Balance of Food

What's Tempting: Regaining lost grocery stores

With all the talk of food deserts, you might think you're safe since you have nearby grocery stores, large ones with real produce sections.

But what happens if you lose your grocery store?

Some folks in the Chicagoland area are running into this scenario on Saturday as Safeway is abandoning the Dominick's stores. They are willing to sell the stores, but if they don't get sold, they close.

If you read last week's edition of What's Tempting, this is the end result of the 50% grocery store discount.

Safeway, which hadn't run the Dominick's all that well during its reign, announced abruptly on October 18 that the stores would close on December 28 unless they were bought. Not much time to find a new owner, though Jewel, Dominick's primary rival, bought 4 locations and Mariano's, a up and coming chain started by a former Dominick's employee, bought 11 locations. Whole Foods might buy 7 locations. This still leaves a lot of neighborhoods that will lose a major grocery store in a matter of days.

These stores are in poor and middle-class neighborhoods. They are neighborhoods that supported the Dominck's stores; they aren't closing because they were bad locations.

Previous coverage: What's Tempting: 50% off groceries

When I wrote about food deserts that had a definition of a major grocery store within ½ mile, I noted that I had a Dominick's ⅝ of a mile away. Well, that store will close on December 28. Perhaps, maybe, some company will take over that space. But there will be residents that will have to travel further to get groceries.

The Dominick's that is 1½ miles away is being converted to a Mariano's. The transition time will be about 45 days. Winter is not the best time to be without a major grocery store, but there is a nearby Jewel to that location.

When Dominick's upgraded its stores, Safeway choose to rehaul both locations at the same time. If you rely purely on large grocery stores, you were hurting short-term in my neighborhood.

In a better economy, a grocery store chain would jump for a chance to enter the 3rd largest market in the country. Already established stores that are set up to be a grocery store would save a company a lot of start-up money. Heck, a group could even take off the name of Dominick's and run it better than Safeway.

In the current economy, Jewel, the dominant market leader in Chicago, is owned by a venture capital firm, Cerebus Capital Management.

That could have been done with a bit more time than Safeway allowed. But no chain is going to jump in and save the Dominick's chain.

Individual neighborhoods could rush in and take off a location, but running a major grocery store is a challenge. One Chicago neighborhood is looking into a food co-op as a solution. But finding a more viable space and transitioning to a local store will still leave the neighborhood in a bad scenario — and that is if the plan goes through.

Major grocery stores are supposed to the the cure-all for food deserts. And their presence in a neighborhood makes a positive impact. However, neighborhoods need to be aware that those stores could disappear, decisions made by people who have never set foot in your local store.

A variety of options is the best scenario to reduce or eliminate food deserts.

Chance to catch up on What's Tempting columns

The resolve to finish 2013 with no missing weeks for What's Tempting will be accomplished. We will have a new column on Friday, completing 2013 where a Friday column will run every week.

Even with new columns running, you are still invited to take an extra time to recall some of the great What's Tempting columns (including those under the present incarnation, Temptation of the Week). You can click through to the columns here.

Who could forget Sex Cereal or Yogurt for men. Food education for nannies or a small-town lobster supper. Grape-Nuts changing its traditional formula for a little extra protein or vegan chocolate pudding. The Priestley or aspartame in milk. And how about sustainable fish or getting enough food for Wal-Mart workers for Thanksgiving.

What's Tempting: 50% off groceries

Most going out of business sales involve dramatically increased prices, followed by slashed prices, to get you to buy something you otherwise might not buy just because it's 50% off.

But what if a grocery store goes out of business, and offers 50% off?

Chicagoland grocery shoppers found out when the long-time local chain Dominick's started marking most of its food at 50% off last Friday. The crowds were a bit huge as word spread of the sales.

Your humbled reporter didn't get to the scene until Sunday, but still found a few bargains. And a lot of empty shelves.

At the first Dominick's on my short list, the items were shuffled from other aisles to aisle 5. The middle aisles were virtually empty and everything from the middle had been loaded onto poor aisle 5. People walking slowly up and down the aisle, looking, inspecting, hoping to discover a bargain that somehow everyone else had missed. A hodgepodge of items, like the island of misfit toys, but with canned goods.

The produce section was pristine as was the fresh meat and the dairy. They were pristine because they weren't subject to the 50% off sale.

If you have ever seen a supermarket game where you had a limited amount of time to buy, you know to go for the valuable food. The more expensive, the better.

The fresh seafood wasn't on special, but the crab meat next to it was on special. The crab meat was on special and then marked down 50%. A specific brand of bacon was 2-for-1; with 50% off, the bacon was 4-for-1.

