Balance of Food

Temptation of the Week: 'Authentic' Mexican Coca-Cola

Mexican Coca-Cola is supposed to be the cat's meow, the great alternative to those frustrated by the American version with high-fructose corn syrup. Used to be that you could travel to neighboring countries Canada and Mexico and you'd be guaranteed an experience free of high-fructose corn syrup.

Then, glucose-fructose sneaked its way into Canada; no one really explaining that glucose-fructose is high-fructose corn syrup. Lately, we've been hearing stories about Mexicans having to deal with American coke, er, Coca-Cola. And I've seen "Mexican Coca-Cola" that says on the label "high-fructose corn syrup and/or sugar."

NAFTA is the reason why high-fructose corn syrup has invaded Canada and Mexico. Free trade agreements do have some advantages, but the loss of sovereignty is always a bad side effect. The United States has a lot of power to force something into another country; that power is not as reciprocal in reality.

We live in a society where we can't find out whether the milk we drink has been treated with growth hormones. For consumers who want to avoid high-fructose corn syrup for any number of reasons (time will tell if the autism connection has much validity), they deserve to know whether they are consuming high-fructose corn syrup.

For those looking to cut down on high-fructose corn syrup, Mexican Coca-Cola has been a wonderful option while occasionally having a soft drink. The treat of Mexican Coca-Cola only works if you are drinking "the real thing" (yes, an old company slogan).

If your drink is from a glass bottle and says Coca-Cola and comes from Mexico, it's only real if the label doesn't say high-fructose corn syrup. Anything else isn't "the real thing."

Still wondering why regular U.S. Coca-Cola products are allowed to have the words "Original Formula," when no one knows that to be true.

The popularity of Mexican Coca-Cola should prove to the corporate folks in Atlanta that there is an audience for what Coca-Cola produced before the company switched to high-fructose corn syrup. I have two 2-liter bottles of Kosher for Passover Coca-Cola, another popular choice where available. The switch back to sugar would be the opposite publicity the company received for switching to New Coke.

The best rule of thumb is if the label doesn't mention high-fructose corn syrup, you should be fine. If you see the words "high-fructose corn syrup and/or sugar," place the bottle gently down and run.

"The customer is always right" and "give the people what they want" haven't applied when it comes to Coca-Cola.

This is a painful reminder that we keep needing to bring up: read labels. Seriously. You never know what food manufacturers are going to do.

Wendy's trying to make poutine Canada's national dish

Couldn't help but pass on the word in our unofficial poutine coverage that Wendy's is launching a petition — a "Poutition" — to make poutine Canada's national dish.

Wendy's is using this as an excuse to launch poutine on its menu in Canada. For all the poutine I have eaten, none of them has come from a major fast food chain. The better question for the American audience is whether Wendy's or McDonald's or Burger King would ever bring this across the border.

Canada is a rather large country and poutine is mostly a Quebec thing.

Then again, what is the United States' national dish? Mac & cheese? Hot dogs? High-fructose corn syrup?

The idea of one national dish seems unfair to the rest. If nothing else, we should vote on the national dish … for both countries.

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

photo credit: Wendy's

Distinct Canadian cuisine through the eyes of 'Live with Kelly'

Even though I once moderated a discussion about Canadian food, I don't always have a good answer for what is Canadian food. True, we could talk poutine for days, but the truth about Canadian food depends on where you are in the country.

This issue came up during last week's "Live with Kelly" episodes in Banff, Alberta, Canada. On the last show, the hosts sampled some Rocky Mountain cuisine. Admittedly, the menu was very fancy, since this was from the Fairmont Hotel in Banff Springs and executive chef Martin Luthi.

The first two items contained elk and bison. However squeamish you might be about eating animals you don't know (assuming you eat meat), elk and bison are healthier for you than regular beef. Omega-3s, less fat — all the good stuff. So you don't have to eat your elk tenderloin with black trumpet mushrooms and sunchokes or your braised bison short ribs with barley risotto to get the health benefits of elk and bison. Kelly said she had never had bison before; perhaps she got confused over buffalo vs. bison or maybe she never had buffalo.

The Waterton Lake rainbow trout is a regional dish; served by Luthi with swiss chard, mussels, and shrimps. Fish is obviously a healthier source of protein than traditional beef, except for potential mercury. The chef also brought up salmon with mussels and clams with a broth poured over it to produce a bouillabaisse. Luthi pointed out that the dish was very low in fat, probably less than 350 calories.

