Balance of Food

Halal may not mean better taste, but something was improved

The food quality focus is on how animals are raised, as that effects the quality of the meat. But is there any truth to the idea that how an animal's life ends makes a difference on the plate?

Those who eat Kosher or Halal think how the animal is slain makes a difference for religious reasons. And from what we've seen on the killing floor, you have to wonder based on the cleaning process if going Kosher or Halal makes a difference in taste.

Just for the record, I am not either Jewish or Muslim. And I hope desperately to not offend those who are by my ignorance (please feel free to leave a comment to correct any religious element within the story).

Halal is a Muslim term that is similar in vein to kosher that apply to how the animals are slain.

Sometime ago, I noticed a sign at a nearby KFC that the outlet was halal, not a huge surprise in that area. So I thought this would be a good experiment since unlike other establishments, I would be able to tell "before" and "after."

I ordered a breast and a wing with 2 sides and a biscuit for my sample meal. The chicken came out with a darker brown color than I have had in awhile. My unofficial theory is that KFC tasted better when I was a child in part because the chicken skin was dark brown, not the lighter skinned chicken we see today from KFC. (Yes, it was freshly cooked back then as well.) This chicken didn't quite reach the color level of my childhood, but I was impressed.

[Side note: when I tried the Double Down, I noticed that the picture of the Double Down had a similar dark brown color unlike my actual sandwich. If only I could order the sandwich in the picture.]

Color was good and encouraging, but taste would have to rule out. The chicken certainly was the juiciest KFC bird I had eaten in, well, I couldn't remember. So often in eating KFC, I tough it out with the meat, trying to counterbalance (somewhat) the skin.

Color, taste, expectations? Numerous reasons for why the bird was much better than normal. Can I give full credit to halal? I would have to think that halal made a difference, and kosher would, too.

Other than Kosher beef hot dogs, I don't think I have had kosher or halal meat before this, and hot dogs aren't the best judge of meat quality. But if I feel like the quality is significantly better, my eyes are now open to Kosher and Halal, regardless of religion.

Wendy's new burgers don't live up to its advertising, but are quite good for fast food

As much of a fast food sommelier as I used to be, I don't spend too much time in chain fast food restaurants. Once in a great while, mostly out of circumstance, taking in a fast food restaurant isn't a treat but a necessity.

So when that time comes, it would be nice to have something pretty good. This led me to try Wendy's new hotter, juicier, bigger burgers, at least while making it not sound like a porno movie.

Wendy's had impressed me with its natural-cut fries with sea salt. Yet in all those months, I hadn't been back at Wendy's, at least not for the fries.

I did look forward to another round with the fries, especially if the burger wasn't what it had promised to be.

The local Wendy's had a HD set showcasing its food items. The TV "show" proved necessary as the line to take our orders was not moving very fast. On one level, this was a good sign in that our food was being cooked after we ordered it. However, they had difficulty juggling taking other orders while the first order was being cooked.

Gave me a chance to look at the menu: a lot more choices than the top two fast food burger joints. Still I was determined to get what I wanted. I ordered a single burger, minus cheese and mayonnaise (I'm not masochistic), and a medium fries. With tax, the total comes to $6.03, rather expensive for fast food.

The burger is wrapped in paper and comes in an upright box. The display is similar to Hardee's, but Hardee's has half the sandwich sticking out. Feels odd to have a fast food chain trying to win style points.

Even minus cheese and mayo, the burger still has a lot going for it: lettuce, tomato, red onions, pickles, and mustard. The lettuce in the "commercial" is green, the lettuce I get is white. The tomato slice is thick, mine is medium. The pickles are crinkle cut, but don't have much flavor. The bun was toasted and presumably buttered, but my taste buds couldn't tell if the burger was kosher as a result.

Is the burger hotter? Fast food isn't really hot by my standards, so maybe. Juicier? The burger seemed a little bit juicier, but I gave credit to the other ingredients. The burger can't be classified as juicy by most people's standards. Bigger? The single is still supposed to be ¼ pound before cooking. Don't think it's any bigger.

That being said, it was good. Not great, but good. The flavors worked well together, even if individually you seriously worried that the lettuce, tomato, and pickles had no taste by themselves. Though I would give Hardee's lettuce many more points than the Wendy's iceberg attempt, Wendy's has a better upscale sandwich than Hardee's does.

Should you blow off a good burger place for the Wendy's entry? No. But if you are surrounded by well-known fast food places at meal time, you could do a lot worse than this sandwich. be sure and gets the fries, too.

Canada proves that high cheese standards are worth having

The Supreme Court of Canada could be considered a "foodie" in the United States.

