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: Canadian fat cakes

I've never had a fat cake, Canadian or American. And yet I want one.

The only problem is that fat cakes aren't real.

I'm not in the ideal demo for "iCarly,' but was glad to stumble on the episode where most of the cast tours a plant where Canadian fat cakes are made. Sam (left), one of the lead characters, is obsessed with fat cakes. She has heard that fat cakes in Canada taste better because they are made with "cane fat" while American Fat Cakes are made with "corn fat."

The catch for Sam is that you aren't allowed to bring in Canadian Fat Cakes into the United States. Sam tries to bring them back across the border strapped to her person under a long coat. Unfortunately for Sam, she gets caught smuggling them back.

(Amusingly, this episode originally aired just after Michelle Obama was in an episode of iCarly. From good health to fat cakes, a true Balance of Food.)

You certainly can bring back processed baked goods from Canada into the United States. Long-time readers know of my adventures with Canadian Twinkies. And before glucose-fructose (HFCS) came to Canada, I brought back Canadian versions of soft drinks.

As it turns out, Fat Cakes have been a floating theme through the show. According to this wikia, they are "made with marshmallow and have pink coconut shavings on top and a chocolate cake in the middle with cream filling."

Sounds like more of a take on Sno Balls. They don't sound like much of a temptation, though Jennette McCurdy, the actress who plays Sam, convinces you that they are worth risking the wrath of customs. If Canadian Twinkies were illegal in the United States, I'd be tempted to smuggle them into the States.

We often are tempted by what we can't have, whether that is a certain fast food restaurant or regional favorite. When we travel somewhere, we want to retain that experience long after our trip is over.

I have "smuggled" garlic back from San Francisco on the plane, but within your own country, you can bring such things back without any customs trouble.

When you travel outside the country, you are subject to restrictions on what you can "smuggle" back into your home country. Plants and meat bring up red flags, as tempting as that ham from Spain can be.

If you aren't sure, check with the laws in the country where you live, since that is where you'll be returning. If what you want to bring back fits within those confines, travel and enjoy your food experience, wherever that takes you.

For the Canadian take, check out this story from our sister blog, CanadianCrossing.com.

photo credit: iCarly

Temptation of the Week: Ranch dressing instead of ketchup

Even if you don't like to eat in bars, you have to love the box of condiments you often see in bars. Ketchup, mustard, and hot sauce dominate those boxes. Hidden Valley wants you to add another bottle to the box: ranch dressing.

The company has come out with what it says is pourable ranch dressing with the idea that you would dip your French fries, onion rings, and mozzarella sticks in ranch dressing.

Ranch dressing went from obscurity to dominance in the salad dressing field. Way too often in my life, I have been at a restaurant where I could get ranch but not blue cheese dressing.

Full disclosure: I hate ranch dressing. I find it extremely boring. I like buttermilk. Okay, I love buttermilk. Too often, buttermilk ranch dressing has very little buttermilk. I like buttermilk dressing with a lot of buttermilk. But that isn't ranch dressing.

My favorite Buffalo wings place in the whole world only serves ranch dressing. I end up getting the wings to go or sneaking in blue cheese dressing.

So the idea of adding more ranch dressing to restaurant tables is depressing enough. But as sales and preferences go, I'm in the minority.

My ideal condiments box would be ketchup (without high-fructose corn syrup), mustard (yellow and brown), malt vinegar, Miracle Whip (until Kraft brought back the high-fructose corn syrup version), and hot sauce (red and green).

The two things Americans love are dips and things to dip. Condiments are supposed to enhance the flavor, what you see often in Canada and England where vinegars are lightly sprinkled on fries. A fresh aioli could be served but isn't likely to be sitting out in a condiments box. Unfortunately, you often see patrons drown their food in their condiment of choice.

The condiment manufacturers, like most food manufacturers, want you to use as much of their product as possible and then buy more. That is their desire. Your desire should be to enhance the flavor of whatever you are eating, but still be able to tell the difference between what you are eating and the condiment in question.

photo by me

Temptation of the Week: eating insects

We are drawn to eating food based on color, and so in a lot of processed foods, we get to eat dyes to satisfy our visual nature. In a bag of Wheat Thins Veggie Toasted Chips, you can consume 4 dyes: Blue 2, Red 40, Yellow 6, and Yellow 5.