The other opportunity 50% off buys you is the chance to experiment on products you otherwise wouldn't buy. Salmon jerky and a yogurt-based blue cheese dressing were a lot more appealing at 50% off.

If hoarding is a natural instinct, you can get into problems in this situation. Very tempting to buy things you may never use. Of course, if you don't eat the food, you still are paying 50% for nothing.

Also, you should check to see if the original price is true. In the search down aisle 5, most products didn't have an original price tag. I picked up one item and saw the price when it was rung up. Even at 50%, it seemed too expensive. That could have been the original price or the price was jacked up.

Buying up at 50% off can be emotional, but bring along a logical friend, or alter ego, at least.

Seeing empty or near-empty shelves was an odd mix of euphoria and depression. Grocery stores are supposed to be full of food, and seeing them empty made me feel a little vulnerable. But I was excited at finding something on the shelf, knowing I could take it home for 50% off.

Take full advantage of such a scenario if you ever get the chance. Come up with a plan and stick to it … mostly. Fun with a splash of logic will lower your food bills and give you a nearly once in a lifetime experience.

Daily Show on the real life Hunger Games

The sequester quietly forced $5 billion in cuts to food stamps on November 1. The GOP wants another $40 billion cut over 10 years. The Dems knocked that down to only $4 billion in cuts.

The "Hunger Games" analogy used by "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" was too easy a target. Yet the segment illustrated how little we are paying attention to the loss of food stamps when they are desperately needed.

Jessica Williams helped us see this distopian view of the hungry by introducing us to Forbes columnist John Tamny.

"Food stamps are cruel," says Tamny. Not as cruel as starving or being forced to go hungry while making sure your kids are fed.

Conservatives think food stamps are "cruel" because they promote dependence. Except every statistic shows this isn't true, but this is about political theory, not the truth.

"If people were literally starving, you would see a massive outpouring of charity to make up that fact," Tamny notes. Except we haven't. Williams contrasts the $80 billion in government funding versus the $5 billion in charitable donations.

Conservatives would be in the streets protesting to charities to do more to contribute. Except they aren't.

"Media is going to do a good job of exposing people starving or in need," Tamny observes. Except they aren't.

Forbes is considered the media; we must have missed the huge number of stories Forbes has written on the topic. Tamny lives in Washington, DC, but hasn't seen people starving or in need. Those windows must be pretty tinted on his ride home.

The food stamps cuts, short-term and long-term, haven't been covered in great detail. People who are suffering aren't visible. Tamny wants us to wait to see shrunken bellies, like a Sally Struthers commercial for world hunger. We should strive to do better than wait for that extreme.

As disturbing as Tamny's views are, he represents a power base in Washington that has little regard for those who don't get enough to eat. As much as the GOP resembles Scrooge, the Dems aren't fighting very hard to help those in need. The status quo from before November 1 would be a significant improvement for those in need.

Yes, if Tamny's utopia did exist, people would get help from private charity. Then again, the minimum wage would be higher so people could afford food. The GOP would take the subsidies for the rich in the farm bill and put that back into food stamps.

Until that happens, people who either get help or they will starve. Real-life hunger is no game.

What's Tempting: Celebrities going vegan

Going vegan is a challenge in itself, but made more difficult if you don't know anyone who had gone through the process. If you don't know people in your own lives who have made that switch, you can always live through celebrities. And since a lot of us feel like we know celebrities, well, that's "just as good."

Jay-Z and Beyonce are 10 days into their 22-day vegan challenge. Already the two music stars have an advantage, since Jay-Z knows someone going through the process (Beyonce) and Beyonce knows someone going through the process (Jay-Z). And they're both celebrities.

If Jay-Z and Beyonce aren't at your speed or you don't even know who they are, Al Gore is another recent convert to being vegan, joining former President Bill Clinton.

A brief check of celebrities who are vegans unveiled names such as Lea Michele, Jared Leto, Ellen and Portia, Natalie Portman, Russell Simmons, Sandra Oh, Alicia Silverstone, and Daryl Hannah. Silverstone even plays a vegan in her recent film, "Butter."

Jay-Z says the idea came from a vegan friend of his who "challenged me to embrace a 'plant-based breakfast' every day. So he had 2 things on his side: 1) someone who knew the landscape of being vegan, and 2) a direction to experiment with one meal in a day.

The first smart move is identifying this as "plant-based." In the rapper world, "vegan" might sound hippie-like, but "plant-based" might also sound like Snoop Dogg would be doing the challenge instead of Jay-Z.

Going 22 days as a vegan or eating a plant-based diet isn't a challenge to those who are vegetarian and lean vegan, or a well-established vegan. Doing so without having that much of a background, especially around holiday time, is a significant challenge.

