Balance of Food

Colbert on addictive junk food and Jamie Oliver's chicken patty experiment

In what we hope will be a regular feature, Stephen Colbert had another "Thought for Food" as part of the "Colbert Report" last night.

In the previous episode, Colbert highlighted the New Jersey woman who vowed to gain 400 more pounds to be the world's heaviest woman. She had already been off to a "good" start, being the 43rd heaviest woman at about 600 pounds.

In this week's episode, Colbert updated us on cat litter made from corn, discussed the study this week on addictive junk food, and the chicken patty segment from "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution."

Colbert visually illustrated the junk food study by popping open a can of Pringles, and then in the ultimate ewww moment, created a Pringles sandwich with Reddy-Wip in between. "I want that named after me if it catches on," said Colbert.

(Full disclosure: I created my own Pringles sandwich when I was a child, though my filling was mustard and oregano. It's a little bit healthier.)

Colbert showed the chicken patty experiment from last week's show. As you might remember, Oliver took the worst parts of the chicken, made chicken patties, and the kids still wanted to eat it.

We were assured by Oliver in legalese that our food isn't made this way, but the beauty of the Colbert segment was that there was no disclaimer. And again, the kids wanted the chicken patties "'cause we're hungry."

If I ran a chicken company, I would be livid over what Oliver and Colbert did, unless Oliver was right about how chicken patties were made.

In what was likely a Freudian slip, the Colbert segment identified Oliver's show as Food Evolution, not Food Revolution.

As much publicity as Oliver is getting over this 6-week series, Stephen Colbert has been quietly fighting the fight against crappy food, even more than Jon Stewart, and Stewart has also made his mark.

"Colbert Report" airs Monday-Thursday at 11:30 pm Eastern on Comedy Central.

Finding a solution to fund school lunches to cover the whole political spectrum

Why does the cost of school lunches have to be a political issue?

I'm not trying to be naive; I have written about politics. I'm fully aware of the political-related issues surrounding school lunch programs.

The current child nutrition bill that passed the House and is going through the Senate is designed to address the lack of decent funding for school lunch programs. But even this effort won't be that much improvement.

(Here is a more detailed analysis on the proposed bill.)

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), a Blue Dog Democrat, watered down the increase in funding to 6¢ per lunch. Given that most people spend more on a drink at Starbucks than it takes to feed a child at lunchtime, this isn't much help.

Except for inflation, school lunch funding hasn't increased since 1973. And now we want to only raise it 6¢?

Someone from the outside might see the mission has been to feed our children as little nutritionally as possible, classifying tater tots and ketchup as vegetables, and as cheaply as possible.

And like most political problems these days, we can't even agree that there is a problem.

Feeding students daily nachos, donuts, and Pop-Tarts? That seems fine to some Americans. There are those who don't think that is a good idea, and are rising to complain about this.

So there are two conclusions: either we like it this way or we want to improve the situation.

Republicans aren't comfortable with the federal government running elements of education. Some in the GOP even want to abolish the Department of Education. It's clear that school lunches are caught in the middle of this.

The perception of federal funding of breakfast and school lunches being identified as "welfare" is another political football. There are those who do have plenty of food who don't always feel comfortable supporting those that don't, unless they can label those who take advantage of those deals as "welfare queens" or "welfare cheats."

But if we are going to improve school lunches, and yes, money is at the root of the solution, we have to come up with ways to raise the funds to pull this off.

Republicans (and Blue Dog Democrats) like corporate solutions to problems that those who align with the Democratic Party want to solve with government. But that could be seen as counterproductive, if lunchtime is sponsored by McDonald's and Pizza Hut.

We have seen lunchrooms that already are corporate-sponsored, as we saw in "Super Size Me." Having fast food chains literally sponsor children's lunchtime might not come across well.

Maybe if corporations provided sponsorship in the form of a grant, such as the PBS waivers. "Today's lunch is brought to you by a grant from Archer Daniels Midland, reminding you that there will be plenty of time for high-fructose corn syrup after school."

Sarcasm aside, Republicans might think that states should provide those services. But do we want a country where a child in New York or California eats that much better than a child in South Carolina?

