Put In." So let's see what they put in:

A serving, as defined by Kellogg's, is 55 grams, about 2 ounces. This is twice as much as the typical identified serving on U.S. cereal boxes. So while 13 grams of protein sounds awesome, 6½ grams is the better comparison for U.S. cereal serving sizes.

Soy is the major source of protein in the cereal: soy protein (4th on ingredient list) and soy protein concentrate (6th).

In the tradition of U.S. cereals, Vector has sugar/glucose-fructose (3rd). Glucose-fructose is the same as high-fructose corn syrup, and Kellogg's cereals in the U.S. are smothered in HFCS. Honey (9th) and barley malt syrup (11th) are other sweeteners.

Vegetable oil (7th) is a rather unusual ingredient in a breakfast cereal as is salt (8th) and colour (14th).

The vitamin theme also applies to Stride Spark gum that has vitamins B6 and B12. In a substance that isn't meant to be swallowed, and chewed for a limited time, how much of vitamins could you absorb?

Taco Bell has a new campaign in Canada called "Burger Backlash," as if Big Brother corporate executives want a burger-dominated world, ignoring all the other fast food that isn't burgers or really cheap Mexican food.

A&W showed off its Spicy Mama burger with jalapeno cheese and chipotle sauce. While the brand in the U.S. has struggled, A&W is alive and well in Canada.

Delissio has come out with a square pizza that is thinner. And the Burger King stacker has hit Canada.

The last day brought out a plethora of food ads:

Tim Horton's didn't make an appearance until the last game in the series, and only then we heard about the fruit smoothies. Food dominated the final day with Second Cup chillers, Swiss Chalet ribs, Boston Pizza (got its name back after the Stanley Cup finals), and Marc Angelo sausage. The piece de resistance was the Arby's Steakhouse Sandwich, "freshly sliced Canadian seasoned beef, melted Swiss, crispy onions, peppercorn sauce on a toasted ciabatta bun."

Very tempting foods and commercials. This is the last peak until the beginning of hockey season in October. Maybe we'll get some local Winnipeg favorites as the Jets return to the NHL ice this fall.

Poutine gets acceptance from 'South Park' and Miller Park

When people think about Canadian food, and they usually don't, they might think about poutine. After all, poutine is becoming more popular in the United States.

First up was a couple of mentions on "South Park" on Comedy Central. In last week's episode, well, explaining the A story takes a lot of effort (it's a parody of the NCAA mixed in with Miracle on 34th Street), but the nugget is that Cartman has a plan that makes him rich. Rich enough to have a hot tub — filled with KFC gravy. Fans of the show know Cartman's love of KFC, especially the gravy.

So "rich" for Cartman is being able to dip McDonald's French fries in KFC gravy, while being naked in said hot tub. Have to admit that sounds pretty good.

"McDonald's French fries in KFC gravy. The French call this 'poutine'," Cartman says.

Later when Kyle is trying to justify what he is doing by referring to the fries and gravy, "It happens to be called poutine in Montréal."

Well, the cheese curds are missing, and it's more of a Quebecois thing.

I was up in Milwaukee over the weekend, and they announced in-between innings that poutine is served as Miller Park, home of the MLB Milwaukee Brewers. I didn't get a chance to try the poutine in Milwaukee; ballpark versions aren't always that good. But Wisconsin is known for cheese, and the Miller Park version of poutine is more authentic than the South Park version.

Poutine came in second in a contest to get a food item added to the menu at Miller Park. Kabobs featuring the five sausages in Milwaukee won the contest. Even though poutine came in second, the dish is on the menu.

"South Park" also celebrates Denny's Baconalia. They mention the bacon sundae, which you would hope is parody, but it isn't.

Podcast: Celebrating baseball’s Opening Day with sensible treats

This week's podcast deals with celebrating baseball’s Opening Day with sensible treats.

To access the podcasts, check them out in the podcast library.

Podcast 040111

You can be smart about March Madness, St. Patrick's Day, great food and drink temptations

Today is the odd combination of St. Patrick's Day and the opening day (for all practical purposes) of March Madness.

So this combo will lead to a lot of consumption of food and drink. Admittedly, there might be less bar action since people can watch all the games on various channels. Previously, you had to hope your CBS station would carry the game you wanted. But the bars will still see a lot of action.

We aren't going to suggest you abstain or even starve yourself. Enjoy the chance to root for your team. After all, by Sunday night, there will only be 16 teams left.

But here are some tips to consider if watching the game from the bar.

-- Eat better on March 16 and 18. Too late for the day before, but if your team is playing on Thursday, eat well on Friday. And vice versa if your team plays on Friday.

-- Drink at a casual rate. If you are going to watch several games, pace yourself. Vodka with fruit juice is a decently healthy drink.

-- Think turkey burgers and sweet potato fries. Eat the lettuce and tomato with your sandwich.

-- Drink lots of water.

Your calorie intake will likely be on the rise. Eating cabbage in the traditional corned beef and cabbage will also help, even if your fellow bar mates might disagree.

Enjoy the games. Hope your team wins. Play it smart, and you can have fun while being good.