Balance of Food

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." The question needed extra though (for food), so I posted the video on Twitter (@balanceoffood) in the short term.

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 … .

Gluten-free food is not a diet panacea

Would you eat diabetic candy if you didn't have diabetes? Even diabetics don't want diabetic candy.

So why are so many people eating gluten-free when they don't have to do so?

Clearly, our society has a ever-growing class of people who are allergic to gluten. The sub-class of those who don't physically do well with gluten is also getting larger. And experimenting to see if you are in the first two classes, that's okay, too. This isn't about them, and we wish them the best of luck and fortune.

This is aimed at the rest of you: gluten-free is not a fad. It's not cool. It's not a diet gimmick.

As part of my job, I've tried gluten-free baked goods. I always think to myself, "Something is missing." This is because there is something missing.

People associate gluten with wheat, so they figure if they don't eat wheat, they will lose weight. Whether you eat brown rice spaghetti or whole wheat spaghetti, calories are calories. To someone who suffers from gluten, brown rice spaghetti makes a difference. To someone without gluten issues, brown rice spaghetti doesn't make a difference.

French fries are gluten-free. White rice flour is gluten free. Tapioca starch is gluten free. They are not low in calories as a result.

Bread and spaghetti aren't the enemy. The evil "carbs" aren't out to get you. They can fill you up in large quantities, and you might want to cut back on the bread basket if you are that concerned.

If you fix a lean buffalo steak or some grilled skinless chicken, and you have some non-starchy vegetables and a serving of high-antioxidant fruit, adding a slice of multi-grain bread is a nice way to accent that meal. Or a nice small plate of whole wheat spaghetti with lots of vegetables and a tomato sauce naturally low in salt and sugar can be a really nice treat.

All this, unless you have a sensitivity to gluten. Then you have to try something else.

If you ask anyone with gluten allergies, issues, or problems, they would trade places with you in a heartbeat. Appreciate the world of food if you can eat gluten.

USDA needs better reasons to avoid telling us that we're eating pink slime

"Warning: Pink Slime contained in this meat."

We haven't been crazy about the trend of plastering nutrition info on menu boards because the information is contained elsewhere and you (should) have some idea about those numbers. But we generously support any attempt to tell us what is in the food we are eating, especially when the government doesn't want us to know what we are eating.

While the news that schools could choose not to carry "pink slime" meat was thrilling, the actual numbers behind the statistics aren't thrilling. What's worse is that this is a reminder once again that the USDA doesn't want us to know that we are eating meat treated with ammonia.

Watching the U.S food supply in motion is sadly reminiscent of the Monty Python skit, "Crunchy Frog." Without spoiling the humor, the sketch is about a candy maker with deceiving names for peculiar confectionaries. At one point, the candy maker mentions a key ingredient for a candy as larx vomit. The constable suggests a big warning label that says, "Warning: Larx Vomit." The candy maker notes that his sales would plummet if they knew the candy contained the odorous ingredient.

The fine print on the pink slime in school lunchrooms is that the ban only applies to 20% of the beef, since the rest is purchased through USDA-approved vendors. And if already placed orders aren't reversed, the changes that may eventually come won't come as soon as was hoped.

"Warning: Ammonia is an ingredient in what you are about to eat."

Would you pick that up? Would you sniff it first?

Unless you are really good about where you source your foods or if you a vegetarian/vegan, chances are you have eaten pink slime. I'm virtually certain I have.

Jamie Oliver's take on pink slime in Season 2 of the "Food Revolution" was disgusting. Since no one sued Jamie Oliver for what he did, we have to assume that it's true.

Even the vast majority of those who watched Oliver do what he did have consumed pink slime since then because we aren't reminded often enough of what we are eating.

In the Monty Python skit, the idea is if a candy has a warning for larx vomit, you won't eat it. The underlying message is "Don't put larx vomit in your candy." Well, don't put pink slime in your food, especially for the children.