There isn't a realistic expectation that school lunches will ever be like an Alice Waters meal in Berkeley. Kids across the country will not be served organic arugula on 7-grain toast.

However, there has to be a compromise between Froot Loops and organic arugula, something where children get nutrition that isn't laden with sodium and sugar or high-fructose corn syrup.

Studies have consistently shown that eating better and having proper recess time and time to digest lunch all lead to better educational environments for our children to learn. Jamie Oliver pointed out on "Good Morning America" last week that we are debating over $4.5 billion over 10 years for school lunches while the U.S. spends $7 billion a month in Afghanistan. We don't have to spend all $84 billion on school lunches, but a small chunk would make a difference.

Our education figures are appalling in this country. And if using money wisely is a primary concern, improving breakfast and lunch nutritional quality might be the best way to spend just a little more money.

What we need more than money is to come to an agreement that our children deserve better from school lunches and their government, and to find a way financially to make that happen.

Ragu's take on vegetables more hype than help

You have to expect that companies would take full advantage of a 6-episode series on food and nutrition, and place advertising that correlates with the programming.

So watching "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" can be educational, even during the commercials.

Coming first out of the break at about :37 was a spot for Ragu. The ad is a take on kids and vegetables: on Monday, the boy feeds his broccoli to the dog; on Tuesday, he feeds the dog carrots.

But on Wednesday, the boy ignores the dog because Mom presented him with a serving of vegetables in the form of Ragu spaghetti sauce.

As the company points out, "Ragu has more than a full serving of veggies in every ½ cup."

The company's Web site notes that the sauces meet the FDA guidelines for healthy. This is defined as "To be considered "healthy" by the FDA, pasta sauce must be low in fat and saturated fat, contain limited amounts of cholesterol and sodium, and contain a minimum amount of certain nutrients."

Ragu doesn't offer nutritional information on its Web site, but the vegetables that the kid feeds to his dog on Monday and Tuesday don't look like they are cooked with a lot of salt and sugar, er, high-fructose corn syrup (does this mean Ragu counts 'corn' as part of the vegetable?). Those FDA guidelines seem a little shallow.

While this particular Web site has a look at Ragu's label, the update is from 2006. In the 2006 update, a ½ cup serving has 580 mg of sodium and 6 grams of sugar. Unless the recipe has changed dramatically, those aren't great numbers.

And the commercial goes out of its way to show a small serving of sauce on the kids plate. Chances are you or your loved ones won't limit yourself to a ½ cup (4 oz.) serving of sauce. The official Ragu Web site suggests a 26 oz. jar per pound of pasta, which works out to 6.5 oz. per quarter-pound of pasta.

Jamie Oliver is fighting a lot of demons in our society. Marketing is one of those demons. Ragu has every right to advertise its take on vegetables, because it's a free country. But as Oliver and others are pointing out, we need to do a better job of looking past the hype.

Kids might be able to enjoy a little Ragu, but they also need those broccoli and carrots, too.

Broccoli and carrots don't get marketed, yet their benefits are better than a ½ cup of processed spaghetti sauce with salt and sugar. Eating better involves a lot of different things; being cynical about marketing is a helpful tool.

Jamie Oliver offers lots of free cooking and nutrition help in Huntington

In "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution," Oliver set up a kitchen facility in Huntington so that people could take advantage of Oliver's skills and expertise. Imagine if something such as this was in your hometown.

On the window of Jamie's Kitchen:

Free Cooking Lessons
Free Shopping Advice
Free Nutrition Advice
Free Food Consultation
Men, Woman (sic), Children
All Ages Everyone Welcome
Come Join the Revolution

As I mentioned last week, Jamie's Kitchen is located across the street from a Five Guys burger and fries location. Even with that temptation, it would be very easy to pick a chance to learn from a renowned chef for free. It will be intriguing to see what kind of response Jamie's Kitchen gets in future episodes.

Jamie Oliver Round 2: Progress in the school lunchroom

In the second episode, there is a sense of progress in "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" on ABC. But the progress is a little messy.