The chips also have dehydrated vegetables, which you would think would be a good source of color. We are told, after all, to eat color through vegetables. But in chips that contain sugar, malt syrup, high-fructose corn syrup AND MSG, at least the dyes are the last ingredient listed.

Still, the idea of eating something horrible to satisfy a visual makes you want to eat your food with your eyes closed.

Starbucks customers found out recently they were eating something horrible to satisfy a visual: insects are used to achieve the red color in a Strawberries & Creme Frappuccino.

Eating insects, even dipped in chocolate, won't appeal to many, other than your Anthony Bourdain types or adolescent boys on a dare. Somehow, crushed up insects might be more plausible, but if you're a vegetarian, you would prefer that nothing die for your overpriced coffee drinks.

Grist weighs in with a very good point: eating insects is still better than consuming coal tar or petroleum. Jess Zimmerman notes that the alternative to cochineal (bugs) is Red 40 (coal tar/petroleum).

Where did we hear about Red 40? That's right: the Wheat Thins chips.

Put me down for those insects. Mmmmmm. Protein.

The other issue is why a drink that contains strawberries wouldn't provide enough red for you to love its color. After all, strawberries and milk in a blender will turn pink.

The strawberries come from strawberry puree concentrate. The white grape juice concentrate dominates the sauce, so perhaps the sauce doesn't have enough strawberries, or red ones at least.

If you see the ingredients on the sauce (see link above) and you know that cochineal extract means dried female cochineal insects, then you are aware. If you mindlessly order the drink, you would have no idea whether the red color came from strawberries, petroleum, or crushed dead insects.

Plant-based foods can supply needed color in foods so companies don't have to resort to insects or petroleum, but those probably cost more.

The insects are natural, even more natural than good ol' castoreum (beaver anal gland). The idea of drinking petroleum is gross, especially if it's only to get a product that should be red, more red.

You might upset people if you hold up a line in Starbucks asking them if their drinks have dead insects or petroleum, but you do have a right to know what is in your food and drink. Then you can decide is eating insects is right for you.

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: Eating fish and seafood on Fridays during Lent

One of my favorite Dr. Demento songs is "Wet Dream in the Gulf Stream" — a bunch of fish and seafood puns from Kip Addotta. You groan through the rapid-fire puns, but the other emotion you get at the end of the song is hunger for seafood.

Last week, we profiled the temptation of eating meat on a Friday during Lent. So we thought we should give equal time to the fishy creatures of the sea.

Theologians can recite the tale of why creatures of the sea are OK during Lent but not those who live on land. After all, fish and seafood are alive and can feel pain, especially when a lobster is placed in boiling water.

Vegetarians consider fish and seafood to be "meat" — what comes out of a crab leg looks nothing like a cow steak, but they still come from animals.

Since we get the all-clear, our society associates fish with Fridays, such as fish frys. Or the fact that Filet O'Fish sandwiches get more publicity during Lent. You don't have to be a Catholic during Lent to appreciate a seafood dinner on a Friday.

Growing up, most of the seafood I ate was fish sticks and fried clams at Bill Knapp's. Well, canned tuna was also on the list. I had a deprived childhood, seafood-wise.

Since then, I've learned to love not-fried clams, calamari, mussels, lobster, smoked salmon, crab, fish, scallops, shrimp, prawns, and so much more. Still trapped in the Midwest, the seafood isn't as good as it would be fresh from the ocean. And the vast majority of seafood I've eaten, even as an adult, was cooked by someone else.

Those who grew up in seafood-friendly areas might feel the same way about steak. Even at this point, cooking fish and seafood isn't as instinctual as cooking hamburgers and steak.

Fish and seafood, when properly prepared, provide better nutrition (Omega 3s) than meat and still provides a lot of protein. Like Regis Philbin during his Prince Edward Island seafood adventure, too many Americans love seafood only if it's deep-fried.

If you are one of those people, experiment with seafood. Try a spice-filled recipe. Cajun a fish. Saute some scallops. Find a way to make fish and seafood a true temptation of the week.

Temptation of the Week: Eating meat on Fridays in Lent

If it weren't for Leap Year, St. Patrick's Day would be today Friday. This would have caused a religious conundrum of Biblical proportions. How can you eat corned beef (with cabbage) on St. Patrick's Day if you couldn't eat meat on Fridays during Lent?

Dispensations are regularly granted to Catholics to allow them to eat corned beef on a Friday St. Patrick's Day.