The court refused to hear an appeal from cheese manufacturers Saputo and Kraft that wanted to use more milk solids in cheese and less milk in the process. The rules that were upheld require cheese to have more full-fat milk.

This may have seemed like a common sense ruling but in the United States, common sense in food labeling is very difficult to locate. Substances that are labelled "cheese" in marketing in the United States as already identified as "processed cheese" in Canada.

Previous coverage: U.S. standards need to limit labeling 'cheese' for actual cheese

The ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada shows what regulation can mean to the quality of food. You can imagine that if the current U.S. Supreme Court had a chance to rule on food quality standards, corporate food manufacturers would walk away smiling.

Knowledgable people know processed cheese isn't real cheese, but if you aren't paying attention, and you hear the word "cheese," you should have a reasonable expectation of getting cheese. You can get that in Canada, but not in the United States. Freedom indeed.

And/or should never be on an ingredient list

The front of food labels usually features very deceptive language, but the ingredient list is supposed to contain what is in the food product. Yet for years, soft drink companies had "high-fructose corn syrup and/or sugar" on their labels. Either you have an ingredient or you don't.

Now what we are seeing in Canada is "glucose/fructose and/or sugar" (glucose/fructose is what Canada calls high-fructose corn syrup).

For more on this disturbing trend, read the story first reported on CanadianCrossing.com.

American school kids deserve better than 'pizza as a vegetable'

When we mocked Ragu last spring for its vegetable emphasis, the company pointed out that "Ragu has more than a full serving of veggies in every ½ cup." Now the spaghetti sauce manufacturer says it's 2 servings in every ½ cup.

Seems like Ragu took a lesson from the USDA or vice versa, as the GOP-led House has pushed through a spending bill that peels away some of the gains made in the school lunch program. The press and comedy shows had fun with this GOP-led House bill making pizza into a vegetable. What got missed in the humor and depression is that the USDA has virtually made pizza into a vegetable already.

The USDA counts tomato paste as a vegetable now, but to be fair, the organization has "standards." The requirement for the USDA was to count a ½ cup of tomato paste as a serving, something where pizza currently falls short. The House bill wanted to change that to make the tomato paste in pizza count as a vegetable, even at less than ½ cup.

Tomatoes and cooked tomatoes should certainly count as a vegetable, unlike potatoes, especially French fries and, dare we say, tater tots. The argument that Ragu and the USDA make is tomatoes count, no matter in what form and what might be alongside.

After all, if we were to drop our hypocrisy for a second, we don't like vegetables unless they're covered in something, and we do use sugar as a way to eat our veggies. "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down in the most delightful way."

Common salad dressings have sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. Candied carrots. Sometimes, the pacifier isn't sweet, but salty. Processed dip mixes. Or buttery, as in asparagus in butter sauce, or cheesy, as broccoli either covered in cheese or smothered in a "cheese" sauce.

So we have accepted that vegetables need a little push to get them through our internal systems. However, this doesn't let the USDA or the Republicans in Congress off the hook.

In mocking Ragu, at least the spaghetti sauce is healthier for you than the pizza in school lunchrooms. Sure both the spaghetti sauce and the pizza sauce is loaded with high-fructose corn syrup and salt, and they are used on white flour products. However, the fat content of the mozzarella cheese on top of pizza and the nitrates in the meat usually featured on a school lunch pizza outweighs the parmesan cheese, even the kind from the green can, on spaghetti.

Feeding kids in the home (the Ragu commercial features a kid) deserves a modicum of protection, but somehow, feeding kids in a public school would demand higher standards. So even if ½ cup of tomato paste counts as a serving of vegetables, the USDA has the power to make that tomato paste mean more than the minimum standards it insists on setting. No amount of political pressure should reduce that even further.

Since the rule would need to be written in bureaucraticese, this is what we have in mind:

"If the only vegetable in a school lunch item, as noted in Section 1-6, Article 2, paragraph 4, meets the minimum standard of ½ cup of tomato paste, then the school lunch item can only count as a "vegetable" if the school lunch item also contains ½ cup of vegetables in solid form, only ¼ cup of which can be carrots, in solid form only, as noted in Section 1-3, Article 5, paragraph 2."

In English, what this means is that if you want to count pizza as a vegetable, you have to have real solid vegetables on the pizza. Yes, that pizza would still have too much high-fructose corn syrup in the sauce, too much starch in the crust, too much fat in the cheese, and too many nitrates in the meat, but you would be able to look at it and say "that has vegetables." or as Herman Cain would put it "a sissy pizza." And ketchup wouldn't be counted as a vegetable. Neither would French fries or tater tots.