Oliver makes more progress in the school lunchroom, though that came across as slow. Oliver did do well in a week's time, which is still rather amazing.

The meal that finally put him over the top, at least a little bit, was beef fajitas. One obvious point that Oliver has been slow to learn is that the food has to look similar to what kids are used to for them to want to try it.

His first school lunch in this episode was a tuna pasta bake with 7 vegetables and tomato sauce, mixed salad, and homemade foccacia bread. That would be a difficult meal for an adult to handle, much less a child used to chicken nuggets.

The kids don't like it, because well, they aren't used to it. "in England, what I do is I send them back to the table," says Oliver. Welcome to the United States.

Since Oliver did this in England, believing that Oliver knows what he is doing would appear obvious. But clearly, Oliver is learning about America, and struggling with this.

Early in the episode, Oliver replicates an experiment he did in England, showing kids the worst parts of a chicken and turning into patties to see if the kids will eat them.

In the sequence, Oliver describes the experiment. All of a sudden, the sound quality changes as if someone had entered a different audio track. Oliver's tone changes as he says in a upbeat fashion, "Thankfully, chicken nuggets in this country are not made this way."

Yikes! What lovely wording. Sounds more like a "disclaimer" required either by lawyers for chicken patty manufacturers or for ABC.

So assuming this is true, and it's not done this way in the U.S., why show us the experiment? Give Oliver credit: the experiment failed badly and he aired the clip. But it came across more like the experiment matched what happened in the U.S. and as the last minute, the program was threatened unless the disclaimer was aired.

Kids wanted to eat the chicken patties because they were hungry. Though if you are going to do it this way, it would be the best quality of that type. At the same time, Oliver is serving them something that the claim is that we don't do that in the United States. Very strange.

Jamie Oliver runs into an unexpected issue: he wants kids to have a fork and knife to go along with the fajitas. But all they get is a spoon for every meal. The principal and lunch ladies give Oliver a great big hassle. I'm on Jamie's side on this one; if these kids are eating finger foods all the time, they aren't learning how to appreciate food.

Watching how bad the kids do with a fork and knife shows that Oliver was right. If they learn nothing else, at least they will know cutlery.

As the kids struggle with using forks and knives, Oliver asks them for more time. In a lot of schools in the United States, they don't have enough time to eat what they get. In real life, kids aren't surrounded by cameras putting pressure to give them extra time.

School lunches need money to get better food, and more time to properly digest it.

Other highlights:

-- Jamie dresses up as a peapod "Mr. P." Cute idea, except the kids don't recognize the peas in his costume. this leads to the fresh food experiment that I profiled earlier.

For those who missed it, kids couldn't identify fresh vegetables. They could pick out chicken nuggets, pizza, and French fries. Later, the 1st grade teacher voluntarily put signs on the vegetables, the kids could pick them up when Oliver held them up.

Amusingly, I had suggested that Oliver should have compared side-by-side a potato and French fries. Sure enough, Oliver did just that. Great minds think alike.

-- Jamie did an experiment of showing what kids were eating in the school lunches for parents, kids, and teachers to see. Dumping a week's worth of chocolate milk: "more sugar in that than [not sure] your brand of soda. Put your hands up if you didn't know that as parents." Also dumps sloppy joes, French fries, and nachos, and shows fat consumed by kids in a year in a Dumpster. Didn't seem a good experiment to me, but parents saw it as a wakeup call.

-- In the beef fajitas lunch, only white milk was served. When some kids asked what happened, Oliver said the chocolate milk man didn't show up. If kids were eating really good meals, you might justify the chocolate milk. But given what they normally get, the chocolate milk is over the top.

-- Students were wearing stickers "I've tried something new." I was excited to see this simple solution. I would have loved to have that kind of incentive when I was a child. A girl in the class had the sticker earlier in the episode, but it wasn't really introduced until later. Not quite sure how that worked from a continuity standpoint.

-- Some ABC stations are offering an additional air time of the episode. In Chicago, WLS-TV is airing a rebroadcast Saturday afternoon at 3 pm Central. Check your local listings.