Alberta is known for its beef. The sample dish was beef tenderloin carpaccio with aioli and arugula. During the phone trivia game, Thursday's contestant — David Torres of Fairhaven, MA — had heard of Calgary and Alberta but not Lake Louise. Yet, Torres did know Alberta beef: "not the best looking, but it is the best tasting steak." They didn't even ask him about the beef, but that is what he associated with Alberta.

Dessert was a lovely poached pear with maple mousse. Ripa's co-host, Ben Mulroney, an actual Canadian, said, "nothing says Canada like maple, huh." Agreed.

Ripa, after trying the dessert, chose to dip the dessert in the cheese fondue with truffle. She enjoyed it, even if that freaked out the chef.

The vast majority of Albertans do not eat this way. However, they and other Canadians do incorporate the elk, buffalo, trout, and other creatures along with tastes such as maple to produce a distinct Canadian cuisine. But they also eat poutine and donuts from Tim Horton's and lots of foods that look the same as those on American plates. Well, they do put ketchup on their Kraft Dinner (macaroni & cheese) and vinegar (or mayo) on their fries.

So you see, there are a few differences between eating Canadian and eating American.

Special thanks to the coverage of "Live with Kelly" from CanadianCrossing.com.

photo credit: WABC-TV, New York

Jayma Mays proclaims love for poutine on 'Live with Kelly' in Canada

"I am in love with poutine" -- Jayma Mays

When Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa were in Prince Edward Island in 2010, they raved about the fresh seafood, potatoes, and Cows ice cream (extra butterfat). But they never mentioned poutine.

And even though Ripa is in Banff, Alberta, Canada this week, the last thing you would have expected from a non-Canadian guest was proclaimed love for poutine.

But there was Jayma Mays, star of "Glee," extolling the virtues of the Canadian delicacy. "It's heaven in a bowl," she exclaimed.

Ripa started out the transition by noting that her producer said Mays had fallen in love with Canadian French fries.

Shortly after Mays shared her love for poutine, someone brought out a large bowl of poutine. Ripa, co-host Chris Harrison, and Mays ate from a large bowl of poutine.

"That is incredible," Ripa said after she tried it.

We have written quite a bit about poutine. If you eat well most of the time, you can indulge in such treats if that is how you want to spent your "food currency." Mays is a tiny young woman, so you can imagine that while she loves poutine, she doesn't have it all the time. And she is in great shape.

Yes, celebrities can spend more time getting in shape than the average person. But Mays shows you that it can be done.

Ironically, Ripa and Harrison didn't discuss poutine with Caroline Rhea, a guest later in yesterday's episode. Rhea is from Montréal, home of poutine.

Now, the two main Regis Philbin co-hosts have tried poutine on television. Kathie Lee Gifford had lobster poutine in Montréal on the "Today" show in 2011.

I recently tried the house poutine as a poutine shop in Chicago, devoted mostly to poutine. The poutine was rather good, but way too costly at $10. Poutine is a food for the masses, not for those who pay $10 for a snack. The poutine with fois gras was less than that at Au Pied de Cochon in Montréal when I had it there in 2009.

Poutine is making its way slowly into the United States, and Jayma Mays love for poutine will help speed up the process.

CanadianCrossing.com is carrying summaries all this week of the episodes of Live with Kelly in Banff.

photo credit: WABC-TV/New York

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 … .

Fat Tuesday in a parallel universe

Editor's Note: The following takes place in a parallel universe, though the New Orleans in the parallel universe looks pretty similar to the New Orleans we all know.

Tom walks down Bourbon Street, munching on broccoli. The crunch almost keeps rhythm with the loud music all around. After all, this is Skinny Tuesday, the day before people will gorge themselves (except Sundays) for the next 40 days.

Taking in the sights, he goes back and forth between eating the broccoli and drinking from the bottle of pomegranate juice in his other hand. Tom does cheat a little by adding some blueberry juice, but given the dark red color, unless anyone else could smell or taste it, they wouldn't know it wasn't pure pomegranate juice.

He thinks about all the foods he gets to eat starting tomorrow. Grilled cheese sandwiches made with donuts, hot fudge sundaes, fried chicken skin in a bowl with whipped cream on top. Oh and French fries dipped in gravy, mayonnaise, ketchup, chili, nacho cheese. His favorite trick is to dip a fry into each condiment and eat the five fries all at once.