The Republicans in these circumstances say "we don't want the government telling us what to eat." In the regular world, this isn't an issue. If you are a 10-year-old in a public school and your parents didn't pack you a lunch, the government is going to set guidelines on what happens in the school cafeteria, so the government will have some influence. Unless you want to get rid of publicly funded school lunches.

Until the GOP dumps the Department of Education and the school lunch program, those who want better school lunches will have to fight tooth and nail for our children to have better standards in the school lunch room. The late-night comedians can only do so much.

photo credit: Ragu

'Colbert Report' teaches us new way to cram in food

The Colbert Report (and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) are on a well-deserved vacation. Stephen Colbert left us a Thought for Food, though the segment didn't have much on food, but how to eat said food.

Pushy Pops make it "easier" to cram food into your mouth. We're told that more people in Western European countries are eating food on the run these days, so Americans need to find easier ways to eat food on the run.

Those of us (including myself) who grew up not wanting to touch other things on a plate would be horrified to have to eat with a Pushy Pop.

Colbert took cheesecake, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and salad (reverse order) and pushed in with the Pushy Pop. Surprisingly, he didn't eat it. Colbert is usually more brave about such things, but maybe we finally found his tipping point.

For those who wonder what the hell "natural flavor" is on an ingredient list, Stephen told us the segment was sponsored by Triscuit rosemary and olive oil crackers, where it says right on the box, "natural flavor with other natural flavor." To us, "natural flavor" better be rosemary or olive oil or something already spelled out. We know what artificial flavor means, but natural flavor should be more obvious than it is.

photo credit: Colbert Report

Temptation of the Week: Removing holiday temptation

How much weight would you not gain if you blew off the holidays?

Like saved jobs in this country, proving how much you wouldn't eat in a scenario is a rather difficult task.

We talk about the temptation that the holidays bring, anything from the Thanksgiving stuffing we had as a child to candy dishes full of red and green wrapped candy at work. Why are there two gigantic eating holidays at a time where cold weather prevents us from burning off some of those extra calories?

The reality is you will celebrate the holidays because you have to, you want to, you need to, and you'll do your best to get through them.

Secretly, you might desire a chance to spend the holidays by yourself. Okay, you would miss your family. Maybe. But you would be away from the temptations that holidays bring. And the emotional, financial, physical stress that accompany trips.

What if you made a nice simple Thanksgiving type meal, allowing you the time to cook that you might not get after coming up late from work? You could splurge on yourself, but have the time to prepare something tasty and healthy. No verbal pressure to have pie, cake, tart unless you really want it.

How about a nice roasted chicken or quinoa dish at holiday time? Again, a simple meal made with time and love for yourself.

For most, this is a fantasy because you will spend holidays with the family and reality, but not in a good way, because you don't have any family left or the situation is just too bad.

As tempting as it might be to remove temptation, others suffer from the opposite. If left alone, they are more afraid they will overeat and seek the company of others. And alone for the holidays can feel more alone.

If you have no family or don't want to admit you have a family, you can hang out with friends or friends' families. They might be in a family drama, but as an outsider, you don't have to worry about stress levels. And their older relatives might want you to eat more, but they don't have the baggage of your older relatives.

You do have options for how to handle the temptations of the holidays. Even if you are somewhere you don't want to be, you are still in control. Temptations are all around you, but the will to fight them is from within.

Consumers need to fight for higher standards so food advertising reflects what's on the plate

Truth in advertising can sometimes be a joke. Look at that awesome thing on TV or in a magazine ad, and you never quite get what you saw that attracted your attention.

Advertising in most countries has laws, rules, and standards protecting consumers from feeling deceived. The United States practices laissez-faire when it comes to advertising, especially in the food realm.

What was surprising from the recent coverage of food photography was this idea that companies are starting to make their food look more like it does in restaurants.

Uh, no.

This subject still stirs me up, even if my fast food days are mostly behind me. Presentation is an over used phrase in food. Normally, I don't care about presentation, and if presentation is more important than the ingredients or the taste, then it isn't worth eating. But in some dishes, how it looks makes a big difference.

I recounted this with amusement when the Double Down sandwich made its debut. The beautiful picture that I saw as I walked in — that sandwich was worth eating. The sandwich I got was not.

The picture featured golden brown pieces of chicken and bacon sticking out of it, good-looking bacon. The reality was light brown pieces of chicken and very little bacon, not as beautiful or plentiful as in the picture.

Little Caesar's Crazy Bread looks great on TV, but the reality is nothing even close. The TV ad Crazy Bread has plenty of sprinkled on cheese; the reality barely has any.

Perhaps it's generic, since my late father thought that McDonald's Apple Pie should have as many apples on the inside as were on the box. Often, the actual pie fell short.