Jamie Oliver offers generous help to Edwards family

The best of this show — "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" — is the time Oliver spends with the Edwards family.

This week, we meet Tim, the father, who to no one's surprise, is fat. Tim was missing from the first episode because he was driving a truck, so Oliver wasn't sure what his reaction would be.

The best of this show — "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" — is the time Oliver spends with the Edwards family.

This week, we meet Tim, the father, who to no one's surprise, is fat. Tim was missing from the first episode because he was driving a truck, so Oliver wasn't sure what his reaction would be.

Tim stunned Oliver by saying about the new recipes, "Actually, I love them. I haven't made one yet that I didn't like."

But Oliver suspects otherwise, after looking through the refrigerator and seeing unused ingredients. Oliver also sees fast food cups around. He asks the young daughter, Katie, what her favorite meal was this week. Katie's first word on television ever was "pizza.'

Jamie takes the Edwards family to the hospital to get them checked out. Katie is up first. In my first OMG moment, Katie says she's 4. She is at least the size of a 7-year-old. Yikes!

Justin is up next. The doctor suspects diabetes, so he gives Justin the HbA1c test, which measures blood sugar levels over a 3-month period. Justin is in the 6th grade, so this would be an early diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes.

After a well-placed commercial, we find out Justin does not have diabetes, for now.

The doctor is still very concerned about Justin. "We've got to do it now. Can't do it half way, we gotta do it all the way."

It's sad to see that checkups aren't a priority for the Edwards family. Some of that may be due to the U.S. health care program; if you think that analysis is political. Consider that it's a one-income family with a truck driver. Is their insurance going to be that great if they have insurance at all?

In the segment, we see Katie and Justin go to the doctor but not the other two boys. Have they disappeared from view or was there a focus on the younger children? This question goes unanswered.

Oliver has taken a shine to Justin, and it's good to see a 1-on-1 scenario, where Oliver clearly does much better. Jamie has Justin come over to Jamie's Kitchen to teach him how to cook.

On tap, Justin is to make chicken stir fry. We see Justin learning how to use a knife to chop: Oliver says Justin's "knife skills improved in 10 minutes."

Oliver loves Justin's dish. What is great to see is that the meals Oliver helps them with are regular meals. Last week, it was spaghetti and now chicken stir-fry. It's not eating lettuce all day, as the disc jockey snorts in the opening episode. This is real food that is realistic: good for Jamie.

There is a feeling that Jamie will be more in the face of the Edwards family, but is also working with Justin to promote change from within.

Offer of free groceries sounds great, but may not be for everyone

FREE GROCERIES

Jewel Food Stores is offering a special deal that they have offered before: the premise is tied to getting your tax refund and spending it on food.

If you buy a $300 gift card from Jewel, you get a $30 card for free. Getting a 10% return sounds marvelous. And being able to get extra groceries for free, especially in this economic downturn, sounds too good to believe.

So why aren't people beating down the door for the deal?

This isn't much to do with Jewel or any other company that offers a similar deal, but it comes down to human nature and economics.

If you are getting a huge tax refund, you likely have many other needs: rent, bills, credit card debt. So you might not be able to put that kind of money upfront for any purpose. Ironically, the people who could really use the $30 gift card aren't the least likely to afford it.

If the deal was six $50 cards instead of one $300 card, I would sign up in a heartbeat. The amount is manageable and even if I spent less than $50 in a trip. I could feel like I would use them properly. But $300 on one card seems like too much money at one time.

I wouldn't feel like I was keeping track of the money, and not feeling like I was getting the value, even if I do spend $300.

I don't have a family, and honestly, might be $7-10 at a time. This works well for a $50 card, but not a $300 card.

If you have a large family where $300 would go pretty quickly, and you could afford to put up the initial money, this might rock.

But a single person who buys here and there might not see that much value, even if it is a 10% return.

This isn't a knock at the deal per se. After all, anything that gets people free groceries — if they can pull off the deal — is good in my book. But it may not be for everyone.