Ammonia is used to treat potential e-coli that stems from poor handling of animals and meat in the whole of the factory farm system. So even if we got rid of ammonia, we still have the underlying problem. But if the government considered ammonia to be an ingredient worth posting in our food supply, we would get a lot angrier at the prospect. And that would be a good start toward making things better.

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.

Spring brings wellness lectures; tips in case you need a refresher

Today is the first day of spring, the hopeful season when we all think that we can lose that weight and eat better. Well, we're seeing larger companies get more involved in helping their employees, even if it is for selfish reasons (energy, reduced absenteeism, etc.).

So my day job held a week of wellness lectures to help reinvigorate their employees. And if your day job doesn't do something like this, or if you don't have a day or night job, here are some of their tips.

One of the lectures was run by a chiropractor who talked about health and stress. He noted that stress is essential for you to live, but too much wasn't healthy either. As he noted that, I jotted down "salt" since we are told we need salt or we will die, but too much is unhealthy. Most Americans get too much salt and stress.

Instinctively, we turn to snacks when we are stressed. Of course, if they contain salt, they are also filled with irony.

The chiropractor suggests not eating when you're stressed out, not eating after 7 pm, and snacking on nuts and seeds for Omega 3s, which can help with stress.

He listed three stress hormones, including cortisol that raises blood sugar, a careful consideration for those that have to worry about that.

If giving into stress involves not-so-great eating options (donuts?), well this can make a stressful situation worse.

The chiropractor suggests breathing, 10-minute walks (a 2-hour benefit), laughing, and the rule of 90 (keeping back and knees at 90°.

The other lecture I attended was from a dietitian on staying healthy when eating out. Her examples stemmed mostly from places such as Chili's and Applebee's, traditionally some of the worst chain restaurants for adding hidden calories. Seems like the best advice is to avoid those places entirely. Though, one tip you should take with you if you end up there. Some of the appetizers have more calories than entrees at regular restaurants. She described the Bacon Ranch Quesadilla as having 1,620 calories. That's not good … in some many ways.

She approached everything in terms of fat and calories, since a gram of fat has 9 calories vs. a gram of protein or carbohydrate, which has 4 calories. You need good fats, but to be fair, you have to try hard to find good fats, especially in chain restaurants.

While she noted that you should ask for adjustments when ordering, if you have to change more than 3 elements within an item, order something else.

Her best advice might have been the simplest: if you are eating a lot of salt, drink a lot of water. And don't weigh yourself right away after such a meal. Water retention can add up, especially in women.

Some steps were obvious: cut back or cut out cheese, mayonnaise, special sauces. Grilled and broiled is better than fried. Eat a salad or soup to cut down on hunger. Avoid the bread basket. Plan ahead online for nutritional information.

The dietitian offered up one atypical point. She noted that without cheese or mayo, a small hamburger isn't a bad choice. I confess I wanted more tips such as these. Foods can't be divided into great or horrible. Sometimes you have to make an okay choice instead of a great choice. You just don't want to make a really bad choice.

The tips weren't radically off the charts; most of them were rather basic (have to consider who the audience is). They have to assume their audience doesn't know much. And even if you think you do know them, sometimes hearing them at just the right moment is exactly what you need.

Cinnamon is good for you; Cinnamon Challenge might not be

 

The story started out from a co-worker who said that her friend in Missouri read a story about a kid in Ohio who tried to get high on cinnamon and had to go to the hospital.

Like most Internet stories, part of it is true.

The Cinnamon Challenge seemed simple in itself: eat a teaspoon of cinnamon and go a minute without swallowing water. A high school freshman from Michigan (not Ohio) was hospitalized with an infection and a collapsed right lung. And the challenge isn't designed to get anyone high.

Eating a teaspoon of cinnamon without water or other beverage is not a healthy thing since cinnamon dust can be problematic for those with breathing issues.

Eating cinnamon with water or other beverage is a healthy thing since cinnamon is good for those with blood sugar issues.