The Catholic faith requires abstaining from meat on Ash Wednesday and the Fridays in Lent, which is a total of 8 days. 8 days out of a possible 365/366 days doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice. After all, if you practice Meatless Mondays, you give up meat 52 days, more than 6 times as many as in Lent.

You may have gone a day without meat by accident. You may have been sick and had very little to eat in a day. You may have been tricked by a vegetarian friend into eating something that you thought was meat but wasn't.

But as someone who grew up Catholic (and is no longer practicing), when I was younger, the Lenten Fridays felt like a huge weight.

Yes, we didn't really eat meat for breakfast during the week. If you go to a Catholic school, it won't feed you meat for lunch. So all you had to worry about was dinner. One meal where you could eat fish, eggs, peanut butter, beans — just not meat. Somehow, that seemed like a challenge.

Growing up in the land-locked Midwest, seafood wasn't the treat it would be if we lived on the ocean, where eating fish, shellfish, or any other seafood would be a treat, not a sacrifice.

Of course, this is about perspective. After all, Orthodox Jews don't eat shellfish or pork or mix meat and milk year-round. 8 days without meat is a picnic compared to that.

As an adult, going a day without meat isn't a big deal. There are definitely days where I eat a small amount of meat just to get some protein. But it works for me if I just don't think about it.

When you're younger and the world around you treats it as a big deal that you don't eat meat on a particular day, the temptation is to eat meat out of spite. This is probably why I'm not practicing anymore.

Give me a day where I have a spinach, feta, and mushroom omelet for breakfast, spaghetti and mushrooms for lunch, and a nice lobster or crab legs dinner — I won't even remember what meat is like.

This isn't to attack religion or tradition, especially the Catholic religion. If you are in a situation where avoiding meat is difficult/impossible, make up for it somehow. This was a lesson I wish I had learned when I was rebelling from the Lenten meat restriction. If the pressure is too great or the timing is too difficult or if you accidentally forget, pick another day and go without meat.

Going without meat is a penance, but it shouldn't be seen as a sacrifice. This doesn't mean you have to do it every day or even two days in a row. Going without meat for a day allows so many other options. Explore them with an open heart, regardless of why you reached that point in the first place.

Temptation of the Week: 'Fruit and dairy' at McDonald's

Fruit and dairy. The last two words you would associate with McDonald's.

Yet, fruit and dairy are the stars of the new McDonald's ad campaign (which kicks off today), along with Ferris and his pet goat. The pet goat eats everything in sight, so Ferris tries to teach the goat to eat a balanced diet. The picture of a balanced diet is a basket with a fried chicken leg, bread, apple, and carrots alongside a bottle of milk. The rest of the way, it's all about the fruit and dairy.

McDonald's has made strides, such as they are, in tweaking the Happy Meals. This ad should have been discarded like the garbage that the goat eats.

The goat represents the way we eat, pushing things into our mouth at random with no forethought. Then the goat gets help from Ferris = eat a balanced diet. But of course, this isn't what the goat eats. In fact, we don't see the goat eating any food. We see the goat drinking cow's milk (don't think too hard about that one). In the McDonald's, we see Ferris has chicken nuggets, French fries, apples, and milk, but we never see him eat. Ferris grabs the apple slice but we don't see him eating food.

The goat is now big and strong, so he thinks, because he has had fruit and dairy. We don't see the goat eating the fruit, though he and Ferris would do better with a less-sugared fruit, like just about any other fruit in existence. Apples are very high in natural sugar.

If you are going to McDonald's for fruit and dairy, you can buy a gallon of milk for about twice the cost of a half-pint at McDonald's (there are 16 half-pints in a gallon). And you can get apples and other assorted fruit, probably better tasting fruit, at a farmers market or a grocery store.

The three foods best associated with McDonald's are hamburgers, fries, and soft drinks. As someone who grew up in a long ago time, we had the Hamburglar, the small French fry packet with legs, and Grimace's obsession with milkshakes. These merry band of food tie-ins were led by a clown aimed at children.

We were filled with emotional tie-ins to the fast food but we weren't filled with irony. We knew that hamburgers and fries weren't everyday food. If you have a treat every day, it's no longer a treat.

Watching McDonald's push fruit and dairy is like watching Alicia Silverstone do a commercial for a steakhouse; it's unnatural. McDonald's manages to push this without a human eating any food and the only drink comes from a goat; it's not like Alicia is going to put the steak in her mouth.