He has been getting ready for this time of the year. Hasn't had meat in 3 weeks. Whole grain pastas and bread dominate his diet. Tom made extra batches of his lentil and beans stew, which he freezes so he can have something to eat on Sundays. Gets plenty of vegetables, dipping them in dressing on the side made with extra virgin olive oil. He has been eating fruit for dessert. Tom is going to be so ready.

Tom is a little nervous about tomorrow. After all, he isn't used to eating the way you do after Skinny Tuesday. His body will not be used to the new diet. He isn't sure how he'll handle the taste. Once you have become used to the vitamin goodness of raw broccoli, can pork rinds possibly give him that same satisfaction?

Tom lets the music embrace all around him. He loves this moment when people are having a really great time before they make the sacrifice of eating junk food. Besides, Tom thinks to himself, it's only for a few weeks out of the year. And if Tom is honest with himself, he could stand to gain 10-15 pounds.

Temptation of the Week: Going nuts in small portions

When I'm talking about BalanceofFood.com in a social situation, and I want to point to an extreme of what I cover, I mention the time I tried deep-fried butter. Their faces get that look of disgust. "How could he eat healthy and still have deep-fried butter?" That's my point. You don't eat it every day.

"Oh, my gosh, you had turducken," is what I expect the reaction would be if I shared that. Yes, I did have turducken recently. This wasn't the first time. But people sometimes get that look as if you ate the whole turkey, whole duck, and whole chicken all in one setting.

With portion control, you can try deep-fried butter once. You can eat turducken once in a great while. Years ago, I even had deep-fried turkey — once.

Eating deep-fried chicken is no big deal. Or pork rinds. Or artificial fat-free ice cream. Or the extremes of the menu at Denny's. Somehow, these seem normal, even in larger quantities.

I had the turducken at a party. About 30-40 people had some, so in terms of portion control, I didn't eat that much. And none of it was deep-fried.

Yes, the butter was dipped in batter and deep-fried. But you have seen the picture: what you saw is what I ate. I offered some to my newly found friends in Toronto; they turned me down.

I was telling a co-worker about cooking steak in butter and then dipping the cooked steak in more butter. She wondered why I wasn't 300 pounds. "Because I don't do it every day. I consider a treat to be a treat," was my reply. She liked that attitude.

If you need an incentive to be good most of the time, allow yourself a crazy treat every so often. I was on vacation during the deep-fried butter experience. The turducken came at a holiday party. I didn't seek those out; I seized the opportunity that was there. I enjoyed the experience. And I have no regrets.

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

Temptation of the Week: Balancing holiday temptation with reality

Did your Thanksgiving go well?

Perhaps you did really well: enjoyed your food, had a lot but not too much and spread it around several food groups. Or maybe you had a little too much a little too often. Or you could have been surrounded by enough family guilt that you overstuffed and then went into the bathroom to sneak more food.

Even if you did well over the long holiday weekend, you might still be wary of the holiday period to come, regardless of which holiday. After all, Thanksgiving lasts 4-5 days. Right now, you are looking at another 25 days.

Yikes!

The proposal presented two weeks ago in the Temptation of the Week was a bit radical and some could interpret in an anti-family, almost Scroogesque take on the holidays. If you took it literally and it worked for you so far, congratulations. The proposal was meant literally but also could be seen as metaphorical. You would still be surrounded by family, friends, and co-workers in candy cane sweaters, but you would be more in control of making good holiday eating decisions.

Or you could still eat what you want to eat, how much you want to eat, and still add 10% to your consumption just to spite the Balance of Food.

Holidays are a tricky time for a lot of reasons. Maybe you've been good for most of the fall in hopes of eating more in December. Maybe you don't get to see Grandma but this time of year and her homemade pecan pie is the best ever. Maybe you and your spouse are going through a rough patch, or maybe you are more alone than normal. Maybe an extra piece of or slice of will make a difference.

As much as we hope to have a sterile environment around this time of year to steer us away from holiday temptation, holidays involve real people doing real things with real holiday pressures. Sometimes as strong as we would like to think we are, we're only human. We strive to have well-behaved children, inferring that they may not be as well-rewarded if they don't behave. Sometimes children are children and we receive unprecedented joy from the experience. People being human.

This isn't to contradict what I wrote before Thanksgiving: I stand by every word. This week, we are presenting the other side: reality. Sometimes, success in the holiday season is a matter of doing the best you can while having some fun. Redefining what fun is can help you not go too far in the holiday season, but the holiday time is meant for fun, family, friends, and co-workers, though not always candy cane sweaters.

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