Cinnamon also has anti-inflammatory properties; contains manganese, dietary fiber, iron, and calcium; may significantly lower LDL, total cholesterol, and triglycerides; and can enhance memory.

The catch is that cinnamon can be toxic in large doses. Cinnamon is good for you, and it tastes good. The Cinnamon Challenge won't harm most people, is a little strange, and can harm some people.

Sprinkle cinnamon on desserts and yogurt. Make cinnamon toast. Pour some cinnamon on your breakfast cereal. Have some in your coffee or hot chocolate.

Cinnamon will not get you high but can rescue you from blood sugar lows. Just sprinkle it all around.

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.

Iowa ag-gag law puts corporate protection over free speech and food safety

Openness and transparency is good enough for our government, but in some circles, not for our food.

"In a post 9/11 world, transparency is important for farmers and consumers alike. Responsible farmers take good care of their land and livestock and want to employ honest, hardworking people that have the welfare of their livestock as their top priority." said Iowa Farm Bureau Federation President and livestock farmer Craig Hill in a statement.

Iowa’s House File 589 doesn't really address those issues. The bill is designed to make it more difficult to know what is going on in factory farms. As for those consumers, it's a lack of transparency.

Iowa isn't the only state where factory farms are fighting back against those who want to know more about how our food is grown. Seven states — Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York and Utah — have plans in the works for similar legislation.

So what does Iowa’s House File 589 do?

Agricultural production facility fraud. 1. A person is guilty of agricultural production facility fraud if the person willfully does any of the following: a. Obtains access to an agricultural production facility by false pretenses. b. Makes a false statement or representation as part of an application or agreement to be employed at an agricultural production facility, if the person knows the statement to be false, and makes the statement with an intent to commit an act not authorized by the owner of the agricultural production facility, knowing that the act is not authorized.

So if you legitimately work in an agricultural production facility, and you are concerned about the practices where you work, if you take action, your employer will go after you for fraud that doesn't have to be true to be scary. Because somehow if you are concerned about the animals around you, this will be assumed from the start that you came into your job with the intent of disrupting the company.

One element that you got from watching "Fresh" was the number of chicken coop owners who felt like they couldn't appear on camera. So much is hidden from the process, from how the animals are treated to how the animals are processed.

Hill's statement reflects on "honest, hardworking people that have the welfare of their livestock as their top priority." That is what those who have been fighting for transparency want from the food system. If what Hill is saying is true, we don't need this legislation. Then again, they may disagree on the definitions of "honest" and "hardworking" and "welfare of their livestock as their top priority."

Amanda Clayton Michigan story shouldn't hurt those who need food help

You probably have heard the story of Amanda Clayton, the Michigan woman who won $1 million in the state lottery, but was still getting $200/month in food assistance. You may have been one of those who screaming loudly at your computer screen when you realized what Clayton was getting away with doing.

Back in October, we wrote about Michigan's plan to have food stamps receipients list assets in order to qualify. We noted that while homes and the first $15,000 of a car were exempt, those that had a good life before the recession were in greater danger of being denied help because their car might be relatively new, or if they own two cars. We were concerned the most about creating an environment where people who did qualify were intimidated into not taking advantage of what they were entitled to receive.

BalanceofFood.com has stood up for reforming food assistance to concentrate on foods that made more sense (i.e., not soft drinks and junk food), but also to make more money available so that all who need the help can get the help. Those on food assistance should find it easier to take advantage of fresh produce, especially from local farmers.

The poorest of the poor have difficulty affording nutritious food in our backwards government-subsidized corn and soy farm world.

The critics who use the Amanda Clayton story to justify reduced benefits for those in need miss the point. Fraud exists whether government benefits the poor and the rich. But we tend to focus on small amounts such as $200/month rather than hundreds of thousands on a larger scale.

And unlike most of the fraud that occurs among the 1%, Clayton got caught, and the justice system will take care of that case. In the meantime, don't forget about those who really need help getting food on a daily basis.

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.

photo credit: McDonald's