Jay-Z announced this quest on his Life and Times blog. Jay-Z doesn't leave his followers in the cold on how to go vegan. The initial blog entry provides a link to a Web site conveniently entitled 22 days nutrition complete with 22 days of menus for vegan options.

Here is the menu from the first day:

Breakfast: Vanilla chia pudding with 1 cup fresh berries

Lunch: Crunchy red cabbage and green apple sesame slaw with 1 cup steamed, cubed sweet potato (or 1 small sweet potato, baked)

Afternoon snack: 1/4 cup hemp hummus with fresh vegetables (carrots, celery, romaine leaves, bell pepper, etc.)

Dinner: Black bean and quinoa salad with quick cumin dressing

Dessert: Dark chocolate

Celebrities, especially those who have to keep in good shape, have perks in their lives that average people don't get to enjoy. Fewer meals on the go, no commuting pressures — you can control more of your lifestyle.

The former vice president cited the impact of meat in climate change as a reasoning for going vegan. Gore's path has been quieter and a lot more subtle. Even when Gore knew how meat impact greenhouse gases, he still kept eating meat. Then again, Gore has been a vegan longer than 22 days.

If you, non-famous person that you are, chooses to go down the plant-based path to being a vegan, you can follow a more-publicized short-term path such as Jay-Z or a quieter, in for the long haul, journey such as Al Gore. Or you can dig to find out the backstory of other Hollywood vegans. Having a friend who is a vegan who will answer your questions is better than following a celebrity path.

No offense to Jay-Z and Beyonce, but a public spectacle over a 22-day period proves tempting to downplay any bumps in the road. If people are going to follow the path of celebrities, they would benefit from knowing about what to do in times of temptation or trouble. What about road trips? What about dinner parties? Was there a moment where you gave into temptation?

The 22-day method is designed to give a person time to change their ways. This shouldn't be about going 22 straight days without any animal products. The advantage to Gore's method is any slipup exists in real time; not about perfection, but finding a consistent path over a lifetime.

Often when talking to non-famous vegans on how they decided to go vegan, usually they were already vegetarian to start or a part-time vegan. Can't recall how many times I heard the phrase "I never really liked meat anyway." They weren't jumping from classic omnivore to strict vegan; even their path was an evolution, though a few of them seemingly had a head start down the path.

Jay-Z is trying to be realistic about going vegan full-time, not sure about the future. "I don't know what happens after Christmas. A semi-vegan, a full plant-based diet? Or just a spiritual and physical challenge? We'll see …"

Props to Jay-Z: no promises, no guarantees, giving a 24/7 plant-based diet a shot. Props to Beyonce, too. Good to have a loved one by your side in going down a difficult path.

What's Tempting: Banning trans fats

"process of adding a hydrogen atom to a fatty acid, thus reducing the number of double bonds to create a malleable mixture of fat that stays solid at room temperature and can not be metabolized, causing it to accrete in the tissues."

Stephen Colbert breaks down why trans fats are bad for you. Sanjay Gupta isn't a quarter of the health reporter Colbert is.

The FDA wants to ban trans fats. But people don't generally know what trans fats are or how much damage they can do.

While the argument for the FDA doing something anything that might improve people's health and their food supply, trans fats might not be the best place to start. If the FDA can ban trans fats, the agency can take on other issues.

The Heritage Foundation is defending those "judeo-Crisco values" (Colbert joke): "even if they eat so much trans fat that they in fact do have greater health risks, this is their personal and informed choice."

Well, the FDA allows products to advertise "0 grams of trans fat" and still have trans fat, as long as the product has less than ½ gram of trans fat PER SERVING. Unless you know to look for "partially hydrogenated" oils, you aren't informed.

Tucker Carlson assumes trans fats are in foods "because they're delicious." Colbert notes that "trans fats don't have any particular taste."

"That's America's favorite flavor," smiled Colbert.

To answer Carlson's theoretical question, trans fats are in foods to make them more shelf-stable so they'll last longer. As for taste, not that Carlson is correct, but we would offer up that McDonald's French fries weren't the same after switching to oils without trans fat. Not sure if the oil was the cause since we don't know the other contributing factors.

And as much as I like to avoid trans fat, I do eat fake bacon bits that has partially hydrogenated oil. But I try not to eat too much in one sitting.

Saturated, unsaturated, polyunsaturated, trans fats: most people don't pay attention. Look at what happens when you show a "fat-free" food.

We need fat to survive, good fat preferably. Trans fats? We don't need them, and they aren't good for us. I don't miss the old McDonald's French fries, and if the taste is modified in the fake bacon bits, I can live with that.