You might understandably think that expecting national chain fast food restaurants to have high or even medium standards is foolish. But their standards used to be higher.

This isn't just about fast food restaurants; they are worse than other types of restaurants. This is about consumers and their rights, regardless of where they choose to spend their food dollar.

Subtle differences in food presentation are to be expected; no one will literally hold up the exact ideal of what is on TV or magazine ads as what they will literally get. Mostly because, well, we have become too cynical to think any differently.

However, if we start taking some pride in what we are offered, if we learn to appreciate what food should have — and not have — then food companies and restaurants would have to conform to our higher standards. If we don't raise the bar, no one else will.

'Simpsons' expose pretentious eating and obsessive food blogs

Food isn't what Homer Simpson puts in his mouth, but some of what we saw in "The Food Wife" episode of "The Simpsons" didn't seem like food.

The Simpsons clan took on foodies as Marge accidentally stumbles upon an Ethiopian restaurant. This from a woman who was once confused by oregano.

Of course, Marge is mortified by the idea of trying Ethiopian food, yet once she tries it, Marge is onboard. Bart and Lisa are also along for the ride, forming a food blog called the "Three Mouthkeeters."

Homer is not onboard, drawing from either the 4 Krusty Burgers outside their window or "La Fridge" open 24 hours a day.

The fact that the writers compared a food science chemistry restaurant with a meth lab gives us an idea of what they think about the foodie obsession.

Pretentiousness doesn't mean food is good. We don't mind some pretentious and obsessive natures, but when they scare people into not trying to get beyond Homer-type obsession with donuts, well, they aren't helping.

Renowed TV chefs Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain, and Gordon Ramsay lent their voices to the episode, giving it an authentic taste.

Gels, foams = not food. "Pine needle sorbet" = doesn't sound like food. Just because food is exotic doesn't mean it's more awesome; after all in Ethiopia, German food is exotic.

In case you missed the episode, and you want to see it again, you can check out the episode on Hulu.com. You may have to prove you have cable, or otherwise check back in about a week. Regardless of which side you are on this issue, the episode is worth watching.

Temptation of the Week: Breaking down a 2,322 calorie sandwich

Okay, this might seem like one of these freak sandwiches we have loved writing about over the years. The Hamdog. The Luther Burger.

However, what makes this sandwich so lovable is that it comes from a chain (though it's only mentioned in the online menu) that doesn't serve burgers or French fries. And when you look at the sandwich, you wouldn't think it would pack that much of a wallop.

May we present Big Jack's PB&J with double peanut butter and double jelly sandwich with a banana … from Potbelly.

Even if you grew up eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, you would have to wonder how this would add up to 2,322 calories.

Let's break down this sandwich:

• bread = 370 calories, 72 g carbohydrates, 830 mg sodium, 16 g protein
• banana = 300 calories
• jelly = 420 calories (210 calories per level)
• peanut butter = 1160 calories

Here is where the meal calculator gets confusing: each layer of jelly had the same number of calories. If you clicked "peanut butter," you got an additional 655 calories. If you clicked "double peanut butter" alone, you got an additional 505 calories. So the layers of peanut butter are off by 150 calories.

When we originally looked up the sandwich, the total came to 2,322 calories. Now the sandwich ends up at 2,250 calories.

Admittedly, the bread is bigger as is the sandwich, but 16 g protein is an awful lot from two pieces of bread.

Given that the banana is 300 calories, you have to wonder where those bananas grow. A medium banana is about 105 calories. The meal calculator doesn't say "double banana," but even 2 whole medium bananas is nowhere near 300 calories. Even if you are using 2 bananas, this isn't clear anywhere. And it's not like the banana is fried, ala Elvis Presley's favorite snack.

Full disclosure: I was a witness to the eating of the sandwich, an interested observer. So what I know is what I saw.

The meal calculator tells us that this sandwich contains 104 g fat (160%), 19 g saturated fat (97%), 302 g carbohydrates (101%), 174 g sugar, and 62 g protein.

The meal calculator doesn't factor in a human being putting together the proportions for the sandwich; a little more peanut butter, a little less jelly can add or subtract the impact.

Let's say it's a 2,000+ calorie sandwich, one that doesn't involve meat or anything being fried, no freakish combinations unless a banana freaks you out.

Peanut butter and jelly seems so innocent, like Bambi in the forest, until Bambi runs out in the middle of the road of a dark country road and won't move as your car goes along. Peanut butter has calories and fat and salt and sugar. Jelly has calories and sugar. The banana is almost radioactive. Calories can sneak up on you, especially in a friendly temptation.