If McDonald's thinks it is important to be smarter in marketing to children, show a child, a live child, eating an apple slice and drinking some milk. See the child also eat a French fry and a small bite from a hamburger and chicken nugget. Have the announcer point out that it takes all kinds of food to give a young child energy to deal with the day. The child won't just live on fruit and dairy, but also recognize that constant fast food won't cut it either. Then, if nothing else, the commercial will be honest. And that would be a refreshing change in marketing fast food to kids.

Temptation of the Week: Too much of your favorite food

We all have a favorite food, and you really don't have to marry it to enjoy it. But is that food so perfect that you would spent breakfast, lunch, and dinner with it? For 30 years?

The latest rhythmic eating obsession is Claire Simmons in England who has eaten pizza for the last 31 years of her life (she's 33).

You can imagine a 20-something slacker in the United States who would eat nothing but pizza for 2-3 days in a row. But eventually, that person would slip into other bar-type food.

Pizza can supply reasonable nutrition if you pick the right toppings. Unfortunately, for Simmons, her repetitive eating syndrome involves plain cheese pizza. High-fat mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce (probably not the healthiest kind) and white flour crust: surprised she lasted this long.

The story parallels the saga of Stacey Irvine, who has reportedly been eating only chicken nuggets for 15 years.

For the record, I am not one to pass judgment on these people, since I have a breakfast that I eat more than 340 times a year. Regular readers know I talk about this on the right hand rail of the home page. I do use variations on the theme, and it's a lot healthier than pizza or chicken nuggets.

Even then, I only do this at breakfast. Sure, for work lunch or dinner, you can eat the same thing 2-3 times in a row. But after 3-4 times, you want something else for dinner, even a repeat of breakfast.

I used the breakfast as a consistency tool when I first started to eat better. Get myself into the proper rhythm for the day. And since breakfast is the most important meal, somehow, this seems to work.

I can have something different for breakfast. When I travel, I can't pull off this breakfast. I eat other things.

And as much as I love my breakfast, I don't want to eat it 3 times a day every day.

Variety is part of what makes food fun, separating us from the rest of the animals. We can eat meat, fruit, vegetables, grains, and cheese. We can have dessert. We can snack.

While these stories sound extreme, they should remain us that variety is the spice of life, and no matter how great our favorite food, we can't appreciate it as a our favorite food if we don't eat other foods alongside our favorite.

Temptation of the Week: Girl Scout cookies

"Mmmmm. You can taste the palm oil."
— actual quote from me after eating a Thin Mints cookie.

Okay, so I was being sarcastic. You can't literally taste the palm oil. But you may notice it when it's gone.

As heart-warming as the Girl Scouts are, and all of the wonderful things they do and learn, and how they need our support against a bizarre political accusation, you might be inclined not to buy the Girl Scout cookies … for the palm oil.

You've read the stories about the evils of palm oil, and how the Girl Scouts just won't take the palm oil out of the cookies.

This is also Girl Scouts cookie season when your co-workers that are parents or you're the parent and Girl Scout cookies are all around the office. Or someone you know bought some and passed one onto you.

My boss at my day job offered me a Thin Mint and I took it. It was good. Quite good. But I didn't want to eat a whole box. None would have been sad; one was just right.

I could have said "no" because of palm oil or high-fructose corn syrup or calories or any of a number of good excuses. And I had turned down the peanut butter kind. I said "yes" because I wanted a Thin Mint cookie.

Would it be better with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup? Oh, yea. Would it be better with trans fats rather than palm oil? No. Would it be better without palm oil? My hunch is that the taste would change, and not for the better.

I'm also not eating 10-20 cookies. One cookie with some palm oil won't make a difference.

How many are too much? Like the owl in the 1970's Tootsie Pop commercial, you can't always know the answer to some questions.

If you really feel bad about what is in the cookies, you can buy the cookies and not eat them. Buy the cookies and give them to someone else. Give the Girl Scouts money and don't take the cookies.

At some point, the Girl Scouts will likely get rid of palm oil in the cookies, and maybe high-fructose corn syrup. But we aren't going to hold our collective breath on this. Enjoy the cookies or don't. If you do take a cookie or a box, enjoy them at a leisurely pace. After all, a cookie is a treat but the money you give to those Girl Scouts pays itself in multiples down the road. The future of these young women is more important than a little extra palm oil in your life.