Balance of Food is now available on Twitter

Yes, Balance of Food jumps into the 21st century by going on Twitter. You can see the tweets at http://twitter.com/balanceoffood. And of course, you are invited to follow Balance of Food on Twitter.

There will be updates and observations that aren't included in the blog, including news updates and notable observations.

Chicago Public Schools 'improve' school food; no more donuts, Pop-Tarts

If Jamie Oliver thought the school lunches in Huntington, West Virginia were bad, Oliver should come back to the States and visit the Chicago school lunch program.

-- Daily nacho service in the high school

-- Doughnuts and Pop-Tarts for breakfast

I did hint that Oliver didn't really know how bad the school lunches really are in the United States. But this story this week on how the Chicago public schools are making changes on these things makes you ask one obvious question.

Why were you serving this crap in the first place?

You can make nachos healthy, but chances are that they aren't. High sugar (and high-fructose corn syrup) products for breakfast are not conducive to learn.

The news isn't completely good, but change is coming.

According to the district's current food service operator, starting in June, nacho service will be reduced to once a week in high school and once a month in elementary school; sweet packaged desserts will also be reduced to weekly treats; and doughnuts and Pop-Tarts will be eliminated.

We complain that our education system doesn't help our children learn, and then we feed them crap. There is a quid pro quo. And you would think that attention spans, hyperactivity, ADHD, and acting out in class would be concern for our educational system.

Healthier diets increase the chances of having our kids learn what they need to know, and in a classroom setting that is more ideal to learn.

This is especially poignant given that this is the hometown of the First Lady, Michelle Obama. Perhaps Obama's push is having an impact in other areas of childhood obesity.

The Chicago changes do include some positive steps.

Improvements include serving a dark-green or orange vegetable three times a week, one whole-grain offering each day and fruit juice offered only twice a week as the fruit component of the meal.

This isn't to make light of the changes but this is 2010. This should have been done a long time ago.

And the changes don't seem to go far enough: fruit is healthier for you than juice. And if it is a high sugar juice (apple, grape), it's barely healthier.

Our children deserve better — much better.

Would love to have seen Jamie Oliver's reaction to the Chicago school lunch setup. Oliver complained about pizza for breakfast? Imagine his shock with seeing doughnuts and Pop-Tarts. Yikes!!

Crawling for poutine; good to chase after food treats

Even when you are trying to eat well, you sometimes have to indulge in a treat that isn't all that healthy. It does help if you can get a little exercise in chasing down the indulgence.

You've likely heard of beer crawls; well, this was a poutine crawl. For those who aren't familiar with poutine, the Quebecois dish is French fries topped with cheese curds, ideally squeakable, and then all of that is covered with brown gravy. This is not a dish for the timid eater.

Good poutine is not easy to find, but I was invited to see for myself from a bunch of Canadians. Even if poutine is most associated with Quebec, you can find poutine throughout Canada, but not always in the United States.

So I spent a Saturday night chasing down poutine. There were three stops on the crawl: one for poutine, one for beer, and the last for both poutine and beer. Of course, the beer does add calories, but if you are going to treat yourself, you might as well have a bit of fun.

The first place had what might be described as a poor substitute for poutine. When Canadians sniff their noses about poutine, it's best not to try it. After all, why waste calories on a poor substitute?

The second stop — beer only — turned out to be too crowded. So we were headed to the last stop without beer or poutine. But I was told by more than one person that this place would have good poutine.

They were not kidding.

I have had authentic poutine in Quebec. I have eaten poutine covered with foie gras at Au Pied de Cochon in Montréal. This was close to what I would call regular normal poutine.

So I got my taste of fairly authentic poutine with a nice glass (or two) of La Fin du Monde, a Quebec beer, and had a nice late night treat.

I did split the poutine with my girlfriend, so the calorie damage wasn't so bad. But it tasted good, and getting a taste can sometimes be enough to last a while.

We can't go through the day eating lettuce, as the Huntington, WV disc jockey smirked to Jamie Oliver on his TV show. And we can't go through the day eating poutine. But if you manage your calories well, you can make a little room for poutine. It helps if you have to work hard to get that treat.

poutine photo credit